4421

You people and your Eclipse.

I want this thing now.

In other news, I played my first session of King of Tokyo last Friday. All in all a pretty fantastic game, considering the play time, tone and how it’s balanced (it’s equally unfair for everyone!). We had a blast coming up with new strategies, trying to figure out the game and what worked best. The cards are great too.

But damn, what’s with the quality of the components? I’ve heard people call out the dices before, but I actually think everything in this box is a bit lackluster – even the flimsy cardboard box itself! Oh well. Still fun, and definitely a game we will be playing more.

Also in my stash now: Galaxy Trucker and Cyclades. I haven’t gotten to those two yet, but the rules make them seem really fun and straight forward.

4422

I was getting worried about the complexity at first. My group usually plays lighter games. Eclipse and Earth Reborn are about as complex as it gets. When I sat everyone down to watch the Drakkenstrike video I started to see some eyes glaze over. After one test round and lots of mistakes everyone seemed ready enough. Some hands-on time is key here, more so than most games.

I think the rules retention will be high on this game, at least better than Earth Reborn which seems to use a variety of obscure mechanics just for variety’s sake. Most of the info in Eclipse is available on the player boards. The game mechanics are consistent and intuitive. All I’ll need in future games is a reference for the number of rank III hexes, the number of technologies to use, and the reputation reward for each ship type.

There were only a few things I wasn’t completely happy with. The VP reward for diplomacy seems weak compared to combat. I suppose they want to encourage some space battles, but it discourages the player from choosing a peaceful strategy. A peaceful player may be able to get 2-3 VP while an aggressive player could easily get 4-16 VP.

The other thing I wasn’t completely happy with was the random techs. Its great that they’re random, but by the end of a game most techs will have been drawn at least once, so it won’t be completely different every game. I could see the same players picking the same tech trees every game with maybe just the order they research them changing.

Oh and I wish Orbitals were worth at least 1 VP. They can be used to fill in the holes in your economy, but by the time you buy the expensive research and get a couple on the board, you’ve expended a bit too much IMO.

4423

Yes, I understand that, nonetheless I think it’s a bit overdone. The base set tends to come down to a fairly predictable wrestling over first player and reed so you can be the first to grow your family to 3.

I’m happier with how it works for occupations and resources for example (more than one chance), as well as how it works out in a 5 player game (more actions have more than one chance). The expansion alleviates this somewhat too by dampening the benefit of having more family.

Anyway, it’s not that I don’t like the mechanism, but rather that in a few places it’s constrained enough to reduce the variety of play, and it’s often constrained in a way that breaks the theme. Limited resource supplies make sense, limited actions that don’t require any resources or infrastructure? Not so much.

I’ve still gotten more mileage out of Agricola than any other boardgame to date though, I have to admit.

4424

WRT Eclipse I think a thorough rules explanation is actually unnecessary for most players. It took us about an hour plus to go through the rule book line by line while punching out the parts (not because it’s that long but because we’re thorough), and that kind of sucked compared to the relatively painless “and that’s what you need to know” run down of basics that we gave in 10-15 minutes as we moved through the first turn slowly. Sure, we missed a couple of things but the game got going and everyone was tearing things up and resolving the handful of rules questions on the fly with no problems.

4425

CSI just updated its sales page with some good stuff. http://www.coolstuffinc.com/main_saleItems.php

4426

My first two player eclipse game clocked in at 2.5 hours - but we were puzzling over rules as we played, so I think it’ll take half that time next time. Setup/cleanup was a bitch the first time - there are a TON of ship parts to put out - I thing I bagged them in such a way that it’ll be a quicker setup next time.

Great great great game though, and can’t wait to try again.

4427

Eclipse is out of stock all the places I’ve checked. :-/

4428

3 player eclipse took us 4 hours total – but the 1st hour was a blind read of the rules and punching out / sorting all the parts.

Really love the game. Not sure how well it will hold up to multiple plays, but it defintiely scratches that “4X” kind of itch while remaining at least somewhat manageable. It’s not as streamlined as something like Endeavor (the high water mark IMO of hitting the depth / complexity efficiency curve) but it’s very manageable once you get over the raw “token shock” of seeing it all out there.

I really wish they had come up with a better representation for the 3 resources though – they are super hard to tell apart.

4429

Man, you guys and your adoration for Eclipse. And it’s even worse cause it’s out of stock every where.

So, is it worth paying the hefty price as a solely 2p game? On the assumption I love space themes and civ mechanics.

4430

You can try funagain.com. I ordered mine on Sunday and then sent them an email and they expect to be able to fill their exisiting orders. Just order it and then check to see if they are going to ship it this week. It’s only 20% off there but at least you don’t have to pay for shipping since it’s over $70. I guess you could drive down there and get it, but I suspect that would be a multi-hour drive from Portland.

4431

I would say it’s a great value at the 60-90$ range, but beyond that it seems like gouging to me and I would stay away from it. Lots of places I see are marking it way the hell up in anticipation of a gamer frenzy, and it would be nice if they were still sitting on their overpriced copies when the next printing comes out, whenever that is. But I know how hard it is to wait, so I feel for you.

4432

Funagain always charges 20% off, that’s not gouging for them. With free shipping at $70, it works out to close to 30% off anyway.

4433

Yeah, I head down to Ashland occasionally for the Shakespeare and to visit my grandmother over in Brookings, but it’s a bit of a drive. ;-)

I’d actually already checked funagain, but they listed Eclipse as “restocking” when I searched for it, which I took to mean “Good luck!”. Digging a bit deeper I see they’re expecting to get more today though.

Thanks for the tip!

[Edit] Woohoo! Looks like there’s decent odds it’ll even be here in time for Christmas. :-)

4434

I wasn’t referring to your post (hence the range I stated), I mean the people all over the place (including people I normally buy from) charging 100+ (I’ve seen as high as 135$) now that there’s a gold rush.

4435

Awesome. My BGG Secret Santa was ludicrously over the top. His first gift was a gift certificate to CSI. I’ve been checking stuff on there I’m interested in every now and again but with Amazon’s prices crashing on board games, my inner miser was hard pressed to pay more even with a gift certificate.

So does anyone have opinions on the Star Trek deckbuilder? I can’t believe that something licensed would be all that good, but the popularity of the BSG board game proves me wrong and I’ve read posts here where people like the RE deckbuilder.

Lots of cheap LotR adventure packs, too. Nice!

I’m thinking of spending my gift certificate on Discworld, A Few Acres of Snow and either Rune Age or Race for the Galaxy, but since my primary playing partner is my wife, I’m not sure how a game based on Canadian history would fly with her. If the Star Trek deckbuilder is any good, I might switch that out.

4436

So, this LotR LCG… it’s pretty good. The options with all the cards are interesting, and the expansions I got add some interesting cards.

But is it a great solo game? It isn’t bad. I’ll keep playing it. But I don’t imagine it will take the place of Hornet Leader or even solo Combat Commander (which I do because I am too busy to go out and meet other gamers). I’ll play through my adventure packs, and if I’m smart, stop there.

4437

Yeah many OLGS’s margins are pretty low so they look for ways to make up for it. Having a high demand low supply game helps. My understanding is that Asmodee will have more in April, so it’s not like Antiquity where you either get it at a ridiculous price of ~$100 or expect to pay an insanely ridiculous price of over ~$200 in a year or so.

4438

Solo in the sense of using a single deck? I would tend to say no because solo decks tend to be much more challenging than 2p+ decks. You can still win, but you need to be on the top of your game in terms of deck building and utilizing different strategies to win and even then sometimes it’s not enough. And 2p+ decks are hard enough. :)

That’s not to say you can’t play solo with 2 hands of cards, but you get so much more enjoyment out of it if another person is there to be playing that extra hand for you. It’s a great card game for sure, but IMO playing solo with a single deck makes the game too difficult.

4439

That’s good to know.
I’ve got a deck with which I can beat the first scenario very quickly, but I’ve yet to try to harder scenarios. I may be changing my tune very quickly after I try the second one tonight.

4440

I’ll echo LK. For what you get in the box Eclipse is definitely a $75 game. I got it for $62 from CSI. If you pay more than $90 for it online you’re getting gouged and encouraging companies to engage in said gouging. I don’t begrudge B&M stores selling at retail since they, frankly, need the money and have other costs the OLGS do not, but I do find the $100 MSRP to be a bit ridiculous. TI3, in comparison, is a $90 MSRP game that comes with significantly more components of almost universally higher quality than anything in the Eclipse box.

I expect a $100 game to contain some seriously detailed models, a la Space Hulk or Dreadfleet, and Eclipse instead gives you cardboard tokens, wooden cubes, and a handful of plastic ships that look like they were surplus from Eminent Domain.