I have a couple games I love to bring out when the weather starts to get nice and Honey Buzz is at the top of that list. This is a cozy feeling game where you are collecting honey, making hives and selling honey in the market.

For the gameplay, when setting up your hive you will create all these fun chain reactions. You want to set up your hive to give you the most out of your turn, to do this you will be balancing getting honey, selling honey, getting coins and finishing orders. There’s a lot choices to make and strategy that goes into that. Other than the nectar board and other players taking those tiles there isn’t a large amount of player interaction. That hasn’t bothered me because I felt really invested in what I was trying to set up. Since there isn’t a lot of interaction the solo variant works really nicely.

Components for this game are incredible. The honey even has almost a gummy feel to it. The whole presentation is just gorgeous and inviting. If you want a game that gives a wow factor on the table this is it. Everything about this production is high quality. The art is beautiful.

For replay ability, the game doesn’t have a lot of variation. There are different contest cards and hive orientation cards, but it will be pretty much the same each time. That isn’t a problem for myself because I really like the game but if you feel it needs a bit more variation there is at least one expansion available. Also there is a solo mode and a couple small play variations included the base game.

Honeybuzz is published by Elf Creek Games and was designed by Paul Salomon. It is a 1 to 4 player game for ages 10 and up and plays in about 45 minutes.

Components

• 1 Hive Board
• 1 Woodland Board
• 4 Player Boards
• 4 Fan Tokens
• 16 Starting Hive Tiles
• 63 Standard Hive Tiles
• 40 Worker Beeples
• 4 Forage Tokens
• 26 Order Cards
• 18 Configuration Cards
• 24 Nectar Tiles
• 15 Pollen
• 12 Queen’s Contest Cards
• 28 Honey
• 60 Coins
• 10 Drone Cards
• 2 Drone Beeples
• 12 Queen’s Contest Cards(Solo)
• 1 First Player Marker

Game Setup

Place the two game boards next to each other on the table. Make sure the Hive board has the side with the right number of players and the Woodland board is on side A.

Separate the hive tiles into 6 groups based on type and place on the hive board.

Place the coins, pollen and honey next to the woodland board. Sort the honey by type. The pollen can be in one pile, colours don’t matter.

Sort the Queen’s Contest Cards by colour. Pick one card per colour and return the rest to the box. Place the cards and the tokens based on player count on the hive board.

2 Players – Place 20 coins on first place

3 Players place 20/10 coins on 1st/2nd place

4 Place 20/10/5 coins on 1st/2nd/3rd place

Sort the order cards by type, create three stacks based on player count and place them facedown on the woodland board. Flip over the top card on each stack.

2 Players – 2 large orders on the bottom, 1 small order on top

3 Players – 2 large orders on the bottom, 2 small orders on top

4 Players – 2 large orders on the bottom, 3 small orders on top

Add a honey resource to the top space of the market columns.

Give each player a player aid and a set of one colour of player pieces. Which is one player board, four starting hive tiles, ten worker Beeples, one forage token and one fan token. Each player will place their worker Beeples in the supply for now. Each player takes workers and coins from the supply based on their turn order.

1st Player – 1 worker, 5 coins

2nd Player – 1 worker, 10 coins

3rd Player – 1 worker, 15 coins

4th Player – 2 Workers, 5 coins

Pick a Configuration card for all players to use. For your first game choose green which is standard.

Players arrange their starting hives to match the card.

Sort the nectar tiles into four groups based on their fronts and remove certain tiles based on player count.

2 Players – Remove two nector tiles from each group, you will use 16

3 Players – Remove one nector tile from each group. You will use 20

4 Players – Do not remove any nector tiles, you will have 24

Shuffle the nectar tiles and place face up in the field randomly distributed.

Each player places their forage token in different starting positions on the left hand side.

How to Play

On your turn you will either take a tile or recall workers. If you do not have enough workers, you must recall.

Take a tile

Assign one or more of your workers to the hive box on the hive board. If you place more than one stack them to make a beeline. The first person on a spot places one bee. If you choose to place workers on a bee hive that is occupied you must place one more bee than the tallest beeline on that space. If you don’t have enough workers you cannot go on that space.

Once you’ve placed your workers take a hive tile from that spot and place it in your hive. The tile must touch one or more sides of the existing tiles yellow edge to yellow edge. If you take a decree tile it will also cost 5 coins.

If you create an empty space surrounded by hive tiles you can activate the action icons on the adjacent hive tiles. Each action Icon can only be activated once per turn.

Recall Workers

To recall the workers remove all of your workers from the all of the hive boxes and return them to your player board. You can now use them for future turns. Then you can move your forage token one space for free but you cannot spend coins to move extra spaces or gain nectar tile or pollen from the supply.

Queen’s Contests

There are 3 cards on the board, these are opportunities to gain points.

Speed contests offer payouts immediately when completed. These are given out based on first, second and third in the contest.

Final contests are awarded at the end of the game.

Keep in mind for both type of contests, the player that comes in last will never receive a payout so second or third place may not be available based on player count.

Hive Actions

There are 6 hive actions.

To sell to the market choose a pollen or a honey type. Sell any quantity of that resource. For each one sold gain coins equal to the current value that is based on the position of the marker. Once the coins are gained drop the resource value by one in the marker column. If the resource marker cannot drop further, choose a different resource to have the value dropped.

1. Forage – move your forage token in the field. Your first move is free, then it’s two coins per space moved that turn. If your forage token ends in a space with a nectar tile you can place it in an empty cell for that type of nectar in your hive. If you don’t have a space for the nectar or land on an empty space, gain one pollen instead.

Forage tokens cannot move diagonally.

2. Produce – This allows you to place your fan token on any space in the hive. Each nectar token next to that space will immediately produce one honey of the matching type and will be placed on the nectar tile. Nectar tiles can only hold one honey at a time. Once the honey is placed remove the fan.

3. Market – You can sell to the market or complete an order.

To complete an order choose one of the face up cards and pay resources that are required on the card. That card will be worth points at the end of the game. When you complete an order, activate the action icon below the stack of orders. At the end of your turn flip over the next order card.

4. New Bee – Move one of your bees from the supply to the nursery. The next time you recall workers you will gain this bee.

5. Decree – Choose any of the other 5 hive actions.

6. Accounting – gain five coins.

End of Game

The end of the game happens when the value of four of the five resources can’t drop any further or when the orders in two of the three stacks are completed. Once either of these happens the game will continue until every one has had an equal amount of turns. Then calculate the final score.

Scores are calculated by four categories

Coins – each coin value will be counted as points

Honey and Pollen – One point for each honey or pollen left on your board

Contests – Points for each place in the contests

Orders – Points gained on the order cards

Highest score wins the game.

If you like Honey Buzz, try:

Cellulose

Parks

Everdell