Page 37, word number 7. "Brass"
Mine was in the mail yesterday as well.
Fast delivery! I mean it's about 6720 km from Saint Paul to Aarhus, Denmark (that's 4176 miles for you non-metrics). Not bad.
Now, disregard the summer and the sun. Time to go inside and play.
Sadly, not in my local games store yet.
The Seal of the NDA has been broken!
Ask away of myself and my fellow authors now we have been released from the brass bottles of King Chart (er Solomon). 
Lachie
So what's it like?
What the best part?
Can you see yourself using it as a part of a campaign?
Details are required!
Well it has an interesting mix of things...(guys, mine's the piracy bit, right? I keep getting this mixed up with the other book we were writing at the same time.)
Actually, I need to stop there, because as I said, I get this one tangled in my mind with another one we were doing at the same time which has certain similarities, and so I could go "Oh, the cool bit is X" where X is over in the other book. So, I'll just not nominate a cool bit.
I'd love to run a game based on my piracy bit. I think a covenant on the island in question (see what I did there, kept it light in case this is, um...that other one.) would be really cool, as it sort of has links to a couple of surrounding Tribunals, and the covenfolk would be interesting, and David's let me slide a faerie n there right out of Nightmare on Elm Street who could make for a fun companion character.
Pretty awesome - it's five stories for more experienced magi.
Hard to pick the best bit I think. Even if you won't be usng it directly, there's a lot of inspiration and plenty of excellent ideas for the raiding.
There are atleast 2 campaigns in there. And several peces here that could become part of sagas.
The book is full of nifty details! 
Yes, the pirate-bit is yours 
It gave us one of our more fun scenes, with a trio of grogs assigned to guard ...something... and playng dice instead.
The fog rolled in and they kept playing.
There was a noise and they kept playing...
and much fun was had by all!
Gotta ask though: the dedication to Anonymous... a friend of yours?
This is just to show you how long the Ars Magica product pipeline is... 8)
Anonymous is my daughter. At the time the book went to final draft, she had not been born so we were not telling people her name. Amelia's now fourteen months old.
Anonymous (or a variant spelling there-of) used to be a character in our troupe, so I had to ask
I adored playtesting this one. The City of Brass was effectively a mini-saga as we spent ages designing the right spells and magic items to attempt it, and purchased a flying boat from the Verditius. The one with the Papal election was huge fun, even though we ignored the hermetic plot, the players poked the faerie plot and then ran away, and refused to chase up the Rival Magic plot, so we only dealt with the dominion and infernal plots fully. The pirates one made for a fun couple of sessions blowing things up in the English Channel. The Encroaching Dominion was hard to use for our urban covenant, so we had it threaten vis sources and was OK - the only one in the book that wasn't great! The other one featured a villain who became a recurring character in our saga.
Overall 4 excellent scenarios (all 9/10 or 10/10) and one decent one (7/10) means a scenario book worth using from cover to cover, a rarity in roleplaying publishing.
I'm glad you enjoyed The City of Brass (and the whole supplement)!
I particularly liked seeing how the Spetizodium adventure evolved and Timothy's Channel pirates chapter whilst I was working on CoB. One of the best aspects of being a line author is seeing everyone else's work evolve IMO.
Good to hear you were able to use it as a mini-Saga as that was one of the major design goals for the chapter from my perspective.
I think it's the most high fantasy adventure to date for Ars but I think we got away with it by using the Magic Realm.
It was one of the most enjoyable supplements I've worked on to date, even if my part was relatively minor.
(As kudos, Marko pitched the CoB main idea and I really just helped with some of the Jinn and Magic Realm mechanics aspects, as well as refined the MacGuffin/Hooks and Brass Bottle magic. He wrote the vast majority of the text and pretty much created all the stat blocks which Mark Lawford selflessly helped refine a bit towards the end when we were pressed for time).
Since it will take some time for my copies to reach the Antipodes (one of the major drawbacks of living in Oz and writing for Ars sadly), I'd like to ask how the artwork for the CoB chapter worked out?
Also how much of the Faerie alternative made it into the final draft?
Marko and I argued (good naturedly, it's not like I was disputing Flambeau's backstory) over whether to make the 'afrit Magic or Faerie. My take was that the story in the 1000 Nights and 1 Night is a story told about a previous expedition that became lost in Faerie and that if the players make it to the Magic version of the CoB they will engender their own parallel Faerie versions of the expedition, thus multiplying the potential for adventure and increasing the replayability for a Saga.
Did much of this come across? I think we had to cut a fair bit, in which case I'll post in on my blog when I get a chance.
It will be a while before I lay hands on a copy to browse through... 
Lachie
I may well have done, but it's such a long time ago that I can't remember specifically. I think we all pitched in a little towards the end of this book, which gave it a nice collaborative feel. I think Matt Ryan picked up a pass on CoB though. I do remember that. You won't have seen it yet, but he does get a mention for it in the finished product.
Thanks for the shout though.
And I think you'll be pretty pleased with the artwork in this one. I particularly like the style used for Cardinal Decision.
Hmm, I think you're right.
Apologies to Matt - there was quite a collaborative feel at the end so I suspect that confused me. It was a great project to work on.
Lachie
Just got my copy 
Got mine last tuesday from Orcs Nest here in London. I love what I have read so far. [In our saga there is already a PC companion named Eustace and he was a monk but he is not THE Eustace the Monk ... some definite possibilities here.] Well done everyone - so many excellent ideas.
My contributor copies just arrived today!
On a quick skim through the art is amazing!
Very happy.
Lachie
Really, no comments?
Sheesh... After all the hard work we authors out into this.
Lachie
It's always that way, Lachie. Books get a lot of excitement on this board right up until they are released, and then they disappear. 8)
Well to be fair, this is a book of adventures, I've personally not posted anything about it for fear of giving away spoilers... 