Brass Lancashire

Brass: Lancashire — initially published as Brass — is an economic strategy game that narrates the story of competing cotton entrepreneurs in Lancashire during the industrial revolution. Players are tasked with developing, building, and establishing their industries and network to capitalise on the demand for iron, coal, and cotton.

The game unfolds over two distinct halves: the canal phase and the rail phase. To emerge victorious, players must score the most victory points (VPs), which are tallied at the end of each phase. VPs can be earned from canals, rails, and established (flipped) industry tiles.

Each round, players take turns according to the turn order track, receiving two actions to perform from the following:

• Build an industry tile
• Build a rail or canal
• Develop an industry
• Sell cotton
• Take a loan

Players replace the two cards they played with two more from the deck at the end of their turn. The turn order is determined by the amount of money a player spent on the previous turn, ranging from lowest spent first to highest spent. This mechanism adds a layer of strategy, offering players going later in the turn order the possibility of back-to-back turns.

Once all the cards have been played for the first time (with the deck size adjusted for the number of players), the canal phase concludes, followed by a scoring round. After scoring, all canals and the lowest level industries are removed from the game, new cards are dealt, and the rail phase begins.

During the rail phase, players can now occupy more than one location in a city, and although costly, a double-connection build becomes possible. At the end of the rail phase, another scoring round occurs, and ultimately, a winner is declared.

The cards dictate where you can build your industries, but any card can be used for the develop, sell cotton, or build connections actions. This leads to strategic timing and storing of cards. Resources are shared, so if a player constructs a rail line requiring coal, they must use coal from the nearest source. This source might be an opponent's coal mine, moving that coal mine closer to scoring, i.e., being utilised.