Airships Overhead

Last night, I enjoyed my first play with Scythe: The Wind Gambit expansion.

I shuffled the factions and decided to play against two Automa. I ended up with the Rusviet faction. The Automa factions were Crimea and The Nords.

Very quickly into the game I realized I really felt like I purchased the Scythe expansions in a great order for me. Invaders from Afar is definitely the first expansion I recommend getting. It has the least to learn as you add it to the base game. From there, Rise of Fenris campaign expansion. Finally, The Wind Gambit expansion. I'm saying this order as a mostly solo Scythe player as well. Last night marked my 110th play at the table (I'm somewhere in the 70 range on the digital version), yet this expansion brought different ways of thinking and some aspects of the Automa movement to learn. All fine by me! 😁

This expansion brought something I wasn't really expecting. It brought alot more variety to the game. It seems like the deeper you go into collecting all the expansions, the more ways you have to play, which creates endless enjoyment for years to come!

In Wind Gambit you can choose to play with the airships. If you do this, you shuffle the passive and aggressive airship decks and choose one of each. The Automa does not use the passive ability, but does use the aggressive airship ability.

BOOST was my passive ability, which allows an extra movement when a unit is moving out of a territory with an airship.

Notice the territory icon with a '2' in the upper right corner of this ability? That's the range of the airship for it's movement. In this case, 2-territories. And they don't need the riverwalk ability or any abilities to submerge in lakes since they fly.

BOMBARD was the aggressive ability. With this ability, if a battle occurs on a territory with your airship, you can pay up 1/2/3 resources from the airshipo to reduce the opponent's power by 1/3/5. 😮

Notice the 3-resources icon in the top right corner of this ability? This was something in this expansion that was different (and better) than I expected. My understanding was, airships can transport workers and resources. What I didn't know is that it's not the case every game and in an unrestricted way. The aggressive ability each game will determine what the airships can do for you in terms of transport. For last night's game, my airship could carry up to 3-resources (but no workers). Cool! This makes every game different. 😃

This shot was only a turn or two in; before the chaos ensued. 😂 The Automa won this game (the Crimean's -yellow- to be exact) but it ended up close. I didn't get any starts until very late in the game. My mind was very much trying to sort out the best use of my airship and it's abilities, while also trying to learn the minor adjustments to the Automa movement with airships. I didn't mind this at all, but there are still a few things I question whether I did correctly.

Which brings up my earlier point, that I really think I purchased the expansions in a wonderful order. If after 100+ games at the table, I still need to learn some aspects of the Automa movement with airships in play, I can't imagine trying to learn the Automa movement AND the airships module at the same time. I love that I have the understanding of the Automa first, before adding to it.

That's also something I've always admired about this game. Any expansion is not taking anything away from what you've learned in the base game; it's adding to it. Yes there's still things to learn, but in my opinion, all great games will have that learning curve. That's part of the fun! 😊

More to it...

There is more to this cool expansion than airships and their abilities as well, that I didn't utilize last night. Well, one of them I can only use in multiplayer which offers two options in terms of how you use the airship abilities:

1) You can shuffle the passive and aggressive decks, choose one of each and all players' airships utilize those common abilities

2) You can shuffle the passive and aggressive decks and give each player one of each, to create a VERY different game with everyone having their own abilities with their airships. Wow!

But wait! There's more!

The Wind Gambit expansion also comes with resolution tiles. These can be added to the airships module, or played without using airships. It gives you 8-new 'end of game' triggers. You can choose one, or you can shuffle and randomly choose your end of game trigger. Very cool. By the end of the game last night, I was glad I opted not to use this just yet simply because there was enough to think about with the airships module before adding even more options to think about. 😉

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Overall, this expansion was more than I expected. The airships really sway your approach to the game in a new direction. Although I didn't, you can really see how you could utilize the airships to your advantage in different scenarios against your opponent's. I love that. These floating monstrosities over your territories are simply a new tool to help your faction become the wealthiest and most powerful in the alternate 1920's Europa.