geek
We're trying to reach 3000 New Supporters by the end of 2008!
BoardGameGeek Supporter Drive
300 600 900 1200 1500 1800 2100 2400 2700 3000 3300
   
718 New Supporters - Support BGG Now!
Recently Viewed
Hot Games
Dominion
Agricola
Battlestar Galactica
Axis & Allies Anniversary Edition
Android
Lost Cities: The Board Game
Pandemic
Settlers of Catan, The
Sorry! Sliders
Race for the Galaxy
Le Havre
Puerto Rico
Colosseum
Wasabi!
Power Grid
Ghost Stories
Carcassonne
Arkham Horror
Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization
Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear! - Russia 1941-1942
Ticket to Ride
Twilight Struggle
Apples to Apples
War of the Ring
Titan
BattleLore
Stone Age
Tigris & Euphrates
Owner's Choice
Descent: Journeys in the Dark
Red November
Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game
Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game
Risk
Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm
Scrabble
Caylus
Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition
Galaxy Trucker
Space Alert
Formula D
A Touch of Evil, The Supernatural Game
Munchkin Quest
Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery
El Grande
Memoir '44
Mad Gab
Shadows over Camelot
StarCraft: The Board Game
Guess Who
Rules | Subscriptions | Bookmarks | Search | Account | Moderators
Recommend
3
7 Posts
New Thread | Printer Friendly | Subscribe | Bookmark
Your Tags: Login to Add Tags | View 
Popular Tags: [View All]
Martin Butcher
flag
I have a number of fellow players who prefer games that finish in 120 minutes or less. I see in the rules that the estimate time for a four player full game is 200 minutes.

How accurate is this? How much longer is a four player game of Le Havre to a four player game of Agricola (not the family version obviously)? 50% longer? More/less?

(Expressed this way everyone can use their Agricola playing time estimates and scale up/down accordingly)

You only have 35 actions and 20 feedings, most of which are trivial, so surely it can't take that long.

Any thoughts from designer and/or playtesters greatly received.

Martin
Richard Dewsbery
flag
Avatar
With Agricola, one of the main causes of downtime is players analyzing their occupation and minor improvement cards - both in terms of what has been played, and what could be played.

These individually-held cards are largely absent in Le Havre. Some things are built by the players, but from a much smaller pool of collectively-held cards, so I would have thought that the actions in Le Havre might be a bit swifter. Though I have no idea whether Le Havre is indeed slower to play than Agricola.
Hanno Girke
flag
Game Designer
Game Publisher
Avatar
0708
Well - this is a point where Uwe and I just disagreed: the playing time we put in the rules.
I'd say it just depends on the players - how long they tend to think and if they're prone to AP.

It takes a couple of games of LH to get used to all the things that you can do - but as soon as you got the hang for it, it plays pretty smooth. So, for experienced players, it could even be shorter than your Gric.

Carsten Büttemeier
flag
Avatar
08
Hanno wrote:
Well - this is a point where Uwe and I just disagreed: the playing time we put in the rules.
I'd say it just depends on the players - how long they tend to think and if they're prone to AP.

It takes a couple of games of LH to get used to all the things that you can do - but as soon as you got the hang for it, it plays pretty smooth. So, for experienced players, it could even be shorter than your Gric.

Yep, this was my impression, too.

Greetings,
Carsten
Dave Kudzma
flag
Avatar
050607
Early games of Agricola clocked in at about 30 minutes a player. Most of my games average 20 or less depending upon the players.

So I'm going to guess the 50 minutes per player here is an overestimation for the sake of full disclosure.
Last edited on 2008-10-10 08:50:07 CST (Total Number of Edits: 1)
David Hunter
flag
Pretty close, especially for new players. With rules explanation I suspect we took close to 4 hours to play our first game last night.

However it was unnoticed that the game took so long basically because there was so little downtime between your turns.

Cheers
David
Dave Eisen
flag
060708
Took us 3.5 hours for a 3 player full game the other night. All new players, one of the three generally slow at games and the other two generally play at a pretty good clip. This included teaching time.
 
Front Page | Welcome | Contact | Privacy Policy | Advertise | Support BGG | Feeds RSS
BoardGameGeek and the BoardGameGeek logo are trademarks of BoardGameGeek, LLC.