by Shadrach
Intent of this Review:To provide a context for the game, using comparisons to hopefully known games in the industry, helping people who allready understand how games work and if the game works decide if they will LIKE how the game works, while remaining a short and sweet review.What it is:Le Havre is an Economic Engine game set in the port town of Le Havre(The Harbor) france. Through the game the players take the city from a sleepy hamlet of wooden ships to a bustling metropolis playing host to the finest ocean liners.
How it feels to play the game:Oddly, relaxing. I'm laying it down to the micro-nature of the actions, but I find Le Havre to be the least stressful of Uwe Rosenberg's big box games. Take goods, convert goods, build stuff, buy stuff. Each little step takes you along the path to (hopefully) victory. Another big plus for Le Havre is that everything makes sense. You turn clay into bricks in a Kiln. Wood can be turned into Charcoal to be better fuel, but then you can't build with it. You can build clay structures with brick if you want to, or even iron buildings with steel(but then someone at the table is allowed to smack you for being an idiot). These and a hundred other things all just click, requiring no real devotion of brainpower to remember the 'logic' of the game.
Will it Play?
This is the part where I attempt to enumerate what to expect, and what not to expect from a game, hoping to help you decide if your money is well spent here.
*Do you have a phobia of small plastic containers? Because this game needs them. Unless you find pleasure in stacking, and restacking, and damnit Jake quit bumping the board, all the little resource chits. Alternatively you can spend entirely too much time making your own storage solution
BAM! :
*Are you in it for the Tension? Then Le Havre may not be for you. While 'oh God I need to get that action or all is lost!' moments may happen game to game, they're much less prevalent than a lot of games. One of the 'newbie friendly' elements of Le Havre is that there's almost always something ELSE you can do that will be helpful as well.
*Do you like simple victory conditions? Some games have a laundry list of points-scoring mechanisms(Archipelago, Agricola, most anything by Feld...) In Le Havre it's simple. Money+Value of ships/buildings, done! No pads of paper with Tiiiiiiiny little boxes required!
*Do the unwashed masses offend you? Because they're back! While no where near as painful as in Agricola 'feeding your people' is a thing in Le Havre. Failing to feed your people results in loans, but they're not horrible and in fact can be used as a tool from time to time. They're nothing like
*Must you be a maverick? Really? At this oint when teaching this game I say three times during the spiel 'This is a game about a port. Ships are important.' I do everything I can to extoll the virtues of ships, they're shiny! They Float! They bring you food! You can make little steam whistle sounds when you ship goods on them! Yet three quarters of the time I have that bright eyed young soldier saying 'I can do it without Ships!' Rest well Pvt. McNope. Rest well.
*Do you like working on engines? Little tweak there, little tune there. Let's see if we can't get it to upshift at a lower RPM. That's the essence of Le Havre. Small steps along a long path leading to a foreseeable finish line. Goods have relative values in the abstract which helps to shape long term goals, but the slight infusion of variability (special buildings, semi-random building order, random goods-setup) means that at any given point those values are rising and falling in each individual game. I'm going to compare it to Twilight Struggle(another fave of mine). You know in general how the game will play out, but there's enough variance between games to reward situational awareness and opportunism.
Summary:Le Havre is one of my '10' games. No that doesn't mean I believe it is a divinely constructed super-euro. It means I find the game fun and always expect it to be so. I love that it's very teachable and yet has a lot of meat on its bones. I love that it rewards thought without demanding brain-burn. I'm a sucker for a good economic engine and I've not played one that purrrs quite so well as this one. My incredibly biased opinion is that if you believe that 'euros' and 'fun' are not too distinct things, this game will play for you. Agricola/Le Havre is one of those eternal struggle style questions people go back and forth on, but I honestly see them as both being great, and both extremely playable.