by SilvaShado
First off, my husband and I have played Agricola a few times before this and found that game frustrating, though eventually rewarding. I will say for our first run-through of Le Havre, we found it only slightly less frustrating, but just as rewarding.I will say that I made one major mistake relatively early on, which was forgetting to pay a brick for making an iron ship. But neither of us noticed until the next round and it would have been too difficult to redo things so we continued with the agreement that I would focus on getting a brick and placing it there, which I did.
I won, which I feel slightly guilty for as the iron ship did give me an advantage. I won 187 to his 143. But he still gave me quite a run for my money as there were several times I couldn't take an action because his piece was there.
But I feel I got quite a bit of the strategy early on, such as always retaining one grain and 2 cattle for Harvest, which saved me several times when I could change those into bread and meat.
It did take us about an hour to open the game, punch it out and read over the rules. The rules were not the clearest and we had several questions on how certain things worked, but we figured it out as we played. It was not easy to get money for the first several rounds and I would say it did not come easy at all until the final rounds.
It took us 3 hours to play the game, but I admit to several moments of analysis paralysis, mostly due to how late it was getting and my brain was ceasing to function. Thankfully since it was our first game, my husband helped me through several of the moments, giving me advice.
While I am looking forward to playing it again, I know it'll be much like Agricola where I will need to be in the right frame of mind at the right time of day with plenty of time to play. But I do believe it will see the table again soon.