There are some games that generate some real hype and excitement when they start to make their way around the community of gamers. One such game has had a lot of discussion recently and has risen to the top of some lists in 2020. I guess you could say, there is some real “buzz” around this one! Let’s take a look and see if we feel the same way about it!
Honey Buzz is published by Elf Creek Games and designed by Paul Salomon with art by Anne Heidsieck. It plays 1-4 players in 45-90 mins and is for ages 10+.
Overview
In Honey Buzz, players play the role of one of an accountant bee, charged by the Queen to help set up some economics to produce and sell honey to the creatures who keep trying to steal not for themselves. Your job is to help expand the hive, make nectar to help produce honey and sell those to the bear market. Only the top architect will fly to the top and be the head of this new economic empire in the woods of Sweetwater Grove!
Gameplay
In Honey Buzz, there are two game boards, one for the Hive where you will obtain hive tiles and one for the woodlands where your bee will move around trying to obtain nectar. These are set up with the hive tiles and nectar tiles accordingly, and piles are set around he board for the coins, pollen and honey tokens. Queen’s contest cards are chosen as well and revealed. Based on player count the stacks for small and large order cards are placed in the Bear market as well.
Each player begins with a player aid, board, 4 starting hive tokens, 10 beeples, a forage and fan token. Beeples and coins are assigned based on starting player.
A configuration card is chosen so that all players take their 4 hive tokens and place them in the configuration to start. The nectar tiles are placed randomly in the field and each player placed their forage token on the field board to begin.
On a player’s turn they may either Take a Tile or Recall Workers. Players must recall their workers if they cannot take a tile. When you take a tile, First you must claim a tile with a beeline, which is a stack of bees that is exactly one more than the tallest beestack there. Choosing a space first will only be one bee, but it goes up from there.
Next players will use the tile they acquired to expand their hive. The hive pieces must connect yellow edge to yellow edge only. When the new hive tiles are placed, they will sometimes form an empty cell which is a hexagon surrounded on all sides. Once that empty cell is created you activate all the actions on tiles that touch that cell.
The hive actions are one of the biggest parts of the game and the way you set them up and make them kick is going to be the key to your gameplay. Let’s look at them and what they do:
Forage. This tile will allow you to move your token in the field to obtain a nectar tile. You may move one space for free but each addition space you would like to move costs two coins. The nectar you land on can either be placed somewhere on your board in a completed empty cell, or if you do not have one available you pick up a pollen token instead. The nectar tiles will be one of four types only, and each one requires a different number of hive tiles to construct it. The more it takes to make that nectar tile, the more valuable the honey it produces will be.
Produce. Here you will place your fan token on any space in your hive and all nectar tiles that it touches will produce one honey token. The honey stays on that spot, so until you are able to spend the honey those nectar tiles will not produce more.
Market. When you go to the market you may either sell or complete an order. When you sell your pollen or one type of honey you may sell as many as you have for the price that is in the market. Once you do that the price slides down by one. When you complete an order, turn in the honey and/or pollen and gain the card. This will also kick an addition action at the bottom of that column.
New Bee. You may take one of your bees and place them in the nursery. These bees will come back to you the next time you recall all your workers from the board.
Accounting. Here you gain five coins from the supply.
Decree. This acts as wild allowing you to take one of the other 5 actions already mentioned. It costs five coins to take it but gives you some flexibility in gameplay options.
The Queen’s contests will be either speed or final types. Speed types are looking for players to complete it first, second or third depending on the number of players in the game. The final contests are awarded in points at the end of the game. If there are ties, both receive it and the next space down is decreased by one space. There are placed awarded for the number of players minus one.
The end of the fame is triggered when the value of four of the five resources cannot drop further or when two of the three stacks are completed. Final scoring involves all coins gained, the leftover honey and pollen tokens, contests and order points. The winner is the one with the most collected points!
Impressions
What could be better:
Honey color. I like that the tokens are honey colored but I would have liked a little more variety in them to make it easier to differentiate. It really seems to be a small thing, but it makes it a little tougher for new players on their first play.
What I liked:
Components. I have the standard edition of Honey Buzz and I am impressed with all the care and work that went into this one, I can’t imagine how much better the deluxe is! The tiles, the beeples and especially the honey pieces! The honey is the squishy, tactile goodness that you didn’t know you needed and will love to play with the whole game!
Art. What can I say but wow-this game is cute. The art style and character are all super fun and really immersive, I love the style and the characters on the boards and cards. They have some really fun expressions and jump off the table when you play.
Overall
Honey Buzz is everything I love in a game wrapped up in a tight package-tile placement, worker placement, economics, multi-step planning and a beautiful design all come together to make this one of the best games of 2020. I have played this at 2, 3 and 4 player counts and have enjoyed each experience. The higher the player count the more challenging this game becomes as you fight and jockey for the spots on the board for places to place your bee stack.
The challenge in this one comes with trying to decide how and when to build the empty cells on your board. You need to rush towards making the ones you need for the Queen’s contests but you also need to balance out what will give you good choices in the market. I love the multi-step planning in this game which makes it a real challenge as you try to make the right decisions moving forward. There are quite a few different ways to gain victory points as you play this one, and I have seen players try different approaches well.
This one lends itself to players who can think through their turns a few steps ahead at a time, but isn’t so hard that those who prefer not to will be out of it. Casual gamers may struggle a bit with the tile placement and actions and trying to best optimize them but with a few plays I would expect them to catch on quickly. Experienced gamers should have no trouble identifying the parts of other games they enjoy in this one.
Honey Buzz gives you just the right amount of economics without making it the focus of the game as whole, which I really enjoyed. The tile placement and selections of the different actions are the main focus and that added market is such a fun addition to the game. Players who are just learning this need to focus on trying to make as make different nectar spots as they can and then use them in the market to sell down the high value pieces as soon as they can. This gives you some flexibility with the orders as well as the game progresses.
Overall Honey Buzz is quite certainly one of the better games I have played all year and in the running for the top 10 of my list. It is such a well balanced game and one that everyone seems to enjoy. The design is so well done, the game is tight without being too difficult and it just looks beautiful on the table. I highly recommend this one and hope you all get a chance to see what the buzz is all about!
Thanks so much for such a thorough look at the game and for your very kind words!!