Scythe Board Game Review | Is It Worth the Price?

Scythe is a 1 to 5 player strategy game for ages 14 and up that runs 115 minutes, and it costs about $84 direct from Stonemaier Games. It is worth that money if you like engine building and efficiency puzzles, and it is not worth it if you bought it expecting dice and blown-up buildings.

I am Spector, a dad to Alex, 7, and Emma, 10. Scythe is the game on our shelf that gets the most respect and gets played the least, and I have made my peace with why.

The honest version: this is a 14 and up game about turning four actions into an engine, and every one of those four actions is printed on a cardboard square. It is the most mechanically elegant thing in our collection and it is completely wrong for a family game night with a seven year old at the table. I have bought it for my own game nights, I have taught it to grown adults who had never heard of it, and I have watched a friend lose four hours to it with a grin on his face.

Every rule on this page is checked against the current Stonemaier Games rulebook, the Invaders from Afar rulebook, The Wind Gambit rulebook, The Rise of Fenris rulebook, the solo Automa rulebook and the publisher’s own product pages. Where the old version of this page was wrong, I say so, because a review that invents a rule is worse than no review.

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Scythe at a Glance: What Your $84 Actually Buys

Before the rules, the shopping. This is the whole Scythe line as Stonemaier Games currently lists it, with what each box actually adds. Every price below was read off the publisher’s own store in September 2026, so treat them as the ceiling rather than the deal, and check the current price before you commit.

Product	What it adds	Players	Publisher store price
Scythe	The complete game. 5 factions, 5 player mats, 4 sections, 4 top and 4 bottom actions, 6 stars, ages 14 and up, 115 minutes, 3 minutes of setup	1 to 5	$84, reduced from $105
Scythe: Invaders from Afar	2 factions, Albion and Togawa, 2 more player mats numbered 2a and 3a, and 2 rule changes for 6 and 7 player games	1 to 7	$35
Scythe: The Wind Gambit	7 airships and 8 resolution tiles that replace the 6th star end trigger entirely. The best box for solo and 2 player play	Any	$30
Scythe: The Rise of Fenris	An 8 episode campaign, 11 modules, 2 factions, a cooperative mode and 16 Triumph Tiles. Explicitly not a legacy game	1 to 5, plus Automa	$49, reduced from $60
Scythe Modular Board	A different map. Same rules, different opening	Same	$25, reduced from $30
Scythe Legendary Box	A display box. Zero game components inside it	Not applicable	$49, reduced from $60
Duel of Meloch	A 2 player duelling game set in the same world, sold separately from the Scythe line	2	$44, reduced from $49

The one number on that table I would not argue with is the first one. $84 is a lot of money for a card game, and the honest case for it is not the components. It is that the base box contains 5 factions times 5 player mats, and 2 of those 25 combinations are banned, which leaves 23 legal ways to play a game you have already played.

What a Turn in Scythe Actually Is

A turn in Scythe is: move your action token to a different section of your Player Mat, then take that section’s top action, its bottom action, or both. That is the entire turn structure, and there are no rounds and no phases. The rulebook says so directly.

You have four sections on your mat. Each section has one top action and one bottom action, and you must choose a different section than the one you chose last turn, with the single exception of the Rusviet faction ability. Then you take the top action, then the bottom action, or both, or neither. You may only take each action once per turn, and you pay the full cost of an action before you take any of its benefit.

The four top actions are Bolster, Produce, Move and Trade. The four bottom actions are Upgrade, Deploy, Build and Enlist. The top row is printed in a different order on every player mat, the bottom row is printed in the same order on all of them, and that is the whole reason the same four actions feel different in every game.

The one rule that keeps a 115 minute game from dragging is the overlap rule. As soon as you start taking a bottom action, the player to your left may begin their turn. It is crucial, the rulebook says, that turns overlap this way to keep the game moving at a steady pace. If you have never played a game with asynchronous turns, this is the mechanic that will make or break the table.

The Four Bottom Row Actions in Scythe, and Why There Is No Withdraw

Scythe has four bottom row actions, not five: Upgrade, Deploy, Build and Enlist. There is no Withdraw action anywhere in Scythe, in any edition or any official expansion.

I want to be straight about this one, because the word Withdraw turns up constantly in Scythe conversations and it is not a Scythe action. The word appears zero times across the base game rulebook, the Invaders from Afar rulebook, The Wind Gambit rulebook and The Rise of Fenris rulebook. The old version of this page was never wrong about there being four top and four bottom actions, but nothing anywhere in the game lets you pull your workers and mechs back off the board to reuse them.

What you are probably thinking of is the retreat that follows winning and losing combat, which is a combat consequence rather than an action, and the fact that mechs can pick up workers mid move and drop them somewhere else. If you want a game where you can retract pieces and replay them, you want an area control game, and I have linked to Root in the alternatives section because that is the game where withdrawal is the whole point.

The four real actions, in the rulebook’s own words:

• Upgrade, paid with oil, moves a technology cube from a green box to a red box on your mat.
• Deploy, paid with metal, puts a mech on a territory you control that has at least one of your workers on it.
• Build, paid with wood, puts one of your four structure tokens on a territory you control that has at least one of your workers on it.
• Enlist, paid with food, puts a recruit token on an open bonus space on your Faction Mat and gains the one time bonus printed there.

The resource mapping is worth memorising because it makes the whole action economy click. Oil upgrades your engine, metal puts the mechs on the board, wood builds your structures, food enlists your recruits, and the Trade action is how you get the resource you are currently short of.

Worker Placement in Scythe: Where Your 8 Workers Come From

The printed setup is short and specific. You place your character miniature on your faction’s home base. You place 1 worker on each of the territories connected to your home base by land, which is a total of 2 workers. Your remaining 6 workers go on the rectangles above the Produce action on your Player Mat, and that is where they sit until you spend them.

That means you start every game with 2 workers on the board and 6 in reserve, and the only action that converts a reserve worker into a board worker is Produce on a village. A forest gives you wood, a mountain gives you metal, a farm gives you food, tundra gives you oil, and a village gives you a worker, which is why the game is often described as worker placement even though there is no worker placement board.

Three rules about workers catch people out:

Workers are permanent. Once a worker is on the board it can never return to your Player Mat. The rulebook is blunt about the reason: workers increase the cost of future Produce actions, so they are a commitment rather than a resource.

Workers are not resources. Wood, food, metal and oil are resources. Workers are not, and no cost in the game is ever paid with a worker.

A worker cannot be moved by itself into a territory controlled by an opponent’s workers or by an opponent’s characters and mechs. Only mechs carry workers into enemy ground.

The Four Scythe Structures and Why None of Them Upgrades

The old version of this page never named a single structure. There are four per player, they are wooden rather than plastic because they do not take part in combat, and the rulebook names all four.

• Armory. Whenever you take the Trade action, also gain 1 power.
• Monument. Whenever you take the Bolster action, also gain 1 popularity.
• Mill. Whenever you take the Produce action, the territory with your Mill may count as an extra bonus territory for production. The Mill will produce as if it were a worker, and if you also have real workers there they produce as well.
• Mine. Acts as a tunnel that only you can use. You may move units to and from it as if it were a tunnel, even if an opponent controls the territory it sits on.

Two structural rules matter more than the individual bonuses, and neither was in the old page.

Structures cannot be destroyed or moved. There is no way to lose a structure once you have paid for it, and there is no way to relocate it either.

Only one structure per territory. If you are the first to build on a hex, nobody can build there, including you later. That single rule is why a well placed Mine in a central hex is worth more than a stronger bonus in a corner.

Structures also pay at the end of the game. Setup deals one of 6 structure bonus tiles face up, and that tile tells you which adjacency counts: tunnels next to your structures, lakes next to your structures, encounters next to your structures, your structures in a continuous row, or farms and tundras with your structures on them. You collect that bonus even if you no longer control the territories your structures are standing on.

Upgrading in Scythe Moves Cubes, Not Buildings

You cannot upgrade a Scythe structure. The Upgrade action moves one of your 6 technology cubes from a green benefit box to a red cost box with a bracketed border on your Player Mat.

This is the single most misunderstood rule in the game, and it is the reason “can I upgrade my factory” comes up in every first conversation about Scythe. You cannot. Structures are fixed, permanent, and never upgraded.

What upgrades is your mat. You get 6 technology cubes at setup and they sit on the green boxes of your Player Mat. Taking the Upgrade action costs oil, and in exchange you pick a cube up from any green box and place it on any empty red box with a bracketed border. Red boxes with solid black borders are off limits. In practice you are either making an action cheaper or making its benefit bigger, and the rulebook’s own worked example is exactly that: moving a cube from Produce so you can produce on 3 territories instead of 2, and moving another cube to Enlist to drop the food cost by 1.

Completing all 6 upgrades is one of the 9 printed ways to earn a star, which is why a fast upgrader is often a fast finisher. The other 8 are deploy all 4 mechs, build all 4 structures, enlist all 4 recruits, have all 8 workers on the board, reveal 1 completed objective card, win combat up to 2 times, have 18 popularity, and have 16 power. Stars are never removed once placed, and other players are free to place their stars on the same goal.

Popularity in Scythe Decides Your Score More Than Stars Do

Popularity is a track from 0 to 20 that sets the multiplier on all three of your end-game scoring categories, and it is the single biggest lever in the game. The old page never explained it, which is a shame, because understanding popularity is the difference between playing Scythe and playing Scythe badly.

Popularity goes up when you take the Bolster action, when you use the Monument, when you pick a good encounter option, and when a recruit gives it to you. It goes down when you win a combat as the attacker and force an opponent’s workers off their land, one point per worker, and when an encounter option you wanted costs you. It is worth remembering that a popular faction only has one real way to lose it, and that is picking a fight next to somebody’s workers.

At the end of the game, look at your level on the Popularity Track and score all three categories at that tier:

Your popularity	Per star	Per territory	Per every 2 resources
0 to 6	$3	$2	$1
7 to 12	$4	$3	$2
13 and up	$5	$4	$3

Those tiers are worth checking against your own table, because the rulebook’s printed example is 10 popularity paying $4 per star, $3 per territory and $2 per pair of resources, which is the middle row. One coin crossing from 6 to 7, or from 12 to 13, is worth more than a star is, which is why a quiet turn of Produce can win a game.

Two more scoring details the old page skipped. The Factory is worth 3 territories at the end of the game, not 1, which is why controlling it is worth more than any ordinary hex. And you score resources in pairs, so 13 resources at 10 popularity scores 6 pairs for $12, not 13 for $26.

Objectives and the Game End in Scythe

Each player starts the game with 2 objective cards, drawn face down and kept secret from the other players. After everyone has drawn, the objective deck goes back onto the board. You may reveal a completed objective card on your own turn, either before or after you take an action, which earns a star on the Triumph Track and means discarding both of your objective cards together.

You only get one objective star, because revealing one card discards the other. Saxony is the exception and can take up to two. The designer’s note is worth reading because it explains the design: Jamey Stegmaier did not want players making a keep one and discard one decision before the game even started, so everyone gets two and the choice is made as the game unfolds.

The game ends immediately when a player places their 6th star. There are two carve-outs and both are printed:

• If the 6th star comes from a bottom row action, you still gain that action’s primary benefit, its coins and its Recruit Ongoing Bonus before you place the star.
• If you still have units sharing a territory with an opponent from a Move action, you must undo that part of your move and send those units back where they came from.

Then everyone scores, with no banker and no delay, and the player with the most coins wins. Ties break in this order: number of workers, mechs and structures, then power, then popularity, then resources controlled, then territories controlled, then stars placed.

Who Goes First in Scythe, and Why the Start Is Not a Reward

The player with the lowest number printed on their Player Mat goes first, play proceeds clockwise, and the starting player receives no compensation of any kind.

That is the whole rule, and there is no first player marker, no extra coin, and no extra resource. The rulebook instead prints a designer’s note explaining how the game stays fair without one: the higher numbered player mats offer slightly more lucrative starting track positions, precisely because those players are more likely to have taken one fewer turn by the end of the game.

That is worth sitting with for a second, because it means the player who goes first is the one who is slightly worse off on the mat, and it means the mats are dealt in a shuffled order at setup along with the faction mats. The faction and player mat pairings of Rusviet with Industrial, and Crimea with Patriotic, are banned. If you draw one of those, you discard the player mat and take another.

With Invaders from Afar in the game, the two new player mats are numbered 2a and 3a and they join the shuffle at every player count, not just at 6 and 7. The full first player order becomes 1, 2, 2a, 3, 3a, 4, 5.

Scythe Combat Is Arithmetic, Not Dice

There are no dice in Scythe’s decisions. Combat is fully deterministic, which is exactly why it feels like a bluff.

At the end of your Move action, if your character and mechs share a territory with an opponent’s character or mechs, combat happens on every territory where that is true and you choose the order. Both players secretly turn their Power Dial to a number up to 7, even though the Power Track goes to 16, and you may tuck 1 combat card behind the dial for each of your own units in the combat, so 2 mechs plus your character means up to 3 cards. Then everyone reveals at once.

The attacker wins ties, and that is a deliberate design choice the designer has explained publicly: the defender is not prepared for the attack, and playtesting showed players needed a nudge to take risks.

The combat deck is 42 yellow cards with values 2, 3, 4 and 5 only, in counts of 16, 12, 8 and 6. There is no 7 power combat card in the game, so if you have seen a Scythe combat chart that includes one, it is wrong. The winner takes control of the hex and the resources on it, and if the winner was the attacker they lose 1 popularity for each worker they forced to retreat. The loser retreats everything to their home base and draws a combat card if they revealed any power at all.

The last thing to know about combat is that it is rare. Two factions can play a full game without a single fight, and the designer’s note in the rulebook makes the point that almost none of Jakub Rozalski’s mechs are actually depicted fighting, because in Scythe the threat of combat is usually worth more than the combat itself.

The Scythe Factions: 5 in the Box, 7 With an Expansion, Never 6

This is the biggest factual correction on the page. The old version of this post said Scythe has 7 base factions. The base box has 5.

• Nordic, blue. Ability Swim: your workers may move across rivers onto any terrain except lakes.
• Saxony, black. Ability Dominate: no limit on the stars you can place from objectives or combat, so Saxony can take both objective cards and unlimited combat stars.
• Polania, white. Ability Meander: pick up to 2 options per encounter card instead of 1.
• Crimea, yellow. Ability Coercion: once per turn, spend 1 combat card as if it were any 1 resource token.
• Rusviet, red. Ability Relentless: you may choose the same Player Mat section as the previous turn.

Invaders from Afar adds Albion, green, with the Exalt ability and 4 Flag tokens that each count as an extra territory at the end of the game, and Togawa, purple, with the Maifuku ability and 4 Trap tokens that ambush anyone who steps on them. That takes the line to 7 factions and 7 players. The Rise of Fenris adds Fenris and Vesna, which takes the campaign content to 9.

There is no official Scythe product with 6 factions, so if you have read a buying guide that says Scythe has six, that guide is describing a fan scenario, a print and play, or nothing at all. The numbers are 5, then 7, then 9.

Playing Scythe Solo With the Automa

The base box ships two rulebooks, one for multiplayer and one for solo, so solo is a first class mode rather than an afterthought. The Automa is a deck driven artificial opponent, and the solo rulebook is refreshingly blunt about how limited it is. The Automa has no recruits, no structures, no upgrades and no objective cards. It never changes its popularity, produces no resources, pays no action costs, uses no tunnels, and uses none of its faction’s or mech abilities. It plays on normal hexes and can cross rivers once it has advanced far enough on its tracker, it retreats its combat units to its faction mat, and it places its stars differently from you.

You pick one of 4 star tracker cards to set the difficulty, and the solo rulebook recommends the Autometta tracker for a first game. The Automa is driven by 19 Automa cards, each with a move action line, an Automa gains line, a player recruit bonus line, a combat table and a resource box, and you run the whole thing yourself, which is the real cost of solo Scythe: it is the most admin heavy 115 minute game in my collection. The board is set up as a 2 player game with 3 Factory cards rather than 6.

The practical advice is that solo Scythe teaches you the game faster than a teach ever will, and that you should expect the first one to feel like a wargame with an economic front end. I like it. I also only play it when nobody else is available.

Scythe Expansions: Which One Is Worth Your Money

The base game is complete on its own. Buy Invaders from Afar if you have 6 or 7 players, and The Wind Gambit if you play solo or as a pair. Here is what each one actually changes, with the marketing stripped out.

Invaders from Afar, $35. Two factions, two player mats, and the maximum player count goes from 5 to 7. It also makes two specific rule changes for 6 and 7 player games: Crimea swaps Wayfare for moving to any unoccupied farm, and Polania swaps Meander for picking up to 2 options per encounter card plus $3 per encounter territory at the end. If you do not regularly host 6 or 7 players, this one sits in a box.

The Wind Gambit, $30. Two modules you can use separately. The airship module gives every player an airship and two abilities chosen from 16 tiles, and airships never control territories, which is a genuinely interesting wrinkle. The resolution module is the reason to buy it: 8 resolution tiles that replace the 6th star end trigger with a different condition, such as the Doomsday Clock or the Backup Plan. This is the best Scythe box for two players and for solo, because it solves the only real problem with both, which is that the base game has a long tail of board left with nothing to do with it.

The Rise of Fenris, $49. An 8 episode campaign, and the rulebook is explicit that it “is fully replayable and resettable (it is not a legacy game)”, so the old claim that it is a legacy expansion is wrong. It contains 11 modules, 2 factions, a cooperative mode, a semi official variant for playing with any mix of human and Automa players, and 16 Triumph Tiles of which 10 are shuffled onto the Triumph Track to randomise the star conditions. Expect to spend 8 evenings on it and to buy a second player mat set if your group is 4 or larger.

The Modular Board, $25. Not an expansion and no new rules. It changes the map, which is the single most effective way to make a game you already own feel new, and it is the best value per dollar in the entire line.

There are no mode tiles in Scythe. The closest real components are The Wind Gambit’s 8 resolution tiles and The Rise of Fenris’s 16 Triumph Tiles, both of which are expansion pieces. The base box contains no tiles of that kind at all, only the 6 structure bonus tiles that score your buildings.

Is Scythe Worth the Price? The Verdict

Yes, Scythe is worth about $84 if you will play it 10 times with adults who like engine building. Divide the price by the number of plays and it costs a few dollars an evening, which is less than the takeaway you will order while the game is still running.

Here is how I actually think about it. $84 is not a lot of money for a game that will last a decade, and Stonemaier sells free replacement parts and keeps every rulebook online forever, which is a real saving when a cardboard token wears out. The components justify themselves on their own for a display shelf. The price is a lot of money if you are buying it for a family game night, and it is a lot of money if you will play it twice and then it becomes a shelf ornament.

The cost per play argument only works if you actually play it. Ten plays takes a committed group roughly six months of twice monthly game nights, and at 115 minutes a pop that is a genuinely good deal. Two plays is $42 an evening, which is the price of a nice dinner, and my honest advice is to find a group first and buy second.

Who it is for, and who it is not:

• Buy it if you enjoy worker placement, engine building and efficiency puzzles, and you like a game where you can see someone’s whole plan from across the table.
• Buy it if you are willing to be bad at it for three games while you learn the icons. That learning curve is real and it is the only real barrier.
• Skip it if you want dice, direct conflict, or a game that ends in under an hour. None of those exist here.
• Skip it for children. The box says 14 and up, and if your only alternative players are under 14, this is not the game.

If you want the same feeling of building an efficient engine with less of the commitment, our Terra Mystica strategy guide is the closest thing on our shelf, and our Brass: Birmingham strategy guide is the closest thing for players who want the economic decisions to hurt. Our 7 Wonders review is the better buy if you want something in 30 to 40 minutes, Board Game Zero and the world of abstract games with no luck is the right page if what you actually wanted was zero randomness, and Sleeping Gods is the right one if you want an even longer commitment with a cooperative twist.

• Similarities: Engine building on a player board, low direct interaction, and a scoring track that turns small advantages into a win. Both are about efficiency rather than confrontation.
• Differences: Scythe has mechs, deterministic combat and a fixed end trigger. Terra Mystica has no combat at all, a much shorter game and a gentler learning curve.
• Why this game fans will enjoy it: If Scythe is the game you keep thinking about and not playing, one of these two is the version you will actually finish.

For a 6 or 7 person table, Scythe with Invaders from Afar belongs in our guide to the best board games for 6 players, and for a pair it is a strong pick in our date night two player strategy guide. If you are still working out what a heavy strategy game even is, start with the best strategy board games for modern gamers.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does a game of Scythe take?

The rulebook cover and the publisher’s store page both say 115 minutes, and the Invaders from Afar rulebook gives the scaling rule as roughly 25 minutes per player. Add 20 to 30 minutes for teaching the first time.

Is Scythe too complicated for casual gamers?

The rules themselves are short, being 32 pages built around four actions, and the only real barrier is reading the icon language. It is not a casual game, because the box says 14 and up, but an experienced gamer who is willing to slow down will enjoy it.

Does Scythe work well with 2 players?

Yes, 1 to 5 is printed on the box and the solo rulebook exists because one player works too. Two players is tense and clear but the map feels big and you will meet less often, so most groups settle on 3 or 4.

Can you play Scythe solo?

Yes, and the base box includes the solo rulebook. The Automa is driven by 19 cards with 4 difficulty levels, and it is set up as a 2 player game with 3 Factory cards. Expect to run the whole thing yourself.

How many factions are in Scythe?

There are 5 in the base box, being Nordic, Saxony, Polania, Crimea and Rusviet. Invaders from Afar takes it to 7 with Albion and Togawa, and The Rise of Fenris adds Fenris and Vesna for 9. There is no official 6 faction version.

Is there a Withdraw action in Scythe?

No. There are four bottom row actions, being Upgrade, Deploy, Build and Enlist, and the word Withdraw appears in none of the base game, Invaders from Afar, Wind Gambit or Rise of Fenris rulebooks. Retreating your units happens through combat resolution, not through an action.

How do you upgrade in Scythe?

You move one of your 6 technology cubes from a green benefit box to a red cost box with a bracketed border on your Player Mat, which makes actions cheaper or stronger. Structures cannot be upgraded, moved or destroyed at all.