(Photo credit to lautepelit.fi games)
Written by Ed Carter, Staff Writer
- Eclipse Second Dawn of the Galaxy
- 2-6 players
- Space, 4x, combat, resource gathering and management, dice rolling
Published by lautepelit.fi games
Let’s start with some definitions. What is a 4x game? It basically describes a game that allows 4 types of actions; Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate. There are 4x games in several themes, but one of the most popular is space. The two big games in this genre are Eclipse and Twilight Imperium 4th edition (TI4).
Before going further into it, I want to put it right out there; these games are expensive and one should look at what each offers before investing. I agree with Shea Parker from RTFM, while they both are compared, they really are two different games. I have a full review of TI4, as this one is focused on Eclipse. I want to go over what this game is like on its own. So if you are in the market for a 4x game, here is what you can expect from Eclipse.
ECLIPSE’S ORGANIZATION IS OUT OF THIS WORLD
First off, Eclipse is one of the best games that comes with its own organization system. Like I said these games are big and there are a lot of components. Eclipse comes with a storage system inside the box. Each of the 6 species has its own trays with all of their ships, discs, and cubes all together. In addition, the lid of the tray is where you track your income, research, and production. All of the tiles used are stored in a tray at the bottom of the box. Just wonderful to set up. When you first open the box, all the plastic components are already sorted into trays you just have to punch out all of the cardboard, 10 sheets to be exact. Once the ship parts are sorted into their tray, you only return what was used back to the tray. All of the research tokens are stored in a cloth bag, as are the reputation tiles. so again when done just return the used ones back to the bag. It’s a 10/10 storage solution for such a big game.
SO HOW DOES IT PLAY?
But games are played, so what does Eclipse offer? How do you get a full 4x experience in 2 hours? This game is a hybrid Euro and war game. It lasts 8 rounds and the player who has the most points at the end wins. During those 8 rounds, players take actions to explore new planets, populate planets, research technologies, improve their fleet of ships, and fight to make their empire the greatest in the galaxy. A player will do all of these actions throughout the game and must balance them in order to win.
SETTING UP
I am not going to go through the whole setup; it’s explained in the rulebook, but basically, each player starts the game by taking their chosen species player board, components tray, and their home planet tile. The game has NPC species that are used, based on the player count, to fill in so there are always 6 players. Each game starts with placing the Galactic Center in the center with the Galactic Center Defense System (GCDS) miniature on top. Each NPC and the GCDS have a discovery tile on them. The NPC species are either Guardians or Ancients, and each has its own ships. In addition to the discovery tile, place a ship miniature of the corresponding species. Take the designated number of 1,2, and 3 tiles from the rulebook and set them aside.
From your species tray, set your influence discs on your player board and fill out your income, research, and production cubes onto their appropriate tracks. Take your 3 population trackers and put them on the starting spaces indicated on your species player board, Take out your 3 colony ships and set them next to your player board. Place the leftmost influence disc on the influence action space and your next on your home planet in addition to the lowest population cubes based on the type on your planet and one fighter ship.
Based on player count draw the designated number of research tiles placing them on the technology tray: these are the current technologies you can research during a research action.
Hand the first player token to the youngest player and you are ready to start
TAKING ACTIONS: THE ACTION PHASE
Eclipse is played in turns consisting of three phases: Actions, Combat, and Upkeep. In player order, each player takes one action by taking their leftmost influence disc and placing it on their chosen action. The actions to choose from, are, Explore, Research, Upgrade, Influence or Move.
Explore will most likely be your first action as there are no other planets out at the start and players are all separated. Each action has a number of activations indicated on their species board. To take an action, choose the desired action and take your leftmost influence disc, and place it in your chosen action
For an Explore, this indicates the number of tiles you can look at. Take the designated number and decide if you want to place one. The tiles indicate if they go in the inner, middle or outer ring surrounding the GCDS. If you decide to place a tile, you can decide its orientation by placing it to a current tile that is adjacent to a planet you control or you have a ship in. Tiles are connected based on whether their wormhole symbols are connected or not. A tile that is only half a wormhole is not considered connected (there is a research tile that allows this) but in general prevents movement to and from. The tiles also indicate if you place a discovery token and/or NPC ships and how many. Once the tile is placed, and if it is empty, you can decide to control it by placing an influence disc and take any discovery tile as well. If you control it, you can then populate it based on the population type indicated. Just like you populated your home planet, take a cube of the indicated population track and place it on the planet, but this time you will need to use one of your three colony ships to do it for each population you want to use.
A move action allows you to move the indicated number of ships from one tile, or sector, to another. If you place a ship in an opponent’s or NPC’s tile, your movement with that ship ends and you will engage in combat. You can move additional ships into the sector but are pinned if only one ship is there. Your opponent is also pinned until they move additional ships in as well
A research action allows you to spend research to purchase an available technology; move your research tracker down to pay the cost and place it on one of your research tracks. The more technology you research, the less it costs. However, each research has a minimum cost that must be paid regardless of the discount indicated on your species board.
Each of your 4 ship types has a blueprint on your species board and each ship consists of several types of parts; A power source, Ship drive, weapons, computers, a hull, and shields. Each part may require energy and that requires a source that is big enough to power it. The drive increases the speed, the computer helps in combat, the weapons determine the type of dice, and the hull and shields reduce the damage.
An upgrade action allows a player to upgrade a blueprint as long as the source has enough power to use it. Some upgrades require a technology in order to use it.
The influence action allows a player to move an influence disc from one controlled planet to another. One important note, removing an influence disc will also require removing any population cubes that were on it.
Once a player has completed all the actions they want to do they pass. However, there are still 3 actions they can do. Once all players pass, the Action phase ends and the combat phase begins.
TIME TO FIGHT: THE COMBAT PHASE
Any players that have ships in an opponents planet or where they have ships, is considered engaged and will initiate a combat. In order based on the sector number, players will fight. To fight, first determine who the defender is, this is either the player who controls the planet or who entered the sector first. This is important in determining who fights first if multiple players are in the same sector as the fight order goes from the last to first. Once the defender is determined it’s time to set the initiative order based on the blueprints. After initiative is set,then any ship with missiles fires them before resolving any other weapons. Each weapon shows the number and color of dice rolled. To attack, roll the dice and see how many hits are made. The dice have either 1-4 bursts, numbers and blanks. a burst indicates a hit, a number is used with a ships computer to determine a hit. The target number is 6. So a ship with a +1 computer needs a 5, a +2 hits on a 4 or 5 and so on.
After the hits are determined, compare the number of hits to the ship’s shields and hull. A shield reduces the damage and the hull absorbs the damage. If any damage is remaining then assign it to the ship. So a ship with 1 hull needs 2 hits to be destroyed.
Any destroyed ships are taken by the victor as a trophy which is used in determining how many reputation tiles are awarded at the end.
A player then can choose to remain in the fight or retreat to a sector that is theirs and has no enemy ships in. If the retreating ship can survive another round of attacks, it retreats safely. Once ship combat ends, the remaining ship can attack the population of the planet to take control of it. Population cubes have no shields and are destroyed when hit. Any destroyed population cubes are returned to the player who places them in their graveyard for one turn before returning to their appropriate tracks.
Once the planet is empty, the victor can then take control and repopulate with their own by using a colony ship.
After all fights are resolved, reputation tiles are awarded based on the type of ships destroyed. Any players who engaged in combat and did not retreat gained a reputation tile. Draw tiles in initiative order from the reputation bag. If a player draws more than one tile, they decide which one to keep returning the rest to the bag, placing the chosen tile on their reputation track. If their track is full, a player can still draw tiles, and replace a tile of lower value in place of a higher one, returning the lower one to the bag. After tiles are drawn, return the destroyed ships back to the player.
Finally, repair all damaged ships removing any remaining damage tokens.
After all the combats are resolved it’s time to move to paying the bill in the Upkeep phase
I OWE HOW MUCH? THE UPKEEP PHARE
So every action a player takes has a cost indicated on the influence track on their species board. A player then must be able to pay for their species’ upkeep by having enough income to support it. However, if they don’t, they can trade population at the trade rate indicated on their species board. If they still can’t cover the cost, they can reduce their empire by returning influence discs back to their species board, reducing their upkeep cost, and also returning any population cubes back.
After paying your upkeep, you earn income based on your population track and moving your population markers up the indicated number.
Return all used influence discs from your actions, not your planets, back to your influence trac, Return the population cubes in the graveyard back to their designated tracks, draw a new amount of technologies based on player count, reset your colony ships, and move the round market up.
BECOMING THE VICTOR: WINNING THE GAME
The game continues for 8 rounds and at the end of the 8th round, time to see who won. Determine the final score by earning the indicated reputation for each controlled planet, adding up your reputation tiles, reputation bonuses from your technology tracks, and any discovery tiles used for their point value. Whoever has the most points, wins!
IS ECLIPSE WORTH IT? SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
I didn’t mention the use of monoliths to gain reputation, but building them gives you points as long as you control them. In addition, the discovery tiles can either be used for reputation or the bonus, but you have to choose when you obtain them. The review was just to give you a basic overview of what you can expect from the game.
As I stated at the beginning this is an expensive game, running anywhere from $180-$200 or more if you want the World’s expansion with it. So what makes it worth it?
If you enjoy 4x games, you know the time requirement. A good game of TI4 can last from several hours to all day. That’s a lot of time to carve out, but Eclipse offers that in about 2 hours. Eclipse has an amazing organization system for all of the components, using the species tray as a playable part of the game. You would need to invest in a way to organize TI4 in addition to buying the game to make it as manageable as Eclipse.
What Eclipse doesn’t have, is all of the player interactions that TI4 does. There are ambassadors used with 4 or more players but is nowhere as interesting as the trades and politics involved in the TI4 experience.
Eclipse requires a fine balance between actions and cost. You have to be able to pay for the actions you take, and for some, that may mean shorter turns as your empire expands. You have to have enough population in research to purchase technology and the production to use it. You may need to be aggressive to get the planets that have the population you need in order to increase your income, technology, or production; but can you win the fight with the ships you have or is the risk too great? These are the decisions you will face when playing Eclipse.
So, in conclusion, if you are not that interested in the heavy player interactions but love upgrading ships and researching, then Eclipse might be what works for you.
I find the reduced time commitment, the vast choices in upgrade capabilities, and the technology choices, are greatly expanded in Eclipse than other games of its type. It’s these choices and strategies that appealed to me to add this game to my collection. I find that I will get much more gameplay out of Eclipse than TI4, and why I can highly recommend it as a fantastic 4x choice.
Until next time, keep moving those meeples and happy gaming!
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