Apiary Unboxing and Components Review

Apiary is one of the more interesting titles to come from Stonemaier Games in my opinion. All Stonemaier products are fantastic, but something about Apiary had me really excited to get it out of the box the second it arrived. Let’s take a look at what comes in the box!

There is a bit of punching required before your first game, but the pieces punch really easily and also have fantastic places for storage in the awesome insert included in the box. While other companies would use cardboard tokens to represent resources, Stonemaier Games goes all out with amazing wooden pieces shaped after the resources they are suppose to represent. They are the quality you would expect from this company!

The crème-de-la-crème of this box, however, are the Bee Dice. Yes, you heard that right, bee Dice! Each bee has 4 sides to them, labeled one through 4. These work into the games mechanics in a wonderful way – more in our review – and are of fantastic quality. There is also a larger bee miniature used to track the movement between different planets – it comes with a clear stand to elevate it off the play surface so it can “fly” around!

The board is great, and has a lot of iconography all over it to help you remember what is what, and where certain actions happen. I’ve always been a fan of boards made by Stonemaier, and this is no exception! The Stonemaier Games linen finish rule book is here as well, which I absolutely love.

If there is one thing I’m not crazy about in this box, it has to be the player mats and hove extensions. They are made of pretty thin materials that will tear relatively easily. There are also times when you need to slide cards underneath this “board” and it doesn’t work well.

Overall, however the components are fantastic, and I think it’s bodes well for the overall gameplay when the components are this good! A lot of care and consideration went into producing this game, and it’s better for it.