Harbour

Are you ready for the rising tides of Harbour?

• HOOK - Easy to learn, easy to teach, still satisfying
• LINE - Decisions of a heavier game in 10-15 minutes per player
• SINKER - Special player powers, innovative market, tons of replayability

In Harbour, players are ambitious merchants and entrepreneurs in a light-hearted fantasy port city named Gullsbottom. They collect and exchange goods, make shipments, manipulate the market, and purchase buildings as the waterfront community quickly develops.

In clockwise order, players take turns moving their single pawn from one building to a different unoccupied building (simple worker placement). 

• Buildings trigger actions that gather or manipulate the goods in your personal warehouse (resource management).
• Some actions enable you to buy buildings by selling goods from your warehouse at the market. Owning buildings accumulates prestige (victory points). 
• Every time any goods are sold at the market, resource values fluctuate. Timing is everything (innovative market).
• The game ends when a player accumulates their 4th building. The player who has acquired the most prestigious property value is the winner.

Buildings - Developing The Waterfront

Most of the buildings either provide resources, convert resources to different types, or allow the purchasing of buildings. Some of them grant you clever abilities that include manipulating the market prices and breaking the rules.

Interestingly, buildings have variable types that grant bonuses as you acquire them:

• Coins - make buildings cheaper (cumulative)
• Top Hats - grant you access to other's buildings
• Anchors - production bonuses (cumulative)
• Warehouses - keep a resource with each sale (cumulative)

In each game, 10-23 buildings will be used depending on the number of players. Since each of the buildings in Harbour is unique and the order in which they come out is random, there is significant variability in how a game can unfold.

The Colorful Cast of Characters

There's enough gameplay in Harbour that you could enjoy it fully if each player started the game on equal footing without a special power. The back of every character card supports this option by providing a generic shop owner / merchant (i.e. the Family Game).

The game really starts to reveal new layers, however, when the cast of characters are unleashed. We are very pleased with the potential mix of characters that could be unlocked through the stretch goals in this campaign. 

In addition to the standard merchant couple without special abilities on the back of each card, here at the four base characters included with the game:

• Clockwork Tradesman - Such a proficient trader that when selling for $2, he always gets $3 instead.
• Diplomat - Starting with a top hat allows you to go to buildings that other players have purchased without paying those players.
• Bookkeeper - Normally you lose all extra resources when you sell, but with the skills of a bookkeeper this no longer effects you.
• Entrepreneur - Starting with a warehouse, you'll get to keep resources whenever you sell.

Rising Tides - The Dynamic Market

We've covered the simple turn structure, the building types and their variability, and hinted at what the characters can bring to the game. But it's all tied together with an innovative ever-changing market.

• Every time goods are sold, market values change.
• Highest valued goods fall to the bottom and less expensive goods rise to the top; there's an elegant flow that makes sense as soon as you see it work its magic.
• You'll find yourself strategizing about the timing of your critical moves; this is meaningful indirect interaction at its very best. (strategic euro game mechanics)