Brass Birmingham Solo

Play Brass: Birmingham solo in the browser against the Mautoma — the fan-made card-driven opponent by Mauro Gibertoni. The physical game has no official solo mode; this app implements the full 2-player rules with the Automa as your opponent, so nothing needs to be tracked by hand: legal moves, resource sourcing, markets, income, era scoring and all 22 Automa cards are automated.

▶ Play it: https://solo.kdc.sh/brass-birmingham/

Desktop (light)	Desktop (dark)

Mobile	New game

Features

• Full rules engine — build, network, sell, develop, loan, scout, pass; closest-coal-mine sourcing, market price tracks, overbuilding, farm breweries, the 3-way Kidderminster–farm–Worcester link, era transition, shortfall, link + industry scoring.
• The complete Mautoma — all 22 cards, three difficulty levels, every rulebook and FAQ tiebreaker implemented deterministically (link placement priorities, building-selection tiebreaker icons, beer order, first-turn rules).
• Seeded games — replay the exact same setup and Automa deck by reusing a seed.
• Undo, autosave, game log — the game survives page reloads; every engine event is logged.
• Dark mode — follows your system preference, toggleable, persistent.
• Responsive — plays on phone-sized screens; e2e-tested on desktop and mobile viewports.

How to play

1. Pick a difficulty (easy / medium / hard — harder mats give the Automa better tiles) and start.
2. Each turn you take two actions (one on the very first turn): choose an action, then a card from your hand, then a target. Legal targets are highlighted on the board and listed as buttons.
3. The Automa takes its whole turn automatically after yours; read the log to see what it did.
4. Highest VP after the Rail Era wins.

Rules references: the official rulebook is available from Roxley and the Mautoma rulebook + FAQ from mautoma.com (rulebook PDFs are intentionally not redistributed in this repo).

Development

npm install
npm run dev        # local dev server
npm test           # engine unit tests + 30-game self-play soak
npx playwright test  # e2e, desktop + mobile projects
npm run build      # production build

• src/engine/ — pure TypeScript rules engine (no UI dependencies), fully deterministic from a seed.
• src/engine/mautoma/ — the Automa card data and turn executor.
• src/ui/ — React UI: schematic SVG board, action flow, theming.
• docs/DATA_SOURCES.md — how the board/tile data was verified against three independent sources.
• docs/PLAYTEST.md — playtest report: bugs found, verified behaviors, known v1 simplifications.

Credits & legal

• Brass: Birmingham is designed by Gavan Brown, Matt Tolman and Martin Wallace, published by Roxley Games. This is an unofficial, non-commercial fan project: it uses no publisher artwork or text — the board is an original schematic. If you enjoy it, buy the physical game.
• The Mautoma solo variant is by Mauro Gibertoni (mautoma.com) — thank you for making solo Brass possible.
• Game mechanics are not protected by copyright; all data files here were transcribed and cross-verified from publicly available sources (see docs/DATA_SOURCES.md).