by heylisarenee
If you're looking for a detailed, eloquent review of Le Havre, keep on looking. If you think maybe you'd like to read a light review that hits on the main points of Le Havre while trying to explain why it's addictive, you're getting warmer.
Oh Le Havre. How you give me ulcers and anxiety induced hives...yet I still love to collect goods and build ships and process goods at your harbor. Uwe, you get me.
Le Havre is a game that encourages a variety of strategies, a fun shipping/harbor theme, and is an addictive challenge of trying to balance short term planning with long term goals.
I adore that there are so many options all the time! You can take resources, build a building, build a ship, or enter a building to complete the action. Since you only have one token, you can only do one action per turn in addition to buying things for straight cash. You need resources to build, to feed, and to upgrade into better resources. In short, you can definitely get caught up in resource hoarding. I do. All. The. Time.
The artwork on the cards is great because not only does it show you the building cost, but it also shows you how many points the card is worth at the end (or if you want to just pay the cash for the building. cash = points), what action you can do when you enter the building, how much it costs to enter the building, and iconography helps identify end game bonus scoring for building types. Basically, you really don't have to look up what each and every building means or what it does because it's all on there for you! AND it has some fun artwork so that's kinda cute.
I have discovered that getting a good strategy going, as well as a decent food engine, takes time. Which means I can't feed my workers right off the bat and I need to take loans. Do I HAVE to? No. But it allows me to do other things instead of just scraping by to feed turn after turn. It's a "spending money to make money" situation. I know. It stresses me out to the moon and back but I still have to do it just so I can take the 7 wood offer to prevent my husband from getting all that resource goodness on his next turn. A cheap shot? Probably.
You know how far you are in the game based on the predetermined amount of turns. In the two player regular/long game, there are 14 turns. There are cards that are flipped at the end of each turn that tell you how much food you need (for maximum anxiety) as well as what turn you're on to help with planning.
You can see my board and playing area above. I've got some resources hoarded and a few buildings built. I always struggle with how much to diversify, which usually leads to analysis paralysis and (again) resource hoarding. Anyway, you can see I have a handful of buildings that will score me points in the end, and my player token is currently in the Brickworks building which means I spent my turn completing that action.
I admit it. I frequently get DESTROYED at this game. Mainly because I have such a hard time figuring out how to balance the short term game (feeding engine) with long term game (point engine). But that doesn't stop me from absolutely LOVING Le Havre!
The actions are clear cut and defined, which is great. That leaves it up to the player to decide how to win the game. There is no "right" way to win this game. I've seen people win by having great bonus scoring at the end, by shipping like crazy, and even by building immense amount of ships.
Le Havre offers player interaction without being cutthroat, which I like. You're competing for the same resources and entering buildings, but there is ALWAYS something to do with your action.
And of course, I'm a sucker for a game with my own player mat. Even if it's one that my husband made for me!