The Bee's Knees

 Steaming Up the Windows

I have several things that I look for in games that makes me want to come back to play them over and over again:

Everdell is so pretty, especially the tree.

1) Does it aesthetically please? I need to have an aesthetically pleasing board and artwork to really draw me into the game. I personally prefer games that both look good and lean into that aesthetic with their gameplay.

2) I prefer to play worker-placement games with some sort of upgrade mechanic that allows me to strategize in the long-term and make multiple plans that might lead to victory. I will branch out to play dexterity and real-time as well as dungeon crawlers, but worker-placement is my bread and butter, so many of my favorite games have that mechanic.

Something about this game just really resonates with me.

3) Theming is somewhat important to me as I tend to like games that are more fantastical in nature. While some might prefer to play games that are more down-to-earth with their themes such as Flamme Rouge, Twilight Struggle, or Viticulture, I generally like to play games with a fantastical bent to them, such as Everdell, Dinosaur World, or Cartographers. Interestingly enough, I really do like Heat: Pedal to the Metal despite it being more of a "simulation" game. I think that it has to do with growing up watching Indy-500 races with my dad and enjoying the racing aspect of the game.

4) When I play games, I want some kind of randomization of the board. It could be different objectives, cards, locations to visit, or alternative tile placement, but I want to have the board feel different each time I play. It prevents the game from getting stale and also reduces the advantage of people who have played before against newbies to the game. I like having variable setups with games because it keeps it fresh and with alternative ways of playing, always challenges me to rethink previous strategies.

While these aren't hard and fast rules to me enjoying a game (for instance, I really enjoyed playing Gizmos enough to think about adding it to my collection), if a game meets those three requirements, I tend to rate it a bit higher than other games since I really enjoy those aspects of games. Is it completely subjective based on what I enjoy? Absolutely. But that's the fun of board games and finding games that you enjoy to play with others, especially ones that check off all the boxes on your "preferred play list."

Mr. Time is coming for your crystals.

Enter Steam Time. The game checks all my boxes by being aesthetically pleasing, having a worker-placement mechanic, has a fantastical theme to it (I need to play more steampunk games), and the board is randomized when it's set up each time. If we were to take just those four aspects of my preferences, the game should be a 10/10 and leave me wanting to play again and again. Steam Time checks all my boxes and seems to fit what I prefer in my games, so why do I have it rated as a 7.75 - 8 on BGG?

I think this is where the rubber meets the road in the case of Steam Time. As I played my second game of it with four players instead of the two that I had originally played with, I found that the game played remarkably similarly to the first time that I had played. Sure there was a bit more of a scramble to get your airship to the location that you wanted to get it to before everyone else did, but mechanically, it didn't feel too different than a two-player game. Balance with multiple player count is always an important thing and Steam Time managed to do it beautifully, but it still felt lacking in my book.

Upgrades people. It's all about the upgrades.

I was able to take the same actions and use the same strategy that I had done with a two player game: upgrade my airship so that each round I would get more and more benefits from the upgrades. I took six separate upgrades during the game; more than anyone else (the next highest was four upgrades) and managed to get enough resources from just my upgrades that I didn't have to use my airships to get additional resources or victory points. I was able to focus on getting final objective cards and scored a majority of my final points that way.

After I finished the game, it was pointed out by my friend Zach that while the theming for the game was great, it didn't lean into the steampunk-esque nature of the theme beyond using crystals as a resource and could easily be reskinned with another theme. After some thought, I had to agree with Zach that the game didn't use it's theming well. Sure it looked great and had a light connection, but it missed more with it's theming than I would have guessed.

I also realized that while I enjoyed the worker-placement aspect of the game, I had been able to complete my previous strategy of upgrading my airship again and again and that won me the game. I enjoy games that give multiple ways to win a game and don't have one specific way that will guarantee a win, but after two games, I would have to say that upgrades are the way to go. They just feel a bit too overpowered and there's not much reason to go for other objectives, especially since the upgrades provide ongoing resources and can be used towards final objectives.

While I do enjoy Steam Time, I think that many other games play better than it and use the same mechanics better. Steam Time is a solid game, but not necessarily one that I would pull out every single time I want to play a worker-placement game.

Magic in the Making

The mall is ever changing.

On the other side of the coin with a game that I don't think that I'll ever get tired of playing, we have Magic Maze. I had originally played the game in 2021 (I believe) at a friend's house when someone had brought it to the table for us to try out. It was explained that we all had our own actions and had to simultaneously move the player pawns around the ever-growing mall to their respective weapons and exits once all weapons had been retrieved, all in real time. But there was a catch: this had to be done without ever talking or communicating outside of specified times because it was a heist and players had to be as quiet as possible. There was a "Do Something" pawn that we could place (sometimes violently) in front of a player that needed to perform an action, but that was the extent of communication outside of when the timer was flipped, or the green pawn discovered a new area of the mall.

We played several rounds of the game and I was immediately hooked. The frenetic real-time nature of the game pushed each of us to frantically move pieces around the board, all in an attempt to collect the respective items that were needed by each pawn. There was a lot of wild arm waving, gesturing angrily at the board and general chaos and the first attempt or two resulted in us failing miserably. We did win a game (or two?) eventually and a good time was had by all, but what stuck with me the most was how unique the game was. Until that time, I had limited interaction with real-time games and it immediately lit a fire under me to get the game.

I spent the next several years looking for a copy of the game but unfortunately due to Covid, all stock was either sold or extremely pricey. I didn't want to pay lots of shipping and additional fees to have a copy shipped from the UK or Europe so I waited patiently. I became very excited when I saw that a copy of the game was available on Amazon, but immediately noted that it was the expansion Magic Maze: Maximum Security rather than the base game. About two years passed before the game was rerun and I was able to get my hands on both a copy of the base game and expansion for fairly cheap. My patience had paid off and I finally had my hands on the game to add to my collection!

The solo actions.

As soon as I received the game, I noted that the game had a solo play version as well, which I had been unaware of. I was fairly new to collecting board games and solo games were almost nonexistent in my collection so I was excited to see that the game had a solo version that I could play without anyone else (which was often an problem since my wife was very busy with our young daughter). I immediately played several games and found that not only was the solo mode cleverly designed, it still retained the basic frenetic feel of the game and performed admirably, despite feeling like it required a bit more multitasking than playing with others.

Fast forward to several years later now and I've logged 30 total plays of the game here on BGG, making it my highest played game count so far (One Night Ultimate Werewolf comes in second with 19 plays). The game itself is simple to teach but oh so difficult to master, especially as more and more abilities get added to the game. Magic Maze does something that I've not really seen implemented in other games extremely well: it teaches each player how to play the game with scenarios that add in additional objectives and powers each time, slowly ramping up until all objectives and character powers are in the game. The tiles are each numbered and scenarios have a list of each respective tile that is added to the game, ensuring that players don't add too many tiles or get overwhelmed by the number

Scenario 1 has the players tasked with getting to each respective weapon, but all exit through the same purple exit. It teaches the basic mechanics of movement, finding the weapons and exiting the mall without being overwhelming, as there's only eight tiles (tiles numbered 2-9) in the stack of potential tiles to be discovered. This scenario also allows players to talk the entire game, easing the initial chaos of having to direct four pawns together. Once completed, Scenario 2 adds in three additional tiles: the respective exits for each of the pawns, adding a slight difficulty bump, but nothing beyond what was already experienced by the players. This scenario also has players not allowed to talk unless the timer is flipped, but since they have learned how to play the game from the first scenario, it doesn't present that much of a change.

As you play through the various scenarios, actions such as changing tiles when the timer is flipped, small passages only the orange player can go through, and talking when the green player discovers the tile, are added to the game, each adding complexity to the game, but in a slow but manageable manner. The game finishes teaching each of the various actions and abilities with scenario 7 and scenarios 8 to 17 add in special rules that the players must follow during the game. The game adds additional replayability by adding in additional tiles that can be added to the stack bringing the total room count to 24 total tiles and a challenge sheet that allows players to track each of their successes and how many timer flips were used.

A game in progress.

The expansions add additional complexity, but each takes the same approach: single scenarios add in the additional rules to be played by each of the players and then are added into the game if/when players would like to play with them. It's an extremely effective way to not only teach new mechanics to players, but also does so in a way that it doesn't overwhelm new players (or even veterans) with a ton of things to learn.

Magic Maze plays quickly. The nature of the game is that it will not last longer than ten minutes a play, allowing for multiple plays of the game to occur within a single sitting. It's easy to finish a game and go "I have time to play another round!" because setup is so quick and efficient. While it might lost it's #1 spot for me this year due to so many other games being added to my collection, I expect Magic Maze to consistently and effortlessly stay at within my top 10 list without any difficulty.

I Saw the Game, Now I'm a Bee-liever

Bees! In Space!

To be completely, honest, this game caught me completely off guard. I had seen that it had come out in November of 2023 to some high regard, but I passed it off as another hype-driven Stonemaier Games release. I already had preordered Wyrmspan in December as a late Christmas gift from my in-laws, but I hadn't really thought much about Apiary. The theming was really interesting to me, but I wasn't convinced that it was something that I had to have in my collection, especially since I had Everdell to fit my worker placement, tableau-building part of my collection.

But as several months went by and the game continued to gain traction here on BGG, I began to be intrigued. Apiary seemed to have some staying power, even topping the "BGG Hot List" several times (it still sits at 48 at the time of writing this). I was intrigued, but there wasn't anything yet that had convinced me to look into purchasing the game. I spent some time talking with my buddy Anthony about our various games and he mentioned his thoughts on Everdell: resources felt to scarce and it felt over too quickly. I disagreed with him on the matter, but to be fair, I also had 14 games played to his 2.

Nevertheless, this got me thinking and I was determined to find a game that Anthony would like to play that was a worker-placement but also didn't feel rushed to complete nor had a lack of resources. The gauntlet had been thrown down and now I needed to find (if only for my own personal challenge) a game that he would enjoy playing that resolved some of his complaints. I thought for quite some time about what I should bring to the table since there wasn't anything that I personally owned that I thought would fit that niche.

It was then that I came across a review of Apiary which went into depth about the game and how it played. I unfortunately don't remember which review website that I found since my web browsing history is of no use, but the reviewer noted that the game often felt wildly unbalanced with the factions and stated that it led to some awesome powerful combos. The reviewer went on to note that the game often felt like it grew and grew without any stopgaps in place to reduce how powerful a player's hive got and how it felt incredible to create giant hives that generated immense amounts of resources and actions for players to use.

With that review in mind, I knew that I had found my solution to my self-imposed problem of finding a game that would meet the strict standards that Anthony had set for me. The only problem was finding a copy of the game where I lived. I knew after checking the Stonemaier website that they were sold out from the game and any check on alternative websites yielded prices that were a bit higher than my liking. I turned to my best resource: a local board game exchange group. I typed up a post for the game asking if anyone had seen a copy in the area and within two hours I had over a half-dozen leads on potential locations to find the game as well as a recommendation for a shop that was selling it for 30% off MSRP.

I immediately launched myself into full-on "obtain the precious" mode and zipped over to the LGS after work, only to find that the shop was closed until later that afternoon. I creepily peeked into the store in a vain attempt to see if they had a copy of the game, but not wanting to be arrested for suspicious behavior, I left before I was able to snag a glimpse of the game. I returned later that night and after some searching, managed to find a copy of Apiary on their shelves nestled with a few other copies of it's brethren.

Prize in hand, I returned home and immediately began unwrapping the game to show my prize to my beautiful wife. I proudly proclaimed that I had found a game that would not only be up Anthony's wheelhouse, but also something that I thought that she would enjoy as well as it paired elements of both Everdell and Splendor. Sarah watched me gleefully punch out each of the components and noted that she would like to play but would leave the initial playthrough to me in order to find out how it played.

The game looks so good.

I had watched a how to play video previously and while there was mention of the solo automa, I didn't know how that would pair with how the game played. After about an hour of punching, setting up, and gawking at how pretty the game was, I began playing with the solo automa and found that the game was exactly as described: a clever worker-placement and engine builder that saw impressive growth and combinations the longer the game went. I artificially drew out the game as long as possible to see what I could build, but even when the end of the game was forced by the automa opponent, I didn't feel as if I had completely exhausted all of my options.

I wound down the night feeling both exhausted and exhilarated as I had beaten the solo automa fairly easily with a large point gap. The solo game felt amazing and I immediately knew that I had found a winner. Contrary to how I felt after playing Steam Time, I immediately wanted to launch back into another game of Apiary despite the late hour. The entire game felt incredible and there was never a time where a decision I made felt like a bad decision. Overall it felt extremely well-balanced towards fun and the solo automa was excellently designed to be both minimal and feel like an actual player that I was against.

To be fair, there is a lot of choice here.

Unfortunately, I found that the game didn't hit as well for Sarah as it did for me when we played the subsequent night. While she loved the artwork and overall look for the game, she felt overwhelmed with the number of potential number of actions that she could take during the game. I'm also pretty sure that it was not the right time to introduce the game to her since she was so overwhelmed by the day and just didn't have the mental bandwidth to learn a new game. I'm going to try to reintroduce it to Sarah later this week or next week to see if I can teach her when she's less overwhelmed by life.

I still do have to teach it to my buddy Anthony, but I'm a bit more hopeful on that front as the level of complexity and choice is close to Lost Ruins of Arnak and he loved that game when we played (to the point where the monster picked it up before I could get it).

Ups, Downs, and All Arounds

This has been a really weird week for board games for me. I added a new game to my collection and played it twice, to varying success with both plays. I feel like usually when I introduce games to Sarah, I have a fairly good reading on how well she likes games. I could have sworn up and down that she would have loved Apiary but again, I think that she was just not in the right mood for it. I think replaying at a later time when we're both not so overwhelmed by the chaos of our four-year-old child will make for a better experience, but it's been some time since there's been such a bad initial play of a game with Sarah. I'll chalk it all up to experience though and hopefully come back to the game with a better understanding and help her through the various actions when we play again.

I've also hit 30 total plays (logged) of Magic Maze, making it the first game that I've logged 30 plays of here on BGG. I only started logging plays back in September of 2023 (so many missed plays from previous years gone *sigh*) so while that might be the first game I've logged 30 plays of, I'm not certain if there are other games that have 30 plays for me. I'm also getting close to 90 plays total for 2024 (wow) and probably will continue to play a game (or two) a day as I've found that it's a nice way to wind down the night. I have done a fairly decent job of completing my 10x10 Challenge List to the point where it's about halfway done for the year. I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to complete it with all the original games on it, but who knows what this year will bring?

I'm feeling pretty good about this blog and want to thank each and every one of you for checking it out, recommending it and for the geekgold. It means so much to me that you like it and comment on my posts since I want to create a positive community here on BGG. I'm always up for recommendations on good games to try out and if there's anything that you feel that I should check out, let me know! If there's anything that i have developed over the last year, it's an insatiable appetite for games and I just want to try them all!

What are some games that you've brought to the table fully expecting to be a big hit, but having them fall flat when you play them? When it comes to situations like that, do you chalk it up to a bad experience playing the game and attempt again, or choose to not play it with that group of people? What games have you played that seem to have an excellent theme and look to them, but have missed the mark with gameplay and how would you feel that it would be better able to be integrated?

As always, keep playing games my friends and have a wonderful weekend! I'll be back on Monday with my thoughts on the mechanics of introducing new games to people, be they seasoned veterans or newbies to the hobby, as well as some games that introduce mechanics to new players in good (and bad) ways.

*Originally published on BoardGameGeek on 23/2/2024*