Brass on Wednesday 20 July 2011

We played another game of Brass on Wednesday, this time with Jarratt. We discussed the King Cotton and port strategies and Jarratt decided to try a port strategy. He mostly built ports and "burnt" stuff in his first few turns, while I concentrated on "burning" and then building cotton mills. I was so fixated on cotton that I missed an extremely obvious ironworks (which Jarratt then built), this wasn't the only ironworks opportunity I missed. Anne built ironworks (all 4 by the end of the game) coal mines (she had run out well before the end of the game) and shipyards (3 by the end of the game) with a few cotton mills and ports.

Jarratt's early ports had little affect on Anne or I in the canal phase and at the beginning of the rail phase I built 2 ports in Liverpool as a safety measure. We decided that a port strategy should be opportunistic in the canal phase (remember you can't build more than one building per town in that phase) and more determined in the rail phase. Anne's coal mines worked well to fund her shipyard building. Jarratt, at the other extreme, built no coal mines at all and lagged on the income track.

At the end of the rail phase I wanted to build 2 mills and 2 ports but didn't have the right cards for the 2 mills so built a shipyard in Barrow and Furness instead (and an opportunistic port which no-one flipped :-( ). In the end Jarratt's cotton mills were more valuable than mine, his port strategy had morphed into a King Cotton strategy. Both Anne and I had over forty pounds left at the end of the game which means that we failed to build enough rail (even though coal cost £5 by then it was still cost effective to spend £25 on two rail rather than £10 on one rail).

Anne's score of 181 would probably have been a winning score two years ago, and my score of 194 was possibly the best score I have seen except for Jarratt's winning score of 218!

Jarratt 218
Ian     194
Anne    181