An Interview with Jamey Stegmaier on Scythe - Gen Con 2015

During the busy days of Gen Con 2015 we were lucky enough to get the chance to speak with Jamey Stegmaier about the upcoming game Scythe.


Published: August 1, 2015 11:00 AM /

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Scythe Cover Art

At Gen Con we have the chance to sit down and talk with many people about the games they are working on and creating. One of those people was Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier games, the designer of Scythe, their new game currently in development.

Scythe is a 4x game based around an alternate 1920s period—one of farming, war, love found and lost, invention, and valor. As the leader of a faction you are trying to restore the honor of your fallen civilization in Eastern Europa by finding villagers, conscripting soldiers, conquering territory, building buildings, and even using powerful mechs. Check out the interview for yourself below. 

Jamie Stegmaier - An Interview on Scythe

Each of the up to 5 players has their own starting position, along with one of several faction special abilities and a hidden goal that you seek to accomplish. Luck is kept to a minimum in Scythe; outside of the hidden goal each player has, the only other luck based elements you run into are encounter cards when exploring new territory or combat cards that give you a temporary boost in combat.

Each of the factions, which are nations such as Crimea, Nordic Vikings, or Saxon, has their unique mech to go with their abilities. Sometimes, abilities come from the mech, such as the Nordic Vikings mech being water focused lets their units go across water, going on lakes on the board for example. The Saxon Mech on the other hand has tanks that can move from any part of the board through a tunnel, and they can block tunnels other players might use. That's only a sample of the different abilities available as they have characters and other non-mech related abilities as well that help make each faction play differently.

The game was conceived from what many of our readers may find an odd place. Jamey Stegmaier saw Jakub Rozalski’s work on Kotaku of all places and reached out to him. Jakub had begun designing the world through his art, and it served as the inspiration for the game. After talking with Jamey, they fleshed out other factions and more to work out the game. A lot of his art is visible over on his Facebook page, and it looks incredible.

 

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Don Parsons
| Senior Writer

A longtime lover of speculative fiction, in almost all its forms, Don joined TechRaptor in 2014 on a whim sending in an application as he was looking for… More about Don