To Havre and Havre Not

I am having an intense love-hate relationship with the board game Le Havre. It's another game from Agricola designer Uwe Rosenburg. The "love" part is pretty simple: I love the game. The "hate" part comes from me not being able to play it very often.

The thing is, I don't think I have ever played a game more full with the potential for "analysis paralysis," that crippling, crushing mental weight you get when it's your turn, you can do only one thing, but you have tons of things you'd like to do (and several of those that you need to do). Swift and savvy players can keep it moving, with a run time of about half an hour per player (though I've yet to play it with the maximum five). But even then, you will have a few turns where you just have to say, "sorry, I need a minute."

That's with players who are ordinarily quick gamers. The sort of people who can play Puerto Rico in 30-45 minutes, including set-up time. I don't even want to think about how long it might take to play Le Havre with slower players.

Of course, if it were an absolutely brilliant game design, it would be a little less rife with analysis paralysis. But it's still a damn good design. The core is simple enough. Each player's turn, two out of seven basic resources "increment" one in an array of ever growing piles. That player then chooses to either take an action with his player disc, foregoing the acquisition of resources; or takes one of the seven growing piles, taking everything that has built up in it for several turns (and foregoing any other action). It sounds that simple.

But as I said, there are seven piles of resources to choose from. And when you get to taking an action, your options there can be staggering too. The game starts with only three choices, but players "build" cards that offer more actions all game long. By the end, there can be over 20 to choose from. No surprise, choosing from possibly 25 things you can do isn't always easy.

Though it really is fun. It's a constant struggle to keep feeding your people as you acquire building resources of various types to build more cards. There are still other commodities besides the seven that automatically accumulate, some of which you can only make by "upgrading" the basic versions of those things. There's just a lot going on. The game also has many clever ways to ensure that repeat plays can be strikingly different.

I quite struggled with it for the first few times I played, never winning, but still enjoying myself. Lately, I've been able to win a few, including a crushing victory where everything just magically aligned to give me an impossibly high score. But I don't feel any closer to having "mastered" the game, nor has my enjoyment of it lessened in any way.

For the right group, this game is a real gem, a must own. For the wrong group, you'll never even want to open the box. It's worth a look if you like resource management games, but I do suggest doing some investigating of your own before you decide to make a purchase.