Scythe Saxony (Thoughts)

[@gerbie42]

Tips on playing Saxony in general (not the blitzkrieg way): - Get the mindset that your ability is a nice extra, but don't rely on it. - Use Saxony's 'other' strength. They excel at moving their mechs around quickly on the map, if you have speed + underpass and your mechs are on a mountain territory, they are able to hit any territory on a tunnel and one territory further - which is huge. Use this to attack, spread workers, get objectives and retaliate (you can hit any tunnel with a mech that's on your homebase > mountain > tunnel) If you DO want to all out blitz it, try this This does have the requirements that: - Your objectives are fairly easy to get (i.e. preferably territory control) so you can combine it during your attacks/move actions. - Your player mat compliments this strategy (i.e. cheap mechs and preferably set up in a way so you can efficiently use your move and bolster actions with a complimentary bottom row action) Then try: - Aim for a mech star, 2 objective + 3 combat stars. - Forget about popularity and other stars yourself and try and get 6 stars asap! - Try and get 3 mechs out asap (Underpass, Speed, Disarm) If you get it from an encounter, even better. - Then try to alternate your move and bolster actions, this way you can keep your amount of power/cards relatively high compared to the other players whilst moving in good positions. - Fight on tunnels! Very important, this will lower their power by 2 at the start of combat and if you get retaliated on a tunnel they also lose 2 power, then if they win you can use underpass + speed to retaliate yourself the next turn from your homebase again making your opponent lose 2 power. - A no-brainer really but, if you get attacked and know you'll lose combat, use a single 2-card so you swap it out for something possibly higher, don't waste any power. - In early combats rely more on overpowering with more mechs and cards than power. If you save power others might not retaliate since they have an unknown when it comes to your combat cards and you can use this power to fight other players who might have lower power and even less or no cards. - Bring workers along to keep their popularity low for if they DO retaliate - Don't worry about losing a combat, as long as you get 6 stars the quickest you can always retaliate onto a tunnel. - If you can, although this is situational, try to aim for a 3-star play to finish. If you have a mech star, 1 combat and 1 objective star. You won't feel as oppressive yet. And in all honesty, if you aim for combat 'only' having to win 3 combats isn't that MUCH. To make the blitzkrieg work, you really need to abuse disarm and boslter/move a lot so your power/card amount stays up relatively high compared to the other players.

[@stefankollenberg1504]

When I've won as Saxony here is what I focus on: 1. End the game before anyone can get to tier 3 popularity, meanwhile you focus on getting to the bottom level of tier 2 2. Make all your workers right away and use them to produce all your mechs really fast, unlocking your mech abilities. 3. I then focus on upgrading so I can move 3 people in one turn, and focus on attacking people on their tunnels to get the power benefit. I've found that if you do this and make sure to spread your workers out at the end game, you have a pretty decent chance of winning

[@stefankollenberg1504]

@Joey Turco good stuff! Hope you're having a bit more success.

[@vzuzukin]

Get Saxony player to build a Mine on Factory space (it's a legal territory space for buildings!) and get back on what happens ;) Also, as Polandia in a three player game you are set up to romp and win, esp against Saxony and even powerful Crimea. Camp out on lakes as safe spaces for your character and mechs and strike from them with impunity. Treat your lakes as Saxony treats their tunnels (home turf). Also deprive Crimea of combat card recruiting (which they desperately need for their engine) by recruiting as little as possible. Get all your mechs through encounters if possible (don't build them). You can even get a building or two this way. You can get popularity, upgrades, and TONS of resources this way. The real metagame in your three player scenario becomes this: Polandia romps all the encounters and attacks opportunistically to get combats it can win for two combat stars (probably ganging up with multiple mechs jumping and speeding (+1) out of lakes). Crimea has to rely on its own combat card production, as neither Polandia nor Saxony will recruit needlessly. So Crimea will tend to play the euro resource game, waiting to get attacked while grinding out stars with its resource engine. Saxony will realize that Polandia and Crimea are both overpowering (Polandia has militarized a bunch of mechs out of reach while Crimea is flush with power points and combat cards spoiling for a fight) so Saxony will get both its objective stars (if possible) and bolster its power just waiting to get attacked (probably camping on all the tunnels defensively) while trying to get its own resource engine going (much less successfully than Crimea). In this scenario, Polandia has a good shot of winning if it claims "all" encounters. This assumes all players know what they're doing and don't make mistakes. All three factions here are heavily incentivized to pounce on a player making a tactical mistake in positioning, as all three are hungry for combat wins in essentially a cold war standoff.

[@gui5476]

Def mixed feeling on Saxony. Maybe they're very RNG dependent...& playing with bots don't help since there's a lack of discussion/bargaining. Makes you WANT to attack, but lack of power (maybe you gotta either strike up deals and be like "Don't attack me, so I can attack him instead!" since yellow is such a threat). I've had better luck in combat when I go in with 3 mechs (3 battle cards) since luckily one of my objectives also had me horde 8 of those plus win a battle. HOWEVER, (back to your point)...just played a game where yellow horded battle cards and put everything (all bots & captain) on one single hex...they still won only from coin and resources they had on table (20pnts just from unused resources)...and I don't think I could defeat 5 battle cards (1 captain, 4 mechs) with only 3 mechs & less than 7 power. I won 2nd, to my surprise...but prob was unlucky with my card (didn't favor upgrades: oil. 0 money there), did good on mechs (2 coin: iron). Unlucky again on 2nd objective, which kept me @ 3 workers for most of game, which made the upgrade that much more important. So its also hard to say WHEN to ditch an objective...especially when that's your whole ability, if not combat...the two don't always mesh.

[@georgebarkly5677]

If you have a Saxony and Togawa in a game Saxony should get their asses over the board and bitch slap purple to victory.

[@tozmom615]

The law of the jungle. Art imitating life. Sounds like the game was not especially enjoyable. I’ve only played a few times so far and have been enjoying it. I find the Polania special ability especially potentially unbalancing especially with low numbers of players. It behooves them to spread out and claim all those encounters.

[@jeffbaril4047]

So in my experience with black you need to use the special ability as a blitzkrieg closer to the end once you have built up your mechanism. I have never focused on using that ability to attack early. I use it later on to snipe stars quickly especially if I know that I have a victory condition. A quick blitz to go from 3 stars to 6 can surprise everyone especially if the star count is equal plus if you do it right your can possibly be taking resources along with territories adding to your point total. I ended two games leaving all my mechs and hero on iron producing squares and went out with a massive deck of power cards and smashed 3 wins... gained me 3 territories and 6 resources plus 3 stars had a high popularity this took away points and gave me more. Players who catch on to this will try to impede you... when I play against black I use air ships to mess with them exclusively if wind gambit is being used and make sure that I have any mines close to be guarded with two mechs and workers so they pay extra if I lose Anyway long ramble but don’t be over zealous to attack. Build up mechs and get lots of cards once you get your third star from mechs upgrades and one other condition along with a high popularity get ready for a blitzkrieg for 3 quick stars. The key is to make sure you are getting stars!

[@francisgregoire1576]

I have played black a couple of times. They work great when you can get stars quickly and end the game before other factions can get their popularity on the rise. There is also a little bit of chance in Scythe, meaning that you didn't have a strong player mat paired with black. Also having two doable objectives cards help a lot. With the combination of a good player mat and objectives card you can surprise your opponent into ending the game early.