veector

After only playing this once, my friends and I agreed we didn’t see what was so special about this game. Whether it was the mediocre worker placement mechanic or the roll of years that seemed to be rather arbitrary, we just couldn’t get in to it.

We followed the rules and understood how the dice system worked. Maybe it was the lack of direct conflict or it was the difficulty in utilizing all of the worker placement options. Everything just felt “meh” about this game.

As someone who is prepared to reserve space on the game bookcase only for those games which are truly worthy of my time, I ended up selling it.

I REALLY wanted to like this game a lot. We had a great game with a good experienced group of players. Everything seemed to be going well, and then one player won… rather quickly.

We couldn’t exactly figure it out until we realized that his dial (one of the methods of winning is advancing a dial) was a shorter path to victory than the other players’ dials.

I really like games that give you a single indicator as to who is winning from turn to turn. With this game, there’s a lot to keep track of and unless you’re paying close attention to what all other players are doing and how well they’re accomplishing their goals, you’re likely to lose.

Some may find this a strength of the game, I just found it a bit tedious. Rather than having many paths to the same measure of victory, this felt like many players with many paths to different end goals. Just didn’t work for me.

I’m amazed that I’m saying it, but Eclipse threw me for a curve. When initially reading the rules and understanding how the game flowed, I didn’t think much of it. After the first play through with all players being Human, I still didn’t really grok it. Finally, we got a game in that kept everyone (5 players) engaged right up to the very end.

This game will take you by surprise. It is definitely more than the sum of it’s mechanics, some of which are borrowed from other games, but the combination of the Euro and American mechanics makes something that is both engaging and challenging while also not feeling like there’s too much luck involved.

It quickly became one of my top three favorite games.