To Bee or not to Bee?
Queenz is a set collection and pattern building game for 2-4 players which is played in turns. On your turn you have two options; plant a field or collect flowers.
To plant a field you simply select one of the five Tetris shaped field tiles available and fill it with some combination of flowers and hives from your supply. For every new area of 2 or more flowers of the same colour, you'll immediately score points equal to the number of tiles in that area.
You'll also be able to collect a honey pot of the same colour if you don't have one already. If you can collect honey pots of all five colours you'll earn a 'diversified production' award. Yes, that's the actual name given in the rulebook, for a fairly abstract lightweight game about bees I can only guess that something got lost in the translation here. These awards are worth more points to the first player to achieve them so there is a real incentive to get them quickly.
Scoring 10 vp for the bees in adjacent spaces this is a great hive
That sounds simple enough but you also need to consider where you're placing your hives and bees for final scoring. At this point, hives are just dead space, but at the end of the game each hive scores one point for each bee in a space adjacent to it, and these points can often be the difference between victory and defeat.
Taking the final field tile will also net you a victory point, but will refill the selection giving other players more choice after you.
Take the blue bees, two yellow flowers or a blue, pink and yellow...so many choices!
Collecting flowers is a little more complex. To do this you need to look at the line of flower tokens that the Gardener token is stood next to. You may take from this row or column in the garden any combination that matches one of the following three conditions:
Any 1 tile
Any 2 tiles as long as they don't contain bees
Any 3 tiles as long as they don't share a colour and don't contain any bees
If you take a flower with a queen bee (a single bee on the flower) you're also able to switch it for a flower already planted. This is the only way to fix mistakes or improve placement after it's done.
Once you've collected your flowers the Gardener is moved forward a number of spaces equal to the number of flowers you collected. If the Gardener has arrived at an empty row you receive a victory point and the flower garden is refreshed additionally if the Gardener has completed a circuit of the garden you receive a victory point and both the available field tiles and the flower garden are refreshed.
The game ends when one player plants a fifth field and the remaining players are permitted one final turn and can only partially fill a field if necessary.
This is the third game I'm reviewing from Mandoo Games and while it is definitely my favourite, after the previous two I was a little surprised by the poor component quality in this one.
The garden board is already warping
On the one hand I understand the use of thin card stock from a cost perspective. On the player boards, score track and the garden board this doesn't make a huge difference to gameplay (though it's still annoying), but on the Tetris pieces, which are already fiddly to interlock, this is going to be a real issue. I managed to bend one of them getting it out of the punchboard and ongoing wear and tear is going to reduce the lifespan of the game.
The scoring tokens don't fit on the scoreboard
More frustrating though is the scoreboard design. The scoring tokens are pretty small and probably couldn't be made any smaller without making them annoying to handle. Unfortunately, they haven't scaled the scoreboard to match, so as you can see the four tokens in this image cover five spaces on the score track. This is a game where close scores are common so this is a real nuisance.
The gameplay offers a great balance of two core strategies. You can collect lots of flowers, planting quickly and continuously extend fields, maybe grabbing a diversified production award along the way, or you can plan for the end game taking fewer flowers, prioritising bees and ensuring your hives are scoring powerhouses. I've seen both played to the extreme and achieve victory and I've seen players blend the two to succeed as well.
When you initially play you'll take the best flowers and or fields for yourself each time, not really concerning yourself with the options you leave other players, but as you become more experienced you'll find that sometimes planting early will be to your advantage, or that you should take fewer flowers leaving the next player with a less optimal choice.
As some scoring takes place as you play, while the rest is added at the end and both can score a vast amount of points, it's difficult to be certain how far ahead or behind you are. This is actually a good thing as players are less prone to becoming discouraged and can keep focusing on achieving what they can.
Queenz offers clear straightforward rules and rewarding strategic choices from the first play, with the option to grow into more nuanced decisions as you gain familiarity with its mechanics. The playtime is spot on, it really doesn't outstay its welcome. The theme, though only really pasted onto an abstract frame, shouldn't be threatening to anyone and it features only indirect interaction making it perfect for families. This one might be making an appearance at Christmas with the family.
Note that I was given a free copy of this game for the purposes of providing a review.
If you'd like to try any of this week's reviewed games from Mandoo Games I'll be bringing them to Stabcon South 1st-3rd November where they will be available to try.
