(This is mostly an translation from the text written on http://spiellust.blogspot.com/2008/07/vorausblick-auf-le-hav... by me. It is now available in german, polish (thx pomimo) and english. It's a longer text of my impressions I got from the prototype which is more detailed then the "first impression post" and probably of interest to you. My motivation here is to make this game known to the english community and maybe to earn some geekgold to get me my avatar. As for an english version of the game I don't know if there will be one, but Z-Man published Agricola in english so one could possible hope that they would do Le Havre, if successful, too? We'll see...)


I've had the pleasure to test the new game from Uwe (see http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/308732) as a prototype and I'm going to tell you about it in the following text.
I'm hoping that I can hold the finished game in my own two hands to the Essen exposition (Spiel'08) - we'll see if this is going to happen.

short overview about the game
You take the part of an business man in the homonymous french town. As usual it's the goal of the game to make as much profit as possible.
This can be achieved by cash and by buildings/ships which are worth money. Those can be bought or build throughout the game, where as the latter is to recommend for a gain in most cases.
There are eight ressources in the game which you can gain and improve. But you should also look for your harbor laborers which you should support because there is a harvest equal to the harvest in Agricola where you should support those men. In a case of need you have to get a credit but this one isn't as bad as the "Bettelkarten" in Agricola because there are good ways to get rid of those credits. (Uwe himself told us that he gets in debt in ~50% of his games)

Core of the game is the harbor. New ressources are brought constantly into the storages. There is a storage for each of the basic ressources and with every turn of a player there will be two ressources added to those storages.
Once a player is on turn he can then choose to avail hisself to get those ressources from a storage (all of the ressources in this storage go to the players property and the storage is therefor empty again) or to use a building in the harbor.
Only three buildings exist at the beginning of the game. Those three allow the players to build other buildings. Throughout the game the player or the city acquire buildings and activate new options to all of the players.

materials of the game
The prototype consists of three game boards which had the storages printed on them (at the bottom). Additionaly there are also printed on the boards:
- a bank (left) which holds the cash currently not owned by players.
- an action bar (round fields) which tells the players whose turn it is and which ressources to add to the storages
- a deck of cards ("Rundenkarten", right) from which the top card symbolizes the coming harvest. On this card is printed how much food you have to support to your laborers - this demand is increasing.
- ships to be acquired (left) which makes it easier for you to support your laborers because those ships deliver food to your workers every harvest. Additionaly you can sell goods with them later on and make some cash.

The ressources to be held in the storages (and their improved counterparts) are:
- fish. Fish is a choice to get some food and can be improved to bouillabaisse.
- lumber is primarily a building material for buildings and ships but can be used for energy supply too. As an energy supply it can be upgraded to charcoal but it loses its meaning as a building material then (Have you ever seen building made of charcoal? If so, ever seen an insurance for this one?!)
- clay is the main component for the walls of a building und therefor needed for buildings. Modern buildings are no mud huts of course and so it's possible to improve clay to bricks.
- iron is used mainly for buildings and advanced ships and can be improved to steel, the most expensive ressource in the game, later on.
- corn is also a possibility to get the stomaches of your workers filled. But in contrast to Agricola you can't eat corn raw, you have to bake a bread out of it first.
- cattle is the best way to get harbors lucious. There is nothing like a good steak to do the job Because of this cattle can be "improved" to meat. Additionaly you win the luxury good coat from this progress.
- coal is the best energy support early in the game but a bit hard to get because there is no storage for this one. It's role as an energy supplier is advanced if you improve it to coke.
- coat have been described as luxury goods by me. I did this because you can't build something from it. You can only improve it to leather or sell it. Then again leather can only be sold so these two are only in the game to be a source of cash for the player.

I previously meantioned buildings and of course those are also in the game! They are three card piles at the top of the game board:

Which building lies in which pile is chosen randomly at the beginning of the game. The only garantee you'll get is that minor buildings are always on top of heavier (more end-game like) buildings because every building has got a number and the cards in the piles are sorted. Clever!
Additionaly there is a pile of 6 special buildings which come into play at special harvests (depending on player number). Those special buildings change from game to game and add a bit of chaos into the game (some special buildings more, some less). Like in Agricola there are plenty of special buildings so you can play a lot of games until you have to use exactly the same ones again. The people who know Agricola and it's few minor occupations might get a grasp of what I mean

Buildings who are bought/build lay in the middle of the table (if they're owned by the city) or in front of the player who owns them. What's left to say about buildings? They belong to three (at least?) different categories:
1. mercantile buildings
2. craftsmen
3. industry
This is important because other buildings might apply to this (e.g. the bank gives for every building points - which means cash - at the end of game. I think it was for mercantile and industy buildings - but I'm not too sure about it).
Additionally some buildings have special symbols on them: a hammer or a fishing rod. The building "Baumarkt" for example has both. Those symbols also apply to some other cards. Mostly they give you some benefit or additional ressources


I hope at this point every interested reader now has a overview about the materials in the game so I can go along with the gameplay itself.


a player's turn in details
At the beginning of the game every player gets a bit of starting cash, a token (prototype: House) for the action bar and another token (prototype: wooden disc) as an indicator to show which building he has used last. I will reference to those tokens as "House" and "Disc" in the following but I don't know how they'll look like in the finished game.
Afterwards all "cards" for the action bar are shuffled and then placed on the fields on the board face down. The three starting buildings are placed in the middle of the table (yes, the city owns them now) and the starting player moves his house on the first field on the action bar and flips it over so it lays now face up (those fields are put face up at the first time one steps on them and remain so until the end of the game - thus the last field is revealed before the first harvest).
The player now add two ressources to the storages, depending on which are displayed on the card. Then he looks if there is a coin displayed on the field. If there is, all players with credits have to pay a franc as interest to the bank (independend of how much credit they have).
After all this is done, the player now has the choice what to do. He can buy and/or sell buildings and/or ships and has the choice to either to empty one storage or to do a building action.

In the prototype he could do this in any order he'd like, for example he could sell a building, buy one then empty a storage and sell something afterwards. It was not sure if this will be equal in the finished game.
After all this, his turn is over and the next player is starting his turn.
But now let's take a look at the two possible choices a player can make in detail:
- Emptying a storage is easily described. The player just takes all the ressources of one kind.
- The building action has a bit more rules to explain. This is because you can only use a building on which is no disc (not even ones own). This decreases ones choice which buildings can be used a bit. If a player uses a building the disc is removed from the previous building and placed on the one he used just now - thus blocking other players from using it. On some buildings there is a price to be paid for using it. A player using his own building doesn't have to pay it but using a foreign building means you have to pay that player (or the bank) this price.
Some buildings deliever ressource or does allow the player to improve their standard ressources - mostly with a cost of energy to be paid again.
Le Havre shines here for the variety of different buildings and how the influence each other. I think you should plan to play a few games to get a grip of how the buildings interact with each other (I think I took something like two plays for it)

The additional action of buying/selling buildings does hereby occur more rarely than you might guess from the description above because cash is really seldom in this game! This is because on the one side player tend to buy buildings as soon as they get cash because they can hope other players to visit those - thus paying to them. On the other side cash is always a compensation for food.


After a few turns occured this way, more precisely after every seven turns, a harvest occurs. Now every player has to support their harbor laborers and therefor to pay food. This amount of food is decreased for every ship the player has because those deliver food to the laborers. Excess in food is not paid back to the players - looks like those extra ration are welcome to the laborer.
Positive for the players about a harvest is that natural ressources such as corn and cattle grow again. Everyone who has at least one corn or two cattle can take an additional one (but not accumulativ - this means four cattle still only result in one additional cattle).
The card for the harvest is then flipped and with this a new ship enters the game. Those exist in four kinds: wooden, iron and steel ships and even luxury liner. Those four enter the game in exactly this order.
Iron and steel ships are somewhat advanced wooden ships which can transport more ressources and such deliver more food.
If you get those earlier you save more food from harvest. A bit compensating for this is that later ships are worth more points - in my view this doesnt compensate the use of an early ship but I doubt it should compensate for it completely.
Luxury liner are somewhat different. One could think that an expensive ship is able to transport even more ressources and food but this is not the case. Luxury liner are surely what is called pomposity because they can't transport anything at all!
Maybe this is because of all those of the leisured classes who doesn't seem to like to travel between chicks, cattle and corn. Who knows...
Luxury liner are also different in the way that later ships are worth less points (instead of more).


So now I've told you the basic principles of the game but not when it ends. It ends after everyone has done exactly twenty turns which leads to a different number of harvests depending in the player number.
Le Havre has a "short play version" up its sleave which has lesser turns and buildings and therefor should be more quick. I have to admit I haven't played the shorter version and have based my opinion solely on the full play.



personal opinion
Le Havre is similar to Agricola in the way that it's a game which wants to be discovered. I have to decide each turn a tactical choice. Do I take the tempting storage A which is bursting of ressources or should I better improve my ressources in the appropiate building - which is free at the moment - because I want to build this great building/ship a bit later?
You are always stucked between short aims and those which aim for something later on. You should be able to change your aims quickly but don't forget to plan on something for later!
In the progress of many tempting storages you can see some players to not buy a ship at all until late - this is something I believe is fatal to that player because he then spends many more worthy actions later on to get all that food needed for his laborers without doing something else whereas the other player score important points.

Here is a point where I see a problem with Le Havre and a special kind of gamer. These are gamers who tend to take their time to fully analyse one turn and run down the game for the other players. My suggestion here is: think short about your options and then try one of the better looking options and learn from experience not analyse. This way it has the side effect that the game is fun for you and the others as well.
If you take this into consideration the downtime between turns is really short because every choice you make is just a short turn of a gearwheel in the mechanism of the game to your favor. Those gearwheels sometimes sometimes get stuck in this progress as for example an important building is blocked for you - in this case you should better develop an alternative way to make money or better already have one up your sleeve.


Maybe one or the other has noticed it somewhere along the way: I am really a fan of Le Havre. Those snappish decisions you have to take and the short playtime really animate me to shout "Let's do it again!". The game itself varies because of the building orders and the special buildings.
In some way you create your own economical realm with tactics and strategies to follow. Talking about strategies, I really appriciate that there are long-time strategies which look poor at first but pay out later on. I spot new tricks every game - even if its just an alternative way if the nasty player before me blocked me my building again.

From my side this is a sure recommendation for the game!
( so far it would be from me )

(I could mention here that this is the second game I really like from Uwe. But I could also mention that I don't like Bohnanza without some specific expansion and even told him a crushing opinion about another prototype of his. The reason I don't write about this one for example is I don't like to write long a text about a game I don't like and which is not in a state where you can expect it to be published in something near what I've played)

Thanks so much for sharing this! It sounds like another fascinating design from Uwe.

I really enjoyed reading your preview - thanks! The only sad thing is that the seats for the english demo at Essen have gone for the days I will be there

Does the game feel very different from Agricola, or is it similar mechanisms in a new setting?

This would not be a problem however as I am very impressed with Agricola - I have played 17 games so far and enjoyed them all!

I'm sure it would be worthwhile to stop by the stand and have a look anyway.

Le Havre feels differently compared to Agricola.

Both games are something like: "Do your best in xyz turns".
However in Agricola you have a certain path you want to take, mainly based on your cards to get the best advantage and get a maximum of synergy between your strategy and your cards. Maybe you should change that plan during the game because you can't get that wood which you would need badly but on a greater scale you don't change your plans this often.

In Le Havre you have all those really interesting looking offers and the urge to take them. What's usualy in my mind during my turn looks like this:
*Wow* There are 6 fishes on the field?!
I don't need fish... yes I do need fish... no I don't...
but 6 fishes... can't leave them to the next player...
but have to leave them for my greater plans... *arghs*

I would say that Le Havre is more tactical than Agricola and is even more dynamic because those buildings always comes in a different order into the game (and this is really important).
I have yet to think of strategies. There are some obvious like:
"Gonna get the bank and much buildings which benefit from it"

My feeling is that the games feels a lot different than Agricola but if you see it as "optimising your points in a fixed number of turns" than it's the same. I think it depends if you like this type of game.
If you do you'll notice the differences.
If you don't like this "point optimising kind of games" at all, this will mostly don't make it different at all.

The most heard critism of Agricola that I read was, that it is multiplayer solitaire. Le Havre don't have direct interaction again - to harm another player probably the best way is to block a building he needs urgently - but this forces you to just take new goods and don't use buildings during the time you want to block.
So what can be done (and I do this occasionally) is that if a certain buildings is important (like a late game buildings which appeared really early in the game) you could think of some ways to plan your actions in a different timing so you can block the building a bit longer. So if you see it this way, Le Havre is all the same multiplayer solitaire in which you can't harm, attack or do something against your opponents at all.

I myself have a different view on Le Havre and for me it feels totally different.
I'm anxious what the people on BGG will think of the game
(especially those who are going to don't like it).


As for english rounds in Essen I can't promise to help you but maybe we'll meet in Essen so I could explain it to you.
(I think I am going to visit the Lookout Stand quite often)
Usually I'm quite busy in Essen to look for all those great game but we'll see.

Thanks for this very helpful reply - much appreciated. I like the sound of this game very much and I will visit the Essen stand for sure (and ask out for you in any case). I'm there from Thurs to Sat lunchtime.

One of the things I like about Agricola is that for me it really is not multiplayer solitaire at all. The more I play it the game is about assessing what the other players need to do, as well as what actions can you push back because no-one else can do them now. So in between your turns you spend a lot of time looking at other players' positions and what they are trying to achieve. Anyway, 18 games of this played now, with 2 more games lined up over the rest of this weekend!

I also like point optimising games, so Le Havre will be at the top of my list to check out.