Unexpectedly, I had a little over an hour where I could relax and get a game to the table before the evening festivities. I've had the urge for heavier games that fill the table; but what could I play in an hour or less? Scythe. 😍
I kept it simple in regards to play and setup;
-1 Automa opponent. Random shuffles of course to choose the Automa and my own faction.
-3 modular board tiles only to keep things tight!
-I chose to use an end game variant from the Wind Gambit expansion (but no airships)
I played with the "Mission Possible" end game variant (right). This has you shuffle and randomly draw two additional objective cards that go beside the star tracker track. These provide two additional options to place stars. The card on the left is the Automa's setup using this variant. This has the Automa place a star on one of the objectives at the start of the game (since the Automa doesn't get stars for completing objectives). This puts immediate pressure on you to be smart in your decisions (hopefully) since it leaves the Automa to only need to place 5-stars to finish the game. In addition, with this end game variant, once someone places a 6th star, the other player gets one final turn but cannot take a move action.
Here's the setup. Notice I have my resource trays in the top right corner of the board? That's because there's no map tile there. Albion faction's base is to the East of mine, with only one map tile option of possible movement to the North. Yikes!
As planned, the game took about 40min with only one Automa opponent and I enjoyed every second as usual. 😀 Albion actually pinned me in quite quickly (should've seen that coming with this map), but I managed to build a tunnel so I could get out to other areas of the board. There's another thing; with the modular board, tunnel territories are in VERY different locations on the map AND with one less map tile being played, I was limited in selection. Often, the Automa would be on a tunnel territory - meaning I had to battle OR find a different way to move out.
Here's a shot at the end of the game where you can see my tunnel I built (left) near my faction's base. I did manage to get a factory card part way through the game, and held onto the factory without any issues (close calls mind you). However, Albion took the win.
I've mentioned before that what I love about Scythe for me is when I haven't played for a while, it's a challenge getting a win for a few plays. It's a great reminder to try to play more. Add a modular board, tighter map and different factors such as the end game variant options and it's a totally different experience. So that said, I wasn't unhappy with my end result despite the loss.
And I was VERY happy to have gotten one game in before enjoying our evening. 😊