Description
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 Solo Variant Rules
There are several solo variants for this game.
One of the simpler rulesets involves building four buildings and getting as high a score as possible within 20 moves.
Start with a standard two-player set-up (pick one of two random characters, 5 random buildings, and 3 resources of your choice), except that you are playing without any opponents.
Play the game as normal, but the challenge is to try to build four buildings and get as high a score as you can within 20 turns.
And that is all there is to it! Just count your moves, and see what is the best you can do within precisely 20 turns.
Although some elements from a normal game are absent (e.g. Top Hat icons become irrelevant, as do some interactive characters/cards), on the whole it plays quite close to a normal game.
It’s also much quicker than the official solo variant with the Training Dummy, and is a fun puzzle-like challenge, because you can plan for the market and optimize your moves and exchanges.
Harbour – Quick Runthrough
Player feedback
The forums at BoardGameGeek often have good discussions about gameplay.
We have selected some of the best links below. (Links will open in a new window or tab)
Solo ideas and discussions
A selection of posts specifically about solo gameplay or solo variants
- The 20-Move Solo Challenge: a quicker and easier one-player variant
- Unofficial Solo Variant
- Solo Variant – Alternate Head to Head
Files
A selection of files from BoardGameGeek. Links will open in a new window or tab.
Harbour – low res rules
Low res file of the rulebook for Harbour.
>> Click to download PDF <<
Unofficial Solo Variant
Unofficial solo variant for Harbour. Needs a d6 and printing out a single sheet of paper.
>> Click to download PDF <<
Harbour Solo Rival Variant
The file below has a solitaire AI to play against. Four dice of one color and one die of another color are required.
>> Click to download PDF <<
Harbour Rules Summary
A two-page summary for Harbour.
>> Click to download PDF <<
Special Abilities (Custom Expansion)
A set of twelve unique cards, each of which gives a special ability usable one time per game. Each player receives one card and keeps it secret until using it.
>> Click to download PDF <<