by kendahlj
I'm not a fan of Agricola so I wasn't really excited about playing Le Havre. The two things I'd heard about it are that it's long and fiddly. When my friend Ben suggested it I agreed because it's his favorite game and he's about to embark on a two-year church mission and thus, a long drought of board game playing.Set up took about 15 minutes and I could see that the fiddly part was indeed going to be accurate.
Ben did an excellent job with the rules explanation. This really isn't that complex of a game. I had to ask questions throughout the game, but it was mostly questions like "I need brick, what building let's me get brick?"
The game is really not complex. You have two choices on your turn...take some resources of use a building. There is a nice card that reminds you what you can do as well. Still, I was pretty lost with what I should do. The complexity comes in knowing how to make the moving parts work together to maximize your score. There's definitely a little puzzle aspect to this game.
I ended up going for a shipping strategy, although I only ended up shipping once. I bought three ships, but I never really had the energy to ship goods. I had tons of cattle and went with converting them to meat to get hides and then converting the hides to leather to get money.
Ben's brother was late to get ships and was struggling with food the entire game. He spent a lot of actions getting fish and smoking them, so he wasn't really able to ever get anything going.
The final score:
Ben - 225
Me - 176
John - 93
I had 120 points in cash...the rest from buildings. Ben built tons of buildings throughout the game and that's where he got most his points. I had only built five buildings and the ships, which hurt. Ben said that he's won before with so few buildings, but it's hard to believe.
What a great game. I loved it. I am sad I haven't played this sooner...I can't stop thinking about what I might have done to score higher (although I was told 176 is a pretty decent score, esp for the first time playing). The length wasn't too bad at all...about two hours or so. I think I made it longer than it needed to be by my indecision on a few turns. It's super fiddly though...almost to a distraction.
I can't wait to add this game to my collection and introduce it to my family.
