Scythe

What makes this game this game

There are no rounds and no phases. On your turn you simply choose one of the four sections of your Player Mat, then take its top-row action and its bottom-row action, in that order — either, both, or neither.

• Only characters and mechs fight. Workers never fight each other.
• Winning as the attacker and forcing enemy workers to retreat costs you popularity. That single line is why a game covered in war art has so little combat in it.
• Faction Mats (special abilities) and Player Mats (action layouts) are shuffled and dealt separately, so the pairing is different every game.

Components

Setup

1. 1Shuffle the encounter, combat and objective cards and put each deck on its space on the board.
2. 2Shuffle the Factory cards, deal one more than the number of players face-down onto the board, and return the rest to the box unseen.
3. 3Draw one of the six structure bonus tiles at random and place it face-up at the bottom of the Popularity Track.
4. 4Place one encounter token on every territory marked with an encounter symbol (11 in total).
5. 5Put the resource tokens, coins and multiplier tokens beside the board as the supply.
6. 6Shuffle the Faction Mats and the Player Mats separately and deal one of each per player. Seating runs clockwise from the top: Nordic, Rusviet, Crimea, Saxony, Polania.
7. 7Take the starting power and combat cards shown on your Faction Mat, and the starting popularity, objective cards and coins shown on your Player Mat.
8. 8Put your character on your home base and one worker on each of the two territories joined to it by land.
9. 9Put 6 technology cubes on the green boxes with a black square, your 4 structures and 4 recruit tokens on their spaces, and your remaining 6 workers on the red rectangles above the Produce action. The action token sits beside the mat.
10. 10The player with the lowest number on their Player Mat goes first; play proceeds clockwise.

Taking a turn — the action token remembers

1. 1Move your action token to a different section than the one it was on last turn. This part is never optional.
2. 2Take that section's top-row action once (optional).
3. 3Take that section's bottom-row action once (optional).

Rarely you may be unable to take any action at all (you took Move last turn and have no coins, resources, power or popularity). Then you take a dead turn: move the action token to another section and do nothing there. That is why the rulebook advises being thrifty with coins early on.

The four top-row actions

• Move must use different units. You cannot move the same unit twice.
• Mechs may pick up and drop off any number of resources and workers while moving. Being carried does not count as the worker's movement, so that worker may still move on its own.
• If your character or mech enters a territory held only by enemy workers, its movement ends there and those workers retreat to their home base, leaving resources behind. You lose 1 popularity per worker you forced to retreat.
• Workers may not move into territories controlled by an opponent on their own.
• If your character enters a territory holding an encounter token, its Move action ends immediately.

The four bottom-row actions

• Structures can never be destroyed or moved. If an opponent's unit enters the territory they take control of it, but you keep the structure's ability (the Mill's production is the exception — you must control that territory to use it).
• Deploying a mech gives the unlocked ability to your character and all your mechs. Workers never gain it.
• Enlisting gives both a one-time bonus (2 power, $2, 2 popularity or 2 combat cards, depending on the space you cover) and an ongoing bonus that triggers whenever you or the player to your immediate left or right takes that section's bottom-row action.
• Because of those ongoing bonuses you must announce your bottom-row action out loud.
• Most bottom-row actions also hand you coins. Even once you have nothing left to upgrade, you may keep paying the cost to take the coins and the ongoing bonus.

Combat is a blind bid

Combat happens once the Move action is completely finished, when your character or mechs share a territory with an opponent's character or mechs. It is resolved before your bottom-row action, and if several combats are pending the attacker chooses their order.

1. 1Both players simultaneously and secretly set their Power Dials. You cannot choose more than you have on the Power Track, and never more than 7.
2. 2Optionally, tuck one combat card per character or mech you have in this combat behind the dial (allowed even if you selected 0 power).
3. 3Reveal at the same time. The higher total of dial plus combat cards wins. Ties go to the attacker.
4. 4Both players pay the power they selected on the dial and discard any combat cards they used (cards are a temporary boost and never touch the Power Track).

• The winner takes the territory and every resource on it, and places a combat victory star (up to 2 of them; only Saxony is unlimited).
• The loser retreats every unit on that territory — mechs, character and workers — to their home base. Resources they were carrying stay behind for the winner.
• If the loser revealed at least 1 power, on the dial or through combat cards, they draw 1 combat card as they retreat.
• An attacker who wins loses 1 popularity per enemy worker forced to retreat. A defender who wins loses none.
• You may start a combat with 0 power and 0 popularity.

Encounters and the Factory

Only characters trigger encounters. When your character enters a territory with an encounter token its movement ends; once all movement and combat for the turn is done (and before any bottom-row action) you discard the token and draw an encounter card.

• Encounter rewards are isolated: you pay no extra costs, gain no extra benefits and trigger no Recruit Ongoing Bonuses.
• If an opponent's mech on that territory forced a combat, the encounter only happens after you win it.
• Polania's Meander is the one exception: it takes two options from a single encounter card, and the first option's benefit may pay for the second.

Factory card actions are entirely separate from your Player Mat. Even when they look similar they grant no Recruit Ongoing Bonuses, no structure bonuses and no coins. In exchange, every Factory card's bottom row is a special Move action: move one unit up to two times.

Faction abilities and mech abilities

A mech ability is the one that was printed under the mech you deployed, so the order in which you deploy is the order in which abilities open. The unlocked ability goes to your character and every mech, never to workers — Nordic's Swim is a faction ability and is the exception that applies to workers alone.

Stars and the Triumph Track

You start with 2 objective cards but may only complete one (Saxony may complete both). You reveal it on your own turn, before or after a top- or bottom-row action, and you must meet every requirement at the moment you reveal it. The unused card goes back to the bottom of the deck.

End-game scoring — popularity sets the rate

All six structure bonus tiles use the same coin ladder ($2 → $4 → $6 → $9); only the thresholds differ. Tiles that count adjacent tunnels, lakes or encounters have four steps (lakes, for instance, run 1 / 2–3 / 4–5 / 6–7). The tile counting structures built on tunnels has only three steps (1 / 2 / 3–4), capping it at $6. The tiles for structures in a row and for structures on farms and tundras run 1 / 2 / 3 / 4.

Game end and tiebreakers

The game ends immediately when a player places their 6th star token, even if that player still had things they could do on that turn.

• If the 6th star comes from a bottom-row action, take the benefit, the coins and the Recruit Ongoing Bonus first, then place the star.
• If a Move action left your units sharing a territory with an opponent's units and the combat can no longer happen, undo that part of the move and return the units to where they came from.
• If a Recruit Ongoing Bonus on an opponent's turn would give you a popularity or power star, it is resolved after that opponent finishes their action, in clockwise order. If a 6th star lands there, the game ends at once.

Strategy that falls straight out of the rules

• Look at popularity first. The 1 popularity from Trade and the Monument (1 popularity every time you Bolster) look small, but they lift all three scoring categories at the end.
• Attacking costs popularity. Winning as the attacker burns 1 popularity per enemy worker you push off. A territory crowded with enemy workers is expensive to take, which is exactly what makes workers a wall.
• A Factory card changes your tempo. It is a fifth section, so alternating it with a Move section lets you move every turn. The earlier you arrive, the more cards you get to choose from.
• Upgrading pays twice. Taking a cube out of a green box raises a top-row benefit, and putting it on a red box lowers a bottom-row cost. Doing it six times is also a star.
• Eight workers are not free. Every worker you produce uncovers more of the Produce cost, so power, popularity and coins bleed out on every Produce. Chase that star only if your income can carry the overhead.
• More power does not mean winning. Your opponent does not know how much you will spend or how many combat cards you tucked in. Combat cards are worth nothing at the end, so there is no reason to hoard them.
• Read the mat pairing. The bottom row is in a fixed order and only the top row moves, so the question of the game is which top-row action happens to sit above the bottom-row action you plan to use most.

Expansions and other versions

• Korea Boardgames publishes Korean rulebooks for all three expansions (we read the 8-page Invaders from Afar, the 52-page Rise of Fenris and the 12-page Automa rules).
• My Little Scythe is a separate game. It borrows the setting for a family game; it is not a smaller version of these rules.
• There is a digital edition, and a standalone follow-up called Expeditions (2023) that shares the world but not the rules.
• This guide covers the base game only. Expansions change the faction count, the end conditions and the module rules.

Rules people get wrong

History and editions

• Designed by Jamey Stegmaier, with art and world building by Jakub Rozalski from his 1920+ series. The paintings of mechs standing in farmland came first; the game followed.
• Funded on Kickstarter in 2015 and released in 2016.
• It took four 2016 Golden Geek Awards — game of the year, artwork and presentation, strategy game and solo game — and the expansions The Wind Gambit (2017) and The Rise of Fenris (2018) each won best expansion (cross-checked against Wikipedia).
• The Korean edition is published by Korea Boardgames, which holds exclusive Korean rights under contract with Stonemaier — confirmed from the copyright page of the 2021 Korean rulebook, which also carries a Korean title of its own rather than a transliteration.
• The designer's note in the rulebook explains the title: a scythe is both a farming tool and a weapon. The design of a war game where fighting is rare comes straight out of that sentence.