by MichMedia
Looking at our player boards (ship blueprints in particular) one might wonder how Mechanema managed to crush Orion Hegemony's empire. The short answer is "ships, or lack thereof," and the long answer is below.
Our usual third player was out for this session and we decided to play a two-player game of Eclipse. Up to this point we'd been teaching new players in each of our previous games, and so played Terran. With no new players this time, we were itching to try aliens! I'd had my eye on Mechanema for some time due to their cheaper building costs and increased building capacity, but I let my guest choose first. After a quick overview he (magenta) chose Orion Hegemony (drawn by their militaristic slant), and I (gray) snapped up Mechanema.
This choice was the beginning of Magenta's demise for one simple reason: resource trade rate. Having grown accustomed to Terran's 2-1 rate (and doing a fair amount of trading to fudge actions), Orion Hegemony's doubled rate (4-1) meant that it was either impossible for Magenta to trade resources (not having at least four to begin with), or if he could trade, it cost him so dearly he could never get any resource storage built up from his production. This was a vicious cycle that Magenta didn't realize until later in the game, when it was too late.
But let's rewind to the beginning of the game. We set up the galactic center (ancient dreadnaught) with our homeworlds on opposite sides, as per a two-player game, then filled in (at random) the remaining homeworld spaces with ancient homeworlds. Gray's very first explore yielded an ancient hive–right beside his home hex! Now, we'd been playing a no-discard house rule; you must play the hex you draw. We considered going back to the official rules, but Gray decided to stick it out, factoring in the odds that any or all ancients would even move into his hex, and that he could probably build some ships before combat (end of the following round), should they invade.
We did some more exploring, roughly filling in the hexes surrounding our homeworlds (see picture). Gray found guarded and unguarded discovery hexes in equal measure, meaning that while he couldn't gain population-based production yet, he was able to get some resources from early discoveries. Magenta found all unguarded hexes, most with one or two immediately-usable planets per. While this meant he could get some production going, he consistently traded it away. As we went into the mid-game, Gray'd already taken out a handful of ancients with his fleet (including some from the hive) before Magenta built a simgle ship.
For much of the game, Gray's fleet consisted of interceptors piggybacking on cruisers, thanks to the Interceptor Bay rare tech. This meant that with just two Move actions Gray could move an entire fleet of twelve ships (and later, two additional dreadnaughts with a third Move); what a great tech (and a perfect match for Machinema's building capabilities)! Speaking of techs, Gray also pushed to buy Quantum Grid early on, while Magenta made due with Advanced Robotics.
Gray's fleet was poised on the doorstep of the center when Magenta built two dreads and moved them in first. His reasoning was that if he lost the center, he'd lose the game, which I'm not certain had to have happened. If you look at the board, Gray's space was riddled with three wormholes, and there was a wormhole development tile up for grabs. Had Magenta managed his resources differently, I think he could have let Gray have the center, but used the wormhole (plus as much of a fleet as he could muster) to threaten a counterattack into Gray's space, if (as happened) Gray moved on Magenta's space.
Magenta didn't retreated once things started going south, so his dreads were destroyed and Gray took the center. At that point, with no fleet or resource storage to speak of, Magenta knew he'd lost the game. However, we'd decided earlier to play a full game, so we played it out. By the last round Gray'd brought his fleet to bear on Magenta's home hex, defended by only two starbases and his starting cruiser. They died honorably, but perhaps needlessly. Magenta should have made sure he wasn't going to lose more than he could afford to when making his initial stand (I mentioned the retreat option above), and even without the wormhole Magenta may have been able to hold a line had he kept those dreads (plus whatever else he could muster).
Magenta's blueprints and tactics weren't quite optimal, either. He had Phase Shields to counter Gray's Positron Computers, but he designed a little too defensively, resting on +3 shields and hull at the expense of more weapons. More weapons equals more chances to hit! Once Gray realized his computers had been neutralized, he replaced them with additional Ion Cannon on his dreads (where innitiative was low anyway), doubling his attack die for the dreads from four to eight. Computers didn't matter in this case, the enemy was overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Magenta had researched Plasma Cannon, but wasted the extra point of damage per hit by targeting interceptors. Had he targeted Gray's cruisers, Magenta could have reduced Gray's attack die by two and taken away two interceptors' free movement, per cruiser. This would have slowed Gray down significantly, as his fleet relied on swarms of Ion Cannon.
Had Magenta been able to hold his territory, he would have denied Gray the VPs from controlling hexes and perhaps some from combat draws. Had he managed his resource storage differently, he may even have been able to max out a couple of his research tracks with cheap techs. In short, it could have been a much closer game. So, perhaps the lesson here is: don't get locked into a certain mode of thinking; flexibility often means survival.
