Bremerhaven is a fun worker placement game that takes its name and theme from the German port city of Bremerhaven. Players each take a player board, and a ship, contract, and game board also populate the playing area. The ship and contract boards contain- you guessed it- ships and boards, while the game board boasts several actions like building, getting building permits, changing player ranks, manipulating prices, and more.
Where this game really shines is in the fun bidding that players do to get those actions, ships and contracts. Every player is given five influence cards- numbered one through five- and players put their cards down in front of what they want to do. Then all of the cards are revealed and whoever placed the highest value in cards (added together) wins that action. It is a really fun and unique mechanic that I haven't seen before in a worker placement game, and really makes the old "one worker, one action" mechanic from games like "Lords of Waterdeep" (still a great game, to be sure), seem a little dry. Real competition heats up as players stress out and lay down more cards to claim what they need, and are limited from doing multiple actions because they must keep laying cards down on the one that they really need. You will laugh and curse at your friends every time a card hits the table. Gaining greater value influence cards is also one of the actions you can bid for.
After the bidding, players take the various ships, contracts, or items that they won. Here the game becomes a little less exciting as it plays more like a solitaire game as you are trying to build up your port's infrastructure and move goods from the ships to the loading docks in order to fulfill contracts. It's not really bad, it is just not nearly as fun as the bidding phase. Also, several newspaper "event" cards come into play that add a lot of random elements to the game. These events inject a fun element into the competition as everyone is wondering if the event coming up will help or hinder their goals.
There are two things that you want to gain in this game- prestige and money. You get money for selling goods and prestige for fulfilling contracts or servicing ships. The way in which prestige is calculated from turn to turn is a little confusing at first, but will come naturally after a few plays. What is really cool is that in order to win you multiply you prestige by your money. You could have far and away the most prestige, but if you don't have money in your pocket when the time comes (you do need to spend money to do some actions in the game), you will multiply your prestige times 0, meaning you will score no victory points. It's another great mechanic.
All told, Bremerhaven is a good, solid and most importantly fun game. While not the best worker placement game I've every played, it is nevertheless enjoyable and relatively easy to learn. Check it out.
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