Description

A tile placement game for all ages, this intuitive-to-play and fast moving game involves pattern (tile edge) matching and spatial recognition. The game is played with six-sided tiles, each edge having either one, two, three or four pips.

Usually a 2-4 player game, Hexinos can be played by five player (six is unwieldly and its too long between turns).

All players start each turn with two tiles (hidden from the other players). On their turn the player places one of those two tiles onto the game table, matching at least one edge of their six sided tile to a tile edge already on the game table. That placement is immediately scored (see below), the player retrieves another tile from the facedown tilepile and then the player to their left takes their turn. Play continues until all tiles have been placed.

There are two ways of scoring Hexinos tile placement: Basic and Advanced. Basic can be used with younger kids or just to make the game play go a bit faster.

Basic scoring is super basic - if the player matches:

+ one edge of their tile to one edge of a tile already on the game table: score one point

+ two edges of their tile: score three points

+ three edges of their tile: score six points

+ four edges of their tile: score ten points

+ five edges of their tile: score fifteen points

+ all edges of their tile - the "perfect match": that player wins immediately.

Advanced scoring requires both addition and multiplication:

+ one edge of their tile to one edge of a tile already on the game table: score one point for each pip on that matching edge of the player's tile (e.g. if the matching tile edge has three pips, its three points (not six))

+ two edge match: count total pips on the matching edges of the players tile, then multiply that by two

+ three edge match: count total pips on the matching edges of the players tile, then multiply that by three

+ four edge match: count total pips on the matching edges of the players tile, then multiply that by four

+ five edge match: count total pips on the matching edges of the players tile, then multiply that by five

For both Basic and Advanced scoring - if the placed tile closes off an empty tile space (called "bridging"), the placing player scores as usual for the edges that match, then a bonus of six points for each empty hex that has been closed off.

A note about younger players:
As long as the player can hold and place the tiles, Hexinos can be played at any age. For younger players it encourages both pattern matching and spatial recognition - seeing their tile with an edge with 2 pips next to a 3 pip edge, but does that match what is on the tiles already on the table, or is the 2 & 3 "backwards"? And with the basic scoring system, kids easily grasp the benefit of "more edges matching is better" without needed to know addition or multiplication.

-description from designer