Apiary: Expanding the Hive adds to the variety of the core game with components designed to fit inside the original insert and a comprehensive appendix that covers the core game and the expansion. This expansion features a few bigger additions (7 new hive mats, 15 unique frames, and 15 new seed cards), along with a greater variety of tiles and tokens, plus a few updated components.
You can follow along and get a September 4 launch notification by clicking here.
- 1 comprehensive appendix with expansion rules
- 7 new hive mats
- 15 new frames (all unique)
- 15 new seed cards
- 1 new faction
- 4 new recruits
- 3 new carvings
- 5 new developments
- 4 new farms
- 3 new dance tiles
- 6 new dance tokens
- 4 new explore tokens
The expansion also replaces the original frame mats with new variable frames, along with some revised versions of a few tiles and complete appendix encompassing the core game and the expansion.
Media
- Apiary game
- BoardGameGeek
- Facebook Group
- announcement newsletter (August 28)
- announcement day livecast
- video highlighting the new components
- reviews to come on September 2
Release Details: This expansion is available from Stonemaier Games starting on September 4, with Stonemaier webstore orders shipping in September from fulfillment centers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia. This is followed by a worldwide retail release date in late October.
FAQ
Will everything fit in the Apiary box and insert?
Yes, all components (core game and the expansion) fit in the original box and insert.
Why should I preorder from Stonemaier Games instead of waiting a few months for the retail release?
In addition to our launch discount, we offer delivery much earlier than the retail release date (shipped from fulfillment centers in the US, Canada, Europe, or Australia) and a guarantee that you’ll get an authentic first-run copy in a timely manner. We also support anyone who wants to order the game from their retailer of choice (retailers will offer the game for pick up or shipping on the retail release day).
Can I buy all Apiary stuff all at once?
Absolutely! All Apiary products are available on our webstore, so you can buy anything and everything you’re interested in. You’ll receive an additional 20% discount if you’re a Stonemaier Champion.
August 30: Smaller Additions
Little additions, adjustments, and improvements can make a big difference. One of the biggest reasons we wait until after our games are released before we start working on the expansion design is because we learn a lot from listening to people about what they want to see more or less of. There were a few such lessons learned from Apiary that impacted the expansion.
Of course, part of the design constraint was that all components would fit into the original insert. Fortunately, we still had space to add a number of new farm, recruit, development, and carving tiles. These tiles–along with a new faction, new dance/tiles and tokens, and new exploration tokens–are designed to increase the variety while also subtly nudging players towards a diversity of strategies.
I actually played Apiary with the expansion at my Wednesday game night this week, and it was a delight to simply shuffle and play–the expansion is truly that easy to add. The new components led to each of us pursuing completely different carvings and end-game scoring, yet we all ended within around 10 VP of each other. I don’t mind someone running away with a game if they play particularly well, but it’s also neat to see four people playing well while taking different paths.
Connie: In terms of tweaks to the base game, there were a couple of tiles and factions that we were dissatisfied with, once the game got out into the world. The reality – based on sheer numbers – is that a Stonemaier game is going to get played a lot more times in the weeks after its release than in the years leading up to it. Once Apiary hit prime time, there were a few things that sometimes went a hair “off the rails,” that we wanted to adjust with this expansion:
Arti Faction: The Arti faction allows you to permanently increase or decrease the strength of your worker when you place it. In playtests, players tended to alternate between increasing and decreasing the strength of their workers – it was a powerful ability, but one that fit within the confines of the game. What we found out once the game got out into the world is that some players who played Arti would either only increase or only decrease the strength of their workers. This created either a very short game or a very long one, and in either case could contribute to an overall negative experience for the other players at the table (and sometimes, for the player playing Arti). In designing the expansion, I tried a number of revisions to Arti’s ability – including requiring paying a resource in order to change the strength of a worker and allowing players to place 2 workers into one space and adding their values – but ultimately concluded that the core of Arti’s ability gave one player too much power over the length of the game. With that in mind, I ended up replacing Arti’s ability with a new one – that keeps the core “fun” of Arti (taking extra strength-4 actions!), without impacting the length of the game.- Cecro Faction: The Cecro faction begins the game by adding two face-up recruit tiles to its hive. Stonemaier collects gameplay stats from players, and it turns out that Cecro was winning just a little bit too often compared to the other factions. If the right “flop” of Recruits came out, Cecro was off to the races too quickly, which in turn could create negative gameplay experiences for other players, since they could feel behind right out of the gate. We weakened Cecro’s starting ability to account for this – so players start with one recruit, instead of two.
- Engineer Recruit: The engineer allows players to take development tiles with a discount of 1 wax. It turns out that most of the highest scoring games of Apiary we saw began with an early engineer. This is interesting from a design perspective: throughout Apiary’s design and playtesting process, development tiles got significantly cheaper. When the Engineer was initially added to the game, most developments cost 2 or 3 wax. Going from 3 wax to 2 was nice – but you still had to collect resources, convert them to wax, and have a place to store them. As developments gradually decreased in cost (most now cost 1 or 2 wax), the engineer got stronger and stronger – and I didn’t sufficiently adjust the engineer to take into account that change. With that in mind, with this expansion, I made the tile just a little bit more expensive, and just a little bit weaker.
- Pharmacist Recruit: The pharmacist allows you to retrieve a worker (and trigger 1 farm income) every time you take the research action. Unlike the engineer, I don’t think the pharmacist is too strong, but we saw a number of reports where players felt like the tile forced them into an un-fun play pattern, where every turn they had to take the research action (and trigger the income from a 2VP or 3VP farm). We saw enough cases of this that we thought it was worth changing the tile; the tile as redesigned still encourages you to take the research action, but encourages you to take other actions, as well.
Arti Faction: The Arti faction allows you to permanently increase or decrease the strength of your worker when you place it. In playtests, players tended to alternate between increasing and decreasing the strength of their workers – it was a powerful ability, but one that fit within the confines of the game. What we found out once the game got out into the world is that some players who played Arti would either only increase or only decrease the strength of their workers. This created either a very short game or a very long one, and in either case could contribute to an overall negative experience for the other players at the table (and sometimes, for the player playing Arti). In designing the expansion, I tried a number of revisions to Arti’s ability – including requiring paying a resource in order to change the strength of a worker and allowing players to place 2 workers into one space and adding their values – but ultimately concluded that the core of Arti’s ability gave one player too much power over the length of the game. With that in mind, I ended up replacing Arti’s ability with a new one – that keeps the core “fun” of Arti (taking extra strength-4 actions!), without impacting the length of the game.
Engineer Recruit: The engineer allows players to take development tiles with a discount of 1 wax. It turns out that most of the highest scoring games of Apiary we saw began with an early engineer. This is interesting from a design perspective: throughout Apiary’s design and playtesting process, development tiles got significantly cheaper. When the Engineer was initially added to the game, most developments cost 2 or 3 wax. Going from 3 wax to 2 was nice – but you still had to collect resources, convert them to wax, and have a place to store them. As developments gradually decreased in cost (most now cost 1 or 2 wax), the engineer got stronger and stronger – and I didn’t sufficiently adjust the engineer to take into account that change. With that in mind, with this expansion, I made the tile just a little bit more expensive, and just a little bit weaker.All in all, I hope you enjoy this expansion! It’s the type of expansion that I want to play: It adds more tiles, cards, frames, and hive mats, and gives you extra “levers” to pull to build combos and build out your hive. At the same time, the additional rules associated with the expansion are minimal, allowing you to dive right in.
Jamey:Today I showcase the new components and mechanisms in this video about Apiary: Expanding the Hive. Which aspect of the expansion are you the most excited about?
Design Diary
August 29: Big Additions
Even within the constraint of only adding components that could fit inside the original Apiary game insert, we had plenty of design space to explore. Here’s Connie to discuss the three biggest additions in Expanding the Hive.
Connie:
In terms of the most significant components we added with this expansion, they fall into three buckets:
New Hive Mats: This expansion adds 7 new hive mats. All of them have new shapes, new powers, and all are named after (real!) types of beehives. We saw a significant number of requests for additional hive mats – and adding more of these mats is a great way to add variability to the game. In addition, once I saw the game “in action” out in the world, I also had a better sense of what additional types of abilities might be fun for players, and what abilities would work well within the greater context of the game.
New Frames: This expansion replaces the 15 frames in the base game with new frames – each of which is unique. There were two motivating factors behind this change:
- In seeing the game out in the world, I realized that getting a new frame was often one of the more rote parts of the game: sure, you need an extra frame in order to build additional spaces, but getting new frames often felt more like a “necessary evil” than something interesting or fun.
- If I have one broader concern with Apiary, it’s that sometimes players can acquire too many seed cards. This is generally fine if players play their seed cards gradually, but I have seen a few reports where players hoard 10+ cards, then play them all at the end of the game in one mega-turn. This can slow the end-game to an absolute crawl, and is exceedingly dull for the other players at the table. (Strategy tip: if you find yourself doing this, I strongly encourage that you try to use your seed cards earlier! Your score – and your fellow players – will thank you!) The best way to slightly reduce the number of seed cards that players had access to was to change up the frames.
These new frames will not only create interesting decisions (when should you get a new frame? Do you like the ones available in the display, or should you wait for something better?), but they will also make seed cards just a hair scarcer – which should prevent the game from slowing down quite so much at the end. The new frames will also help players lean into slightly different strategies that they may be pursuing.
Additional Seed Cards: We added 15 new seed cards to the game. The reasoning behind adding these new seed cards was two-fold. First, adding new seed cards is a good way to add extra variety to the game, both to add additional scoring abilities and to help players manipulate their hives or their workers. Second, adding extra seed cards makes it less likely that players will make it all the way through the deck, even in a 5-player game. Although shuffling the seed card deck toward the end of the game isn’t a tragedy, it’s certainly nicer if players don’t have to do so.
Jamey: I love the unique shapes and bonuses Connie created on the new hive mats, and having a variety of frames for expanding my hive is a lot of fun. There are some fun new abilities on the seed cards too.
If you have any questions about these new additions, please let us know! You can sign up here for a launch notification on September 4, with shipping to follow within 1-2 weeks: https://mailchi.mp/stonemaier/apiary
August 28: The Box, the Origin Story, and Launch Signups
I’m finally excited to reveal the expansion for Apiary, Expanding the Hive!
Designer Connie Vogelmann and artist Kwanchai Moriya take us back to the future of space bees in Apiary: Expanding the Hive. This is a “more stuff” expansion designed to fit into the original insert. Here’s Connie to introduce the origins of the expansion:
Connie: In thinking about a potential expansion for Apiary, we wanted to design something that worked well within the existing framework of the game. Outside of a few tweaks (discussed below), there weren’t glaring issues, and the game came together as a nice, smooth whole. Jamey and I briefly discussed whether we should target a larger expansion – e.g., adding a new mechanism that would boost the “grow” action. Ultimately, neither of us thought a bigger expansion would be a net positive for the game. We didn’t want to add something that would significantly increase either the rules overhead or the cognitive load of the game, or that would risk throwing “off” a game that was working well.
With that in mind, we set our sights on something smaller, and I designed the type of expansion for Apiary that I would want to play. As a gamer, I am often a little overwhelmed with the sea of board game choices that are available at any given moment. Consequently, I’ve largely cooled on big expansions. More often than not, if I buy a big expansion with an extra side-board and second rulebook, I end up never getting the game off the shelf. The time and energy that it takes to learn (and remember!) the expansion, as well as the extra setup time that’s often involved, leads me to just pick up a different game instead. Although there are certainly exceptions (for instance, the Rise of Ix expansion for Dune Imperium), often times these types of expansions feel tacked on, and don’t integrate cleanly into the base game. More and more, as a gamer, I like the “extra stuff” expansions – they give me more of the great gameplay I enjoy, and fun new abilities, without adding extra rules to remember. This was the mantra behind this Apiary expansion.
In designing this expansion, Jamey and I also wanted to be mindful of the game’s setup time, and with it, its box insert. In some ways, it sounds silly to design an expansion around an insert (is this an example of the tail wagging the dog?) – but more and more, I’m realizing that a smooth (and short!) setup makes a big difference in how often I play a game. There are games languishing on my shelf unplayed because of how much of a hassle it is to set them up – why embark on a game with a 30-minute setup, when I could play a whole different game in that time? The Apiary insert makes setup a breeze, and turns what could otherwise be a lot of steps into something that can be handled in just a few minutes. We didn’t want to lose that. So with that in mind, I set about working on the expansion: what could we add to “pack the box,” to create maximum variability, and maximum fun, without adding extra rules or an extra burden to the game’s setup? (The answer: quite a lot!)
Rulebook
If you want to “spoil” how it plays before this week’s other design diary posts, the full rulebook is available right now (https://tinyurl.com/37v6ar4w). It includes a full appendix for the expansion and game (that way you don’t need to flip back and forth between two appendices to find a specific tile, faction, or card). Today we’re also revealing the box, which—along with all components in the expansion—is illustrated by Kwanchai Moriya.
Apiary: Expanding the Hive will launch on our webstore on September 4 (along with our new game Stamp Swap), shipping to customers in the weeks that follow from fulfillment centers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia. You can sign up here for a launch notification and other updates: https://mailchi.mp/stonemaier/apiary
Design Diary
Copyright 2023 Stonemaier LLC. Apiary is a trademark of Stonemaier LLC. All Rights Reserved. This content is not authorized for posting on Steam.
15 Comments on “Apiary: Expanding the Hive”
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With the preface that I am only trying to express my own preferences on expansions, not invalidate anyone else’s, I feel like the same “too many games to play” premise brings me to the opposite conclusion.
I don’t really like “more stuff” expansions that just throw a new set of cards (or tiles) into an existing relatively large deck because it is rare for one game in my collection to get so many plays that I feel like every–or even most–cards in the deck have had a chance to show up and shine in their intended context or combos. If the base game’s deck is still dishing out surprises to me, adding a bunch of new cards to it feels….not likely to significantly change my experience with the deck, and in the worst case makes things worse (through dilution, reducing the chances for existing intended/interesting combos to show up together).
If a game interested me but not enough to get it to the table often enough to wear out the deck, what I’m looking for in an expansion is something that is _guaranteed_ to change the game, not stochastically make some things different at the margins.
Factions / variable player powers / other starts-in-play types of cards are a different matter–I’m happy with “more stuff” for those because they have more impact and it’s easier to force them to show up since you can usually just select them in setup. The new frames also look like they should unconditionally affect the game.
Of course, if I compare how much time I spend playing games to how much time I spend reading rules / projecting how they’ll play based on the rules, someone could make a reasonable case that I like learning the rules of games more than playing them, so that might factor into my preference for new mechanics, too.
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I love this game so much, was getting burnt on playing the same thing. All I wanted was more, which this definitely looks like it adds.
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You must have played Apiary a lot for it to feel like the same thing–there’s such a massive variety of tiles and cards! :) The expansion adds even more stuff to keep that variety level high.
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I’ll admit I was really hoping for an expanded hibernation comb (endgame triggers), just 2 or three more slots would go a long way. The 2 player game ends way too quickly compared to 3 player. Hopefully in another expansion.
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Fortunately, there are other ways to impact the length of the game, including offering more options to decrease the strength of your workers (which the expansion does add).
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That’s good to know, thanks.
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I note there is a rather significant rebalancing of previous assets in this expansion… interesting!
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There are 2 adjusted faction tiles, 2 adjusted hex tiles, and 1 adjusted exploration token–just a few minor adjustments.
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This looks like a GREAT expansion! Apiary is already an excellent game, and this sounds like it adds the perfect amount to improve the variety a bit without needlessly complicating things. Great insights as well on the nature of game expansions. Can’t wait to get my copy!
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Just got Apiary with the most recent restock, have played the game bout a dozen times already! Instant hit with the game group. Some of the hinted add-ons are things we have hoped would be added to the game, so this expansion is a welcome surprise! Can’t wait for release!
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That’s awesome, William! I hope you enjoy the expansion too. :)
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Have truly enjoyed every play and teach of Apiary.
Haven’t even played or seen all the content in original box but super excited for more of a great thing.Reply
Thank youfor teaching and playing Apiary! I agree that there’s lots of replayability in the core game–the new content shuffles in seamlessly. :)
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Are the adjusted components balance changes? Will they be replacing the existing components? Looking forward to a more of the same expansion. Great game.
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Yes (minor balance adjustments) and yes. :) We’ll talk about them in tomorrow’s design diary post!
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