The original plan for today was to play a four player game of Memoir 44. But for reasons (I say reasons because we have no idea why the fourth player never turned up) we only had three players.

Luckily I had decided to grab a back up plan for such a situation. Which we decided to go with.

So instead of Memoir we set up to play Apiary.

Below are the faction and hive mats that each of us used.

• Utel – The Log (Jeff)
• Iber – The Warre (John)
• Carpa – The Langstroth (me)

I actually planted seed cards! The first game I’ve managed to plant any and I do four.

I completed my hive mat, and a frame. Plus upgraded my faction tile.

I think I explored twice during the game, and did one retrieval. After I got a tile that allowed me to retrieve a worker and activate a farm every time I did a research action I was researching a lot. It was getting me a seed card and victory points.

There was a moment early on when I did hate buy a tile to stop Jeff having it. If he’d been allowed to get it, along with his faction ability he’d have gotten two basic resources of his choice every explore action on top of everything else.

I triggered the end of the game, and below is how the scores stood after all the smoke had cleared.

I have to say if Jeff or John had those scores in my previous two games they would have won. And Jeff did so much better than I did in my first play.

I’m just taken aback by how high my score was. Especially considering my first two plays.

A great afternoon though despite our original plan falling through.