Overview

Monster Hex is an area majority game played on a hexagonal board. Each player takes a stack of 10 Monsters of their chosen Faction and places them in turn around Magic Stones to capture them for Points.

Game Board

There are 3 boards for different player counts. Each board consists of a certain number of hexes: either empty ones where Monster tiles can be placed, or the ones containing Magic Stones. The hexes marked with a purple Magic Hexagon are starting hexes.

There are two types of Magic Stones on the board:

• Small Stones worth 1 point to the player who captures it.
• Large Stones that award varying amount of points to the first and second place during capture, and also score bonuses to specific player Factions.

Tiles

Each Monster of a given Faction is represented by a hexagonal tile, each edge of which has different number of dots representing the monster power in the corresponding direction (the power ranges from 1 to 5). Each Monster also has a rank printed on it, with S being the strongest rank, and C being the weakest.

In the base game, each Faction has identical composition of Monster tiles, varying only visually.

Setup

During setup, each player fills their hand from the stack of their Faction tiles. The hand size if 4 if it's a 4-player game, and 3 otherwise.

Play Sequence

The game takes a fixed number of rounds depending on the board it's being played at:

• 👤4players board ➡ 8 rounds
• 👤3players board ➡ 10 rounds
• 👤2players board ➡ 9 rounds

Each round consists of players taking turns placing tiles from the hand onto the board. After everyone have placed their tiles, they refill their hands to the maximum size and move on to the next round.

Placing Tiles

The first Monster tile of the game must be placed on one of the starting hexes marked with the purple Magic Hexagon and can be rotated arbitrarily. After that, each new tile must be rotated and placed so that power at one of its edges matches power of another Monster in a neighboring hex. The Factions of the Monsters involved don't matter, and it's not necessary for powers on the other sides of the placed Monster to be matched.

In case there is no valid place for any of the Monsters in player's hand, they can place a tile on any unoccupied starting hex. If there is no valid staring hexes either, the tile can be placed arbitrarily.

Capturing Stones

Immediately after a Magic Stone becomes completely surrounded, a capture check is performed as follows:

• ⭐Players total up the powers of their Monster tile edges facing the Stone.
• ⭐The total powers are compared to determine first and second places
• ⭐No one gets the first place if there's a tie for the most power. Only when capturing a Small Stone, the ties are disambiguated using the ranks of the monsters involved
• ⭐No one gets the second place if there's a tie for the second most power
• ⭐The first place player, if any, scores number of points equal to any of the values printed on the Stone
• ⭐The second place player, if any, scores number of points equal to one of the remaining values
• ⭐If a player picks a value of the same color as their faction, that player scores additional 2 points.

• ⭐👤2players board specific Overwhelm rule: a player capturing a Stone with at least twice as much power as the opponent receives both first and second place score.

Game End

The game ends when the board is completely filled with tiles. The player with the highest total score wins the game. If tied, the player who ranked first when capturing the Demon King Stone (the Large Stone with value 7).'

Game Variants

Abilities

During setup, each player chooses one of two Abilities available to their Faction to use during the game. An Ability is activated right after placing a tile with red Rank letter (there are 3 such tiles for each Faction, one for each Rank except A). Some Abilities have extra powerful effect when activated with a tile of Rank S. Using Ability effects is optional. Any pending Stone captures are delayed until the Ability is fully resolved.

Available Abilities are as follows:

Red Faction

✨ Enchant: increase all powers of one of your Monsters by 1 (by 2 with Rank S).

✨ Reward: add a permanent +1 (+2 with Rank S) bonus for getting first place during capture of Large Stones. This effect is cumulative.

Blue Faction

✨ Strike: Immediately place another tile from hand (once per round). However, after you've placed the number of tile equal to the number of game rounds, all your future turns are skipped.

✨ Scatter: place the activating tile ignoring the power restrictions (or on any empty hex with Rank S).

Yellow Faction

✨ Confuse: rotate an opponent's tile adjacent to the activating tile (or any opponent's tile with Rank S).

✨ Scheme: draw a private Objective card, even if playing without Objectives.

Green Faction

✨ Curse: decrease all powers of one of opponent's monsters by 1 (by 2 with Rank S). This can make its power negative.

✨ Petrify: convert an empty hex into a temporary Large Stone with a single score value of 1 point (2 points with Rank S). After being captured, this stone is removed from the board, making the hex available again. The temporary stone cannot be placed so that it occupies the last empty hex near another Stone. When two or more temporary Stones are placed on adjacent hexes, they are captured simultaneously when the whole group is surrounded.

Objectives

A single private Objective per player in addition to two public Objectives are drawn during setup. The Objectives require Monsters to be positioned in a certain way on the board. If, at the end of the game, a player fulfills any of the conditions indicated on their private Objective and public Objectives, they score the corresponding points that are indicated on the card.

A single Objective can be scored multiple times if there are multiple Monster configurations on the board that fulfill its condition (however, a single Monster can only be counted for at most one of these configurations). If a conditions requires players to have ```"most of"``` something, all tied players receive the score. There's no penalty for failing an Objective.

Shared faction

👤2players game can be played on the 👤3players board using an extra faction shared between players. Each round one of the players holds a tile of that extra faction that they must play at the end of the round, observing the usual tile placement rules.

Unofficial Solo mode

The game can be played solo using the shared Faction from the previous section as the only opponent. There's no specific win condition, but it's a good way to quickly learn the game. Try to beat your previous high score!