by Lotana
Me and my friend have started doing regular 2-player games of Scythe (Original + Invaders from Afar only). My friend is the game owner and he loves Rusviet faction! From now on I will refer to him as "Red Menace" because he is... He plays that faction exclusively, while I do a random selection because I still can't get a handle on any of them. We play with the rule that he can't use the Industrial mat and can not use the Factory card every single turn. I can't use Patriotic when I play Crimea.Mr. Menace is a VERY intelligent player. Games like Scythe are his forte and he picked up Rusviet and fell madly in love with them. So he is VERY good with them, or maybe I am terrible as a competition... In general he likes to get to the Factory really early (That ability to jump to the Factory from any village is used often), locks me out of the Factory hex with his character/mechs and setup shop on the resources (And encounters) around there. And then his economic engine becomes incredibly efficient and he just flies to the 5 stars after which he stops, spreads all around as far as he can (Generally away from me as much as possible) and slams down the 6'th star. He avoids offensive combat and when he does do (Generally defensive) combat there is always a worker with his mechs (It gives me a card bonus I think), so I always end up losing at least one popularity. He keeps his resources as far away from me as possible and spreads them out on different hexes so that only a few of them are in one place at a time.
For my strategy, I am trying to go for the encounters and then focus on the advanced action with the most coins on it. I find a very nice pair of actions to bounce between (I really like the trade due to flexibility of resources and where to put them), and so accumulate the gold. I struggle to find the spare turns to do the movement as that slows down my engine. By the time I am anywhere close to the Factory, it already has been looted and fortified with at least one of Red's workers and one (sometimes two mechs) of his. And he guards it viciously, so I very rarely have a factory card of my own and if I do, that was after a very expensive battle to get there. Thus he recovers much faster and counter-attacks very next turn or one turn after. I have yet to finish a game in control of the Factory space: He really wants his 3 territories it counts as.
Now, I know that in this game all factions are balanced. Each one has strengths and weaknesses. That it is not the game, it is the player. I need to get better. So I need tips on how to fight the Rusviet. I am sure there is something simple that I am doing very wrong. I think that once I master opposing them, this would teach me enough to be able to face any other faction.
No, I don't want to force him to play some other faction. I want to get better to be able to have at least 40% win rate against him on his own terms. I am looking for advice from Rusviet veterans out there who can tell me what they fear most.
- What are the Rusviet weaknesses and downsides that I can exploit?
- What are some things they are VERY strong in that I shouldn't even waste my efforts to compete with them on?
- What is their weakest and strongest phases?
- What can I do to shut down an up-and-running Rusviet economy machine once they got all the resources and positions they need? Or the only option is to prevent them getting there in the first place?
- Is there any faction that has more of the advantage against them that I can focus on learning?
- What should be my early goals to prevent their early Factory lock down? Or is Factory not as big of a deal as Red and myself see?
Thank you for reading.