My First Time Playing Scythe | Top Tips for your First Time Playing Scythe

Why did it take me so long to play Scythe for the first time?
I've wanted to play Scythe for a long time now, so this blog post has been a long time coming. There are multiple reasons why I held out until now, namely:

1. The price.
2. The number of components.
3. The complexity.
4. The group of gaming friends I have (this is tied into points 2 and 3).​

So, what's changed? Well, this relates strongly to my game design journey. If you haven't been following my blog, I will essentially capture a casual audience with a simple game; then, I plan to convert them to middle-to-heavy weight gamers throughout six games, therefore adding to the market rather than taking away. 

As you can probably tell from what I just said, I had to wait for this sort of journey to play out in my group of gaming friends as well. When we first started playing weekly earlier this year, we started with games like Kingdomino, Coup and Ticket to Ride. Last Wednesday, we played Scythe for the first time, the biggest game we have touched to date. Here are my top tips to learning and playing Scythe based on my own first-time experience. 
Tips for Learning Scythe

1. Watch the Watch it Played how to play video. Rodney goes into great detail about the very specifics of the turn breakdowns, which allows for a great foundation in getting started with the game. He also goes over all eventualities and restrictions regarding specific unit movement, but I wouldn't worry if you get lost in that section of the video, so did I. 
2. I would come into Scythe with the mentality that you are playing a worker placement game (this helped me learn Disney Villainous). On top of it making it, in my opinion, easier to understand the player boards in Scythe, it's not that far from the truth. In Scythe, you always start your turn by placing a player marker on your player mat on one of the four spaces. If you imagine it as a worker placement game, making decisions early on is much easier. 
3. Workers and buildings are the only units that claim your territory. You can't move resources, and you use resources without workers being in the same territory as them. 
4. Play on the Tabletop Simulator version first. Many of the pieces have quick tips when you hover over them (such as the buildings), so you don't have to go into the rulebook or check the glossary every time you forget what they do. ​​

Tips for Playing Scythe 

1. Combat isn't necessary almost ever. I would also go into combat if I needed to gain a star for the scoreboard, and it would be an easy victory for me. 
2. I would focus on popularity more so than any other track in the game. The winner of my first game was the player with the least amount of stars, but because he was in the third tier of popularity whilst I was in the second and the third player was in the bottom level, he won by nearly 10 points. 
3. If in doubt, use the goals in the top left of the board as objectives; you won't go far wrong in the game as long as you aim to complete those. 
4. The game aim is to have the most money; the number of stars does not matter nearly as much as priming yourself to get the most amount of money. ​

How would I rate my first time playing Scythe?
I never really expected to rate games on my blog, but you can quickly just head over to my board game geek profile and check out the ratings I give games, so why not? Based on my first experience with Scythe, I would rate the game an 8 out of 10. The game took roughly 4 hours, and one of my two friends were bored by the end of it, but for me, it was one of the most fun experiences I've had playing a new board game in a while. It felt like there were so many possibilities and actions to take on any turn. It seemed to me like any goal was in reach so long as you plan, and it made me feel good for thinking things out and using a strategy. ​