My Little Scythe

3rd February 2022

It's a Thursday and we're round Simon's for a night of gaming. The first game of the evening was My Little Scythe.

My Little Pony
So Skinny and bony
Tripped on a wire
Fell in the fire
No little pony today

​What does does My Little Scythe have to do My Little Pony? Well... err... nothing... obviously...

My Little Scythe is a reskinned iteration of Scythe that has been simplified and pared down to make it more accessible to younger players.
I have played Scythe but it was some time ago, long before I started this blog in fact.

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What's in a game?

• Board: My Little Scythe comes with a big board and the game has a fairly big footprint.
  Map: The board mostly depicts a landscape divided into 6 different terrains types (Regions.) which are marked out by large hexes. At the centre is a castle, there are also several portals dotted across the map. Finally, there are 6 starting points throughout the map.
  Tracks: There 2 tracks shown on the board, one for pies and one for friendship.
  Spaces: There are spaces for the game's magic spell, quest cards and upgrade tiles as well as for the 8 spaces for the 8 victory conditions.
• Setup tile: This hexagonal tile is used to determine the initial placement of the game's 2 types of resources; apples, gems as well as quests.
• Player boards: These boards depict the 3 types of actions that will available to each player as well as their related sub actions. There are also spaces for players to place victory tokens.
• Tokens: There are quite a few types of tokens in this game.
  Friendship tokens: A little heart adorns these triangular shaped card tokens which are used on the friendship track. There is 1 in each player colour.
  Pie Tokens: Ditto for these circular tokens decorated with pies which are used on the pie stack. Again there is 1 in each player colour.
  Trophy tokens: There are 4 square, card trophy tokens in each colour and they all display pictures of trophies. Trophy tokens are used to track victory conditions.
  Quest tokens: These card tokens will appear the board and when picked up by players, provide them with a quest card.
  Base camp tiles: These come in player colours and are used to indicate each player's starting position and respawn point.
  Apple tokens: Bright red, chunky and apple shaped tokens.
  Magic gem tokens: Translucent acrylic stylised like diamonds are used for magic gems.
  Pawns: Standard plastic pawns that come in the different player colours. Used to track which actions are available to each player.
• Power up tiles: Players can acquire these tiles and use them to upgrade 2 of their 3 abilities.
  Base camp tiles: These come in player colours and are used to indicate each player's starting position and spawn point.
• Cards: My Little Scythe uses 3 types of cards:
  Personality cards: Each personality card makes it easier to achieve one of the game's 8 victory conditions and one is dealt to each player.
  Magics spell cards: These cards can be used to increase a player's combat score during a pie fight and each one has a numeric value.
  Quest cards: When a player picks up a quest card, it will give them 3 options to choose from (More on this below.).
• Pie fight dials: These dials are mounted on card and during pie fights (Combat really.) they're used to make blind bids to win a pie fight, there's also a place to slide in a magic spell card.
• Dice: My Little Scythe comes with 5 plastic six sided dice, 2 red, 2 blue and 1 yellow. These are not normal six-siders and are instead covered with differently coloured symbols, one on each face corresponding to one of the 6 regions.
• Meeples: There are 2 oversized meeples (Called Seekers.) in each player colour for My Little Scythe. Each set depicts a different anthropomorphic animal type.

All of My Little Scythe's components are high quality, there's been no skimping on the game. Tiles, tokens and pie fight dials are cut from thick card and feel sturdy. Having opaque plastic for apples and translucent for gems is a nice touch and looks good on the board. Wooden dice would have been nice but that's not to say that the plastic ones are bad. Finally, the meeples are chunky and well designed, they're a little bland in beige though - I'm sure they'd look good painted up.

It's obviously that the game's art direction is meant to emulate the style of a Saturday morning kid's cartoon. It makes use of bright colours and features well illustrated cartoon styled art throughout.

The game's iconography is clear, all of the symbols are easily understood.

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What's in a game?
Setup

• Board: Put out the game board and determine which starting locations should be used as per the player count.
• Magic spell cards: Shuffle the magic spell cards into a face-down deck and place it on it's space on the board.
• Quest cards: Also shuffle the quest cards into a face-down deck and place it on it's space on the board.
• Power up tiles: Sort them by type and shuffle them into a face-down decks on their relevant spaces on the board.
• Players: Each player should take a player board and choose their colour, then take all the components in that colour.
  Base Camp: Each player should then put their base camp tile on one of the allotted starting locations. Their 2 meeples should go into the base camp.
  Friendship & pie tokens: Each player should place their friendship and pie tokens on the '3' space along the pertinent track.
  Trophy tokens: All 4 trophy tokens should be put into the allotted spaces on each player's personal board. ​
• Personality cards: shuffle the personality cards and randomly deal 1 face-down to each player.
• Determine start resources: Put the setup tile on the castle space face-down, spin it around and flip it face-up. then align it with the castle's hex. This will determine the resources that start on the board.
• Determine start player: Choose a starting player.

On to play
My Little Scythe is all about victory conditions and the first player to achieve 4 of them will win.
The turn structure in My Little Scythe is very traditional, with the active player having their turn and active play moving to the person on the left.

• Actions: My Little Scythe has 3 types of action the player can make use of; Move, Seek and Make, each action type will also have 1 or more sub actions which are what the active player must perform.
  When a player chooses an action they want to activate, they place or move their pawn on the spot next to the sub action they want to complete. There's 1 restriction here, a player cannot place a pawn back on the action type they just took the pawn from. Thus players cannot perform the same action type 2 turns in a row. The actions types are:
  • Move: The active player may move their Seekers up to 2 hexes or 1 only if they are carrying resources. When Seekers leave a hex, they can 'carry' any resources that are on the hex along with them, any resources on a hex with a seeker are under that Seekers 'control'.
    Portals: They allow Seekers to teleport across the map or enter the castle.
  • Seek: This action allows the active player to put resources and quest tokens on to different regions on the board by rolling 4 dice and has 2 sub actions which determines which dice are used. As a base, 1 of each die type is used, but the sub actions determines whether the 4th die will be red or blue.
    After the dice are rolled, the results determine the region into which the resources are placed but active player chooses the exact hex in those regions to place the items. Although no hex may contain more than 1 of anything.
    Friendship: If the active player puts a resource into a hex occupied by a Seeker of another player, then the active player moves up the friendship track.
  • Create: The create action contains 3 sub actions that allows the active player to spend various combinations of resources to move up the pie track, draw a magic spell card or draw an upgrade tile.
• Base camp: If a Seeker is returned to their base camp either by delivering to the castle or losing a pie fight, 2 event occur.
  Gain resource: The affected player either draws a magic spell card into their hand or moves their token 2 spaces up the pie track.
  Remove pawn: The affected removes their pawn from their board, as a result, they will a choice of all actions when they become active player.
• Castle delivery: If the active player's Seekers deliver resources to the castle, they will be return to their base camp.
• Pie fight: When 1 or more of the active player's Seekers ends their turn in the same spaces as one or more seekers of another player, it will result in a pie fight.
  The active player - who moved into the space is considered the attacker and immediately drops 1 on the friendship track.
  A pie fight in essence involves a blind auction between the players using their score on the pie track as currency. Thus a player may use up to 7 pies if they have them on the track. This is done by each player taking a pie fight dial and in secret, setting it between 0-7 (The amount they want to bid.). Each player may also secretly add a magic spell card to their dial for each of their Seekers participating in the pie fight.
  Both players Then simultaneously reveal their dials, the value of any magic cards played is added to the bid. Whoever has the highest value wins the pie-fight, ties go to the attacker.
  The losing Seeker(s) are returned to their base camp, leaving any resources they had as spoils for the victor.
  Regardless of a pie fight's outcome, each player's score on the pie track is lowered by the amount they bid and any magic spell cards used are discarded.
• Quests: If a Seeker ends their turn on to a hex space containing a quest token, they remove it, immediately draw a card from the quest deck and attempt to resolve it. Each quest has 2 options to choose from with different requirements and rewards, if the player cannot or chooses not to complete the quest, there's also a 3rd option to return the card to the bottom of the deck for a small reward.
  When a quest is completed, it is retained by the player who did it on their playing area.
• Upgrade tiles: When a player acquires an upgrade tile, they can choose to upgrade either the move or make action type and draw 3 tiles from the chosen stack. From those 3 they pick one and cover the basic action type with it. This means the upgraded action type will provide new action the player can activate.
  The remaining 2 tile are returned to the bottom of their relevant deck.
• End of turn: When the active player has completed their turn, play progress to the player on their left.

That's it for the main rules, however, the trophies need to be described.

• Trophies: Firstly; quests can only be completed if a player has a friendship score of 3 or more.
  Players can each earn exactly 1 trophy per turn, provided they achieve the requirements. If a player meets the requirements of 2 in a turn, they can still only earn 1 per turn. When a player earns a trophy, they take a trophy token from their player board and place it on the space for the achievement they completed. Achievements are as follows:
  Apple delivery: Delivering 4 apples to the castle.
  Friendship: Reaching 8 on the friendship track.
  Magic gem delivery: Delivering 4 magic gems to the castle.
  ​Magic spell cards: Have 3 magic spell cards in hand at one time.
  Pies: Reaching 8 on the pie track.
  Pie fight: Winning a pie fight.
  Quests: Successfully complete 2 quests.
  Upgrade tiles: Acquire 2 upgrade tiles.

Endgame
Play continues until a player has earned all 4 of their trophies which triggers the endgame.
Each player who has not earned their 4 trophies now has a further single turn to do so. Additionally, the 1 trophy per turn restriction does not apply during the endgame.

In the case of a tie (Which can be likely considering the small scoring range.), whoever has the highest friendship score wins, if the tie still isn't broken, whoever controls the most resources wins and if that's equal, victory is shared.

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Overall
My Little Scythe has done a good job of paring down the rules of Scythe without really diluting its game experience. Players of Scythe will find a lot here that is familiar.

Like Scythe, My Little Scythe is a blend of doing your own thing and competing with other players.

This is due to how the trophy mechanics work; players are attempting to complete any 4 objectives out of 8 which generates a lot of routes towards victory. Different players will naturally approach how they can go about winning individualistically.

It means that player behaviour can generally be quite varied, players may simply ignore each other, compete for resources or even engage in outright conflict, or any amount of combination of those.
However, I feel that acquiring apples and gems is perhaps the most important goal in the game maybe overimportant, they provide the most ways to earning most trophies, competition for them can be stiff, especially with higher player counts.

Players in My Little Scythe will want to optimise there strategy dependant on a number of factors, including personality card and resource locations, they can also to pay attention to what other players, trying to predict what they're doing, react accordingly and may have to change their strategy.

With it's colourful, cartoony presentation and relatively stripped down rules, it's obvious that My Little Scythe is at least in part aimed at younger players - that's not to say that it can't be enjoyed by adults or doesn't have some crossover appeal.
Having said that, I don't think the rules are that simplified, I'd say they're still fairly intricate and could prove an obstacle to younger players, particularly if there isn't an older player present who's familiar with the rules. I'd say My Little Scythe is family-friendly more than kid-friendly.
I think it's a fairly good family-friendly game as well and a good introduction for kids or 'non-gamers'.
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For me though; I'm not sure how I feel about My Little Scythe. It doesn't feel like my kin of game.
There's nothing wrong with the game mechanically, nor do I think it's overly simplistic and I'm fine with the theme. I can see how other people enjoy it but I was just unenthused by it and found it unchallenging. To me,  It felt like there was synergy  lacking between actions
I'd have no problem playing it again if others wanted to, but it's not one I'd choose to play.