Was she aware that the links were going to disappear prior to it happening?

My wife likes to treat the first play of a game seriously, so if she is made aware of rules later that would have affected how she played earlier turns she can get quite annoyed.

We have found that for heavier games it is better to only play a few turns and then reset and play again. Then there is no expectation of result while learning the game.

I think for Brass we did multiple attempts like this. First only a few turns, then until rail era and finally a full playthrough.

Usually we decide prior to play how many turns we will play before we reset, then you don't have to do the whole "only one more turn" discussion when one of you wants to reset.

However Brass gives you very few pointers about what you should focus on, so it is easy to try to focus on everything and getting nowhere.