Return to Stockport

Last night, Sam was designated host at his new house. However, at just past 7pm, unforeseen circumstances and general needing-a-rest lead him to cry off, and games night was hastily relocated to Joe's — a triumvirate of Adam, Andrew and me.
Despite my best efforts to force Thunderstone on them (Adam balked at the words "Attack +4" on one of the cards, and to be sure, it is a shameless uber-nerdy dungeon-crawler), there was really only one option for the three of us — a return to 19th century Lancashire in the company of Mr Wallace. But only after we'd got Age of Steam out of the box, and gazed at the Ireland map for a couple of minutes.
I always have a bit of anxiety when choosing a long game —its a whole evening committed, and there's always the sneaking feeling that the choice might be a poor one. A few moments into Brass, though, and it fit us like a comfortable pair of slippers; slippers with sleepy scorpions curled up in the toes.
Adam has been honing his skills online, and was clearly focussed from the start, taking a couple of loans back-to-back, and instantaneously catapulting himself back into profit. Andrew and I were a bit rusty, and feeling our way, but the canal phase ended closely, with Andrew and Adam tied, me lagging a couple of points behind.
The rail phase seemed fairly evenly contested, but Adam came out streets ahead in the end, with something like 190 points, me in second with 160 odd, Andrew 140-ish; something like that, anyway. Andrew and I might have been closer together actually . . .
It was an unusual game in that there was almost no coal and iron on the map throughout — we all tended to build to refill the demand track, rather than taking free resources. And it wasn't too brutal; there was a little tit-for-tat overbuilding, but as is often the case with three, there was enough room for everybody to stretch out, though as Adam noted, the fact that no-one touched their shipyards made the centre of the board quite congested. There was a tense moment for Andrew when he had to take a chance on the distant market; it had bottomed out on me in the canal phase, but he just managed it.
It was a good three and a half hours from start to finish, but lots of fun. Brass is a good 'un — I don't enjoy long-term planning in games, and it does allow for quick-thinking on the fly.
Most pleasant. And we must induct Sam into the Brass experience — four-player is definitely the way to do it.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Adam	7	36.5	5.22
Joe	7	28	4
Andrew	8	24.5	3.06
Sam	4	20	5
Quentin	5	20	4
Hannah	3	11.5	3.8