Session - Le Havre

4th of February 2011

Game(s) played:
Le Havre

Player(s)
Mo
Milo
Nitsuj

My regular boardgaming group has re-established itself to play on a regular basis once more and our options for play have greatly increased now that my second sister is back from her six month stint in Melbourne, bringing our group to the glorious figure of four. She did remark on the number of new stuff I have now compared to when she left for Oz and after a quick count, I realize that I had doubled my collection in the six months that she was gone… … … The strange thing is that I hadn’t realized it myself, but I’m faced with the unmistakable math that it is indeed true. It’s not that I’m not getting good mileage out of most of my stuff, it’s just that I had things like 7 Wonders and Innovation all lined up which I now feel guilty enough that I should delay my next purchases a little bit. Christmas perhaps?

Anyway, we had a session of Le Havre tonight and I just can’t resist blogging about it :P In this round, I played as Purple (which looks like Blue here), my brother played as the Neutral color and my sister played as Red. I don’t have any in-game pictures but here are our end-game shots:


This is my brother’s winning set-up at 207 points (@#$%!).He went with a cattle strategy, changing other goods for cattle at the Trafficking Spot (LGH) then subsequently to meat at the Abattoir to solve his food problems. By a stroke of luck, Cobbler’s (LGH) came out (we totally didn’t anticipate it because we had been working the Special Buildings deck through the Marketplace for all the previous Special Buildings except this one, who would’ve thought it’d be the game changer) and he changed 8 Leathers which enabled him to use the Emporium (LGH) to shoot for steel and net him the last Luxury Liner, effectively winning the game. (Plus he had extra cash to buy buildings to boost his Town Hall score, I believe he bought 3 buildings towards game end).


I landed second with a mere 139 points. I tried going for an old school shipping strategy but most of the wood offers kept eluding me and I only managed to get a start at the Iron Ship stage. I was loan heavy throughout most of the game but got rid of most of it through Local Court. I missed the entire Steel Ship stage, concentrating on netting my steel through Business Office mostly (which now I realize is just too slow) and managing to buy 1 Luxury Liner. I would’ve snagged the last Luxury Liner as well through shipping coal at the Shipping Line but the Cobbler’s incident occurred and realizing my brother would get to build the last Luxury Liner through turn-order, I went for another shipment at the Shipping Line to try and close the gap but alas it was not to be


My younger sister did well for her first time with 129 points. She focused mostly on buildings with high points and making sure she had enough food through cattle and grain. She only had to take a loan once and I suspect if she had built the Abattoir first, things would’ve turned out very differently in this game. As you can see, she is very resource rich and had the Bridge Over The Seine been in a different Building Proposal Pile, I think she would’ve killed us… or at least I would’ve probably lost. Being new to the idea of shipping and chaining the use of buildings together, I think she did very well by ignoring that part of the game and focusing on what would give her points at the end of the game.


Le Havre is still a firm favorite for me. My brother and I were standing up from Round 11 till the last round (Round 18) trying to “see everything” haha and outsmart each other whilst strangely enough my sister was just BBMing friends to arrange to go out after our game LOL. It’s a great game with just so many ways to make money that its one of the few games I don’t feel screwed when my brother guesses my next move and throws a roadblock in my way. I just run-off on a tangent and it usually still works out fine… unless it’s the last few rounds of course :P.

To be honest, I’m just glad my boardgaming group is usually willing and quite able to give anything a try. You know you’ve got a good group when most games have no meh moments simply because everyone’s there to have fun with each other whilst playing and playing the game well at the same time.