Another criticism I've seen against the combat in Scythe is that it's too simplistic. I absolutely disagree with that. The combat
is simplistic, and that is because the actual combat should never be the focus in Scythe. A quick, clever system means the game doesn't get bogged down in boring combat resolution and keeps the focus on the more interesting aspects of the gameplay.
In comparison, a game that utterly failed in this respect is Star Wars Rebellion. It's a game that has its strength in the cat and mouse chase between the empire and rebels. But instead of keeping the focus on that very cool aspect of the game it keeps turning into a drawn out luck driven dice chucker, essentially killing the momentum stone dead every time combat occurs. It would have been so much better with a quick and simple battle system. Let the game play to its strengths.
Now I'm trying to think of a game that does pile of miniatures on a space vs other pile of miniatures in a way I actually enjoy. From a quick think, Inis is probably my favorite way to do that? Since you can kind of predict what's going to happen and a lot of times it just ends in "okay you're good?" "yep" "okay, we spilled a little blood but now we're cool". And losing a fight in that isn't the end of the world like it can be in some other games.
Inis is such a wonderful game, and the conflicts are so interesting. The entire game feels like mudwrestling, desperately trying to get a handle both on your very slippery opponents and a constantly changing board state. I wish I got to play it more often.
