We only ever make it to turn 8, a 7 player game of Eclipse.

Well as the title suggests whenever our gaming group plays Eclipse, one of my favourite boardgames at the moment, we only make it to turn 8/9. This is probably due to the epic proportions of the game, this particular game taking 6 hours! Yikes. This was due to multiple factors, trying to watch the All Blacks vs South Africa (which we won), teaching a new player, two players leaving during the game. Anyway I wont get into the nitty gritty as Eclipse just doesn't make for great session reports like Flames of War. If you haven't played before feel free to read a review of the ipad app I did which has an overview of the rules here. 

We played with some of the additions added by the expansion, most notably increasing the game to 7 players. However this didn't last as one of our players had to quit in turn 3 as mentioned above so we helped him bankrupt his society (this was our new player). Then around turn 5 or 6 Dan left so Chris played both Dans Orion Hegemony and his Rho Indri Syndicate who had formed an alliance earlier. Anyhow here is a shot of the starting set up...

Sorry Zac you got an action shot.

• The players and Races in order of play were: 
• Stephen (me), Enlightened of Lyra
• Zac, Machanema
• Ben, Hydran Progress
• Alex, Magellen
• Chris, Rho Inhri syndicate 
• Dan, Orion
• Matt, Humans. 

So the game went down something like this: During initial exploring some diplomacies started, and by turn two Dan and Chris formed and alliance a new component of the expansion. This was worrying for the rest of us as they were the combat races. They then swept through taking over alien hexes. Ben and I being Lyra and Hydran races best at turting kept to ourselves while Zac steadily expanded. Zac and I kept positive relations aware that we may need to team up to beat up Chris and Dans forming empire. I sublimed my mind to my shrine grid, a Lyra special abitily where I build shrines on my hexes, eventually giving me advantages. 

Finally combat broke out between factions, Dan and Chris attacked me, luckily Zac and I had formed an alliance by then so took them out together. Whew. 

Orion and Rho verses Lyra and Machenema

Things were getting hot but Zac and I had a pretty good defensive position, unfortunately our attempts to expand were not so successful but fun none the least. My Shrine system was going well giving me and extra disc first up (turn 4) and wormhole generator (turn 6), and I was having a lot of fun playing them. Ben as the Hydran was researching like a boss, he had filled all research tracks by turn 8! He was in a healthy position and conflict broke out between Zac and him but ended with neither being better off. I attacked the Orion and Rho alliance and got wasted, however this was more in order to keep them off my turf. Then the game ended. 

The end game shot

The game score looked like this

1. Machanema and Lyra allicance (Zac and I) both on 43 points.
2. Hydran on 42 points, very close
3. Magallen, 37
4. Orion and Rho alliance on 32
5. Humans, bankrupt. 

It was a pretty high scoring game in the end and I think we all enjoyed it. Having 7 players really added to the game, as did the expansion. The length was not so great, although we added in the fast play variant at the end having multiple players taking turns at the same time around turn 5. The rugby and Chris having to play for both himself and Dan slowed things down a bit. One of the best parts was I thought the Enlightened of Lyra, the race suited my play style and were a lot of fun to play with their special shrine grids. It is worth noting I was able to build a shrine per turn and if we had finished the game should have been able to finish with all 9 giving 12 VP. 

My shrine system

My player board end game. 

Once again can't be bothered editing this post so please excuse grammatical errors.