A cursory glance over Scythe, its components and glorious artwork – Jakub Rozalski’s rural dieselpunk vistas having been one of the game’s central inspirations – could easily suggest a game firmly ensconced in wargaming territory. Its board – a sprawling, intricately segmented map of a fictional 1920’s Europe (named here ‘Europa’) – offers glimpses of territory control a la, say, Risk or Game of Thrones. Elsewhere, the double-dip of character and action boards that each player has at their command, littered with cubes, meeples, wooden tokens and insignia, suggest engine-building, worker placement and resource management reminiscent of another hit from the Stonemaier catalogue, Viticulture.

It’s a testimony to the thematically and mechanically rich, yet relatively intuitive, design of Scythe, then, that this is a game that is all of those things (and more) at once, with little-to-no baggage. With its stunning depictions of hulking mechs – neatly realised in plastic form, to boot – and warfare-tinted symbols and embellishments, it’s perhaps the militaristic elements of Scythe that make the strongest first impact. And yet, despite clashes for territory and resources being indeed part of the tapestry here, combat plays a perhaps surprisingly minor part of most games of Scythe. Indeed, as we discovered in our sessions, even hotly-contested four or five-players games can play out on a knife edge with relatively few direct tussles even taking place.

Much like the aforementioned Viticulture, there’s a fair amount of visual language to Scythe. It can make for a slightly daunting first impression, but once the basic mechanics and symbols are understood, it all becomes pleasingly straightforward and responsive.

Play is divided between the main boad – a central map of ‘Europa’ – and each player’s pair of character and action boards. As expected, the map is where you will place and move workers, build structures, harvest resources, and send your unique ‘character’ on a journey to experience ‘encounters’ – narrative cards with one-off, multiple choice bonuses – and perhaps even engage in a combat or two. When you’ve gathered enough resources, you can start fielding your mechs – combat and movement-focused figures who can help carry your workers about, support your character in combat, or even engage in fights of their own.

How you do all of this is dictated by your two boards. Character boards, for the most part, govern special rules and unlockable bonuses tailored to whichever faction you are assigned at the start of the game. Your mechs, for instance, begin the game here, covering special ‘peekaboo’ bonuses; every time you field one (moving it from your board onto the map), you get to use the bonus rule that revealed when you do so. One such example is ‘riverwalk’ rule – which means that once that particular mech is fielded, your character and all mechs now gain the ability to cross otherwise impassable rivers that weave throughout the map.

“There’s a fair amount of visual language to Scythe… but once the basic mechanics and symbols are understood, it all becomes pleasingly straightforward and responsive.”

Elsewhere on the character boards, unique rules for each faction are available from the offset. The fairly self-evidently inspired ‘Rusviet Union’, for instance, get to bypass restrictions on not repeating actions, whilst the workers of the ‘Nordic Kingdom’ are allowed to move through those previously-mentioned rivers, that otherwise bar passage to other factions. Each faction and character board have unique unlockable bonuses, too, including those hidden mech bonuses, meaning that your overall strategy and approach will likely differ depending on which faction you are randomly assigned at the start of play. The aforementioned Nordics, for instance, in being able to cross rivers, are not as territorially-restricted in the early game, meaning fast expansion and aggressive resource grabbing can be a legitimate approach. The ‘Polania Republic’ player, meanwhile, will want to be planning to send his character out to as many ‘encounters’ as possible, as their special rule allows them to harvest two benefits (of a possible three) from each encounter card, whereas other players are restricted to picking only one.

Moving over to the action boards, these are sub-divided into four sections, and each turn players must move their marker to a new section from the one previously on – in a vein similar to, say, Ravensburger‘s Villainous titles – and may fulfil one or both of the actions of that section. There are some conditionals – if choosing both actions, you must complete the top one first, and you can’t complete an action if you don’t have the required amount of resources to pay for it.

These actions are the crucial mechanics enable you to fulfil the key objective of Scythe – which is, namely, to be the player at the end of the game who has accrued the most cumulative wealth. Sample actions include being able to move your pieces across the hexagonal territories of the Europa map, harvest various resources – wood, oil, food and more workers – from territories currently under your control, engineer buildings and structures for further resources and bonuses, enlist recruits to get short term but also game-long benefits, build and field your four mechs, and even upgrade and tinker with your boards in ways that will make future actions cheaper, and the benefits from doing so even better.

A fairly straightforward but robust ‘star’ system tracks both individual players success, and the overall progress of the game as a whole. Each player begins with six stars, and when certain achievements, thresholds or milestones are hit, players will place a star on the respective section of the board. Much like actions, the variety and breadth of options for star placement is fairly broad – max out your ‘reputation’ by doing good deeds and avoiding scaring off enemy workers? Place a star. Win your first combat? Place a star. Successfully complete one of the unique ‘objective’ cards you’re given at the start of the game? Place a star. Manage to field all four of your mechs? …You get the idea.

As soon as any player lodges their sixth and final star, though, the game ends immediately (even if this takes place in another player’s turn), meaning Scythe as a whole is something of a managed and calculated race. With wealth being the final barometer of victory, though, you can easily get situations where a player may hold back on placing their final star (thus ending the game) until they’ve spread out a little further, or acquired that extra bit of wealth or resource. The worst thing you can do is prematurely end the game, only to realise that one of your fellow players actually has notably more territory or gold in the bank.

It’s the sheer wealth of options and approaches that makes Scythe such an absorbing and multi-faceted puzzle of a game to tackle. Unlike many other games of its ilk, it’s rarely about being just the most overtly aggressive or expansionist player. Indeed, for some factions, the resource and reputational cost of simply going all-out on the offensive can be entirely counter-productive. Some players and factions may yield success by carefully cultivating their own area, focusing on getting their mechs and buildings out, and possibly never encountering a fellow player at all. Others, such as the aggressive ‘Saxony Empire’, contrarily, have unique rules that favour being combative and warmongering. The stars system and action boards are robust and diverse enough, though, that there are countless approaches and strategies that can be tackled with practically every faction.

For some, there’s the risk that this can cultivate a curious dichotomy in the wealth of choices and pathways that Scythe entrusts its players with. Once the initially intimidating catalogue of iconography, actions and mechanics become understood and familiar – which is, to say, likely quite quickly (so neatly-designed and instinctive as they are) – it’s very easy to become lost in a broil of attempting to do all things at once. Indeed, Scythe gives you so many options and routes to victory, it is very easy to get bogged down trying to accomplish too much at once.

“It’s the sheer wealth of options and approaches that makes Scythe such an absorbing and multi-faceted puzzle of a game to tackle.”

It isn’t really so much a criticism of the game as it is a word of strategic warning, but it’s still likely that the more focused thinkers will dominate early games, until the realisation that targeted efficiency is the name of the game here truly sinks in. Said efficiency, and being willing to disregard (or at least not prioritise) entire chunks of the game’s mechanics, isn’t something that the surplus of options makes immediately obvious or organic, though.

Indeed, there are whole elements of play we haven’t even touched upon yet, too, such as the ‘power’ scale, a chart that your faction will climb up and down on, and one completely separate from the similarly numerical ‘reputation’. ‘Power’ governs your ability to dish out damage in combat (more on which, shortly), but can also be both another resource and another pathway to placing a coveted star. Of ‘reputation’, your faction’s placement on this important scale provides an at-times decisive end-game multiplier to your wealth, territory and resources. And then there’s the ‘factory’, a unique space in the centre of the board that not only counts as multiple territories during endgame calculations, but also gives a powerful expansion to action boards for any players that manage to guide their unique character figure there (which can, in and of itself, be a risky, exposing journey).

Which leaves combat. Again, often neither as ubiquitous nor decisive as perhaps expected, it nonetheless hinges upon another neatly-realised mechanic. Any instance of shared territory – where one player moves a mech or character into a space occupied by an enemy counterpart (lowly workers do not initiate fights, they simply flee) – immediately initiates combat. Courtesy of a hidden dial, each combatant then secretly assigns some – or none – of their accumulated power (which is then lost, win or lose) and can further buttress this with a number of combat cards equal to the number of fighters (characters, mechs) they have in that particular combat. It’s a hidden numbers game, essentially, and when both players reveal their combat ‘total’ – power spent and any bonuses on cards played – the highest wins (attackers breaking a tie), sending the loser packing back to their starting spot. The secretive nature of assigning power and cards can lead to genuinely tense stand-offs and, like much of Scythe, there’s flexiblity to try out different tactics. Can you bluff or double-bluff your opponent into thinking you’re not even going to add any cards, or perhaps even force another player to overspend and waste power on a combat you are going to throw anyway? It’s another enjoyable and flavoursome wrinkle in what could have very easily been a simple card or dice throwdown.

“Combat… another enjoyable and flavoursome wrinkle in what could have very easily been a simple card or dice throwdown.”

Moving from mechanics and gameplay over to realisation and design, and the components, build quality and aesthetic of Scythe prove just as impressive and absorbing as its gameplay. Rozalski’s sumptuous, evocative artwork underpins it all, including a well laid-out and accessible rulebook. The myriad cards, player boards, character designs et al, are all at the pinnacle of what you can expect from a contemporary board game. It all looks and feels premium, quality and, crucially, sturdy. The five plastic faction characters – each complete with animal sidekick – are suitably detailed, distinctive and dynamic, which extends through to each faction’s mechs being of a unique design, too.

There are some quality of life and future-proofing touches, too; whilst initially a 2016 release, it’s nice to see the base map and board natively providing spaces and insignia for its eventual expansion factions. A bespoke deck and additional set of rules for solo mode (courtesy of Automata Factory) are further indicators of a considered and inclusive approach to the game’s design and release. Whilst we have yet to test the solo mode, Automata have a solid reputation in this area, and general consensus from both critical and user feedback seems to be that Scythe’s 1-player experience can be an exciting – not to mention surprisingly aggressive – experience.

There’s a fair amount in the box, and if the recycled plastic bags that contain many of the wooden components and cards are expectedly flimsy, it is nonetheless always nice to see a manufacturer being environmentally-conscious. Two branded Stonemaier plastic tubs are included (and can open out to provide four trays for in-game use) for the numerous card tokens that the game requires – currency, encounter markers etc. – but you’ll likely want to handle the bags with care, or otherwise source some inserts, as there is plenty to keep tidied away that you really don’t want left loose rattling around and getting mixed up in the box.

For a relatively recent release (first landing, as mentioned, in 2016), Scythe has become rapidly established within the board game community as a title of real substance and renown. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from playing and reviewing the game, is how it isn’t at all as ‘heavy’ an offering as first impressions could perhaps suggest. Again, it’s reflective of the hallmark of Stonemaier’s approach (and doubtless exhaustive testplaying) that its expansive, diverse catalogue of strategies, options and approaches become second-nature remarkably quickly.

“That its gameplay excellence is equally matched by its aesthetic and artistic quality only sweetens the deal.”

For certain, it likely won’t sway casual gamers, and at higher player counts you’re likely looking at a circa 2-hour time sink, but it cannot be overstated how this is an intuitive, responsive and engaging board game experience that will likely appeal to a far broader base than its optics (and reputation) may first suggest. Contrarily, for those who may enjoy getting lost in the headier, day-consuming, endlessly-intricate machinations of, say, Twilight Imperium or its contemporaries, then Scythe will perhaps feel a breezier, lighter affair (for better or worse).

On balance, though, this is a masterfully and robustly designed offering from Jamey Stegmaier – a rich, involving, asymmetric playground of consequence, competition and choice. Part worker-placement, part engine-builder, part territory-control, part resource-management, Scythe practically demands repeat plays. To test out the elasticity of its factions, to try out different approaches and strategies, and simply because its mechanics are so damned fun. That its gameplay excellence is equally matched by its aesthetic and artistic quality only sweetens the deal.

It may not be for everyone, but for those who take the (refreshingly brief) time to get a grasp of its gears, they’ll find in Scythe a rewarding and compelling dieselpunk challenge of very few equals.

The worker placement genre is a (fittingly) busying world. Whether reaching quite literally upward with the treetops and expansionism of Starling Games’ Everdell, or plucking at Hollywood IP with the deck building and placement hybrid of Dune: Imperium, it’s an ilk of board gaming that has stayed the course, and continues to evolve at a rapid pace.

Whilst this review lands just as a brand new expansion – the co-operative Viticulture World – releases, it still makes Stonemaier Games‘ core Viticulture game, at just shy of a decade, almost a relic in board gaming terms. The original release, back in 2013, which sees players competing to build the most successful and productive Italian Vineyard, garnered praise for its gorgeous styling and simple-yet-versatile mechanics. Reprints and expansions inevitably followed, which added extra options, wrinkles to the formula, and additional components, but at its core, Viticulture remained refined but relatively untouched; a taut, accessible yet compelling worker placement puzzle.

In 2015, Stonemaier released what is now the definitive (and only available) version of the core Viticulture boxed set – Viticulture: Essential Edition. Most notably, this Essential release bore a small handful of quality of life improvements (for instance, merging the alternating versions of the game and player boards in to singular, perfectly honed compromises), as well as improved card decks and a handful of extra refinements and add-ons from the popular Tuscany expansion, in particular.

And yet, as mentioned, the board gaming world continues its international explosion, only fuelled by the pandemic boon, and seven years, let alone nine, can prove an eternity in game development.

So, does Viticulture remain an Essential addition to a gaming collection?

For the most part, it’s a resounding yes. The core Viticulture experience remains a polished, fairly easy to learn/difficult to master gaming challenge, buttressed by gorgeous artwork and, typical of Stonemaier, faultlessly-executed theming.

Players compete to be the first to acquire 20 XP, which they gain through a variety of tasks as they build up their Vineyard empire. One of Viticulture’s best and most unique ideas is how each round consists of a ‘year’, split up into the four seasons. The first, Spring, sees players bid for what position they wish to spend the rest of the ‘year’ starting in. Bid lower, and you risk going late or even last in every phase, yet the compensation for doing so can be bonus XP or even a free extra worker for the year. ‘Spring’ is one of the best mechanics in Viticulture, introducing strategic risk-reward considerations from the off.

Skipping ahead, Autumn gets players a free card or two, but the real gameplay lands in the worker placement of Summer and Winter. Anyone familiar with the likes of Lords of Waterdeep or many worker placement games will be in recognisable territory here, as your finite number of workers can be sent out to fulfil an impressive diversity of tasks – from gaining currency, drawing or playing cards, constructing vital buildings, and, of course, the multi-step process of making your precious wines.

“Wine-making is a fun, addictive and multi-faceted mini-game in and of itself.”

Wine-making is a fun, addictive and multi-faceted mini-game in and of itself. In Summer, you can draw and discover the best vines, juggle the process of planting them in fields where you grow them (each field having a maximum value that you cannot plant above), and then, in Winter, go through the process of harvesting your grapes and then crushing them into wine. Naturally, at the end of each year, all of your wines and grapes age, making them more valuable, but you’d best hope you’ve constructed the improved wine cellars as you progress through the game, or risk losing some of their ageing progress.

If it sounds at all impenetrable, it really isn’t. At first glance, the difference between planting, harvesting and wine-making may seem a little complicated and obtuse, but it’s remarkably intuitive and easy to pick up, with a palpable sense of pride and joy as you watch a lowly Pinot harvested and ripen, before merging it to create, say, a hugely valuable blush or sparkling wine.

One of Viticulture’s best ploys is how it forces players to strategise between Summer and Winter. Your pool of workers – which, inevitably, you can add to over the course of the game – are for the entire year. Of course, half of the essential mechanics are split fairly evenly between the two seasons, so it remains a perpetual balancing act on how many you wish to conserve for later in the round.

Complimenting this is the relative variety of ways you can go about charting victory. The main, and often most lucrative, method is to complete Wine Orders, where you are required to cultivate specific values of red, white, blush and/or sparkling wine, and then use one of your workers in Winter to fulfil this order. You lose the respective wine, but often garner big XP in return, as well as ongoing, residual end-of-year income.

“One of Viticulture’s best ploys is how it forces players to strategise between Summer and Winter… a perpetual balancing act.”

Outside of these orders, though, which in and of themselves often help direct your strategies, there’s a wealth of additional ways to accrue XP. Many of the optional buildings you can construct will yield annual XP bonuses. For example – build yourself a Tasting Room and you get an XP every time you ‘give a tour’, itself already a popular placement action as it yields you 2 – 3 currency. The Windmill, likewise, is a powerful early go-to, giving you, as it does, bonus XP for the core action of planting vines. Many of these are limited to a maximum bonus of 1 XP per round/year, but even so, funnelling them together with the myriad of Summer and Winter cards (each season having its own deck) that can give circumstantial XP, can easily chart a player on a steady course to victory. In one of the games played for this review, I comfortably won whilst fulfilling only a single wine order, so lucrative were all the side hustles and XP card plays that I managed to pull off.

On the subject of decks, Essential Edition features improved seasonal decks, which mean that the vast majority of cards you will draw will have some utility, even if not immediately. One of the major criticisms of the original Viticulture was that the visitor decks (i.e. Summer and Winter) were stacked with highly circumstantial conditions and effects that would rarely prove useful. Now, in Essential Edition, spending two valuable workers to pick up and then play a card is almost always valuable, and can even occasionally prove game-changing.

Much like its contemporary Waterdeep, Viticulture: Essential Edition is showing hints of its age in places, but is still a thoroughly pleasant and immensely repayable offering, and certainly more immediately accessible for less hardcore gaming groups than the likes of, say, Scythe.

Perhaps its biggest potential ‘flaw’, reviewing seven years on in 2022, is that whilst it does what it does extremely well, and with superb presentation, it doesn’t really do a tremendous amount more. The aforementioned Everdell and Dune: Imperium layer tableau and deck building, respectively, on top of their worker placement mechanics, whilst other contemporaries such as Marco Polo and Hallertau throw dice and card play into the mix.

“Much like its contemporary Waterdeep, Viticulture: Essential Edition is showing hints of its age in places, but is still a thoroughly pleasant and immensely repayable offering…”

There’s also little by way of direct player interaction, too. Some of the seasonal cards can give you the chance to offer your opponents circumstantial ultimatums (i.e. ‘give me one of your coins or I will get a free card’), but these are relatively few and far between, and for the most part you’ll be far more focused on your own turn and strategy.

Similarly, the concept of ‘blocking’ your opponents feels a little too forgiving, namely owing to the inclusion of a special ‘Grande’ worker. For context, depending on the player count, there is always a limited number of spots available at each action space. Let’s say you want to draw a card, only you ended up bidding low in Spring so you are third or fourth in the turn order, meaning that by the time you get the chance to place one of your workers, the two ‘draw a card’ spaces are already taken by other players. You’d be forgiven for thinking this could lead to a wealth of tense moments where players strategically block one another or deprive a position out of spite or competitiveness, and yet every player has one special ‘Grande’ worker, who can take an action even if its spaces are blocked.

It’s a neat idea that prevents completely wasted turns or overt nastiness, and you do only get one Grande worker, so have to consider carefully when you will utilise him each year, but there’s no denying it’s a mechanic that does suck some of the tension and conflict out of proceedings, and can sadly undermine some of the consequential hustling of Spring in particular. In larger games, there are ‘bonus’ action spaces which give extra benefits to the player who places there first, and which Grande workers can’t benefit from, which does go some way in making games with players counts of three or more a trifle more competitive (the bonus spaces not being accessible at all in two-player games).

It means that, for the most part, Viticulture is a pleasant, mostly non-confrontational experience where, at worst, you may temporarily inconvenience an opponent, rather than stopping them dead in their tracks.

“…a gorgeously crafted board game, with fantastic, high-quality components and beautiful art direction that reaches into every nook and cranny of its execution.”

For some, all of this will be no bad thing, but for others, the lack of extra mechanics and relative lightness of player interaction may make Viticulture, even with the enhancements in this Essential Edition, perhaps a little too slight.

For everyone else though, the game remains, even in the bustling genre it helped define, an easy recommendation. Viticulture: Essential Edition is a gorgeously crafted board game, with fantastic, high-quality components and beautiful art direction that reaches into every nook and cranny of its execution.

It’s also, crucially, supremely playable, impressively polished, and a benchmark release in the worker placement crowd that, whilst perhaps missing some of the bells and whistles, extra heft and cutthroat interaction of many of its successors, brings enough charm, variety and thematic uniqueness to make it, for the most part, Essential indeed.