by saslett
So my wife and I recently acquired Le Havre. We played our first game (a two player game) and, unfortunately, it was a terrible experience. Given the high praise this game has received, we are wondering if we simply played incorrectly.Per the manual, in a two player game you remove 15 buildings randomly. So we went through the buildings eligible to be used in a two player game and removed 15 randomly. The shipping lane and the wharf were two of the buildings that got removed randomly. The six buildings that were randomly chosen for construction / purchase were all resource conversion buildings like the Abbatoir, Bakery, Brickhouse, and the Steel Mill.
During the game, we could not sell our goods (no shipping lane) and could not construct ships (no wharf). None of the special buildings that came out made it possible to make extra money, and it wasn't really feasible to get tons of money by alternating grabbing Francs. Ships were simply too expensive for either of us to purchase outright.
All buildings that could be constructed were quickly constructed. Some had way lopsided victory point amounts compared to what it cost to build them (e.g. the Steel Mill). Once all buildings were constructed, it was a boring affair of getting resources, converting them to feed what we could of our people, and grinding it out to the bitter end. With no more buildings to buy, and no way to sell our resources, it was pointless to use any of the resource conversion buildings except those that gave you food.
The winner ultimately was the one who happened to first construct the buildings worth more VP.
Compounding the misery, with us unable to construct ships (and too poor to purchase them), it was a struggle to feed our people. Many loans were taken. Neither of us wanted to sell our buildings to buy ships as we didn't want to give up the VP.
Please tell me we played the game wrong and that some buildings must remain in a two player game. I've read through the rules and can't figure out that we played incorrectly. One game in and I'm already thinking about selling this as we play most of our games two player.