Bug Hub in a Bag: Why Hive Beats Chess for Me (Hypothetically!)

Chess-lovers, please take my comparisons with a pinch of salt! The game’s enduring legacy speaks for itself …

Hive came two summers ago clinking and crawling out of its bag with a purpose: to finally dislodge chess from its honorary status in my mind as THE zero-luck duel.

Not that I needed anything to dislodge chess from anywhere. For me, chess had always gone unchallenged, occupying a lofty game plane of its own, like an eagle in its eyrie, or maybe like one of those innocuous but extremely long-legged spiders that camp out in the corner of your living room, just below the ceiling. Let it be, you say, it's not bothering anyone, is it?

But Hive came poking out old Daddy Chess-legs from its dusty corner web. Centuries overdue, gridded feudalism finally scuttled off elsewhere.

Hypothetically.

I say hypothetically in my case, because I'm not an avid player of zero-luck head-to-head games.

But if I was, Hive would be the one for me.

Hive is clean and fresh and boardless. It moves in twisty angles weaving fun threads. It's accessibly organic, uncluttered by the egos of bishops and knights and their kind. Lighter it is for that. Getting steamrollered by an uppity chess piece can be aggravating, whereas you won't mind so much being crawled over by a ladybug or a beetle.

Hive is an intensely crawly, ground-level game where you're not frozen by the abstraction. Here, the 'webs' the bugs weave aren't as suffocating as the iron traps sprung by the chess aristocracy. There's a skittery, buzzy feel to this thing that gets away from the ‘cold war’ feel of chess.

But wait, aren't I overdoing the Hive-chess comparison a bit?

Well I'm not the first to draw that comparison. It's clear why.

* Both games are monosyllabically-named black-white dueling games.

* Both have smooth, clinky pieces whose sound punctuates meditative silence.

* Both are about tightening your circle, keeping one move ahead or regretting falling one move behind.

* Both (even Hive at times) can be merciless, punishing, inexorable. Crushing.

Hypothetically speaking.

Only for me the main difference is that in Hive, you're not working a system; you're creating an organism, forging connections, holding things together with spider threads and bee architecture. It's molecular, it's knitting together a microcosmic world.

Chess doesn't give me that.

Chess is standoffish, with all those gaunt figures like statues in a mausoleum. But Hive's bugs just love connecting and sharing their air. No insect here gets touchy about its personal space; they're all in this together.

Not a trace of dry satire in Hive, though. I love how the bugs are integrated with their habitat. Snail-like, they carry their environment with them, forming infinitely elastic, molecular structures, so different from the ceremonial pomp of chess, where everything is measured 8 by 8. I don't care how many billions of possible combos chess has, they're all tied to the same grid.

Though would I see things differently if I'd spent rainy Sunday afternoons as a kid playing Hive instead of chess? Maybe now I would have been more open to a bit of medieval cerebral politicking. After all, chess has been around for centuries for very sound reasons.

It's just that I'm remembering all the very sound reasons why I should be playing Hive instead.

Besides, when all's said and done, a game that dispenses with the traditional box to go clinking inside a plush honey-hued cloth bag deserves to earn everyone’s warmest buzz of appreciation.

I love Hive’s fond nod at realism. Ants really do crawl round the edge of things, grasshoppers really do hop, and beetles probably wouldn't think twice about crawling over a morass of other bugs.

Whereas chess is largely diagonals and ups and downs and lefts and rights. The formal rigidity of bishops; the predictable, sweeping dominance of castles; the dry doggedness of the expendable pawn-masses ... It’s all bone dry to me. And that feeble, queen-dominated Lear-like king - a satire on the decline of monarchism, perhaps?