Apiary

Designer: Connie Vogelmann

Artist: Kwanchai Moriya

Published: 2023
Players: 1-5
Playing Time: 60-90 Mins
BGG Rating: 7.8
BGG Ranking: 318

Publisher: Stonemaier Games

Mechanisms: Income, Multi-Use Cards, Solitaire Game, Tile Placement, Variable Player Powers, Worker Placement

Sleeves: STN 57,5x89mm

Game Description:

In a far-distant future, humans no longer inhabit Earth. The cause of their disappearance (or perhaps their demise) is unknown, but their absence left a void ready to be filled by another sentient species.

Over the span of untold generations, one species of the humble honeybee evolved to fill that void. They grew in size and intelligence to become a highly advanced society. They call themselves Mellifera, and they have made substantial technological advances in addition to the technology they adapted from human ruins, up to and including space travel.

In Apiary, each player controls one of twenty unique factions. Your faction starts the game with a hive, a few resources, and worker bees. A worker-placement, hive-building challenge awaits you: explore planets, gather resources, develop technologies, and create carvings to demonstrate your faction's strengths (measured in victory points) over one year's Flow. However, the Dearth quickly approaches, and your workers can take only a few actions before they must hibernate! Can you thrive or merely survive?

Quick play overview:

In turn order, players are placing bee-ships around the map to collect and exchanging resources, pimp up their mothership, collect seed cards and bumping other bees back to their owners for further use. 

The trick is that bee-ships have strenght from 1 to 4 and each time they are bumped back to the owner, the ship' strenght increases by 1 … until it reaches the max.  Once the 4-strenght ship is bumped off the board, it doesn't return to the owner but rather it hibernates which moves the game one step closer to the end and the owner gets a nice one-time bonus.

The stronger the ship, the stronger is the action. There is even a location that allows only 4-strenght ships while other locations will grant an extra bonus.

Final thoughts:

Players keep on playing turns without any “end of round” downtime, which is a great system to keep everyone engaged.

Each game will feel different as some players will end up with huge motherships while others will score massive points from worshipping the Queen. Tiles that are built on the mothership improve specific actions and allow for different strategies.

I like the big selection from many starting factions and their special powers, to the huge piles of tiles etc.

FINAL SCORE:

Gameplay & How often I want to play it: 9/10

I love all the choices and different setups. You are never locked out of a possible action… only the wanted tile might not be there anymore if you wait to long.

The game is quick and moves along very fast. At least at a lower player count. If it wasn’t that the preparation takes a long time, this could be a great game to bring out every few weeks.

Art & Graphic Design:

The is more of a graphics game than a piece of art. The box art is great but beyond that, there is no much art inside.

There is not a single problematic or inconvenient aspect from the graphic point of view.

Rules & Complexity:

There is plenty of rules but they are easy to explain and the game flows nicely. The game gets the complexity from hundreds of combinations of tiles and starting factions.

Theme & Mechanism fit:

Bees flying through the space and searching for planets and developing their ships, is a very specific theme. Except the hibernation all the other mechanisms don’t really reflect the theme.

Fun & Replayability:

Each turn you have plenty of options but players shouldn’t get AP because not all the options are great at all times, so the games should run smoothly.

With so many tiles, starting factions and end game combinations, each game should feel different enough for a long time.