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Synopsis: You are masters of the port in the fabled French commune of Le Havre. Here, in the second largest port of France, you will amass a personal fortune through trade and stock as Le Havre undergoes its most prosperous period in the 19th Century.
You win if you have the most amount of wealth when the game concludes. You gain wealth by constructing or buying ships and buildings alike. You may also make some money through the shipping of goods and through improving goods. However, you must ensure that your workforce is fed, and they grow in number with each passing round.
A single round of Le Havre is divided into seven turns. Players will take turns to activate, firstly placing new goods in the various offer spaces and taking one single action. You can activate an available building, including those found in other players’ possession or in a common pool representing the town centre. Alternatively, you can take one of the accumulated offerings.
Around the early-mid game, the option to build ships becomes available. Ships provide a passive amount of food each round for your workforce. Buildings have many varied abilities, but they typically allow you to manipulate goods: upgrading, sell, use them in construction. However, buildings can also bring in a trickle of income through an entry fee, which other players must pay to you for the privilege of using your buildings.
Commentary: Despite the relatively higher level of complexity of this game, the design is very smooth. The number of elements necessary to consider start off small and gradually increase. This makes it easier for first time players to discover the game incrementally. However, some of the nuances might not be apparent until the mid-early to mid-game.
Part of works well for this game is the almost exponential acceleration of the game. It starts small and builds up to a crescendo of activity. In doing so, the game follows the sorts of trajectories found in many of Rosenberg’s other harvest games. Though I think mechanically, the build-up is more elegant in this game than his others. Le Havre comes across as a snowball that cascades into a giant crashing snow ball, whereas his other harvest games seem more like scaling a mountain.
Despite the above, Le Havre feels like a departure from many of the design assumptions typical of a Rosenberg game. The blueprints are still there, but this reads like a game with more innovation and divergence than not. It doesn’t just feel like a rehash of an existing game and idea, and even makes a significant departure from the agrarian themes that dominate his gaming niche.
As one who does prefer low player count games, I find this game suits the lower player counts. Simply put, because there are only seven turns between harvests, you get three or four actions in a two-player game or two, maybe three, actions in a four-player game. Having one, maybe two, actions per round seems to limit the engagement with the game. Moreover, the two-player game and the three-player games skew differently enough to change the experience.
Verdict: A solid Rosenberg, which I highly recommend.
http://storyboardwebseries.tumblr.com/post/156858624092/le-h...
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StoryBoardGames/
twitter: https://twitter.com/StoryBoardWebtv
Synopsis: You are masters of the port in the fabled French commune of Le Havre. Here, in the second largest port of France, you will amass a personal fortune through trade and stock as Le Havre undergoes its most prosperous period in the 19th Century.
You win if you have the most amount of wealth when the game concludes. You gain wealth by constructing or buying ships and buildings alike. You may also make some money through the shipping of goods and through improving goods. However, you must ensure that your workforce is fed, and they grow in number with each passing round.
A single round of Le Havre is divided into seven turns. Players will take turns to activate, firstly placing new goods in the various offer spaces and taking one single action. You can activate an available building, including those found in other players’ possession or in a common pool representing the town centre. Alternatively, you can take one of the accumulated offerings.
Around the early-mid game, the option to build ships becomes available. Ships provide a passive amount of food each round for your workforce. Buildings have many varied abilities, but they typically allow you to manipulate goods: upgrading, sell, use them in construction. However, buildings can also bring in a trickle of income through an entry fee, which other players must pay to you for the privilege of using your buildings.
Commentary: Despite the relatively higher level of complexity of this game, the design is very smooth. The number of elements necessary to consider start off small and gradually increase. This makes it easier for first time players to discover the game incrementally. However, some of the nuances might not be apparent until the mid-early to mid-game.
Part of works well for this game is the almost exponential acceleration of the game. It starts small and builds up to a crescendo of activity. In doing so, the game follows the sorts of trajectories found in many of Rosenberg’s other harvest games. Though I think mechanically, the build-up is more elegant in this game than his others. Le Havre comes across as a snowball that cascades into a giant crashing snow ball, whereas his other harvest games seem more like scaling a mountain.
Despite the above, Le Havre feels like a departure from many of the design assumptions typical of a Rosenberg game. The blueprints are still there, but this reads like a game with more innovation and divergence than not. It doesn’t just feel like a rehash of an existing game and idea, and even makes a significant departure from the agrarian themes that dominate his gaming niche.
As one who does prefer low player count games, I find this game suits the lower player counts. Simply put, because there are only seven turns between harvests, you get three or four actions in a two-player game or two, maybe three, actions in a four-player game. Having one, maybe two, actions per round seems to limit the engagement with the game. Moreover, the two-player game and the three-player games skew differently enough to change the experience.
Verdict: A solid Rosenberg, which I highly recommend.