Skip to main content
Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2017
This expansion for Scythe adds 2 completely new playable races and a few new tokens. Now it may not seem like much at first but once you really start digging into what these races really offer, it becomes a game changer. First of all but adding two more races to the game, it effectively increases the player cap to 7 players! Now I haven't played a 7 player game YET but I can imagine it would get crowded pretty quickly on that board which would make for a more intense game.
As far as the 2 new races go, at first I thought they were pretty over powered as both of their starting locations on the board are not blocked off by a river or water so they are free to roam about the land right off the bat before any upgrades. However after delving into the other races abilities I discovered that they have some abilities that allow them to move around the board much quicker so it pretty much evens out. The new abilities that the new races have are unique and interesting. I especially like the Togawa ability to lay down traps, this is freaking awesome in more ways than one. First off when you lay a trap it claims that land as yours so it adds to your overall land score at the end game. However an opposing player can still capture that land BUT it will set off the trap which will impact 1 of 4 different things against that player such as their popularity or military power.
The second race, the Albion, are also interesting as they can place down flags on land they control which effectively doubles that land count. So the piece of land that they have flagged it worth 2 instead of the usual 1. Not quite as neat as the Togawa's ability but handy nonetheless. As far as the pieces go, they are amazing as per usual. The two new character's are very well represented in plastic with the human's accompanying their respected animal companion. The mech's are represented in green and purple respectively and each have their own unique look. Same goes with the little wooden worker pieces.
The expansion also adds some new money tokens of a higher value. You probably won't ever use these unless you are playing with at least 5 players though. Not much else is included as the original game board already has the places printed on it for the two new races. All in all I highly recommend this expansion if you are craving more after playing Scythe.
As far as the 2 new races go, at first I thought they were pretty over powered as both of their starting locations on the board are not blocked off by a river or water so they are free to roam about the land right off the bat before any upgrades. However after delving into the other races abilities I discovered that they have some abilities that allow them to move around the board much quicker so it pretty much evens out. The new abilities that the new races have are unique and interesting. I especially like the Togawa ability to lay down traps, this is freaking awesome in more ways than one. First off when you lay a trap it claims that land as yours so it adds to your overall land score at the end game. However an opposing player can still capture that land BUT it will set off the trap which will impact 1 of 4 different things against that player such as their popularity or military power.
The second race, the Albion, are also interesting as they can place down flags on land they control which effectively doubles that land count. So the piece of land that they have flagged it worth 2 instead of the usual 1. Not quite as neat as the Togawa's ability but handy nonetheless. As far as the pieces go, they are amazing as per usual. The two new character's are very well represented in plastic with the human's accompanying their respected animal companion. The mech's are represented in green and purple respectively and each have their own unique look. Same goes with the little wooden worker pieces.
The expansion also adds some new money tokens of a higher value. You probably won't ever use these unless you are playing with at least 5 players though. Not much else is included as the original game board already has the places printed on it for the two new races. All in all I highly recommend this expansion if you are craving more after playing Scythe.
