Scythe!! Board game Review
Scythe is a board game created by Stonemaier Games designed to be played by 1-5 players. In this game the players control factions with the goal to make their faction the richest and most powerful one on the board. This is done by taking territories, building units/buildings, upgrading your technology, and trying to have the greatest fortune before the 6th star on the Triumph Track is placed. This game is all about strategy and how to make every turn useful while also trying to predict your enemies moves. Its complex nature can make this game very daunting at first but once you play things start to fall in place as you develop strategy after strategy to take on your friends in an alternate world that is known as Scythe. I found this game a few years back while perusing a local board game shop. I was looking for something more strategy based not another conquering focused game. While walking around the store I stumbled upon this wonderful game. The first look at the game caught my eye because of its art on the box. Art depicting a world reeked with turmoil and danger but yet people were working in farms as these large mechs march around them. If this was not a game that I wouldn’t be interested in then I don’t know what I was doing here. While picking up this game I became extremely excited to play and luckily for me I had friends free to play that evening. We get snacks and other game necessities and began the process of unpacking this monster of a game. As we get everything set up and ready, we realized the daunting task ahead of us, the 31-page rulebook! While taking on this endeavor we soon came to realize that the best way to go forward was to just start playing taking each step at a time. Once we started to get a hang of the game did the real fun begin. I will not go into the details of the game in this article but instead go into the things that I loved about the game and why you should give it a chance.
To start it is the aspect that this game was designed not only to be played with multiple friends but to be able to be played by one’s self. This was the first that I had experienced the mechanics of playing a board game by myself. I was really surprised with how well they were able to make the mechanics work to the point they have multiple difficulties for you to try and conquer against this AI created by cards. Hearing this at first, I am sure you think “o how great can this be.” well, I thought the same until I tried it myself and realized how it still required thought and strategy to figure out how to win the game. It was the equivalent to playing an AI in any video game which surprised me for a board game. Now of course after some time the surprise will go away and it will not be the same as playing against other people as there is no taunting, trash talk, or even distractions but it still allows you to get that board game itch when you need it.
While many games focus on either being the first player to reach a set number of victory points or being the last standing army on the game board this takes a very different approach. Instead, this game combines all of these strategies into one by having a wealth count once the first player reaches their last Triumph Star. This aspect forces each player to focus on all of the components of the game instead of rushing to be the first one to get all of the Stars first. This was one of the first strategy holes that my group feel into the first play through to the point that the one who had the least number of Stars actually won the game. They are able to do this with counting up your territories, unused resources, popularity, and the random structure bonus tile that changes each game. These all add up to wealth at the end of the game. While there are great tradeoffs to using these, they are something you still want when the game ends. This keeps the game pace to that of a marathon then a sprint because if you do everything as quick as you can then something else ends up falling behind. While I think this is an amazing approach to a strategy game it can be very complicated to keep track of everything and for much of the game it feels like I have no idea what is going on until it all finally starts coming into a picture.
The third point I will bring in is the aspect of combat that they were able to capture to round out the overall feel of the game. At first glance it feels like a combination of Settlers of Catan and Risk because of the focus on resources and the possible need to fight the other players but it is not even close to either of those two when you start to finally play it. The major difference is that it becomes a big tradeoff if you go and attack a group of another players workers. While yes you may hinder their production and get all new forms of resources from it there is an overall popularity score that gets decreased if you attack workers and cause them to retreat to their home base. While some may not think this is a big deal the population counter controls a good section of the end game scoring. Making combat something that happens but in a more calculated focus when it involves someone’s workers. Now the mechanic of determining who wins a combat is different as it comes from 2 sources. These are from your own power bar and the combat cards you wish or can add to the combat. This makes guessing the opposing players power difficult because you are unsure what combination of power and combat cards will be used to win the combat or loss it. They also make it so sometimes the best thing is to loss your battle by not destroying your mech or workers but instead they just get sent back to your home base. This makes it so yes you may loss that territory and maybe resources if you had any there but you do not need to worry about redeploying your mechs or workers instead you just need to move them back out of your base.
There are many more aspects to this game that could make me go on and on for hours but this is just a few of the things that made me really enjoy the game. Now don’t get me wrong is this game semi difficult to learn? Yes, it is, but it is a very enjoyable time if you are a person who loves strategy games and can focus on it for at least 2hrs once you get the swing of things. While some people like to go away from board games that take a long time (cough) Monopoly, I am someone who loves those games because I need to change and evolve my strategy as the game develops and if I don’t then I will be the first one to go bye bye. I hope you have enjoyed the review of Scythe created by Stonemaier Games as much as we have enjoyed playing it and as always enjoy and have fun around your table!
If interested in the game go to Stonemaier Games’ Site https://stonemaiergames.com/games/scythe/ and get a copy for yourself!
