Defeating Star Trek: Spock in 3D chess – these are the official rules of the game!

Anyone who has seen “Star Trek” will inevitably have stumbled upon the 3D chess game that Spock (Leonard Nimoy in “Starship Enterprise” and Ethan Peck in “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”) loves to play. Also in “The Big Bang Theory” Sheldon (Jim Parson) regularly plays against his friends.

Although no set of rules was ever recorded in “Spaceship Enterprise”, there are now tournament rules for “Star Trek Chess”. This comes from Jens Meder and can be found on his website. We’ll tell you how to play the iconic game yourself!

Star Trek: This is how the iconic 3D chess works!

Probably the most blatant difference to conventional chess is the fact that it consists of three main game boards. These are arranged one above the other. At the bottom is the “White Board” (W), in the middle is the “Neutral Board” (N), and at the top is the “Bulletin Board” (S). There are also four attack decks.

Since the graphic above is only in 2D, only two attack decks (top left and bottom right) are shown. These are attached slightly above the main game boards via pins so that they “float” above the actual playing field.

A common 2D chessboard is square and has rows (a through h) and rows (1 through 8). The rows are those that run towards the opponent from the player’s point of view, while the lines are horizontal in front of us, where our pawns are placed from the rook to the king to the other rook.

In 3D chess there are also 8 rows separating us from our opponents, but there are some squares that are doubled. (Sometimes the playing field is expanded by the attack decks, but more on that later.)

Star Trek: The Overlapping of the Game Boards

Each of the three main game boards are square. They consist of only 4 lines, a to d, and 4 rows each. Start counting down at the white board. This has rows 1 through 4. The neutral board (N) in the middle has rows 3 through 6, and the bulletin board (S) on top has rows 5 through 8.

You’ll notice some row numbers are duplicated because the center neutral board overlaps the bottom white board in two rows, and the top black board in turn overlaps the other two rows of the neutral board. The squares a3, a4, a5, a6 as well as b3, b4, b5, b6, c3, c4, c5, c6, and d3, d4, d5, d6 exist twice in the game.

Star Trek: How Attack Decks Come In!

In addition to the main boards just described, both players also have two attack decks, each with a 2×2 grid. These are attached by pins to the respective corners of the main game boards. There is a pin on each corner, so there are a total of 12 pins in play.

The decks can be moved like pawns to “jump” from pin to pin. A deck can only be moved one pin per turn, whether forwards, sideways, up or down it doesn’t matter. The main thing is that it is an “adjacent” pin. At the beginning, the attack decks are attached to the outermost pins of the game boards.

In their initial position, the attack decks expand the playing field by a total of two rows and two lines. Again, there is an overlap. Due to the agility of attack decks, the playing field is constantly changing and some squares like z0 can cease to “exist” with the movement of an attack deck.

The decks can only be moved forward by a playing person if one or more of their own figures are standing on them. When an attack deck is empty, it can be moved backwards by the person who “owned” it when it started.

Star Trek: The Pieces in 3D Chess

As in traditional chess, there are 32 pieces in play, 16 light and 16 dark. There is a king and a queen on each side, each player has two knights and two bishops as well as two rooks and eight pawns. (Abbreviated with the respective first letters on the sketch above.

As in conventional chess, the pawns stand as a protective line in front of the “important” pieces at the beginning of the game. The initial setup also includes the attack deck, as shown in the sketch above.

On the main board (for the white pieces it is the white board below and for the black pieces it is the black board above) the two bishops are placed in the middle in row 1 and row 8 respectively. At the corners stand the knights.

The king and queen are placed on their respective attack decks (king on row d and queen on a), on their respective insides. On the outer corners of the attack decks are the towers.

Star Trek: How the pieces move in 3D chess

Once the pieces are properly set up, things proceed mostly as in regular 2D chess. The figures behave in the same way and one exception is that the figures can move not only horizontally but also vertically from top to bottom or vice versa.

You don’t need a special move to jump up or down. The squares that exist twice because the boards overlap are treated equally. If a figure is moved to the c5-square by a move, the player may choose on which floor the figure moves. This means that two figures can stand on the same field – but at different heights.

The attack decks are also traded as pieces in the sense of a move. As explained above, these can move like a king, only one step at a time, in any direction. In this case, movement is via pins at the respective corners of each main board. The aim of the game is, of course, to checkmate your opponent.

Here it goes to complete set of rules by Jens Meder. You can buy one “Star Trek” chess game for example at Amazon acquire. If you prefer to stay with “Star Trek” in theory, you can also look forward to new roles of our heroes in the upcoming “Star Trek” series and films.