Hex & Veil
A hex-grid connection game with a short opening phase played behind a screen, so the first four moves of every game are a blind gamble you can still lose the game over.
Two players, a hexagonal board of 61 cells, and the standard connection win condition: link your two opposite edges with an unbroken chain. What separates Hex & Veil from the hundred other connection games is the veil. Before play begins, each player secretly marks two cells on their own screen and those stones enter the board face-down. The four hidden stones remain on the board, blocking movement and counting for connection, until either their owner flips them face-up as a turn action or an enemy stone ends a turn adjacent to them and flips them automatically. There is no luck involved, only concealed intent, and everything in the box is public information the moment the veil lifts.
The veil phase does something to a connection game that I did not expect to enjoy this much. Standard hex connection games are famously solved in the opening for perfect play, which makes them dry at high level. Here, four unknown stones mean the first dozen turns are a genuine negotiation with incomplete information, and you will occasionally watch a player discover in horror that the stone they have been building around for ten turns belongs to the other side. The flip action is the pressure valve: flipping your own stone is a wasted turn but stabilises a line, while leaving it hidden invites disaster. It is a constant, low-grade calculation of how much uncertainty you can tolerate.
The cost is that Hex & Veil is not as clean as its ancestors. The hidden stones occasionally make the board state feel arbitrary rather than elegant, and a game can be decided by a veil placement that happened before anyone made a single real move. That sits badly with purists, and I understand the objection: this is not a perfect-information abstract, it only dresses like one. For players who find pure connection games too dry, though, it is exactly the right amount of mess, and at 25 minutes it never overstays.
The Veil Setup: Four Unknowns on the Board
Each player takes a screen and secretly marks two cells. Those four stones then enter the board face-down, so both players see the occupied locations but not who owns each stone—except that you always know your own two. The starting position therefore has four ambiguous cells that both block placement and count for connection, but their allegiance is a private fact.
This creates immediate asymmetry: you can plan around your own hidden stones with confidence, while your opponent must guess. The first few moves are less about claiming territory and more about testing the unknown cells, because building toward a stone that turns out to be the opponent's can waste an entire opening. The veil phase turns the classic connection opening on its head—you no longer have a clean empty board, but a board already seeded with secrets.
Flip as a Turn: Paying Tempo for Certainty
On your turn you either place a new stone on any empty cell or flip one of your own face-down stones. Flipping costs a full turn, so you give up a board development move to reveal your stone to the opponent. This is only worth it if the stone anchors a critical chain and you want to remove all doubt about its ownership, forcing your opponent to treat it as a solid link.
The adjacent-flip rule complicates this: if an enemy stone ends its turn next to any face-down stone, that stone flips automatically. So you can force an opponent's stone to reveal without spending a turn, but you must place a stone in an adjacent cell—which may not be where you want to go. In practice, players often must choose between revealing their own stone at a time of their choosing or letting the opponent trigger the reveal on their own terms.
The Gambler's Temptation: Building on Hope
A common mistake is to assume a face-down stone is yours because it would complete a beautiful line, then build toward it only to discover it belongs to the other side. Since you know only your own two, any unknown stone near your planned path is a gamble. Some players overcommit, spending three or four moves to reach a stone that flips as enemy and cuts the line completely.
Better players flip their own key stones early to remove the gamble, or keep them hidden purely as a bluff to lure the opponent into adjacency. The hidden stone is not a passive asset; its value depends on whether you control the reveal. Leaving a stone hidden for too long invites an opponent to probe it, and once it flips, the board state may suddenly shift from a secure chain to a broken plan.
Revelation by Force: The Adjacent Threat
The adjacency flip is the primary tool for prying information out of the fog. If you suspect an enemy stone sits in a key corridor, you can place a stone adjacent to force its reveal, but that placement itself may be suboptimal for your own connection. It is a form of active reconnaissance: you trade a turn's optimal play for certainty about one hidden cell.
By the midgame, most hidden stones have been flipped either voluntarily or through adjacency, and the board gradually becomes fully public. The transition from concealed to open is where the game's tension peaks—once all four veils are lifted, Hex & Veil becomes a standard connection puzzle, and the player who managed the earlier uncertainty better usually holds the advantage. The endgame is often a pure race, but the path to that race was shaped by hidden decisions and forced reveals.
Who It's For: The Messy Middle
Players who love perfect-information abstracts may bristle at a pre-game placement that can decide the game before a single real move is made. The review notes that purists object because this is not a clean abstract—it dresses like one but carries hidden state. For them, the elegance of a solved opening is traded for arbitrary variance.
But for players who find classic connection games dry or over-analyzed, the veil injects exactly the right amount of mess. Every game starts from a different hidden configuration, so the opening is never scripted, and the 25-minute runtime means you can play several rounds in a session. The hidden phase rewards reading your opponent's hesitations and stone placements, adding a social deduction layer to the pure logic. If you want a connection game with a poker face, Hex & Veil fills that niche.
What we like
- The veil solves the dry opening problem that plagues solved connection games
- Flip-or-hold is a constant, meaningful tension that runs through every turn
- Short and sharp, with the whole game rarely lasting past 25 minutes
- All hidden information is revealed eventually, so nothing feels cheap in retrospect
What we don’t
- Purists will object that a pre-game placement can decide the game before play begins
- The board gets visually confusing with face-down stones mixed into chains
- Slightly less elegant than the classic connection games it borrows from
Verdict
An imperfect but genuinely fresh spin on the connection genre. 7.5, mostly for players who already know the classics and want something messier.
Frequently asked questions
- Do the face-down stones count toward a connection before they are revealed?
- Yes, they count as their owner's stones from the moment they are placed, even while face-down. Only the owner knows which side they belong to until they are revealed.
- Can I flip an opponent's hidden stone on my turn?
- No, you may only flip your own stones as a turn action. An opponent's stone flips automatically if you end your turn with a stone adjacent to it.
- Is there any luck in Hex & Veil?
- There is no randomness. All hidden information comes from the players' secret placements and choices, so every outcome is determined by deliberate decisions.
- What happens if I place a stone next to a face-down stone?
- That face-down stone immediately flips face-up, revealing its owner to both players. This happens regardless of whose stone it is.