Deploy your worker bees, collect pollen, and build the most glorious hives!
What Is Propolis?
Propolis is a material made by bees, a mixture of beeswax and spit and plant substances, to fill gaps in their hives. Propolis—the primary subject of this post—is a bee-themed worker placement game for 1 to 4 players, ages 10 and up, and takes about 15–30 minutes to play. (According to the box, at least—I’ve found it generally takes a bit longer than that particularly if you have more players, but presumably it will get faster as players are more experienced.) It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of $ for a copy of the game. (The Kickstarter campaign is for two different titles—you can check out my review of Point Galaxy here.) Propolis also includes elements of area control, tableau building, and engine building—but we’ll get to all that later.
Propolis was designed by Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, and Shawn Stankewich and published by Flatout Games with AEG, with illustrations by Dylan Mangini.
New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.
Propolis Components
Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality.
Here’s what comes in the box:
- 4 Player boards
- 60 Structure/Landscape cards
- 12 Starting Structure/Queen’s Palace cards
- 16 Solo Mode cards
- 48 Worker Beeples (12 per player color)
- 24 Resource markers(6 per player in 6 different colors)
Kickstarter backers will also get the mini-expansion included, which adds 4 more starting/palace cards and 12 more structure/landscape cards.
All of the cards are double-sided: the bulk of the cards have structures on one side and landscapes on the other. Structures (seen above) are cute little buildings with names like “Marigold Blacksmith” and “Coneflower Bakery.” Each one has the cost to build it at the bottom (a combination of beeples and pollen), and then what it provides at the top. They can generate points, permanent resources, or provide one-time bonuses like extra beeples or pollen. Structures are labeled with a letter from A to D—the typeface is meant to give it that medieval look, but can be a little harder to read at a distance or if you’re sitting at a weird angle from the market.
The backs of the structures are landscape cards—these are where you’ll send your beeples to gather resources. The hex spaces correspond to the five different types of flowers where you can collect pollen. Green circles (showing a bee) are where you can get more beeples, and the grey square spaces are for trading resources. The areas of the cards are distinguished by color and icon, as well as the background illustrations. One thing that I didn’t see anywhere in the rulebook was names for the five different flowers—the yellow ones look like sunflowers and the purple is lavender, but we weren’t entirely sure what to call the others, so mostly we just referred to them by color name. I think it would add just a little more of the flavor to identify the flowers by name.
The smaller set of cards is starting structures and Queen’s palaces. Starting structures are a little basic hive. Each one shows you some number of starting resources at the bottom of the card, and at the top there’s a letter and also a permanent resource—that gives you a discount any time you want to build something that requires that resource. The starting structures all have the same type of scoring: 2 points for a set of two particular letters. It’s likely that you’ll have at least some overlap with other players for the letters that you want, and it’s even possible for two players to have the exact same requirements (though with other differences in the structures).
The backs of the starting structure cards show Queen’s Palaces. Each player may only build one of these at most, and they are the hardest to build—they require beeples and a number of permanent resources, which means you’ll have to build a lot of other structures first instead of just collecting pollen. They’re worth 3 or 4 points each, but the big bonus is that they are a wild letter—at the end of the game you can decide which letter will give you the biggest benefit.
The worker beeples are very cute, and designed so they can be placed standing up or flat. The resource markers are little wooden hexagons, which slot nicely into the player board cutouts so you can track your various resources. The player boards have tracks for all of your pollen, plus a smaller track in the bottom corner for wild resources.
The whole thing comes in a small box—although the game ends up taking quite a bit of space on the table, it’s primarily cards and so it doesn’t take up a lot of space when packed up. The player boards are the largest components, sized to fit in the same box dimensions as Point Salad (and many of Flatout Games’ other titles).
How to Play Propolis
You can download a draft of the rulebook here.
The Goal
The goal of the game is to score the most points by building structures.
Setup
The central area is set up with Queen’s Palace cards, the landscape, and a structure market. Set out a number of Queen’s Palace cards face-up based on the player count, and put the rest away in the box. For the landscape, shuffle the landscape deck and lay out 2 or 3 rows of 4 cards each—the number of rows depends on the player count. Finally, deal out 10 structures face-up to form a market. Set the deck nearby.
Each player gets a player board and a random starting structure, which shows their starting resources, marked on your player board. Everyone takes 9 of their beeples into their personal supply, and puts the other 3 near the landscape cards. The starting structures are numbered at the bottom right—the player with the lowest number goes first, and play goes clockwise from there.
Gameplay
On your turn, you take one of these actions: Deploy, Fortify, Retreat, Construct Structure, or Construct Queen’s Palace.
Deploy: choose an empty landscape card, and place up to 1 beeple per space, and then gain those resources. Hexes provide pollen, green circles give you more beeples from the main supply, and grey spaces let you trade pollen for other pollen. Note that you do not have to fill a card, but you cannot place beeples on a card that already has any beeples on it, even your own.
If you place beeples on the last remaining card in a row, you gain 1 wild resource, and then there will be a check for majority at the end of your turn (explained later).
Fortify: Choose any two of your beeples on the landscape and fortify them, and regain those resources/bonuses.
(Note: the rules say to deploy them standing up, and then lay them down when you fortify, but my gaming group all agreed that it’s easier to place a bunch of bees flat and then only stand up the fortified ones—plus it seems to make more sense visually—so that’s what my photos show.)
Retreat: remove any number of beeples from the landscape and put them back into your personal supply. You may leave any number of your beeples on the landscape.
Construct Structure: Spend the resources to build one of the structures from the market, placing it in front of you, and then refill the market with a new structure. Permanent resources on your existing structures act as a discount, and wild resources may be spent as any color pollen. For instance, in the photo above, the Trillium Shop costs 2 beeples, 3 orange pollen, and 3 pink pollen. I have plenty of beeples, and since my starting structure provides 1 orange pollen, I only need to spend 2 from my supply. I only have 1 pink pollen, but I do have 1 wild pollen as well, so that covers the pink cost. After building this, I now have a permanent wild resource that can be used each time I construct.
Construct Queen’s Palace: Build one of the Queen’s Palace cards from the market. Note that Queen’s Palaces may only be build using permanent resources, not pollen from your supply. Each player may only have one Queen’s Palace.
At the end of your turn, check to see if any of the landscape rows has been filled—that is, there are no completely empty cards. (It’s okay if some of the cards have empty spaces, as long as they aren’t totally empty). If so, then you will check for majority to see who controls the row. Count the number of beeples each player has in that row, with fortified beeples counting as 2. Whoever has the majority will get all of their beeples from that row back to their supply, and can earn 1 wild resource if they weren’t the active player this turn.
Then, remove the right-most empty card and discard it. Slide everything to the right to fill gaps, and refill the row from the deck. It’s possible for there to be a tie for majority—in that case, nobody earns a wild resource and no beeples are removed. The tie may be broken on a future turn if somebody fortifies in that row, or retreats some workers.
In the photo above, the teal player just filled the row on their turn, so they earned 1 wild resource for doing so. They have the majority now (8 to 2) but since they’re the active player, they do not earn another wild resource. They’ll clear all of their beeples from this row. The pink/yellow landscape card at the right will be discarded, and a new landscape card will be refilled on the left side of the row.
Game End
When any player has built 10 structure cards (including their starting structure and Queen’s Palace), finish that round so that all players have had the same number of total turns. Then score!
Some structures have a flat score. Some, including your starting structure, score points for specific sets of letters that you’ve built. Finally, there are structures that will score points based on pairs of resources—these count both permanent resources and pollen left in your supply. (If you have wild resources left over, you may count each one as any single pollen.)
You also score your total remaining resources on your board (not permanent), divided by five.
The player with the highest score wins, with ties going to the player with the most remaining resources, and then the most remaining wild resources.
Why You Should Play Propolis
There’s a part of me that wonders if the initial spark for Propolis was a bit of wordplay: “propolis” as a bee’s construction material, “-opolis” as in cities, worker bees and worker placement. Whatever the origins, the results are a clever blend of mechanics that makes this small game feel like something a bit bigger.
Propolis‘ combination of worker placement to collect resources with area control in the fields is an interesting twist on the genre. The area control kind of sneaks in there—at first, you’re just placing bees to get resources you want, and maybe you fortify because you really want another lavender and there isn’t another free space on the board. But as the landscape starts to fill up, you realize that going in one location may give you resources you want, but will give another player a wild resource and their bees. Another location might not have the resource you want, but you could get a whole pile of bees back into your supply. But is it better to wait it out and see if somebody else might earn you a wild resource?
Fortifying can also be used as a stalling tactic when you’re low on beeples in your supply, because it always feels like something went wrong when you have to retreat, taking a turn just to take some bees back. If you fortify enough times, maybe you can wait out somebody filling up a row where you’ll have majority control.
Understanding how the cards will clear out after majority is also important, because it can let players manipulate the landscape a little bit. You can see by the lengths of the resource tracks on the player boards the relative rarity of the different pollens—there are the most yellow spaces, and the fewest purple. Of course, there’s still luck involved, since some cards will end up getting flipped over as structures, in which case they’ll never return to the landscape rows. In some games, I’ve seen players take up positions simply to help particular cards stick around a little bit longer after majority is checked.
The engine building comes into play with the structures that have permanent resources. They usually aren’t worth as many points, but if you can find a structure that has a letter you already want and it provides a permanent resource, it can pay off, especially getting it early in the game. Wild permanent resources are particularly valuable, of course, but they often get snapped up as soon as they appear in the market if somebody can afford them. And, of course, since you can only buy a Queen’s Palace using permanent resources, you’ll definitely need to plan ahead to get the right ones. That part reminds me a little bit of Splendor, where you could decide how much you want to go for tiles that generate more resources vs. tiles that just generate more points.
Another strategy is to go after the points combos. If your starting card gives you points for C-D sets, then finding another structure that also scores for the same letters will let you double up. Or, maybe you hedge your bets: get another card that scores for A-B sets, and now you’ve covered your bases. There are even a few that will score 4 points for A-B-C-D; of course, with a maximum of 10 structures, that means you can only score that card twice, but 8 points is still a pretty good chunk in this game.
Finally, there’s the resource strategy (though it’s probably not a good standalone strategy). Leftover resources are worth basically 1/5 of a point each, but there are a lot of structures that will give you points for pairs. If you can get a few of those buildings and combine them with some aggressive resource collection and also build a few of the permanent resources that match, that could end up being pretty valuable as well.
The game does end up being pretty quick (though I haven’t gotten close to that 15-minute mark—maybe for a solo game?), considering how much is going on. It feels a little different from a lot of the other Flatout Games titles since it’s a little closer to a traditional Eurogame than the puzzly drafting games that they’re known for, but overall I think it’s a solid game for players who like games about building things.
For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Propolis Kickstarter page!
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Disclosure: GeekDad was loaned a prototype of this game for review purposes.
