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.

Mass Effect 3 Updates and Demo

I promised myself that I would not download the demo for Mass Effect 3. I am anticipating a great ending to the series and did not want to spoil the story. I lasted about 8 hours.

This post will give you some information about the demo and updates about Mass Effect 3. No spoilers will be in this post, but links to information off of this blog may contain spoilers. I will warn you in the link so you can decide if you want that information.

Firstly, the demo: it contains two levels of the game.The first level is very basic, teaching you some of the controls (but by no means all of them). If you watched the Fall of Earth trailer, the first level of the demo will not provide significant spoilers. There are a few character revels, but this info has been previously released through the Voice Cast Revel video. If you are really jonesing for a fix of Mass Effect, playing this level will not ruin the game.