Brass Birmingham's merchant tiles are the difference between a mechanical exercise and a geography puzzle. The merchants — located at cities around the map's periphery — require specific goods to be adjacent and networked to score. This creates a pull mechanic where you want to build near the merchants that pay best for your goods.

The merchant placement varies by player count, which creates different geographic priorities at two, three, and four players. At two players, the reduced merchant variety means the goods competition is tighter. At four players, multiple merchants of the same type create geographic choices about which to target.

For players who find Birmingham feels like a mechanical optimization: pay more attention to merchant tile requirements and let those shape your network. The geography becomes legible when you start from merchant requirements and work backward to infrastructure needs.