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Dockmaster Schlibble and Constable O'Brady cordially invite you to visit their bustling Harbour town! Attend to business at the Trader's Guild or the Masoner's Hall. Break for lunch at the Sushi Shop, or stop off for a drink at the Pub. Don't forget to check out the Wizard's Traveling Imaginarium before you go! But no matter where you go, keep on the lookout for a bargain... the denizens of this town are always wheeling and dealing! Collect and trade resources as you visit the various buildings of Harbour, and cash them in to buy your way into the town. Whoever has the most points worth of buildings when the game ends, wins!
Harbour is a worker placement game where players move their worker from building to building, collecting and trading Fish, Livestock, Wood, and Stone; and cashing those resources in to purchase buildings (which are the worker placement spots) from the central pool. Once a building is purchased, it is replaced from the deck, and the central pool is a small subset of the deck, and is therefore different every game.
The game ends when a player has purchased his fourth building. After that round finishes, the player with the most points worth of buildings is the winner!
At the heart of Harbour is a dynamic market mechanism. Each time a player purchases a building, the value of the resources they used drops, while the value of the other resources rise. You'll have to carefully time your purchases to take advantage of the ebb and flow of market prices, or be prepared to waste some resources!
Harbour - How To Play
- Acquiring buildings provides victory points.
- Buildings can provide additional benefits and special abilities.
- Optional expansion (Inland Traders) offers additional gameplay.
- Unique player boards and character abilities add variety.
- Rules for solo play are available.
- competing to sell your goods for the best prices and acquire the most prestigious properties to be declared the Harbor Master
- a bustling Harbor full of ambitious entrepreneurs
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- engine building — Acquired buildings provide ongoing benefits, such as reducing future building costs, allowing free use of opponent's buildings, or providing goods based on anchors.
- market fluctuation — Market values of goods change based on player actions, influencing the prices when goods are sold.
- Resource management — Players manage goods in their warehouse, with limits on the quantity of each good (max 6, min 0).
- set collection — Acquiring buildings is the primary way to score points, with the number of buildings owned also acting as a tie-breaker.
- worker placement — Players place their worker in a building to perform an action, acquiring or trading goods, adjusting market values, or buying buildings.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Go's bottom is a bustling Harbor full of ambitious entrepreneurs of every shape and variety and you're one of them and you'll be competing to sell your goods for the best prices and acquire the most prestigious properties so you can be declared the Harbor Master
- On your turn you must move your Pawn to a vacant building that is a building that does not already have another player's Pawn on it
- This is the building deck first Shuffle it and then deal out face up three plus the number of players
- So to ship fish I need to have two or more I only have one fish so I can't ship that item likewise wood I need to have four or more I only have two so I can't can't ship wood either oh let's take a look here at Stone I have three stone and you need three or more so I could ship the stone and to do that I reduce my stone value to zero and then I shift this token down this tells me I get $3
- Each coin you have on your buildings reduces the cost of each future building you buy by $1 per coin symbol that you have
- For example let's say I shipped out this wood and this livestock I could now keep any combination of three of those goods because I have three Warehouse symbols
References (from this video)
- Clean and fast; works well with 3-4 players
- Strong push-your-luck element
- 2-player mode less ideal
- geography-inspired gardens; scoring via score cards
- Personal and public garden card drafting
- pusher-luck with scoring cards
- Push-your-luck card games
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- bi-layered card drafting — Reveal cards and add to personal or public garden; later collect cards from score cards.
- card drafting — Reveal cards and add to personal or public garden; later collect cards from score cards.
- Compound Scoring — Score based on the chosen cards and the possible doubles or all-different sets.
- score-card driven scoring — Score based on the chosen cards and the possible doubles or all-different sets.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- the market is manipulated because you have these cards that are sat between you and one of your neighbors
- the rules are so thin
- it's fantastic I think it's criminally underrated
- the rich and the good definitely one of the highlights of the period