I’m sure that you could play it in a more aggressive way than we have so far, but it certainly won’t have the sparkle that it will have when multiple players are vying for the same spots with their uniquely built ships. In many ways, this way of managing resources is the invisible glue that holds the game’s many flashy, awesome features together. Eclipse: 2nd Dawn for the GalaxyThis massive box of goodness is a new version of the much loved 4X game Eclipse. The game currently has three expansions – Rise of the Ancients, released in 2012, Ship Pack One, released in 2013 and Shadow of the Rift, released in 2015 – and four mini expansions. By putting all the maths in the upkeep phase and using sliding markers on a track rather than discrete components to show how many resources you have, Eclipse takes away so much faff.

Every component is designed to have its own little niche inside of the game box, and there is virtually no spilling over of components when inside. Even if you only get it off the shelf a couple of times a year, that’ll be well worth the epic science fiction event that takes place everytime you do. At the end of the day, my life is better when there’s intergalactic civilization mayhem in it than when there’s none, and Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy may very well be the best box for that experience on the market today.I bought and played my first few games of Eclipse: Second Dawn in January 2021, which means that I have only been able to play it with one other person: my wife.

In fact, the game slightly incentivizes other players to capitalize on the downtrodden civilization, swooping in like vultures to pick apart the corpse for their own gain.The fiddliest components – the tech and point tiles – just get chucked into a cloth bag at the end of the game that they’ll be drawn out of when needed next time. Then the upkeep phase will occur in which players will gain some tech and building points and have to manage their money income. These are small facedown tiles that are added to certain exploration tiles that are placed and collected when someone happens to explore a tile. Individual faction boxes make setup super easy, then remain on hand as your resource tracking components and supply tray for the rest of the game.