by Sean May
When: Saturday 10th November, 2018Where: Tabletop Gaming in Korea Minicon VII
Who: Me and Jaini
While everyone at the minicon else went to get food, my girlfriend and I played Le Havre. This wasn't out of dedication to gaming, but because we didn't want to leave Jaini's dog alone at the venue. I persuaded Jaini to play Le Havre, which I'd recently played solo (see above).
The competitive game has quite a different feel - and I'm sure games with more than two players are different again. You only need to get about half as much food, but, per round, you have half as many chances to collect resources and buildings.
I feel like I did less well at this game than I had in the solo version. I especially made a mistake with cattle. I accumulated a giant stack of cattle throughout the game, making use of Jaini's abattoir only once. I managed to convert much of the resulting hides to leather and ship it, but I was left with a tower of meat that was unused at the game's end. I didn't even need food, as I'd covered that with ships.
I won 150-something to 90-something. Jaini was especially annoyed by the loans - even though they're pretty easygoing in this game - and had -14 points at the end from unpaid loans. We did have a few turns where one or the other of us broke even at the end of the round, but then interest was due on the very first turn and we had no money - thus necessitating another loan just to pay that one coin.