In my limited experience, yes. I’ve taught it to about a half dozen people, and thus far everyone has enjoyed it, and picked up the basics quickly, and been keen to play multiple games (it’s also quick to play – half an hour would be a long game). The standard game only uses five different tile/creature types, which are all easy to distinguish from one another, and it’s easy to teach because there are very few rules to learn. There’s plenty of depth, though; it’s easily one of the best two-player games I know.
The pocket version is pretty good – I carry a copy most places, in my backpack. As a literal “in a pocket” thing it’s not all that practical (refer to Quinns’ video), and even the smaller tiles still weigh a bit, so if you’re serious about minimising the space and weight then I reckon a home-made version is a fine idea. I’d grab yourself a copy of the Pocket edition first, though, and see how you get on.
The only revised rules I’m aware of are for the two-player game, and insofar as the two sets of rules changes for a two-player game are really very different to one another, you’re not too likely to get them mixed up. I’ve never seen anyone say they prefer the original two-player rules, so I think it’s safe to forget about them : )
It’s usually pretty easy to block that kind of a threat with a defensive piece of your own – or at least, it tends to be if you still have them in hand. it’s almost inevitably going to take your opponent more moves to press that attack than it takes you to effectively defend it, so it’s probably not going to be worth their while.
If you actually manage to secure that position unhindered, though, it can easily be a game winner. I always make a point of demonstrating how that particular situation is going to play out when I’m teaching Hive, as a “definitely don’t allow me to do this” pointer.
Of course, blocking things in general is often simple enough… the real trick is to notice when your protection has been neatly circumvented while you were concentrating on some other part of the hive : )
I think that we’ve both just been attacking from the off, with no attempt at defence. I think once we break the meta we’ll be able to explore the game a lot more.
When I sell Hive to new customers, the usual pitch includes the line “Your first game of Hive you’re going to finish saying ‘Oh my gods, ants are the best things ever.’ By game three, you’ll be saying ‘Actually, grasshoppers are totally overpowered.’ By game seven you’ll be singing the praises of beetles. And then by game twelve, you’ll be convinced that ants are the best things ever again.”
A lovely game, and one that rewards skilled play quite expertly. A straight-up better version of chess.
Taverns of Tiefenthal I’ve had this for a while and still play it regularly. I’ve taken it to friends and they’ve ended up buying their own. It’s a very satisfying game which plays well from 2 to 4. An easy first game for the 3-game collection.
Welcome to if I can only have 3 games, I need something that’s straight forward to teach, easy to get people to play and scales well. This is a fun little game and hits all those requirements… I get an unlimited pad, right??
Flash Point I love a good co-op game and this one is always good fun.
Pencil depends on the user, I do press firmly when using pencils for annotations like numbers, so that tends to limit the amount of times i can have a re-usable paper… If you see my RPG or dungeon crawler characters sheet, I tend to start pressing softly, and eventually I forget and after my first couple of numbers are deleted, I carve through the paper again
