by krux
I've only played Ora et Labora three times and Le Havre maybe six or seven times, but so far I put them on fairly equal terms. They scratch different itches, by and large (if anything, they've both made me less likely to play Agricola).I don't entirely disagree with you on the theme - I've argued before that Le Havre actually has a particularly well implemented theme. All the same, the lack of verisimilitude in Ora doesn't bother me in the least. The wheel is a wonderful tool and I just don't have enough of an imagination to pretend that my fingers are workers picking up a shipment off the pier. I'm simply too lost in all the choices to care.
All those choices remind of of your final point, about player interaction. Again, I agree with you here with a caveat. Two of my three games with Ora were with two players, and the game particularly struggles with the multi-solitaire feeling here, as there's not enough competition for buildings to keep anyone from their ideal strategy. Nonetheless, if one person pays attention to his competitor's board more than the other, they have a huge leg up. It's harder to do because of all the choices that have to be made in Ora compared to Le Havre, but it's nonetheless essential to a cohesive strategy. In both games a potent strategy is to find the opposition's strategy and take key buildings in that strategy. Sometimes there's a work around they can find, but sometimes there isn't. I feel that BOTH game suffer from a solitaire feel in some regards, but I feel they each have demand enough attention of the competition to remain interactive.
I definitely agree about the variety of setup problem, but this happens to be a non-issue for me because I never get to play enough of these games for a lack of variety to bother me. :cry: Plus, in most of my favorite games, the variety for me is trying out every strategy.