The Rusviet Innovative strategy is here, and it sure is a doozy. At present, it is the only legal combination that can almost guarantee a 12 – 14 turn victory in Scythe. Therefore, many experienced players are calling to have it added to the banned list for faction / player mat combination, but as of this writing it still hasn’t happened.
So, naturally, I’m going to run a playthrough of it and outline what I believe to be the best step-by-step strategy, and hopefully you’ll get a chance to try it out before it potentially ends up on the chopping block.
Innovative Mat.
The Innovative Mat in Scythe is widely considered one of the best mats – if not THE best mat – by more experienced players. The reason for this is because the arguably strongest top row actions (Produce and Move) are above the arguably strongest bottom row actions (Deploy and Enlist), which drastically shortens the time in which you can achieve your Six Stars. In other words, if we combine this with a faction ability such as Rusviet’s “Relentless” you can quickly start to see why Rusviet Innovative would seem a bit unfair.
Highpoints:
- As stated above, we have incredibly strong rows in Produce/Deploy and Move/Enlist.
- For Rusviet, we can use any row any number of times in a row, so it benefits us greatly to have these rows lined up to streamline actions.
Lowpoints:
- Deploying and Enlisting are our worst coin generating rows, so we’re not going to be racking up a ton of wealth that’ll help our score in this game.
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’ll plan on getting an Upgrade to help with our Move and Deploy actions. But beyond that, Rusviet Innovative works best in fast games and getting 6 Upgrades won’t be fast. So, no Upgrade Star.
Mech Star.
We’ll be trying to integrate our mechs into when we Produce for the most effective turns. With how many times we Produce, it’s to our benefit to focus on this Star.
Build Star.
Rusviet isn’t able to easily access a Forest, and since we’ll be focusing on Producing and Moving, getting to our Build action probably won’t happen. No Build Star.
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 that’s about it.
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 Rusviet 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’d likely lean toward trying to get the Power Star by conserving our Power and Enlisting the Upgrade action early in the game.
Objective Strategy.
Getting an Objective is important for us to get our 6th Star, and actually finishing with Rusviet 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 “Harvest Advantage” and “Foundations of the Empire.”
Both of which are possible to complete, but we already know with getting our Worker Star that we’ll be completing Foundations of the Empire easily.
Rusviet Innovative Strategy Overview.
Almost all Rusviet combinations start off with a Produce action. We’re going to delay that because when we Produce we’ll want to Deploy a mech right away. So we’ll start with Trades to Upgrade our Move and Deploy actions. From there we’ll Produce and Deploy mechs, then Move up to the Farm(s) to Produce enough Food for our Enlists. After that, it’ll just be making our way about the board getting combats and occupying territories.
Rusviet Innovative Step by Step Strategy.
Objectives: Harvest Advantage and Foundations of the Empire.
- TRADE: 2 Oil.
- TRADE: 1 Oil and 1 Metal. UPGRADE: Move / Deploy.
- PRODUCE: 1 Worker and 1 Metal. DEPLOY: Riverwalk Mech on Village.
- PRODUCE: 2 Workers and 1 Metal.
- PRODUCE: 3 Workers and 1 Metal. DEPLOY: Speed Mech on Village. [Worker Star] [Objective Star].
- MOVE: 1 Worker to Mountain, Mech + 6 Workers and Hero to Farm Encounter.
- Encounter: We’d like food enough to Enlist or an Enlist. We’d also be fine with an Upgrade, but we can’t afford to pay in Popularity as we’ll need that for our next Produce actions.
- We received Encounter 25 and chose to pay $2 for 4 Power.
Mid Game.
- PRODUCE: 6 Food and 2 Metal. DEPLOY: People’s Army Mech on Farm.
- PRODUCE: 6 Food and 2 Metal. DEPLOY: Township on Mountain. [Mech Star].
- MOVE: Mech +3 Workers from Farm to adjacent Farm (leave 1 Worker) then to Tunnel Forest. Mech + 3 Workers from Farm to N. Village (leave 1 Worker) then to Factory – via Township. Mech + 2 Workers from Mountain to Tunnel Village. ENLIST: Enlist / Combat Cards reward.
- MOVE: Mech + 2 Workers from Tunnel Village to Tunnel Farm (leave 1 Worker) then to combat with Saxony on Saxony Village. Mech + 2 Workers from Tunnel Forest to S. Tunnel Tundra (leave 1 Worker) then to combat with Polania on N. Tunnel Tundra. Hero to Factory via Township. ENLIST: Deploy / Power reward. [Combat Star] [Combat Star].
- Combat w/ Polania: We needed to be most concerned with this one as Polania had 3 Power and some Combat Cards. We threw a 5 and 2 Combat Card to win.
- Combat w/ Saxony: Saxony only had 1 Power a couple Combat Cards. We threw a 3 Combat Card and 1 Power just to be on the safer side to win.
- Factory Card: We chose Card #6 which would give us 3 Coin for 1 Power. We likely won’t use it, but if we need to increase our score quickly, this would help.
End Game.
- MOVE: Hero to Saxony Village Encounter. Move Workers and Mechs about to strengthen territories. ENLIST: Upgrade / Popularity reward.
- Encounter: We would prefer Coin or Popularity.
- We received Encounter 10 and chose to gain 2 Oil and 1 Popularity as we can’t use the other options.
- MOVE: Hero to S. Village Encounter. Mech and Worker spread for territory. ENLIST: Build / Coin reward. [Enlist Star].
- Encounter: We would prefer Coin or Popularity.
- We received Encounter 12 and chose to gain 2 Food and 1 Popularity because we don’t really need anything else.
End Game Stats.
- Stars: Mech, Enlist, Objective, Combat (2), and Worker.
- Round 12; 58 Coin.
Thoughts and Tips.
As you can see, Rusviet Innovative is nothing to mess with, and very little can stop it’s momentum once those mechs are all deployed. It’s all just a matter of making sure we as the player line things up properly and don’t leave ourselves vulnerable to attacks before we’re ready.
That being said, expect any games you play with moderately experienced players to feel like it’s you against the rest of the table. And if you get into a game with a really good player, they’re going to try to sabotage Rusviet Innovative because it’s the only hope of the game not ending prematurely for them.
To prevent this, we want to avoid spreading ourselves too thin. We also want to ensure we have a worker with each of our mechs once People’s Army is deployed, because that is a severely powerful ability. Finally, don’t burn through Combat Cards. Because this combination Enlists later than other factions, we might be a bit strapped for Combat Cards and may only get around six of them all game.
As always, here’s my rant about playing against Scythe bots: Even the hardest bots are easy compared to real players. They make really poor decisions and leave themselves and their resources vulnerable all the time. In this game, I achieved both combats in a single round because they just camp with single units on easy to reach territories, such as Tunnel hexes. Just know, that real players won’t make it as possible to win super fast.
Rusviet Innovative Videos.
Additionally, we have two of my favorite Scythe players FOMOF and JoyDivision who have detailed strategy videos posted regarding this combination. Check those out below and subscribe to them if you find them helpful.
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 combinations, check out our Rusviet 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