by Misterboy
As there are so few forum posts regarding Hornets, and given how much I find myself liking this game, I thought I'd share a rather funny session.This was my second play, the first of which is documented here: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/877028/a-sweet-and-sticky-ga.... That session report also serves as a bit of a first play review.
That first game was with some non-gamers, but this second one consisted of a group of 4 of us, three heavy gamers (myself included) and one gamer-light guy. I taught the game, which is a fairly quick process given the simple mechanisms in the game. I warned the other players, however, that this game may seem simple, yet is actually more complex than the sum of its parts.
We randomized the hexes this game, but we left the score board un-punched. I LOVE the fact that this game has two completely independent sets of modular components which each randomize the game to a very large extent. This fact impressed the other players, despite themselves.
The game was a bit of an uphill battle. The two more hardcore gamers were well aware that the game has been heavily discounted. They are also typical of Board Game Geeks in that on some level they largely feel as though they've seen it all, and aren't easily impressed. I knew they would be looking for reasons that this game wasn't "good enough".
We dug in and everyone understood what was going on... or thought they did. I had to repeatedly force players to obey the card number turn order... everyone was a little "grabby" with the nectar. This, however, wasn't really a problem. I only mention it to help convey the mood of the game... that is everyone very quickly thought they had a complete handle on what was going on and was eager to take their turns. The mood was very much one of, "yeah yeah we understand this game, let's play!".
In the initial seeding, everyone put a bit of honey into the
hive, but after that, everyone spread out a bit and tried to concentrate on their own hives. I identified that my starting honey in the hive wasn't worth fighting over so I have up on . The other two players did the same and that let the brown player take the hive easily while everyone learned the game through the first several action rounds.The next Hive,
, went to the pink player who did battle with the green player. This was the first contested hive, and lessons were learned. In the end, the green player had to lick his wounds and decided to concentrate on the last Hive to score... 
, I think. I was working on hives 
and 
, and pink having won , hadn't yet concentrated on the next hive.Hive
scored very quickly after which caught us off guard. I'd made a silly mistake and confused with , so left unguarded more than I'd expected... but I was also teaching the game and auditing the turns. I tend not to try very hard when I teach a game, as I think other player's experiences are far more important then my own. (I'm setting up an alibi for what happens next) 
After it was too late, the pink and green players realized they didn't have enough time to contest Hive
, which the brown player was in control of. My plan was to take , , and maybe 
or 
, so I wasn't concerned with . As a result, the brown player took very cheaply.Brown was up by 2 hives! One more and he would win! This was understood by the group. Everyone clearly understood that brown couldn't win another hive.
The next battle was for Hive
, which I had already invested in heavily. It wasn't part of the central hub of hives (the tiles having been placed by us players), so I wondered if the other players would "give" it to me as they concentrated on other hives. Well, I was wrong, and brown lived up to his strategy of simply going after each hive in order. He flew over and it looked like we were going to fight.The green and pink players ignored
and went about setting up later hives. I made a critical error and did not add honey to when I could have, because I was trying to build up a bit more nectar and because it occurred to me that I could let brown invest in and then I could swap it out. If I wasn't auditing turns, I'd like to think I'd have noticed how the first player marker was going to end up on action turn before the scoring round 
. Oops!Sadly, I was the first player on this last round before
scored. Brown had a slight lead in honey which I suddenly realized meant that the best possible outcome would be if 3 players chose the honey action, and the brown player tried the aggressive version. This would allow me to fill the last 4 spots with my honey, and then the brown player would only be allowed to remove my honey, but would only be able to remove three. That would leave us tied. ANY other permutation of actions would lead to me losing the hive!! 
The green player realized this eventually, so chose the honey action, but the brown player wisely saw that his best choice was the safe honey action anyway. There was nothing that could be done, and just like that, the brown player had his third hive and game was over, with us just over half way on the turn order sheet!
Now, I was probably most at fault because I knew the game, having played it once, and because I should have put at least one more honey on an earlier turn which would meant I could probably at least tied the brown player.
But what really happened? The players thought they were playing a game that they understood, which turned out to be completely wrong. I warned them, but the seemingly simple mechanisms of the game led these battle hardened gamers to assume they knew what they were doing. The brown player was the least gamer of us all. I believe he only plays games occasionally with one of the other players. He won because he did what made the most sense up front: he just did his best to compete on the hives in the order that they scored. Simple as that, and we LET him win!
Personally, I thought the whole experience was hilariously awesome! It proved to me that my initial impression of this game was correct; that this game is incredibly enjoyable. I wish you could have seen the look on the green player's face when he realized that we had probably all lost. His statement was, "Wow, this game really requires you to FIGHT". Well, yeah. That's exactly why I conveyed the anecdote about the game's title being HORNET and why I re-emphasized the fighting in the game when the green player himself pointed out that the hornets on the cards looked "pretty buff and agrressive"!
I may not be conveying it well, but the irony in this game was piled high, and it just cracked me up.
I think the green and pink players got a bad taste in their mouth having lost the way we did, but I also think they acknowledge that the loss was essentially their faults (myself included). The green player, despite his shock and awe said he definitely wanted to play again. I hope we have the opportunity soon, as I can't wait to play again. I'm sure the brown player is up for another game
I am really beginning to love this game. Simultaneous role selection adds automatic tension every turn. You have to mentally play each other player's turn to try to guess what they may do... but the best part is that the mechanisms are so simple that this is a very EASY thing to do, so AP isn't a problem. It's like Puerto Rico in that sense, only simpler to grasp. Throw in limited actions, lots you want to do without always being able to do it, tons of strategy deciding where and when you want to fight, incredible molecularity with an ever changing board and ever changing turn track, and you get a pretty great game. Not to mention the theme comes through, which is rare for a pure Euro game!
Can't wait to play again. Maybe next time we won't underestimate this game!