I recently picked up the game, and have been thinking about it (since I haven't had someone to play it with yet).
In chess, the pawn is the weakest piece and also the most numerous at 8. The rooks, are much more powerful, but you only have 2, and queen is unique.
So why in Hive are you given 3 ants (infinite slide... almost free choice) and 2 spiders (exactly 3 slides)? It seems that ant/spider roles should be reversed.
I know they're different games, and I haven't tried Hive enough to draw conclusions, but I was wondering if anyone who's more experienced had any insight on the flow of the game. I know i could use house rules and just switch their roles, but would that make the game too slow/difficult to complete?
It seems as if spiders would be throw away early pieces, with the ants doing a lot of the mid-late game work?