Scythe Board Game

There are lots of things in this world that I wish I was clever enough to do. One of them might be “Play Scythe”. It is a board game all about world (or at least board) domination. You can fight battles, make pacts, build stuff and deploy fighting machines. We watched a half hour video about it which was notable for the way that the presenter failed to take a single breath during the whole presentation. And that seemed to cover board setup and the first moves.

It was fun to play, even though we spent a lot of time wondering what the various buttons did. We were playing the online version which is very well realised. The network play was quite easy to get going and worked reliably right up to the end of the game, when for some reason we were unceremoniously dumped and the AI took over for our final two turns. Perhaps the game had lost patience with us. One thing that Scythe brings home in spades is the cost of doing battle, and the even greater cost of standing up to an incoming aggressor. We won one battle, but in doing so used up all our fighting powers, leaving us as easy pickings at what turned out to be a crucial point in the game.

We’ll be having another go, and probably watching a few more breathless videos to get more of a feel for the game.