Scythe is my favorite board game so far. It is dynamic, strategic, beautiful and fun. It works well to play with two players. With the Automa mechanics you can play solo or in a two person game add more players. This page though is created to modify the game to be more fun for just two players.
We have been playing mostly two person games (no automa). We quickly realized that some mechanics works a lot better for three or more people. So we made some modifications to the base rules, that works on all expansions and you can choose if you want to use them all or pick and choose.
Below is our thought process regarding these modifications. We have played with these rules for some time now and for us it works out good. Maybe you have other ideas, send them in if you wish.
Often one person could see that the game was going to end in a certain amount of turns, and had the control to end it. Of course that player started to spread it's workers in the last or second to last turn. Which potentially could yield 2/3/4 x 8 extra points. Depending on how you spread your workers. That created a huge leap in points that was just because that player could control the end of the game. The other player that wasn't controlling the sixth star placement often got left behind with fewer controlled hexes in end game. The player could of course be attentive and planning and start spread workers before the other player places the sixth star. But it always felt like the person placing the sixth star could use the situation a lot easier and more effective to her/his advantage
SCORING MODIFICATION: Our solution is quite simple and even out the hex count in the end. One single worker does not count for end game hex count. One worker and token (trap, flag) counts. One worker and building counts.
We played a lot of games with the objective cards that involves the player to control three hexes of the same type. When only two players populate the board it was not even a problem to fulfill the objective. Those objective felt unreasonable easy compared to others.
OBJECTIVE CARD MODIFICATION: Remove objective card no: 1,2,3,4,10,11. ie remove the cards with objective "control 3 tundra/forest/village/mountain/tunnel hexes"
When playing two people the person that initiated the attack won most of the times, because of the rule that attacker win ties. The result was either the defender put the dial to 0 to be able to counter attack later on or as a defender you could guess that if you both could put 7 power on the dial it could be reasonable to guess that the attacker has a 5 point power card. Then you have the option to take a chance and use 7 power and your best combat card. Which often lead to loosing while spending all your power and best combat cards.
If power was resonable even (which usually is the case in the beginning - no one wants to be vulnerable to attack), the first attacker got attacked back and that gave one star each. That just felt like boring game play, predictable and static. We found that Fenris ability Death Ray helped to make fights a bit more exciting. I really like that Scythe is almost purely tactics and not a lot of chance, but ....
COMBAT MODIFICATION: Our solution is to add a small amount of randomization (RNG) to fights. When combat is initiated the attacker draws a combat card from top of the pile, then the defender draws a card from the pile. Both cards are shown on the table. Then combat process moves on as usual, the random card is added to the power count of each player. And then combat is resolved as usual.
This has made combat a little bit more exciting and less predictable for both attacker and defender. The problem with combat wasn't that is wasn't balanced or that it was strategically broken. It was just not as fun as in games with more players.