[Brian,
Monday October 27, 2008 at 8:46pm]
Should I buy Le Havre?
It seems like it's my sort of thing, and I can order from Lookout games for roughly what Funagain costs.
Thoughts?
Update: OK, I went and read the rules and fired off an email to Lookout games. Assuming they still have any left ...
I don't know why you say that, Doug. It finished 11th and things were pretty bunched together at that point (the seventh through eleventh games had ratings of 2.38, 2.40, 2.45, 2.48, and 2.51). Moreover, they made the rather arbitrary decision to set the cutoff point at 45 ratings. If they had used 50 ratings, as they did last year, Le Havre would have finished 7th.
Besides, have you looked at all those buildings? Can you imagine how many choices you'll have in your first game? I have no idea how anyone can accurately rate this game during Essen playtest conditions.
Buy the game, Brian. Rosenberg is a top-notch designer and this looks like it's as good as anything he's done. You'll hate yourself if you don't.
I like Agricola, but the flaws in it are starting to bug me (mainly, that he seems to have thrown in every card he could think of, resulting in too much junk). Rosenberg is not exactly a reliable designer; for a while I would have considered him a one-hit wonder (Bohnanza), as he's done a lot of borderline or worse games. But Mama Mia! was quite good too (even if the sequel was atrocious), and now Agricola, which is certainly fun even if it's not a masterpiece of game design.
All of which is just by way of saying I'm sitting on the same fence you are. I'll probably buy it. While I doubt Agricola will stand the test of time, for the 15-20 plays I'll get out of it, it'll be money and time well spent. Le Havre is probably a somewhat risky but decent bet.
I guess I was expecting it to be top 3 given the pedigree. I only saw that it wasn't in the top 10-- I didn't know it was that close.
Understandable, particularly since there was a little bit of (probably deserved) pre-fair hype. I bet Hanno had some choice words for the Fairplay guys for setting the cutoff point as low as they did.