We're going to discuss our strategy for playing the board game Apiary. This video is aimed at a beginner to intermediate level of play, so if you're a grandmaster already, it may not help that much. If you watch this video through to the end, you should become a better player. Stop joking around! I know you've got some 10-move opening all planned out. Drop the goods on us! Not really! This is a very tactical game. I couldn't comment without knowing what factions and tiles have come up. There are certain plays in Apiary that work very well, but you won't know what play to run until you see the board. The most straightforward play is The Big Build. When in doubt, fill a spot on your hive mat. When your hive mat gets full, acquire a frame and keep going. Why is that a good idea? Consider this frame... if you put four tiles here, you get eight points. Plus the tiles themselves should be worth four points, so that's 12 points in four turns, or three points a turn. That's a decent fraction of what you need to score in any given turn. Plus you get two cards... which should be worth something. What do you mean by, "what I need to score each turn..."? In a typical game, you'll get 20 to 24 turns, and you need 100 points to beat a good player, so that's 5 points per turn! Your early turns will score less, so your later turns will have to score more. But I'll spend some turns gathering resources, or getting more workers, or retrieving my workers. I'll barely fill my hive mat! I won't have time to fill any frames! People often fill their hive mat PLUS a couple frames. You see, this game has has a SECRET! What secret? It's not like board games have tragic love affairs in their youth... Not that kind of secret! You see, Apiary isn't as limiting as it looks. Tiles and cards, and strength-4 Bees give you a lot of extra actions. You can build a lot more than you think. But building requires resources... where do I get those? Try to pick up resources as you go... from placement bonuses... cards... even the tiles themselves. There are discounts available, and they may reduce the cost of some tiles to nothing! You can actually string together a surprising number of advanced turns. Still, you'll need some resources, which you'll get with the Explore action. If your faction starts with few resources, Exploring will be your first job. It's particularly good if you can grab a great explore token. While I'm picking up resources, which ones are most important? You don't need to build a huge number of Farms... and wax can be hard to get... so pollen is the primary currency of The Big Build strategy. If you have two pollen, you'll almost always be able to build a blue Recruit tile. And most of these tiles are helpful in one way or another. You're not suggesting we play Recruit tiles willy-nilly are you? Start by reading the available Carvings. If Monoculture comes up, consider building your Farms to take advantage. If Research comes up, consider building Development tiles. Recruit tiles are easy to build, so... everyone should notice when Delegation or Emissary come up. If everyone notices them I bet they'll be hard to get. In a minute we'll talk about how to grab the first Carving, but let's talk about Farms now. Farms have two primary uses: First off, they give you extra storage spots. For The Big Build strategy, you'll want a couple extra places to store pollen, fiber, wax, and honey. Secondly, Farms generate income when you retrieve your workers... And that's our second play, Farming Points! To Farm Points, you need two or three Farms that generate either points or queen's favor. Why only two or three? Normally you'd have two to four workers. And you don't get income from workers that Hibernate, so you'll rarely activate more than two or three Farms at once. Ideally, you'd get 5 points each time you Retrieve, so you need 'Primo' [excellent] Farms to make this work. Sometimes my workers get bumped a lot... especially with five players. What if I don't Retrieve that often? If you can get 5 points when you Retrieve... then use the Landing Area and Retrieve whenever you can activate your Farms. If you can't get Five Points, avoid Retrieving and Recapture those turns to do something else. It's almost always a good idea to build good Farms... in a solo game or a two-player game, but at higher player counts, you'll have to assess it versus other options. What about these crowns? Those are queen's favor points. They convert into victory points at the end of the game. At best, they can convert one-to-one, but more typically, they're worth about half a victory point. You can also use them in dances to create efficient ways to make honey or wax. Overall, queen's favor points are worth a bit less than a victory point. Shouldn't I use Farms to gather resources like pollen and fiber? Something is better than nothing... but overall, the Explore action is a better, and more flexible way to get resources. By keeping 4 Bees in-play, I could Retrieve less often, and maximize income when I do Retrieve! It's a good argument... on the other hand... if you only have 2 Bees you'll play them more often, and they'll advance to strength 4 more quickly. There are advantages to having strength 4 Bees before everyone else! Also good Farms are rare and expensive. You're unlikely to have four great Farms, so the marginal advantage of having more Farms may be small. It's the age-old question: "2 Bees... or not 2 Bees?"... But seriously, is there ever a reason to build more than two or three Farms? Perhaps you want more storage, or perhaps you're just filling up frames. If you can build Farms quickly and cheaply using tiles or cards, these these small benefits are well worth it! If there's a Carving I want, how do I get it before anyone else? Carvings are often the biggest scoring opportunity in the game, but they're hard to play, because you need both a strength 4 worker and honey. We're Bees! Honey shouldn't bee hard to get! [Get it? BEE hard to get?] Bee that as it may,
there aren't that many places to get honey. You can get one honey in the hibernation comb, there's one Development tile that provides honey, and there's one Recruit tile that reduces the amount of honey that's needed. Otherwise, you have have to go to the Convert action and pay three resources to get a single honey. It would take me about three explore actions to get six specific resources, and then another action to convert them into honey, and a final action to grab the Carving. That's five turns! 5 turns times 5 points per turn, is 25 points! Can I make 25 points on a single Carving? Occasionally! But 12 points is more typical. So Carvings are a bad idea? There's a cheaper way to get honey. If I place a strength 4 worker on Covert, I can teach a dance to make honey cheaper, and then USE that dance up to 4 times. That's 4 honey, which is enough honey to buy 2 Carvings. 1-turn sounds better than 4, and since I taught the dance, I'll get queen's favor if anyone else uses it. But, I am leaving this cheap honey for everyone else's use. And if they do, all I get is 1 queen's favor... like half a victory point. It doesn't seem worth it. It's even possible that someone might use YOUR new dance to get a couple honey, and then buy the Carving that you wanted! So when you set up the dance, you need to have another strength 4 Bee available! So that on your next turn, you can immediately go get a Carving. So that's what you need to make this play work: You need to have two strength 4 Bees before anyone else. How do I do that? If you place bumped Bees in your active area, and then replay them instead of playing other, lower strength Bees, you can get a few Bees to strength 4 pretty quickly. Also, players who have fewer Bees tend to Retrieve more often, and replay the same Bees more often. Some factions, cards, and tiles can also help you get to strength 4 more quickly. Wow! This faction can increase the strength of their workers every turn! How can I beat them to level 4, and get the first Carving? If I'm playing against 'Arti', I won't rush Carvings... unless they're focused somewhere else. Any time someone else is going to beat you to the Carvings, try to guess what they want, so that you can plan to take something else. Note that 'Iber' can also accelerate the process of getting strength 4 Bees. While 'Visah' hardly needs to rush Carvings. Before leaving Carvings behind, I should mention that about HALF of the Carvings score either tiles or frames in your hive. There's a huge overlap between The Big Build strategy and the Carvings! There seem to be a lot of good actions for strength 4 Bees... I guess I'll need A LOT of those! When strength 4 workers are Retrieved, they Hibernate. When the hibernation comb is full, the game ends! There are only four spots... in the hibernation comb per player, so it stands to reason that you won't get to place more than four or five strength 4 workers in the entire game! You HAVE to spend your strength 4 actions very carefully. Suddenly using a strength 4 Bee to teach a dance for cheap honey... doesn't seem so cheap! You're right, it isn't all bad to let someone ELSE make the cheap honey dance, and just use it. I bet I can get more strength 4 actions using cards or by placing the right tiles? Exactly right! In fact, I think it deserves to be called-out as its own separate play: Get More Strength 4 Actions! Any effect that allows you to Retrieve workers without aging, can ALSO be used to pull-back a level 4 worker, before it Hibernates, so that it can be used again. Also, there are tiles and cards that directly activate level 4 actions. What about Exploring with strength 4 workers? It depends on what planets have been exposed and what you need. You'll need to pay attention to the strength 4 actions on the planets. How often do you use the Research action at strength 4? I like to use it late in the game to plant cards. If you have a decent card, you can plant it under your board and get another selected card at the same time! Or sometimes you might even just go fishing and plant whichever card is best. Do you ever use a strength 4 worker in the Advance space? Yes! Imagine the game is drawing to a close, and you can play a big scoring tile that also completes a frame. These are some of the biggest turns in the game! Don't miss them just because you have to play a strength 4 worker! And the three extra points don't hurt. What about these reddish tiles? Is there a play that uses these? The play is called: Spam Developments! If you get some wax... you can play these red Development tiles. These tiles typically offer more points than other tiles. And they have a one-time benefit, that's typically
tantamount to getting an extra turn, or even a couple extra turns. If I Spam Developments, I'm going to run out of wax pretty quickly... There's a Farm that gives you wax income. There's a Recruit that makes Development tiles cheap, or even free. Finally there are Developments that give you wax, which can lead to a hive mat full of Development tiles. You'll be surprised how many Development tiles you can play, if you get the ball rolling! Some of these are really great! Look at this one: You can plant two cards at the same time. It usually takes two strength 4 actions. "Do not underestimate the power of the wax side!" What about these blue tiles? Is there a play associated with these? The Recruit tiles are part of EVERY play we've discussed. In fact, if you want to know what play might work, you should START by reading the Recruit tiles. Even simple tiles like this one can be the basis of a play. If you have this [Herbalist] tile, the Research action basically comes free with an Explore action. Usually Research is a high-risk play in the early game, but with this tile, it becomes your best bet for gathering resources. There's another Research tile [Geneticist = Cards] that's probably even better! You could call this: The Draw a Bunch of Cards play, BUT... it's all based on these [blue] Recruit tiles. Without these Recruit tiles, you'd be better off to get Cards from placement bonuses, or comb bonuses, or exploration tokens. How should I play the Cards once I draw them? TIP: Don't pile your cards in a huge pile, and then play them all on your last turn! Wrangling a hand of a dozen cards can slow this game to a crawl. Mostly the variant is just enforcing good play... If you draw a card that you'd rather plant, hold on to it. Otherwise, USE your cards as you go to accelerate your game. It's usually a bad idea to use your cards as a simple resource, but sometimes it's the best you can do [with that card]. If you're going to the Convert action, and you have an extra Conversion, don't forget to to exchange your worst Cards! Planting Cards under your mat is a significant scoring opportunity. Look for ways to plant cards under your mat, and look for cards that score well with what you've already done. You've shown us all these plays that depend on special tiles or cards... many of which are unique, and may never come up! What do I do if the tile I'm waiting for never appears? Or if someone else grabs it? You've got it backwards... I don't plan to Spam Developments and THEN go looking for ways to generate wax. Instead, I NOTICE that there are good ways to generate wax, and I decide to Spam Developments as a result. Putting it another way, if you NOTICE there are great Farms available, you might play them, and then use your Landing Area to maximize the number of times that you can use them. You don't plan to Farm Points until you already have the necessary Farms in place. This game punishes people who stick too doggedly to their plans... and rewards people who pounce on whatever opportunity is available. So what about The Big Build play? Is that always relevant? I believe The Big Build strategy is always relevant, BUT it may not always be optimal. For example, many of the things you can do with tiles, you can also do with Cards. And planting cards under your mat, isn't so different from getting a Carving. Even among the Carvings, about half of them score things that AREN'T directly related to building anything in your hive. You might de-emphasize building, and concentrate on scoring using cards, or other types of resources. And depending on the situation, you might win. So nothing you've said was reliable?... This game is easy to teach... it looks pretty, and it has a super silly theme! But winning this game consistently isn't easy. What about upgrading your faction? It depends on the faction.... Often there are better ways to use a strength 4 worker. It seems like you de-value queen's favor? I've certainly scored 25 points on queen's favor from time-to-time, but more often, I'll build up a little queen's favor, and trade it away for honey or wax. Queen's favor is an all-or-nothing strategy! Either you're going for 25 points or it doesn't score
that well. What about the factions and the hive mats? Do you have any advice about these? In broad terms... you just need to maximize whatever your faction has to offer. Sometimes your ability isn't that great, but you'll start with decent resources, so you can buy some good tiles early. Know what upgrading your faction gets you, and whether it's worth it [to upgrade]. The value of your hive mat is dependent on what faction you have. For example, 'The Log' [mat] is ideal with 'Arti' [faction]... but nearly useless with 'Capra' [faction]. I guess that about wraps it up! Yeah, Thanks for Watching! And do us a favor... watch for low-flying space-Bees! We don't want to lose anyone out there... It really IS a silly theme! [buzzing...]
