by Tony Boydell
It's Friday evening and I am standing in front of the shelves trying to decide what to take to Ross-on-Wye; I scan from top-to-bottom, left-to-right:- too long for an evening session
- Jobbers/Boffo/Smudge hates it
- I hate it (so why is it still there?)
- Too valuable to actually play
- Haven't read the rules so the first hour would be a heckle-some ordeal
- "Just don't fancy it"
I only want to take one thing down - Yokohama is already in the back of the car - and I just can't seem to make up my mind. And then I see the spine of Le Havre...
Le Havre has been / is about to be reprinted with all of the extra goodies (which is a bit of a shame for those of us who tirelessly hunted-and-gathered them the first time around) and pictures of it 'in play' have been popping up on Social Media (mainly via the excellent Heavy Cardboard stream: @HeavyCardboard). Additionally, I have been happily hammering the AI on my iOS app version for 4+ years now so it seemed almost an angelic chorus-accompanied moment as I slid it from the 'Lookout Games Line-Up' and in to my bag!
We would be six again this evening: by the bead-woven beard of St John the Baptist but it's a purple patch for the Ross-on-Wye gamers at the moment, so the thought of a 3 player Le Havre (the perfect player count) filled me with butterflies. While we waited for Mischa and James, the usual four got out our bristle-y daubers a got a-paintin':
Starving Artists: I don't know much about Art but I know what I like.
In summary: each round comprises two actions (a 'working day'), one each for the morning and one each for the afternoon: get some paint cubes from a bag, put some paint cubes on to a painting 'stencil' OR buy a stencil. Once per day you may swap cubes for other cubes from a central pool. At the end of the day, players may sell one or more completed stencils to get VPS, food (very important) and more paint cubes drafted from the pool. Each day, your food marker counts down and the game will go in to an end phase when someone 'starves' ie. runs out of food because either the cannot - or don't want to - sell a painting to get food. The game ends when a player completes X stencils OR reaches a threshold VP value OR the end of the round after someone starves; in the first cases, the person achieving the goal wins and, in the latter, most VPs is the winner.
I'm enjoying Starving Artists very much but I won again by being the first to complete X stencils and - again, like last Monday - the other players expressed concerns about how paint cubes are awarded/drafted when stencils are sold: I find myself collecting almost all the cubes I need to complete my NEXT painting off the back of the prior one, in a pleasing 'chain', but this only benefits the first picker. I must scout the forums to see if anyone else has been niggled by this. It _is_ lovely, though.
There was still no sign of Mischa and James, so Smudge suggested we play Troyes; hardly Le Havre but an acceptable alternative. I'd barely picked up my first worker to place in one of the districts when our missing additionals cheerfully bounce in to the Pub. There was some thought that we should pack away Troyes and, perhaps, offer something lighter to our guests but - in a moment of (selfish?) evangelistic fervour - I forbad that suggestion and insisted they still play Troyes (because it's great and substantial and a fantastic example of modern Euro games) while Jobbers and Smudge and I slope off to the corner to play - yes - Le Havre!
What a brilliant session it turned out to be: Jobbers and Smudge picking up end-game bonus buildings for 'spare resources' and cows respectively. I spotted I was getting a bit behind on buildings myself and hoovered up the Church, Cokery and Bank in a penultimate round splurge...the latter worth an extra 15 points on it's own! The final scores, all very close indeed, gave witness to a superbly nip-and-tuck game (all done in just over two hours): 185 (me), 172 (Jobbers) and 164 (Smudge). Now that this magnificent work is getting some reissue love, perhaps I need to sit down and design a few additional buildings myself? Perhaps with some new supply tile(s) and new Goods?
Next week I shall be Expo-ing, of course, and the week after..? Well, it seems the Prince of Wales pub is being sold and refurbished over the Summer - the last time our little group went through that particular change scenario, it didn't turn out too well. Fingers crossed, eh?
