We're up to ~15 games of Scythe since it came in. Good game so far, but boardgamegeek is stuck in full fellatio mode on the dev; game has some issues. Russia isn't "unbeatable", but it definitely is heavily advantaged, and requires a dedication from the other players to meddling directly in its affairs, which is rarely required by other factions. Game definitely feels a lot better when you draft the action-boards after recieving your Nation Board, rather than when you hand them out randomly, as some starting peninsulas are extremely bad for certain action boards.
Polania is the only faction that really feels weak in our time playing, and that's mostly due to the difficulty it has getting off its starting peninsula without a friendly-costed action board. If you manage to get off early due to good luck with your starting-peninsula quest, the faction feels great, but that's a ton of shit riding on that first encounter. Black&Yellow faction has never won a game, mostly because everyone is super paranoid when they're involved (thanks to Black's ability to ambush-win the game by completing multiple objectives at once and being able to get more than 2 military stars), rather than being weak.
All the encounters that provide mechs feel brutally overpowered when they're found on a starting peninsula.
My "irrational personal gripe" of the game is that it's awkward to track Recruits some times when you have 4+ players. People taking recruit bonuses from players who are 2 spots away, players missing recruit bonus actions taken by their adjacent players, etc.
Strategically, we haven't had a '5-worker' strat player get 1st or 2nd, those slots are always locked up by someone who rushed 8 workers for the star/efficient mech distribution of move actions. Our games are pretty evenly split on sections of the popularity track for the winner, having had multiple people win at each of the three point multiplier segments.
I heavily recommend giving it a go. It looks like a 3-4 hour game, but it's actually a 1.5-2h game, and it plays pretty smooth.
Kuro
- Glad to hear after 15 games that Russia is still broken. I raped with them in our first game, no one was even close to me. After playing that I felt the game was fine but Russia was just way too good. Glad to hear I'm not the only one.
Brand
- Mystic Vale is only half a game like Dominion or Ascension is only half a game. It's a deckbuilder with no player interaction. Those games have been making millions over the past decade. I felt like it had some cool mechanics and definitely drives the genre along in to new territory. I think their next game which is Mystic Vale with attacks will be sweet as long as the attacks are more interactive then something like Star Realms.
