Eclipse is a game of interstellar conquest in the same genre as games like Galactic Emperor, Space Empires 4X and Twillight Imperium. Eclipse stands out from the rest due to it’s mechanics.  It takes all the tedious over complicated rules and book keeping of other games and condenses them into easy to understand systems that can be found in many traditional Euro games.  It also offers a fantastic way to deal with technology and ship configurations.  Stating it plainly Eclipse takes the boring out of the game and makes it fun.

Game Play

The rule book is well laid out and the rules in general are very straight forward. The book is about 31 pages but the text and general layout of the pages makes them very easy to read. There are several clear example of play and about 6 pages in the back on the different races and some FAQ questions. The way the rule book is structured it is very easy to find a rule or example if you need to. I find most of the questions during a game of Eclipse come from players who are looking, or rather hoping a rule lets them do something it’s not intended too.

A game round is comprised of 4 phases. The Action phase is first and this is where much of the game occurs. Player take turns declaring an paying for an action, they continue to do so until everyone has passed. On your turn you may pass by flipping over your player summary card. Even when you pass you can jump back in and take a reactive action but these actions are limited in variety and function in a reduced capacity.

Paying for an action works by taking one of your influence disc  and putting it on the action on your player mat. Each time you remove a disc there is an associated number below it.  This number is the cost in money you will need to pay at the end of the round. As you start to take discs away to pay for actions or to control sectors the cost increases greatly. You need to balance your actions with your income in order to be able to pay at rounds end. If you can’t pay with cash you’re going to pay elsewhere such as losing sectors. Losing sectors means loss of income so it’s a nasty cycle you want to avoid.

Tiles provide resources and some can be guarded by the NPC race called the ancients with their ships. Some tiles also have discovery tokens which provided benefits like a surplus in science, or ancient ship parts or technology. Each tile also has a victory point value ranging from 1-3, the galactic center mentioned before is worth 4. Make no mistake some tiles are more valuable then others and there is a certain luck of the draw factor here especially when staring out. The explore action allows you to not place the tile you have drawn and throw it to the discard pile but it uses your action and it still costs.

The more successful you are in combat the more tiles you will draw but you only keep one to place on your board and you never draw more then 5 tiles.  What’s great about this is you get a draw just for being in a combat and I have seen a game turn on the loser of a combat pulling a good tile.

I mentioned alliances so this is a good time to discuss them. Whenever you and another player have an active wormhole connection to each other (i.e. adjacent tiles) you can offer an alliance. If both players agree then you simply exchange one of your 3 ambassador tokens and it goes onto the other players mat. You then also give him a cube of your choice from your board to sit on that tile. So I can establish diplomatic relations with a player and give him a cube off my money track to increase my income. It’s an easy way to get a few cubes out there especially when your sectors aren’t generating a lot of a certain resource.

You can also acquire victory points from developing technology. Each player board has 3 tech tracks  which allow you to research up to 7 techs. When you research enough technology in one you get victory points. The more you build the more you can acquire. A person who maxes out all 3 tracks can accumulate 15 victory points but that person has research 21 techs during the game. It’s a good option for player who prefer to avoid combat and also some of the alien races. What it also does is allows a player to compete that is in a bad spot or had some tough draws.

After the action phase is the combat phase. Combat is resolve by rolling dice in initiative order but it’s a lot more interesting then that. One of the best aspects of Eclipse is the ship design. Each player has on their mat a blue print for their interceptor, cruiser, dreadnought and star base. Each of these ships come pre-configured with an energy source and then most have hull, weapons, shields or computers. During the game as you research technology you can then retrofit your ships. As long as you adhere to some simple rules on energy management and making sure each ship has a drive you can customize the ships how you want then.

Another aspect of combat I love is that instead of attacking on a ship types turn it can elect to retreat to a friendly sector. However they just don’t move away, they get put on the edge of the sector and the other player gets a free shot the next round before they get away. It makes retreating risky but it’s an option that you must consider as losing all of your ships in a fight can be the momentum that swings the game.

There are also rules for attacking enemy sectors which allows you to remove their disc and cubes and take control of it.  However there is a tech called neutron bombs which basically eliminates the combat because these bombs wipe out those disc and cubes in an undefended sector. Pretty much every game I have played all players have gotten this tech.

After Combat you have upkeep where you first determine how much money you spent by looking at the last empty spot on your influence disc track, then how much money you made by looking at your income track. If you have a surplus you’re collect that extra into your stores.  If you owe you then subtract from your stores. If you owe more then you have income stored away you can trade other resources away to pay the income. If you still don’t have enough then you start losing sectors as I mentioned way back in the beginning.  Once the money is out of the way you collect your science and material value and add it to your stores. Science is used to research technology and material used for building ships etc.

The last phase is clean up where you straighten out your board, new technologies are reveal to research and the turn marker is move forward. Yes Eclipse has a turn maker and it’s what keeps this game from taking 5-7 hours like other in the genre.

 What I Liked

Over All:  A+

It says a lot about a design that after completing a 3 hour game most players immediately want to play again. I’ve had countless discussion with fellow players on strategy and proper ship builds. We’ve lingered over the board after a game and discussed how we could of played something better.  I love that Eclipse offers so many ways out of bad situations. For every hurdle there is a solution, for every wall another doorway exists. To me that is the essential part of a good design, allowing the players the chance to overcome their early mistakes. Eclipse is a special game and in a year of great designs it stands head and shoulders over the competition.

Complete review and comments available here: Oldboardgamer.com