Le Havre

by Lookout Games

• For 1-5 players
• From the creator of Agricola and Bohnanza
• Tons of replay value
• Great for solitaire play

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 12.5 x 9 x 3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B001N815J8
• Item model number: LOG 29
• Manufacturer recommended age: 12 - 16 years
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,681 in Toys & Games (See Top 100 in Toys & Games)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Le Havre is a game about managing a harbor, building ships and constructing buildings. On each turn, players must decide whether to take good of one type or to carry out a building action.  The number of goods on offer varies from turn to turn. New goods of each kind are added regularly, building up until a player takes them. Wood, clay and iron are building resources. Fish, grain and cattle are used to feed your dock workers. Actions in buildings allow goods to be upgraded -- just turn the tokens over to show the reverse side.  At the end of the game, the player with the largest fortune is the winner. This is the total of the player's cash and the value of his or her ships and buildings.  Le Havre can be played by 1-5 players, either in a shortened version or as a full game, ensuring that it provides the right level of challenge for any game table.

Product Description

Le Havre is a game about managing a harbor, building ships and constructing buildings. On each turn, players must decide whether to take good of one type or to carry out a building action.  The number of goods on offer varies from turn to turn. New goods of each kind are added regularly, building up until a player takes them. Wood, clay and iron are building resources. Fish, grain and cattle are used to feed your dock workers. Actions in buildings allow goods to be upgraded -- just turn the tokens over to show the reverse side.  At the end of the game, the player with the largest fortune is the winner. This is the total of the player's cash and the value of his or her ships and buildings.  Le Havre can be played by 1-5 players, either in a shortened version or as a full game, ensuring that it provides the right level of challenge for any game table.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Shipping Game from Popular Board Game Designer November 17, 2009

By Andrew J. Brown

Durability: 4.0 out of 5 stars    Educational: 4.0 out of 5 stars    Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

Le Havre is the second game in a series of boardgames by designer Uwe Rosenberg. The first game is Agricola, a very popular and well received farming based game. Uwe is also responsible for other well received card games, namely Bohnanza.

Le Havre is for 1-5 players, but I recommend you begin by playing with no more than 3. The game is much more difficult with 4-5 players and many find it taxing and even overwhelming. This is a positive note for Le Havre, however, as plenty of games support 4-5 players but few are best when you only have two other friends around interested in playing a game.

Le Havre is more complex than most traditional board games and many designer board games. This complexity comes in part from the large variety of options you have each turn. There are 8 (16) different resources you can produce and anywhere from 4-30 buildings you could activate with any given action. This can be overwhelming the first few times you play the game. However, more options can also mean more variety, more re-playability, more depth, more strategy. This is not always true, but I think it is with Le Havre.

In Le Havre there are many different ways to win the game. Sure, you win by accruing the most wealth. But this can be achieved by focusing on building profitable buildings, shipping valuable resources to other ports, or building the very lucrative upscale ships. From my experiences with Le Havre, none of the strategies offers a sure path to victory.

I highly recommend this game if its theme, mechanics, and complexity suit you. It is highly regarded by the board game community [...] (ranked in the TOP 10 board games of ALL TIME).... If your only experience with board games is Risk, Monopoly, and Chess, I may recommend other games instead (Thurn und Taxis, Carcassonne, Small World, Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride to name a few). But if you are interested in a game with a slightly longer playing time (1.5-2.5 hours) more complexity and arguably more depth and strategy, I would suggest you consider Le Havre. Read more ›

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Euro-Style Game May 11, 2010

By Zachary Hiwiller

Durability: 4.0 out of 5 stars    Educational: 5.0 out of 5 stars    Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

Le Havre treads on similar ground as Agricola. If you hated Agricola, you probably won't enjoy Le Havre too much. But if you were ambivalent or loved Agricola, you will find a lot to love here.

Whereas Agricola's main dynamic was scarcity (Oh my God, how am I going to feed my people!), Le Havre's is abundance (What am I going to do with all this stuff?) Yes, you still have to "feed" people, build buildings, manage resources, but in Le Havre, it seems so much less desperate and thus interesting.

There is a lot more player interaction in Le Havre, although it can still be played in a fairly solitaire manner. Entering buildings owned by other players requires an entrance fee payed to the player. This simple mechanic opens up a lot of interesting decisions.

The amount of special buildings keeps the gameplay new every single time. I haven't played enough to have any repeats yet. The cards are better designed than the Agricola counterparts, having checkmarks on the back for different ranges of players making sorting much easier. There are an abundance of pieces, but they are all pretty much different types of the same thing so it isn't a pain to manage them all.

I was highly surprised by this one. A definite keeper.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars To ship or to build May 25, 2010

By E. Heidel

Durability: 4.0 out of 5 stars    Educational: 4.0 out of 5 stars    Fun: 4.0 out of 5 stars   

The short of it. Each player tries to accumulate enough victory points to win, all while feeding his people. Each turn you collect resources OR use buildings (to build other buildings, provide food, build ships, convert resources, or just make cash). Buildings, ships, and cash all contribute to your final score. Officially, it plays 2-5 players (and has a solo variant). I've played it with 2-5 people and it plays well with all numbers of players, though the challenges vary a bit with different numbers of players. I would suggest 3 or 4 is the optimal number of players, especially the first time around, though 5 works quite well.

The long of it. Each player's turn, they have the option of either collecting a resource OR using a building.
Resources gradually accumulate over the course of player turns. When a resource is collected by a player, it is then unavailable to other players until it begins to slowly accumulate again. Resources allow you to build buildings and ships or feed your people directly. There are eight different resources, all of which have an upgraded version.
Buildings are either constructed or purchased outright. Construction requires the right resource or combination of resources (and the use of one of the construction buildings). Each of the 33 standard buildings offers some different function: construct a ship/building, upgrade a resource, get cash via varying methods, etc. There are also 36 special buildings of which only 5 can appear in any given game. Much like the standard buildings, these have a variety of extra nifty functions.
Ships in the game serve two and a half functions. They are worth points themselves, they provide a certain base amount of food each full round (except for the luxury liner).... They may also allow you to ship goods, i.e. turn goods into cash.

Each round is 7 turns, and yes, that means different players will get a different number of turns in a round, on a rotational basis. Each player has one worker token that can be used on a building. Many buildings have entry fees that must be paid to use them, either to the owner or the bank (if nobody owns it). Buildings can only be used by one person at a time, and they stay occupied until a player's worker token is moved off somehow (usually when they use a different building). There are multiple paths to victory, though as always, some specific paths are more easily realized (but not necessarily more effective).
All 33 buildings are used in 4 or 5 player games, with fewer players, you start to remove buildings.

Taken altogether, the game is a typical resource/action scarcity game, with a number of flips and twists. The exact order resources appear in, the order buildings can appear, and which specials are available will all vary from game to game, making repeat plays potentially quite different (in one game, for example, the steelworks building, which allows conversion from iron to steel, did not become available until extremely late in the game, making it nearly impossible to build the higher level ships {steel/luxury}, I have seen several games where certain buildings simply did not get built, which meant some functions were never available).
The game, in concept and play, is quite similar to Agricola (created by the same people, so no surprise there), but there seems to be less randomness in the game (though more than "family-style" Agri) and less dependence on turn order.
The one downside is that it tends to take a hefty chunk of time, and with far more options of what to do on a given turn if you or your friends suffer from analysis-paralysis that gets magnified. Read more ›

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great game! November 30, 2010

By Karen Knoblaugh

Durability: 5.0 out of 5 stars    Educational: 5.0 out of 5 stars    Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

I just bought this game so only have played it through once, but I loved it straight away. Lots of depth and options - and the good news is that none of those options are really bad. If you love strategy board games, you will love this one. It does take a bit longer to play than some other similar games, but if you enjoy thoughtfully weighing and balancing all of your various options, this game is for you.
I can compare it to someone who loves playing Scrabble and enjoys taking some time to really think through their word possibilities - this game is the same way. Enjoy!