Session Report - Eclipse: Rise of the Ancients - First Play with Expansion

This 7 player game of Eclipse: Rise of the Ancients was played on 12 January 2013 and was our first play with the expansion, although every player had at least one game with the original. We used the simultaneous turn order and added a house rule of extending the game by one turn, making a total of ten turns. The players were:

Planta – Green

Orion – Black
Mech – White
Rho Indi Syndicate – Gray
Yellow – Draco
Eridani – Red
Exiles – Purple (Me)

The guy who bought the expansion originally put it on layaway last week because his wife said their budget could not afford it so soon after Christmas. As I predicted, he couldn't wait and took the hit with his wife, probably taking the money out of the kid's college fund or some other equally unimportant area, in order that we could enjoy this game. Needless to say, most of us were keen to give it a try.

We set up the board using the 9 player third ring, placing 2 of the new ancients to fill in the gaps of the two missing players. Starting with Planta and going clockwise around the board, the player order was as follows: Planta, Orion, Mech, Rho Indi, Exiles, Draco, Eridani.

Eclipse Impressions - Updated

I am a fan of science fiction and have been looking for a good sci-fi themed, conquer the galaxy board game for some time. The obvious first choice was Twilight Imperium (3rd edition). Typical game length for TI is 1+ hour per player. In our first game of TI it took us three hours to get through 3 turns. Getting the time and the players together for such a long game was a chore. Twilight Imperium is not a cheap game, so I held off purchasing it as I really wanted to be sure it was something I would get a lot of use out of before I bought it.

Then last year along came Eclipse. I missed the first order (they ran out of copies) and had to wait for the second printing which came out around May, to get my copy. Although approximately the same price as TI, the reviews for Eclipse were very good and it maintains a high rating on Board Game Geek. The group I regularly game with has been running a Warhammer tournament for the last few months, but last week I finally got a chance to try out a short 2 player game. We did a test game, reading the rules as we played, getting a feel for the game before introducing it to a full 6 players.