Scythe

I set up Scythe with nearly everything, leaving only Rise of Fenris in the box, and one fact remains beyond dispute: it is superb eye candy. It fills the table, looks important, and promises a grand, strange conflict. Promises are cheap, fortunately.

In play, the broken tempo is what lingers. Turns move with little to no downtime, so nobody is left waiting for another player to finish their shift; the manageable running time helps too. Scythe does not have time to become a chore, even when its decisions seem to have been assembled without agreeing on the underlying logic.

The alternate endings are fair and give a game a respectable finish, while the hidden encounters we saw were impressively uninteresting. Wind Gambit is a different sort of oddity: it adds material without making a case for why that material needed to be there. More Scythe does not automatically mean better Scythe. A useful lesson, if an expensive-looking one.

This is not a terrible game. It is a game with excellent table presence, low downtime, and several good ideas, repeatedly tripped by its own tempo and inconsistencies. It could have been much better, which is its most irritating quality.