Join Marc, Matt, Orion, Ben, and Amber as they discuss Marc’s 50th-41st favorite board games of all time. There’s some heated disagreement here, but mostly a great discussion about fantastic games.
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2 thoughts on “Marc’s Top 50 Games: 50-41”
My group played Twilight Imperium first, and then tried Eclipse, and we almost unanimously prefer Eclipse. We don’t battle any less in Eclipse than in TI:3 (i.e. Not much in either), but we get to fight ancients instead! There’s actual exploration (I would argue that TI:3 is a 3x game; not 4x, as there is no exploration). And the dice don’t seem any less relevant in TI:3 (if anything, the ability to customize ships lets you mitigate the dice quite a bit in Eclipse). I do like TI:3 a lot, but I don’t think Eclipse is lesser in any way, except time and art. And I can survive the lesser art for the sake of having a game that will actually get to the table several times per year, and doesn’t otherwise sacrifice anything at all, in our humble opinions.
I forget what criticisms I mentioned in the podcast, but I find the exploration in Eclipse to be the weakest part, by far. Much too dependent on random tile draws for me. I suppose if I had a lot of trouble getting TI3 to the table I’d play Eclipse a lot more but I’m fortunate in that regard.