Battles are a combination of tech and dice rolls and will be played out against AI and the other players.

There is a constant battle in resource management in this game, making it so you always need to be sure to have enough gold to maintain your population scattered across various planets. Nevertheless, tension and discord are growing among the seven major species and in the Council itself. FInally, I was disappointed with the box not including the stands for the ships (the only model to receive a stand was the ball like model).

Eclipse’s economy might not have the glamour of its customisable ships, but it takes equal credit for making the game as good as it is.

In a standard Kallax shelf you will have a bit of overhang (about an inch) with about a half an inch of space above it.Highly recommend getting a 4+ player game going to be able to work with allies as it definitely adds new element to the game. The map playmat was due to arrive within 2 weeks while the game itself was due to arrive within 3 - 5 days but the map playmat arrived within a couple of days and was the 1st to arrive to my surprise. Each time we’ve played, at least one of us (usually me) has been wiped out in combat because we got overconfident in taking them on unprepared. Secondly, and linked, the upgrade system means that it wouldn’t take much for that enemy cruiser to become spiky enough to deal with being outnumbered by becoming effectively unkillable. That said, if you do go for the light option, you’d better hope the dice gods are smiling or you’ll simply fire everything and once the smoke clears you’ll be looking at an unscathed enemy ship just as it turns its guns on you.

In a review of Eclipse in Black Gate, John ONeill said "There's more to the game than just cruel matriarchal domination and deep-space explosions. I think many players will discover that there is room in their collections for both titles, as each one does a few things very well while also retaining some weaknesses. That means that you need to at least keep pace in the interstellar arms race if you want to do any conquering later in the game. The small plastic discs used to mark influence and actions are bright and catch your eye immediately.When you take the upgrade action you can sift through the available upgrade tiles and pluck as many as your action allows and place them on your player board over your specific ships.