One of my favourite kinds of packages to arrive; One from Stonemaier games. I have yet to play my latest purchases, however I did get to unbox them yesterday afternoon. Let's dive in!
First up: Apiary: Expanding the Hive expansion.
This is a "More Stuff" expansion. You can see from the picture above that there's plenty MORE with this first expansion.
7 new hive mats is probably the thing I'm most excited about. That gives a total of 12 I believe. Awesome!
Fifteen replacement frames!! Whoa. The base game frames (these can be added to expand your hive) were all the same. With these new frames, you can see they all are different and offer more variation in the bonuses you can get if you fill them up. Cool!
More tiles to ADD and a few to replace permanently!
A couple permanent faction tile replacements, along with some more stuff to add. Oke doke! 😃
This appendix book along with a few notes about some expansion stuff is a replacement for the base game appendix (basically just putting more into one book, and fixing up some of the tile replacement details).
OH! A "mystery envelope". I was very curious immediately.
Inside was the frame tiles (pic above) and MORE seed cards. WOO HOO!!!!
Lastly with the Apiary expansion I wanted to show my fellow ST gang a subtle rule change while playing against the Automa: Whenever the Automa takes the grow action, you now remove the top frame from the stack and put it underneath. This makes sense since the frames are now all different. 😀
NEXT up... Tapestry Revised Civilizations:
Pretty straight forward and as it sounds. The stack of civilizations (top middle) are ALL civs from the base game and ALL expansions. Sweet! Looks like you can play them without needing to necessarily have the expansion, which is cool.
The top right card shows the shapes of the landmarks that you place on your city map, but also on the opposite side it shows the difficulty rating for ALL civilizations and which expansion/base game they belong to. Nice little touch.
The two city maps pictured on the bottom, are permanent replacements for their base game counter parts of the same name.
NEXT.... Tapestry Plans & Ploys:
This expansion is (for the most part) a "More Stuff" expansion as well.
Notice the round tokens to the right of the above pic? These are landmarks that are found on the technology tracks on the main board. These are optional tokens to place, as an easy visual reminder of what landmarks are still available to snag up.
Ok, kind of a sad thing to admit, but this was a big exciting thing for me to have this first expansion for this game; The tile bag. 🤣 Yep. A plain, drawstring back that you draw the map tiles from instead of having to take them out of the ziploc bags and stacking them up every time you play. What can I say - I'm a simple guy! And I'm happy! 😂
Finally, the only addition to the game otherwise that this expansion adds (other than some more tapestry and automa civ cards) is the landmark cards. This is a nice simple addition to this game. At the start of the game each player is dealt a landmark card. This landmark is available for that player only. After a round, if you've completed the requirements on your landmark card, you can place that landmark on your city map. So a little extra way to get some points and fill your map, but nothing drastic. I like it.
Can't wait to play some "more stuff" games this week sometime!!! Woo! 🤗
Whoa, that's a lot of "more stuff", Derek. Will it fit into their respective 'base game' boxes, or do you generally keep the expansion boxes, anyway?
You're a simple guy, but what about one of these with Bargain Ninja or Stonemaier Stallion embroidered on it? 🙂