Scythe is free to play online, and that's a bigger deal than the phrase "available on Board Game Arena" makes it sound. Jamey Stegmaier's asymmetric engine-builder arrived on BGA on 31 March, meaning you can now sit down with four strangers from anywhere in the world and play one of the most popular heavy games of the last decade without buying a thing.
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See how it worksFor the uninitiated, Scythe is a 1-5 player strategy game set in an alternate-history 1920s Europe where each player runs a faction building mechs, harvesting resources and scrapping over territory. It sits around 8.1 on BGG with over 100,000 ratings, still inside the top 20 games on the site ten years after its 2016 release. The physical edition is a chunky box with an eye-watering price tag, so getting it on BGA for free lowers the bar considerably.
The Board Game Arena version was developed by Tisaac and vincentt with the support of Stonemaier Games, and Stegmaier has been sharing revenue from the BGA implementation for over a year. It supports asynchronous play, which matters for a game that can push an hour or two at a real table.
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Find events near youIf your group has been putting off trying Scythe because nobody wants to commit £70 to a maybe, this is the fix. Rally everyone for a Wednesday night session online, and if it clicks, find your nearest group to play the cardboard version in person.
Sources: Board Game Arena | Stonemaier Games | BGG
