Martin Wallace's Brass: exhibition game

[Old Harry]

I'd have liked to take another couple of loans or develop again before selling, but thought the chance of the demand bottoming out wasn't worth it.

[wetbandit]

Coal mine not the best of moves, c'est la vie. Good fortune would have it that I, as per usual, luckbox draw an iron works card of my own. Goal to play that at some point. Iron is expensive to develop, but no one is investing heavily in ports and that seems tempting. Still muddling through and so I'll build a link to colne from Burnley and play a mill in Colne. I realize the external market may bottom out, but this whole system should eventually link to another port. Plus I get to use a coal (or not apparently yikes missed that button).

[Cheater Hater]

My hand still sucks, and outside of using a double-action build my only reasonable action is to build a Port in Lancaster. Developing it to L2 is expensive, but it's still worth doing because it scores twice. Next turn I have 3 basic possibilities, based on the other player's moves (unfortunately I'll likely be near the end of the turn order thanks to those expensive Develops) and what I draw:
1. Worst case is that my Port flips from someone building a Cotton Mill in Lancaster, then selling to the Port rather than the Distant Market. This still flips my Port, but its main problem is that I'm left without good moves--I might just take a loan or two, possibly develop some Coal Mines--we'll see.
2. The default play is Canal: Lancaster->Preston and building a L2 Cotton Mill--this means I have to wait a turn to get my cotton sold, but there are a ton of Ports in the area--if my Port somehow got flipped I could go Canal+Loan and try to get a Port somewhere else (worst case I can always go through Wigan to Liverpool, though that's a lot of canals).
3. Best case requires lucky draws, but if I draw either Ironworks or Preston, I can build the Canal: Lancaster->Preston, but build an L3 Ironworks in Preston rather than the Cotton Mill (assuming my Port doesn't get flipped, which again requires Lancaster specifically). This is obviously the best case, but it requires a lucky draw.

Let's see what I draw then:
Cotton Mill, Cotton Mill, Coal Mine, Birkenhead, Liverpool, Cotton Mill, Preston, Port.
I guess it's better to be lucky than good

[Bacchus]

Everyone has spent a bunch of cash, so it's easy for me to take four actions in a row and then go first again. This is also good, because I will be playing straight after Cheater Hater. Now, in a real game I wouldn't know exactly how good that is, but here I can expect to finally getaccess to some reasonably-costed development opportunities.

I will build a canal this turn, using the last of my starting £30 and take a loan. At the start of the next turn I will take another loan and sell cotton, again spending £0.

[Bacchus]

Weak. I was guaranteed a sale on the first mill, but I drew a -3 card, 1/4 chance, which meant that I only had a 2/5 chance of making the second sale. Naturally, that didn't happen. To get the Macclesfield mill flipped, I will have to extend the canal links down south to Ellesmere Port. This, in essence is the great weakness of the cotton rushing strategy, don't try it at home.

[Old Harry]

Looking at the board I can't see anything immediately profitable to do, I'm waiting for someone to build something useful in Preston, Rochdale, Manchester or Bolton, or to link one of those towns to the distant market. So as a delaying tactic I'll just take out a couple of loans with my Oldham and Cotton Mill cards.

I'm left with: Bolton, Burnley, Liverpool, Manchester, Preston, Rochdale, Cotton Mill, Port.

[Bacchus]

Me and OH have finished half of the canal period. That means we will not be drawing new cards and can more or less plan out the remainder of the period. My final 8 actions will have to come from those cards:

Your cards are: Lancaster, Wigan, Iron Works, Bolton, Warrington & Runcorn, Port, Coal Mine, Wigan.

Very stupidly, I discarded Ellesmere Port earlier. I want to develop my mills lots (4 times), so that's two actions. I would like to place and flip at least one level 3 mill, and maybe we can strike a deal with CH for active port development. In any case that's two more actions (build, sell). I need to built at least two more canals, that's two more actions. That leaves two to spare. I will probably have to spend at least one building a port, and because I don't want to build lvl 1 ports I might develop again.

Retrospectively, I also showed the danger of building early canals. After building the second mill I should have taken a loan, so that no-one can ninja the market using my canal. The loan would have cost me, but much less than this unflipped mill is costing

[wetbandit]

Took a loan and built a link from Blackburn to Wigan. I'm in the same boat as Bacchus, need to flip a cotton mill. Building out to Preston port area seems to be the best way to go and also opens up another iron works location for me, so if Rochdale gets filled, I can build in Preston or vice versa. Look to develop and build lvl 2 ports in the next 4 turns.

Colne, Manchester, Rochdale, Stockport, Warrington & Runcorn, Iron Works, Port, Shipyard.

[Old Harry]

I don't think your position is that bad, I'd just try to get your income as low as possible before your coal mine flips.

Bear in mind you can also start a new network around Manchester and Warrington with your location cards (although that doesn't help flip your existing mills necessarily so your Preston plan is good too).

[Cheater Hater]

As I mentioned last turn, I got a lucky draw which allowed me to play and flip an L3 Ironworks. Now let's see what I draw:
Cotton Mill, Cotton Mill, Coal Mine, Liverpool, Cotton Mill, Port, Barrow – In – Furness, Bury.

Considering I got the lucky draw leading into this turn, I can't really complain about how bad my cards are. However, I am last in the turn order again, so I can possibly do some interesting things:
1. Default probably involves me biding my time, in some combination of taking loans and developing things (probably the remaining L2 Port and some L2 Cotton Mills). It certainly feels weird that I'm the only person with positive income at the moment though.
2. The one good location card I do have is Bury, so another action I could do is build a L2 Coal Mine in Bury and stall for a sec (double-Develop Cotton Mills or take a loan) then Canal: Bury-Manchester and build my L4 Ironworks. In order for this to work I need people to Develop some more, and even then it feels like I shouldn't be playing all my Ironworks so early.
3. I can use the double-action Build to do something, but I have no clue where I would go. In particular, there aren't many ports for me to go through now that the Distant Market has dried up, and the main reason I would double-action Build is to try to flip a Cotton Mill.
4. The most interesting path involves building two canals: Preston-Wigan and Wigan-W&R, then building my L2 Cotton Mill in W&R and immediately selling to my L2 Port. However, I'll be surprised if my Port survives this turn (more on that in a sec), and I certainly don't want to risk a double-canal turn that could do nothing, so I don't want to do this unless I get a double move (last to first) because Canals are relatively cheap.

The biggest complication in my planning is that wetbandit can flip my Port this turn by building the Wigan-Preston Canal himself and selling his cotton. If that happens, I probably should bide my time on selling my cotton--is it bad if I just invest into iron for the whole Canal phase? If I wasn't going to be out of Ironworks the Bury line feels like the best line, and then I bide my time, getting ready to sell a bunch of cotton to the Distant Market at the start of the rail phase.