by Michael Poplawski
If the theme appeals to you, get it!
I wrote the rest of this when maybe I wasn't really addressing the very simple question being asked... maybe it helps somebody out there.
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I like Le Havre much more than Agricola at this point, but I'm comparing apples to oranges. I've only played Agricola as a board game, and Le Havre on iOS. My observations, though:
A couple differences between the games is that Le Havre's information is entirely open, whereas in Agricola using cards, each player's hand is secret--players can take each other a bit by surprise and benefit from good card draws.
Le Havre's turn mechanics are much simpler, with one action + buying/selling to deal with, rather than 2 or more actions that must work together. (I'm prone to AP, my group would like me better playing Le Havre!)
Le Havre's scoring seems to be a bit easier to get a handle on for me--add together buildings, ships and money, as opposed to negative points for having only 1 field, or 3 points whether you have six or seven sheep.
The scoring in Le Havre isn't as painful in another respect: in Le Havre, you're richer than when you began the game. It's just a pure wealth building exercise. In Agricola, well, I find there's kind of a sense of failure since a farm is usually going to be missing something at the end of the game. (Somebody who likes Agricola because it's about building a farm might find Le Havre a little flat.)
I'm a geography nut and Francophile, so I like the fact that Le Havre is loosely (and sometimes non-so-loosely) based on the real place.
Both games are good, I'd like to play more Agricola (and would love to see it on iOS) to make the same kind of learning investment as I have with Le Havre.
