Apiary

Apiary is a game with an unusual setting. It is set in a distant future when humankind is extinct. Bees are now the dominant intelligent species, and they are going into interstellar expansion. This is a worker placement game. One interesting part is how your workers will grow, and as they grow bigger, they become stronger. Eventually they will grow old enough to retire, and retirement is mandatory. So during the game you have to remember to birth new bees to replenish the workforce. 

Overall, this is yet another game about collecting resources and then spending them to buy stuff, and stuff you buy score points based on various criteria. The worker placement rule is a little unusual. Each area has limited slots, but they never stop you from placing your worker. You can always place a worker. When you do that, previously placed workers are shifted right or down. If there are not enough seats, the one which has been around the longest will be pushed off the seat, i.e. first in first out. And that's a good thing. If your bee gets expelled this way, it grows, and it returns to your hand. That means you can now deploy it again. 

Storage is a challenge, because there are five types of resources, and your storage slots are for specific resource types. You need to make sure you have enough space for all five types. Also, you may have at most four workers at the same time. 

To claim a yellow tile (which scores points at game end), you can only use a Level-4 worker bee. This action is called Carve. 

This is your hive. Every player has a unique tribe with its own special powers. You start your hive with a large base plate on which you already have some hex tiles. Space on your base plate is limited, and once it is full, you cannot further expand your hive. You need to add base plate extensions before you can add more tiles. 

In some cases the position of a tile has an impact, for example a tile may score points based on how many farm tiles are adjacent to it. So you have some spatial element here. 

The green tiles are the farm tiles. They produce resources and they are also your storage space for these resources. The red tiles have single use powers when placed. The yellow tiles score points at game end. Another type is blue. Blue tiles give you a permanent special ability. 

You get to collect cards. A card can be used in three ways. It can be discarded as a single basic resource (which is not a very efficient way of using the card). It can be played for a one-time ability. It can also be used as a game-end scoring card. Slots are limited to use cards for game-end scoring, so you need to consider carefully which ones to assign to these slots. 

Apiary is a complex and heavy strategy game. There is a lot of text to read, which I find a little tedious. I think it's an interesting concept having workers which grow and become stronger, affecting what they can do and how well them do them. Generally you keep collecting resources and spending them to get stuff. This is the typical Eurogame so there is nothing particular new about the resources and buying stuff with them. During the game you can collect several scoring conditions and you do your best to fulfil them. This is a game with multiple ways to score points. One more thing which is interesting - if you run out of storage space and are forced to discard resources, you earn the queen's favour. If you get a lot of the queen's favour, it can translate to many points at game end. So sometimes it's worthwhile to deliberately plan to waste resources. 

I've never really clicked with games from Stonemaier Games. Their games are hugely popular, and I can appreciate why. It's just that they don't match my personal tastes. Most of their games are heavy Eurogames. Not that I don't like this genre. I do, but I don't find new ideas or mechanisms in their games which excite me. They do know how to pick interesting themes - birds in Wingspan, alternative history mechas in Scythe. Apiary, about bees in space, is certainly something I've never seen before. If you are a fan of Stonemaier Games, chances are you will like Apiary, because this is very much their style of game.