boardgaming in photos: Race for the Galaxy, Le Havre

7 Nov 2020. My wife Michelle and I brought out Race for the Galaxy again, after more than 3 years of having stopped playing. This used to be our spouse game and we played our copy so much that the card edges frayed. I was a little surprised we were a little fuzzy on some rules. I had to look up the rule book. It felt good revisiting this game which was such a staple.  

8 Nov 2020. We brought out Le Havre too. This is a 2-player game setup. We don't use the standard way of using the game board. The many warehouse spaces on the board are meant for the many types of resources in the game. However we use a compartmentalised box for the resources, so we don't need these warehouse spaces. We use them for other stuff. 

The three columns of cards in the centre are the buildings. Normally the spaces for them are just those three yellow bordered construction sites. If we use just those spaces, the columns of cards will spill beyond the game board across the top edge. Now that we have extra space, the columns can be shifted down and placed fully on the board. 

Both during play and storage we use this compartmentalised box for the resources. This is very convenient and saves much trouble, certainly better than storing them in individual ziplock bags. 

The round tiles are not yet revealed at the start of the game. Every turn, the round tiles determine which offer spaces will get more resources. There is a row of offer spaces along the bottom of the game board. On a player's turn, he has only two options, and one of them is to collect all resources on an offer space. As resources pile up on an offer space, it becomes more and more tempting. 

This was still early in our game. Both of us had only constructed or bought three buildings each. Both of us already needed to take loans. The banks in Le Havre are kind. They only charge you a flat $1 interest once a round, no matter how much you have borrowed. 

These were Michelle's buildings. She had both the fishery and the smokehouse, which was a good combination in the early game. It helped with producing food and thus with the feeding phase of every round. She also had both the clay mound and the brickworks. This too was a good combination. Brick production is important because in the second half of the game, most buildings require bricks. 

In Le Havre, not owning a building doesn't stop you from using it. You can still use the building, just that you need to pay a small fee. The main benefit of winning the race to construct a certain building is the point value of the building. The secondary benefit is you get to use it for free, and you receive a fee when others use it. 

These were my buildings. In the early game I did not manage to grab any particularly important building. The marketplace did help me somewhat. It was handy to be able to take three different resources at one go, at least in the early game. One important building I managed to construct was the wharf. Building ships is important in this game. They reduce the food you need to pay at the end of every round. The food requirement keeps increasing. Without ships you will be under tremendous pressure. When you don't have enough food, you pay cash, and if you run out of cash, you take loans. When we played, I remembered the importance of ships and made sure I built them as soon as I could. Even though my first wooden ship only reduced the food requirement by four, it helped. The iron ships I built later helped even more. Michelle was late in building ships, and that cost her much food. 

We placed the matching resources on the round tiles in preparation for future turns. When we had downtime, we did such preparation to help us play quickly and smoothly. 

This was near game end. All buildings on the board had been constructed, leaving the three vacant construction sites. By now Michelle had built some ships, so the feeding phase was not as painful anymore. I had repaid all my loans, which was a relief. Now I was preparing to build the luxury liners which would become available in the final few rounds. Luxury liners were worth many points, but they required much steel, and making steel was a major engineering effort. 

By the end of the game, I purchased most of the buildings which belonged to the city. I had surplus cash, and the victory point values of most of these buildings were the same as their costs, so buying them was no loss to me. The city only had one building left, on the right side of this photo. I didn't buy it because the victory point value was lower than the cost. 

Some buildings score points based on the number of buildings of specific types that you own. So when you have surplus cash, it is good to buy up city buildings. You may earn some entrance fees if your opponents decide to use these buildings. You also save entrance fees if you yourself decide to use them.