A digital adaptation of the award-winning board game by Roxley Games. Build your industrial empire across the English Midlands during the height of the Industrial Revolution (1770-1870).
Note: This is an unofficial fan project. Brass: Birmingham is designed by Gavan Brown, Matt Tolman, and Martin Wallace, published by Roxley Games. Please support the original by purchasing the physical game.
A quick look at setup, the labeled card hand, both eras, building, and scoring.
Canal Era in play with the bundled board, cards, tile art, and resource cubes.
Rail Era, with a wider network and higher-level industries.
The printed board artwork used by the game.
Compete as rival entrepreneurs in Birmingham and its surrounding towns. Establish canals and railways, develop industries, and outmaneuver your opponents across two distinct eras.
2-4 Players · Canal Era + Rail Era · Hotseat Multiplayer
Canal Era (1770-1830) — Build canals and establish your first industries. Only one tile per location. At the end, all canals and Level I tiles are removed — but Level II+ tiles carry over and score again.
Rail Era (1830-1870) — Build railways (requiring coal), expand aggressively with multiple tiles per location, and push for the highest score.
Choose from six industry types, each with a unique strategic role:
| Industry | Role | Key Trait |
|---|---|---|
| Cotton Mills | Sell goods for VP | Expensive but high-scoring |
| Coal Mines | Fuel rail links and industries | Cheap, strong income |
| Iron Works | Supply iron for building and development | Efficient, denies opponents |
| Manufacturers | 8 unique levels with varied rewards | Versatile and complex |
| Potteries | Massive VP potential (up to 20 VP) | High cost, requires planning |
| Breweries | Supply beer for selling goods | The most important industry |
Select what to build, where, and for how much — all costs including coal and iron sourcing are calculated automatically.
Build action — choose from available industries at locations matching your cards
Sell action — check the goods, beer requirement, and merchant bonus before selling.
A persistent action phase bar guides you through each turn:
- Choose Action — Pick from Build, Network, Develop, Sell, Loan, Scout, or Pass
- Select Target — Choose what/where to build, which connection, etc.
- Discard Card — Valid cards glow gold; invalid cards are dimmed
The phase bar shows your current step, contextual instructions, and a cancel button. Press Escape at any time to abort.
When waiting for card selection, action buttons and your player mat dim to focus attention on your hand. Only valid discard options are clickable.
A scrollable game log in the right panel records every action: builds, network links, sales, loans, and more — color-coded by player. No more relying on fleeting toast notifications.
Between turns, a brief animated overlay shows the next player's name in their color, giving a clear visual break.
Right panel — player stats, markets with current prices, and the game log
Spend iron to remove low-level tiles from your player mat and access the powerful high-level industries underneath. Optionally develop two tiles at once.
Develop action — skip past weak tiles to access Level III+ industries
Play location cards to build anywhere on the map, or industry cards to build within your network. Manage your hand carefully — every action costs a card.
Cards use the included printed faces, with inline SVG artwork as a fallback.
Bottom panel — your hand of cards, the seven available actions, and your remaining industry tiles
The game includes the printed board artwork and also has an original, procedural night-time relief map as a fallback:
- Procedural terrain — a hill-shaded elevation raster generated in-page, with an industrial haze over the Black Country basin
- Region washes tinting each county, and warm furnace light pooling over every town
- Towns on slate plinths with region-coloured name ribbons, as printed on the board
- Engraved industry art — a spinning mill, pithead winding gear, blast furnace, sawtooth workshop, bottle kiln and cask, rather than abstract glyphs
- Canals as cut waterways and railways as ballast with sleeper ties; rivers stay desaturated so they never read as buildable links
- A numbered 0–99 score track running the perimeter of a brass frame
Slots permitting two industries show both icons split on the diagonal.
The repository includes the board, industry chips, card faces, and player mat
under assets/. The README gallery above shows the board art in play and as a
full map.
To use a different board image, replace assets/board.jpg locally or point the
browser at another image:
localStorage.brassBoardAsset = 'https://example.com/board.jpg'The matching chip, card and mat files are already included:
assets/board.jpg the map
assets/tiles/<kind>-<n>.jpg industry chips, e.g. coal-1.jpg, iron-3-flipped.jpg
assets/cards/<id>.jpg card faces, keyed by city id or industry id
assets/player-mat.jpg the player mat
The printed map carries the towns, routes and merchant buildings, and the game draws the changing state on top: placed chips, resource cubes, beer barrels and highlights. The locally bundled assets are tracked with the project; browser overrides and calibration remain in local storage.
All 27 locations move to measured positions for a retail board, and each
location's industry spaces are placed using the arrangement the board actually
prints — Coalbrookdale one space over two, Birmingham two over two, and so on,
rather than a single row. To adjust the alignment, open the page with
?calibrate=1:
| Input | Effect |
|---|---|
| drag a town / merchant / brewery | move it onto its printed space |
c |
dump the finished layout as JSON to the console |
r |
reset to the measured defaults |
Positions are stored normalised, so one calibration holds for any image at any resolution, and is saved automatically as you drag.
Board artwork is normally the publisher's copyright. Supplying an image is your call — use art you have the right to use.
At the end of each era, score VP from your flipped industry tiles and the links connecting them. Higher-level tiles placed in the Canal Era score in both eras.
Era scoring — link VP and industry VP tallied for each player
python3 -m http.server 8080
Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser. No build step or dependencies.
- Choose 2-4 players and enter names
- Click Begin Game
- Select an action from the action panel (Build, Network, Develop, Sell, Loan, Scout, or Pass)
- Follow the phase bar — it shows your current step and what to do next
- Choose your target from the modal or board
- Click a valid card (highlighted with a gold pulse) to discard
Disabled action buttons show tooltips explaining why they can't be used (e.g. "No iron available", "Need at least 3 cards").
The game handles all resource sourcing (coal, iron, beer), market pricing, turn order, and scoring automatically.
- Build breweries early — Beer is the most contested resource in the game
- Watch the turn order — Spending less money means going first next round
- Develop to skip weak tiles — Accessing Level III+ tiles is worth the iron cost
- Build in the Canal Era for double scoring — Level II+ tiles persist into the Rail Era
- Don't ignore income — It compounds every round and scores VP at the end
This implementation follows the official Brass: Birmingham rulebook:
- Coal requires a connected source (mine or market via merchant link)
- Iron can be taken from any iron works on the board — no connection needed
- Beer for selling comes from your own breweries (anywhere), connected opponent breweries, or merchant barrels
- Overbuilding your own tiles requires same type + higher level; opponent coal/iron tiles can only be overbuilt when that resource is globally depleted
- Pottery I and III have the lightbulb icon and cannot be developed — they must be built
- Turn order each round goes to whoever spent the least money
Pure HTML/CSS/JS — no build tools, no frameworks, no dependencies. Board and
component artwork is bundled under assets/; procedural board art remains the
fallback.
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
index.html |
Layout: setup screen, game screen with phase bar, game log, overlays |
css/style.css |
Dark Victorian theme with CSS animations, card-select mode, transitions |
js/gameData.js |
All constants: tiles, cities, connections, cards, merchants, markets |
js/gameState.js |
Game state, market mechanics, network pathfinding, turn management |
js/gameLogic.js |
All 7 actions + getDisabledReason() for tooltip feedback |
js/industryIcons.js |
Engraved industry illustrations shared by the board and hand cards |
js/boardAssets.js |
Bundled board/component artwork + measured board layout |
js/boardRenderer.js |
SVG board: procedural terrain, frame + score track, calibration mode |
js/uiManager.js |
Phase bar, card selection mode, game log, turn transitions, modals |
js/main.js |
Entry point, setup screen |
- Brass: Birmingham designed by Gavan Brown, Matt Tolman, and Martin Wallace
- Published by Roxley Games
- Tile data verified against the Tabletop Simulator implementation by Kini/ikegami
- Board geography and card data referenced from community implementations
Fan-made digital adaptation for personal and educational use. All game design credit belongs to the original designers and publisher.