Designer: Touko Tahkokallio
Want to play an epic 4X Space game, but don’t have 8-12 hours to play Twilight Imperium? Eclipse provides most of the ambition of Twilight Imperium, in a game session that usually only runs 2-3 hours.
In Eclipse, you play as the leader of a great space civilization. You initially start on a planet in isolated space. You will need to explore (i.e. flip tiles) in order to find resources, find other civilizations and to find the center of the galaxy. Along the way, players will fight NPC aliens, find ancient artifacts, discover new technology, colonize new worlds, and build their fleet in preparation for final combat.
Eclipse is a great game, although it’s not without it’s flaws. The technology tree is great, for example, but requires moving around the table to examine. Also, it is possible to be screwed by bad explore actions and be left in a relatively resource poor corner of the galaxy. But overall, the game is by far my favorite in the space 4X genre.
Key Mechanic: Efficiency. Many of these space games have a runaway winner problem, where players who claim early planets end up getting an insurmountable amount of momentum from the additional resource flow. Eclipse has very nearly solved this problem by with their efficiency system. Claiming a planet removes a cube from the playmat in front of you, which results in you paying higher upkeep costs per turn. This system helps put the breaks on expanding too fast, in a way that is very easy and transparent to understand to the players.
(Photo Credit: Polyhedron Collider)
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