Le Havre

Chuck (Red), Doug (Blue), and Scott (Green) played their first game of Le Havre – ever. So, we are a little behind the curve on playing what has become a classic.

Your objective is to build the most valuable enterprise in the city of Le Havre. You do this through a variety of means – acquiring goods, modifying goods (i.e. turning clay into bricks and wood into charcoal), building/buying buildings and ships, selling goods in the city, and shipping goods. The game is played over a number of rounds, with each player having turns during the rounds (the number of players impacts the number of turns a player may have during a round). The game makes the day-to-day commerce abstract – each turn more a couple goods become available and can be collected by the players as one of their two main actions. Instead, a player can visit a building to perform an action. Players can also take out and payoff loans whenever they like (interest is paid by everyone during one of the turns). At the end of the Round, there is usually a Harvest in which you get more grain or cattle, a building (special or standard) might be built by the town, and you need to provide food (this generally increases each round).

This was definitely a learning game for all of us, as we had no idea of the appropriate strategy to take and the best combination of cards. It took a moment to understand how the whole turn / round system tied together, but it was fairly straightforward once we did it a couple times. Also, the basic gameplay mechanics are quite straightforward, as well. There are just a lot of decisions to make, especially regarding the building choices and owning them versus letting the city own them. Chuck’s strategy focused on a land-based business (he finished the game with a single ship) and he soon had the buildings in place to acquire goods, increase their value, and sell them for a profit. He was the only player who was really able to self-finance his operations. Doug started the game by buying one of the starting buildings that was worthless to him – the Building Firm that has no cost to visit (he would eventually sell that back to the town at a loss when facing a cash crisis, then buy the other Building Firm once he realized the little hammer shown on it did have value!) His strategy became very focused on ship building (he finished with four ships). He built a full production line to build wooden and steel ships. This led him to be in (somewhat heavily) and out of debt throughout the game. Scott seemed to take the middle road between those two strategies. He finished the game with a couple ships and the facilities to make more, but he also had some land-focused production. All three players finished the last couple turns of the game with some big shipping runs.

Congratulations to Doug on his victory with 206 (96 for buildings, 68 for ships, and 42 cash)! Chuck squeaked into 2^nd with 153 (64 for buildings, 24 for ships, 19 cash, and 46 bonus points for a special building – his massive ranch) and Scott was right on his heels at 152 (84 for buildings, 24 for ships, and 44 cash). We enjoyed the game and expect it will find its way back to our table.