This version is inspired by the European colonial empires (16th to 19th century).
The game world is made of 7 hexes. Each player starts from a different one.
To win you must colonise at least 3 hexes and hold them for a whole round.
Each player gets:
- 1 Queen
- 1 Drone
- 1 Worker
- 3 honey
- 7 flowers
- 4 large coloured cubes (to mark which hex is under your dominion)
- 3 small coloured cubes (to keep track of your moves)
Each player occupies one of the hexes at the extremities.
The hexes in the middle axis start unoccupied, with 2 flowers top and bottom, and 4 flowers in the centre one.
Decide who will be the player starting each round. Play will proceed clockwise.
HEADS UP! The player to move last will start with 9 flowers instead of 7.
Set aside all remaining flowers, honey and bee cards. You can put them in a container which you'll call the Bank.
You may also need a (smaller) container to collect the small coloured cubes as players make their moves. You can call that the Box.
The game has an indefinite number of rounds (for now!) but I promise that rounds are very short to play :)
- Each player will carry out 1 move per round: player 1 makes a move, player 2 makes a move, player 3 makes a move, player 4 makes a move, end of round.
- At the end of every third round (rounds 3, 6, 9, 12 etc.) you will replant the flowers in every hex.
Actions that count as one move:
| What? | Which bee? | How? |
|---|---|---|
| Travel | Worker, Drone and Queen | Move the bee card from one hex to a contiguous hex, provided both hexes are under your control (ie both hexes have your coloured marker on them). |
| Make honey | Worker | Pick 1 flower from the hex where the Worker currently stands, and swap it for 2 honey from the Bank |
| Trade | Worker | You can trade honey for flowers, or viceversa. See if any other player wants to trade with you, and negotiate the exchange rate. |
| Invade | Drone | Remove the previous occupier's marker (large cube) and place your own. Discard the Drone (it died in the invasion). There may be still bees loyal to the previous occupier on the hex you just invaded: you'll need to wait for the next round to either kill or enslave them. You won't hold a hex until there are only your bees on that hex. The good thing is that foreign bees can't travel back to their hexes, but they can still operate (make honey, trade, kill your bees or regain control of the hex etc.) |
| Kill | Drone | You can annihilate another bee currently operating in a hex you control (provided the Drone is currently in the same hex). Discard the Drone and the bee it killed. |
| Enslave | Queen | You can trade foreign bees back to their hexes (provided that they're in the same hex as your Queen). |
| Generate | Queen | You can generate a Worker for 1 honey or a Drone for 2 honey. Place them on the same hex as the Queen. |
After each move, place one of your 3 mini cubes in the Box, to keep track of how many moves you have left before replanting the garden.
You can repeat the same move round after round if you like.
Flowers represent natural resources, which get replenished periodically (provided they're not completely depleted) and are used to feed the bees. Hexes with many bees and few flowers will deplete quickly, while hexes with few/no bees and many flowers will flourish.
Use the formula current flowers divided by 2 (round up) minus the number of bees currently occupying the hex.
| Flowers | Growth |
|---|---|
| 0 | 0 |
| 1-2 | 1 |
| 3-4 | 2 |
| 5-6 | 3 |
| 7-8 | 4 |
| etc. |
For example: if one of your hexes has 7 flowers and 3 bees, the formula will be 7/2 (round up) - 3, ie 4 - 3 so you'll replant 1 flower.
After replanting the flowers each player can pick their 3 mini cubes back and start the next round.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
