Finales Funkeln (The Final Spark)

Last weekend we played another game we picked up at GenCon, Last Light.  Released in 2023 by Grey Fox Games after a Kickstarter, and is now available to LGS with a few exceptions.  Nine of the thirty four playable races are exlusive promos and the 8-player expansion hasn't moved to retail yet.  We were able to find the 8-player expansion and higher quality pieces from the Grey Fox Games booth.

The story of the game is that our White Dwarf sun is burning out, so we are in a wild race to acquire as much LIGHT (victory points) as possible before that happens. The first person to hit 20 will trigger the end game and at the end of that turn whoever has the most LIGHT wins.  Last Light is a 4x game with a rotating board where players will take mostly simultaneous turns determined by the 6 available action cards.  Each turn players will play one of their remaining action cards and in card order (and turn order when necessary) will perform the appropriate action(s).  Your actions are as follows:

1) Research / Manufacture Technologies - First you will gain LIGHT for every 4 technologies you have researched.  Next you will draw 3 research cards from a universal research deck and keep 2 of them.  Once you have selected the two you wish to keep you will then spend resources to create whichever technologies you wish.  There are 3 types of Research cards. Civiilization (blue) cards are your static enhancements and bonus actions (scoring VP when you destroy a big ship or exhausting the card to provide a specific resource for example).  You can have an unlimited amount of blue techs.  Ship Ability (green) cards will provide one of your 3 ships (small, medium and large) a special ability that might trigger during a specific die roll or be exhausted to provide a bonus.  There is only a single slot for each ship, but you can replace them if you choose.  The Ship Mod (yellow) cards similarly provide benefits to your ships.  The size of the ship determines the number of mods available. Small = 1, Medium = 2, Large = 3.  These mods range from extra movement or dice during combat to new abilities like being able to destroy extractors.
2) Mine - Probably the most simple action. Mining will provide you with a specific resource for every Extractor you have on a planet or your colony ship.  The resourses will differ from planet to planet so you are incentivized to spread out and explore or fight for planets that provide resources you need. 
3) Construct - Another rather simple action.  First you build any number of ships at your colony ship and then you can build an Extractor on a planet which you control. This requires you to be the only person in the sector. Alternatively you can build an Extractor on your Colony Ship as long as you have a space available (there are 2 extra slots).
4) Trade - Allows you to do two of the following: get a common resource (grey), turn 2 common into an uncommon resource (purple) or vice versa, turn 2 uncommon into a rare resource (yellow) or vice versa, or turn 2 rare into a LIGHT
5) Refresh / Claim - This is the action that dictates the rotation of the solar system. When you play this card remove all damage from your ships and pick up all of the previously played cards, leaving Refresh in your discard pile.  Then you will claim LIGHT based on the number of unbarricaded (no other enemy ships present) inner planets (2 per) and outer planets (1 per).  Once all players have played their Refresh card the board rotates and all players return their Refresh card (AND ONLY THEIR REFRESH CARD) to their hand.  First rotate the outer ring 45 degrees and then rotate the inner circle 90 degrees.  The planets that were once very close to your colony ship will quickly be across space!  Be sure to plan for this.  Whenever the systems rotate, pass the "first player" marker clockwise and every player who has ships in the center (where the White Dwarf resides) will score 1 LIGHT per ship (before modifers).
6) Move  / Attack - The spicy action!  This is where things get fun and the turn order is relevant.  Each player who played this card, in turn order, will move any number of their ships equal to their movement (which is 1 by default for all ships).  If you move into an unexplored area you can reveal the facedown tile and gain any rewards.  For planets, this facedown tile will also determine which resource is produced during the MINING  action.  We never determined whether you could move a ship into a zone, discover the tile, and then move other ships based on this discovery or if you wait until you've finalized all movement and then flip tiles.  I tend to think it's the latter because multiple players might end up in the same zone.  Once everyone has finalized all movements, the owner of the first player marker determines the order of any and all conflicts, sector by sector.  This is vital because it may be key to forcing a decision of which ship mod to use in a location that is less ideal.  Attacking is only done by players who played this card, so if you play a trade action and someone moves in to a zone where you have ships to attack, you are defenseless.  Based on ship size and modifiers the attacking player will roll dice and deal damage based on the roll. Each 6 sided die has side with a miss, 2 sides with a single hit, a side with a special activation, a side with a hit AND a special activation and a final side with rolling damage (you re-roll and add any hits to the total).  The attacking player determines how to assign all damage dealt.  There can be any number of different factions in the same tile and one Excavator.  If you have enough damage to kill all enemy ships you can then target the Excavator with extra damage, assuming your ship has the capability to target them (only large ships can do this by default).

The pace of the game will be determined by how fast your play group is and how comfortable they are with simultaneous actions.  Most of our first few turns were just done in turn order to make sure everyone did the things they were supposed to, by the end of the night we were pretty quick about everything up until combat struck. Any dice combat game can be frustrating, which was certainly one of our biggest gripes.  The upgrades you come by are a bit random so there's an extra level of challenge to try and formulate a plan.  The winner of our game actually just spammed resources and research and hit 20 a full three actions before anyone else had a shot.  There is some counter play available, but it does seem a bit slow because of the way the cards have to be played out.  You can't really be much of an expert on a single thing, especially when you have at least one other player who goes through their entire deck every rotation.  There are a few upgrades and exploration tokens that you can find that allow you to pick up a non-refresh card you've played before, and those are very powerful, but without something like that you only get to play each action a maximum of two times before a planetary rotation.

There is a bit more randomness to this than I typically like in games, but that's how most 4x games I've played have been.  Compared to something like Eclipse, I definitely prefer this.  I think the strategies are currently a bit more reactive, based on the way you draw random research cards. I like to be able to formulate a plan (for better or worse) rather than being pushed in a direction based on what I draw.  Having a line-up where some number of cards are revealed and you can draw from that pile or randomly (like Ark Nova or Wingspan) would likely alleviate this problem.  It would also allow some counter measures to be taken and players might finally know the answer to THAT question . . . where to be or not to be.  Combat being random will always be a bit of a crapshoot, which is fine as long as it's equally balanced.  That being said the rolling hit pip on the dice is probably something that should be altered just for the feels bad, maybe making it a Ship Mod would be okay. I actually really like the simultaneous turns based on the card you played.  There's just enough mind gaming and strategy involved, and the ability to move in and attack while your opponent's shields are down is very fun.  Overall I think the game was fun. I look forward to playing again and trying out some of the races.  We might end up making some house rules on things after a few plays to make it a bit more competitive.  

If you've played let me know what you think!  The base 4 player game is available in store!