Eclipse Two: Celestial Boogaloo

Far in the future, civilisations take their first steps into the final frontier. They begin with just one little dinky ship in their own sector of space. In time, players will explore the galaxy, expand their empires, exploit planets for resources, and exterminate others who get in their way.

There is a lot of work to do.

Each turn, players choose one of six possible options: explore, research, upgrade, move, build, or influence. These actions tell a story. First, you explore the universe around you, placing new sector tiles around you. You Research new technologies like stronger weapons or aiming computers. You then upgrade your ship schematics with the new tech, before building your fleet. Super simple stuff – in theory.

Exploring provides players with interesting decisions from the get-go. Hexagonal sectors of space have wormholes on some edges. You can only move between sectors if the touching sides both have wormholes (wormhole touching wormhole), so you should orient tiles to move towards people you want to fight, while cutting others off. These tiles may also come with colonisable planets that provide resource income, one-off bonuses, or alien ships to fight.

Ship customisation makes Eclipse unique among other 4X games. You can customise your ship’s blueprints, swapping out parts as you see fit. Want to create a squadron of kamikaze ships that are powerful but expendable? Throw out those hulls and slap on more cannons!

This creates an interested arms race, as you adapt to the actions of other players. If everyone else upgrades their ships with computers to improve aim, you could counter them by slapping on shields that cancel the computers out. Players frequently have to assess what their enemies are doing to their ships, to make adjustments on their own. As research usually begins from turn one, players have their attention focused on others right from the get-go.

Available technology changes from game to game. Every turn, random technologies are drawn from a bag. While you may have done well by loading your ships with powerful plasma cannons early on in one game, those plasma cannons might not show up in the next game for a while. You’ll have to adapt to what’s available, so things stay fresh e

The other really cool thing about Eclipse is how it simulates your economy. You have a row of discs on your player sheet. These discs represent the cost of running your growing empire – as more discs are removed from your sheet, your empire becomes more expensive to run. Taking control over new sectors of space, these discs are used to signify your influence. When you carry out an action on your turn, you place one of these discs on the respective action spot. So as you expand and do things, your upkeep cost at the end of each round increases. Costs go up exponentially, which mechanically stops players from running away with the game.

On the other side, your income is represented by cubes. On most sector tiles, there are planets which produce one of 3 resources – tech, materials, or money. When you control a sector, you can colonise these planets. As you place down your cubes, your income for that resources increases. That is the balancing point of the game’s economy – spreading out increases your upkeep cost, but colonising planets in your empire increases your income. Effective gameplay requires balancing both of these things. In fact, managing your economy is as important as making tactical war decisions.

Eclipse is as much a euro-style economic game as it is a tactical dudes-on-a-map game. It gives you the best of both worlds.

You could even say that it’s pretty….stellar!

(pause for applause)

Let’s talk about combat. Combat is simulated by dice. These custom dice have one empty face, one hit, and numbers 2-5. Hits always hit, misses always miss, but numbers can be manipulated. Putting computers in your ships add bonuses to any numbers rolled, and they hit on 6s. For every cannon you’ve built, you roll one die. Keep taking turns rolling dice and assigning damage, until one person remains.

While combat can be punishing in other 4X games, Eclipse promotes proactive players and motivates players to look for trouble. Battle participants – both winners and losers – draw reputation tiles from a bag which grant 1-4 victory points. You’ll want to get into that reputation tile bag while there are still high-scoring tiles left, so fight early and fight often!

However, as much as I like that conflict rewards players, I’m not the biggest fan of how battles are decided. Rolling dice can be exciting, especially if it’s over a high-stakes sector. But if – and it’s very possible that this happens – players keep missing their rolls, one battle can drag on for ages. This is especially the case for smaller fights between smaller ships that are less likely to have tech that improves aim. Seventeen rolls for one fight between two small ships at the edge of space?

Blah.

As you may have deduced, there is also a lot of randomness in the game. Sector tiles are drawn randomly when exploring and dice-based combat means so some players can just luck out. Fortunately, players balance this themselves. Again, Eclipse encourages proactivity. Team up, go after those doing well…but make sure you don’t give your allies too much of a lead!

After 8 rounds, points are calculated from sectors controlled, reputation tiles, and technology, and a winner is crowned. This usually takes from 2-4 hours, which is reasonable when compared to another grand space opera game, Twilight Imperium, which has a magnificent yet terrifying playtime of 4-8 hours.

Okay, I’m almost done gushing about this game.

Let’s talk about how it looks. It is gorgeous. The sector tiles are beautifully illustrated while remaining easy to read. Player sheets are useful and cleanly designed, and the ship miniatures are beautiful and begging to be painted. The game comes with GameTrayz to help store and distribute everything, and even use the trays themselves to display resources and income in-game. Removing income cubes to put on planets gives you a very visual and understandable representation of your gains. It’s elegantly practical and stylish. These GameTrayz also make setting up the game a breeze – well, considering how much stuff there is. The only real struggle here is fitting everything on a table! My table measures 50x180cm and it barely contains a 4 player game. I cannot being to fathom how big a full 6 player game will be!

Though Eclipse does have a pretty hefty price tag, it’s quite normal for games in this genre. Considering how much labour and love went into the production, it’s justifiable. There is a lot in this box. Eclipse is a sleek addition to the massive, grand space opera genre. The ship upgrade system allowing for players to flex their creative muscles. Having only 6 possible choices each turn and only 3 resources to manage, Eclipse is amazingly approachable for the daring new gamer while packing enough of a punch to excite the heaviest of board gamers.

In my opinion, Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy is truly…out of this world.