magnitus

This is a well produced product. The dice are beautiful, the artwork on the cards is nice, and it all comes in a nice package. The rules aren’t complicated. My biggest issue with the game is that I find that I make more interesting choices in Yahtzee than I do in this game. If the dice come up right, you do get a choice of what die you can buy, but after that it is luck X luck. So for those who like rolling the dice to see what happens, this might be a fun activity, but there is not enough game in this game. And I was looking for a game.

It took us a while to crack Brass, but our group had a lot of fun along the way. It has a good simplified market system that creates market opportunities – not in a contrived way – but as a side effect of things you are trying to do in the game. After several plays, we discovered that setting up a big rail move at the beginning of the second era is vital. Several plays more and we were all pretty good at optimizing this move – which turned 5-6 moves of the game into almost programmed sequence of getting loans, jockeying for turn order and making sure there is enough coal when you get into the rail age.

When we got to this point, we kind of stopped playing so often because at that point, the cards became too important to the outcome of the game.

We still play it every few months and now our skills have ebbed enough to make it more interesting.

Age of Industry looks like Brass, but since you rarely have very many cards, you don’t get much of a strategic look ahead. I will play Brass over AoI any day.

Lots of crazy things happen in this game. I like it best with 2 or 4 (partners). I’m withholding judgement about the expansion. There is some cool stuff, but it makes the game more complex and long. I would rather play 2 short games of innovation rather than 1 really long one.