Hive

Hello there, First name / friend! It's patio season here in St. Louis and I thought that would be the perfect time to talk about some great patio games. To me a patio game has components that won't blow away and doesn't take up a lot of space. It's also not going to be too complicated. The first game I want to introduce is Hive. It takes less than 10 minutes to learn and about 5-10 minutes to play.

Hive is a 2-player game. One player takes the white tiles, the other black. Your goal is to surround your opponent's queen bee before they surround yours. You have 5 different types of bugs and each have a different movement.

 

The yellow queen bee can only move one space. Refer to the image above to see what 1 move looks like. In the image in the middle, the queen bee is stuck (I'll go over that below).

 

The purple beetle also moves just one space, but it can move on top of another bug. When this happens, the bug(s) underneath cannot move.

 

The green grasshopper jumps in a line from its space over any number of bugs to the next empty space. Below is an example of how I moved a grasshopper (to win the game I might add 😉).

 

 

The brown spider moves exactly 3 spaces per turn. It cannot backtrack and must always be in direct contact with another piece. 

 

Before we play, also note that you cannot move a bug if it splits the hive in two. The hive is what we call all of the pieces played. Bugs are also only moved in a sliding movement, with the exception of the grasshopper and the beetle when it's going on top of or down from another bug. This is why the queen bee in the first picture cannot move. 

 

That's it! We are ready to play! Play starts with each player playing one bug from their hand. I chose the beetle and Adam chose the spider. Then I will place another bug so that it's touching my black tile, but not his white. This will be true for any future placements. We will take turns placing bugs. Note that you MUST play your queen bee within your first 4 turns and only after that can you start to move tiles instead of placing a new one. 

 

 

You'll continue to take turns placing or moving tiles until someone's queen bee is surrounded. It only takes 5-10 minutes, I've found. In my grasshopper pictures above, you can see how I used that move to win the game. 

 

I love how quick this one is and it's perfect for the patio or for travel. It also comes with this great carrying case! 

Instead of shopping links, I'm including previous emails just in case you missed them! 

Happy playing!

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