If you have ever spent three hours arguing over coal shortages and canal routes with your gaming group, you already know why this one matters. Brass: Pittsburgh, the long-awaited sequel to Brass: Birmingham, has pulled in more than $9.1m on Gamefound, making it the biggest board game crowdfund of 2026 so far and one of the ten largest tabletop raises ever. More than 37,000 backers piled in.
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Start organising for freeBrass: Birmingham, the acclaimed economic game built on British designer Martin Wallace's original Brass system and co-designed by Roxley's Gavan Brown, sits at number one on BoardGameGeek's rankings, so a follow-up was always going to draw a crowd. Pittsburgh keeps the Brass system that fans obsess over (build your network, develop your industries, then ride the market at the right moment) but shifts the action from the English Midlands to America's Gilded Age. You play a ruthless industrial titan laying railways, pipelines, steel mills and oil refineries in the era of Carnegie and Rockefeller.
Brown, who co-designed Pittsburgh with Wallace, told BoardGameWire he had expected around $4m and would have been content with $2m. The runaway total surprised even him. He also resisted the deluxe "arms race" of ever-bigger boxes: the retail Essentials Edition carries the same price as Brass: Birmingham does in shops, roughly £58 ($79).
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See how it worksMissed the campaign? Roxley still has a late-pledge link live on its site, routed through Gamefound, so you are not completely out of luck. If Birmingham is any guide, this one will be hard to find once it reaches retail, so Brass devotees will want to move quickly.
Fancy learning the original first? Round up your group and find a game night near you to get some practice in before Pittsburgh lands.
Sources: BoardGameWire | Roxley Games | Wargamer
