Scythe, Played Mostly Against the Automa

Overcast most of the week I brought this up, which suited it, the map is grey Eastern Europe between wars and the box art matches the mood outside the window better than I expected. Big mechs on the cover, but combat here is expensive and mostly avoided, you build an engine, plant workers, pop encounter cards, and the actual shooting is a last resort more often than not. I like that. Felt strange the first time I killed someone’s unit and lost popularity for it, like why do I even have the mech then, but by game three that tension is the whole point.

Played it solo against the automa deck close to a dozen times before I ever got another person up the trail to try it two-player, and the automa is the real reason I kept the box. Steep to learn, the little booklet doesn’t explain itself well and I had to run it wrong twice before it clicked, but once it clicked it plays like a genuine opponent, not a rubber stamp. My copy also arrived with a bent meeple and a couple of scuffed mats, which I’ve seen enough other people mention that it’s clearly not just my box, quality control on a Kickstarter this size apparently a real coin flip.

The endgame math bugs me a little, tallying everyone’s coins and stars and popularity to know if ending the game now is smart, it turns a clean tactical game briefly into a spreadsheet. And the theme lives almost entirely in the encounter cards, the rest is a very well dressed resource engine, I’d have been fine with wooden cubes instead of the mini figures honestly, less about the sculpts and more about not wanting extra weight in the pack. Downtime creeps up with more players at the table but each turn resolves fast, so it never quite drags. Solid two-player game, better one-player game than it has any right to be.