TL;DR

• As often as possible, use buildings that give you a net gain of 2 goods.
• Your Starting Building is very useful. Use it!
• Don't try to use every building that's available. Pick a few that help you the most and use them over and over.
• If an opponent is closer to buying a building than you are, mess up their plans by using buildings that rearrange the market.
• It can be useful to figure out which building an opponent wants to use next and block them by using it yourself.

Introduction - Overarching Goals of the Game

Harbour is a game that asks you to do two things:

1. Generate certain sets of goods as efficiently as possible. (Ex: Get 2 lumber, 4 stone, and 5 livestock.)
2. Stop your opponent(s) from generating sets of goods efficiently.

In order to play well, you have to understand how the different types of buildings in the game help you achieve those two goals. Let's take a look.

Building Types - Fixed, Flexible, and Utility

Buildings come in three broad types, each of which has strengths and weaknesses. Not every building falls perfectly under one of these types, but most of them do, and it’s a helpful way to think about the game.

The three types are:

Fixed Buildings

These are buildings that exchange specific type(s) of goods for other specific type(s) of goods.

(Ex: Golem Crafters exchanges 3 livestock for 5 stone.)

Flexible Buildings

These are buildings that exchange goods of your choice.

(Ex: Salvage Yard exchanges 5 of any good for 3 each of any two other goods.)

Utility Buildings

These are buildings that do something other than exchanging goods. These usually allow you to manipulate the market and/or buy a building.

For now, I’m going to focus on Fixed Buildings and Flexible Buildings. We’ll come back to Utility Buildings later.

Fixed Buildings almost always provide a net increase of 2 goods. For example, Golem Crafters causes you to lose 3 livestock, then gain 5 stone. You've gained a total of 2 goods in the exchange.

Flexible Buildings almost always provide a net gain of only 1 good. For example, Salvage Yard causes you to lose 5 of any good, then gain 3 each of any two other goods (for a total of 6 goods gained overall). You've gained 1 good in the exchange.

It’s obvious that Fixed Buildings are better than Flexible Buildings for building up the total number of goods in your warehouse, but the benefit of a Flexible Building is, of course, its flexibility. The marketplace in Harbour cares not just about the number of goods you have, but also what types of goods they are, and that can sometimes make Fixed Buildings inconvenient. When you use Golem Crafters (which is a Fixed Building), you have to lose livestock and you have to gain stone. But when you use Salvage Yard (which is a Flexible Building) you can lose whatever you want and gain whatever you want. When you use a Flexible Building you’re sacrificing some raw production power for the privilege of customizing what you gain and lose.

To sum up what we’ve learned so far:

Fixed Buildings:
Strength: Powerful (net gain of 2 goods)
Weakness: Lack versatility (can’t decide what goods to lose and gain)

Flexible Buildings
Strength: Versatile (you get to decide what goods to lose and gain)
Weakness: Lack power (net gain of only 1 good)

Moral of the Story #1

The first moral of the story, then, is that you should use Fixed Buildings as much as you possibly can. Remember, Harbour is a game about generating certain sets of goods as efficiently as possible. You should try to have a net gain of 2 goods on most of your turns, otherwise you’re not building up your warehouse as efficiently as you could be. If the Fixed Buildings that are available don’t gain/lose the right types of goods for the current market, you should still use the Fixed Buildings most of the time in order to rapidly increase the total number of goods in your warehouse. Then use a Flexible Building to convert some of them into the correct types.

But wait a minute, doesn’t that mean that you’ll probably use only a fraction of the buildings that are available at any given time? Yes, it does! If you’ve played Dominion, this will be a familiar concept. In Dominion, players are presented with a set of 10 different cards and asked to use them to build a deck that can get the most points. You are NOT supposed to try to use all 10 of the available cards. Instead, you’re supposed to figure out what subset of the available cards will work the best together, use that subset, and ignore the rest. Harbour is similar. You are NOT supposed to try to use every building that’s available. You’re supposed to figure out which subset of the available buildings will allow you to buy the building you want as quickly as possible, use that subset of the buildings, and ignore the rest.

Moral of the Story #2 / The Best Building in the Game

Now that we’ve laid some groundwork for understanding types of buildings and a general strategy for generating goods efficiently, it’s time to look at the best building in the game: your Starting Building. (Yes, really.)

Your Starting Building is the best building in the game, especially when you play without the Characters (i.e., when everyone uses the "Wharfs" side of their player board). Why? Because it has the production power of a Fixed Building and the versatility of a Flexible Building put together! When you use it, you get to gain 2 goods *of your choice* (as long as it’s two different types of goods). No other building in the game is able to generate goods that quickly while also giving you so many options. (Ok, there are a few exceptions...kind of. That's for a later section. For now, just believe me on this.)

When you play with the Characters, your Starting Building generates one good of a specific type and one good of your choice, so it’s slightly weaker than the Starting Building on the Wharfs side of the player board…but it still has a better combination of production power and versatility than any other building in the game. It also has the easily overlooked but non-trivial benefit of always being available to you, every game, for the entire game.

Our second moral of the story, then, is that you should use your Starting Building as much as you possibly can. Ideally, you’re using your Starting Building on every other turn. That is, use the Starting Building, then use a different building, then back to your Starting Building, and so on.

That probably sounds rather boring, and if that's all the game was, it 'would' get boring. But Harbour is a game played against opponents, and that's where things get interesting.

Oh, Right, There are Opponents

Your opponent(s) are not going to sit around and do nothing while you hop back and forth between your Starting Building and the available Fixed Buildings, happily scooping up armfuls of goods. For one thing, they’re going to want to use those Fixed Buildings for themselves, so you’ll likely have turns where an opponent is blocking the building you wanted to use. And for another thing, you can’t ignore your opponent(s) for the whole game and expect to win. They're going to screw up your plans, so you need to be able to recover, and you also need to be ready to screw up theirs. That’s where Utility Buildings come in.

As I said before, Utility Buildings are buildings that do something other than exchanging goods. They might allow you to manipulate the market, buy a building, or do something else entirely. (On rare occasions they might also allow you to gain goods, but that’s not their primary function.) Utility Buildings are how you mess with your opponent(s), and how you cope with it when they mess with you. Are they about to ship goods and buy a building? Rearrange the market so that they can’t afford a building anymore. Did they just rearrange the market on you? Rearrange it again to put things back in your favor. They blocked the building you wanted to use? Go to the Ghost Ship and get to use that building anyway. Utility Buildings also often have the benefit of allowing you to do something and also buy a building on the same turn. You get to take some action (rearranging the market, for example) and then immediately capitalize on it without your opponent(s) having a chance to react. Alternatively, you you're allowed to buy a building first, then do the other action second, if that's more beneficial to you/detrimental to your opponent.

Utility Buildings are what makes Harbour more than simply an optimization exercise. They allow you to interact with the other people playing the game. They are what makes Harbour fun.

The Special Symbols (Anchors, Warehouses, Coins, and Top Hats)

Coming soon!