I just had to write and say that I had a rather lousy day... week actually. I have been quite the irritable grump since I got home tonight. It's gotten late in the evening for me and I was just clicking around here before I head to bed when I came across your review. You two had me snickering and chuckling in no time. My day is over, but you managed to save what was left. It will be nice to go to bed in a better mood. Thank you so much. I have subscribed. Keep up the humor. :)

Solid review. What stands out to me is that I was able to parse from your take that I would probably like this game a fair deal, and can see why others might not nearly as much. When you mix praise and criticism, and can still give a clear picture as to whether or not an individual will actually enjoy the experience, you have a very helpful bit of content. Keep up the good work.

You two are adorable. Please make videos until the sun burns out.

Another insightful, entertaining and well-balanced review! Great job as always :)

I just found your channel tonight and I am delighted that I did so. Very funny and great reviews.

LOL, when she takes his hat off and starts to put it on her own head while screaming. This is awesome, you guys!

I love you guys! This was the first video I have watched from your channel and it was just great.

Definitely my favorite boardgame review channel! Keep up the great work. It's not only funny and interesting, but full of details and information. As another commenter said, just keep making these until the sun burns out and I'll be okay. Not sure I'd ever get it to the table multiplayer, but I'm still pscythed about it because I hear it has a great solitaire "opponent".

Wow, I didn't realise it's been over three years since Scythe was released. Time flies!!

Great work you guys! Can't wait to get my copy.

I think this is the third of your reviews that I've watched. The first one, I don't know where it came from and where it went. Then your channel popped up again and I was like, "Hey, I recognize that guy and I remember liking his style of review" so I clicked. That review was on Forgotten Waters. Great btw. And now, here...and wow, fantastic in so many ways. I will echo what so many have said already, you two are lovely and fantastic. I subscribed, I rang the bell, and I'll be coming back for many many more. Thank you so much for sharing your humor, your love of games, and just yourselves with us all. In such a time when we need laughter and love, you give! :) _/\_

I really really loved your review of this game. Great work guys!

Well done No Pun. Great stuff.

Love the review guys!

This is also my first video of yours that I've watched. Love the video!

Found this channel while searching for Arkham Horror the Card Game reviews. Efka is awesome, very entertaining and good reviews. Keep it up!

Hello there. I played Scythe once again with friends recently and sadly came away with the same feeling of ennui that plagued me during my first go round. My friends had me play a different "faction" but it didn't really matter. This is just not a game that trips my trigger unlike your reviews which always serve to tickle my funny bone while enlightening me to some new board game or two. Now, my gaming friends all seem to really enjoy Scythe. Most of them have engineering or tech related backgrounds and I come from sales and marketing. So, farming stuff just doesn't cut it. We also played a Gears of War scenario. That game is utterly brilliant in its execution as a cooperative venture. Mowing down Locust with utterly ridiculous weapons never gets old. Then again, those rotten, no good Locust usually get us in the end. Keep up the marvelous reviews and have a wonderful weekend.

Great Job on the review guys! In a sense, what I can deduct from your explanation is that Scythe, just like Viticulture, have you focus on your own action instead of how to counter anyone else action.

I like how this video kept me listening intently and learning about the game. Might use your video to teach Scythe to my pals. Thanks for being awesomely geeky. Did subscribed as well.

Loved the video guys! Can't wait to play Scythe

God I love your guy's videos.

Great review, thanks guys! For what it's worth, I absolutely loved the game we played on the Thursday night at UKGE with the Dice Tower Guys and Paul from CGE. Thought it was unbelievably fun, and I've been desperate to play it again on multiple occasions since then - frustrating when I'm not physically able to, ha! But not long until the KS copy arrives - phew!

What a great review as always.

I really like how you two play off of each other in your reviews. The plethora of reviews about games help me learn how to play and get people's opinions, but you fit in a smaller subset that provide equally as much entertainment as information.

Great video , looking forward to playing the game!

Saw a Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex poster and decided you were good people. Subbed.

Great review! Like Euphoria and Viticulture, Scythe maybe be a euro type game (with combat), but it still a race to the end. I did really enjoy my time with the print n play. Can't wait to get my copy!!!

Love it. Youre great guys!

I appreciate the honesty guys! Thanks for your hard work, I appreciate it. Obviously, no game with this much hype could ever be without fault, so it's good to hear about those as well as the positives :-).

I don't know how it is only now I am finding your channel, it's brilliant. Thank you for all the reviews you have done. If you guys come to Gen Con over in the states hope to run into you and say hi. Cheers!

"I'm a whale" caught me off guard and had me laughing pretty good. good review.

You guys are fun to watch, and you're good teachers :)

That was a fun review. Love it.

Awesome content. Love your videos

Subscribed. Love the SU&SD style. Much more engaging than the DT - stand in front of a wall of games and talk at me - style

wonderful review! on fence about getting this and this helped!

Great job, guys!

This is the first you tube video i'm watching from you. You are both awesome - very likeable. :-)

I've not hear the words 'bottom actions' so many times in a single video since "Backdoor Betty".

This review is a work of art

Scythe benefits from some home rules. One home rule is playing to 8 stars (4 combat stars)

I love you guys! Keep up the great work :) Joe from the US.

Liked the video, because you worked so hard!

Best reviewformat at the Moment for me

Thanks for the video. It will be interesting to see if your opinion(s) of the game change the more you play it.

Love your energy and excitement! I liked your comments at the end on detractors or a lessened experience when playing the game. I wonder if as a 2 player game you should each play 2 factions so that you can explore more of the world and experience it more fully.

Your videos are the best!!!!

Wow your videos just ooze fun Subbed!

So it looks great and plays ok🙂

The inflection is similar to Quinn's :)

Great review - entertaining and balanced. well done. Has anyone made the "bottom actions" joke yet?

just picked up scythe from my flgs this afternoon. i had 25 dollars in store credit, wanted a new game and preferably one i can play solo. this is what i decided on. really looking forward to digging into this after work tomorrow. i'm not sure if it's supposed to taste like this, but i think my borscht has gone bad. great review.

How I am surprised to see video episode from Nida in the beginning... Nice !!! :)

You guys are great together, thanks for the fun videos!

Watched your review on gloomhaven and now this. I like it. Thanks for the good work. Sub. Edited, that ending is kinda epic. Haha

Oh, man that ending!

Miniatures and hexagons! YIIIIIS!!

"I'm a whale!" Love it

@3:02 I spotted the large cellar piece & the windmill from Viticulture!

First, I was like 😊 and then I was like 😳 and then I was like 🙀 and then I finished with 🤔. I'm not sure what I just watched but it was amusing.

Nice review

i love you guys !

I bought the app and I‘m still unsure what to think about it, it somehow really got me hooked but I also sometimes think it‘s not that great. It‘s obviously extremely complex and I still don’t really know all the rules. I don’t know yet if I will pick the game up once the pandemic is over and we can actually meet people again to play boardgames because I feel this game, like u said, doesn’t work with new people, it‘s just too complex and deep, an experienced player will always have the upper hand.

you make reviews interesting to watch lol

just awesome game, awesome acting and one of best review there is

New to the channel, and came here from a recent thread about giving SM too much praise. Or something like that...the thread devolved into something else entirely. Anyway...Scythe is my favorite game. Love it. But I believe your review is very fair. I understand its faults, and why people would not like it. I get that people would also think that it is about Mech's fighting all the time. It is not, but I knew that cause I was late to the game and knew about it before I bought it. It does have fighting, but I find the game more about timing. Battles occur...but you have to know when and where it will work to your benefit. The only criticisms I have of this video is where you say you go into a battle and you suddenly lose. If you are the attacker, and you want to win the combat, there should be no surprises that make you suddenly lose. If you are the defender, yes that can happen cause tie goes to the attacker, but if you are the one starting the fight, you should not be losing. The other would be...if you are NOT fighting at some point, you are losing the game. You need to know when and where. Sometimes you have to fight to keep someone from getting ahead. That is where you are 100% right at the end....more experienced players will destroy newbies to the game. Can't be helped. But when you have equally skilled players is where this game shines the most. I'm lucky I have that in my group. All in all....your points that criticize this game are 100% valid, and loved the video. I love the game because of those things and what it is. It isn't about combat...it is about the threat of combat.

You 2 are a couple very fun and cool :). Your videos are great :)

Great review! How did you find it with 2 players? SInce I think that will be my most played player count. 3rd or 4rt player is harder to find...

Trading can be very beneficial at the start of the game. In your strategy example you could have built a mech one turn earlier by trading twice for a total of 4 metal, and then building your mech on turn 3.

Scythe is a strange, beautiful beast. Add the expansions and away you go!

My group had a similar "early experience" with Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia, in that everyone pretty much did their own thing. However, as players became familiar with both the rules and general flow of the game, they started to learn how to disrupt other players and there was more interaction in the game. I very much suspect that will be a similar occurrence with Scythe, given its complexity.

is it just me or i can see from them Shut Up and Sitdown? Awesome review tho! 😁😁😁🙌🙌

Wish I could love this game. Not sure what the barrier is. Can’t even bring myself to play it. Maybe it’s the theme, garden salad board, fiddly bits or iconography. Your review only cemented my resistance. And that’s ok.

I finally got my version from kickstarter....have no idea how to play it!

Loved the review. I bought Scythe pretty much because of the theme, knowing really nothing about it, and expected a war game. Instead, I found the experience of playing it most makes me think of Twilight Imperium 3. That too looks like it should be a war game, but in reality it is instead a game about building an economy and achieving VPs. The real benefit of Scythe is that it only takes 2-3 hours to play, unlike TI3 where the fastest game I played was 7 hours, and that due to someone being really sneaky in scoring their secret objective.

could you please do a runewars + expansion video?

You lucky lady/gent, I can see my local internet local store in Spain has a copy in August (or so they claim). Hang on a minute, I thought you were in England and then I saw you in front of a nice sunny beach !? that can't be right !

We need a crossover episode with Shut Up & Sit Down

Unlocked riverwalk I see Efka.

If you are not paying attention to other players you are doing it wrong. I love how players are blocking each other, i like the race to factory (for a bonus card and 3 tiles!), tunnel system as this giant circle works really well, making you actually playing the game. Stockpiling resources is bad idea, you need to spend them. I rarely see such pattern as you've mentioned of moving producing, if you're not able to do bottom action on turn 3 you messed up something most likely. I do agree that first experience with scythe is rewarding, but for that you really need to learn while playing, you need to plan your action, think always one step ahead, better two steps and push for the win whenever window opens for you. Play to your faction strength.

i think what happens with this game is it looks pretty aggressive, meaning they have gigantic robots, wild animals with long claws, it's themed after a world war, the art is very striking in that sense, with landscapes that can feel desolated, the imponent leaders watching over their workers -- like elaine said, it LOOKS epic. so i understand the expectation twist when we find out that the motivation of the game's actions aren't primarily the confrontation, the epicness, the destruction, the direct overpowering. yes, there are elements of those things, but i understand the game celebrates the opposite more -- though we're in this war-related world, the most privileged players will be the ones who hold on to their efficiency in management/construction and, most importantly, those that will remain LIKEABLE while achieving that. the mechs are mainly there not to dizimate villages, but to carry workers and goods, for god's sake! the war is over, so combats aren't indeed that exciting, though sometimes necessary, though most of the times avoidable, and will often smear your reputation; the encounters will have you make morally horrible choices and be a "worse person" if you want to take the easier way... i mean, to me it seems deliberate that the game was designed to be like that, to give us warning signs about brutality as a means -- you can even negotiate and pay por peace! in that sense, the game loses in interaction power, and here i do believe this thematic aspect could benefit from some player-to-player trading mechanism. but overall i don't think it necessarily makes it less enjoyable. if anything, you may find comfort in challeging yourself. actually, i think that is exactly where the theme is mostly played up -- along the game we are constantly reminded to "make hay, not war". so to me, this is a game about making it big, but nice. but then we could say -- isn't competing for popularity just as messed up? well, the game still gives us the option to consider cut-throat competition as a (tough) path if we want -- unlike other goals, you can get 2 stars from combat, one of the factions can get indefinite combat stars... i don't know, there's a sense of irony and even humor in this (that i get from stegmeier since euphoria) that actually works for me and motivates me to play! :D

People had similar complaints about Hyperborea (and maybe Terra Mystica a little), and excellent game that is not a war game, but looks a little like a war game.

The real trick about victory points is how easy they are to achieve, and you have to limit your own effectiveness to not end the game too early.

You're both very funny!

I think this is a pretty great game! It's not very confusing. And with multiple groups it still costed me about 2 hours. The combat is very underwhelming, i prefer to roll dice like TI, but all games don't have a lot of combat anyway. Once/twice per player.

Guys, you're just great 👍🏼))) hail from Mother Russia

Wow, that took courage. A review that questioned the greatness of scythe... to go against the massive hype currents. Finally played it at dice con, it’s okay. It’s just another worker placement game with a lot of bling. I actually enjoyed it more than I thought. The artwork/theme actually put me off some. Didn’t see how a lady walking around with a bear and Star Wars mech warrior meshed. But I may buy the game just for the grandiose of the game/board. I actually bought the board expansion at the con. Be foolish now not to buy the game. But what is refreshing is that you will say how you feel; and not be one of these reviewers that says every game is wonderful; just to stay on a publisher free copy list.

Elaine and Efka always provide an entertaining, informative, clever and highly objective reviews. I have played Scythe and have a slightly different take on the game. The quality and variety of the components and the art work of the board elements are all very well done. The game is easy to learn and as noted in their review, does not take that long to complete. What I found most disappointing about the game is that it appears to promise highly thematic elements but in reality all the pieces are just that, colored pieces of bits and bobs. You play a faction and get a faction character that looks cool but doesn't add anything to the game itself. It is just another colored piece that can engage in combat and has movement capabilities. Whoopie. I played as the black or "Germanic" faction and my character had two dire wolves as part of his back story. Had no relevance whatsoever to the game itself. I thought the characters might have special abilities relevant to their faction but sadly, that is not the case. As noted in the review engaging in combat punishes the player as you lose power and popularity. And, combat is abstracted anyway. Basically, rock, paper, scissors. Mechs? Just more pieces of plastic. Nothing really distinguishes your mechs other than some movement bonuses and both mechs and your character only count as component during combat. No other factor or element is incorporated and I found that very disappointing.The game to me is actually quite superficial. It looks utterly fantastic when you unbox it but when you get into the meat of the game, you find there is a reason it is so easy to learn. While Efka is quite correct you can approach the game differently each time, in the end, if you do not have sufficient "popularity" you will not succeed. Popularity is the games "force multiplier". Want to play as a no good rotten warmonger? Don't even think it. The game punishes you for even thinking about that approach. And, that in the end is what turned me off from this game. You can have a great time as long as you follow the dictates the designer(s) intended. Not my cup of tea as I readily admit, I like to "break" things in the games I enjoy most. So, the lack of thematic elements, abstracted gameplay and the heavy hand of the designer influencing player strategy means I will be sticking with other game options in the future.

How do you eat a cake you don't have?

Efka is efking hilarious

Your videos give me a Top Gear vibe.

I'm a WHALE!

Where in Eastern Europe did you guys travel to?

I love this game, rise of fenris is GREAT

So you basically have four actions to choose from the entire game?

I loved this game on the first couple of plays but somehow the more I play it the less I like it. In the end it often feels just like a lot of repetitiveness and somehow even unbalanced at times ... For me at least

Where are you in this video? Lithuania?

Scythe is a game best played with 4-5 players. Anything less than that results in a game that's dry with zero player interaction

Did I just watch a low budget Top Gear board game review?

Only just got to play this at a friends this month. And this review summed up my feelings. I lost my first game (Other 3 had played) but it wasn’t just that one player got 60+ and other two 20ish and me a bit less. It was that I wanted to go do something on the board. I saw the space and we all looked close together so let’s explore the world. Then as game went on I realised you are only playing your player Mat and not the board. The cost to get to fight is slightly high but then to have a fight you loose hearts if people are around so too painful. Why have mech at all apart form cool. They might as well be guards or farming tools. Then the player piece seems to have no good use after the story tiles go (which was close to end game so was fine) if that piece was the only to fight or could move fast or something to skirmish. Tunnels also confuse if you are not to fight they are really just to get you near resources you might need. Thought same as the review. This is a solo peaceful game where you only need interact with other players from the enlist actions. So these actions and the encounter cards and the visual is great but why have 4 people on a board to play alone 🤷🏼‍♂️ Agricola plus mechs that guard not fight. ( I will play again as might be might board was hard “2A” to get going or understand but game missed what it could)