Scythe

Scythe has the most misleading box in our collection. The art promises mechs stomping across a war map, and then you sit down and spend most of the evening moving workers onto fields and deciding whether you can afford another upgrade. We score it 4/5 Pandas and 2/5 Bamboo, and the gap between what people expect and what they get is the main reason groups bounce off it early.

Start with the Scythe review, which spends most of its time on why this is not the war game it looks like. If your table is nervous about the weight of it, Scythe for beginners is the reassuring one: not too hard, but the first night is genuinely rough, and it separates what is actually difficult from what only looks difficult. Our player count piece ranks everything from the solo mode up to five, and four is the clear winner.

For people already playing, the strategy guide is built on a single claim, that the economy decides the winner and combat only sets the timing. The faction ranking puts Rusviet and Crimea at the top and Saxony at the bottom, while arguing that the player mat you pair a faction with matters more than the faction itself.