Circadians: First Light

To set up Circadians: First Light, players choose a unique leader and receive a corresponding research base board, a player screen, three starting dice, and starting resources. Players then draft three contract cards from a hand of four, passing cards left and right. The circular planet board is set up with resource tokens and six hidden gem caches. Common action boards (Market, Laboratory, Foundry, Control Room, Academy, Mining Camp, Depository, Headquarters, and Negotiations) are placed in the center of the table. A deck of seven event cards, with the 'End of an Era' card always at the bottom, is placed on the Headquarters board.

In Circadians: First Light, players represent explorer teams from Earth, each with a unique leader, exploring the newly discovered planet of Ryh. Using dice that represent their crew, players will collect resources, explore the planet, build ships and farms, spend resources to complete contracts, and negotiate with local clans for points. The player with the most victory points after seven rounds of play will win the game.

Each round begins with drawing an event card, which can have positive, negative, or immediate effects. Then, all players simultaneously enter the plan phase, placing their rolled active dice behind their player screens onto garages or farms on their research board. Dice placed in garages are for worker placement actions, while dice on farms produce resources. Players then take turns executing actions, starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise. Actions include buying ships or farms, trading resources, moving their harvester on the planet to collect resources, mining for gems, gaining new dice, fulfilling contracts, and negotiating with local clans. After all dice are used, players harvest resources from their farms and current harvester location. Finally, in the rest phase, players retrieve dice from farms and common action boards (excluding Depository and Negotiations), discard down to five dice and eight contract cards, and pass the first player marker clockwise.

At the end of the game, players calculate their final scores. Points are awarded for dice placed on the negotiation board (based on the printed values next to them), the values on any revealed gem caches their harvesters are on, completed contract cards (including end-game objectives), and points from ships and farms on their player board (equal to the lowest printed value not covered). Additionally, players gain one victory point for each leftover gem token. The player with the highest total score wins the game.

The game concludes after seven rounds, when the 'End of an Era' event card is drawn. At this point, players proceed to final scoring. Ties are broken by the player with the most dice remaining in their supply. If still tied, the player with the most resources (excluding gems) wins. If a tie persists, victory is shared among the tied players.