Propolis [Preview] – What’s Eric Playing?

Base price: $XX.
1 – 4 players.
play time: 15 – 30 minutes.
BGG Link
Check it out on Kickstarter! (Will update link when Kickstarter is live.)
Logged plays: 2

Full disclosure: A preview copy of Propolis was provided by Flatout games. Some art, gameplay, or other aspects of the game may change between this preview and the fulfillment of the Kickstarter, should it fund, as this is a preview of a currently unreleased game. 

So this is going to be the second review of Polis Week, where I review a bunch of games with “Polis” in the title. City-building, thematically, is an ongoing favorite thing (even on the video game side), so getting to play more board games that concern themselves with it in one way or another is incredibly fun for me. I am, however, unfortunately a bit burnt out from travel and just a general job-related fatigue, so I’ll be brief here. Polis Week continues and concludes.

In Propolis, you are worker bees striving to build the greatest palace for your greatest bee: your Queen. You will stop at nothing to build a town worthy of her greatness, even if it means you have to fight other bees for resources necessary to make her (and your) dreams come true. Place bees, claim resources, fortify, and occasionally withdraw as you place workers to get what you need. Will you attain unbeelievable success?

Contents

Setup

Not a ton of setup, but still some. First, let each player pick a player color and take a player board in that color:

Then, give them the corresponding beeples and a resource tracker of each color. Each (including the gold Wild resources) should be set to 1.

Shuffle up the Starting Structure cards and give each player one; they also add the corresponding starting resources on the card on their player boards.

Flip them over and deal 5 / 6 / 7 for 1 – 2 / 3 / 4 players; these will be the Queen’s Palaces that are in play for the game.

Shuffle the other double-sided Structure / Landscape cards. Deal 10 face-up in two rows of 5 to form the Structure Market; deal 2 / 3 / 4 rows of 4 Landscape cards to make the Landscape for 1 – 2 / 3 / 4 players.

You’re ready to start! The player with the lowest-numbered Starting Structure card goes first.

Gameplay

Your goal here is to earn points by building various structures! Just watch out, as getting resources may not be as easy as you anticipated.

On your turn, you may take any one of the following actions.

• Place Beeples on a card. Choose any completely empty card and place up to one beeple per space on the card, standing up. Earn the corresponding resource (or beeple, or trade one resource for another, depending on the space). If you place on the last empty card in a row, gain 1 Wild Resource.
• Fortify up to two Beeples. Choose any of your beeples and lay them down, once again collecting the resource (or other benefit) for their space. If you lay down a beeple in a row with no empty Landscape cards, gain 1 Wild Resource.
• Retrieve all Beeples. You can just take your beeples back from Landscape cards as an action, though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. You can leave any beeples (fortified or not) in place.
• Build a Structure. Spend resources equal to the Structure’s cost (including any beeples, placing them in the center) to take a Structure of your choice and add it to your tableau. Some will reward you with additional beeples and others will give you a Permanent Resource, discounting subsequent costs of that type by 1. Immediately refill the Structure Market.
• Build a Queen’s Palace. This works very similarly to building a Structure, but you can only use the Permanent Resources from other structure cards to pay the fee (along with any beeples).

Once you’ve done an action, your turn ends. Then, check both Landscape Rows to see if either are completely filled. If all cards in a row have beeples on them, then check for a majority! If any player has an outright majority (fortified beeples are worth 2, rather than 1), they claim the majority and may immediately return all of their beeples in that row to their supply. If it’s not their turn, they also gain 1 Wild Resource! Then, discard the rightmost empty card in the Landscape Row, slide the cards to the right, and draw a new Landscape card to replace the discarded one. Check the other row in the same way.

If, at the end of a player’s turn, they have ten Structure cards, finish the round and then the game ends. score player cards (and 1 point for every 5 remaining resources), and the player with the most points wins!

Player Count Differences

Propolis has some nontrivial player count differences beyond just setup changes. Yes, there are generally more cards available at higher player counts to compensate for there being more players pulled from the market, but that doesn’t quite matter as much as some of the gameplay impact of more players. With fewer players, the area control element of the Landscape cards can feel a bit back-and-forth, since you’re directly facing off against one other person. A dummy player or some randomly-played beeples could have made this a bit more interesting, I feel, but also more volatile. With more players, spoilers can emerge: players who have no shot of a majority but can prevent you getting one on your next turn if that was your plan, or something. It means that there’s a bit more shifting happening, especially since the players who lose leave their beeples in place on the cards; now, you might win but only clear out one or two cards, instead of two or three. That ends up working better for me, structurally, and I prefer the game with more people as a result. That said, if they had something to mix things up at two players, I’d probably like the game better at that player count, as well.

Strategy

• Ideally, you want your structures to synergize with each other. Many structures give points for having other structures or pairs of structures with certain letters. Getting a bunch of those is generally a solid idea. If you’re not doing that, you run the risk of just getting a bunch of singletons and not being able to scale your score.
• Don’t take the permanent resources for granted! They make it much easier to buy subsequent structures. It’s a little bit of engine-building, in effect, as each permanent resource you get discounts subsequent buildings by that resource and makes it eventually possible for you to get a Queen’s Palace. If you opt not to get any permanent resources, then you’re going to be spending a lot of time doing resource collection.
• If you’re getting unlucky on the draw, you may need to pivot. Not all of the cards you need are going to come up, and it’s decently likely that you can set a plan and then none of the cards you need come up at all. It’s a bit frustrating, but that’s the nature of random card markets. Just be ready to shift strategies a bit if need be.
• Resource exchange spaces are pretty handy. Some resource spaces may not come up at all (we’ve struggled to get pink and purple resources in various games), so having the ability to swap resources you have too many of for resources that are harder to get can be pretty clutch. Plus, then you can block off those spaces so other players can’t have them.
• If you have a lot of beeples saved up, you might even just initiate an area control check even if you’re not going to win just because you get a free wild resource. Wild resources are helpful, and sometimes clearing out spaces occupied by your opponent’s beeples is valid, even if they end up taking some of those spaces back on the next turn. Plus, it cycles in a new Landscape card each time, which means different options. Not necessarily better options, but certainly different ones.
• You don’t necessarily need a Queen’s Palace to win, if you’re getting sufficient points elsewhere. They’re pretty useful, since they contribute any type of building you want in addition to points, but they’re also pretty expensive. You need to have a bunch of permanent resources in play to be able to afford one, which is tough.
• Fortifying is absolutely a valid and useful move! Sometimes the best spots are the ones you already occupy. Fortifying not only strengthens your position for the area control check, but also lets you reactivate two of those sites. It’s a very nice move!

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• Bee meeples are always a hoot. Beeples is just much more fun to say than meeples. Plus, they’re bee-shaped! Just be careful; the antennae are a bit thin, so they’re liable to break off.
• The color scheme for this game is very good. It’s got a lot of magenta and royal blue and teal, and it looks great! I particularly like that they went for a nonstandard color scheme for the player pieces.
• I also appreciate that they went through the trouble of naming all the structures; it’s fun. It’s that kind of whimsy that I look for when I’m playing games, to be honest. I need it at every level of the game, and naming all the buildings is a silly way to ensure I’m a bit more into the theme of the game.
• A much quicker game than I expected, once everyone has the hang of it. I think it helps that the turns are pretty short, so you can move pretty fast once you know what you’re doing. I was surprised when the box said it was a 15 – 30 minute game, but honestly, it’s gotten pretty close to that even with new players. I was pretty pleased!
• The double-sided cards are all very nice for their various purposes. It’s a nice way to save on having to make extra cards, but I particularly like the double-sided Landscape cards also being Structure cards; it means you can’t necessarily rely on what’s going to come next on either stack. Makes things a bit less predictable and more exciting.
• Lots of different moving parts lends itself well to lots of different strategies, which is cool. You can go for a lot of resources or go after building an efficient engine or try to rush the game with cheap buildings or a variety of other things. Plus, I imagine there will be some exciting other things added via the Kickstarter.
• The engine-building elements of the permanent resources are really cool too. It makes the game feel a bit like Splendor, which is an easy classic, but I like how the worker placement elements help you get resources. It’s almost Realm of Sand, but with worker placement instead of tile placement.

Mehs

• Odd font choice for the A / B / C / D on cards; it’s not the easiest to read. Maybe it’s just me? No idea.
• I’m surprised there’s no way to refresh the Structure Market. It would be nice to get a few more cards into the mix between rounds, especially if you’re looking for something.

Cons

• The starting cards generally require you to get pairs of some structure type, which can be frustrating if the market gets stale and you can’t get your hands on one. I think it’s almost becoming a meme that Flatout just loves static random markets, but who knows. Having the starting cards require that you get certain cards to score more points seems to benefit players essentially at random (especially if you have overlap with other players and your required cards don’t come up as much), which can be frustrating.

Overall: 7.5 / 10

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by Propolis! I tend to be a bit mid on worker placement games. Not that I don’t like them; they’re just not usually my preferred genre. This worker placement spin on a classic resource collection game with a bit of area control added in is just my speed. It’s also quick, which I really appreciate? Bees were a decently popular theme a few years ago, so it’s nice to see a few bee games still coming down the pipeline, too. Flatout spared no expense though: the player boards are great, the bee meeples are fun, and the art and color scheme are particularly excellent. It’s just a fun, quick, and pleasant light strategy game. It’s also got the right amount of whimsy to it for a colorful game about bee structures. I’d love to see things like variable player powers, some day, or at least some way to refresh the Structure Market, but them’s kind of the breaks with Flatout. Maybe they’re doing it to me personally; that feels the most likely. But I’d still play Propolis again. I’ve been really enjoying it. If you’re down for a quick and light worker placement game, you enjoy area control or light strategy, or you just like bees, Propolis will likely be right up your alley!

If you enjoyed this review and would like to support What’s Eric Playing? in the future, please check out my Patreon. Thanks for reading!