Category Archives: Rise of Fenris

Scythe Rise of Fenris Campaign Episode 8

Game day, Rise of Fenris, Scythe

So for the last time (“thank feck for that” I hear you say) I’ll be saying the following.

SPOILER ALERT! The following post contains spoilers for the Rise of Fenris campaign for Scythe. If you haven’t played the expansion and wish to avoid any spoilers you may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

I wasn’t expecting Ben for this final showdown. Having checked in with him afterwards he has been having a rough time health wise. I know I speak for all of us that know Ben and don’t, that we wish him a speedy recovery. He has been missed during our campaign, and we all look forward to when we can game with him again.

Now onto the bit everyone who has been following this has been waiting for.

Episode 8 – The Final Episode – TESLA’S MADNESS

So here we are episode 8, the final episode of the Rise of Fenris campaign. The only episode that counts in deciding the winner of the campaign.

With our failure to rescue (or is it recapture in the case of the Fenris faction?) Tesla in the previous episode, this episode had the title of Tesla’s Madness.

This meant that the Tesla mini started on the Factory space and would move around the board based on a die roll and a Mad Tesla tile, attacking anyone he moved into the same space as. Tesla would be the last to take a turn. So in our game between Shane (last) and Jeff(first). Jeff was given the duty of controlling Tesla.

I will say it was confusing in the rules when it referred to using the blue and orange dice with Tesla. The dice aren’t coloured that way. They were black and brown! Then it clicked with Jeff the rules were referring to the colour of the numerals on the dice! Why?

The rules allowed players to chose their player mats this episode. Naturally the combo restrictions for Rusviet and Crimea applied. The order of choice was based on total wealth at the start of this episode. Which meant Jeff chose first, then Shane, and finally myself. Here is our final faction and player mat setup.

  • Vesna & Voltan/Industrial (Cyan) – Jeff
  • Rusviet Union/Patriotic (Red) – Shane
  • Fenris/Militant (Orange) – Me

Once again we were given the option to use the Wind Gambit expansion, and the Backup Plan/Doomsday Clock resolution tiles. So naturally we were going to have in play the airships. However I went with this being the “classic” end of game condition. Besides we also had the defeat Tesla end game condition.

Airship rules and structure bonus for the game.

Jeff started off the game with a bit of shock and awe, using a factory card and an infrastructure mod he completed one of his objective cards and had a star out on the triumph track. Plus had an encounter!

The first actions of Shane and myself were not as impressive. Although I did thanks to my infrastructure mod have a mech out on turn one unlocking my leap ability.

I was definitely aiming to have Rasputin out and roaming the board putting out those influence tokens right from the start.

Tesla roaming around the board threatened to attack on several occasions. But I was the first to take Tesla on and win. I did have death ray at that point plus the mod that could add +2 to my attack.

I did take an early lead getting stars out but kinda ran out of gas towards the end for doing that. Jeff was getting close to ending the game, so I was hoping that either Tesla would get him off the factory tile or I could get to him and kick him off. However Tesla was unable to defeat him (twice) and I was unable to get there in time.

Our final Triumph Track

Although Shane got more stars out than me, and was threatening to end the game. I did feel he was not “aggressive” enough with my beloved faction. He did seem penned in to his home area for much of the game. He could have had a factory card and control of more tiles.

Jeff had chosen two Vesna mech abilities to do with lakes. The first allowed him to teleport between lakes. The second gave him +1 for each location he controlled that was a lake. Add in the fact he had control of the Factory at the end, the territory he controlled gave him the victory. He got 48 odd points from this. It basically accounts for the point difference between us.

Our final scores for episode 8

So congratulations to Jeff on his victory and on winning the campaign.

I hope Jeff enjoyed his chicken dinner. Obviously Shane and I didn’t get a one.

Thoughts on Rise of Fenris

We had a blast playing this campaign. Some great twists and turns.

The great thing is we can now use the expansion as modules to a regular game, as well as getting two more factions. Add in the modular board, the two unofficial variants (in the complete rulebook) and wow talk about variability and replay ability.

For example the triumph track now can be the “classic” no change, or you could use either the war or peace tracks, or have it totally random using the tiles from Tesla!

You can focus more on conflict or down grade it’s importance. Basically tailor the game to the style of play you enjoy the most, or feel like on the day.

And then there is the Desolation module that’s adds a co-op mode to the game.

Plus you can replay the campaign. Ok you won’t have the surprise element to the campaign as it unfolds. But that doesn’t matter. It might change how you approach each episode.

You don’t have to play the campaign to start with and can just use it as modules for the game. But why wouldn’t you play the campaign first?

This is an amazing expansion that offers fantastic value for money.

I might even say this may be my favourite and the best expansion for Scythe. Don’t get me wrong, I really like the other expansions. Especially the Wind Gambit and what it adds to the game. But Rise of Fenris just blows them away.

This is the moment

Rise of Fenris, Scythe

This Saturday sees episode 8 aka the final episode of our play through of the Rise of Fenris Campaign for Scythe.

I can’t believe just how excited I am about it.

The following quote from the Jekyll and Hyde musical seems very appropriate.

I’ve won two out of the previous seven episodes. With Jeff taking the other five victories.

As the Metallica song goes “And nothing else matters.”

It’s all down to this final episode. “The winner takes it all!”

“The winner of the campaign is the winner of the final episode.” That’s the rules!

So whilst Jeff has the bragging rights of the most wins. I’ve quietly been building up the triumph log ready for this moment.

The FA Cup/League Cup/Champions League Final for our Rise of Fenris Campaign.

Saturday can’t come quick enough for me.

I’ll finish the post with another cheesy quote, this time from the WWE.

“Your time is up, my time is now
You can’t see me, my time is now”

Scythe Rise of Fenris Campaign Episode 7

Game day, Rise of Fenris, Scythe

I know it’s not as if this blog has a huge readership that I can afford to have some go away and read something else. But I have to say the following. I don’t want to spoil the Rise of Fenris campaign for anyone.

SPOILER ALERT! The following post contains spoilers for the Rise of Fenris campaign for Scythe. If you haven’t played the expansion and wish to avoid any spoilers you may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

Right if you are still here and read previous posts in this campaign log,I think it’s a log, you know what’s coming up next.

It was unlikely that Ben was going to turn up. His major life event was having complications. So I set up for three players but had Ben’s stuff to hand if he felt able to come along.

Sadly

Episode 7

The special setup rules for this episode saw the twelfth encounter token being used. This went on the factory space.

We also used the side of the Triumph Track not used in episode 2. Which meant this time it was…

This also meant we could have Rivals in this game too!

Setting up rivals was simple you “…declare “rivals” by placing 1 or more of your stars on other players’ home bases. You may place up to 4 of your stars this way, and you may place multiple stars on the same home base. All players do this simultaneously.”

I placed 2 stars on both Jeff and Shane’s home bases. Sharing the “love”.

This meant while Jeff and Shane had one of my stars on their home base they were a rival. Which also meant if I defeated them in combat I’d not only place one of those stars on the triumph but also get $5. The draw back for me was I could only place these stars on the triumph track by winning a combat.

Our goals were to win the game or find Tesla.

To find Tesla one player had to collect five encounter tokens (the number required changes with the player count).

The question I had was if I the Fenris player found Tesla did that mean he had been recaptured?

Our faction/player board match ups for this episode were as follows after randomly drawing the player boards.

  • Vesna & Voltan/Mechanical (Cyan) – Jeff
  • Rusviet Union/Innovative (Red) – Shane
  • Fenris/Patriotic (Orange) – Me

Once again we were given the option to use the Wind Gambit expansion, and the Backup Plan resolution tile. So naturally they were going to be in play.

Airship Rules, structure bonus, and resolution tile used in episode 7

Opening turns saw us utilising our infrastructure mods to get that initial boost. I obviously unlocked my mech leap ability, and built my windmill, and doubled my initial produce action. Followed by an early recruit to get me three combat cards.

Naturally I wanted to get a good hand of combat cards to go with the soon to be unlocked death ray (ULAH!).

I did get the eight combat cards star on the Triumph track, and was now ready to start being aggressive and winning those combats.

Whilst I was doing all this slowly Jeff and Shane were getting encounter tokens.

I needed to start moving and getting rid of those influence tokens.

Slowly I started placing them around the board to try and slow down the other two. Whilst doing so I was able to win a combat or two and gather an encounter token or two.

Then I got my dream encounter card. I had just won a combat against Shane, and got $5 for my spoils. So I had the money (I did anyway) to pay for the option to copy an opponent’s faction ability for the rest of the game. This was in addition to my own.

As you can see I did a short Instagram video of my reaction to getting the Rusviet faction ability.

How how I miss this ability. It was time to abuse the move action to get out my remaining influence tokens.

If I hadn’t tied up four of my stars for rivals and combat I had got to the point where I had five stars out, and a possibility to get a sixth out without combat. However I had no option but to build up some bolster points to attack the weakest of my opponents to get that final star out.

With a 5 value combat card in hand, I got a single bolster point more than Shane. It was all I needed. Getting to this point had been costly. I had lost a combat against both of them. I had been hoping to keep their stars on the Triumph track to a lower count.

The end of the game was triggered. Then that Backup Plan resolution tile bit me in the butt. I hadn’t won. However that extra round enabled Shane and Jeff to knock me off two tiles and reduce my final score.

However I earnt enough to buy a mod at the end. Which was the important bit.

Final scores for episode 7

I also had three wild card stars to use on the triumph log. So I was able to complete more columns and rows putting me in a good end of game position for episode 8.

Ok Jeff has been winning the battles (well most of them) but the war/campaign is won at the end of episode 8.

Tesla wasn’t found. So we still got to open the last box, revealing a rather cool Tesla mini. But boy is he pissed apparently that we didn’t.

I can’t wait until our final game and find out what Tesla brings to the game.

Scythe Rise of Fenris Campaign Episodes 5 and 6

Game day, Rise of Fenris, Scythe

SPOILER ALERT! The following post contains spoilers for the Rise of Fenris campaign for Scythe. If you haven’t played the expansion and wish to avoid any spoilers you may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

Ben messaged me saying he was not up to joining us today. I called him to check he was ok. But his life event is taking it out of him at the moment.

You know the drill by now. I get there early and set up.

Episode 5

I setup the changes for episode 5 which saw box D being placed on the Factory. An amazing bit of theatre. Then some influence tokens were placed on each tunnel and on each of the three land territories adjacent to the Factory. These would be worth -$1 for each one collected at the end of the game.

Our faction/player board match ups for episode 5 were as follows after randomly drawing the player boards. (I remembered to record them this session.)

  • Vesna & Voltan/Industrial (Cyan) – Jeff
  • Nordic Kingdoms/Militant (Blue) – Shane
  • Rusviet Union/Engineering (Red) – Me

We were allowed the Wind Gambit expansion again so airships were back on the map. This episode we went with the Backup Plan resolution tile. I’ve never played with this resolution tile. It looked interesting with its extra turn if the player triggering the end of the game does not have the highest score.

The two airship tiles drawn were Bombard and Reap. Reap was going to be especially useful for ramping up production.

My beloved Rusviet were having to use the alternative Township mech tile this game.

True to form I made a dash to the Factory, whilst the other two did their “going to complete achievements and get points thing”!

Getting to the Factory got me two influence tokens for my efforts. Aka -$2 at the end of the episode. Was it worth it?

However once there I got to open the mysterious box D.

Inside the box was an Annihilator mini that I had to fight. Victory would trigger the end of the game. Defeat, a major set back and humiliation.

I rolled the two dice.

Double 3.

I had a total combat score of 17.

The Annihilator had a base power of 3, plus the total of the top 3 cards from the combat deck. Well that’s what the expansion rule book said. However the complete rule book said it was the top 4. After a quick debate I went to the Scythe FAQ. It was indeed the top 4 cards. Bugger. There was a misprint in the expansion rule book.

Any card 4 or less and I win. I drew the fourth card, it was a 3. I had defeated the Annihilator and triggered the end of the game.

Sadly I hadn’t won.

So there was one more round. Which saw Shane steal the Factory from me and reduce my score even more. Jeff was the run away victor.

Episode 5 Final Scores

My reward for defeating the Annihilator was to get to play a new faction Fenris, lead by Rasputin.

Episode 6

After moving to another part of the community centre (there was a booking that evening, and they needed to setup where we were). We commenced with episode 6 considering the previous episode had been over so quickly.

Our faction/player board match ups for episode 6 were as follows after randomly drawing the player boards.

  • Vesna & Voltan/Innovative (Cyan) – Jeff
  • Nordic Kingdoms/Industrial (Blue) – Shane
  • Fenris/Agricultural (Orange) – Me

The Wind Gambit was still in play, and we decided to stay with the Backup Plan resolution tile. Our airship tiles for this episode were Negotiate and Toll.

There were no special rules this episode. It was to be just a “normal” game of Scythe!

It was so odd playing without the Rusviet faction ability. How do others do it?

The Annihilator mech has such a War of the Worlds Martian vibe.

I need a sound board app to play that ulah next episode.

No river walk needed with the Annihilator mech, it gets leap! Plus a really cool mech ability called Death Ray! ULAH!

Death Ray is sooooo cool. It allows you to play as many combat cards as you want in combat as long as they are all the same value. So amassing combat cards is a necessary thing to do. Which I did.

One drawback of Fenris is it starts with -$16! However Rasputin (the Fenris Commander) gets to place one influence token on the tile he moves to. Plus one more on an unoccupied tile. These are great fun as they mean -$1 to an opponent if they land on a tile with one on.

I did trigger the end of the game. And I won by a single point much to Jeff’s annoyance. That one point was the influence token he had to take! Plus there was extra salt in his fresh wounds because he might have won if he’d remembered to collect the oil resource at the start of his turns.

Episode 6 Final Scores

Afterwards players were given the chance to swap faction. I decided to stay with Rasputin and Fenris. It was a hard decision. Jeff decided to keep the “broken“ Vesna faction. But Shane couldn’t wait to abandon the Nordic faction, who let’s remember had fought tooth and nail for him in this campaign. Shane wanted to take my beloved Rusviet.

I’m so looking forward to the penultimate episode, episode 7.

Scythe Rise of Fenris Campaign Episode 4

Game day, Rise of Fenris, Scythe

Behind The Scenes or BTS – 4/26/22 aka Alien Day: Why this post is only now appearing. This post has been written over several days. I started it Sunday. However I’ve been a bit tired or as I like to put it “bloody knackered”. So I’ve been writing a little bit of it each day before tiredness kicked in.

Look if you want to ruin the surprises that await you as you play the Scythe Rise of Fenris expansion then ignore the following warning. Otherwise please pay heed to it.

SPOILER ALERT! The following post contains spoilers for the Rise of Fenris campaign for Scythe. If you haven’t played the expansion and wish to avoid any spoilers you may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

Yesterday it was time to get Scythe and the Rise of Fenris expansion back to the table to play the next episode in the campaign.

First thing I did was to call Ben and see if he was well enough to join us. We left it that he’d call me at around 11:30am and let me know if he wasn’t.

I grabbed my bag with “everything” in and left for the Community Centre. As I was picking up the bag I distinctly remembered thinking to myself how nice it was to be able to just pick up a single bag and go. Knowing everything was in that bag.

Sadly that wasn’t entirely true.

It wasn’t until I got to the Community Centre, got out the car, took out the bag, and started walking from the car to the Community Centre, that I realised I’d left the neoprene playmat at home!

No worries we could use the regular board. Which changed to we will use the big board set up.

Whilst setting up Ben arrived.

This episode allowed the Wind Gambit expansion to be used. So naturally we were going to play with the airships. We were also allowed to use either the Doomsday Clock or Backup Plan resolution tiles. Of course we went with the Doomsday Clock. I’d played using that before (it’s the only resolution tile I’ve played with so far, but then again it’s only the second time I’ve played with them) and really enjoyed it. I really do like how the focus changes. It’s much more focused and pressured.

I got Ben to draw the two airship tiles, and we ended up with Toll and Hero. Ben also drew the structure bonus for this episode (see below).

We also got to open the little box marked B. Inside eight little orange meeples! These were Fenris agents. Two went on the Factory tile, and each of the six tiles with a tunnel on them also got a single Fenris agent.

By the time setup was finished, which included leaving the factory cards not drawn for the game to one side for Jeff to finish his Vesna faction setup once he arrived. We still had a little time left before the others were due to arrive.

With my setup bonuses and purchasing the perk for 2 more popularity my starting popularity for this episode was 6.

Our goals for episode 4 were to subdue the Fenris agents, and win the game (in 20 turns).

If there is one flaw I have in this campaign it’s going for the shiny new things like influence tokens, or as in this episode Fenris agents over trying to get objectives completed.

I did manage to get five of them, and there was that alluring promise of unimaginable riches at the end of the episode. Riches that translated to setup bonuses. Which felt a little disappointing when it was revealed at the end of the episode. Although I know that at the start of the next episode I will appreciate their benefit.

One of my tactics this game was a land grab trying to be in control of as many tiles as possible. I was able to utilise my airship as a way to lockdown the factory tile under my control. If you remember we had Toll as one of the airship tiles. Which meant to move through or into a space with an airship you had to pay a toll.

I only managed to get three objectives completed this episode before the Doomsday Clock ran out. So far out of the four episodes played the only objective I haven’t completed is the recruit one. So I need to complete that one next episode to complete a line across the Triumph Track. That’s $25 in the final episodes end scoring.

Jeff romped home with the victory and more than enough cash to buy two of the newly unlocked mech mods.

Shane also was able to purchase one. Whilst Ben and myself could look in the shop window but not buy anything. Maybe next episode.

I’m looking forward to our next game in 3 weeks time and the surprises it brings.

Scythe Rise of Fenris Campaign Episode 3

Game day, Rise of Fenris, Scythe

I have to say the following as I’d hate to have ruined the campaign for anyone.

SPOILER ALERT! The following post contains spoilers for the Rise of Fenris campaign for Scythe. If you haven’t played the expansion and wish to avoid any spoilers you may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

The morning started off with Ben sending me a text saying he was unlikely to make our session later.

As per normal (well for me) I arrived early and started to set up.

I know folks might find this hard to believe, but I actually enjoy setting up Scythe! It’s a breeze.

We were due to have Lizzy and Mark join us for the campaign but you can guess from how I started the sentence they were unable to. While setting up Lizzy messaged me that Mark seemed to have whatever she had mid week.

I just had an image in my head that I was going to end up with no one coming, and be sitting there looking like Billy no mates in front of the footy fans watching the lunchtime match (Everton vs Man U), and mothers having a kid free beverage.

While waiting for the appointed time between drinking my latte, eating my ham roll, and bagging the game pieces in Cryptid. I was checking my phone regularly for messages from Jeff and Shane.

There was a big sigh of relief when Jeff turned up. Followed by Shane.

Refreshments is place. It was time for …

Episode 3

Our faction/player board match ups for this episode were as follows after randomly drawing the player boards.

  • Saxony Empire/Agricultural (Black) – Jeff
  • Nordic Kingdoms/Engineering (Blue) – Shane
  • Rusviet Union/Innovative (Red) – Me

The factory deck and space were going to be different this episode.

For starters a character card for Vesna, daughter of Nicolas Tesla was added to the initial four cards. Then a further four cards were added, with the larger deck then being shuffled.

During this episode when we visited the factory tile we would get an encounter token. We would then shuffle the deck and reveal cards equal to the number of encounter tokens we had. If one of the cards was Vesna we’d keep the card. Otherwise if we didn’t have a factory card already we could keep one of the revealed cards.

It was the turn of the Rusviets to have an episode nerf. For this episode only (I’m assuming) the Township ability was replaced. I could no longer jump into the factory tile from a controlled village tile. However I could jump from a controlled village tile to an unoccupied one. Which was nearly as cool, and did allow me to get more than my share of encounter tokens.

Goals for the episode were to accumulate influence tokens, find Vesna, and win the game. I’m always forgetting to do that later one!

The story mission did have that “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” vibe to it.

I got off to a blazing start and had the objective for all my workers out on the map completed. It helped that my starting perk for this episode was an extra worker.

Then things slowed down for me, with Shane not long after also completing the same objective.

It transpired that using my faction ability to abuse the crap out of a factory card (damn game balancing errata) wasn’t our only miss play in the opening episodes. In episode 2 Jeff got most of his objective points from completing missions. He was drawing new ones, when he completed one. It had escaped me that he was doing this. I thought he was getting new ones from Encounter cards.

Shane queried his Engineering player board and it’s move action.

It looked like it did not have the slash between the move actions and the gain coins action. Shane was querying whether it should have one there. I said if it didn’t then it was a misprint. Otherwise that’d be an insanely power action.

As the photo of the Engineering player board above shows that it does indeed exist on the player board. It’s just very hard to see thanks to the gorgeous art work. A black line on a dark grey part of the image doesn’t make it the easiest thing to spot.

Naturally my three visits to the Factory failed to find Vesna. But it did get me three influence tokens, and a factory card. To add salt to the wound Jeff defeated my mech on the space, and then found Vesna on his first attempt.

I was too slow putting stars out. Although I did get the one for having the maximum bolster points. One I rarely get in games. I had been playing catch up on that front for most of the game.

So it came as little surprise Jeff triggered the end of the game. I was at least three maybe four turns away from being able to do the same. I’d only got four stars out.

The final scores were as follows:

As you can see Jeff won with a very comfortable margin.

So Jeff’s reward for finding Vesna was to change his faction! Saxony is no more. Jeff had the honour of opening box A to have the new plastic revealed to him. It looks pretty cool. However you will have to wait until we play episode 4 to see photos.

The rulebook very generously also allowed the rest of us to change our factions if we so wished. Shane and I both declined that offer.

We also got to draw more infrastructure mods. I bought the Construction mod. Which means I now have three mods to use each game. My other two being Cavalry and Automachines. Bloody shame I never used those two this episode. That might explain a little why I didn’t do as well. Failure to utilise all my resources.

The influence tokens also meant something this game other than card draw on the factory deck. For every two influence tokens (rounded up) you got to increase a setup bonus by one. I spent them wisely on popularity. So from now on I start each episode with an extra two popularity.

I ended this session with $16. Just enough to buy the perk at the start of episode four.

What a great game. Loved it. Loved the hunt for Vesna and the change to the factory deck. Wow! Getting the new faction. Can’t wait to see what that does in episode four.

Scythe Rise of Fenris Campaign Episodes 1 and 2

Game day, Rise of Fenris, Scythe

SPOILER ALERT! The following post contains spoilers for the Rise of Fenris campaign for Scythe. If you haven’t played the expansion and wish to avoid any spoilers you may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

Since coming out in 2018 the Rise of Fenris (RoF) has been sitting sealed in bubble wrap on my shelf waiting for today!

During that time I’ve managed to avoid any spoilers, and just as important resist opening it up.

I wanted to experience the campaign as it unfolded episode by episode revealing what ever surprises it held inside its box. You only get to do this once. It’s like watching a movie, or hearing a song for the very first time. You can never recapture that moment. No matter how hard you try.

Today Ben, Jeff, Shane and myself met up to start this journey together.

For this opening session of RoF we used the neoprene map. It truly is a lovely version of the game board. We were using the base game of Scythe plus the following expansions Invaders from Afar (nearly wrote Mars there), Encounters, and all the promo packs. For the first two episodes it is not recommended to play with the Wind Gambit expansion.

This meant all faction and player boards were in play when it came down to choosing our faction for the campaign.

Player boards were dealt out randomly to each player. Then starting with the highest numbered player board and going in descending order we drafted our faction board, avoiding any banned combinations. Which meant I chose first, followed by Jeff, then Shane, and finally Ben.

We had our factions for the campaign.

I thought on my drive over I had decided maybe I won’t chose Rusviet. But instead try another faction. Assuming no one else chose Rusviet that is. However without even thinking I went for my favourite faction. Somehow the familiar seemed right.

Having the lowest numbered player board meant that Ben would be first player in episode 1 of RoF. A bit of a curve ball for him as this would be his first time of playing the game! Which was also true for Shane. They were about to jump into the deep end of the pool, having only watched a tutorial online. Would they sink or swim? For sure their learning curve was going to be very steep, against two very competitive players.

Episode 1

This is how the factions and player boards matched up for the opening episode of the campaign.

  • Republic of Polania/Industrial (White) – Ben
  • Saxony Empire/Patriotic (Black) – Jeff
  • Nordic Kingdoms/Militant (Blue) – Shane
  • Rusviet Union/Mechanical (Red) – Me

Setup for episode 1 was as expected, just like a regular game of Scythe. Then it came to making the additions for this opening episode.

The first addition was to draw 1 random objective card from the deck and place it next to the Triumph Track. This was to be an extra objective all players could complete and place a star on.

Next was to punch some cardboard and add an influence token to each of the Triumph track categories plus the objective we had just added.

We also got to choose a free perk for this episode. After that they would cost us hard earned dollars to purchase at the start of each episode. The first hit is always free.

The “special rules” were simple. Be the first to place a star on a category or the added objective and claim the influence token.

Objectives for episode 1 were simple. Win the game, and collect influence tokens.

This first game was basically like any regular game of Scythe. With the only difference being we got these influence tokens that we had no idea what they were going to be used for.

Somehow I wasn’t the first to the Factory! Ben was. Yeah I know how did that happen? But I was second.

This was an unusual game, or it felt that way. We were all in the first section of the popularity track when it came to the final counting. No one had massive amounts of territory that they controlled. There was combat but not massive amounts. It felt we were all being very insular.

I did trigger the end of the game. On the road to doing so I had collected 5 influence tokens.

Not one of us completed the additional objective.

After the tallying of coins was done, and the dust settled Jeff had won.

Episode 1 Scores

We made a note of the money earnt. This was going to allow us to buy stuff in subsequent episodes.

Before we moved on we had one more thing to do. Using our influence tokens we had to vote on the direction of the next episode. Did we want to focus more on War (combat and interaction) or focus more on Peace (engine building and infrastructure).

I voted for peace. Which with my 5 tokens guaranteed that was the route we would be going down.

Episode 2

For episode 2 we got new player mats, which were drawn at random. Once again enforcing the banned pairings. Below are the new faction and player mat pairings.

  • Republic of Polania/Mechanical (White) – Ben
  • Saxony Empire/Innovative (Black) – Jeff
  • Nordic Kingdoms/Industrial (Blue) – Shane
  • Rusviet Union/Engineering (Red) – Me

The game board was reset. The influence tokens returned to the box.

The setup for episode 2 gave us a new Triumph track in the form of a Peace Triumph track overlay. Plus each of us got our matching faction alliance token. We also got the chance to purchase a perk for the episode for $15.

The episode goals were to obviously win the game and build structures.

This time I was the first to get to the Factory. Order to the universe was restored.

It would have been nice to have had the Polania faction ability. But Ben wouldn’t have it. All he saw was the money on the front of the tile, and that he got considerable less on that front than me. He didn’t see how powerful my faction ability was. So sadly I was limited to just one of the encounter cards options.

Initially Shane turned down my offer of an alliance also. His Nordic ability would be handy for my workers. He listened to Ben’s flawed money argument. But eventually he caved and an alliance was made. At just the right time for me as it gave me enough income to fuel my factions abuse of its power until near the very end.

The river walk for my workers did prove very handy allowing me to expand out and build my structures close to encounter spots.

As the final scores show this episode really really suited my faction. I was in the final section of the popularity track getting the maximum points multiplier.

I wasn’t expecting any combat to happen. It didn’t “gain” you anything. However in the later half of the game Ben and Jeff turned to the aggressive side and attacked Shane!

Episode 2 Scores

At the end of the episode we got to choose a free Infrastructure Mod, and the chance to buy other ones for $50 each. The number you got to choose from depended on how many structures you built during the game. You got to draw two initially plus an extra one for each structure you built. Which meant I was choosing from 6 mods.

“Remember, wealth earned in Episodes 1-7 is not used to determine the winner of the campaign, so spend it to improve your empire!” Rise of Fenris rulebook, page 19

How cool is the above? “The winner of the campaign is the winner of the final episode”. Love it.

I really loved these first two episodes. The additions weren’t overwhelming, they ease you into the campaign very gently. I can’t wait for our next session in two weeks time and see what surprises lie in wait for us. We haven’t even opened a box yet!