Getting Started in Star Trek: Into the Unknown, Part II

Continuing going over how Star Trek: Into the Unknown works, using the Preview Kit for examples.

So, now that we know the bare bone basics of what officers are and what they can do, let's talk about when they do it.

Make it so.

It is the first phase of each round where your officers get to work, known as the priority phase.  Think of it as your officers taking the initiative to do actions on their own to make the ship work.  Starting with the player who has the priority token each player takes turns having one of their officers take a priority order - in other word commit them to take an action.  This is what is going to do much of the work on your ships, as officers can either perform tasks more efficiently (using less energy from the ship's reserves) or more effectively (adding expertise dice to tests or attacks.)

Unlike other games, ships do not activate and do everything all at once, but instead they can continue to do new things as long as officers and the appropriate station are available to be used.  You can move a ship with your first order and then shoot with your next order, or you can shoot with your first order and jump to warp on your next turn.

You can continue to take turns until you pass, at which point you can no longer issue priority orders.  If one player passes but the other has not, they can continue to issue orders one after another.

Once the priority phase ends, we move to the standby phase.  There are two sub phases in this section, which are ships activate and projectiles active, which take place separately.  

First, each player starting with the player that DOES NOT have the priority token (the standby player), takes turns taking one action with their ship, a standby order.  Once you have taken an order with a ship, you mark it with a standby token (see part I) to signal that it has finished it's action.  Again, passing ends their turn and they will not be able to order another ship.

Once both players have passed, they then take turns starting with the standby player gives standby orders to projectiles.  All torpedoes must be given a standby order, and other projectiles may be given one.  Once all orders you must give have been given, you may pass.  We then move on to the...

...the Hazard Phase.

During the Hazard phase you'll take the following steps in order:

For each step, each player, starting with the priority player resolves the effects that pertain to them in the order of their choice.

Uh oh, that's not good.

We next move onto the Ready Phase, where we will see things reset and be made ready for the next turn.  In this phase the priority player resolves all 4 steps, then the standby player resolves all 4 steps.

1) Remove Peril: Each ship may spend any number of advantage (+) tokens to cancel an equal number of peril (-) tokens.

2) Ready Officers: The player readies up to 3 committed officers

3) Relocate Officers:  The player relocates up to 3 officers to any section or station of the ship they are currently aboard.  These officers can be ready, committed, or even incapacitated.

4) Resolve //Ready// Abilities:  In this phase the player resolves unit or officers abilities that have the Ready phase ability.  This is also when ships recover energy equal to their recharge value (the blue number on their alert dial).  If you're looking carefully at a ship card, you can actually see where it tells you to do this. (The astute among you will notice that is not all it says to do)

Then we move to the Hail Phase, which is not really used for much in the Preview Kit, though the Dominion Player has an opportunity to flip their directive card to hostile if they are losing the game during this phase. 

After all phases are concluded, the priority player hands over the priority token to the standby player, who then becomes the next round's priority player.  We are now onto the next round.

In part 3 we will play a bit of a demo game, and see how the various actions work.