Add your own Tips, Strategies, & House Rules! Vote for tips that you think are useful.
Tips & Strategies (18)
Tips & Strategies (18)
Add your own Tip, Strategy, or House Rule
You must be logged in to add a comment.
- 01Arkham Horror
- 01Arkham Horror: Innsmouth Horror
- 01Dungeon Lords
- 01Arkham Horror: The Lurker at the Threshold
- 01Arkham Horror: Miskatonic Horror
- 01Arkham Horror: Kingsport Horror
- 00King of Tokyo: Halloween
- 01Peloponnes (4th ed)
- 00Spirit Island: Branch And Claw
- 00Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization
- (updated once every hour)
- Check out our users' favorite games!
- (152) 7 Wonders
- (149) Dominion
- (144) Pandemic
- (135) The Settlers of Catan
- (120) Carcassonne
- (115) Ticket to Ride
- (97) Small World
- (96) Munchkin
- (92) Arkham Horror
- (91) Forbidden Island
- (# of user reviews, updated every 12 hours)
- 3 Formula D
- 3 Everdell
- 3 Maracaibo
- 2 Root
- 2 The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
- 2 Port Royal
- 1 Dungeons & Dragons: Lords of Waterdeep
- 1 Exploding Kittens: Streaking Kittens
- 1 Arkham Horror
- 1 Peloponnes (4th ed)
- (# of times played, updated every 12 hours)
- see all new games >
-
Hasty Baker
19-Aug-24, GoChuckle -
Mythic Quests: The Card Game
7-Nov-22, BoardGaming.com -
Mythic Dungeon Crawler – A Solo Card Game
27-Sep-22, BoardGaming.com -
Lost Ruins of Arnak
28-Dec-21, Czech Games Edition -
13 Monsters
4-Dec-20, Twisted Stranger B.V. -
Forgotten Waters
4-Dec-20, Plaid Hat Games -
Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Core Set
18-Nov-20, Paizo Publishing -
Unlocking Insanity
5-Oct-20, Petersen Games -
Planet Apocalypse
5-Oct-20, Petersen Games -
Marvel United
1-Oct-20, CMON, Spin Master Ltd. -
Draconis Invasion: Wrath
23-Sep-20, -
2 Minute Dino Deal
5-Aug-20, Petersen Games -
Mythic Challenge: The Card Game
2-Aug-20, BoardGaming.com -
Viscounts of the West Kingdom
27-Mar-20, Garphill Games -
Glamazons
14-Feb-20, Prettiest Princess - see all new games >
- see all upcoming games >
-
Gravity Warfare
2018 Q4, Smart Iguana Games -
BANG! The Dice Game – Undead or Alive
2019, dV Giochi -
Hasty Baker
2019, GoChuckle -
Penguinramids
2019 Q4, dV Giochi -
Origami: Legends
2019 Q4, dV Giochi -
Decktective: Bloody-red roses
2019 Q4, dV Giochi -
BANG! The Duel: Renegades
2019 Q4, dV Giochi -
Buy It Or Don’t
2019 Q4, Binks Games -
Four Levels
2019 Q4, Four Level Productions -
Unlocking Insanity
2020, Petersen Games -
High Noon
2020 Q4, High Noon Inc. -
Quantified
2021, Quality Beast -
High Frontier 4 All (4th ed)
2021 Q2, Ion Game Design, Sierra Madre Games -
Legends of Sleepy Hollow
2021 Q2, Dice Hate Me Games -
Game of Energy
2021 Q2, Ninex Games - see all upcoming games >
Recent News
- New Game Adds – What Do You Want?
9-Feb-22|13 comments - Winter Gaming and Gift Giving
17-Dec-21|11 comments - Games Added – Dec 4
4-Dec-20|8 comments - The holiday shopping season is upon us!
30-Nov-20|5 comments - Technology, table top games and the coming holidays
19-Nov-20|8 comments - Support Mythic Kingdoms – Get BG Rewards
11-Aug-20|10 comments - Tournament of the Mythic Kingdoms: Illustrated Playing Cards
1-Jul-20|15 comments - How have games been helping you, your family and friends?
10-Apr-20|12 comments - Games Added (March 27)
27-Mar-20|7 comments - What are you playing during your Stay-At-Home?
27-Mar-20|13 comments
The free digital app isn’t good for much, but I found it helpful for teaching my young kids how the movement rules work. I didn’t have to spend a lot of time saying,”No, you do that” because the app won’t allow illegal placement or movement.
That said, we quickly moved on to the physical game because accidental finger swipes will ruin a game in-app.
When I teach this to kids or people who are not very “in” to games, I will do so in three short games. I try to keep these first games very short by helping them to win fairly quickly.
The first game I will only use the Ants, the Beetles, and the Bee. I explain the moves of each piece and about not splitting the hive and that you can only move pieces that are able to slide out of their current position.
In the next game I will add the Spiders, explaining how they move. And in the last game, I will add the Grasshoppers. In my experience, the Grasshoppers seem to be the most difficult for people to understand so I save them for last so they have a good grasp of all the other pieces.
By the end of the third game they are excited and ready to play more.
I like to use the grasshoppers early and then attempt to jump the hive to the other side and use it as a base to deploy more pieces. The jump makes it ideal to get to the enemy side and by not using ants early you can save them for later and reduces the chance that your ants will be locked down.
It is very important to remember the “one hive” rule! Locking down pieces, often the Queen, is easy if the piece is at a edge where you can place a single bug on the edge of that piece. This will lock down the piece because of the one hive rule (since the piece you placed will be stranded if the locked piece moves). Remember this on the defense and offense.
When teaching Hive to younger children (<8), or to kids who simply don't have much experience playing tabletop games, it's best to introduce the game with a limited number of pieces. Then gradually introduce new pieces one-at-a-time over several games.
I used the following sequence to teach my daughter who was five at the time, but now at age six plays the full game (minus the mosquito):
Phase 1: Queen + ants + grasshoppers + beetles (to lose, queen only has to be surrounded on 4 sides)
Phase 2: Queen + ants + grasshoppers + beetles + spiders (to lose, queen only has to be surrounded on 5 sides)
Phase 3: Queen + ants + grasshoppers + beetles + spiders + ladybug (full rules; queen loses surrounded on 6 sides)
The flip-side to the “Runaway Queen” tip mentioned earlier is to tie down your opponents queen as soon as possible, I generally use an ant. With the Queen incapacitated, you can then play your beetle adjacent to your ant and bring it over the blocked Queen. This allows you to place your bugs directly to spaces surrounding the Queen as tile placement must be touching your pieces, but placement is based on the topmost bug. This also tends to trip up many players as they see an extra empty space and forget that you can drop the beetle to complete your capture of the Queen.
A problem with no-luck strategy games is that it can be hard for a newer player to have a good opportunity to play at an even level with an experienced player.
One handicap I have used is to turn all non-queen pieces face down and play them randomly. This won’t be a big advantage against very new players, but it should help those in the process of learning.
An additional handicap is to for every game won, the experienced player loses a non-queen piece for the next game. You can do it randomly or have the losing player choose. As the newer player starts to win, return a piece to the experienced player.
I have found this sliding handicap helps a newer player learn much quicker, and they still get to enjoy the game.
I like placing a Beetle near my Bee. It serves two purposes back there:
1. It climbs on top of an adjacent piece, opening up room to prevent the Bee from being trapped. Ideally this will be an interior space it’s vacating, to make it even harder for the opponent to block it up again.
2. It can climb on top of an opposing piece to prevent your opponent from building a new unit back there.
One of the biggest limitations with Hive is that it’s only for 2 players. This need not Bee the case however. You can actually play with 3 to 6 players with slight rule variations.
The hard part is getting a second set that doesn’t match your base set. There are two ways of doing this:
1> For 4: Buy a normal Hive set and a Hive:Carbon set.
2> Or: Buy 2 or 3 sets, and color in the bugs in each set with paint or a wax crayon.
Base rule changes:
1> The first move happens in unity, all choose and place together:
a> Use a triangle for 3 player.
b> Use a U shape for 4/5, middle player(s) first, end players last.
c> Use a ring/circle for 6 players.
2> You may NOT place your Queen on the first move.
3> You may delay up to the 5th placement to place your Queen.
4> You may not MOVE other bugs until you’ve placed your Queen.
When a player dies, you have three options:
1> Game ends, other players win.
2> Use Spiders Delight rules (simple).
3> Use Zombie/Queen rules (challenging).
Spiders Delight rules:
1> All bugs of the losing player are flipped, becoming dead carcasses.
2> At the start of each turn, any carcass with only one neighbor falls off the hive.
3> Spiders gain a special movement: Eat = Spiders may eat an adjacent carcass and (optionally) take it’s place, as long as the eating/moving does not break the hive.
Beetle rules: Bugs under a beetle carcasses may take a move turn to “shake it off” if there is an adjacent empty hex for the carcass. Spiders may consume an adjacent beetle carcass (one level up), though the spider may not climb up if it does so.
Zombie/Queen rules:
1> All bugs of the losing player are flipped, becoming zombies.
2> Any player may move zombie bugs (Queen movement) as a normal move.
3> Living Queen gains a special move: Sting = Queen can kill/remove an adjacent zombie unless doing so would break the hive.
Beetles: A zombie beetle can crawl along/off other bugs, but may not climb up again. For purposes of the Queen’s sting, a zombie beetle above a Queen is only adjacent to the Queen if it is directly on top of her.
Last Queen standing wins. 🙂
Especially when playing black, if you play your queen on the second or third turn (never play it on the first turn, as previously stated), it opens up a bunch of moves, and lessens the first placement advantage that white gets.
Many players like to play the queen as their first tile, allowing them move their first piece very quickly (as soon as the 3rd move if necessary). Unfortunately if both players do this than the game ends in a draw quite often. A simple fix for this is to not allow the queen bee to be placed on the first move of the game. This rule is also commonly used in tournament play.
Maybe (at some point) your queen-bee is semi-surrounded by 3 enemy bugs, in a way that leaves room for your queen to move. If you move your queen right along the 3rd enemy bug, you create a chain (queen being the end of that chain) and you lock down these enemy bugs! This is a rookie mistake (and probably a winning move), but it’s not too uncommon – so keep an eye not to do it yourself! 🙂
The spiders are by far the hardest piece to do something useful because of their hard restrictions. Consider playing them VERY early, like first or second piece and try to quickly run around the opposing queen and tie her up. Even one border to the enemy queen held by a spider is GREAT. Ants can always quickly go where they are needed and the locusts can often be played at endgame to fill in the last slots (and the same goes for the beetle).
This is the rule that can be used to reduce the number of Hive games ending in a draw:
* The first player must not play the Bee as their first tile. Then a move that positions one Bee next to another one is illegal unless it wins the game immediately.
Ants are the most powerful bugs of your army; they move all around the hive in one move. I find them very useful to lock down enemy pieces (at start/mid-game), before the final coup de grace.
An aggressive opening (especially if you’re playing 2nd), would be: the spider(1st tile)-ant(2nd tile). You can follow with the bee(3rd tile) or another ant(3rd tile), depending on your opponent’s opening. Placing your queen-bee as a 3rd tile (2nd move), means you can start harassing/locking down enemy bugs (an enemy ant would be the best) as your 3rd move.
In this game it’s quite common to see long chains of insects tying up each other, every second one belong to the respective player. Even though you may have ants trapped in the chain, think twice before losen it up if you have the ending piece. Your opponent will also benefit from getting some more options, and as long as you have the ending piece you can decide when to let go. It’s not always a bad thing to keep things locked down, especially if your opponent allready have fewer pieces available for legal moves.
The Beetle can drop down and take up a required space if it is above the Queen – don’t forget to take that into account when playing.
Keep your ants from getting blocked or stuck on a section of the hive. They are your most versatile units for trapping the queen.