Honey Buzz: Fall Flavors Review

Honey Buzz was one of our favorite games last year, and we raved about the games production value and game mechanics. Players would draft honeycomb tiles for their hive, attempting to make rings, use actions, produce and sell honey, and much more, all to earn points and hopefully be the best hive at the end of the game. The game was phenomenal, and we played it a ton. The more we played, the more we realized we wished there was something more. Enter Honey Buzz: Fall Flavors, a 5 module expansion that can be mixed and matched with your base game to create a neven deeper Honey Buzz Experience.

I have mixed opinions on most board game expansions. Honestly, we often don’t play games enough to require new content to be introduced, so we actually have a ton of expansions still in shrink on our shelves. What I do love, however, are expansions that are really just small modules that you can mix and match with your game to give it a slightly different feel. And that is what Fall Flavors does – let’s take a look at the 5 modules and provide quick thoughts on each!

Sweetwater Sunset Module – this is a module they recommend you always play with regardless of which other Fall Flavors modules you play. This module introduces the sunset board, with a son token that will advance as certain conditions are met throughout the game. This is a game end trigger module, and certain things that happen will make the sunset happen more or less quickly. When the sun token reaches the end of the board, it triggers the game end. I appreciate this addition to the game and think it makes the end-game much more predictable.

Fall Fruit Module – this is the biggest module in the box. A brand new board is introduced where players will be collecting fruit. Nexter tiles still exist on this board, but there are also fruits that can be collected for points. The cards from the base game are still there, but fruit orders are also present so you can complete contracts using the brand new resource. We found this module just gave players more options and more decisions across the game, which made us all change our strategies a bit. There are other minor changes here as well, including the layout of the tiles you will be trying to collect.

Fall Festival Module – this is the second largest module in the box, and introduces a brand new side board where cards will be placed. Like with the Nectar Caps Module which we will discuss in a bit, this module allows you to slow down your own economy by retiring your worker bees, at the benefit of getting some points.

The trade off, of course, is that you will have less workers to use on the main board to obtain tiles as you send bees off to retirement. When placing bees on this board, players can either propose a toast and choose one of the faceup cards to score instantly, or have their worker do some work one last time, which lets you take the “decree” action (giving you access to any of the other available actions). Powerful if used at the right time, yes, but again a decent way to alter your strategy and even get more points than before!

Nectar Caps Module – this module is pretty straightforward and minor, and one I would include in every game of Honey Buzz I play moving forward. This will allow you to cap your nectar tiles at any point during the game to earn some end game scoring points. Be careful though, once you cap a nectar tile it can no longer produce for you for the rest of the game!

Autumn Leaves Module – the old hive tiles are replaced with new hive tiles with different types of leaves on them. Depending on which scoring cards are in play, you will want to collect certain kinds of leaf tiles to score additional points at the end of the game. What we liked about this module is that you are mixing in a few leaf tiles into the original stacks of tiles, which means not every tile will have leaves on it. When one is revealed, it adds an additional bit of decision making time to decide whether you want to take an action simply to get a leaf tile. This forces players to think a bit more turn-to-turn, instead of relying on their strategies that were very predictable in the past!

Honey Buzz: Fall Flavors is a fantastic edition to Honey Buzz and I would recommend it to anyone. Even if you are purchasing Honey Buzz for the first time, add this expansion to your cart as well. The modules are easy to learn and integrate seamlessly. You might not like them all, but I think there is something in here for everyone!