Scythe Overview of Board Games
Scythe Overview of Board Games
Kosa is known as one of the most well made and most beautiful games out there. His theme and story of alternate reality caught everyone’s attention when it started in 2016. But does it work as well as it looks? Let's dive into our Koso review and find out.
- This is a time of unrest in Europe in the 1920s. Ashes from the first ...
- Lead your faction to victory, build bellows, cultivate the land, ...
- Explore the alternate history of 1920 plus Europe through Jakub ...
A brief overview of the skite
Scythe is a strategy game for up to five players. Set in the wet and foggy Eastern Europe in alternate reality, however, huge bellows, a cat from the First World War , patrol the earth .
Your goal is to lead your clan to become the richest in the country. You will explore new territory, create resources, build structures, develop your workforce while encountering local tribes. Sometimes you will end up fighting other players as well ...
This is a game of building motorcycles by heart all arranged on the playing mat in front of you. You will strive to improve the playing mat and develop a strategy for creating points. At the end of the game, add up the points and the one who has the most wins.
Unpacking Scythe
When you open Scythe, you will find:
- 1 quick reference leads
- 110 cards
- 5 carpets for players
- 1 game board
- 184 tokens
- 6 structural tiles
- Fraction elements (x5)
- 1 fractional medium
- 1 action token
- 1 token of popularity
- 1 power token
- 6 stars
- 4 structural tokens
- 4 recruitment tokens
- 4 mech miniatures
- 1-character thumbnail
- 8 workers
- 6 technology cubes
One of Scythe’s outstanding qualities is the artwork and production values of its components. It's simple, it's huge. The box itself has an amazing scene showing the rolling fields of rural Eastern Europe farming family in the foreground while in the background you see an army of battle bellows. This alone will definitely get your attention on the shelf.
Things stay just as good when you get in the box. The game board is an extensive map of the earth, divided into hexes that act as play spaces between which you move. It’s gorgeous again, with strong bold colors and clear markings that make it easy to play.
The components themselves are of very high quality. There are wooden chips that I like more and more, and Plastic Miniatures because even your character and bellows are really cool, varying from faction to faction.
All in all, it’s a great move.
How to play Scythe
Setup
To get started, place 11 meeting tokens on their territories and place the fight, target, meeting and factory decks on board.
Then the players randomly get a factional rug (Nordic, Russian, Crimean, Saxon or Polan - all have different abilities) and a play rug. These can be combined in several different ways and tell each player the number of coins, battle and objective cards they can take, and where their markers start at popularity and power.
Then place your character on the home base and the worker on each territory associated with it.
Finally, place your structure, action, recruits and technology tokens and your workers on the play mat .
The goal of the game
Your goal is to become the richest empire in Eastern Europe. Players start with small games, but throughout the game they will increase their resources, staff, technology and land. When someone has achieved six achievements - for example, the installation of swords, a certain level of popularity or a certain number of population - the game is over and the points are added up.
When turning
The player's turn begins with moving the action token to another section on the playing mat (it cannot stay in the same place). Each section has an upper and a lower row. Players will resolve them in that order.
The location of the actions in the top line varies depending on the play mat, and the bottom line remains the same, but has different costs / benefits. This means that each player will have to play a little differently, depending on the carpet he has. The actions in the top line are:
- Move - move units from one territory to another. If your character or bellows move to another player’s territory, this can cause a fight. If you enter territory with a meeting token, you will need to resolve the meeting card.
- Bolster - pay a coin to move up the electric track or get a battle card.
- Shop - Pay a coin to raise funds or move up in popularity.
- Produce - choose two territories. All workers in these territories produce resources, depending on the type of terrain of the territory.
The actions in the bottom line often improve every time we use them. You have at your disposal:
- upgrade - pay for oil to make other measures cheaper to use.
- deployment - install mechanics to protect your workers. Mech abilities vary by faction.
- Build - Build structures on your territory, such as mines or monuments, all of which offer different benefits.
- Sign up - take a recruiting token from the play mat and place it on the faction section for a one-time bonus. You also get a permanent bonus depending on where you took the token from . When a player on your immediate left or right uses an action from that section on their playing mat, you receive a bonus.
fight
If you move the bellows or your character to the territory where the bellows or the character of the other player is, then a fight ensues.
To do this, players secretly select a number on their power button (between 1 and 7, although it should not be higher than their power level). They can also use combat cards to increase this. After it is revealed, the one who chooses the most (including the battle cards) wins. Then both sides pay for the amount of power they surrendered.
If the attacker wins, he takes the territory and all his resources. The winner also puts a star on the battlefield anyway, for which you can get coins in the end.
Moving through the game
Players take action and expand their empires one by one. They will enter new territories to take away their resources, improve their skills, meet different local peoples to create resources, coin base and popularity. Sometimes they will also fight each other (though not as much as you might think).
There are various achievements and goals with which players can strive to create more points / coins. When someone makes six achievements, the game ends and all points are added up. In addition to the achievements themselves, you will get points for the territory you control and your popularity. Whoever has the most wins.
Your first hair game
Factory
Along with making a matte player motor using upgrades and structures, there is also a factory. This is a special area on the board that allows players to get a new strong action space for their play mat. Once you enter the territory, you can select Factory Factory from the Factory deck and this will be added next to the player's carpet.
This means that whoever gets there first gets the choice of the party. What’s more, if you end up controlling, you also get some coins.
Meetings
As you expand your territory, you will also encounter different locals and have to deal with the situations that come with them. These are meetings.
Once your character enters territory with a meeting token, you must resolve the meeting card. You will get several different potential results with different costs and benefits, so you need to decide which path to take. This will often cause your popularity to increase or decrease, along with a variety of other effects.
Variations and extensions
There are four Scythe extensions that develop the game in different ways. Scythe: Encounters is pretty simple and adds 32 new meeting cards to the game.
- Compatible with the basic game and all extensions
- A brand new deck to meet with 32 cards
- This deck can be used to replace the Encounter card deck from ...
Scythe: The Wind Gambit and Scythe: The Rise of Fenris are introducing several new modules to mix the gameplay, the latter also adding an eight-episode campaign that develops the story.
Finally, Scythe: Invaders from Afar adds two new factions, bringing the total number of players to seven.
- Expand the Scythe universe with two new factions, Albion and ...
- Adds the ability to replay with two unique new factions and two ...
- This expansion requires the basic Scythe game
Modular board
Okay, maybe not necessarily an extension, the addition of a modular board can increase your ability to replicate Scythe.
Instead of using the same tile with tiles, the Modular Board replaces the original with pieces that can be rearranged to create a much different experience each time you play. Similar to Catan ( Katana Inhabitants ) and the Wizard Knight , pieces can be placed to create a much more tense gaming experience. The whole game feels fresh by changing the locations of the factions.
- 1-7 players
- The extension contains the following: 1 double-sided plate 4 ...
- The map and locations of the factions change each time you play.
Advantages disadvantages
Advantages:
- An extremely strategic approach to territorial control
- A different look at 4x-style play
- Players' mixing boards
- Great theme and components
Weaknesses:
- Surprisingly little struggle
- Waiting between turns can be long
Scythe is pretty hard to define. It contains all the elements of a 4x game, but when you actually play it you will think you are playing a completely different beast.
Not quite a perfect war
Instead of playing Absolute War, Scythe instead focuses on developing a play mat and resources. Fighting plays an important role, but it’s expensive, whether you win or not. This deters players from attacking when they grow their wealth by other means. After all, who with all the death and destruction that comes with war, also who really wins?
This might come as a surprise, as Scythe’s artwork and components are flooded with bellows and gray soldiers. But for me, it creates a fantastic sense of threat that hangs over the game. The probabilities increase forever as your empires are built and raised, suspiciously observed in your Cold War.
All about strategy
Scythe is about intelligent and strategic carpet management. As you upgrade your actions, build structures, and visit the factory, you can create a clean machine of moving parts from clip to turn. It’s incredibly useful and that’s what the game will bring you in the end.
What’s more, the ability to mix and match faction and player boards - as well as improve them in the Factory - forces each player to have a different strategy, and you’ll need to do that every time you play the game, too.
FTW theme
Another thing I like about Scythe is the theme. It's so cool. The concept is interesting. Artwork and design are sublime. Meetings brilliantly revive him. And storytelling is wonderfully involved and also unusually fun.
On the other hand, where Scythe falls, some paths to victory are much more effective than others. An especially popular song is a bit too strong, as it acts as a multiplier in the hit at the end - the second reason is often avoided.
A different kind of beast
When it comes to flow, I liked that Scythe didn’t follow the usual phase structure of 4x games. The turn-to-turn process felt different and helped keep the game going. However, the level of strategic thought that will need to be considered can cause some players to take some time to change their minds. This is important to keep in mind, as there are some groups that just can’t handle too many outages without getting upset.
Still, one of the benefits of such an engaging theme is that it takes a few minutes longer than usual before people remember not actually hiding from a bellows in a rural Eastern European ditch while nurturing wounds from the surrounding area. World War I.
TL; DR
Scythe is a strategy game for one -to -five players set in an interwar period in alternate reality . By expanding your territory and creating resources, you need to lead your clan to become the largest in the country. Whoever has the most points in the end wins.
This is a very dense game for making engines that will require a lot of thinking, but it is more than worth it. There are many ways to earn points and improving your playing mat to make it effective can be really fun.
While the amount of fighting is relatively small, the disturbing sense of threat grows, as players who build their empires will still leave the bloodthirsty more than satisfied.
Conclusion: a verdict?
Scythe rightly received a lot of praise for the fantastic alternate reality he created and the way he is then presented on the table. You will be enchanted by the fragile, fog-filled world. Luckily, there are extensions to satisfy some of these cravings, but I’m worried I’ll never have enough of it.
The game itself also plays very well and will be a big hit for fans of ultra strategic 4x behemoths. The machine room that is your lining for the player is truly love, while the cost-benefit decisions you make all the time are tiring.
Nevertheless, the amount of strategy required by this game will be a bit difficult for some, and the lack of combat may not be a nice surprise, especially compared to other games in the genre. It will be important to gather the right group for this.
Either way, whether you’re pressed the buttons while playing or not, do me a big favor and sign my petition to shoot Scythe: The Movie.
- This is a time of unrest in Europe in the 1920s. Ashes from the first ...
- Lead your faction to victory, build bellows, cultivate the land, ...
- Explore the alternate history of 1920 plus Europe through Jakub ...
Have you tried Scythe yet? Drop a comment below! We want to hear your thoughts.
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