Brass Lancashire and Brass Birmingham

Last year Roxley Games kickstarted a deluxe version of the classic Martin Wallace economic strategy game Brass. The deluxe edition was renamed Brass Lancashire, and a follow-on game Brass Birmingham was also released. Both of these games are beautiful games, but they both use a lot of tiles for each player, and so the games could use a bit more organization than a couple of plastic bags.

The first item I designed was a tray (with lid) that would store all of the tiles and counters for each player. These trays were designed to fit in the larger parts well in the box insert. This well has sculpted corners, so the trays were sculpted to fit the well, for maximum space utilization. There's a separate model for Brass Lancashire and Brass Birmingham, because each game has a different number of tiles. The tray lids have a window so you can see which color tiles are in the box.

The tile trays are intended to be filled in reverse (first tiles used are loaded in the tray first, upside down). When you want to set up the game, open the tray, remove the character tile, then carefully turn the tray upside down and then move the tiles to their correct location on the player board.

The second item was a custom deck box to contain the location and industry cards. I sleeved my cards, so the box needed to be large enough to accommodate the sleeved cards. Brass Lancashire has fewer cards than Brass Birmingham, but it also has a plaque that gets stuck into the deck during play, and that can be stored in the deck box as well.

Finally. there are wooden tokens that represent the different types of commodities in each game, and they need trays as well. Lancashire uses a single tray for iron and coal; Birmingham has one for the beer barrels, and one for the iron, coal, and merchant tiles. I also added a box for the foreign market tiles for Lancashire.

Brass Lancashire BOM

Brass Birmingham BOM

Full sources are available on GitHub.

Updated on 2018-08-16 07:58 EDT with latest models
Updated on 2018-08-16 21:01 EDT with corrected box lids
Updated on 2018-08-22 06:20 EDT with resized parts boxes
Updated on 2018-09-16 17:56 EDT with printable guide for tile arrangement
Updated on 2019-01-29 17:22 EDT with inset labels for the tile compartments

Print Settings

Printer Brand:

Prusa

Printer:

i3 MK3

Rafts:

No

Supports:

No

Resolution:

200um

Infill:

5%

Notes:

I printed these trays in PETG for better resistance to high temperatures (I frequently leave my games in my car, in the south, in the summer), but you should be successful with PLA if you keep your games inside.

How I Designed This

I do all of my modeling with OpenSCAD, because it's an open design tool that works for me.

My initial design was similar to trays that I've designed in the past, but this time there was a lot of wasted space in the design, and (because of the sculpted insert wells) a lot of wasted space in the box. After looking at some other designs, notably Brass Lancashire by tvkili, I tossed my initial design and started from scratch.

My new design goals were:

• Trays have lids to keep the tiles in the tray, even if the box is inverted.
• Recessed cavities to match the size and number of each type of tile.
• Trays should make it easy to set up the game.
• Sculpted to match the box insert.
• All tile types visible (nothing on edge).
• All parts for a player in one tray. 

I decided that I was OK with the players inverting the tray to get the parts out. This let me make more use of the space, and to overlap some parts vertically.

I cut a template out of paper to match the insert well, then started moving pieces around until I could fit everything in an aesthetically pleasing fashion, then started working out techniques to make the sculpted boxes, and then inset token wells. In the final design, the part has 180-degree symmetry, so the lid doesn't have a specific orientation to fit the tray. The design is completely parameterized, so tweaking the design is a simple matter of adjusting a single variable.

Category: Toy & Game Accessories