Apiary: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Worker Placement, Point Salad, Tile PlacementPlayer Age: 14+ Player Count: 1 - 5 Players Time to Play: 60 - 90 Minutes
Game Designer: Connie Vogelmann
Game Designer: Connie Vogelmann
Rundown:
In Apiary, players are building their hive with farms (engine-building), carvings (end-game scoring), recruits (ongoing benefits), and development tiles (one-off benefits). This is achieved through placing worker bees on locations. The longer a bee worker is used the stronger they become but after their last action at strength four, they must hibernate.
On a turn, a player will either play a worker to activate the location or retrieve all their placed workers. As you place a worker, no location is ever considered blocked. Instead, the worker on that location is bounced back to the owner, gaining one strength.
Once there has been enough hibernation between players (based on the player count), or all hibernation tokens from one player has been used the game will end and any additional scoring will be considered now. Additional scoring can be gained from tiles built, seed cards planted, position on the queens favour track, hibernation comb majority, filling the hive mat/frames, or any specific scoring from the players starting faction.
Action Spots:
There are six different actions associated with locations that players can send their workers to. When a strength 4 worker is used, some locations have additional benefits. The different actions are; explore, advance, grow, research, convert, and carve.
Explore:
There are two worker spots at this location. When the location is used, the sum of both workers' strengths will move the queen around by that value of spaces. If the planet has already been explored (revealed), the active player will add one basic resource (pollen, fibre or water) from the supply onto a vacant dotted square at the top of the tile (if available) then gain all the resources shown on the planet from the supply. If there is a strength 4 benefit, it will activate if a strength 4 worker was used.
If the planet hasn't been explored the player will instead gain the benefit of the exploration token. They will then reveal a new planet tile as the top tile for the stack and proceed as normal for the planet, adding a resource if the dotted square is vacant first.
Advance:
At 1-3 players, this action counts as one action. However, at 4-5 players, this action is split up between the farm tile type and the recruit/development tile type.
The active player will select which tile they want to build with the higher combined strength of the workers at the location, determining which columns can be chosen. For example, if a player has strength 3+ (from the combined workers) they can select a tile from the or left-hand side, 4+ can select from the middle, and 5+ can select from the right-hand side.
The resource at the bottom of the tile will need to be paid and then the tile can be placed adjacent to an already built tile on the player’s board. If the tile covers an icon on the hive, they will gain that bonus benefit.
When a strength 4 worker is used, that player will gain a bonus of 3 points. The tiles will be slid left and replenished after the action is resolved.
Grow:
This action will grow the hive or the colony. The player can spend their workers' strength as a currency for this action. One strength and a pollen can add a strength 1 worker to that player's colony (maximum four workers at a time). Two strengths and two basic resources can be spent to add a frame. Each frame will have the opportunity to award the player eight points at the end of the game if it is filled.
If a strength 4 worker is used, the active player may flip their faction board to the upgraded side, increasing their faction benefits.
Research:
The research action will award the player seed cards. They will draw seed cards equal to the worker's strength, keep one and discard the rest.
The research cards can be played anytime on a player's turn to gain any basic resource or gain the effect at the top of the card. Each seed card also has an endgame scoring opportunity at the bottom of the card.
If a strength 4 worker is played after choosing which card to keep, they can plant any seed card under their player board to gain the end-game scoring. At the start of the game, players can only plant two seeds. Each frame a player adds will increase the seed capacity until players can plant four seeds.
Convert:
The amount of conversions a player can make is based on the strength of their worker. These conversions are shown below.
A strength 4 worker can show off their dance. If the player hasn't done this in the game yet they can create a new conversion dance. Whenever an opponent uses this dance in a normal convert turn the player who built it will gain a queen's favour. To build a dance the player will select any available dance tile revealed and fill in the blank locations with dance tokens of their choice. Then they place on a cube of their colour to signify this is their dance.
Carve:
Only a strength 4 worker can go to this location. This will allow the player to pay and build one carve tile. There will only be a select number of carve tiles available each game. The carve tiles will cost honey, the hardest resource to gain, and add a new scoring condition for the player.
Pollinators (AKA Workers):
In Apiarary the workers have a level system. Actions will reward stronger benefits based on the worker's higher levels, as well as grant a bonus effect for a level four worker. Workers can be gained through the grow location, but how can the worker strength be increased? Throughout the game, if any worker (the active players or any other players) is at a location and someone else wants to use that location, they will bump that worker back to its owner. This will give that player the choice to place that bumped worker back into their active pool of workers by increasing their strength level
or, instead, the worker can be placed on the landing area to retain their current strength and be stored for a retrieval action.
When retrieving, all workers from the board and the landing area will be returned to the active pool, increasing their strength by 1. The player will now be able to collect income from a different farm tile (shown at the top of the farm tiles) for each worker retrieved this way.
The strength 4 workers tend to have their last sting after achieving their stronger action. When a strength 4 worker is bumped or retrieved, the normal benefit doesn't occur. Instead, they go into hibernation. This worker will go back to the supply, and a hibernation token will go onto a hibernation comb available based on the player count. The player will gain the effect the token covers. There are also bonus points for the majority of each comb at the end of the game.
Interacties:
Resource Storage:
During the game, players will gain the three basic resources, honey, and wax. Unlike some other games where there is a static limit to the resources, there are resource spots on the starting faction tile as well as farms that players develop. If a resource can't go on any of these vacancies then the resource is discarded to gain one queen's favour.
Asymmetrical Start:
There are 20 faction tiles which will have various starting resources, workers, and either end-game scoring or ongoing abilities.
There are five different hive mats which have different tile orientations and benefits that can be gained when tiles are built on top of the hive vacancies.
Queens Favour:
The queen's favour is a score track at the bottom of the board which will give victory points based on the location of the player on the track. Some elements in the game will refer to this track as a currency or for different benefits/bonus scoring.
Determination:
- A lot of the game board is built by the players' choices, both the dances and the planets (as well as their resources).
- Strength 4 workers lead to powerful turns but are also the main driver for the end-game condition.
- Unique theme, great components and plenty of built-in variability.
Apiarary is a hive-building game in more than theme alone. Players are using their colony of bees to expand their hive board with ongoing, one-off, and income benefits, as well as unique end-game scoring conditions through the carve tiles and the planted seed cards. Players are also expanding on the main board by deciding which planets produce which resources, in addition to new conversions (dances) for players to use. The other crucial element is the unique levelling system that the workers have. Each player can have up to four workers at a time but they can have seven workers hibernate throughout the game. Each worker will gain strength when bumped so players will be tempted to play workers in such a way to always make sure they don't need to recall. Players may often want to bump their own workers to help speed along to a strength 4 worker. This is due to each location having a unique benefit for these specific workers that are so close to hibernation. If players build a farm-based hive, they may want to recall as frequently as possible to gain income benefits. There are many strategies around this worker system and the vast array of point salad options and built-in variability will always keep the game engaging. For these reasons, I'm easily awarding the game a Go-To Golden Seal.
Comments
Post a Comment