Lautapelit.fi Eclipse: 2nd Dawn for the Galaxy

Product Information

What this means is that you might not ever connect paths between players if you choose to not explore specific pathways. Instead, your civilisation generates materials, science and money at the end as dictated by the value you’ve uncovered on each resource track. Eclipse has so many awesome features, so I’m going to highlight three before I go into what makes this game special at two players: ship customisation, resource management and component quality. For starters I’ve never gone under a play time of 3 hours which may be a bit long for those who like their games quick and simple. These ambassador tiles are then placed on the others player sheet with one of their population cubes of their choice.

At the end of the day, my life is better when there’s intergalactic civilization mayhem in it than when there’s none, and Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy may very well be the best box for that experience on the market today. Each action uses resources (money, materials or science), and resource management is a key part of gameplay. That means that you need to at least keep pace in the interstellar arms race if you want to do any conquering later in the game. Players will command a human or alien species that explores, expands, exploits and exterminates their way to victory with all new miniatures for ancients, GCDS, orbitals, and more.It comes down to personal preference at the end of the day, and I recognise that my perfection is another player’s boredom. Build: Pay materials to build ships (for attack and defence), starbases (for defence) or a couple of other structures that give you points or resources. Players each control one of seven unique factions all bidding to be the biggest and baddest there is, with points available at the end of eight rounds for controlling hexagonal space sectors, discovering technology, winning combat and a few minor activities.

Eclipse is a "4X" game where players will command a human or alien species that explores, expands, exploits, and exterminates their way to victory.The way the game plays at two is perfect for us because we don’t like destroying what each other has built. There’s very little diplomacy in Eclipse (save for the Ambassadors if one elects to include them in higher-player count games) and the VP system is weakened by the RNG effect of pulling-chits-from-the-bag despite an uncontested battle victory (this mechanic also promotes early aggression to try maximize your statistical chances of getting the rarer 3 and 4 point VP tokens). But, thanks to lockdown restrictions, I’ve found it to be a quite brilliant two player economic game.