Bone tissue engineering materials must blend in the targeted physiological environment, in terms of both the materials' biocompatibility and mechanical properties. As for the latter, a well-adjusted stiffness ensures that the biomaterial's deformation behavior fits well to the deformation behavior of the surrounding biological tissue, whereas an appropriate strength provides sufficient load-carrying capacity of the biomaterial. Here, a mathematical modeling approach for estimating the macroscopic load that initiates failure of a hierarchically organized, granular, hydroxyapatite-based biomaterial is presented. For this purpose, a micromechanics model is developed for downscaling macroscopically prescribed stress (or strain) states to the level of the needle-shaped hydroxyapatite crystals. Presuming that the biomaterial fails due to the quasi-brittle failure of the most unfavorably stressed hydroxyapatite needle, the downscaled stress tensors are fed into a suitable, Mohr-Coulomb-