Honeycomb Hustle: Review
Introduction:
Honeycomb Hustle is a welcoming game that combines bag building, tile placement and autoplay mechanisms. Players will build their honeycomb numerous times throughout the game in the pursuit of being able to afford honey and having the most honey in their bag at the end of the game. Each round the player will build their honeycomb trying to gain the most flowers (currency to buy honey), whichever player has the most flowers will also gain the first option of the new tile to be added to their bag.
Game Anatomy:
Honey and Nectar Tiles:
Honey tiles cost five flowers and Nectar tiles cost three flowers to purchase.
The honey tiles will close the routes on the honeycomb but they are the only point of scoring in this game. Whichever player has the most of the end of the game will be the winner. Nectar tiles add paths when building the honeycomb as they have two connections. These are designed for leftover flowers and planning the later game. Whenever a player has a group of three nectars they are removed from the players bag and are replaced with one honey token. These nectars work towards the victory condition but do give the players time to build their engine before focusing on scoring.
Restart Cubes:
Each player starts the game with two restart cubes. These cubes are one-time use and cannot be regained. The cube can be spent during the building of the honeycomb. When spent the entire honeycomb is discarded back into the bag and started again, like the round just begun. These should be used with caution when the luck is severely against the player.
Helpers Bee Tiles:
The player with the lowest flower quantity will gain a helper bee for every three flowers in-between the flower value of the higher and lowest scoring flowers (to a maximum of three). Each helper bee tile is discarded when it's used.
Blue Tiles:
Blue tiles appear in values of one or two. This is the value they are worth if played normally. However, if this token is played adjacent to another blue tile by sharing an edge (not a connection) they are worth double the points.
Red Tile:
Red tiles score flowers equally to the amount of red flowers in the honeycomb multiplied by that value. For example below is three times three equally nine flowers.
Purple Tiles:
The purple tiles appear in an array of points with the higher points having less connections and smaller points having more connections.
Orange Tiles:
Orange tiles are used to create trade (stealing) opportunities. At the end of each round any trade tile that a player player has can be traded with another player's tile that was played this round.
Gray Tiles:
Gray tiles are used to cover honey. They will create another connection as well. The gray tiles are special that if they cannot be placed into a honey when drawn it will be placed to the side until that placement is valid.
Setup:
- Each player will also gain two restart cubes.
- Honey tokens are placed in the centre based on the player count multiplied by seven.
- A pile for helper bee tokens and Nectar tokens will be placed in the centre play area separately.
- All leftover tokens will enter the main token bag.
- The player that ate honey most recently, will gain the bee (first player marker).
How to Play:
Players will play several rounds mostly simultaneously until the honey tiles have been depleted. Whichever player has the most honey tikes at the end of the game will be the winner. Each round is broken into the building phase and a drafting/purchasing phase.
In the building phase players will draw one tile at a time, adding the token to an existing open connection by using one of the connections on the drawn tile. The first token in the game cannot be a honey tile. If at any point the honeycomb is full and there are no longer any open connections, the player will stop drawing tiles. Once all players have finished this phase the next phase will commence. Two exceptions to this rule are that the gray tile won't instantly be placed if there is no honey tile to cover, the other exception is the restart cubes. If the player isn't happy with the finished honeycomb, they can discard a restart cubes to place all tokens back into the players bag and they will start building their honeycomb again.
Once all honeycombs are built all players will total their flowers produced this round. Tiles based on the player count plus one will be drawn from the main bag. Starting with the player with the highest flower value and descending down each player will pick one tile to add to their bag. Players can then spend their flowers simultaneously to add honey or Nectar to their bag for five and three flowers respectively.
Final Thoughts:
- Good catch-up mechanism with the helpers bee tokens.
- Choosing when to use the restart cubes is a great addition to the autoplay nature.
- Great family weight filler with great components.
- Low agency due to the nature of how building the honeycomb works.
- Wish there was a way to purchase tokens for the honeycomb not just drafting.
Honeycomb Hustle is a fast playing combination of bag building, tile placement and auto builder. All of these mechanics meld together seamlessly to create a really welcoming game at a speedy filler length of 15 - 20 minutes. Each round players are building their honeycomb through drawing and placing one tile at a time until there are no valid placements left. Then players will tally their flowers. Starting with the highest flower score (then descending) each player will draft a new tile from a small selection. Using these flowers players will buy honey and nectar tiles progressing the game towards the end, while slowing down the efficiency of their bag (in the case of honey). Whichever player has the most honey tiles when the game finishes is the winner. With the autoplay nature of the game honeycomb has captured the highs and lows of the bag building genre while keeping the game extremely welcoming. Don't be fooled by the explanation there are still plenty of choices in the game, based on what tile strategies the player decides to focus on, as well as how fast or slow players decide to add honey to their bag. Adding honey to a player's bag gets the player closer to victory but will ultimately steer luck out of their favour, closing connections faster and faster. Nectar is the alternative strategy costing more while managing to keep the honeycomb growing. Points can still be gained when enough nectar appears in one round as well. For fans of autoplay games and bag building, honeycomb has a rinse and repeat formula that will easily keep players engaged as they enjoy the highs and lows that the luck and their bag building strategy unfolds.
Comments
Post a Comment