I'm using a simple 1D array, (What I've done with previous games I've done in Java :)) because it's simple and fast! Already have the place/remove moving and working with the draw method with little effort. Checking Neighboring tiles will be easy as well, only tricky part is thinking of it as a square array versus a hex one.
Got the checkNbrs function working as it should! Had a little bit of a stump because of how the board is drawn (made the math a little different), and I can probably fix it more elegantly later on if I have time. For now, it works!