Saturday, October 21, 2006

Protect your Hive

Today, let's talk about boardgame called "Hive" which has been available for several years as a "deluxe wooden edition" and just recently released (even in the Czech Republic) as the cheaper bakelite edition with nice carrying pouch (pictured).

Hive

(The above is a valid in-game configuration of playing pieces, but probably not very strategically sound. I just wanted to squeeze them all to that small space.)

I'm not going to explain Hive rules to you. They are available at the official site (where you can also play against computer opponent [who sucks]). The object of the game is to protect your queen bee from being surrounded while at the same time trying to surround opponent's queen bee. Various insects have various rules of movement (yes, I know spider is not an insect, smartass) and the playing pieces themselves form the playing board (the "hive"), which must never be broken up (although it constantly changes shape.

Interesting feature (rare nowadays) of this game is that "Hive" has absolutely no randomness. Both players have the same pieces, there is no dice or random drawing of playing pieces, it depends solely on your strategic skills. It's just like Chess (probably slightly less complex rules than Chess).

One game lasts about 20 minutes and the only drawback is that "Hive" can only be played by exactly two players.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where did you buy it? I am from the Czech Republic.

František Fuka said...

Prodejna "Hras", pasaz Rokoko, u Vaclavaku.

Anonymous said...

Da se to objednat po netu? Nemohl jsem nic vygooglit. :/

Anonymous said...

There's another interesting and new strategic game comparable to chess. It's called Arimaa (look at arimaa.com). It's playable with regular chess pieces and has about 200 chances of moves in the middle game (chess has about 40). This means that good human player is unbeatable by any computer (algorithms are still based on a brute-force approach). Rules are explained in a few minutes by 7-year old boy (son of the game creator) in a Flash tutorital and then you can start to play instantly.
And if you write a program that beats the best human player, you'll win $ 20 000. It's really motivating.

Anonymous said...

V Rokoku vyprodáno, další prý budou za tři týdny.

Anonymous said...

Killer bees!

Anonymous said...

Aha, tohle bude ta bloggerská skrytá placená recenze, tuhle jsem šel kolem pasáže Rokoko a byla tam 115m fronta a bral to úplně každej (někdo i dvakrát, pro tchýni)! Dokonce se mi zdálo, že jsem ve frontě zahlédl R.H.! ;-)

Anonymous said...

A kterýho? Já znal dva...

Andrej said...

spider is not insect?

Anonymous said...

I know, I know! Spider is mamal! Cause he sucks blood, isn´t it?