Apiary

Category: Worker Placement

Designer: Connie Vogelmann

Publisher: Stonemaier Games

Year Published: 2023

Players: 1-5

Playing Time: 60-90 Minutes

To Play or Not To Play: Play

Two words: Space Bees. Interested? Great! That's all you need, go have fun!

Apiary is, bar none, the friendliest worker-placement game I've played. I've reviewed a few other worker-placement games on this site, like Ex Libris and Lords of Waterdeep. In both of these games, you spend the entire game jockeying for the best spots to send your workers. Snagging the first-player token is often worth spending a worker to guarantee you'll be able to claim the spot you want most on your next turn. As the game goes on more locations become available, but you're still competing for the best ones.

Apiary turns that entire premise on its head. There is zero competition for spaces. Instead, if there's already a worker in the space you want to go to, you can still go. You just bump the other worker off the space and it returns home to the active worker area, ready to deploy on the player's next turn. It's so remarkably relaxed that it catches players off-guard at first! So, how can a worker-placement game where you can always send your workers to any space have any tension or stakes? That's the magic of Apiary!

The Green player's worker bees!

The heart of the game are the worker bees. These chunky pieces are kind of shaped lke bees, though if you look closely at the abdomen you'll see that it's actually a rocket exhaust port. The thorax is cube-shaped with four numbers. These numbers represent the age of your workers. The bulk of your workers will start at age 1, and then over time they'll grow up into age 4 workers. The age of your worker determines the strength of the action they get to take, so sending older workers means you get to take more powerful actions. But what happens if an age 4 worker ages again? It goes to the hibernation comb for a well-deserved nap, and now you're down a worker until you take an action to hatch a new age 1 worker.

How do bees age? The grow up by one point each time they return to your player mat. There are two ways for bees to return: either you can spend your turn recalling all of your bee workers from the board, or your worker can get bumped back to your board by another worker bee going to the same space.

The worker bee pieces are so big and chunky! These pieces make the game feel special, even though they are essentially 4-sided dice.

Without getting into any of the other rules, you can see the inherent tension in Apiary. You can always go to whatever space you want, but if you go somewhere that has another player's worker you'll age that worker and give that player the potential for a more powerful action on their turn. This leads to some very interesting decisions! Do you place a worker in a place that gives you the greatest benefit immediately, or do you place it somewhere popular where it will get bumped off quickly so you can use it again somewhere else? How important is it really that you go to that space right now? Is it worth giving your opponent an age 4 bee?

Somehow, the red player has already managed to hiberate two worker bees before anyone else!

Let's talk about hibernation now. The general theme of the game is that your hive of space-faring bees is travelling through space to colonize on a new world. You want experienced and capable worker bees ready to help with the colonization effort upon arrival: age 4 bees. So once your bees have reached age 4 and made one final contribution to the ship, they get loaded into the Hibernation Comb to sleep through the rest of the voyage.

When an age 4 worker would age it instead hibernates. The worker leaves the board and does not return to your player mat. Insteady, you place one of your hibernation tokens on any one of the spaces in the Hibernation comb. You get an immediate bonus based on the symbol printed in the space (usually a resource, but sometimes victory points or a small bonus action), and your token stays there until the end of the game. The hibernation comb has multiple sections, and the player with the most tokens in that section at the end of the game gets some bonus points.

The game ends when all the spaces in the Hibernation Comb are full. The picture above shows the Hibernational Comb for a 4-5 player game, and you can see that it has 15 spaces. That means 15 workers need to hibernate for the game to end. That's the core of the game. The rest is figuring out how to score as many victory points as you can on your path to hibernation. And that's where things get really fun, and also really flavorful.

Four players sit down to a game of Apiary!

First, let's talk about this game's board. As you can see, Apiary takes up quite a bit of space! In addition to a full-sized central board, which is where your workers will spend the majority of their time, each player also has two player mats. One is the storage area for their worker bees when they come home between tasks, and the other is a unique ship housing your particular tribe of bees.

The game comes with 5 ship mats, each with a different shape and different placement bonuses. Each ship is a hive, and as you play the game you'll grow your hive with hexagonal tiles. When you place a tile, you gain the bonus printed on that space. That could be victory points, resources, or even hatching new worker bees! These ships are distributed randomly at the start of the game, and they can play a huge role in shaping your overall strategy.

There are a lot of different tribes to experiment with in this game!

Adding to the asymmetry, each player also starts the game with a unique starting tile. There are many different tribes of bees, each with a unique ability and different starting conditions. Some combinations of tribe and ship may seem more or less powerful when you first play the game, but the more I've played the game, the more I've found them to be pretty well-balanced. It's just that some may require you follow a less straightforward strategy to maximize your benefits. One extra tidbit that I love: each tribe is named after a different species of bee! I do not know nearly enough about bees to know if the abilities thematically relate to each species' unique characteristics. I just think it's neat!

Okay, so you have a unique ship and a unique tribe of bees with its own special power. Let's look at the actions your workers can take to help you earn those precious victory points along the way. Like many worker-placement games, you'll need resources to do anything. The main way to get resources is by Exploring, where you guide the Queen Ship to various planets and collect basic resources.

The Queen Ship explores the galaxy

The Queen Ship will move a number of spaces equal to the age of your worker plus the age of the worker that was there previously (if any). If the planet tile is facedown, you get the bonus on the yellow token (usually a basic resource or some other small benefit) and then you flip the planet over. All planets have at least one hashmarked box, and as the discoverer you get to select if the planet produces water, pollen, or fiber in the first of those boxes.

Some planets also have pre-printed resources, and will always produce that resource plus whatever the discover chooses. If there are still empty hashmarked boxes, the next player to land the Queen Ship on that planet gets to select what other resource that planety produces. That means some planets can produce up to three total resources if players keep landing on them. Every action in the game has an added bonus if you send an age 4 worker (except one). The one for Explore is somewhat random: some planets have an extra effect that happens if you sent an age 4 worker.

The Queen Ship is pretty chonky, and I love the way the stand helps it hover over the board!

Ok, now we need to spend our resources. The "Advance" action allows you to build up your hive ship with extra tiles. Advance is such a common action that it can hold a total of 4 workers in a 4-5 player game (and just 2 in a 2-3 player game). You first decide if you want a farm tile or a recruit/development tile. Then you send your worker to the top-most worker space in the Advance section of the board. You total up the levels of the workers in both slots to determine your action strength just like figuring out how far the Queen ship can move on an Explore action. Here, stronger Advance actions mean more choices for which tile to purchase.

For example, if you send a age 1 worker, and there's already a level 3 worker in the top spot, you shift that age 3 worker down to the lower slot (covering the +1), and place your worker in the top spot. Then you add their ages together. 1 +3 = 4, which means you can take a tile from the 2+ or 3+ columns, but not the 5+ column. Then if another player sends a age 2 worker, they take the top spot, your age 1 worker shifts down to the lower slot, and the age 3 worker in that lower slot returns to the player's mat and grows up into an age 4 worker.

The three types of Advancement tiles: farms, recruits, and developments.

If you send a worker and there isn't another worker already there, then you just add 1 to your worker's age, meaning you will always at least get to purchase a tile from the 2+ column.

Each tile's price is shown along the very bottom edge. Farms always cost fiber and water, two of the basic resources that players can easily acquire while Exploring. Recruits cost pollen, the other basic resource. Developments require are powerful, and require wax. Wax is an advanced resource, more on those later.

These tiles all perform different functions in your ship. Developments are powerful one-time effects that can gain you lots of resources, award you victory points, or just break the normal rules in fun ways. Recruits are specialized bees that grant you ongoing benefits. They usually modify the various actions you send your workers to perform. Farms are the weirdest of the bunch. They provide extra space to store resources (more on this later). They also have a "harvest" effect that you can trigger when you recall your workers. Remember, on your turn you can choose to either place a worker if you have one, or recall all of your workers back to your player mat. If you choose to do the latter, then each of your workers can harvest from one your farms on their way back. A farm's harvest value is printed at the top of the hex tile and usually grants basic resources or victory points.

In the early game, Exploring with the Queen Ship is the easiest way to get resources. When you gain resources, you need to find places in your hive ship to store them. Each player's starting tile has space for six basic resources and 2 advanced resources in various combinations and then you can store additional resources on any Farm tiles you've purchased, if you have any. If you have more resources than you can store by the end of your turn, you'll have to give the excess to the Queen.

The Queen's Favor track, which is separate from the victory points track.

Each resource you give to the Queen advances your piece one space along the Queen's Favor track. The Queen will accept any resource, including advanced ones, but only awards one favor per resource. At the end of the game, you'll gain victory points based on how far along the track you are. There are lots of ways to gain favor other than gifting excess resources. Any time you see a crown symbol it means "gain a favor." There are farms that earn favor during harvest, Exploration tokens worth one or two favor, and Developments and Recruits that provide favor for performing certain actions. There's even a tribe of bees that gives you and an opponent favor whenever an opponent bumps one of your bees!

Carvings grant end game bonuses

Another action is "Carve," which is where you can send your bee to construct a special tile in your ship that doesn't provide any immediate benefit, but will be worth a lot of victory points at the end of the game. These are randomly selected from a large stack at the start of the game, and they are never refilled. They are public objectives that only one player can score, and that is only if that player puts in the effort to acquire the carving and fulfill its scoring condition.

Carvings are tough to get. First, they all cost between 1 and 3 honey. Honey is another advanced resource that requires some effort to obtain. The Carve action is also the only one in the game that can only be performed by an age 4 bee. This is the last thing your bee will do before it hibernates. As a result, getting more than 2 or 3 carvings in a game is extremely difficult, and getting just 1 often feels like quite an accomplishment!

Oops . . . I cut off the name of this action in the photo. Just trust me that it's called "Convert"!

It's pretty well-known by now that bees are able to communicate with each other through intricate dances. In this game, bees dance to Convert resources into others. At the start of the game, there are four basic dances. When you send a worker to the Convert location, they get to perform a number of dances equal to their age. An age 3 bee gets to dance three times, for example. Dancing lets you convert basic resources into other basic resources and basic resources into advanced resources.

But an age 4 bee not only performs 4 dances, but also gets to teach the hive a new dance. There are several dance templates, and three are randomly selected at the start of the game (2 in a 2-3 player game). When you teach a dance, you get to select different resources from a small supply of tiles to customize the dance however you want. You can create dances to make it easier to obtain advanced resources, victory points, or Queen's Favor. You can even create dances that let you sacrifice victory points or Queen's Favor as costs to obtain resources. As the creator of the dance, you get first dibs to perform it, but afterwards any player can choose to perform the dance. As the creator, you'll gain a Queen's Favor any time another player performs your dance.

The smallest, yet arguably the most important action on the board

As the game goes on, you'll start feeling constrained. You'll lose workers to hibernation while your ship fills up with tiles. This is when you need to send a worker to help your hive Grow. There are two main things that can happen when you send a worker to Grow: you can spend one pollen to hatch a new level 1 worker, or you can spend two basic resources to add a "frame" to your hive ship. A frame is a small mat that you attach to your hive ship however you wish, and it allows you to build four more tiles onto your ship. Only two of these four spaces have any benefits, and you'll gain some victory points for filling up all four spaces on your frame. Most players will need one or two extra frames over the course of the game.

As always, the age of your worker determiens the strength of the action. Hatching a new worker requires 1 strength, while building a frame requires 2. So an age 2 worker can either build a frame, or hatch two new workers. A key part of the game is figuring out when to send a worker to Grow your ship so that you have space for tiles you need and so that you don't run out of workers at a bad time. If you send an age 4 worker, you also get to upgrade your starting tile.

All you have to do is flip your starting tile over to view the upgraded version!

To upgrade your tile, simply flip it over to reveal the upgraded side. Usually, this will be a more powerful version of your tribe's special ability, but it could also be an immediate bonus or an endgame scoring condition It's usually a good idea to upgrade your faction at some point during the game, but it does require having an age 4 bee on hand!

What worker-placement game wouldn't be complete without an extra deck of cards, right?

And finally, we come to the Research action: the biggest source of variance in this entire game. These cards have a lot of different uses, and figuring out the best way to use them is crucial. First, if you look at the top-right, you'll see the generic resource circle. You can always discard a card to gain one basic resource. This is a surprisingly useful ability, and one that's easy to forget!

Below that is an effect. You can play a card at any time during your turn to use its effect. It's not an action to play a card, so this can be a huge boon! Or it could be completely useless for your current strategy. It all depends! And if you look closely at the card, you can see that just below the text box is art that kind of looks like a rocket exhaust port, and then some extra text near the bottom of the card. There are a few times in the game when you'll be allowed to "plant" a card (such as when you send an age 4 bee to the Research action). Planting means sliding the card underneath your hive ship mat so that the pink text box is covered. This activates the endgame scoring condition on the bottom of the card. Each hive ship can only hold two planted cards at first, but each frame you build onto your ship adds one additional space for a planted card to a maximum of 4.

Apiary gives you a huge amount of freedom to determine how you're going to earn your victory points. Will you gain them from building a massive hive ship filled with farms and recruits? Or will you focus on maximizing a few specific carvings? Or will you find ways to synergize your planted research cards with your faction's upgrade power? Or maybe you'll find something else entirely! You'll rarely find yourself with any bad options, the issue is finding optimal paths to accomplish your goals in the limited time you have. That hibernation comb fills up faster than you expect!

I will freely admit that learning this game is a bit of a chore. You can't really teach as you go because on your first turn, you can take any action you want aside from "Carve." This is the kind of game where you have to sit and listen to 15 minutes of explanation before your first turn (or read the rulebook for yourself), and it will take some time to internalize them all.

On the flip side, this game actively invites exploration. It's not like Agricola where you can get blocked out and starved into oblivion by the other players if you're not careful. Every action is always available, and so it's a puzzle about optimizing your path forward. Sure, there's a time limit as the hibernation comb fills up, but it's not an oppressive one for most of the game. You have time to try out the different actions and learn the relationships between them while still putting together a competitve score.

Now, you could argue that this game has far less player interaction than your average worker-placement game, a genre notorious for having little player interaction to begin with. I have to agree: what other players are doing is rarely relevant to your average turn. As you get better at the game, you'll see that there's actually some interesting stuff going on in this space. How dangerous is it to bump off your opponent's Age 3 worker? Will that risk your ability to purchase the carving you're gunning for? What if trying to purchase that farm causes another player to hibernate and get a bunch of bonuses? And you can run into some major issues if you expect one of your workers to get bumped off befre your next turn but then it doesn't!

That's one of my favorite things about this game. When you're inexperienced and learning, you can focus on figuring out what the different locations do and how to best use them. Then once you have that internalized, you can shift your focus outwards to what the other players are doing, and incorporate their plans into your own. Is the player to your left amassing honey? Then they're probably going to Carve soon, and that means you might want to get your own bee into position so that it can get bumped off and sent to the hibernation comb first!

Aside from the mechanisms, Apiary has fantastic production values. The board is gorgeous, but desn't distract from the game-relevant text and images in the foreground. The Queen Bee token is awesome, and really fun to move around. And the resource tokens aregreat! The basic resources have distinct colors and shapes, while the wax tokens look like candy (Rolos, anyone?). My only gripe is that the wax and honey tokens are very similar in color and shape. They can be tough to distinguish at a glance.

Aside from that little quibble, Apiary is fantastic. Once you get through the teach, you get to have a lot of fun growing your hive, hibernating your bees, and buzzing your way through the galaxy. Apiary is an excellent game that I highly recommend. You sould definitely play this game!

Thanks for reading! Join me next time as I review a game that I thought would be familiar to some others, but surprised me with its complexity and depth. See you then!