I got to play multiplayer Scythe for the first time a couple of days ago. We had four factions: Russviet, Polonia, Crimea, and Nordic. I got Polonia, and the Patriotic (bonus for Enlist and Deploy) Player Mat. I had one decent Objective card (occupy all four basic resources) and one bad one (do something stupid with 0 mechs). Experience with the game was 4-2-1-0 games, with me having played four Automa games.
I tried my best to play into the setup's strengths, and it seemed to work. The other players didn't put as high a priority on the Encounters, and I pushed for them to take advantage of Polonia's 2-for-1 ability. My other plans were to get 16 Power, 4 Enlist, cash in the decent Objective, and play the rest by ear. I didn't make more of my stupid mistakes than usual, and ended up with 6 stars; the three I planned, 2 combat wins, and 4 mechs, Since I didn't spend much Popularity, I was at the third level. The final scores were 87-46-30-28 or something like that. Game time was 3 hours, including rules explanation to the new player. There was a little back and forth in the rules, but all in all it went smoothly.
At the end, three of us liked it. Three of us had copies, and two will probably hang on to their copies. The last place guy didn't particularly care for it, and will probably sell his.
My take on the game so far looks a lot like charlest's:
- Play into your Faction and Player strengths. It's an efficiency game, so fighting your setup won't help.
- As we discussed earlier in the thread, combat costs you. If you want to win a fight, you'll have to spend Power to do it. When I won my two battles, the other three players had been butting heads all game, and were well below the magic number 7. Both combat victories were guaranteed.
- Don't try to do a little of everything. That's Point Salad 101, but I tend to do that and lose. Scythe will punish you for that.
Games
How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
