E komo mai

At a recent CABS meeting, a few people asked me to play Hawaii.  So I said, "sounds ok, tell me about it."  The response I got was "It's the game Tom Vasel threw in the trash."  For those not familiar, here's the video...

In my mind, that's not exactly the way I would normally try to get someone to play a game, but I was intrigued to see why Tom would hate the game so much, so I sat down to play anyway.

At its heart, Hawaii is a village building game, using tile laying mechanics.  The main conceit of the game is very similar to the game Vikings, right down to having a similar "island border" piece for each player, although game play is quite different.  After playing the game once, I can hear what Tom is saying, but he's completely wrong.*

(*He's not completely wrong, that's just a line from the Filmspotting podcast I love that I've always wanted to use)

The first thing I can say about Hawaii is that you get a metric crapton of stuff in the box.  There are three different types of big chunky wooden tokens used as various currencies, there are well over 100 tiles that will be placed on the board, there are 10 modular board pieces, and even shields to keep your resources hidden.  Given the fact that the game has an MSRP for $40, I can safely say Hawaii is a good value, based on pieces alone.  But, does the game stack up to the contents?

The main board (shaped like the large island of Hawaii) is made of a series of large tiles (allowing a random set up each game), on each tile is a place for a specific type of building.  At the top of each tile is a series of spaces for price tokens.  These price tokens serve two purposes: 1. To show how much stuff on that space will cost (duh) 2. How many of that item is available for purchase that turn.

At the beginning of each of the five game turns, each empty price token space on the board gets a random price token placed on it.  Once all the empty spaces are filled, one more price token is drawn for each tile.  On one of the price token spaces on each tile is a pre-printed number...if the total of all drawn price tokens for that tile is higher than that pre-printed number, that token is not placed on the board.  Instead it goes onto the beach, upside down, and becomes fish a player can collect.  This led to the line in the title of the article of "8+5=fish"  This also means that there is one fewer of that item available that turn.  I will say that this pricing mechanism is horrifically fiddly, and it makes very little sense thematically.

Once those tokens are placed, it's time to play!  Players can move around the island (playing feet tokens for movement, buy stuff (paying shells), and boating (which is movement, which requires feet).  There's nothing terribly new with this section of the game.  I love the idea of feet being a resource that you can spend and save.  The buying section does have a twist or two.  First, when you buy a building, you can either pay the price on the token, or pay double the price and flip over the building.  This flipped building is much more powerful (usually worth twice the benefit of the main side).  Second, you collect the token, and place it in front of you.  This becomes important at the end of the turn.  The boating mechanic plays exactly like the bonus cards in Stone Age.  You pay a number of feet to go out on your boats, and gain one of the tiles out in the water.  You'll score some points, and get some other bonus (another building, bonus points etc).  You can also "go fishing."  Remember the discarded price tokens from earlier?  You can take a number of fish tokens equal to the number of feet you spend.

My resources...7 feet (on left) and 13 shells (right)

At the end of the turn, there's an end of round scoring phase.  On the board, is a tile showing players how many resources they get at the beginning of each turn.  There is also a larger "goal number" listed.  If your price tokens + fish icons is equal to or bigger than this number, you'll score some points.  If you have the highest or second highest number, you'll get even more points.  This continues for five turns, when end of game scoring happens.

End of game scoring is basically all the bonus point stuff you acquire throughout the game.  Certain buildings give bonuses, there are kahuna tokens that will give you other bonuses, there are even surfer girl tokens that will score for each building in a certain village.  In my game, I scored more bonus points than I did actual points throughout the game.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.  It seems to diminish the importance of the main part of the game.  Of course, I suppose if my strategy focused on other sources, I might not have felt this way.

Overall, I moderately enjoyed Hawaii.  I hate the token setup phase each turn.  Absolutely hate it.  But, I loved the random board set up, the movement, and I just felt the mechanics of the game fit really well together.  With that being said...Hawaii won't find a place on my shelf.  I don't find the game shines in any meaningful way.  It does everything quite well, but not well enough to knock out a game like Vikings, which it shares so much with.  I already own Vikings...and I find the roundel mechanic at the heart of that game to be far more interesting than anything found in Hawaii.