Constantinople and the Adventurous Mat: The New Scythe Faction

Scythe has had five base factions and two from Invaders from Afar for a long time, and the faction roster felt settled. Duel of Meloch changes that: inside the box is Constantinople, the first brand-new Scythe faction in years, plus Adventurous, the eighth and final player mat.

Stars as a Resource

In every other version of Scythe, stars are pure output. You place them to mark achievements, six of them ends the game, and they convert into coins at scoring. They are the scoreboard, and nothing else.

Constantinople treats them as something you can spend. That is a genuine departure — it takes the game's victory counter and makes it part of your economy.

The Adventurous Mat

Player mats in Scythe pair a top action with a bottom action in each column, and the seven existing mats cover seven of the possible arrangements. Adventurous is the eighth — the last configuration of top and bottom actions not found on any of the others.

That completeness is the appeal. Long-time players have known there was one combination left unbuilt, and this is it. In a game where the faction/mat pairing matters more than the faction alone, adding an eighth mat widens the combination space for every faction you own, not just the new one.

Using Them in Regular Scythe

Both work in your normal games. Constantinople and Adventurous slot into standard 1–7 player Scythe exactly as any other faction and mat would, and everything travels the other way too — all your existing factions, mats, encounter cards and factory cards work inside Duel of Meloch.

For Scythe owners, this reframes the purchase entirely. You're not only buying a two-player duel; you're buying a faction expansion that happens to come with a duel game attached. Depending on how much two-player gaming you do, either half can be the reason you bought it.

How Strong Is It?

Nobody credibly knows yet, and that's the honest answer. Duel of Meloch has only been out since July 2026. Faction strength in Scythe is judged over hundreds of games by a community that argues about it seriously, and Constantinople hasn't had that yet.

What can be said is structural: a faction that spends stars is playing a different resource game to everyone else at the table, and that kind of mechanical outlier tends to be either underrated for months or overrated immediately. Play it a dozen times before forming an opinion, and treat any confident tier placement you read right now with suspicion — including ours.

Our take on how the established factions rank is in the Scythe faction tier list, which covers Constantinople with the same caveat.

Is the Faction Alone Worth the Box?

If you play Scythe often and multiplayer, a new faction plus the last player mat is a meaningful addition — you're getting an expansion's worth of content with a full second game alongside it.

If Scythe comes out twice a year, probably not on its own. The case then rests on whether you want the duel, which is covered in is Duel of Meloch worth it.