Many of you may be familiar with My Little Scythe, Scythe’s little brother, targeted to more casual board gamers. If you are not, you can read our extensive review of My Little Scythe here. But what on earth could flying pies have to do with a board game? Pie in the sky is a fancy name given to the first (?) expansion of My Little Scythe. I will get on the details only of this expansion in the current review.
Expansion contents
As you may remember, in My Little Scythe you get to choose one of seven animal kingdoms to control its Seekers, throughout the game. Well now two more kingdoms are added to the lot, namely the Owl and the Fox. The miniatures are as cute as the previous ones and you can also paint them following the included painting guide just like in the original game. The miniatures fit perfectly in the space reserved for them in the original box. Actually all the components of this expansion fit in the original box, which is more than welcome. In the end of the day, you have a richer game without wasting any precious game storage space.
Another impressive component of the game is the Airship Kai accompanied by a dice. Indeed its color (light purple) and size are quite impressive at first sight. Then the first thing that came into my mind was: Are the miniatures able to step in the airship and fly with it? Aaargh, sadly this just isn’t the case however it would be so cool! So flying is done more mentally than actually and the cargo hold of the airship can be found on the ground, on top of a card. The airship still gives the impression of flying by standing on a tall base.
Unique airship abilities is also an important addition to gameplay. These abilites can be assigned randomly or by animal kingdom.
Inside the gamebox you can also find mats for an upgraded Seek action, that uses the airship as well as tokens for a 5th trophy (remember in the base game you had to win 4 trophies in order to win.
Finally, other components include 4 new power up tiles, 2 new quest cards and airship gadget tokens (used by some airship abilities).
How gameplay is affected by the expansion
The main feature of this expansion is of course the airship. Any kingdom can command the airship through a new improved Seek action. The original Seek action space is covered with an overlay card which allows you to Seek with airship support. Whenever you choose the Seek action, now you will roll an extra dice along with the usual apple, gem and quest dice, called the airship dice. This way you call for Air support. After placing apples, gems and quests as usual you can move the airship and if it reaches a space with an apple or game, call Air support to do one of the following:
- either retrive an apple or gem and place it your cargo hold
- or use your unique airship ability to gain a benefit
These unique abilities in my opinion are the most worthy in this expansion as they enhance the strategic asppect of the game. The option to divide them by animal kingdom or randomly increases the game’s replayability by far.
Taking into account that this game is targeted to kids, if they already like the original and have learned to play it well, with this expansion, they can go a bit further and deepen their strategic thinking. That is why, my suggestion is that if you buy My Little Scythe for your kids, you would better buy the base game first, then see if the kids enjoy it enough and then after they truly conquer the game and play it easily, you could buy the expansion. This way your kids can have renewed interest for the game and step up gradually to deeper strategy.
All in all, I found that although not introducing any breakthrough in gameplay, this expansion really provides a bit richer gameplay than the base game and I fully recommend it to those that already have loads of fun with the original game.
I still have to try this expansion by playing solo with Automountie and update this post with my conclusions. Many thanks to Stonemaier games for providing the review copy and for immediately replacing a broken owl miniature.
