The Hungry Gamer Previews Great Harbor

0:00 ooh that looks tasty folks to the hungry gamer is back with another crowdfunding preview and today we're talking about the great Harbor designed by Matel denardis with art by Daniel kunha published by Arona games and I do apologize if I mispronounced any of those names so what this game is is this is a dice drafting dice placement game with a little bit of trading and Tableau building going on for good measure and the game's going to be played over six rounds though each round is going to have two phases in it so in essence you're actually kind of having 12 rounds but in any event that's how this game is going to work and as you go through you'll be using your workers to get resources to build buildings which will be giving you abilities House people which is also going to give you abilities and sends you up on these tracks for points and other items you're going to build ships which are just off the bottom of the screen right here and then you are going to additionally build different buildings on your player board and get colonists who are really just going to be workers and going to be able to do things for you as well and at the end of the six rounds Whoever has the most prestige being this symbol right here will win the game before I get started please make sure you turn your Cleon subtitles because if I make any mistakes in the rules overview that's where you'll find the corrections additionally I need to point out that what you are seeing is still in the Prototype phase and subject to change now if you are not interested in how this game is played just want jump into my final thoughts you want to go to the time stamp on the screen right now for those of us still here let's talk about how this game is played and again this is going to be a

1:31 very high level overview because when you start digging into the details there's actually quite a bit going on but at its core each round you are going to draw Dice from the bag and you will roll them and you're going to roll one more dice then you have players this is set up as a two-player game so I would roll those five dice and in turn order players are going to take turns drafting different dice we'll just say one player right here wound up drafting these two and the other player wound up drafting those two and it is a back and forth draft the other one will go to the smuggers district then you're going to count up who has the fewest number of Pips in this case this player right here and they will get to go first and so they'll take one of their Dice and they will place it somewhere on the board however they can only place it in this case in a spot that has at least one purple side so they could place it right here and that would allow them to activate this board here or this board here or both dividing up the Pips so for the sake of aring we'll say they will spend one of their three Pips right here to get a yellow ship so they would take this ship and they would put it into their hand and they'll be able to build it later in this case for two wood and then they will also use two over here to get one favor and you'll be able to use favor to reuse different abilities on your colonist later on in the game then the other player would go and we'll

3:02 just say that he is going to go right here and they're just going to get three rope which they would just track on their player board right here like so then back to the first player the first player wants to get some of that favor themselves so they would go right here but because it is around an edge there is a sub they actually get a minus they would actually lose three Pips because they're going on the Ed that does not have a second side to it the only to get around that would be to spend a Smuggler token which they could have gotten at The Smuggler District to ignore that effect and they'll go around and around until all the dice have been played once that has happened then you go into the action phase during the action phase just when you're going to be able to build your ships house colonists or build buildings I'll talk about that very quickly as I move this right out here and what you'll see here is we have a little three little docks right there and ships will actually kind of lock right on that dock as you can see like so it's a little hard to see on the board for what we're looking at right now and so in your action phase you're going to be get the chance to spend your resources to build things so as I mentioned they might spend two rope to build this small ship and it would go right here and now this one right here is this ship when it goes sailing it's going to have different fight values different cargo values different movement Val values and it'll be worth a different amount of prestige at the end however the other things that

4:33 you can do you can build little dock Huts the cost is right there which will allow you to do some free repairs and you can build these other little buildings here again for the cost right there what that's going to do is that's going to actually give you the ability to make some resources some luxury goods with your colonist which is another resource that you're able to pick up and you can send a couple of them out there and they will get that resource for you which is something you're going to be able to use when you are doing the trading phase which we'll talk about in just a minute additionally you're going to be able to house any of the characters that you have in your hand and you just simply slide those underneath the spot and you will go up on that track on the tracker as we can see over here so this is a red card I would go up on the red and as you go up there's various bonuses and you simply slide it on underneath like so and I apologize everything's getting very very messy right now and the other thing you can do is you can build buildings that you have in your hand and they're going to give you points they're going to send you up a track and they're going to give you some kind of power and that's what they're going to cost over there and I'll point out you're going to get the building cards and the people cards from different spaces on the board using the same Pips which will allow you to pick from here or Draw or Draw from the top of the deck Etc now the last thing that you can do is send your ships on a trade Mission and when you do that you'll put them on the first available space you there 1 2 3 four spots then at the end of the round we'll have the trade phase

6:05 which is where your ships will move one space heading out and they'll have the choice they can trade with the port that they're at based on their cargo so we'll see here the cargo on this ship is a one and so one time two they would get two coins for that over here they'd get three over here they'd only get one but also if they have any of these luxury goods they can turn them in to gain Prestige right there and then both they're good and the good off of the board here would be removed then once they've made their trade they would turn around and they would start going back to Port however there is always the possibility of pirates and so every turn if there's a ship in any of these zones here you are going to draw a pirate car which may be nothing or it may be an actual pirate like this one here and this one here has a fight value of one well unfortunately for me my ship has a fight of zero so I can't battle them I would take damage and if I ever took damage up to my whole strength which in this case is two I would have to sail back home now if you remember I had this card out earlier and I could then activate that which would give me more hole and would give me plus one fight in order to fight off the Pirates and that's the broad overview of how this game works you're going to play through the six rounds and at the end of the game Whoever has the most points is going to be the winner so what do I like about this game the first thing is the

7:37 way that you're doing the draft of the dice and then how depending on the sum of the Pips on your dice then determines the player order I really think is clever and the reason I want to highlight that ISL it's particularly clever is because in general when you get the first draft well they get to pick the quote Best die and in this game the best dice are always the higher number without question however by doing this it suddenly makes you have to think about well maybe I want a lower one so I can be sure that I can go and get this one particular space that is really really juicy for me so maybe I take that six first then the second time I take a one so I come in under the other player and I just I think it's really really clever the way that's done because just that one little thing suddenly wipes out this idea that you should take the biggest die that's out there and that's going to be the best and I think it actually works really well as far as the game goes next thing I want to say is I like the way that you can put the die down and then split the Pips between the two sides and get two different things it's really satisfying to do it that way and because of the way it works where if you're on one of the tiles on the side that doesn't have anything else it's actually a penalty that goes along with it it goes back to that earlier thing that I was mentioning that you want to go first so maybe you are taking worse Dice and I just think that that bit of mechanics is just very very clever and

9:07 makes this game stand out in some ways and well I think it works really really well next thing I'll say is there's constant interesting choices in this game because you're never quite sure what it is that you should do first do you want to get a ship and start trading right away do you want to get resources then upgrade your personal Tableau do you want to House people do you want want to build ships Do you want to build buildings there's lots of different ways that you can go and as near as I can tell and I haven't played this game a billion times but in the times I have played I've yet to see one strategy that is necessarily better than another and so I like the way that you constantly have that choice and you can do different things and try different things and you're always going to get something that's going to feel a little bit different every time you play and then the next thing I want to say is I've already alluded to this with the way you're doing the dice placement on tiles but often you can kind of change the order of tiles in a game and this is no exception you're going to deal them out every time but the order and orientation makes a huge difference in the game it is spectacular that this is one of those games that truly it's going to feel different every single time you lay out the board because you're getting different combos what you can do together you're getting different colors which means different things can be placed and I think think far more than most games of this ilk that'll do something like that well just put the tiles out and there in different places it matters so much in this game and I

10:38 also really like that and the last thing I'll say is I always like a tableau Builder and I enjoy this one too this is a light Tableau Builder because you can only use your people you've housed a couple of times yes there's ways that you can use them again but it's it's a minor Tableau build but I always enjoy Tableau building and I always enjoy dice placement so I like those things quite a bit so what are my quibbles with the game first one is thematically it's dry which is ironic because it's a harbor see what I did there but it it's dry you're not really getting a ton of the theme in this game and it's not to say that it is themess this is not a themeless Euro game you definitely have some things going on and it does make sense but it's relatively dry theme-wise and even though there is a variety in what choices you make which Str strategies you choose to pursue and with how the tiles are laid out overall this is one of those games that is still going to be the same basic gameplay Arc as you play over and over again now that doesn't mean it is bad there's a lot of games that I like a lot that are like that but the discovery each game is not coming from the game it's coming from the competition it's coming from what you do differently and and as I always say that this is a quibble because I don't know that this is a bad thing like I said I love games like lunar rush and guildmaster and oh he Merchant's Cove those games are always the same Arc every game but the

12:10 interesting thing comes from how you build your stuff how you make your choices so just something to understand in case that wasn't obvious next thing I want to say is even though there is the pirate combat it's not exciting and I just and part of me as a guy who loves the idea the romanticized version of pirates and pirate battles and stuff I do wish that there was just a little bit more to it and I understand that that's not the point of the game but it's in there so I don't know let me roll a die or something flip a card I don't know do something and then the last thing I'm going to say which is actually going to cycle me into kind of my final thoughts on this is that at its core this is really just a resource management game with one really cool unique twist to it and that is those piles the way they're laid out and putting the die in between them lets you activate both sides based on the Pips and you're splitting the Pips that I think is what makes this game fresh so here's my point if you're not into that then you're not going to enjoy this game and so I think this is a delightful light medium game for for anyone that loves dice placement I love dice placement and you like resource management and kind of sort of contract fulfillment if you're into that kind of stuff and that tile thing that I talked about is exciting to you then this is a game I think you should really check out especially because it's a small tiny

13:40 little box it's not going to take up a lot of space and shipping probably won't be too bad so there you have it folks as always if I made any mistakes in the rules overview please let me know in the comments with the time stamps so I get that in the cing on subtitles if you found this video useful please like subscribe share maybe become a channel member as always thank you so much for watching have a wonderful wonderful day