Joined in 2023 
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Honey Buzz has a great table presence. Pastel-colored bees everywhere. Gummy-like pieces of honey. Cute woodland creatures adorn the board and many of the cards. You’d be forgiven for thinking you are about to play some light family game and not entering the dog-eat-dog world of bee economics. Maybe it should be a bee-sting-bee world? Either way, the point is this: things aren’t as nice and cute as you might expect. 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.
I quite like this game. If you want proof, all you have to do is spend 50 minutes of your precious time watching me do a full playthrough of Honey Buzz. But just in case you don’t want to do that, I can also give you the highlights here. The Queen’s Contest cards are also quite an important race in a two player game. This is because the last player to complete a speed contest doesn’t receive any prize. So in a two player game you have to be first to get anything. In the games I played, often the player who won the first speed contest was also the first player. This player then also tended to be the winner. I don’t think this would always be the case. On that note, the designer of the game did take first player advantage into account, as the starting player begins the game with less coins and potentially less worker-beeples than the other players. Whether or not this is enough is something I’ll keep an eye out for in future games. 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. Of course, when you don’t have any bees left to use, you must recall your workers. You also get to move your bee in the field one space if you’d like when you do this.As you continually expand your hive, you'll forage for nectar and pollen, make honey, sell different varieties at the bear market, host honey tastings, and attend to the queen and her court. There's only so much nectar to go around, and finding it won't be easy. Players will have to scout out the nectar field and pay attention to other players searches to try to deduce the location of the nectar they need for themselves. Harvest Festival Module – Trim your labor force by retiring your workers and sending them off to the harvest festival. As each worker retires, you choose whether they propose a toast or work one last time._x000D_ Nectar Caps Module – Put caps on your nectar cells to prepare for winter. Nectar caps are worth lots of points and might even earn you a trophy, but they slow down your economy because capped nectar tiles cannot produce honey!_x000D_
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! Forage– Move your bee token in the field and, if possible, collect the nectar token and place it in your hive.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. Did you know that honey bees are the only insect that produces food eaten by humans? They also pollinate over 80 percent of our cultivated crops. And in turn, we’ve decimated the honey bee population in the last 50 years. It seems like they’ve had enough. And that really does sum up our experience with Honey Buzz. It’s a gorgeous game – the production value is through the roof and the artwork and color palette makes it sit brilliantly on the table. We got the deluxe version so some of our components were upgraded, though to be honest, aside from the acrylic nectar tiles none of the upgrades really felt like they particularly improved the experience of engaging the game (the upgraded nectar tiles sit higher than the surrounding hive, creating more visual distinction and making it slightly easier to see your nectar in the hex grid of your hive). The base game still features plastic blobs for honey, wooden Beeples, thematic & distinct coin denominations, and plenty of lovely, colorful art. Except for the pollen baskets, these are standard components & inserts
What I really like about Honey Buzz is how the actions work. It’s a worker placement game in that you are placing your worker-beeples to get tiles, but the actual actions you get from this might not be immediate. This can either be great allowing for super combos, or tortuous as you watch your opponent beat you to the action you want to take. This delayed action mechanic reminds me a bit of Tzolk’in, a worker placement game where the player’s actions happen when they remove their workers. This comparison is a compliment to Salomon’s design. I really enjoy when designers take a concept we are familiar with and find a new way to implement it. That’s often a misleading metric. When there are various difficulty levels broken up into easy, standard, and hard categories, I typically start at the bottom and work my way up. It takes time, yet there are some cases where the easiest level feels more like a tutorial. There isn’t much of a challenge, yet I imagine that’s always different for everyone! If you wanted to challenge yourself further, there is an advanced variant. On the other side of the woodland board, the forage grid changes. You also place the nectar tiles face down, so it becomes a memory test as well as a strategy game. I don’t know that the advanced variant adds much to be honest. I’ve played both and don’t feel like it’s any better than the basic game. When you take a production action, you place your fan marker and then generate honey on any nectar it touches When deploying their bees, players have 6 tile-types to choose, which will allow them to do different actions when creating a cell. These actions are:
The bees have discovered economics. The queens believe that if they sell honey to the bears, badgers, and woodland creatures, they will find peace and prosperity. Spring has arrived and it’s time to build the hive, find nectar, make honey, and, for the first time ever, set up shop._x000D_ Whereas acacia honey can only be held in a cell meticulously formed from 5 tiles in this arrangement: Constructing more complex cells like this not only let you make more valuable honey, but they also let you take more actions simultaneously when the cell is complete. But the tradeoff is they take longer to construct. Honey Buzz is a worker and tile placement game where 2-4 players face-off to have the most prosperous hive. How to Play Before I tell you how much I love the game, I do feel the need to mention a couple of slight criticisms. The first of these is to do with the honey pieces. At first glance they do look like each other (aside from the wildflower). Unless you have the trained eye of a Dulux paint fanatic, it can be hard to tell them apart. The second negative is the advanced variant. The basic game is fantastic, but the advanced variant didn’t really have enough to make me want to play that version more often. Queen Bee Or Not For Me? The start of the game is a little slow, as you only have one worker bee. If you are the third player in a 3-4 player game, it immediately limits your options. If you want to place a bee to claim the same hive tile as someone else, you must place one extra beeple in a “beeline”. The game really does build up in pace as you start to recall workers and in turn give birth to more worker bees.
Comparison between the acrylic & cardboard nectar bits. The tiles are undeniably nicer, and the best part of the deluxe components The bees have discovered economics. The queens believe that if they sell honey to the bears, badgers, and woodland creatures, they will find peace and prosperity. Spring has arrived and it’s time to build the hive, find nectar, make honey, and, for the first time ever, set up shop. What it definitely isn’t is a cute little game about adorable bees making delicious honey. I mean, it is, except for, you know, the cutthroat capitalism. 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.The gameplay in Honey Buzz revolves around your personal hive which you create from hexagonal tiles. Each tile has two hexagons and every player starts the game with the same tiles arranged in the same shape. There is also a field where different types of nectar are laid out in a grid. Each player has one bee token that can move around and collect nectar throughout the game. The bees in Honey Buzz have realized they can cut out the humans and sell their honey directly to the bears and badgers of the forest for those sweet dollar bills that every bee’s dreams are made of. Hopefully, they can afford some good lobbyists to fight for environmental protection when it’s all said and done. Gameplay Overview: New Bee: Add a bee from the bank to the nursery. The next time you recall your bees, this new one is added to your supply.
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