Brass, a Warfrog economic game, stood high on my "must try" list; today I got the chance.
Given my preferences, no points awarded for guessing that I liked it. This had the typical Warfrog "what can I do now?" first game issues that so many of their titles suffer from. But once you get used to the system(s), then it isn't too bad. In general, you get two actions a turn, and spend a card for each action. Some actions (loans, research, delivering cotton, or building canals/railroads) don't care which card you use. but buildings require a card in the matching city or the matching industry card (with some restrictions). In addition, you have to be able to ship coal around (for buildings that require it). An "Era" lasts until the deck runs out and each player empties his hand, then you score buildings that were utilized. At the end of the first era, you sweep low-tech buildings (and canals) off the board, and start again.
What I liked — you have to manage money, actions, cards and resources (although you can use other peoples resources), and VPs. Competition in space and time. Things are tight, but not as precarious as Age of Steam. In short, Brass has what I like.
What I dislike — Understanding the 'technology tree' requires flipping lots of chits over. As usual, a player aid would help immensely. (Update — The player aid I wanted is on the back of the rulebook). Some icons on the chits (and map) are confusing. The rules are what you'd expect from Warfrog. Like Struggle of Empires, this suffers from the "You can do anything on the first turn, but don't have a feel for what's good." (That's a drawback the first time you play, but shouldn't be a killer). All minor peeves, really.
What worries me — All of the chrome may just hide the fact that one strategy dominates, or that the cards have a huge impact. I won by getting two of the cities that allow you to build Ships (worth Tons of VPs). If one of my opponents had one of those cards, I would have lost.
I'll hold out, until I get a few more plays (or a steal). But I'm cautiously optimistic.
I also played Wings of War. To my surprise, it's a Blue Max variant. Instead of having a hex chart for each play, you have a deck of cards and play three cards (in order). Then each player takes their first card, lines it up with the front of the plane, and moves the plane to where the arrow on the card ends up. (So you play on any flat surface). Then you use rulers to fire. So instead of having a "big move" then complicated fire, you plot three small moves and have a fire after each step. I think Blue Max's red/blue chits are slightly more elegant than the single card deck for Wings of War, but perhaps an advanced rules adjusts that. But overall the games are close enough to make them interchangeable, in my opinion. Which is pretty reasonable praise. Wings of War will probably be another game I play infrequently, but rather like.
And I finally played my copy of Race.
Update: (April '08) -- I had so many rules wrong on Brass that you should just ignore the above. I'll post a link to a new review later.