OUR REVIEW

Sun, beaches, dancers and rural economy

HAWAII

in the Hawaiian archipelago

Did you ever played the game STONE AGE? It was beautiful, plenty of actions to do, different possibilities for the final victory and a lot of fun even if you lose. HAWAII is a game with a similar feeling: you have a lot to do, different possible strategies but a very low quantity of money … sorry … “shells” (the local value) to spend, so you must pay high attention to your expenses all along the game if you wish to keep a possibility to win, as the amount of resources and shells will lower turn after turn and you will play the last one with no money at all! You are advised, ok?

Opening the box you will find it filled with materials, but not a standard board: instead you must assembly your island with a puzzle-like perimeter of cardboard pieces and 10 large “terrain” tiles to randomly place inside this perimeter. Each tile has different icons that show what you can do there if you sent your “chieftain” in that terrain.

You will also find a lot of small counters that depict huts, Hawaiian hula dancers, surfers, fruits, boats, water pools, Tiki, etc. (we will look closer at them later). You finally find also wooden pieces (foots, shells and fruits) that will be used to move and buy items, together with a few wooden colored meeples for 2 to 5 players.

The most annoying duty of the game is the set-up: you need to assembly the island’s perimeter, fill the interior with the large terrain tiles and then place all the counters on the terrains: this will take about 15 minutes if you do not keep the pieces separated in transparent bags, in order to quickly sort them by type (but don’t forget to separate them again at the game’s end, one type per bag, in order to be ready for the next session!)

Now your island is ready and filled of beautiful items: the sun is high and the sea is blue so it is time to search for your meeples and start the game. Each player takes a Chieftain and 2 sub-chiefs of the same color, together with a personal mini-board (you will build your villages here), a screen (to hide your resources) and a small fishing boat. You have to place one sub-chief on the scoring track, the other on the turn order track and your Chieftain on the main beach, near the port. Your goal is to get the most Victory Points (VP) at the game’s end, and you earn many VP building up to 5 villages, filling them with huts, habitants, Gods, etc. Other VP are collected at the end of each turn if you are able to reach a certain “prize” (see below) or visiting the smaller islands of this Hawaiian archipelago.

Sort four small island cards from a deck of 10 and place them on the port. Finally 5 rectangular “round indicators” are placed on the corresponding space on the map: they show how many “shells” and “feet” you will get on each turn and the minimum “prize” number to reach at the end of each round in order to get extra Victory Points.

A black bag is provided to host the 25 price tokens (round cardboard pieces with values from 2 to 6) that you have to randomly place on each Terrain tile. They will show the price (from 2 to 6 shells) necessary to buy each of the items placed on the terrain. Note that four terrain tiles have only 2 token emplacements, three have 3 places and two have only 1. Please note that each terrain will offer items on the “first come, first served” basis: the first chieftain that arrives pay the “lower” cost for the item and take the price token with him; the second must pay the lower cost between the remaining tokens and so on, so it is absolutely possible that you cannot buy any item because the terrain has no more tokens.

The game starts deciding at random the play order: the first player does not get any bonus; the second receive 2 fruits, the third 3 fruits and the fourth 4 fruits. They are a sort of “jokers”: you may use them instead of the feet or the shells and they are really very important, especially in the last two turns of the game if you were able to save a good amount of them.

Each player has a hut already printed on his personal board, but to win you need VP and you get most of them creating villages, as we have already seen. To start a new village you need a hut (that you may buy inside the island). To enlarge an existing village you have to purchase other huts, surfers, hula dancers, temples, etc. that you may find inside the island or in the four smaller islands always available. In your turn you have to decide where to go and what to buy. Each move (from the beach to the first line of terrain tiles and thereafter from one terrain tile to an adjacent one) cost you a “foot” that you have to pay to the bank. You may pay the movement cost in fruits, but you cannot mix fruits and feet. When you stop in a terrain you may decide to buy one of the items exposed there, paying the number of “shells” exposed on the price tokens. You may eventually pay these costs with fruits, if you collected enough of them, but you cannot pay with a mixture of fruits and shells.   

Each counter has two faces: the front shows the bonus offered but that counter, and the back a better bonus. If you pay the cost showed by one the price token you may place the tile on your village “face up”; if you pay DOUBLE price you may place the tile “back up”. Example: you want to buy a “shell hut” and you find two price tokens in that terrain that show the values 2-3. If you pay 2 shells you get the shell hut that gives you ONE EXTRA shell per turn; if you pay 4 shells you use the back of the hut that gives you TWO EXTRA shells per turn.

A separate players aid table offers you a summary of the different items and their effects if used with the face or the back up. This aid is important for the first game or two, but then a quick look at the icons printed on the tiles will be enough and you will not need to go back to the rules anymore.

Among the available counters you find “production huts” (that give you extra feet, shells, bonus VP, etc.), four different fruit trees (coco, mango, banana and papaya: each give you extra fruits), surfers (that give a discount for the “prize” at the end of the turn), hula dancers (that offer 1VP for each tile in the village at the game’s end), Tikis and Kahunas (more about them later) and Gods tiles (each with a different bonus).

Your mini-board has place for 5 new villages (5 rows of tiles) and you have to “roughly” decide since the beginning how many of them you wish to build during the game, as this will be the “base” for your general strategy. Try to change strategy after turn 2 is not suggested as you will not have enough time. Each village (row) will give you VP depending on the number and type of tiles that you placed on it. But villages are scored ONLY if they are protected by a TIKI (local divinity): this can be done in two ways, using many tiles and reaching the Tiki level printed on the board or buying other Tikis and thus reducing the necessary level. Each village (row) may also get extra VP if you buy Kahunas: a Kahuna on row 1 and 2 will grant 5 VP extra, on rows 3 and 4 gives 10 VP extra and on the last row grants 15 VP extra. In total you may get 45 VP extra if you build the 5 villages and they are all covered by a Kahuna and protected by the Tiki (as we have seen before).

When a player is active he may move his Chieftain inside the main island to purchase items or he may send it back to the port to reach a smaller island by boat, but you have to first buy a larger boat inside the main island as your initial fishing boat is not able to reach the small islands. Once you have the right boat you may select one of the small islands, pay the cost in feet (3 feet for the first island, 4 for the second, 5 for the third and 6 for the fourth), get some bonus VP (2-3-4-9 VP respectively) and the item depicted on that island. Finally you may simply go … fishing in the island’s bay: for every foot that you pay (to the maximum possible depends on your boats) you get one fish token that will be used at the turn’s end.

Each turn goes on in successive rounds: in each round the active player may do one action or pass; then the following payer do the same, and so on. When all the players pass (because they cannot move anymore, or they cannot purchase or they do not wish to do anything else because they prefer to save some of their precious resources for the following rounds) the turn is over and a special end turn procedure is activated.

Note that the first player to “pass” may select his turn order for the following round: he moves his sub-chieftain accordingly on the turn order track and collects the bonus token of that position. The other player will do the same later in the round.

Now all players add the numbers of their price tokens, add the number of fishes (if they have some of them) and compare their total to the “Prize Number” of the actual Round Indicator: if the total is the same or higher you get some VP, otherwise … nothing. The HIGHER total receives the VP printed under the 1st position, the second higher the VP under the 2^nd position and all the other the VP of the last position. Adjust your score immediately.

Then everybody receives the number of shells and feet showed on the round tile: please note that the basic allotment of resources decreases from round to round and there will not be any resource available on the last turn!!!

Finally the players get extra “bonus” resources from the huts of their villages and hide them inside their player’s hut.

Now it is time to mix again all the price tokens, put them on the board as before, arrange the small islands, etc. in order to start a new round with the new First player.

At the end of the fifth round the players make the usual calculation and then they proceed to the FINAL SCORE: for each “valid” village (i.e. protected by a Tiki) the player calculate the extra VP and adjust is general score accordingly. The player with most VP wins.

We did not find a real “winning strategy” in the dozen of games that we played to test HAWAII, and often the victory went to the more imaginative player of that evening: the first winner was the player who made just ONE village, but very very long and with three hula dancers; the fifth game’s winner was the player who built all 5 villages, very short (he bought a lot of Tikis) but each of them had a Kahuna, so he got the 45 VP bonus; the other games were won by any combination of strategies.  All winners had one common feature: they saved fruits round after round in order to arrive at the game’s last turn with a good reserve and they were thus able to make a lot of actions.

All losers made the same mistake: they did not bought enough “production huts” and thus they arrived “exhausted” at the game’s end.

But all the players had high pleasure in playing HAWAII and nobody was bored: the game is quick and an action will take just a few seconds (if you start planning your move when the others play). Also nasty tricks are allowed and welcome: if you arrive first in a terrain, for example, you may buy the last available item, depriving of important counters your opponents, or you may buy an important tile (boats, tikis, Kahunas, etc.) for a very low price , leaving high prices to the opponents (that sometimes will be unable to buy for shortage of shells). In other words you have to think about your strategy early in the game and then follow it round after round, trying to discourage your opponents with a few dirty tricks.

Pietro Cremona

Players: 2-5

Age: 10+

Time: 60-90 minutes

Designer: Gregory Daigle

Artist: Dennis Lohausen

Price: ca. 36 Euro

Publisher: Hans im Glück 2011

Web: www.schmidtspiele.de

Genre: Resources management

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en fr

In-game text: no

Comments:

Needs consequent adhering to strategy from the start

Many possible strategies to win

Good components and graphics

Compares to:

Stone Age

Other editions:

Filosofia, France, Rio Grande, USA

My rating: 6

Pietro Cremona:

A nice game, quite interactive, that will keep you busy and … happy. Hawaiian music is suggested during play!

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0