Reading the Table in Brass: Birmingham

Brass: Birmingham hides only one thing: the cards in each hand. Everything else sits face up. Each player’s mat shows the next tile they can build in every industry. The progress track shows every income level and score. The character tiles show what everyone has spent this round. Good players read all of it.

Read the mats

A rival’s mat tells you their next build in every industry, what it costs, and what it needs. If their next cotton mill needs coal and iron, they need a coal source connected to the town they build in. If their next brewery is level 4, they cannot build a brewery until the Rail Era. If their mat still shows level 1 coal and iron tiles late in the Canal Era, their Rail Era will start slowly unless they spend a Develop.

Read the money

Spending sits on the character tiles all round long, so before your turn you know roughly where everyone will land in next round’s order. A player who has spent nothing this round will probably go early next round. If they are also one action from a sell, the merchant barrel you wanted may be gone before your next turn.

Income levels are on the track for everyone to see. A player with low income has little money arriving each round and may reach for a loan soon. A player at income level -8 or below cannot take one at all, since a loan may never take income below -10.

Forced coal and borrowed beer

Coal must come from the closest connected coal mine with coal on it, whoever owns it. So when you build a coal mine, ask who will be forced to use it. A mine at the junction of several rivals’ towns flips quickly, and each cube they take was their action helping your income.

The reverse matters too. When you need coal and the closest connected mine is a rival’s, your build pays them. Sometimes a canal that changes which mine is closest, or a mine of your own in the town you build in, keeps the gift at home.

Beer works the same way with more choice. A rival’s brewery only supplies you if it is connected, and your own supplies you from anywhere. A brewery near many rivals’ goods tiles is a brewery that flips.

Contested spaces

Every town has a fixed number of build spaces, and some show only one industry. When a town has one space for the industry a rival needs, building there first can push their plan elsewhere. Taking the last free space for an industry in a town closes that town to everyone else for that industry, unless the tile is later overbuilt.

Merchant beer is the other contested space. Each non-blank merchant tile starts with one barrel, and it does not come back until the era break. If two players are both building toward the same merchant, the first seller gets the barrel and the bonus.

Overbuilding a rival

In the Rail Era especially, coal and iron can run out across the whole board. When there are no coal cubes anywhere, on any tile or in the market, you may overbuild a rival’s coal mine with a higher-level mine of your own. The same rule applies to iron works and iron. If no coal is left anywhere, every coal mine on the board has been emptied, which means flipped. So the rival loses a tile that would have scored at the end of the era, though they keep the income and VPs it already earned, and you place a fresh mine full of cubes that everyone now needs.

Help yourself more than anyone else

Almost every play in Brass helps someone else a little: a link raises the value of a rival’s tile, a coal mine feeds their builds, a brewery serves their sales. That is fine. The question is the margin. Before a play, ask who gains and how much. A canal that scores you 6 VPs and lets a rival sell a tile worth 9 is a canal you may want to place one turn later.

If your table slows down while everyone reads everyone, our piece on analysis paralysis has kind ways to keep the game moving.