One of my gaming partners suggested playing Le Havre this weekend and I know my parents have a copy that I've never bothered to learn how to play, so over the last three hours I read the rules and played a full solo game so I'd be better prepared for this weekend.
I don't know if it's really possible to "crush" this game when you're only playing solo, but the gameplay became really redundant pretty much from the second round onward. The opening building spread showed the Marketplace, Bakehouse and Fishery. Not knowing what to really be aiming for I thought I should aim to at least get some food together to feed my workforce at the end of the round. Trying to keep my options open in the mean time then I built the Marketplace and used my next turn to collect some resources and took a look at the top special cards. The Clothing Industry and the Fish Restaurant presented itself to me - the Fish Restaurant you say? I thought. I looked at the Restaurant and saw that building the Marketplace had revealed the Smokehouse. This was it, I knew it, I had never played before and knew that I was meant to do something involving boats and shipping things off through the Shipping Line but what was the point when Le Havre's culinary experts cried out for fish? I immediately obtained the leftover fish from the offer, built the Smokehouse, smoked the fish with my last wood and got myself in a position to get the Fishery as soon as possible.
And that was it, from that round onwards I alternated visiting the Fishery, Smokehouse and Fish Restaurant to my heart's delight. To spice things up I would occasionally take more wood from the offer to ensure I had a steady supply of fuel for smoking my fish, or I'd take an enormous build up of fish in the offer and smoke my way through that while alternating with other actions that I thought I should be doing but weren't really helping my score. I finally built up so much fish that the bag was running out and I didn't want to fuss with the "5x" tokens that I remembered the rule book mentioning, (incidentally I scoffed at those tokens when I first read about them, never imagining I would need them in my very first game), so I hit the Fish Restaurant and picked up 96 Francs. Over the next few rounds I did it again. I sold so much fish that diners in Le Havre must've been dying for ANYTHING else.
One round (about round 4 or so I think) I began to feel like I wasn't really playing the game but wasn't sure how to progress as the buildings in the offer were only infrequently changing now that I'd stopped building/buying them. So I decided to build the Wharf and build a ship through that (though I had so much money I could've just bought one and saved myself the actions for more fishing). Doing so meant finding some bricks, but the Kiln had shown up from the Special Buildings so I was like "Hell just buy it, why not?" and got myself some bricks. I had this vague delusion that I would need all these ships in the end game when the Shipping Line showed up and I would ship off all my junk resources that I had somehow acquired along the way. That end game never came though as the Shipping Line was stacked another two buildings down and I wasn't about to build the Abattoir or the Clay Mound just to get to it.
Aside from wasting time on the Wharf and all the actions that went into building a ship then I could've saved even more money for my score if I'd realised a round or two earlier that paying the food upkeep with my Smoked Fish was actually a silly proposition when they were worth 3 Francs each when sold at the Fish Restaurant. Incidentally, was this the only restaurant in town? How on earth were they shifting this much fish so fast? I'm pretty sure my supply was outpacing demand by a country mile Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
I appreciate that I got insanely lucky seeing the Fish Restaurant so early on but the entirety of my game plan pretty much orbited around that. Obviously I assume that with more players then such a plan might not have come together quite as fortuitously, but it does make me wonder how future games will go. I don't think I really got a taste of the real Le Havre gameplay at all, but at least I have the rules down pat Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Please do contribute any thoughts you have! Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
I don't know if it's really possible to "crush" this game when you're only playing solo, but the gameplay became really redundant pretty much from the second round onward. The opening building spread showed the Marketplace, Bakehouse and Fishery. Not knowing what to really be aiming for I thought I should aim to at least get some food together to feed my workforce at the end of the round. Trying to keep my options open in the mean time then I built the Marketplace and used my next turn to collect some resources and took a look at the top special cards. The Clothing Industry and the Fish Restaurant presented itself to me - the Fish Restaurant you say? I thought. I looked at the Restaurant and saw that building the Marketplace had revealed the Smokehouse. This was it, I knew it, I had never played before and knew that I was meant to do something involving boats and shipping things off through the Shipping Line but what was the point when Le Havre's culinary experts cried out for fish? I immediately obtained the leftover fish from the offer, built the Smokehouse, smoked the fish with my last wood and got myself in a position to get the Fishery as soon as possible.
And that was it, from that round onwards I alternated visiting the Fishery, Smokehouse and Fish Restaurant to my heart's delight. To spice things up I would occasionally take more wood from the offer to ensure I had a steady supply of fuel for smoking my fish, or I'd take an enormous build up of fish in the offer and smoke my way through that while alternating with other actions that I thought I should be doing but weren't really helping my score. I finally built up so much fish that the bag was running out and I didn't want to fuss with the "5x" tokens that I remembered the rule book mentioning, (incidentally I scoffed at those tokens when I first read about them, never imagining I would need them in my very first game), so I hit the Fish Restaurant and picked up 96 Francs. Over the next few rounds I did it again. I sold so much fish that diners in Le Havre must've been dying for ANYTHING else.
One round (about round 4 or so I think) I began to feel like I wasn't really playing the game but wasn't sure how to progress as the buildings in the offer were only infrequently changing now that I'd stopped building/buying them. So I decided to build the Wharf and build a ship through that (though I had so much money I could've just bought one and saved myself the actions for more fishing). Doing so meant finding some bricks, but the Kiln had shown up from the Special Buildings so I was like "Hell just buy it, why not?" and got myself some bricks. I had this vague delusion that I would need all these ships in the end game when the Shipping Line showed up and I would ship off all my junk resources that I had somehow acquired along the way. That end game never came though as the Shipping Line was stacked another two buildings down and I wasn't about to build the Abattoir or the Clay Mound just to get to it.
Aside from wasting time on the Wharf and all the actions that went into building a ship then I could've saved even more money for my score if I'd realised a round or two earlier that paying the food upkeep with my Smoked Fish was actually a silly proposition when they were worth 3 Francs each when sold at the Fish Restaurant. Incidentally, was this the only restaurant in town? How on earth were they shifting this much fish so fast? I'm pretty sure my supply was outpacing demand by a country mile Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
I appreciate that I got insanely lucky seeing the Fish Restaurant so early on but the entirety of my game plan pretty much orbited around that. Obviously I assume that with more players then such a plan might not have come together quite as fortuitously, but it does make me wonder how future games will go. I don't think I really got a taste of the real Le Havre gameplay at all, but at least I have the rules down pat Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Please do contribute any thoughts you have! Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
