Mechs and Capitalism: A Deep Dive of Scythe

“The ashes from the first Great War still darken the snow in 1920s Europa. The capitalistic city–state known simply as “The Factory,” which fueled the war with heavily armored mechs, has closed its doors, drawing the attention of several nearby countries.”

Overview of the game

This week, my group played Scythe again. This is a 1920s era, alternate history engine-building board game. This game was designed by Jamey Stegmaier and published by Stonemaier Games. Each game takes roughly 115 minutes, and can be played solo or with up to four other people. 

Gameplay mechanics

Scythe is unlike any other game I have played. There are several different strategies you can take to win, and the game ends as soon as any player places their sixth star token. You gain these in a multitude of ways, from completing tracks on your player board to winning combats. Star tokens give you extra money at the end of the game, so it’s worthwhile to get as many stars down as you can.

You’ll also want to keep track of your fame and your power. Fame is how much people like you, and can change your options when you are playing encounter cards. At the end of the game, you gain more coins the higher your fame is.  Your power is what you’ll spend when you get into combat, and not having enough can cause you to lose vital resources or territory.

Scythe isn’t played in rounds or phases; players take one turn after another until a player places their sixth star. On your turn, you use your faction mat to take different actions by moving your token to a different location on the mat. Then, you have the option to take your top row action, then your bottom row action. You can skip either or both of these actions, but you still have to move your token each turn.

Your top row actions give you the ability to move, produce resources, trade, or bolster your units, while your bottom row allows you to upgrade, deploy mechs, build, or enlist more workers. In most cases, you have to build a mech before you can get off of your island and explore the rest of the map. 

During gameplay, you’ll be trying to complete one of your two objective cards, while also attempting to fully upgrade the tracks on your faction mat. Upgrading can allow you to gain more workers, resources, or coins when you use the associated actions. It can also make things like deploying mechs cheaper. Fully upgrading tracks is also a way to gain star tokens. 

There are also encounter cards you can gather along your way, which present you with a scenario. These scenarios each require you to make a decision. You’ll usually have 2-3 different choices, and they typically have some kind of trade-off, like paying money to gain oil. These are my personal favorite part of the game, as the art on each of the cards is unique and gorgeous.

Once you’re able to get off your island and start moving around, you get into the combat mechanics. Combat happens when you try to place workers or a mech on a space that already has an opponent’s worker or mech residing there. If you place a mech on an opponent’s space that only has workers on it, the workers immediately retreat, leaving behind all resources(and costing you one fame for each worker you evicted). However, if you place your mech on a space with an opponent’s mech or character token, combat begins.

Simultaneously, each player involved in the combat selects a number on their Power Dial. Then, for each of your units involved in the combat, you can tuck one combat card from your hand behind the Power Dial. After both players have done this, you reveal simultaneously. The player with the highest total wins the combat and gains control of the space, and places a star token on the tracker. In the event of a tie, the attacking player has the advantage.  Each player also loses Power equal to the number they chose on the Power Dial. 

The loser must retreat, moving all of their units back to their home base and leaving all resources on the space. 

Game end

The game ends immediately when a player places their sixth star, even if they had other actions they could have completed, so make sure you’ve done everything you were able to do before placing the last star down. 

Then, you go into end game scoring. You gain coins for each star token you’ve placed, every territory you control, every 2 resources you control, and the number of structures you’ve built. Add up all of your coins, and the player with the most wins!

Components

The art on this game, done by Jakub Rozaliski, is incredibly eye-catching, and drew my attention immediately. The 1920s era landscape mixed with massive, terrain-altering mechs made Scythe impossible to pass up. The actual board itself is fairly basic, with a depiction of the landscape and symbols for each faction secluded to their own islands, but the game board is massive and requires a lot of table space. The encounter cards all have unique art, which makes drawing them exciting.

The components of Scythe are all incredibly high quality. I have played this game dozens of times and neither the board nor the cards show any signs of wear. The miniatures included in the game are exceedingly detailed and durable. The game also includes wooden tokens for representing oil, food, metal, and wood. This is a nice upgrade over the usual chipboard. 

My thoughts

We enjoyed Scythe a lot. The gameplay is fun and the plethora of ways to win makes the game remarkably replayable. It’s a lot of fun to turn the tide just when it looks like someone else is about to win, or to bribe people to let you pass by when playing in a larger group. 

Scythe is one of the more complex games we have played so far. The rulebook is 31 pages long, so it can be difficult to learn the first time you play. The rulebook does include the link to a how-to-play video, as well as a quick start guide that makes getting into the game slightly easier.

By design, the game starts off at a slow pace, allowing everybody to get a good grasp of the rules and actions you can take. Towards the end of the game, the pace rapidly picks up as everybody begins to race to gather stars and territory.

The game can feel a little unbalanced at times, especially as everyone gets more experienced with it. However, there is a list of banned combos for the game that makes everything more fair.

In conclusion

Scythe offers an incredibly fun gaming experience, and is excellent for people looking to get into more complex board games. It isn’t something I would recommend to brand new board game players, as it is a long and moderately complex game. 

This is a game you can easily spend dozens of hours in, and each game will feel different. There are so many different strategies you can attempt to win with, and expansions that add new factions and encounter cards. The expansions allow for the game to be played by more people, so Scythe is an excellent choice for any board game night.

The artwork is gorgeous and very thematic, and paired with the quality materials you can really get immersed in this game. It is a personal favorite of mine, and I bring it to game night every chance I get.