Yep!
It also kinda depends what you are doing. I see from your avatar you have a extremely detailed style- HB would probably be a bit trickier for getting the shading into that kind of work.
I'm no good at faces, but when I did try one, using my regular HB pencil was not that great..... I do...
X2
Still, you can get fairly good at drawing with just HB pencils. That's all I use, due to the fact I haven't seen my special pencils in quite some time! (I'm always losing stuff...)
I do very much agree on getting special drawing paper- That really helped me out.
-Banti