by Kantel
First of all, this is my first post on a forum, so please forgive me if I do anything wrong or misunderstand the purpose of this forum.Last evening I played my first session of RotA. I have played the original game several times now, so I think I'm quite experienced now.
We chose randomly between the new races and my friend draw Rho Indi while I draw the Exiles.
I normally liked to play with Orion / Eridani races, since they are more aggressive, but I learn to appreciate the 'turtle' races as well. In fact I have won once with Hydress already, but this was in 3P game.
The game itself:
My first rounds considered mostly exploring ring II and III and placed 2 additional orbitals on round 3, but still could not create planets with more than 3 cubes.
My opponent had found the Morph Shield (which is way too good compared to other tech tiles as double ion cannon) and upgraded this in his cruiser. On round four he attacked the middle planet with Ancient Dreadnought with 2 cruisers and 2 interceptors and manage to win. (I guess it was 60-40 to win)
By that time I had only 1 interceptor since my focus was on building orbitals. (btw you can't build an additional orbital on your home planet right, besides the one you start with?)
After that round had to draw back towards my home planet since my orbital were no match for his cruisers. The orbital is very hard to upgrade..
After that my opponent attacked all other ancient cruisers and obtain many points. We end the game with an very disappointing 58 - 29 points.
To sum up: I think the exiles are no match for rho indi. The cloaking ability is very hard to be effective and the start orbitals are not so great as well. They are expensive and don't have any contribution to your defenses because of its blue print and you only build one. All benefits of the rho indi are great from the beginning. The disadvantages, 0 point home planet is easily be compensated with the extra reputation tile. No Dreadnought can be hard, but can be compensated by multiple ships and you don’t need to upgrade that much, less actions.
I'm really curious if someone experiences something equal or different or have a different opinion about the exiles and rho indi.
Besides that: in 2P games I experienced that that Mechanema/Hydress/Planta are no match for Orion too. Only draco and even eridani can match Orion a little bit, since they can attack ancient from the beginning.
General opinion: If you can’t attack ancients in the first 3/4 rounds (like Mechanema/Hydress/Planta/Exiles) , you can’t influence juicy planets, can’t get nice boost from discovery tiles, can’t get reputation tiles, I guess this will reduces your chances to win very much. Note that this holds for >3 player games, but there is a restrictive head start, since it can be 2 to 1 in the mid/end rounds…
But in end: I really like playing Eclipse and will try again with the Exiles a maybe seek for different strategies…