Welcome to the Polania Innovative strategy! If you like Polania, this player mat combination and strategy will be a ton of fun. With the Innovative mat, Polania gets so much flexibility to really make the most of their Meander faction ability. And if you don’t particularly like Polania, this combination is great as it allows players not to get pigeon-holed into only one strong method of winning.
All that aside, Polania Innovative is an incredibly strong combination and can win games in as few as 12 Rounds with the right Objectives and some good Encounters. So, I’ll stop my preamble and we can get into the substance of this combination’s strategy!
Innovative Player Mat.
The Innovative Player Mat starts a player off with 3 Popularity and 5 Coin with a turn priority of 3A. It’s strongest column is Produce / Deploy, followed closely by the Move / Enlist column. Now, both of these columns are the least for coin gain on the mat; however, both rows are the most efficient as both BRA’s work toward Stars while the TRA’s are the most standard actions. Also, both Deploy and Enlist can be discounted down in cost with Upgrades, making them even more valuable.
Additionally, more advanced players consider the Innovative player mat the strongest in the game. The reasoning behind this solely falls in line with these two columns, and the results speak for themselves as the Innovative mat makes it possible to have victories in as short as 12 rounds with most factions in competitive games.
All of this isn’t to say the other two columns are useless. Trade / Upgrade has a lot of potential, and the fact is that players will always benefit from upgrades. Having the Trade action right above Upgrade only makes this mat more valuable as it means players need only produce 1 Oil before taking an action to Upgrade.
Suggested Strategy.
On the Innovative mat, it’s in a player’s best interest to focus on the Mech and Enlist Stars. And, in games where a player notices their opponent getting immensely high coin gains, it isn’t a bad idea to divert some attention to getting some Upgrades for the coin gain.
Polania Innovative 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.
Aside from hoping to get an upgrade or two, we don’t have plans so go after this Star.
Mech Star.
Polania needs at least their Submerge and Speed Mechs in a game. But, our Deploy action is below our Produce action, and as such it would be to our benefit to make these work harmoniously. We’ll plan to get our Mech Star.
Build Star.
We get a decent amount of Coin for the Build action on the Innovative mat. Plus, Polania is one of the few factions that starts with a Forest in their base hexes. However; unless our first Encounter gives us some good options to Build, we have better bottom row actions to focus on.
Enlist Star.
Innovative is geared to Enlist, and because we’ll want to Move and eat up a ton of territory, we’ll be lining ourselves up to get this 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 not the Popularity Star.
Power Star.
We’ll have our hands full trying to stay efficient with Move / Enlist and Produce / Deploy, so we won’t necessarily have the ability to gain enough Power for this one.
All in all, for Polania Innovative we’re going to focus on our Mech, Enlist, Objective, Combat (2), and Worker Stars. We’ll make some flexibility only if we have absolutely terrible and unachievable Objectives. In which case, we’ll know early on and likely lean toward going after our Power and / or Build Stars depending on what our Encounters give us.
Polania Innovative Objective Strategy.
Getting an Objective is important for us to get our 6th Star, and actually finishing with Polania Innovative in 12 – 14 turns will require we 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 “Monopolize the Market” and “Divide and Conquer.”
Monopolize the Market.
“Control at least nine tokens of the same resource at the end of your turn” to complete. For most other factions, this Objective can be near impossible to realistically pull off in a competitive game. With Polania, it’s less impossible, but it depends a great deal on getting the right Encounters and likely being able to steal the same resources from opponents. Because of it’s super variable nature, we don’t want to depend on that happening. However; we can keep it as an option.
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. Typically, Polania likes to get to the Factory ASAP if we’re rushing out onto the map. This Objective throws a bit of a wrench into that as it will end up delaying us from getting to the Factory for two additional rounds if we want to complete it. Totally possible to complete, and easier than our other Objective, but not as streamlined as we would’ve liked.
Overall, considering both Objectives, we’ll lean toward completing Divide and Conquer as it’s much more realistic. However; we’ll keep Monopolize the Market as an option if our first Encounter slows us down a great deal.
Polania Innovative Strategy Overview.
Because Polania and the Innovative mat synergize well with the Move action, we’ll be wanting to get out and about on the game board as early as possible. We’ll want to spread out quickly and ensure we’re able to nail down some Metal and Food through our Encounters or Produce actions. Through those moves, we should be able to complete our Objective, get the Factory, and hopefully an Encounter or two.
Polania Innovative Step by Step Strategy.
Objectives: Monopolize the Market. Divide and Conquer.
- MOVE: Forest worker to Village. Heroine out to Forest hex.
- TRADE: 2 Metal.
- MOVE. Heroine to Encounter.
- Encounter: We’d like to see options for Mechs, Metal, or Upgrades.
- We received Encounter 8. We’ll pay $2 for 4 Oil and Pay 2 Popularity to recruit an Enlist. We chose to Enlist the Deploy action and gain the Popularity bonus.
- TRADE: 2 Metal. UPGRADE: Move / Deploy.
- PRODUCE: 1 Food and 1 Worker. DEPLOY: Submerge Mech on Village.
- TRADE: 2 Oil. UPGRADE: Produce / Enlist.
- PRODUCE: 1 Food and 2 Workers. DEPLOY: Speed Mech on Village.
Mid Game.
- MOVE: Mech +4 Workers from Village to Tunnel Mountain. Other mech to a Lake adjacent to Factory. Heroine to a different Lake adjacent to Factory. ENLIST: Enlist action and gain Combat Card bonus. [Objective Star].
- Ideally, we would’ve liked to have moved our Heroine to the Factory on this action; however, it would’ve been incredibly difficult to accomplish our other Objective, so we had to make this concession.
- PRODUCE: 1 Food and 4 Metal. DEPLOY: Camaraderie Mech on Tunnel Mountain.
- MOVE: Heroine to Factory. Mech + 4 Workers from Tunnel Mountain to Tunnel Village, leave 3 Workers, and then to Factory Mountain. Mech from Tunnel Mountain to combat with Albion on Albion Farm.
- Combat: Albion had 2 Power and 2 Combat Cards with a mech and Hero on their Farm hex. We anticipated losing this fight, but wanted to throw a 4 value Combat Card to drain them of their Combat Cards and Power for a later attack on them.
- Factory Card: We chose card #3. There wasn’t much for choice, but there is a possibility we can use the Popularity boost for Encounters or getting to Tier-2 Popularity.
Late Game.
- PRODUCE: 1 Food, 1 Metal and 3 Workers. DEPLOY: Riverwalk Mech on Tunnel Village. [Worker Star] [Mech Star].
- MOVE: Heroine to S. Village Encounter. Mech + 6 Workers from Tunnel Village, leaving them on various Tunnel hexes, and to Tunnel Farm. Mech from Base to combat with Albion on Albion Tundra. ENLIST: Upgrade action and gained the Power bonus. [Combat Star].
- Combat: Albion had only 1 Power and 1 Combat Card. We threw a value 5 Combat Card and surprisingly so did they. Yet, we still won. As a bonus we gained 3 Food from the fight.
- Encounter: We really want Popularity, Coin, and maybe Power.
- We received Encounter 21 and chose only to gain 2 Popularity. This will set us up for getting Tier 2 Popularity.
- FACTORY CARD: Trade 1 Combat Card for 2 Popularity. MOVE: Mech + 3 Workers from Tunnel Farm to Tunnel Mountain, leave worker. Then leave worker on Albion Tundra and then to combat with Albion on Albion Farm. [Combat Star].
- Combat: Poor Albion; they hadn’t even recovered from our last round’s attack and only had 2 Combat Cards. We threw a value 4 Combat Card because we’ve already seen a bunch of value 5 Combat Cards, so it’s unlikely they had one.
- MOVE: Mechs to unoccupied hexes to spread out. ENLIST: Build action and Coin bonus. [Enlist Star].
END GAME STATS:
- 6 Stars: Mech, Enlist, Objective, Combat (x2), Worker.
- Round 14; 93 coins.
Thoughts & Tips.
Though we got off to a bit of a slow start, I don’t know that I’ve ever accomplished getting a final score of $93 in a 14 Round game. This shows us that Polania can still be pretty fast without rushing the game and create a decent economy with the right Encounters and Objectives.
Other than that, it should be kept in mind that with Polania, strategy has to be very flexible based on the first Encounter they get. As we saw in this game, we ended up getting an Encounter that promoted us getting two early Upgrades and an Enlist. Other cases may promote getting quick mechs and rushing to the Factory, while others still may promote us to utilize getting an early Build action in.
Truth is, the Scythe AI is not as competitive as real players, and chances are that throughout the game real players would’ve likely put up far more roadblocks. That’s not to say this combination of faction and mat can’t finish the game in quick wins. Check out this video by high ranking Digital Edition player FOMOF where he wins the game by turn 14 even after having to deal with some setbacks.
Polania Innovative Video.
Content creator FOMOF has a great 3 Minute Video series with an episode featuring Polania Innovative. It’s a fantastic look at getting a great start on the game, so check it out for some additional strategy!
Polania Innovative Epilogue.
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 Polania combinations, check out our Polania 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