Albion Agricultural

Welcome to our strategy for Albion Agricultural! With this one, we broke a lot of our own preconceived notions about what’s best for Albion. As such, there’s a lot more focus on movement and less on mechs, but we wrapped up a victory in 16 Rounds. That’s fairly competitive for Albion who struggle to accomplish moving about the board as it is.

But I digress, let’s dig into the meat of this combination and you can see for yourselves!

Agricultural Player Mat.

The Agricultural Player Mat starts a player off with 4 Popularity and 7 Coin with a turn priority of 5. It’s strongest column is Bolster / Enlist, as both Power and Enlist are potentially achievable Stars, and getting closer to two Stars in one action is highly valuable. In addition to this, Bolster / Enlist is also the highest coin generating column as a player gets 3 Coin for completing an Enlist. Not to mention, the Enlist action is widely considered the most beneficial BRA on any player mat.

Aside from that, the Agricultural mat has the Upgrade action beneath the Move action. This allows a player to have the option to include an upgrade or two into their typical turn sequence without spending additional turns to do so. Additionally, the Upgrade BRA starts at just 2 Oil which is the cheapest any BRA can start at.

Finally, it has the Trade action above Deploy. Although deployment is expensive at 4 Metal on this mat, having the Trade there can help with having quick access to necessary additional Metal to complete a Deploy action. As an added bonus, the Deploy action can be discounted down to only 2 Metal with two Upgrades making the potential for getting a mech out a single seamless turn.

Suggested Strategy: On the Agricultural mat, it would be wise for players to build their turn engines to be able to Bolster / Enlist to get the Power and Enlist Stars. Adding in a couple turns to Upgrade the cost of enlisting or deploying down will also go a long way.

Albion Agricultural Star Strategy.

I don’t recommend starting a game without considering what Stars you want to achieve. For those unfamiliar, Stars are Victory Points, and the first player to Six Stars ends the game. So, they’re kind of important.

Upgrade Star. 

We’re planning on getting at least two upgrades. Beyond that, we’ll only take them if they’re easily available. So no Upgrade Star for us.

Mech Star. 

Typically mechs are the way to go, but the tough part with Albion Agricultural is we want to favor enlisting. Because of that, right away we’re not going to be producing Metal. Additionally, without producing Metal, it takes two Trade actions to get enough to deploy a mech. We don’t want to spend a ton of turns extra, so unless we get mechs from Encounters, we’re not likely to get the Mech Star.

Build Star.

It takes too long to get to a Forest hex for us, and each structure costs 4 Lumber. So, that means Trade is out of the picture. So, no Build Star for us.

Enlist Star. 

The Agricultural player mat favors Enlists. We can discount them down to 1 Food cost and we get 3 Coin for each. Since Albion starts on a Farm hex, this will be part of our plan. Yes to Enlist Star.

Worker Star. 

In the course of all our necessary Produce actions, it won’t be difficult to gain our eight workers, so we’ll go for this one.

Objective Star. 

Objectives are always on the table. We should be able to work our game around getting one completed. If not, we’ll know at the start of the game that we have to make some adjustments.

Combat Star(s). 

We’ll always have these as a focus. 

Popularity Star. 

Very rarely has Popularity gotten to 18 in competitive games I’ve seen or played in. So, there’s really no point in having it as a focus. We might try for Tier 2 Popularity for scoring if Encounters make it possible, but that’s about it.

Power Star. 

Because of Bolstering to Enlist, we’ll definitely have this within our reach. Albion starts with 3 Power, which means after 4 Bolster actions, we’ll be at 15. We’ll lose a couple Power from Produce actions, but if we Enlist for Upgrades early enough and maybe get some through an Encounter, we should be good. Yes to the Power Star.

Overall, for Albion Agricultural, I think it best that players prioritize their Enlist and Power Stars. In addition to that, we should add in getting the Worker, Objective and two Combat Stars. If there’s an opportunity, we can include the Mech Star to replace the Objective if it’s unachievable.

Albion Agricultural Objective Strategy.

Getting an Objective is important for us to get our 6th Star, and actually winning with Albion Agricultural in 16 Rounds will require us to complete an Objective. Because of this, we really need to have a solid plan going into the game of how we can accomplish one of the Objectives we get; and if we can’t, knowing right away that we’ll have to adjust our gameplan.

For this game, we received “Divide and Conquer” and “Northern Advantage.” 

Divide and Conquer.

“Have zero Factory Cards and control at least two territories adjacent to the Factory at the end of your turn,” to complete. This Objective is tough for Albion to get with our limited movement. While it’s totally possible to get to the Factory near the end of the game, it’s not so much to flank the Factory without first moving on it. It’s not impossible, but it’s quite difficult for us.

Northern Advantage.

“Control at least three Tundra territories at the end of your turn,” to complete. Fortunately for us, moving toward the Factory is part of our plan. Better yet, we have one Tundra near our base hexes and two other Tundra hexes linked to Tunnels. That being said, once we get to our first Tunnel, in a single Move action we can have this Objective complete.

All that to say, Northern Advantage seems like the Objective we’ll be aiming for. It fits within our planned movement and won’t take any additional turns to complete.

Albion Agricultural Strategy Overview.

The Agricultural player mat is a bit expensive on the bottom row actions. This is with the exception to Upgrade, which is only 2 Oil to start. Because it’s linked to our Move action, we can start the game out by trading for Oil and then moving and upgrading. From there, we can pick up another Trade and Upgrade as we get some Food for Enlisting. Once we get to our first Encounter, we can plan deploying our Rally mech for better movement and then getting all our workers out. 

After all that preparation, we rotate Bolster/Enlist with Move, looking for combats along the way. If all goes to plan, we can get our combats by the time we get our Objective completed, and hopefully, that’ll be the game.

Albion Agricultural Step by Step Strategy.

1. TRADE: 2 Oil.
2. MOVE: Workers and Hero to Farm. UPGRADE: Move / Enlist.
3. PRODUCE: 2 Food.
4. TRADE: 2 Oil.
5. MOVE: Hero and 1 worker to Village Encounter. UPGRADE: Bolster / Enlist.
   • Move issues: Nordic had taken the village Round 1 and so had 4 workers on it. Sadly, that means we lose our Popularity, but luckily, they had 2 metal there as well.
   • Encounter: We’d prefer a mech, or metal. Barring that, Combat Cards and/or Power would suffice.
   • We received Encounter 16 and paid $2 for 1 worker and 2 resources (metal).

Mid Game.

6. PRODUCE: 1 Food and 2 Workers.
7. TRADE: 2 Oil. DEPLOY: Rally Mech on Village.
8. PRODUCE: 1 Food and 3 Workers. [Worker Star].
9. MOVE: Worker from Farm to Tundra Encounter. Rally Mech + all but 1 worker to Tundra. Rally Hero to Tundra. UPGRADE: Combat Card Trade / Deploy.
   • Encounter: We’d benefit the most at this point from Power and Combat Cards. Barring that, a mech would suffice.
   • We received Encounter 17 and paid $2 for 2 Combat Cards and 2 Power.

10. BOLSTER: 3 Power. ENLIST: Enlist / Combat Cards reward.

Late Game.

11. MOVE: Worker from Tundra to Farm. Hero and Mech + 5 workers to combat with Polania on Tunnel Mountain. [Combat Star].
    • Combat: Polania had 2 Power and 4 Combat Cards. We brought all our workers with us, so we really didn’t want to lose. So, to be safe, we played two Combat Cards worth 7 Power value for the win.

12. BOLSTER: 3 Power. ENLIST: Upgrade / Power reward.
13. MOVE: Worker from Tunnel Mountain to S. Tunnel Tundra. Hero and Mech + 2 Workers to combat with Polania on N. Tunnel Tundra. [Combat Star] [Objective Star].
    • Combat: Polania had 4 Power and 7 Combat Cards. Again, we don’t want to risk losing as we’re trying to complete our Objective here as well. So, the trick was for us to spend only as much Power as we can make up in our next two Enlist actions for the Power Star. That way we can save our big value Combat Cards in case we get attacked after this.

14. BOLSTER: 3 Power. ENLIST: Deploy / Popularity reward.
15. MOVE: Mech + 1 worker to Factory Forest. Worker to Factory. Rally Hero to Factory.
    • Factory Card: We really don’t need one as we plan to end the game on the following turn. But, in the event things went really south, we picked Card #16 as it’s the only one we can play without losing our Coin.

16. BOLSTER: 3 Power. ENLIST: Build / Coin reward. [Enlist Star] [Power Star].

End Game Stats.

• Stars: Power, Enlist, Objective, Combat (x2), and Worker.
• Round 16; 59 Coin.

Albion Agricultural Thoughts & Tips.

In this playthrough, I was a bit surprised by how fast we could get to the center of the board by being able to avoid deploying any further mechs. Ideally, Albion thrives with their mechs out, but with the Agricultural mat, it would’ve just added more turns and prevented us from moving as much.

I think this combination’s perfect game could run as low as Round 15, and maybe even 14 if everything goes our way. This would involve getting a free Enlist through one Encounter and a big 3-4 Power boost through another. An objective like “Foundations of the Empire” and opponents attacking with us winning would make that possible. A lot of if’s, but not impossible. So stay aware of those opportunities.

Aside from the early setback of losing all our Popularity to bumping Nordic’s workers, the rest of the game went smoothly. We were able to get decent Encounters and get our combats during our Move actions to get our Objective. All around textbook play.

In this game I played against the hardest Scythe bots, and as such, I must add my typical rant against playing bots. Scythe bots are a good way to get used to the game and to strategize faction and mat combinations. However; bots aren’t as good as real players. They make the game far easier because they’re basically set on set courses of actions and don’t adapt well to the game as it’s played. As such, they leave resources out, leave single combat units in easy reach, and they don’t change tactics to prevent you from winning.

That being said, don’t get comfortable playing bots. Get good at the game with real players and by learning how to adapt to this complex and ever changing game.

Albion Agricultural Video.

Additionally, we have a great video following this combination from FOMOF, who is a tournament winning Scythe player and amazing content creator. Check it out and follow along to get a variant game play example.

That’s about it! If you’re a newer player or would like a refresher on some general parts of Scythe, check out our Quick Tips and Strategy section. Looking to get into Scythe? Check out the tabletop version at Stonemaier Games or the Digital Edition on Steam!

Otherwise, if you’d like more Albion combinations, check out our Albion Strategy overview, and if you enjoy our faction / mat combination posts, find more of them in our Strategy Archives. As always, leave a comment if you have any thoughts or want to share how this strategy worked for you!

Happy gaming!

• Norman