Review: My Little Scythe (Stonemaier Games)

My Little Scythe from Stonemaier Games launched from a moment every gaming parent faces: when your too-young-to-play child gets enthralled by your very-expensive-it’s-new-don’t-touch-that board game.

The game originally released as a print-and-play mashup of Stonemaier’s Scythe and Hasbro’s My Little Pony. The published version mixes a whimsical animal kingdom theme with actions and upgrade mechanics inspired by its older cousin. The result comes together as a beautiful, engaging, and surprisingly tactical family game

Here are the top five things you need to know about the magical world of My Little Scythe.

Explore, Gather, and Deliver (and Throw Pies)

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Gameplay in My Little Scythe focuses on sending your two Seekers across the map in search of fame, fortune, and the right to rule the kingdom.

Along the way, they can find and gather resources, craft things, go on quests, and occasionally get into pie fights with other Seekers. In one way or another, all of these activities help you earn trophies. Get four trophies and you win the game.

Actions Make the Game Go Round

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Each turn, you choose a single action for both of your Seekers to take: move, seek, or make.

Movement works very simply. If your seeker isn’t carrying anything, they move up to two hexes, otherwise they move one. To save time, they can also jet around the board through a series of magical portals. If your Seeker has four apples or four gems, they can deliver the goodies by moving onto Castle Everfree in the middle of the board. This earns you a trophy and sends the Seeker back to your base camp for a quick rest.

The Seek action lets you roll dice to populate the board with apples, gems, and quest markers. You choose where the goodies go. Want to put that gem on the same space as your Seeker? That’s fine, but if you put it with an opponent’s Seeker instead, you earn friendship points (more about that in a moment).

Finally, the Make action instructs your Seekers to turn their apples and gems into useful stuff. They can make pies for fights, spell cards (also for fights), or power ups that permanently improve your Make and Move actions.

Compete, But Be Nice

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The Friendship system adds an interesting dimension by gently controlling the game’s “player versus player” aspects and preventing them from getting out of hand.

Each player stars with three Friendship. You can increase your Friendship rating by being helpful when completing a quest or placing resources in the same space as an opponent’s Seeker during your Seek phase. Earn enough Friendship and you get a trophy toward winning the game.

Stealing items during a Quest or starting a pie fight with another player causes you to lose Friendship. But beware — if your friendship dips below three, you can’t earn any trophies until you bring it back up.

The Pies of Combat

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The closest My Little Scythe comes to combat is through pie fighting. If one of your Seekers moves into the same space as another player’s Seeker, then it’s pie fight time!

Players start the fight by secretly setting the number of pies they want to throw using the pie fight dial (a clever throwback to the combat dials in Scythe). They can also add one or two spell cards to toss more pies into the fracas.

When everyone is ready, players reveal their choices at the same time. The player with the most pies wins the fight (with ties going to the attacker). The winner keeps all the goodies that the loser’s Seeker carried, plus gets a trophy for winning the fight. The loser’s Seeker goes back to home base for some rest and recuperation.

Regardless of the outcome, the attacker loses one Friendship for starting the fight.

Delightfully Engaging Extras

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The game includes some wonderful family-oriented extras that truly set it apart. Some are little touches, like the achievement sheet for recording milestone wins and the painting instructions to help you turn the detailed miniatures into personalized works of art.

Others obviously took time, like the Automountie system. This automated tool lets you (or your kids) play the game alone against a robotic opponent. It also includes rules for team play against two or three Automounties, a variant we’re excited to try.

The Verdict

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There’s so much to love about My Little Scythe that we don’t have room on the page. We especially liked the game’s Friendship mechanic. It elegantly prevents one player from repeatedly picking on another while still supporting player choice.

The luxe storage trays in the box keep all of the components organized very well. We had a brief problem with the little pieces escaping their spaces in the bottom storage tray, but we solved it by sandwiching the board between the trays when we put the game away.

My Little Scythe earns a solid recommendation from both of us. This is how strategic family games should work.