Last night with the help of Diego and Jeff, my all time favourite game Scythe hit the table.

For our session last night I used the official play mat and the Scythe Encounters expansion. I could have just shuffled in these new encounters with the old ones. But then we wouldn’t have been guaranteed to have seen any of them. So for this game we played with just the new cards. We were also playing with the Wind Gambit expansion. But only using the airships. Decided not to use the resolutions module this time.

We opted for randomly selecting our factions. Which saw Jeff get my favourite faction Rusviet. Diego pulled Nordic. Whilst I got Polania.

After finishing set up (I’d done a lot of it before the others had arrived) we spent 20 minutes refreshing our memories over the rules. It has been much to my shame a year since I’d last had the game to the table. And that’s despite the excuse of the new expansions coming out. I could make excuses as to why this amazing game hasn’t been played more often. But after last night I no longer have one of the main ones. It just needs calendars to align now, and a max player count of 4.

I have to admit my first couple or so Encounter cards I was real happy I had the Polania faction ability. Being able to chose upto 2 of the options was sweet. These new cards are fun.

I really liked the new cards. I had one that allowed my character to move to the factory if it wasn’t occupied. Hitting that early on was a great bonus. I had first pick of the factory cards.

Although there was a little “discussion” about the wording of one card.

The situation was as follows. I wanted to move my mech into a space that had one of Diego’s workers in and some tasty resources I wanted to steal. As indicated by the red arrow in the photo below.

However…

Earlier on in the game I had drawn the Encounter card below. I did the bottom option Hijack the airship obviously. I also did the Offer Your Protection To The Captain option (highlighted in photo below) choosing Diego.

So I couldn’t attack Diego. Which I interrupted as not doing combat. So I couldn’t move my mech into a space with a mech or character that belonged to him, and start a combat. Whilst Diego interrupted attack to also include moving a mech into a space with his worker.

We made our cases for our points of view. And to settle the impasse we let Jeff make the final decision. With the promise that whatever the judgement we would be hitting the internet later to determine the correct answer.

But the question is who was right? Does moving a mech into a space with an opponents worker in count as an attack?

I’ll update the post later today or leave a comment with the results of my internet search for the answer.

I should mention that the official neoprene play mat is beautiful. A perfect size for the game, and really high quality with stitching on the edges.

We had a blast playing Scythe. I was first loser, with Diego winning. However the gap between Jeff and myself was only 2 points.

A great evening playing an amazing game with some great friends (still no curry night invite Jeff!!!) at a great location.

UPDATE: I found this thread on bgg which would seem to back up my interpretation of attack and combat. And therefore means that Diego’s victory is disputed, as history would have been different. And I have the more important moral victory.