Brass: Birmingham Endgame Planning

The last rounds of Brass: Birmingham are the most predictable part of the game. The deck is gone, every hand is a number you can count, and most of the board is set. That makes them the best place to win points with planning instead of luck.

Count your actions

Once the draw deck is empty, you stop refilling your hand, and every card is one action. With 4 players, the deck runs out after round 4 of each era, so the last four rounds come from the 8 cards you hold. Even a Scout keeps the count: it spends 3 cards but gives you 2 wilds, so your hand still shrinks by one.

So in the final four rounds of the Rail Era, you have exactly 8 actions left. Plan all 8. Only Build needs the right card; every other action takes any card. Sort your hand into builds you can make and cards that are fuel for Network, Sell, Develop, and Loan.

Spend every pound

Leftover money only breaks ties, after income. If you finish with £20 and a rival finishes with £0 and 2 more VPs, your money did nothing. In the final rounds, check that every pound in your plan turns into a tile, a link, or a cube.

The last round of the game pays no income, which makes it the cheapest moment for a loan. A loan as the first action of your final turn gives you £30 for your second action, and the only cost is the card and a lower income for the tiebreak. A loan still cannot take your income below -10.

Flip what will score

Unflipped tiles score nothing. Before the last round, list every unflipped tile you own and how it could flip:

• Cotton mills, manufacturers, and potteries flip with a Sell. One Sell action can flip several tiles, so line up the merchants and the beer first. Your own brewery is the safest beer, because merchant beer goes to whoever reaches it first.
• Coal mines, iron works, and breweries flip when emptied. Rivals may empty them for you, but do not count on it. You can drain your own iron works and breweries whenever you need iron or beer. Your own coal is used only when your mine is the closest connected one.

Final links

Rails placed in the last rounds score the final board, so you can count them almost exactly. A double rail in the final round places 2 links with one action, if you have the beer and coal. Aim them at towns full of flipped tiles and at merchant locations.

Turn order in the last round

Spending in the second-to-last round sets the order for the last one. Spend big and you act last, knowing what everyone else did. Spend little and you act first, with first claim on merchant beer and cheap market coal. Decide which matters more for your plan one round early.

Ties

Ties go to the higher income level, then to more money. If players are still tied, they share the result.

Count the rivals too

Every player runs out of cards in the same round, so once the deck is gone you know exactly how many actions each rival has left: the same number as you. That turns guesses into short lists. If a rival has two unflipped cotton mills and two actions left, a Sell is coming, and the merchant beer they need is the barrel you might take first. If nobody else has a brewery with beer on it, your own barrels are about to become very popular, and every one a rival uses moves your brewery closer to flipping.

Watch the character tiles in the last rounds as well. The money on them shows what each player has spent so far this round, so before your own turn you can tell roughly where you will land in the next round’s order.

The rest of Level 4 picks up from here: finishing on time and reviewing each game. Level 5 then covers how the World Boardgaming Championships runs its Brass event, where to find serious games, and a practice plan for the weeks before a tournament.