Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy - Round One by Man vs Meeple (Lautapelit.fi)

welcome back to round one the ongoing series where we play just the beginning of a new game to give you a taste of what it's like in today's episode we're going to be playing in the Forex masterpiece eclipse second dawn for the galaxy a game which is going to place its players in control of these vast interstellar civilizations we're going to be competing with other human and alien races to explore new star systems to research a range of different technologies and to build starships which we will use to wage war on each other now there are many different paths to victory in this game so we're going to need to explore and plan our strategies according to the strengths and the weaknesses of our own species while also paying very close attention to the progress and goals of the other players at the table Eclipse second dawn for the galaxy is a revised and upgraded version of the original release classic from 2011 so you're gonna be seeing entirely updated components art and even gameplay throughout this session you'll see every move that we make and after the dust settles join us as we discuss the entire experience and find out who came out victorious in this epic galactic confrontation welcome back to round 1 today we're gonna be talking about eclipse second edition otherwise known as second dawn for the galaxy this is awesome I this is one of my favorite Forex games one of my favorite games of all time it's a game that I played a lot like most of the times especially for us to do reviews to sit on this side of the table getting a game of the table two or three times is progress yeah for sure in this case I played this dozens of time you've played it dozens of times the rest of us in fact Derek by the way Derek's here Ryan's here there remembers us I've played it once mm-hmm Derek's played it zero times time so Jeremy is both going to be teaching and destroying us we are at a severe disadvantage here we are you could be so this is the second edition of the game or the reimplementation of the game it's coming to Kickstarter on July 10th it's got a brand new graphical package too it looks completely updated everything from the player boards to the actual tiles themselves opponents it looks absolutely fantastic and what we're gonna be doing today is walking through one round of the game and then breaking to the couch afterwards to talk about our experience with especially for you guys that have not played the game before during this process we're gonna talk about some of the new components and obviously you're gonna get a feel for what the gameplay is like so let's talk about the game itself it is a 4x tile game and what we're doing here is that were each representing one of the different factions in the game there's 12 different factions six of which are color-coded and on the backs of these player boards you have a human race and on the other side you have an alien race all the human races play pretty much the same way they have the same starting stats and the same resources to use now the alien races where you get some of the variability within the game they have different technologies they may start with they have different abilities that they get to you so let's walk through and just talk about who we're playing right from the start but yeah I'm the the Eridani Empire mm-hmm they're pretty cool make seems like they have this other a lot of money not a lot of money a ridiculous start with a ridiculous amount of money but everything I do costs more all of my actions cost more than everybody else's you guys get free actions I have to pay for every action I take so there is a little bit of a balance there it's true I am the humans or the Terran Republic so this is one of the player boards it's going to be similar everyone else's but the cool difference from all of the other alien races is that I'm gonna be able to move three times plus when I'm converting one of the three different resources I have a two-to-one ratio while they have a three to one ratio so I'm able to have a little bit more flexibility with my resources I'm playing the hydron progress this is an alien race one of the unique things about them as they do start with more science they have advanced labs which means I get to build on the advanced lap spaces on the player boards right from the start which is huge because science allows you to do research throughout the course of the game and the other cool thing that I have is I get to upgrade multiple times where you guys have one upgrade or someone you guys have one upgrade I have to upgrade I get to do you have to crease it's research I get to do that's even better yeah it's a research a little bit quicker than you guys so we have playing is the planta and so my cool thing is that I can start by deploying and paying for star bases I also get to explore twice where you have to explore once Jax for each action and then I also have to defend my my plant life because if anybody takes over you know a tile or a sector that I've controlled and I lose control of it all of my popular population to automatic just automatically you have to attack yeah that's normally something that has to be attacked after combat but for you correct your plants or trees you're just gonna burn down again the other cool thing about you too is that each place that you control T and the game provides more victory points once every point so you want to spread out so I want to spread out but I also need to defend myself so I feel like there's gonna be some exploration kind of turtling exactly we'll see how that works so the game itself sets up in this way we have a four player game setup each of us has our own particular starting star system placed on the board now it's going to be placed if you look at this diagram you have the center Glock defense system in the center this is kind of a a place that we all can go to and explore but it's heavily defended but it provides a lot of victory points for players around this is sector one we are on sector two and around that would be sector three and it's going to be filled in with tiles as we explore through the course of the game also each of us is going to populate that so it means we're gonna have one of our influence cubes on there signifying that we have control of that particular area we're also going to populate it with particular population cubes which could be your science materials or money depending upon the planets that are on that area and what you can populate them if you're looking at mine right from the start I get to populate one money cube in an advanced science because I have that unlocked on my player board itself yeah and what's really cool about that is as you put those population cubes out throughout the game through those different three different resources you're going to be collecting those resources more depending on how you populate and how you explore looking at the player board itself we should probably explain that as well across the top of each player's player boards it's going to show you the four different types of things that you can build to the course of game these are your ships you have your interceptors or cruisers your dreadknots on your star bases your three ships are allowed to move and progress or make progress to the board by exploring however your Starbase is a stationary defense system some of us can build those right from the start you guys and some of us cannot Ryan and I so we'll have to learn that technology through the course of the game each of these blueprints also has a number of different tiles that can be placed on it along with pre-printed things telling you your initiative in combat how much science you may have how much movement you may have what kind of weapon systems are built into it and all these can be upgraded through the game with ship parts according to the technologies that you build across the bottom of your player board yeah and you probably can't see this from the cameras but aside from the differences that we talked about already there is a ton of differences between these different races my ships are all have very specific little differences than Ryan's and Jeremy's and Derek's and vice versa and that applies to a lot of different things on the board yeah also when you look at your player board it's going to show you your race what your starting stats will be as far as your resources that you get to use again those resources are science materials and money your science is used to research new technologies onto your player board your materials are used to build the different types of ships along with orbitals and monoliths and your money is used to pay for influence now across the bottom of your board you have influence cube this is how the whole game works this is the crunch of the game itself by taking actions on your turn you're spinning these influence cubes and one of your six different actions across the bottom at any time during the round you can pass and what the last cue or what the last des shows when you have to pay according to the money that you have stored up if you aren't able to do that you have to convert resources or lose population with on the player board itself yeah you don't want to lose money for sure in this game the influence disks are used for your actions they're also going to be depleted as you explore and put influence disks out on the board so in a certain point you're going to be spending some money no matter what so it all comes down to how many actions do I want to take I want to push it do I have the money to push it that sort of thing we're not gonna explain all six of the actions right now cuz you're going get a feel for them once we actually start playing however how it works is on a player's turn they're gonna take one of their disks placed on one of these six actions and they're going to take that action that's going to progress in the next player we're going to keep going around until a player passes when a player passes that player is going to take this start player action and these are gonna be the start player on the next round they're gonna get to money at that point and then they're gonna flip their action tile over to the other side this is the cool thing about the game too when you pass you're not out for the round there's still three actions that you can take however they're reduced benefits from them and you are still spending your influence to be able to do them so they're more reactionary type things like moving or building or upgrading your ships to be able to react to people doing things that are still within the round yes it's a nice way to keep people who've passed a little bit more engaged in their own yeah absolutely alright so are you guys ready to start playing I think so I'm not but let's go alright so all of us are gonna dive over to our action side I've decided I want to go first just because of course and you know the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to pull one of my disks over from the left side over to explore you're looking at I'm gonna do a level one I'm gonna go right here and basically what you're doing is you're pointing to the area you want to explore that explore area has to have a wormhole on it meaning that you could travel from this location to this location also to explore you have to have control of the area that you are on or a ship with no other contending ships in that area so technically I could explore here here here or here and I'm deciding in this point so I flip over the tile and this is beautiful I mean I just couldn't get any better for me so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna spin this in a way that makes sense for me Jeremy Stan you want to go down so what happens at this point is I can actually since there's no contending ships there's a couple things I can happen when these flip over number one there could be ancient guardians that could be placed on this long with discovery tiles those would prevent you from being able to do any actions until you move in there and destroy those ships and explore however since this is an uncontained area I can immediately take one of my disks and be able to populate that area so now I control that area I still have zero money to pay but my turns not over yet there's some other things I can do I can populate these areas as well so I'm gonna send one of my colony ships I'm gonna flip it over and that means that I can populate these two areas one per thing so I want to take my money put it on the money one I'm gonna flip over another colony ship and take a science and put it on the science I mean this is a really good strong powerful first move allows me to be able to get some reoccurring money at the end of the round and be able to populate some areas but also you guys could go into these areas and it's happening because they're completely underfitting at this point now if you control that in the game my understanding is a go score to victory points for control yes each of the tiles has built in victory points according to whether or not you control it at the end of the game so I'm done all right well I'm taking a similar action and I'm going to explore as well I would like to go this should I'm gonna go here which you look to it is a little too because I'm going as far away from Jeremy as possible over here well I'm gonna be handing out my diplomat diplomat tokens so this does have one of the ancient ships and also you discard the tile if you describe the tile it ends your turn immediately it's not advisable by any means but there's a tough one to get through I don't want to discard you're gonna take one of these discovery tiles and put it facedown on the tile along with one of the ships now you're gonna notice I'm not sure we can really talk about this is not an ancient ship is another type of thing which could be introduced only during the case and that discovery tile to has two victory points on the back of it if you take that eventually and keep it to the end of the game it's two points however the other side is gonna have an ability or a power that you can use one time if you want as well right now you have the cool ability of exploring twice with each action so he gets to explore again I do and I'm going to do that and I'd like to take the one and I'm gonna go right here all right and there's another ancient all right so and then connect that to one of your worm holes and throw an ancient I will and I'm cutting you off there so I can get in there that's fine hey nice so travel on this game removing has to be done through the wormholes when they connect from two tiles that you see here however you cannot travel from this area token no token it though just an ancient ship yeah it's nice the way the wormholes work because if you want a turtle like you said at the beginning game right that can help now these also are not going to attack us they are defending the sector therein so I can actually come this way oh and I've got a blockade to this off so if you want to come at me right to the engine ships thank you for sharing your strategy I'm just hey for the camera each of these ships is also represented by one of these tiles telling you exactly what the hall damaged what kind of weapons of fires any shields and what they have in combat that is my first impression of that move all right I have an offense system doing something a little different I'm not going straight for the Explorer I'm actually gonna go for the build alright but I want to build as a cruiser which costs 5 yes now I have four materials okay which means I can't build that Cruiser however I do have my trade ability which I can trade anything at a three to one rate to get one all right so I'm gonna trade in three money uh-huh it's been one of that make it five yeah and I'll spend all of them to build a cruiser and I'll put my cruiser out there so you can build a cruiser in any space that you control so you can join it yeah now I do have to build actions but out of materials I don't want to spend the money again to do that so I'm just gonna take the one alright alright so I want to try something else I was actually considering research but I have absolutely nowhere near enough because I don't have the money you have so I am also going to explore I am going to explore a two because I'm gonna try just to let you know this would be able to read oh it's not a 3 would be 3 yes 3 then when I take the 3 oh that works every time every time but no ancient ship guarding it so you can't immediately populate that and do you know that tile I will take this and now do I have to use this immediately if I want to that's correct or you can keep it on the tube for the end of the game ah interesting I think I am going to use it but I'm gonna need some help understanding it Jeremy okay put my influence disk there yes this is a flux shield okay is this something that I place on our ship right now on a particular ship any one of your ships is going to have that so when you upgrade one of your ships in this case you got a flux she which means it has three shields built into it oh wow but it does require two energy so you have to have a ship that can so I don't work that I don't have that right now right you have three energy on this one and you only have one energy taking up so you could do it honestly I am going to do that because I had planned on trying to make impenetrable star bases so that will tell because I can build star bases right off the bat you can you can so that's my turn I think I think I'm feeling really lucky with my ex oh I can flip a colony to over right like I can I am I'm gonna flip a colony ship over these materials which is exactly so one of the cool things about the game there's three different types as we mentioned before all these different star systems either have brown orange or pink representing those three different materials when you grow in Aizen you're taking him from one of those three different areas on your control board itself as I said I think I need to explore again this just seems so powerful for me what are you doing this time I'm gonna go towards you know what I don't wanna make it let me go here number three yes alright like this I'm going to go here and this is an advanced science which I already have research which you started with so but if you notice I only have one thing here so I will turn that into science and use science I cannot populate this area because I'm out of colony ships the only way I can get colony ships back is by doing influence or by waiting until the end of the round in which all of my ships will flip back now the cool thing about you is that you have or kala nation I do so I'm hoping to populate very quickly here so I am also going to take the Explorer action again because I did not like running into those ships let's take a three all right that's better that is nice and we're gonna go this way why now he just pulled another thing that's um very similar to David he'd discovery tile but he has a grey planet the cool thing about grey Pam planets is when you populate them you can pull from anyone in your three areas okay so I'm gonna take a look at this and I'm going to need what is this alright so that is going to upgrade your ship to be able to hold more air oh nice oh alright hmm I'm gonna go with the two points alright and you can populate that I will populate that get depend influence cube on her first ship and then flip on one of your many colony ships over if you want to oh yeah no it's gonna happen now this is the question what what resource exactly we're gonna go with science as Bill Nye would say science yeah you get one more explore I'm gonna do it we're gonna go here this would be a three does anyone else already annoyed with their exploration pretty good yeah he dies quick I do die quickly that's why another yes is another oh you know I kind of set up a blockade for Jer oh yeah well I have to go here right so I want to leave myself options if I do decide to try to take again discovery facedown on all right whoops no nice try during sorry two of them yeah an ancient dirty alright alright you have a lot of friendly ancient chips over there I'm going to upgrade actually I'm going to upgrade I'm gonna grab a plasma cannon and a goth shuttle and I can do this because I start with those technologies already researched yeah so it's very important to understand this part of the game like the technologies when you research the technologies you're buying them with science from this game trailer that you see over here and you're placing them on your board that only gives you access to be able to upgrade your ships or to be able to buy new components the upgrade action actually allows you to place those components from those technologies onto your ships as long as you have the energy in order to roll those particular components so this still means that roll I roll one that Warner guy instead of one yellow yes an orange guy has the capability of doing two damage instead of just one is that correct I just say yes and it has to energy though so you have to make sure that you can hold it right I can type reduce for actually you'd place it there and now you're gonna be rolling both right that's the question is where do I want to I don't want to do this because I have this shield to come in too so I can either replace my cannon with a better cannon or have two cannons firing it's pretty good however I have this didn't have to replace the shield I'd have to cover something else up yes so I lose my energy energy or which can't do it it was my dry which means I couldn't move you use your targeting computer you could lose my targeting computer but I kind of like having the targeting computer so let's just do this well I'm going to build anyway and just build once okay so this is gonna go down to one cuz I'm going to spend three to build a Starbase yep and I can build that anywhere I have influence right yeah I'm gonna build a Starbase here perfect a new big impenetrable story I think I'm going to go ahead and do an influence action which is going to turn over two of these I'm going to spend one of them immediately and I am going to place a orange Here I am done I'm gonna explore again dang man let's go here that's a fairly significant map by the end of round one yeah this is the power of the planter race though this is what they do exactly what I hoped for yeah you have to move right from where you explored from here we go boy I can't get there there's no yeah so I can't great tile to go here yeah and then I will double well you can only do one because you don't I don't have right well either though correct one of them is advanced and one of them okay I don't have the advanced right so once you learn the tech you could and you could to explore again but you have nowhere you can hit you know here is that 11 3 yeah yeah or I could go here either way but yeah it's a question during the map and the map effects we build out as far as you want to I thought only three three rings right or can it go it's just early Indian level okay so here we go again this look at you actually gotta pay for all these influence cubes though don't forget yeah I know and then that's going to be orange we are the influence at first influence now you have to when you're in Pluto correct correct yep and then we're gonna buy new ships yeah that's like that all right well I'm gonna join you guys and exploring because I haven't explored at all okay so I'm gonna go for a level one tile let's doesn't look like I get much choice here so oh it's beautiful - Sian that's it right there I will take one of these off and drop it on there mm-hmm and I will use both of my County science there now I can't move any ships in for free when I do that Kevin oh it said no that would be a move all done against my better judgment I'm gonna take another action and explore that's what I did yeah I thought so I'm going to explore this is a this would be a level 2 level 2 I'll explore a level 2 ancient tech oh dang so the only way into that tile is from your yep hmm now there are advanced technologies called our technologies called wormhole generators that will allow you to travel from one space that doesn't have oh that's got into a wormhole so you can get that tech your travels kind of open up I'm passing at this point I'm gonna get this and immediately get to money that one too I passed as well I am NOT passing actually I'm going to explore again because I can't think I could get a better town I can come off of this because this is a level one tile because I have presence here I can go to another level one tile right yes that one seems pretty good oh my gosh okay I'll come in there with my influence cube okay and you can and I will use my last colony ship for the money yep for the money all right and I think I'm gonna you guys already all passed no David now at what point can I suggest an alliance now now that we're next to each other we can yes well I'm gonna do that right now I'll do it let's do it so these two players are going to make an alliance with one another this is how this works they have two areas that are adjacent to each other connect it through a wormhole at that point they're going to take their token showing their race and give it to the other player when they do that they're getting one victory point at the end of the game as long as they can hold that tile on the right side of their board then they're allowed to take any one of their population cubes and place it on there the trick here is that they are never allowed to combat each other so they're not going to get any victory points from finding each other for the rest of the game if they do decide to combat each other one of them is going to be a traitor whoever initiates that combat meaning they'll get negative two victory points and never be able to make another alliance for the rest of the game so they're kind of giving up the ability to make combat and combats important because you get victory points from being in combat with each other at least correction should be point out we could take a cube off of our resources and place it on there Ryan what one did you choose I chose materials because I was gonna take some money because I'm always afraid of running out of money so it's my turn and I can upgrade bill or movement even though I've passed I think I will do a movement and I'm going to take my ship which has a drive of one and I'm going to move it to this location now I will do the same seven payment that's not gonna be good I'll just yeah I can't take this I see you though you got the money so I'm gonna explore again cuz oh man I can pay for it I figured yeah I need board starting only not spend over money at least try - all right so that's gonna get discovery Thailand another ship all right David well I think I'm just going to move ok and I can't move my Starbase but I'm gonna move my little interceptor I'm gonna onedrive so I can just move here now since we're allied he could get a minute yeah you can't end in my space though right well you know what then I'm gonna back up I'm not gonna move and I'm going to pass all right so everyone's past I haven't yet but I think that this is the right time to pass all right so we have all passed now we're going to do the upkeep phase we're gonna use any of our remaining colony ships if we so wish I don't know now you're going to pay for your income so we'll look at this first I have five on my board right here and my income is six so I can pay for it which means I'm simply going to move up one space does that make sense so it is it happens simultaneous well you can well you can pay for so I can pay for it and then I move up six yes so it's the same great sure okay so at this point I don't have a conversion rate that's going to allow me to pay for my income or at least the upkeep so five I only have enough to pay for four so I'm gonna have to lose a sector yeah right so you can give up any one of those sectors that you so wish in place that influence cube back on to your player board right you still have to lose all of his resources first well do that for us go ahead and take your one of the planets you want to you think that influence off first because now you have to pay less money Yeah right so man that's a tough tough well they're pretty much the same they are so yep that's gonna go back onto that and then your influence is gonna come back up now you only have to pay three right which I can make that conversion to and then take yep just like and you're good knowing I owe I owe 10 yeah I'm sorry I owe thirteen thirteen so I'll be a ten yeah and then I'm getting for money oh and I get my income just a reminder Ryan started with 26 and we all have like three yeah I did I did start with 26 I now four really now he's got a measly 14 only 14 you're done yep all right I only have to pay two so I'm gonna pay to pump but how much should you have David and then I'm gonna make four which is what we do now everyone go ahead and get your normal income fire science so add your science in and add your materials and everyone now is also gonna flip over all their colony ships because those are going to be able to be used again and all of your actions that you took this turn either from your past actions or from here are going to come back to your player board you're gonna know so you have less actions because some of your stuff is now on the on the map so right those influence actions are gonna fit things will start costing money yes then what we're going to do is no one bought any research tiles but you are going to add seven more so in that white bag you're gonna draw seventh and place them in there we're going to reorganize them according them to the cost of them and we'll do that off-camera of course you're gonna advance the round two and we're going to keep playing we'll try to talk about the combat at the end so we can give you guys an idea of how the combat works but right now this is very typical of the first round again people are exploring establishing their locations building their ships up because there will be combat taking place very soon oh yeah because you've given a wide variety of victory points for combat let's talk also real briefly about how you get victory points in this game that's very important if we go into round two you're technologies and the more technologies that you build out and you can progress you get in victory points for them making alliances we saw two players make an alliance those are worth a victory point at the end of the game combats going to allow you to draw within that black bag and there's victory points depending upon well the ratio is one to four but the more ships you destroy in combat and the larger those ships are the more you can draw so your ratio of getting higher value tiles is better you're also going to get victory points for any of the monoliths that you build monoliths have to be researched for its various specific technologies there are stationary thing that's going to stay within this particular star system so you have to defend them and probably one of the most important ways to score victory points outside of the discovery tiles which some of you guys collected is actually having these locations at the end of the game yeah right now I'm sitting on seven victory points if I can hold these to the course of the game there's are going to add to my point a little at the end so right now we're gonna break we're gonna go to the live stream so if you guys are watching us live obviously this is done by this point check it out and then come back at the end and we'll talk about the entire experience of eclipse a second dawn for the galaxy welcome back we are sitting here on the chairs right now ready to talk about our full experience I'd like to tell you that I actually won the game but I didn't I was know through our scores here in a second but that jeremy and ryan and derek here not at the table talking about our full experience playing all of the clips alright so first experience for both of you guys yeah this is your second game Ryan let's just talk about it first for again this is the second edition of the game there's a lot involved this is basically a feature night game it's not a short experience it's about two hours not a filler game yeah it's not a game that's gonna take all nights but like I said two hours the cool thing has been truncated and I kind of felt that playing the game as many times I have the game does feel shorter for you guys the first time playing it what did you think well I guess for me comparing it to other 4x games I've played which mostly is going to be a twilight imperium I played a ton of Twilight Imperium that game I love a lot of things about it but it does drag on and with Eclipse being only eight rounds it definitely does not drag like well sure if you're sitting in for a game of Twilight you're gonna be playing six or eight it's very much a streamlined space opera right you can definitely feel that it has a lot of it hits the same beats I think interests in a much smaller faster way so that I like a lot like I like that you can sit down and be dumb for two hours you're not gonna have it like six to eight hour commitment a lot of a lot of Euro in mechanics - they're absolutely able for a lot of people who want may not typically be into that sort of game because the way the resources work and the dynamics of moving things off your player board and out onto the board and how that affects the money you have to pay the resources that you're gaining during the income round is a fun thing for euro players yeah and as somebody who's never played before I felt like picking up it was pretty easy so like the complexity the rules was not difficult there's a lot of depth to the game though and a lot of intricacies and nuances so as you understand the game more I definitely feel like it's a game that you're going to want to keep getting to the table yeah it really is something it's easy to play yeah like I'm saying is actually easy it very difficult to master because where the knowledge of the game comes in is knowing all of those things that could potentially come out how together yeah how the how the dynamic that exists between just having a head experience you know you need to know you need to have played the game a few times to determine like okay am I prepared to go into this area mm-hmm because early on I went into a couple areas clearly not prepared and you can lose a lot of your ships in the blink of an eye I think it's the balance yeah I think that's what you're getting at the more you play it the Mergener shedding that balance between three different resources when to explore when to build I mean that's just something have to practice and that was my failure with the exploration was I went very heavy exploration that firsts that first round I think that's super important to that you mentioned the balance within the game this is a game that has to be experienced to understanding it but also the other cool thing I like about this is that it's very dependent upon the players at the table this isn't a game that you can sit down and just do your own thing you're constantly gonna be interacting with other players the way that the hexes get flipped over is going to completely determine your strategy from one game to the night and it's a very important to manage the economy and not only your own systems that you control but also dynamically pushing back against those other players that are maybe expanding too quickly having too much control over areas and the players don't do that they're quickly gonna realize how far behind in the game they can they can get so with you being my neighbor I definitely felt that because I explained it very quickly and you notice that so it kind of painted a target on my back but it also opened up some opportunities for you to sneak in later in the game after I had definitely over committed myself and really my my economy and my whole engine could not keep up with how fast I had explored it was really interesting too because you were building up the way the tiles come out right well too when you explore and you're able to position those how you want with the wormholes you effectively built up a barricade have no wormholes except for one little area where you I was able you were finally a placed in Thailand then you got the Warriner so it didn't really matter anyway but between the tile placement and then also how the ancient ships can come out to kind of build a natural barricade between people Ryan I an allied really early and we kind of honored that for the most part we did we really did but the problem was just like you were saying Derek built a wall that I couldn't get around right only way I was gonna able like able to progress was through you yeah and so eventually we had to fight because Derek blocked me off so yeah I pulled that trigger first work out well for me but it was interesting because yeah you couldn't really get over Derek I did not want to get anywhere close to Jeremy him into my area so you have you you have to do with what you can in your area I wish I'd explored a little bit more to take it just so that I could plant some things down and score those points later in the game but I got to a point where I couldn't really even explore anything yeah I mean of the tile yeah the more experience you get with the game obviously the better you get especially early game there are some natural strategies that go into you want explore early find strongholds that you want to build into and then expand off those areas but again that's the nature of Eclipse like it's it's completely player controlled as you start to expand you start to realize you're gonna be butting heads with with players one of things I want to steer to you real quick too was after playing as many times I have I still love that aspect of building out your player board like it's one of the very unique things about this game is that as you go through the round you start to build up your technology trees which open up ship upgrades so you really start to specialize and a couple different things through the course of the game especially you you had some very big thing what I did was I took like I basically abandoned three of my four ships and put almost every upgrade I got onto my big dreadknots which you could only have two when I had to maxed out they were able to just basically stop everything in their path as they went through yeah and and I let you effectively sit there and do that turn after turn and upgrading cuz I wasn't really doing much to interact with you or to change things for you you know think part of it and correct me if I'm wrong is getting in there disrupting some of his resources that he's pulling so that he's not getting some of those things is there a lot of jocking generally in this game absolutely absolutely yeah yeah but a lot of it again is is placing those tiles so that it's make it difficult for you to do that yeah because I needed you to come all the way out and around and in from the top right which I wasn't able to block you off completely like there did to chair me the way the mat builds out based on player decisions is really interesting oh yeah very dynamic map within a container and that allows players to kind of customize they want to play do you want to play aggressive or any want to have to Atlantic relationships with our players do you want to turtle up and try to just keep the victory points you have from the sectors that you own again very player driven some one other thing I want to talk about before we get into the results of the game is one of the the big problems for anybody that plays the clips it's just the setup on the breakdown time and that's always a problem because you have so many pieces in this game there's literally a thousand pieces in the game yeah yeah these things now they've started working with game traders and these things are phenomenal these are prototype versions but these control boards are awesome like these are gonna sit off to the side of your player board they're gonna house all the different cubes are gonna be recessed they have tokens they're gonna round the outside that mark your strategy but the other cool thing is and we kind of showed this during the game but not really is that below this board it's going to snap into your actual supplies and all these things inside here are going to hold all the things for the individual players this makes the game incredibly simple to set up and to break down not only this but the actual box itself is gonna have trace the house all the supply tokens it's gonna house all the technology tokens yeah well even the tray we had which I again was prototype for the technology tokens mm-hmm one of us made to come in it's really nice to be able to to hand it on that off around it absolutely because you really need to kind of some pens some time getting to know those I don't know if anyone out there has played wasteland Express I know we've played it and that's the best thing about wasteland is just popping it out and you're done you just set everything out I'm so excited to get eclipse and have that because it would be it would be a bear a bear we had to put everything into baggies and put those baggies aside and sort it all this just makes it very very easy no way to put away but to set back up and play again yeah I know some people might think that's silly because there's a lot of people out there things like well let's talk about the game but that you can't deny the fact that ease of setting up and tearing down actually I don't want it like this imagine the man this first edition never got it to the table because it took it hour just to set up the game yeah little things like that can make a big difference oh sure yeah all right so the results of the game you guys want to know how thanks for let's go from my score was it was more than zero in less than ten talk about what happened for you to you your strategy early was to what turtle up maybe a little bit sure and find a couple different spots the problem is you were to have the ability to expand out rapidly I was a dick and what what I I didn't happen to get some tiles that gave me much in the way of any of the resources that I wasn't looking for him unlike you where you had a really good strong one resource yeah you started with a lot of money so that was a good strong resource for you one of the things I was gonna try to do was build mmm-hmm and I did successfully a couple times and then I went in sort of a little too boldly and god that's right a couple fight yeah I mean that's when you learn very quickly that not just having the quantities of ships but having the right kind of build-out for the ships as well when you need to really love Greger ships research the right kind of technologies then upgrade those ships with the right kind of ship parts that you go in there knowing that you have the right targeting computers you have shield you have an X number of cannons to be able to deal with all those things effectively because I can't set you back it's only it's only eight round game but I think I spent six of those eight rounds just researching and upgrading things and then I really only fought for the last two rounds yeah we'd build building up I've got a very strong aren't your two dreadknots were insane that was they were ridiculous and then your ships by the end to were pretty solid yeah dizzy I did some missile strategy at the end was able to conquer a couple different territories I know that I got you pretty bad you're playing the planter race which is a great race for expand because you can start building out very quickly but you have to control those so your other problems you weren't balancing with the right types of ships to defend them so I was come in there take those and when the planter race loses influence their population dies as well so there's that balance of I'm getting a lot of victory points from spreading out quickly but it also have to defend them really well right you still score more points than David right I did he's did I did I score 13 13 points so what happened that what do you think your biggest downfall was I know we talked about this a little bit it definitely was expanding too quickly yeah the the rapid expanding and not being able to set myself up where my economy could really match my expansion and so I definitely would not expand as quickly next time but I definitely think that is a very strong ability that the plan to race has mm-hmm and it definitely needs to be utilized but it just it needs a very keen person who's played with that race you have to expand defend right it's a push and pull and you have to if there's a lot of strategic timing then when you need to expand and when you need to pull back and defend yeah what people might not have realized just from watching was it doesn't even sink it into you play it is that the same disks that you used to pay for your actions are going out to the planets yeah so not only are you paying more overall but now you every action you take cost right because you have so many planets that's what put set me back so quickly as I expanded so fast I lost so many those action cubed or disk markers and so I was paying more for them too early in the game where I didn't have enough money to pay for them like you would have with you starting as with as much as you did yeah I ended up with 37 points I came in second I thought I did pretty well my problem was I didn't go into combat fast enough I weighed in to the last two rounds to really attack you or try some of the ancient ships if you start attacking those in ships you're getting discovery tokens those discovery tokens lead to more resources or technologies or even straight that victory point that's exactly how I think that was a big party you're way part of your that was a very pointed I ended with 44 yeah so it wasn't it wasn't too far off not between us I think the reason I was able to pull that out was well Derrick for one thing the way he blocked off that side of the board there was no competition there no competition there and I'd have to worry about him coming down so I was kind of able to focus on and I you were you were totally fine with having an alliance I was totally fine with having an alliance and so I got kind of lucky but what would did it for me was grabbing that orbital tech early early Manning that has given those orbitals and getting those cubes off and I and then I got one really awesome tech that let me use all of the advanced areas areas so that was an incredible read that was like the tipping point I think getting that research that led me then claimed everything I hadn't claimed yet on the tiles I already control well in a big point to the orbital facility is that you're able to put out your influence cubes without having to put your your action markers out and that's huge for unlocking more of your you know materials or science money yeah it's a big deal so what before we stop were you guys thoughts do you guys like the game yeah absolutely yeah I liked it a lot I think that this there's still a place for big mom games like Twilight Imperium but this satisfied a lot of that need yeah in a two hour time period yeah as you know long Forex style game is not my thing and I think the gyro mechanics and something like this as opposed to something like a Twilight Imperium is what is what I enjoy at the table yeah that the dynamic not that I'm good at it by any means obviously but the dynamic that exists between what you're doing on your player board there's a lot of different decisions yes I'd like to have a little bit more experience with this game before I play and this is the kind of game I feel like I'd want to play with the same group of guys or girls whomever and play it consistently over and over and over it'd be hard to bring this out with like your family yeah I totally agree after his many plays I had I still actually love this game I loved the puzzle of the technology tiles the placing those technology tiles using them to build different types of structures your orbitals your star bases being able to upgrade your ships into different ways that never gets old and I don't think for me that kind of workings within the game will ever get old for me I love that and then also I love the fact that it's completely player controlled as I said this many times it depends on who you're playing with it depends on how those hexes come out and it completely changes the dynamic game of the game every time that you play I mean I think yeah for sure if we had had more interaction or right Dave and I'd been more blocked off or you know you can really change and I think you're gonna get I think it'd be hard to play game of this where everybody's balanced since there is only X amount of tiles somebody's pushing someone out right you want to increase yours somebody's gonna lose out I mean that's just the way that a Forex game go well I even look back to the decisions of where I place those opening tiles where I pulled three out of the by for opening tiles were ancient alien ships how do I place them on Jeremy side of things he would have been blocked off and may have actually come and attacked you and Brian and I may have had some interaction or may be placed somewhere you did and you spent more turns building up ships to attract them to exactly show those areas to get discovery tokens the other thing a lot of decisions to make right yeah like not a paralyzing amount but there are a ton of decisions there's a lot of information to process as you're making the decisions right it's that the text come out all those upgrades come out and it's growing and growing every round so you look at all those things that's you know like a kid in the candy store oh my gosh I didn't even know that existed now I want it right now but with that said you only have so many resources to purchase yes daddy does the rub but I also feel that turns went by pretty quickly yeah it was moving at a good pace ours didn't feel like that no you know I felt like it kept moving pretty well there wasn't a lot of like waiting around right yeah so guys that is eclipses second dog for the galaxy I love this game I've always loved this game if you guys are interested in all go back and of course make comments below if you have questions we've all played enough we've read the rules many times we know all the difference yours and we will check you guys out next time thanks guys don't forget to go watch the live stream on the board games if you go to watch that after the final round shameless plug the first round so go take a look at that thanks a lot you [Music]

Channel: Man vs Meeple

Views: 28,211

Rating: 4.877676 out of 5

Keywords: Eclipse, 4x Games, Board Games, Kolossal Games, Sci Fi Games, Dice Tower, Watch it Played, Game Boy Geek, Star Wars, Space Games, Gen Con, Essen, Origins, Spiel, Kickstarter, 4x, Lautapelit, Lautapelit.fi, Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy, Eclipse Second Dawn, Touko Tahkokallio, Game Trayz

Id: su2F0GmN9P0

Length: 48min 24sec (2904 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 09 2018