Let's get right down to it: Light Speed is easily one of my favorite games, and one of the best I've seen. Is it a crowning triumph of strategy that you can play for hours at a time and will be around for eons? Probably not. Can you get sucked into playing more rounds of it than you planned on? Yeah, probably. This is a really clever, original game that you can explain in a couple minutes, play in a couple minutes, and have a lot of fun doing so.

The other reviews went over the mechanics pretty well, but to recap it basically works like this: Each player has a hand of 10 spaceships. Each ship has a number of damage points it can take, lasers shooting off the cards, and the occassional force field defending some portion of the ship. At the start, you have these shuffled in your hand. A game consists of placing these on the playing surface, simultaneously with the other players, as fast as you can. Once someone gets all their cards down, you see who managed to shoot who with the lasers. Destroying an opponent's ship gets you points, destroying your own ship loses them, and hitting the local asteroids (cards placed beforehand) also gets you points. Once you've tallied up the scores, that's it, shuffle the cards and start all over.

Note that in general I dislike dexterity games, and don't really consider this to be one. The real-time aspect may not be for everyone, but it's a lot of fun. The frenzy of putting cards down definitely creates a feeling of lots of little spaceships darting around an asteroid field taking shots at each other.

Despite the rapid, seemingly barely-thinking nature of the card-playing, the game is interesting enough to have a whole bunch of viable strategies. Do you try to place your cards along the outside, pointing in? Do you try and cluster on the inside and shoot out? Aim for the asteroids or other players? Is it better to aim well or play more ships? Can you get your lower-point ships in place to wipe out the bigger ships before they get a chance to shoot? Can you protect your ships with other ships' shields? Keeping all that in mind as you're whipping ships onto the table and your buddy's almost out can be a real challenge, especially given that you can't move ships once placed and correct any mistakes.

The real-time aspect combined with all these decisions really creates a slight bit of tension and nervousness (at least for me) that you wouldn't expect out of such a seemingly simple game, which is awesome. The fact that all these decisions and thoughts exist is probably why the turn-based variant is still a solid little game, though not as out-and-out fun or original as the real-time version.

Now, this is a Cheap Ass game, which means you need to provide some chits for counting damage and a rubber band or ruler for laser sighting. However, the component quality is very good, better than most of their games. The artwork is fun, colorful, and fits the game well. The cards themselves are also pretty good. They're smaller than normal playing cards, but I like the dimensions. Also, they're of nice, thicker stock than playing cards and handle well. Lastly, the rules are well-written and clear.

The only possible drawback to Light Speed is that sometimes, especially with a couple players, the scoring can take a little longer than it should, given how fast the game plays. It can sometimes take a little bit of scanning just to find the ships in order in the sea of colors out on the table. It's also not something to play with rules-lawyers who'll argue the laser lines ("No, when you look from this angle it just missed!"). I use a rubber band to help with the sighting, but generally play it fast & loose, which keeps things moving.

Still, that's not a serious problem and I overwhelmingly recommend this game to anyone with an interest in little spaceships blasting each other apart and/or a fast, light, original game. Especially considering the ~ $5US cost, this is a great buy. Light speed, ahead!