Apiary (board game)

Last updated
Apiary
Designers Connie Vogelmann
IllustratorsKwanchai Moriya
Publishers Stonemaier Games
Publication2023;1 year ago (2023)
Genres
Players1–5
Playing time60–90 minutes
Age range14+

Apiary is a tile-based strategy game designed by Connie Vogelmann and published in 2023 by Stonemaier Games. Players control a faction of spacefaring bees as they explore, gather resources, and advance their hive before hibernation.

Contents

Publishing history

Apiary was the design debut of Connie Vogelmann and was illustrated by Kwanchai Moriya. [1] It was first available for digital purchase from the Stonemaier Games website and at the 2023 Essen Spiel before its retail release in November of 2023. [2]

Gameplay

Apiary is played on one shared board with sections such as an exploration map where the "QueenShip" token can be moved around through space, the "Hibernation Comb" where advanced bees are placed into hibernation, and locations for advancement tiles, carving tiles, and Seed Cards, representing the different actions a player can take on their turn. Each player receives a hive mat where their individual faction of bees will build their civilization, and a docking mat which has two sections: the landing area where their non-active bee tokens are stored, and the active pool where bee tokens which are ready to be put into play are kept. Worker bees each have a Strength value from 1 to 4 which can be increased during play. [3]

On their turn, a player chooses to either place a worker bee from their docking mat into play or retrieve all their in-play pieces, collect income, and increase each bee's Strength by 1. If a worker bee is placed on an occupied tile, the piece there is replaced and "bumped" back to either its hive's landing area with no Strength increase or its active pool with a Strength increase of one. Income is collected from farm tiles when a worker moves into its landing area. A bee placed on a tile performs the action depicted on it:

Strength-4 workers gain additional benefits when they take an action, can plant Seed Cards for end-game victory points instead of discarding them, and are the only pieces that can be placed on Carve spaces; if one of these pieces would ever move back to its hive or increase level, the player instead places a Hibernation Token in the Hibernation Comb, receives the listed reward, and discards the worker. [3] [5]

Various action bonuses and excess resources discarded at the end of each player's turn earn Queen's Favor points, which are tracked along the Queen's Favor Track on the main board. The game ends one final turn after either the Hibernation Comb becomes full or a player uses all of their Hibernation Tokens, and the winner is the player with the most victory points. Victory points are awarded both during and after the game for hive size, Seed Cards, action bonuses, position along the Queen's Favor track, and more. [6]

Reception

IGN rated Apiary 8/10, with Matt Thrower noting that "it has enough interaction to interest those who like to engage directly with their fellow players" but "perhaps leans too often on the comfortable conventions of its straight-laced genre" and that "despite its appealing theme, and it really needs repeat plays to get to grips with its rich systems". [4] Charlie Hall, writing for Polygon, praised the gameplay and illustrations, writing that "The game is excellent, easy to teach, and rewards multiple playthroughs" but heavily criticizing that the game's art is largely obscured by tokens and pieces when playing. [7] In a review for Paste, Keith Law praised Apiary's game design and illustrations, reservedly recommending the game but concluding that "I just couldn’t connect with it like I thought I would after the first play". [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beehive</span> Structure housing a honey bee colony

A beehive is an enclosed structure in which some honey bee species of the subgenus Apis live and raise their young. Though the word beehive is used to describe the nest of any bee colony, scientific and professional literature distinguishes nest from hive. Nest is used to discuss colonies that house themselves in natural or artificial cavities or are hanging and exposed. The term hive is used to describe an artificial/man-made structure to house a honey bee nest. Several species of Apis live in colonies. But for honey production, the western honey bee and the eastern honey bee are the main species kept in hives.

Beekeeping is the maintenance of bee colonies, commonly in artificial beehives. Honey bees in the genus Apis are the most commonly kept species but other honey producing bees such as Melipona stingless bees are also kept. Beekeepers keep bees to collect honey and other products of the hive: beeswax, propolis, bee pollen, and royal jelly. Other sources of beekeeping income include pollination of crops, raising queens, and production of package bees for sale. Bee hives are kept in an apiary or "bee yard".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apiary</span> Place containing beehives of honey bees

An apiary is a location where beehives of honey bees are kept. Apiaries come in many sizes and can be rural or urban depending on the honey production operation. Furthermore, an apiary may refer to a hobbyist's hives or those used for commercial or educational usage. It can also be a wall-less, roofed structure, similar to a gazebo which houses hives, or an enclosed structure with an opening that directs the flight path of the bees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Queen bee</span> Egg-laying individual in a bee colony

A queen bee is typically an adult, mated female (gyne) that lives in a colony or hive of honey bees. With fully developed reproductive organs, the queen is usually the mother of most, if not all, of the bees in the beehive. Queens are developed from larvae selected by worker bees and specially fed in order to become sexually mature. There is normally only one adult, mated queen in a hive, in which case the bees will usually follow and fiercely protect her.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Worker bee</span> Caste of honey bee

A worker bee is any female bee that lacks the reproductive capacity of the colony's queen bee and carries out the majority of tasks needed for the functioning of the hive. While worker bees are present in all eusocial bee species, the term is rarely used for bees other than honey bees, particularly the European honey bee. Worker bees of this variety are responsible for approximately 80% of the world's crop pollination services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drone (bee)</span> Male bee

A drone is a male bee. Unlike the female worker bee, a drone has no stinger. He does not gather nectar or pollen and cannot feed without assistance from worker bees. His only role is to mate with a maiden queen in nuptial flight.

In tabletop games and video games, game mechanics are the rules or ludemes that govern and guide the player's actions, as well as the game's response to them. A rule is an instruction on how to play, a ludeme is an element of play like the L-shaped move of the knight in chess. A game's mechanics thus effectively specify how the game will work for the people who play it.

<i>Space Crusade</i> 1990 board game

Space Crusade is an adventure board game produced by Milton Bradley together with Games Workshop and was first made in 1990. It was produced in the UK and available in some other countries including Finland, Ireland, France, Spain, Denmark, Australia, Hellas and New Zealand. In Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands, it is known as Star Quest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Langstroth hive</span> Vertically modular beehive with hung brood and honey frames

In beekeeping, a Langstroth hive is any vertically modular beehive that has the key features of vertically hung frames, a bottom board with entrance for the bees, boxes containing frames for brood and honey and an inner cover and top cap to provide weather protection. In a Langstroth hive, the bees build honeycomb into frames, which can be moved with ease. The frames are designed to prevent bees from attaching honeycombs where they would either connect adjacent frames, or connect frames to the walls of the hive. The movable frames allow the beekeeper to manage the bees in a way which was formerly impossible.

<i>Lord of the Rings</i> (board game) Game designed by Reiner Knizia

Lord of the Rings is a cooperative board game based on the high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. Published in 2000 by Kosmos in Germany, Wizards of the Coast in the U.S., and Parker Brothers in the U.K., the game is designed by Reiner Knizia and features artwork by illustrator John Howe. In the game, each player plays a hobbit in the party, and the party will aim to destroy the One Ring. Upon its release, the game received a Spiel des Jahres special award. A slightly revised version was later published by Fantasy Flight Games.

This page is a glossary of beekeeping.

<i>Hive</i> (game) Tabletop abstract strategic board game

Hive is a bug-themed tabletop abstract strategy game, designed by John Yianni and published in 2001 by Gen42 Games. The object of Hive is to capture the opponent's queen bee by allowing it to become completely surrounded by other pieces, while avoiding the capture of one's own queen. Hive shares elements of both tile-based games and board games. It differs from other tile-based games in that the tiles, once placed, can then be moved to other positions according to various rules, much like chess pieces.

StarCraft: The Board Game, published by Fantasy Flight Games, is a game inspired by the 1998 computer game StarCraft. Players take control of the three distinctive races featured in the video games, the Terrans, the Protoss, or the Zerg, to engage in battle across multiple worlds in order to achieve victory. Each of the three races features a fairly different playing style. A prototype of the game was shown in BlizzCon 2007, with pre-release copies sold at Gen Con 2007 and Penny Arcade Expo 2007. It was publicly released in October 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tock</span> Board game

Tock is a board game, similar to Ludo, Aggravation or Sorry!, in which players race their four tokens around the game board from start to finish—the objective being to be the first to take all of one's tokens "home". Like Sorry!, it is played with playing cards rather than dice.

<i>Civilization</i> (2010 board game)

Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game is a 2010 board game created by Kevin Wilson based on the Sid Meier's Civilization series of video games and published by Fantasy Flight Games. While the previous board game based on Sid Meier's Civilization, published by Eagle Games in 2002, was based on Civilization III, the 2010 version takes its primary inspiration from Civilization IV. Its expansions, Fame and Fortune and Wisdom and Warfare, also began to incorporate concepts derived from Civilization V.

<i>Kingdom Builder</i> 2011 strategy board game

Kingdom Builder is a strategy board game designed by Donald X. Vaccarino, published in 2011 by Queen Games with illustrations by Oliver Schlemmer in German, British and international versions.

<i>Lords of Waterdeep</i> Board game

Lords of Waterdeep is a German-style board game designed by Peter Lee and Rodney Thompson and published by Wizards of the Coast in 2012. The game is set in Waterdeep, a fictional city in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Players take the roles of the masked rulers of Waterdeep, deploying agents and hiring adventurers to complete quests and increase their influence over the city.

This glossary of board games explains commonly used terms in board games, in alphabetical order. For a list of board games, see List of board games; for terms specific to chess, see Glossary of chess; for terms specific to chess problems, see Glossary of chess problems.

<i>Tetragonula hockingsi</i> Species of bee

Tetragonula hockingsi is a small stingless bee native to Australia. It is found primarily in Queensland. The colonies can get quite large, with up to 10,000 workers and a single queen. Workers of Tetragonula hockingsi have been observed in fatal fights with other Tetragonula species, where the worker bees risk their lives for the potential benefit of scarce resources.

<i>Wyrmspan</i> (board game) 2024 board game

Wyrmspan is a board game for one to five players designed by Connie Vogelmann and published by Stonemaier Games in 2024. It is a card-driven, engine-building board game in which players compete to excavate labyrinths and entice dragons to the sanctuary of their caves. Based on the acclaimed board game Wingspan, Wyrmspan is themed around dragons instead of birds and hosts slightly more complex game mechanics. Upon its release Wyrmspan received widespread positive reviews and achieved the largest single-day product sale quantity in Stonemaier Games history.

References

  1. ↑ Meehan, Alex (2023-09-06). "Wingspan publisher's next board game is about bees in space". Dicebreaker . Retrieved 2024-05-06.
  2. ↑ Linward, Timothy (2023-09-07). "Wingspan creator's next board game stars SPACE BEES". Wargamer . Retrieved 2024-05-06.
  3. 1 2 "Apiary Rulebook". Stonemaier Games. p. r13. Retrieved 2024-06-01– via Dropbox.
  4. 1 2 Thrower, Matt (2024-01-11). "Apiary Board Game Review". IGN . Retrieved 2024-05-06.
  5. 1 2 Law, Keith (2024-02-15). "Welcome Our New Insect Overlords in the Bee-Based Board Game Apiary". Paste Magazine . Retrieved 2024-05-06.
  6. ↑ Hannula, Joonas (2023-11-16). "Apiary". Lautapeliopas (in Finnish). Retrieved 2024-05-17.
  7. ↑ Hall, Charlie (2024-01-10). "Stonemaier's Apiary, a novel new strategy board game, almost wastes its most valuable resource". Polygon . Retrieved 2024-05-06.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.