Let's Talk: Scythe

I've played three games of this in the past five days so I can hurry up and get an article done for G&S. I'm a pretty huge fan.

The thing is, this is certainly the most Euro of the hybrid games released to date. It feels most similar to Eclipse in my opinion (futzing with engine building on a player mat, driving towards center hex, can turtle), which is one of my favorites. Eclipse is better though, for sure.

I know Pete played this last week and was very disappointed. I get that, and I think many people here will likely hate Scythe. Some certainly won't though.

The weird thing about this game is that there are both incentives to attack and to avoid conflict. The game is a bit of a race to six stars which triggers immediate end game, and are worth some points. You can definitely win if you're not the first to put down six stars but that doesn't seem to be more common than 30ish percent of the time from what I've read concerning others experiences (this jives with my limited experience).

You get up to two stars from winning combats. They are the easiest stars to get but you have many other ways to get stars. Also, the middle hex awards you with a special power the first time your leader character gets there. The middle hex is also worth the equivalent of three regular hexes for end game scoring, and all but one of my games the winner owned it at game's end (this feels like the middle hex significance of Eclipse).

These elements contribute to combat around the middle hex. What's interesting (and perhaps disappointing to many) is that you can just sit back and go to town repeating a set of actions to work through your economy. If everyone does this you will see no combat at all and it will be the first person to achieve all of their upgrades/earning the most resources winning.

Combat also costs you popularity if you displace farmers (workers) on hexes. So if I attack your Mech which is in a space with two of your farmers I lose 2 popularity if I win the battle. Popularity is an important metric for determining the worth of things at end game.

In Pete's game he said the other two players maxed out popularity and this cost him the game as he fought and had low popularity (I can totally see this happening in some plays), but in our games I've never seen someone max out popularity. I did see one player get to the third tier and they lost to someone in the second tier. My last game I played (Saturday), we all finished a three player game in the lowest tier!

There also seems to be more fighting with more players as the map is more congested. The map appears pretty big, but the way the tunnels work everything is actually somewhat close.

Maybe I'm lucky but in three games I've seen plenty of combat in each. Two were with my regular group that leans slightly Ameritrash (I have a couple of Euro players there), and one was with a mixed AT/Euro group. Lots of combat in all of them. It also may have helped that I've built early mechs and pushed the middle hex quickly in all games I've played (this creates an arms race and usually garners a response).

75% of Scythe is engine building/synergizing on your personal action mat. That sounds boring as hell but for some reason it works for me tremendously. I think the theme and the resulting combat/area control on the board pulls it together as I feel rewarded for being more efficient than my opponents. I also really love the recessed player mat and how satisfying it feels mechanically and physically to upgrade.

This game is undoubtedly Euro, but I never felt like I was playing Agricola. It's definitely not Nexus Ops either. Rather, it's a unique combination that does some things I haven't seen elsewhere. I don't think this game will fade from sight anytime soon but it may be scorned here.

By the way, the choose-your-own-adventure encounter cards are genius. If you move (explore) certain hexes you draw an encounter card which gives you several thematic options tied to a lovely piece of art. I'd kill to have discovery tokens in Eclipse be little thematic cards with choices. You can do stuff like conscript a Farmer's son (lose popularity), help the family clear a fallen tree (gain popularity), or purchase some of their food.

Thanks for post---I looked through BGG's gallery of this game the other day. It's one of those games that if I had a legit game group I'd like to try but without that am not going to buy.

I'm sort of back and forth on the eclipse-ish thing that just rewards combat with points in some way. The "if you fight you just generically get victory points, win or lose!" I kind of like what it does, it's good to get people fighting and feeling like fighting isn't so risky, but it really niggles at me to have to add stakes to combat to get people to do it... I think I prefer games that use some other mechanism to reduce the sting of lost combats a little bit.

Gary Sax wrote: Thanks for post---I looked through BGG's gallery of this game the other day. It's one of those games that if I had a legit game group I'd like to try but without that am not going to buy.

I'm sort of back and forth on the eclipse-ish thing that just rewards combat with points in some way. The "if you fight you just generically get victory points, win or lose!" I kind of like what it does, it's good to get people fighting and feeling like fighting isn't so risky, but it really niggles at me to have to add stakes to combat to get people to do it... I think I prefer games that use some other mechanism to reduce the sting of lost combats a little bit.

That's a good point. In Scythe you need to actually win the combat and only your first two wins really matter for direct points (controlling hexes award points too though).

The only thing I don't like about the Eclipse combat VP is the stupidity and narrative incongruence of throwing all of your ships away in the last round in the hope of getting points. However, from a tempo and gameplay perspective it's great because the game has a fitting climax.

Here's my take after 1 play with 3.

- beautiful components. Really well done.
- it's not a hybrid. It's a pure Euro.
- it's not remotely a 4x; it's a race to move cubes from one place on your board to another.
- it discourages fighting in all ways except the "move star token from your board to scoring board if you win a fight"
- Giving losers a fight card when they lose is LLLLAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMME
- it's fun in the kind of way that writing VBA apps is fun; it's fun from an intellectual level but the table talk would indicate that it's not actually fun.

I would play it again, maybe with people who are more Ameritrashy, but I get the feeling it would go over like a turd sandwich at a church picnic.

Ah, OMT.

The "choose your own adventure" exploration tokens offer a small bonus, larger bonus plus a small negative, or a large bonus and large negative. It's very smart, but I'd argue that 99% of the ones I saw ended up with the last option being the only real choice. There were a few "difficult decisions" but not really.

The FLAVOR TEXT is absurd. "Move the cow out from in front of the mech" do you...

"impress it with your yodeling" +1 popularity
"Push it" +2 popularity but lose something small
"Let it die" lose 2 popularity but gain 4 food

It's really funny shit. And I'm not sure it was meant to be.

I'm surprised the choices on those cards were that obvious in your games/for your strategy. I debated all of mine and most choices would have helped me.

it discourages fighting in all ways except the "move star token from your board to scoring board if you win a fight"

That middle space can be worth a significant amount of money.

Giving losers a fight card when they lose is LLLLAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMME

Such a small thing for what you can possibly lose with bidding Power. I think this also doesn't bother me because Blood Rage works similarly.

How many resources do you juggle in this? Just two or three? More?

The action mat is the main thing, where you have to be efficient to balance out your engine. One action leading to another.

The resources you're managing with those actions include 4. You need 3/4 to build each thing (depending on the random mat you receive). Mechs take iron, upgrades take Oil, buildings take wood, and the enlist recruit action (which is hard to explain) takes food.

There's no resource conversion though (i.e. no gaining brown cubes to convert to yellow cubes, to buy what you really want). It's actions to gain resources (based on territories controlled) which you spend on other actions to buy the things you want. The Euro heaviness isn't necessarily from resources but from maximizing and planning your action mat. You can't choose the same action twice in a row so the thought process is something like:

"I'm going to take the move action to spread out for my next resource action. I can't do the bottom action on my move because I don't have the oil so I'll wait."

"Ok, now I'm going to produce, and I'll gain enough iron so that when I do my Bolster action next time I can also pay the cost at the bottom and gain a mech."

"Now I have a mech, I'm going to move again and position my leader on that encounter token and push my mech towards the middle, carrying my workers."

Another element that encouraged combat in my plays was that resources you gain stay out on the hex, they don't go on your player mat like most games. This means they can be taken over if someone can move in before they're spent.

We had one hex in my second play where the guy had 4 metal and 2 wood. This was the result of an encounter that produced some of the metal, and some figures of his moving in with the other resources. This space had four battles fought there before the resources were spent. Kept changing hands.

That was interesting, but it's worth mentioning that your workers can take the stuff with them. In reality, you really end up building what you need, putting your 4 workers each on 2 hexes with a mech, and just go "Bolster"/"Produce"/"Bolster"/"Produce"/"Move" ad nauseum.

When I had excess, I just picked it up and took it with my guys back to a safer area.

I can't imagine that you say ANYTHING encourages battle. The end-of-game scoring is pretty much where all of the scoring is done, and your popularity multiplier is pretty much the only thing that matters. So, if you fight a lot, you end up with low popularity and a low score.

The guy that won did so because he turtled, kind of, and just moved cubes (upgrade/recruit) to get his stars on board, and handily won. The other guy was more adventurous, and scored 5 points less. Me, the aggro- of the group, had the least stars but was the only person to even try to fight, and lost 43:89 or something like that.

Total bullshit that this game encourages battle. It encourages turtling, and it encourages you to just produce, upgrade, produce, upgrade, forever until you get your stars placed.

The MOST interesting thing in the game was the secret objectives, of which I got the 2 worst in the deck: Build 3 buildings in areas not adjacent to your base, and own 9 of the same resources at the end of a turn. Total bullshit.

There's oil, metal, wheat, as far as "hard currency" but there's also power, popularity, and of course, those fucking cubes.

One smart thing is that if you upgrade your powers, you move a cube off the area blocking the power and move it down to the bottom wherever you want, making recruiting, building structures, and deploying mechs cheaper. That was really slick.

Still, the game is fucking boring.

I played it last Thursday with five and quite liked it.

There is definitely a lot of resource/action management, but it's done in an engaging way. I agree that it's definitely full Euro and not at all 4X (although for the latter, I don't think it's claiming to be).

I won pretty handily for two reasons: I was the only one paying attention to popularity; I had the faction that allowed me to get multiple stars for combat. Once I got my engine up and running, I just started fighting anyone in range. I think next time my opponents will do a better job surrounding their mechs with workers to stop that sort of thing.

I really liked how quick turns were and the slow, steady acceleration of game play. At first it felt like it would take forever to get anything done, but before you know it you have several balls in the air. I also liked how each action mat paired top and bottom actions differently. It made it difficult to see what other players were planning, but it also gave each faction additional hurdles and uniqueness.

It's a spreadsheet game, in DOAM's clothing.

Power $truggle is infinitely better for a spreadsheet game.

In a game where everyone turtles Pete, you should be able to win the fight in the middle hex and control it if you are the only one aggressive. Even if you beat someone down and lose popularity, typically someone won't have many workers in the middle because you produce nothing there. Especially if they're turtling produce and repeating actions they won't have any workers in the middle.

So you won't lose any popularity, or at most just a little bit which shouldn't bump you an entire tier (so it doesn't matter).

Even if you are 1 tier below them, you only score 1 less point per Star and 1 less point per hex. You will have 3 more hexes than them counting middle, and more if they really just kept their workers in two hexes.

Additionally, you should have a combat star and they won't, which is the easiest star to gain.

If you take the middle and win, everyone else who turtled objectively should have fought you. If they realize this, the game will be drastically different next time you play.

I agree that this game doesn't want you to stomp across the map and wreck shit. I do think it wants you to fight smart though and pick your battles.

Did you choose to lose popularity on the Encounter cards? How did your popularity end up so low? You realize you only lose popularity in combat if you win, right?

If you own the middle ground it counts for 3, but at Popularity >=6 it's not a bonus worth fighting for, and I didn't lose any battles, of the two that I engaged in. Both wiped out 4 guys each, knocking me back EIGHT popularity. This is what happens when your enemies get on the oil/metal with 4 guys and then just move-produce cycle to build Mechs and Buildings. So, I saw them doing that for like 7 turns in a row and had to go over and stomp them and steal their metal/oil because it was obvious that they were "economic engineing" their way to stars.

It's like this: I had 3 Mechs, all Sergeants completed. I had 2 buildings deployed. Only 2 upgrade blocks left on my board. I had 5 Territories, no middle. I explored ONE "exploration site" token. I think the final score was 18 Gold + 5 for hexes + 20 for stars or something. I was the first one to place stars, but they ended up both getting their VERY SIMPLE "Star For Private Goal" cards in the same round and placed their stars straight away from that.

What killed me is that the opponents had 2/4 mechs, maybe 50% of the upgrades, 2/4 and 3/4 Sergeants deployed, one had one battle star, the other had none. They had almost no cash-in-hand.One controlled the middle, they all had 4 buildings up. One had 6 stars deployed. Both had their power stars, both had their hidden goals. One had 4. I had 3 (Sergeants, battle, battle).

They whooped my ass and did almost nothing but spread workers a bit, and build shit. Like 43:89:94 or something like that. Like, total rout.

It was the popularity that killed me. They both had 18, and got massive end-game bonuses.

If I play again, I'm going to simply spend the first several turns deploying max people, put them on oil and metal, and just produce/recruit/upgrade ad infinitum, then on the last round spread my guys around. And I'd score probably 100 points. It's kind of ridiculous that I achieved more of the goals up until the last 2 turns or so when the one guy placed 2 back to back stars.

They didn't fight most of the game, so got the power stars. They both achieved their core goals, which was another star. they both deployed all buildings, so there's another star (now 3), they both hit 18 popularity (by doing nothing but Bolster and explore to gain hearts) and got another (now 4). One guy fought once (killed one enemy worker and a mech) and got his fifth star, and then I forget how he got the last star, but he did, which ended it.

It seems kind of shitty that I did way more development than they did, but because they spread out in the last 2 turns, they killed me. They also did the "special goal" on the bottom, which was deploying buildings on certain hex types, and that was a big one for them. I got 2, they got 3/4 of them.

Because their popularity was so high, one scored 36 for 6 stars, another scored 24, and I scored 12 for my four. All of this because the game actively discourages fighting...if you pool your guys to get 4 metal/oil/food per Produce action per hex (5 with a windmill!), it kills others' ability to get Popularity. Sure, I get a fight star, but it's worth 3 points, where they get 5 points per hex anyhow at 18 popularity, which is ridiculous. If you win a fight, it should send their dead workers back to their board, not back to base. That alone would fix the game's "no fighting" problem.

Anyhow, one scored like 6 hexes and another 5 hexes (plus one in the middle worth 3), another 30 points or so for one player and 45 for another. I scored 10 for 5 territories. They also scored like 20 each for the upgrades and despite me having all but two cubes moved, I scored only 8.

It was ridiculous. The best strategy is to turtle, build a monument early, and produce/upgrade incessantly.

For those interested, this is how it works:

The top row (extreme left) is where you put stars when you complete the task (do 10 upgrades, build 4 mechs, deploy 4 sergeants, etc). The sliding scale on the left (bottom in pic) is your popularity track. This is gained many ways, but one action basically bumps it up several points every time you take it. Monument building gives you a point every time you use Produce action if a dude is there.

Now, you LOSE popularity when you do a battle and win. You lose a point for every worker you "kill". But you don't kill them, actually, you just move them back to their base. But since you can move 2-3 spaces per turn with 2-3 guys, or you can load infinite dudes in a Mech and just haul them back to where they were killed next turn without penalty, basically, winning the battle means that you probably spent a card (and it's worth noting that the enemy you killed GETS A FUCKING CARD FOR LOSING), you lost Power, and you spent an action moving there, and you get a star which is now worth less because your popularity just got shit upon.