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Waggle Dance got my attention when I was looking at a game called Perfect Crime on Kickstarter. Published by the same company, Grublin Games, and designed by Mike Nudd, Waggle Dance is a worker (dice) placement game for 2-4 players.
It plays is around half hour on the lower player count and just over an hour on the higher one. The idea is to build up your hive and make enough honey to survive the winter…that’s right WINTER IS COMING…
Waggle Dance - Inside the box.
Dice, lots of dice….Waggle Dance is full of basic wooden components that all do their jobs perfectly. There are hexagon (honeycomb) tiles a deck of cards and a good supply of baggies.
The star of the show though is the bag of dice. You get 72 small dice in four player colours - now that’s a lot of dice, all of which are of great quality.
Gameplay
The set up is simple and takes only a few minutes of putting down cards in a pre-determined pattern, giving players their dice, cubes etc of their colour and determining first player. Waggle Dance is played over two phases, Day and Night.
In the day phase, you will roll your dice and what number you roll determines on what card you can place it. The cards have actions that allow you to do things like trade or claim an egg. When a player has placed one bee (die) the other players do this until all bees have been used. The Night phase is then triggered.
In the Night phase, you resolve the actions of all the bees that have been placed. The cards all have letters on them and you resolve the actions in alphabetical order. The main action is to claim nectar This is where if you have an area majority of bees you can claim nectar of that colour and this is then used to make honey which is the way to win the game.
That’s the basics of the game and it’s easy to pick up as you play. There is some strategy involved on how to hatch eggs and make honey etc. One action allows you to draw a ‘queen bee’ card and these give bonus effects in a phase. This adds depth to the game and using this action was used by most players often.
In the day phase, you will roll your dice and what number you roll determines on what card you can place it. The cards have actions that allow you to do things like trade or claim an egg. When a player has placed one bee (die) the other players do this until all bees have been used. The Night phase is then triggered.
In the Night phase, you resolve the actions of all the bees that have been placed. The cards all have letters on them and you resolve the actions in alphabetical order. The main action is to claim nectar This is where if you have an area majority of bees you can claim nectar of that colour and this is then used to make honey which is the way to win the game.
That’s the basics of the game and it’s easy to pick up as you play. There is some strategy involved on how to hatch eggs and make honey etc. One action allows you to draw a ‘queen bee’ card and these give bonus effects in a phase. This adds depth to the game and using this action was used by most players often.
Waggle Dance - Final Thoughts
The game plays very smoothly and at a good pace, players are kept engaged as you must see what actions are left available. This makes forward planning necessary but it’s still easy enough for younger children to play. The Queen Bee cards are the star of the show and these really add player interaction and Take-That elements that would otherwise be missing entirely.
The theme is apparent throughout Waggle Dance and the artwork is good. Component quality as stated above is quite basic but serves a purpose. The cards are of good quality and after a few plays show no signs of wear.
Overall, I enjoy playing Waggle Dance and the fact you can set a point limit means that it is a game that is adaptable enough to get a game in no matter what time limit you have. Often games that win awards are over hyped but Waggle Dance is not one of them.
Winning UKGE Best Family game of 2015 and a Dice Tower Seal Of Approval is very justified and I would say it’s a great entry level dice placement game for families.
