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.

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.

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.