Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Board Game Review #4

I think today will be the Long awaited reveiw of Hex Hex XL. At least I've been waiting, I doubt anyone else has.



Hex Hex is best described as a far more complex version of Hot potato. You get a deck of 150 cards and pass 5 to each player. Each person begins the game with 5 voice. You then pass the Hex around using the cards in your hand until the Hex lands on a person who can't play a card to pass it. That person is then hexed, and loses 1 voice. The person who sent the Hex to them gains 1 voice. That is a bare bones easiest possible way for the game to go. You player a number of rounds equal to 1+ the number of players. Giving each player a chance to be first, the last round, who ever is losing chooses the first caster. After that the player with the most voice wins.

But its not so simple. In the 150 card deck are several cards that really offer a great twist to the game. Some cards create new hexes, so there are more than 1 Hex bounding around the Board. Some cards force the Hex to move only 1 direction. Some boost the amount of Voice lost by the Hexed player. There are several dozen cards that pop up in the game that help make it fun, random, and always keep it fresh.



The Large box set called Hex Hex XL, comes with 2 expansions. Hexen Sticks, and Hex Hex Vexxed. The Sticks are added into the main game and play the same with 1 exception. You place a number of sticks in the center of table equal to one less then the number of players. Then there is a New Card called Grab. Once its played there is a mad scramble for the sticks. Once all sticks are claimed you flip a card from the special Hexen Stick Deck. It gives reweards to certain players and penalties to others. Usually the Penalty falls on the player with out a stick. But not always. Its a nice addition as it keeps everyone paying attention to whats going on in the game. Hex Hex Vexxed, adds in the Vex Deck. After each round who ever was Cursed, is then Vexxed. It adds a hinderance to that player for 1 round. It can be that they can only say words like Ping, ZZzzzt, and Pa'keew. Or other random obnoxious things. Its also a ton of fun, but mostly we just use the Sticks.



Hex hex is very fun and random game. Most times we play ditching any ideas of strategy for plays that will cause more chaos and ridiculousness. And at the moment it is my personal favorite of all the games in my Library. Hex Hex is an A+ in my book.

1 comment:

wrabbit37 said...

Honestly, not a huge fan of the game. It's fun, but I can't really play it more than once in a row without losing interest. Maybe with drinking it would be more fun, but the fact that you can do just about as well in the game flipping the top card off the deck every time as you can trying to formulate a strategy and use cards from your hand makes it less interesting to me. For a random, fast filler game, I prefer Bang, I think.