Hive (game)
Encyclopedia
Hive is a bug-themed tabletop game
, designed by John Yianni and published in 2001 by Gen Four Two. The object of Hive is to capture the opponent's queen bee
by completely surrounding it, while avoiding the capture of one's own queen. Hive is an abstract strategy game.
Hive shares elements of both tile-based game
s and board game
s. It differs from other tile-based games in that the tiles, once placed, can then be moved to other positions according to various rules, much like chess
pieces. Thus, the game has mechanics comparable to an abstract strategy board game and is marketed in that genre. It does not fit the classical definition, however, as there is no gameboard involved; the pieces are simply placed on some relatively flat surface.
There are 22 pieces in total making up a Hive set, with 11 pieces per player, each representing an insect and a different means of moving (the colors listed are for the third edition of the game; the first and second used full-color drawings):
In addition, the game is packaged with a travel bag (a black drawstring bag for older editions; a nylon zippered case for the current version) to make the game more portable. Given the durability of the tiles and the lack of a board, the game is marketed as a "go-anywhere" game that simply needs a relatively flat surface on which to place pieces.
In 2011 the publisher released a "Carbon" edition of Hive with two significant changes. First, the pieces are in black and white; either black insects on white pieces or white insects on black pieces. Second, the Mosquito and Ladybug expansions are included in this set. (See the Expansions section below for details on these pieces.)
On each turn, a player may place a new piece from their supply, or, if their Queen Bee has been placed, move a piece according to its function. A new piece, when placed, must be adjacent to only the player's pieces; it cannot touch any of the opposing player's pieces. The only exception to this rule is the first piece played by each player; the first played piece simply cannot be adjacent to anything, and the other player's first piece must be adjacent to the first player's piece (see the "one hive rule" in the Movement section below). Once placed, a piece may be moved to a new space regardless of what pieces it will touch, except that it must be adjacent to at least one other piece.
After the Queen Bee has been placed, a player is at liberty to place or move at will; as pieces are placed, the layout, known colloquially as the "hive", gets larger, and pieces become surrounded by others. The strategy in placing tiles is thus usually to wait to place stronger tiles until they have a strong chance of not being immediately trapped.
The Queen Bee must be placed in one of the first four turns, and if a player's Queen Bee has not yet been placed, that player may not move any pieces. As such it is generally preferable to place the Bee before being forced to do so on the fourth turn.
s.
A major rule in Hive is the "one-hive rule"; a piece may never be moved such that during or after its movement, there are two separate groups of pieces in play. Even if as a result of the piece's move, the layout remains one group, if the hive becomes disconnected while the piece is in transit the move is illegal. This allows for the basic strategy of "trapping" an opposing piece or pieces by moving one's own piece to the outside of the opposing piece; the opposing piece then cannot legally move because the trapping piece would be stranded.
With two exceptions, moves are made around the circumference of all pieces of the layout, and a piece may never move into a hex that is almost completely or completely surrounded. The two exceptions to both are noted below.
In the official online version of the game, if a player can not make any legal move then the other player takes the move.
if a move results in the simultaneous surrounding of both Queen Bees, or in a situation where each player's best move for a turn leads to an endless cyclical repetition of a series of moves (this situation is known as stalemate
).
Other openings include beginning with a Beetle or Grasshopper; depending on how the Hive's shape evolves, a Beetle or Grasshopper may be able to climb or jump out of its original position, when the Bee, Spider or Ant would likely be trapped for the entire game in a similar situation.
As mentioned before, it is generally considered unwise to leave the placement of the Bee until the fourth turn; not only can placed pieces not move, but the player risks being forced to play an extended string of pieces that can be easily trapped. It is also unwise to play an Ant as the first piece; this piece is likely to be trapped and/or surrounded for the entire game, and thus the player is forced to play short one Ant, placing him/her at a severe disadvantage.
" piece for each player. This game piece can be added to each player's supply before the game begins. The Mosquito acts as a sort of "wild card" piece; once played, the Mosquito takes on the characteristics of any other piece it touches at the time, so that its movement and abilities change during the course of the game. For instance, if a mosquito is located adjacent to a Grasshopper and an Ant, it can either jump over a line of pieces as the Grasshopper moves, or move around the circumference of the hive as an Ant. That move may place it adjacent to a Beetle, Spider and the Queen Bee; if it moves again it can do so as any of those three. The only exception to this rule is that if it is moved on top of the hive (as a Beetle moves), it retains the abilities of a Beetle until it moves down off of the hive again.
In 2010, a forthcoming Ladybug expansion was announced. It was presented at Essen 2010. The Ladybug moves three spaces; two on top of the Hive, then one down. It must move exactly two on top of the Hive and then move one down on its last move. It may not move around the outside of the Hive and may not end its movement on top of the Hive. This expansion was released in early 2011, first on electronic versions of the game for iPhone and on the Hive website, then as part of the Hive Carbon edition, and finally as an expansion set for the 3rd edition Bakelite set.
Tabletop game
Tabletop game is a general term used to refer to board games, card games, dice games, miniatures wargames, tile-based games and other games that are normally played on a table or other flat surface...
, designed by John Yianni and published in 2001 by Gen Four Two. The object of Hive is to capture the opponent's queen bee
Queen bee
The term queen bee is typically used to refer to an adult, mated female that lives in a honey bee colony or hive; she is usually the mother of most, if not all, the bees in the hive. The queens are developed from larvae selected by worker bees and specially fed in order to become sexually mature...
by completely surrounding it, while avoiding the capture of one's own queen. Hive is an abstract strategy game.
Hive shares elements of both tile-based game
Tile-based game
A tile-based game is a game that uses tiles as one of the fundamental elements of play. Traditional tile-based games use small tiles as playing pieces for gambling or entertainment games...
s and board game
Board game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
s. It differs from other tile-based games in that the tiles, once placed, can then be moved to other positions according to various rules, much like chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
pieces. Thus, the game has mechanics comparable to an abstract strategy board game and is marketed in that genre. It does not fit the classical definition, however, as there is no gameboard involved; the pieces are simply placed on some relatively flat surface.
Composition
The game uses hexagonal tiles to represent the various contents of the hive. The original two editions used wooden tiles with full-color insect illustrations on blue and silver stickers to represent the units, but the current third edition has been published using black and almond phenolic resin ("Bakelite") tiles with single-color painted etchings.There are 22 pieces in total making up a Hive set, with 11 pieces per player, each representing an insect and a different means of moving (the colors listed are for the third edition of the game; the first and second used full-color drawings):
- 1 Queen Bee (Yellow-Gold)
- 2 Spiders (Brown)
- 2 Beetles (Purple)
- 3 Grasshoppers (Green)
- 3 Soldier Ants (Blue)
In addition, the game is packaged with a travel bag (a black drawstring bag for older editions; a nylon zippered case for the current version) to make the game more portable. Given the durability of the tiles and the lack of a board, the game is marketed as a "go-anywhere" game that simply needs a relatively flat surface on which to place pieces.
In 2011 the publisher released a "Carbon" edition of Hive with two significant changes. First, the pieces are in black and white; either black insects on white pieces or white insects on black pieces. Second, the Mosquito and Ladybug expansions are included in this set. (See the Expansions section below for details on these pieces.)
Setup and Placement
The game starts with an empty layout, with all of both players' pieces in stacks or otherwise arranged as each player prefers. It confers little or no advantage to conceal the faces of unplaced pieces; both players have "perfect information" about the state of the game, and thus by process of elimination any piece not on the board is yet to be played. Officially, white always goes first, however this is simply convention and players are free to keep the same color and decide who goes first by other means.On each turn, a player may place a new piece from their supply, or, if their Queen Bee has been placed, move a piece according to its function. A new piece, when placed, must be adjacent to only the player's pieces; it cannot touch any of the opposing player's pieces. The only exception to this rule is the first piece played by each player; the first played piece simply cannot be adjacent to anything, and the other player's first piece must be adjacent to the first player's piece (see the "one hive rule" in the Movement section below). Once placed, a piece may be moved to a new space regardless of what pieces it will touch, except that it must be adjacent to at least one other piece.
After the Queen Bee has been placed, a player is at liberty to place or move at will; as pieces are placed, the layout, known colloquially as the "hive", gets larger, and pieces become surrounded by others. The strategy in placing tiles is thus usually to wait to place stronger tiles until they have a strong chance of not being immediately trapped.
The Queen Bee must be placed in one of the first four turns, and if a player's Queen Bee has not yet been placed, that player may not move any pieces. As such it is generally preferable to place the Bee before being forced to do so on the fourth turn.
Movement
Movement of pieces in Hive is governed by the hexagonal shape of the tiles. Tiles must be situated such that one face of a tile contacts the face of an adjacent tile, and a movement of one "space" equates to a shift to a different (imaginary) hex-shaped area that is adjacent to both the current space and to one other piece. The game has no actual board, however it can be thought of as being played on an infinite plane of hexagonal tessellationTessellation
A tessellation or tiling of the plane is a pattern of plane figures that fills the plane with no overlaps and no gaps. One may also speak of tessellations of parts of the plane or of other surfaces. Generalizations to higher dimensions are also possible. Tessellations frequently appeared in the art...
s.
A major rule in Hive is the "one-hive rule"; a piece may never be moved such that during or after its movement, there are two separate groups of pieces in play. Even if as a result of the piece's move, the layout remains one group, if the hive becomes disconnected while the piece is in transit the move is illegal. This allows for the basic strategy of "trapping" an opposing piece or pieces by moving one's own piece to the outside of the opposing piece; the opposing piece then cannot legally move because the trapping piece would be stranded.
With two exceptions, moves are made around the circumference of all pieces of the layout, and a piece may never move into a hex that is almost completely or completely surrounded. The two exceptions to both are noted below.
- The Queen Bee is the most limited in movement; she can only move one space at a time. Although restricted, a well-timed movement of the Queen can avoid being trapped and frustrate an opponent's plans.
- The Beetle, like the Bee, can move only one space at a time. However, unlike the Bee, a Beetle can also climb on top of any adjacent piece, and then if the player so wishes can move one space at a time over the top of the layout. The piece under the Beetle cannot move as long as the Beetle remains on top, and for the purpose of placing new tiles, that space is the color of the Beetle's tile, not the underlying tile. Beetles can move on top of other Beetles even when that Beetle is atop another piece; theoretically a stack 5 tiles high can be constructed, with all four Beetles atop some other tile. A beetle on top of the layout can crawl back down onto the edge of the board, or into any surrounded space.
- The Spider can move three spaces around the circumference of the layout; no more, no less. This makes the Spider restricted in terms of its usefulness later in gameplay, however it has a high degree of utility at the beginning of the game as a base for other pieces or as a fast-attack piece while the layout is still small. Even when the layout becomes larger, the Spider, when positioned correctly, can still affect the game significantly.
- The Grasshopper is, like its namesake, a jumping piece; it moves by jumping over one or more other pieces in a straight line to the first adjacent space on the opposite side of the line of pieces. It always jumps in the direction of one of its faces, never one of its corners. Because of this mode of movement, it can quickly traverse from one side of the layout to the other, and like the Beetle it can move into a surrounded space.
- The Soldier Ant may move only around the edge of the layout, like the Bee or Spider, but unlike either piece it may move as many spaces as the player wishes. This makes the Ant a very powerful piece, capable of moving from anywhere on the edge of the Hive to anywhere else to trap an opposing piece or free a trapped piece.
In the official online version of the game, if a player can not make any legal move then the other player takes the move.
Endgame
The game ends when a Queen Bee is captured by surrounding it on all 6 sides by either player's pieces, and the player whose Queen Bee is surrounded loses the game. The game is a drawTie (draw)
To tie or draw is to finish a competition with identical or inconclusive results. The word "tie" is usually used in North America for sports such as American football. "Draw" is usually used in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Commonwealth of Nations and it is usually used for sports such as...
if a move results in the simultaneous surrounding of both Queen Bees, or in a situation where each player's best move for a turn leads to an endless cyclical repetition of a series of moves (this situation is known as stalemate
Stalemate
Stalemate is a situation in chess where the player whose turn it is to move is not in check but has no legal moves. A stalemate ends the game in a draw. Stalemate is covered in the rules of chess....
).
Openings
There are many possible opening strategies, but two main formations are recommended by the game's publisher. They are reproduced below in order of placement:- Spider - Bee - Ant (in a V formation with the spider at the point): This is a flexible opening that allows the Bee maximum movement possibilities while also quickly introducing a powerful Ant that can move as needed to block or trap. Beetle-Bee-Ant and Hopper-Bee-Ant are common variations that replace the first Spider with a piece that can still move when surrounded and is thus less likely to be trapped for the entire game.
- Bee - Spider - Spider (in a V formation with the bee at the point): This is an aggressive quick-strike opening that allows the player the fastest possible opportunity to move (on the third turn if necessary); the Spiders can thus quickly block the opponent's opening pieces. In addition, if the opponent answers with the same or a similar opening, it provides the best opportunity to force a draw if necessary as the Bees are adjacent. For this last reason, tournament rules forbid the placing of the Bee on the first move. Bee-Spider-Ant is a common variation very similar in its mechanics.
Other openings include beginning with a Beetle or Grasshopper; depending on how the Hive's shape evolves, a Beetle or Grasshopper may be able to climb or jump out of its original position, when the Bee, Spider or Ant would likely be trapped for the entire game in a similar situation.
As mentioned before, it is generally considered unwise to leave the placement of the Bee until the fourth turn; not only can placed pieces not move, but the player risks being forced to play an extended string of pieces that can be easily trapped. It is also unwise to play an Ant as the first piece; this piece is likely to be trapped and/or surrounded for the entire game, and thus the player is forced to play short one Ant, placing him/her at a severe disadvantage.
Basic Game Strategy
- The basic strategy is to control the outside of the hive by trapping the opponent's pieces towards the inside of the hive. Ants are best-suited for this role as they can move wherever they are needed, however this makes them largely unavailable for other tasks like trapping the opposing Bee or defending one's own. Spiders and Grasshoppers, if placed correctly, can quickly move into trapping positions, leaving the Ants for more vital tasks.
- Don't underestimate Spiders, especially in the opening phase of the game. They aren't as powerful or flexible as Ants, but while the hive is still small they can quickly move around to the opponent's side of the hive to trap pieces.
- Try to trap the other player's Queen Bee quickly; the sooner the Bee cannot move, the sooner she can be completely surrounded, and the less likely she is to be able to escape as she is being surrounded.
- Make sure as the opposing Bee is being surrounded that she is not given an opportunity to escape by ensuring that one piece always remains unconnected from any other surrounding piece except the Queen. Connecting three or four pieces around one side often allows the Bee to move out from underneath the capture.
- Conversely, always keep a lookout for chance to move the Bee if given this opportunity. In some cases, the Bee might be able to move onto the end of this chain of formerly surrounding pieces, trapping those pieces and severely setting back one's opponent.
- A popular tactic is to use a Beetle to crawl on top of the opposing Bee. Not only does this prevent the Bee from moving even if she could otherwise, it also makes that space the Beetle's color, allowing that player to surround the Queen simply by placing tiles. Lastly, it prevents the opposing player from blocking one of the spaces, as the Beetle can simply crawl down into that space once all others have been filled. This tactic makes Beetles very important in the mid to end game, and a player defending against this should seek to trap his opponent's Beetles or cover them with his own. This applies even if the Beetle is already on top of the Queen; the opposing player then cannot place tiles directly around the Bee and cannot slide the Beetle off into the last empty space around the Bee.
- The publisher recommends keeping Grasshoppers out of the game until late, when they are needed to quickly traverse the Hive or to jump into a surrounded space to finish surrounding the opponent's Bee. However, because they can jump out of surrounded spaces, and because players have three of them, these pieces are also good to place as the opening move; they are less likely to remain trapped for the entire game than a Spider, Bee or Ant.
Expansions
In 2007 a promotional expansion was released that consisted of a new "MosquitoMosquito
Mosquitoes are members of a family of nematocerid flies: the Culicidae . The word Mosquito is from the Spanish and Portuguese for little fly...
" piece for each player. This game piece can be added to each player's supply before the game begins. The Mosquito acts as a sort of "wild card" piece; once played, the Mosquito takes on the characteristics of any other piece it touches at the time, so that its movement and abilities change during the course of the game. For instance, if a mosquito is located adjacent to a Grasshopper and an Ant, it can either jump over a line of pieces as the Grasshopper moves, or move around the circumference of the hive as an Ant. That move may place it adjacent to a Beetle, Spider and the Queen Bee; if it moves again it can do so as any of those three. The only exception to this rule is that if it is moved on top of the hive (as a Beetle moves), it retains the abilities of a Beetle until it moves down off of the hive again.
In 2010, a forthcoming Ladybug expansion was announced. It was presented at Essen 2010. The Ladybug moves three spaces; two on top of the Hive, then one down. It must move exactly two on top of the Hive and then move one down on its last move. It may not move around the outside of the Hive and may not end its movement on top of the Hive. This expansion was released in early 2011, first on electronic versions of the game for iPhone and on the Hive website, then as part of the Hive Carbon edition, and finally as an expansion set for the 3rd edition Bakelite set.
iPhone and iPod Touch
Hive has also been ported to various electronic forms. Lotusland Studios has published versions for the iPhone and iPod Touch that implement both the original game and some variations.External links
- The publisher's official Hive website
- Hive is now available for the iPhone developed by Lotusland Studios in Vancouver, BC.
- Play HIVE online at Boardspace.netBoardSpace.netBoardspace.net is the online home of a wide array of strategy games. Some are well known in the gaming community others are obscure by almost anyone's standards. The primary goal of the site is to promote real time games between two humans. Most games have robots you can play and use for learning...
, against human or robot opponents.