My dad plays cards, real cards, gin rummy and a dice game he learned in the Navy that I’ve never fully understood the rules to, and for about two years I had this theory that if I just found the right modern board game he’d finally get what I like about this hobby. Scythe was the theory made physical. Beautiful minis, a real war-adjacent theme he’d relate to, and mechanically it’s mostly a peaceful engine builder, which I thought would be a gentle landing for someone used to games that end in fifteen minutes, not two hours.

I was wrong about basically every part of that plan. He sat down over Thanksgiving weekend, my mom hovering with coffee refills, and about twenty minutes into the rules explanation he said, not unkindly, “so when do we actually play.” I hadn’t finished explaining resources yet. I hadn’t gotten to combat, or the star track, or any of the six factions sitting there on the table looking, to him, like six equally confusing options with no obvious first move.

We played anyway. He won, actually, mostly by accident, sitting quiet on the popularity tier the way I usually do, which I found funny given he’d spent the setup complaining he didn’t understand what popularity was even for. But afterward, cleaning up, he said the thing that actually stuck with me: “I don’t want to learn a system, I want to talk to your mother while we play.” And that’s just not what Scythe is built for. It wants your attention on an engine, not on the person across the table, and for two hours a year with my dad, that’s the wrong trade.

I’ve stopped trying to convert him with anything that has an engine in it. Last visit I brought a stack of quick trick-taking games instead, nothing over twenty minutes, and he liked one enough to ask if I’d leave it behind. That’s the actual win, twenty minutes and a request to keep the box, not a four hour session where he’s technically playing but really just waiting for his turn to talk.

I still think Scythe is one of the best things on my shelf. I just needed to stop needing my dad to think so too. He’s got his dice game from the Navy and forty years of gin rummy with my mother, and honestly, watching the two of them play cards at that same kitchen table, bantering through hands they could deal in their sleep, is its own kind of design I can’t replicate with cardboard, no matter how good the components are.