My son made a late-season request for one of his favorite games of my game collection: Hive—and thanks to my local acrylic supplier could grab a few of the colors I didn’t already have in stock. And a couple late nights—and it’s done! Whew!
So I designed the set to be smaller/more portable (31.5mm) than the original tile game (38mm), but a little bigger than the normal Hive Pocket game. (The bug hexes you see on each tile are the same 25mm size as the original Pocket edition.)
And then, while designing and tweaking the bugs and overall color design to have a more graphical style, I wanted the pieces to ‘read’ better than the black/white-only Carbon (original size) set while still having some of the elegance that set introduced. Also made for a good time to create the published fan expansion tiles (like the Butterfly, Mantis and Earthworm) including a dazzling twist on the Honeycombo tile (center).
And then to finish it off, the flip side of his favorite Queen Bee (black) is engraved with the Venom fan expansion Wasp, along with his ‘kingly’ initials. (Still haven’t got all the rest of the Venom-edition bugs that engrave on the flip sides of the tiles designed, so that last step will be finished over the Christmas holiday using a placement jig.)
Maybe the only ‘druthers’ I have at the moment is that I wish I had more choices in shades of brown (for the Spider) than only one my local supplier stocks. But one thing that helps is that the translucent/semi-opaque acrylic colors reflect light in pretty ways, so many of the colors look even more brilliant in person.
This is awesome! It used to be one of my favorite games to play with my youngest daughter back when she thought it was cool playing board games with dad (I’m hoping she comes back to that thinking someday).
Thanks for the compliment! My son was about 6 years old when I first got Hive and we loved playing this together as well. He’s now a senior in high school and a lot better at it than me — and thankfully still loves to play boardgames of all sorts with me and the fam. Until making this gift request he has coopted my set to take along to play with his friends during lunch time—a favorite with all of them, too.
The inlay tweaking, cutting, gluing and polishing took a few of recent late nights, but I was also juggling some other gift-cutting projects at the same time, too. But yeah, last weekend I worked several hours on all the vector Illustrator work getting ready for producing them. Guess I really oughta include that time, too. LOL
First vector work file started on 12/20 at 9:30am, so still not bad turn around for a few days before Christmas amid finishing about 3 other GF projects.
Hive is chess-like in that every bug has different ways of moving—and one wins by completely surrounding the opponent’s Queen Bee. It tends to be much lighter than chess—but still has some fun twists. A novelty is that it doesn’t have a board. You just play with the pieces; you get to choose what bugs enter your side at whatever order you choose by connecting them to the hive as it gets larger.
Thanks! Before my son’s request I probably would have imagined cutting this for myself out of diff hardwoods. But now I saw it all come together, and played a bunch of games with him yesterday, I’m really pleased with the size, weight and high-contrast look of the materials.
Generally no. The inner bug hexes and frames are kerf adjusted, so they stay in their frame well with friction so I just have to hold together for joining the 1/8" layer top to the 1/4" bottom by holding them on their edge–and I use a lighted magnifier while working so it helps get the positioning pretty well without needing clamps or a jig.
They are cemented with Weld-On #3, which, in case you haven’t experienced, is thin like water. So it wicks into the seams and underneath the inset hex as well, by applying with a thin needle applicator. It sets and evaporates pretty fast. It takes some getting used to, but is manageable after a few projects.
Occasionally it can spill over and can either create a hard-water-looking stain in the outer surface sheen or pick up a fingerprint–but I am pretty accustomed to avoid most of that. However, for the few small spill overs that happen, most will polish right out using the Novus 1, 2, & 3 polishing liquids. (But if a bigger surface ‘melt’ occurs it takes using high grit wet sandpapers to get out the problem --thankfully avoided any of that on this project, but if did happen would likely just cut a new piece.)
