Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

If price changes to 800AED I will buy. 1100 is too expensive

It took us 8 hours to finish our first 6 player game. 100% would recommend Kinda like Stellaris as a board game. ALSO, YOU NEED A BIG TABLE

The game itself is great, but it arrived without a box or anything to protect it during delivery (just the game box and cling wrap). This resulted in some damage.

Box comes with a plethora of items: 149 lovingly sculpted miniatures, a truckload of chits, tokens and bits, and a perfect storage solution created by Game Trayz, that speeds up set up and tear down time immensely, integrates itself into the game, and leaves space for the remaining miniexpansions, that are not included in the corebox. Without the use of cards this is a watertight 4X-game, that encourages battle, exploration, invention and science in the style of Babylon 5, Perry Rhodan or Star Trek TNG. The tech-tree and ship customization are one of the many brilliant features of the game and will guarantee lots of replay value. Also it uses a procedurally generated game board. There is a LOT in this game that people have to unpack through multiple replay sessions - but given it's complexity it is also comparatively easy to teach. And - with a 3 hour playtime for 4 players - it's still within the timeframe of a challenging, but not physically and mentally grating gaming experience. This is a Top Buy.

In the 4X area of the board game world, this is a for sure Top #3 that punches with dominance as it vies for #1 in my list. While Twilight Imperium has way more depth to it, TI (any edition) is a spectacle of a game that takes us 8-12 hours to play. So my game group only gets to play it once a year. With Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy, you get a 4X game in less than half the minimum time to play TI. So it's added way more into our game rotation and we play it several times throughout the year. My last 4-player game took 3 hours to play, and that was with a person who never played the game prior. Each player color has an associated Terran faction or an alien faction you play as. All the Terran factions have the same abilities. Each alien faction is asymmetric. Throw in some dice rolling for combat, tech trees, exploration, and ship minis that aren't bad (definitely look better painted up), it's an enjoyable experience every time it hits the table. The faction expansions are somewhat pricey, but I don't think they're necessary unless you're playing this all the time. The other expansion content adds a bit here and there, and we picked up all of those directly from the publisher (except for the metal tokens) after our first play of the game. Because we enjoyed the base game so much.

This is an incredible 4X game that can play under 3 or even 2 hours at 4 players if everyone knows the rules. Every game will be different to another so the replayability is great. My favorite part is the ship upgrades with multitude of parts you can put on them. The only downside me and my group found is the beginning can be a bit "slowburn" but that's easily fixable by increasing the starting resources by 10 of each. Also the package came undamaged so that's good too