Story

We hear at Shelfside LOOOVEE our long epic games, like Sid Meier’s Civilization, TI3, and TI4 w/the PoK expansion! And these games are called 4Xs, where you go out and:

• Xplore stuff

• Xpand your civilization

• Xploit the territory you’ve conquered

• Xterminate your enemies to dust.

But epicness has a price, these BIG games take a while to play- I would say 4-5 hours minimum for your first game of many. This is where Last Light comes in: a space 4X that supposedly takes an hour!

Playthroughs

Played once at WSBG 2023, 3 times in person at home, then 1 time on TTS! So 5 plays in total!

More Notes

We have the deluxe version of the game sent to us by Grey Fox games, which is MSRP $135.

FYI Grey Fox games and Roy Cannaday are NOT sponsoring this video, they haven’t seen any of our thoughts before launch.

Need to learn how to play? Or want more reasoning for our points? Our review video’s got you!

Component/Art PROS

• Bright 3D gumball planets with different colors

• UV board with glyphs is trippy to look at

• 3 different types of minis for each player

• 3D asteroids to block out regions when necessary

• Plenty of plastic bags w/insert

• Resources come in cool canisters

• Light tokens are engraved with glyphs

• Action cards really easy to tell apart, so easy to tell what opponents play

• Dice have unique symbols instead of numbers, and engraved

• Rotation is easy to do with linking up areas

Accessibility Pros

• So easy to teach because just explain action cards 1-6

  • That order will have you explain command (movement/attacking) last, so you do an example of combat then hop into the game

• Each action is really simple to explain by just reading left to right

Gameplay Pros - Refresh Puzzling!

• Refresh is the main way to get actions back in hand, but playing it early exposes yourself

• Can’t play again until everyone else plays refresh, will have to wait a while

• If hold onto refresh and be the last one to play, get to choose when central cards cool

• Nice being able to time when the round ends if you have ships in middle of map for free VP!

• Great interaction in keeping track of what others have played

  • e.g. Move and attack someone before they attack you

  • e.g. research something to buff ships before they are attacked

• Playing command last is best to move away from people hitting you

• Hands are not static because there are abilities to get back cards from discard

  • “De-synced’ hands from everyone else at around turn 3-4 to make refreshing game more nuanced

Gameplay Pros - It’s all fast!

• Choosing a card simultaneously and flipping is still fast

• Many cards don’t interfere with each other so can often resolve at same time

• e.g. can mine while someone else constructs ships

Gameplay Pros - It still crams in so many space opera elements!

• Fleet management to build ships then fight each other with different types

  • All upgrade-able!

• TONS of tech to upgrade the 3 different ships with

  • e.g. move 2x speed, stealing resources, hitting harder

• Also ‘civilization’ techs for once per round abilities, kind of an engine can build

  • e.g. Getting light, getting resources, building more bases (aka extractors)

• 35 asymmetric factions (15 in base game, now have 20 more with game found exclusives)

  • e.g. upgrade ships from anywhere

  • e.g. get extra VP from sitting in the middle

• Different ways to grab VP besides holding inner planets and doing secret objective

  • Get tons of tech to get VP

  • Mine places that give VP

  • Attack other ships to get VP (1 ship is 0.25 of a VP)

Gameplay Pros - Very Fast Progression!

• Mining action becomes incredibly strong with building extractors on the map

  • Can use those to all buy a bunch of techs to deck out ships

• Everyone upgrading ships in own way for emergent asymmetry

• Command activates EVERY ship, so decision space becomes big late game as can split fleets and attack

• Late game is tense with everyone attacking each other

  • lots at stake with fighting over the center of the map!

Component Cons — Poor Quality & Confusing

• Planet insertions are not very finely cut out for something erected in the air

  • Frequently falls off while setting up and taking down

• Too much dead space in the 8 player planet insert

• Quality of action and exploration cards is not good after 3 plays IRL

• Exploration aid should have included more info on combat, rounds, etc.

• “Wild” resource giver exploration token is far bigger than normal ones

  • Unusable since it’s supposed to be secret

• Cannot tell exact rarity of token when flipped faceup

  • Annoying for setup/takedown if playing back to back games

• Text wording of “taking action card back into your hand” is confusing because some will say “take any action card except for refresh”

  • In reality “Refresh” can never be taken back into your hand

Component Cons Part 2 — Hard to see!

• Regarding actual planets is hard to see

  • Extractors hidden by rod and actual planet

• Half-covered style of resources pieces make to tell inside color at certain angles

  • Could have just been different shapes/sizes too

• Exploration tokens are mostly unnecessarily white and black

  • e.g. Getting an action card and getting a tech look SO similar

• Exploration icon for free small ship is literally the exact same one that signifies +1 VP for being in middle of board

  • Confusing because would make you think that only small ships give you points by staying in middle (NOT TRUE)

Rulebook Cons — Extremely Barebones

• Exclusive Gamefound symbol on Aliens not even mentioned

• Instant tech abilities resolve is not clearly explained

• Attacking has 0 examples/diagrams

  • SO concerning for a space fighting game

  • Doesn’t go into detail about 3 player combat, need to fill in gaps

  • How often can you use the mod abilities in combat? (truly infinite)

• Doesn’t say order in which tech cards resolve, but quick reference does

Gameplay Cons — The 2 Movement Techs are too crucial

• Tech 1: Supersonic: +1 movement to 1 ship its installed to

• Tech 2: Pioneering: taps itself to move each ship of any type

• +1 movement is so key with limited rounds and ships only spawning from colony ship base

• Snowballing effect from getting movement, then gobbling up exploration tokens and speed towards middle of map for VP if uncontested

• If everyone has movement buff by mid game, movement is not an issue

  • If someone doesn’t get +1 move entire game, feels bad

  • 7x Supersonic, 3x Pioneering in a deck of 83. See 4 cards upon 1st research action, then 3 for each other research action.

    • Some matches will not have move disparity

Gameplay Cons — Random Tech is Unbalanced

• Some techs always good to have (e.g. movement), others are very situational

  • Sometimes don’t start with the right ones while the player next to you is constantly utilizing them

• “Development” to 2x strength of extractor building is overpowered

  • Extremely easy to spam because command moves EVERY ship to get into position, and building extractors is free

• Leadership is dirt cheap tech to delete itself to get back an action

  • You just get back command to move and attack again, where opponents can’t attack back

3 Possible Tech Fixes

1. Balance costs more

2. Create central area where all players are buying tech from; if bidding will drive up price of good techs

3. Revamp movement by removing movement techs, and make it a guaranteed upgrade you just pay for whenever you want

Gameplay Cons — 9 different Exploration tokens are heavily unbalanced

• Ok: resources, getting tech to research later

• Good: Research a tech without paying its cos

• Great: Immediately building an extractor on the planet to own it (saves half action of construct)

• Great: Get action card back in hand, so you take back command to explore more next turn

• Exploration imbalance hits harder because hard for players to self-balance in a short game (20 VP)

  • Exploration tokens are next to each other

• Action repeat and extractor build should be taken out

  Gameplay Cons — Imbalanced tech + imbalanced exploration?

• Large runaway leader and hopeless loser problem

• Starting with irrelevant techs + poor exploration tokens cannot compete with guy with +1 move, free extractors, and ships in middle of map on round 2

  • Seen games where leader won so hard by having 7 ships in the middle, no one could do anything

Gameplay Cons — Not a true 4X as advertised

• Can’t really exterminate others because they can win by playing research to get VP even if off the board

  • e.g. TI4 to eliminate by sitting on their base and preventing from getting points

• Exterminate would admittedly make the game longer as winner gets 0 points and loser crawling way back

• If you call yourself a “true” thing, you better do it all the way. Don’t mislead people

Gameplay Cons — Player Count

• Want more players to slow down leaders, like killing them off center and taking extractors

• 4 Players seems like the way to go to get proper king of the hill experience

Gameplay Cons — Some factions are lazy/underpowered

• e.g. weak: Rolling an additional die for combat pales to moving or boosting economy

• e.g. weak: Starting with large ship instead of small is intimidating but not impactful, no ability after setup

• e.g. strong: Spending a medium resource to build extractor after exploring

• e.g. strong: do damage to an opponent and take unresearched tech from their hand and build it for free

• Initial faction grab is key in such a short game

  • During setup, draw 3 or 4, then choose 1 faction, instead of the written 2

• Factions feel like a missed opportunity because lot of effort on backstory/art for each, but feel like afterthoughts in design (maybe Gamefound exclusives rushed?)

  • Why not give them different starting units/tech?