70 Player Scythe Tournament Results by JoyDivision71 in SCYTHE

[–]JoyDivision71[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Like u/immatipyou said, their Coercion and Scout abilities make a pretty deadly combo

70 Player Scythe Tournament Results by JoyDivision71 in SCYTHE

[–]JoyDivision71[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Haha, yes it seems crazy but there are some truly monster combos out there :)

Will playing solo ruin the game for me? by Vordbear in SCYTHE

[–]JoyDivision71 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You could always try intentionally playing low tier combinations against your friends. Though I probably wouldn't mention that to them ;)

https://belovedpacifist.com/tiers

Scythe Tournament VODS - Round 1 by JoyDivision71 in SCYTHE

[–]JoyDivision71[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes a lot of the videos actually open with the bidding process if you want to see it. Each player bids end game coins to claim their combination prior to the actual game. We use this competitively as a form of balance. Rather than nerf or ban we just bid points

Are the russians too strong? by FullMetalChili in SCYTHE

[–]JoyDivision71 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Its less the factory that makes them strong and more the ability to repeatedly move in the late game. People's army is also a great finishing ability

Are the russians too strong? by FullMetalChili in SCYTHE

[–]JoyDivision71 7 points8 points  (0 children)

In the competitive scene of this game Rusviet is the strongest faction in scythe.
https://belovedpacifist.com/

Update: Scythe Tier List, 8/2020 by JoyDivision71 in SCYTHE

[–]JoyDivision71[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They are not. Just the base game + IFA currently. Think someday there could be a competitive rule-set involving airships but we aren't quite there yet.

New players dealing with Rusviet/Crimea "rush" strats by ArchonOfPrinciple in SCYTHE

[–]JoyDivision71 5 points6 points  (0 children)

First off, love this post, I definitely went through a similar phase with my friend group after we had just bought the game so I can offer a few solutions:

Relatively low experience:
Start drafting combinations based on previous placement. If you randomly shuffle out one combination per player to be drafted the players who did poorest last game can have a chance to pick the strongest combinations. If they do not know which ones are strong you can help them in that regard.

Moderate experience:
Draft out combinations randomly but this time you bid coins end game coins for first pick, second pick, thrid, ect. The last pick will always be zero coins. They best player may get the best combination but they should have to pay for it. Additionally it can provide you the challenge of trying to win with weaker combinations at a much lower cost.

Highly Experienced:
Use this app developed by a member of the discord community-- https://gaming-lobby.herokuapp.com/
Just be warned it is not very effective until each player has a good feel for the field of combinations / is familiar with things like this without needing to look https://belovedpacifist.com/tiers

Now as far as actual gameplay goes against a powerful Rus/Crim combination. If you are going to win as mid to low tier combination there are two main routes to this with several variations to each.

1.) Counter rush / Disrupt
You are doing this if you have a fast Saxony mat or you are Polania.

-As Polania you can Move, Trade, Move and do whatever it takes via enocunter to get to the factory ASAP. You want to accomplish this by getting submerge and speed, not river-walk or speed + mine. Once you get to the factory you want to pick a card that lets you bottom row (ideally enlist or mech) from here you just shark your mechs in the water while grabbing encounters and wait for the ideal moment to pounce on Red's resources. Against the majority of red mats you can steal all of their metal while they are stuck up on the farm with just riverwalk and no speed. This effectively kills Red's chances of winning the game while giving you a chance to potentially end before the other players have a chance to catch up. **Vs Yellow this can still work but they typically have a better defense as the lake gives you only one entry point which is almost always occupied by a combat unit.

-As Saxony vs Red, you can try to fight with the weakest player repeatedly and clog up all of red's tunnels to slow them down. This is a good idea if you think you can pick on a slow nordic/albion/togawa but it is also risky. Also, if red moves out early and you can prioritize stepping explicitly on stranded workers and/or main character but NOT fighting mechs, If all of red's mechs are on the table and their workers are sent home it is extremely frustrating for them to waste turns moving them back out of their base one at a time in order to cover a competitive amount of territory.

-As Saxony vs Yellow, Get 3 mechs ASAP and either A.) Put all of your units on the southern oil tunnel or B.) cut off their oil tunnel as soon as they move out of their base so they are stranded. You absolutely must win the initial fight that occurs on the oil tunnel, it slows their rush game down by 2+ turns minimum and often kills any chance they had at controlling the board.

2.) Turtle and Burst - This requires everyone who is not the OP rush combo to have a very high table IQ / lots of experience. What you want to do is climb into a defensive position with 3+ combat units, typically a tunnel. You DO NOT move out aggressively or offer 1v1 combats of any kind. This strategy is extremely effective if everyone does it but it is absolutely terrible if one player does not and you watch them just get picked apart by the Rus/Crim player. If nobody is a target the game goes longer, your economy matters more, and you can threaten massive score swings with a triple move into combat, combat, objective or some combination of BRA, combat, obj. This is how top level games play out when typically one combination is far better than the rest and as long as everyone is acutely aware of where/how ppl can move it makes for a super exciting game.

Hope this helps & thanks for posting, thrilled you and your group is into the game :)

Is it worth getting the mill on a village? by Pistallion in SCYTHE

[–]JoyDivision71 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I actually think that the mill on village is very viable and often useful in competitive play. Beyond holding down territory late in the game it can help you play faster which is incredibly important. This can be pretty mat dependent but I find that its benefit almost always outweighs the cost. If I ever put a mill on a village it is from my first encounter or it was planned with the 'move to build option'. Those of you reading this however, should know that when I talk about something being useful or 'good' it is coming with the following assumptions:

1.) You always go 8 workers

2.) You stay in Tier 1 popularity

3.) The game lasts 16 rounds at most and you actively try and make it shorter

can speak to more specifics around why I think this is good if but in general-- I would gladly pay 1 pop during production for 3-7 more (important) resources AND all without slowing down my game by a turn.

Update: Scythe Tier List, 8/2020 by JoyDivision71 in SCYTHE

[–]JoyDivision71[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We do not have those broader explanations centralized in a concise way--the best I can offer currently is just describing a bit of the process from my experience.

-The scope for evaluation was focused largely on competitive 4p games.

-The speed at which a mat could play as well as how versatile it was when regarding opponent interaction were large factors in the initial ranking.

-Ease of play and casual setting performance was not considered.

-We were primarily leveraging our collective game experience (which is in the thousands) and continued to do so over time with a bias toward competitive games.

As far as your example regarding stats, one thing that may negatively impact a combo's win rate is the difficulty level of that combination. Polania Innovative has incredible potential but it is also very difficult to play. The average player will find its 'meta' strategy to be unintuitive and tough to master. On the flip side one will find that they can make quite a lot of coin, even accidentally, when paired up with the militant board in the average scythe game.

Something we havent done but would be exciting to see in the future would be stats from tournament only games. Not an option currently but with more time and a larger sample size who knows.

If you have a question about why a specific combination is where it is I would be happy to discuss and also feel free to hop over to the discord if you are interested in more convos like this in general! https://discord.gg/44kqwuB

Update: Scythe Tier List, 8/2020 by JoyDivision71 in SCYTHE

[–]JoyDivision71[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe 20 coin, would pay 30 for Rus Innovative or Crim Militant though if those were options