How to Play Star Trek: Captain’s Chair

Goal of the game

In the normal ending, score more victory points than your opponent. You earn points from Glory, card values, neutral-location presence, endgame effects, Focus icons linked to your Specialty tracks and—when using Advanced mode—completed missions.

There is also a second ending, the Burn. If the Incident deck empties, the game stops immediately and the player with fewer Incident cards wins. If tied on Incidents, use normal final scoring.

Shared setup

The shared area contains the market and the map-like location contest. Separate the common cards into their decks. The market uses face-up offers from Person, Cargo, Ship and Ally decks, with Encounter and Incident cards handled separately. Starting and Advanced Locations form the location system, and three Starting Locations are revealed into the Neutral Zone.

The Stardate deck acts as the normal game clock. Glory is placed on the current Stardate according to its instructions.

Choose and prepare a captain

Each player chooses one captain/Crew deck and its Crew board. The original core box contains Picard, Sisko, Burnham, Koloth, Sela and Shran. Separate your captain cards by their position indicators:

• Available cards form the shuffled draw deck;
• Reserve cards form the reserve deck;
• Development cards begin face up in the development area.

Place the captain, any starting controlled locations or deployed cards, and the three Specialty markers. Each player begins with the standard starting resources, Away Team tokens and a five-card hand.

Your turn has four steps

1. Resupply
2. Control
3. Action
4. Clean-up

Finish all four before the other player takes a turn.

1. Resupply

Resolve every Resupply operation you currently have in play, in the order you choose. A key distinction is between cards truly in play and cards merely being staged, logged or beamed. Do not assume every visible card can trigger a table operation.

Resupply is where a developed tableau begins paying you before you spend your actions, so effects that recur here can be worth more than a one-time resource gain if acquired early enough.

2. Control a secured location

During the Control step, you may take control of one neutral location you have secured. A location is secured when you have at least three of your tokens there and at least two more tokens than your opponent.

Ships and Away Teams therefore do more than provide tactical effects. They create a persistent contest over neutral locations, and converting one into a controlled location can unlock operations and scoring.

3. Action step: normally three actions

You normally begin the Action step with three action tokens. An operation marked with the action symbol costs one; many other operations are free. Unused actions disappear at the end of the turn.

Common things you can do include playing cards from hand, activating deployed ships or controlled locations, resolving reactions when their trigger occurs, completing missions and warping ships. Captain text and card keywords determine the exact costs and restrictions.

Playing a card

Cards are first played from your hand into the Staging Area and resolve one Play operation. Depending on the card, it may later deploy, enter another zone, be logged, become part of a mission or leave play.

Do not treat the Staging Area as part of your normal tableau. Table operations such as Activation, Reaction and Passive effects generally work from the zones specified by the rules rather than from staged cards.

Resources: Dilithium, Latinum and Glory

The game uses three main resources. Dilithium and Latinum pay for different effects; Glory is flexible and also scores. The core rules allow Glory to substitute for the other resources at specified rates, making it tempting to spend points for tempo.

That trade is contextual. Spending Glory can enable a mission or crucial location play now, but every Glory token retained is also a point in normal final scoring.

Recruit cards and cycle your deck

Gaining a market card expands your deck, but Captain’s Chair’s deck growth is not just ordinary discard reshuffling. When your draw deck empties, reshuffling interacts with your Reserve/Development system so stronger captain-specific cards can enter the cycle.

This is one of the game’s central pacing mechanisms: you are not only buying common cards; you are also deciding when your own captain’s deeper deck becomes available.

Deploy ships, warp and send Away Teams

Ships can deploy into your Fleet Area and place matching tokens on the board. Warping moves deployed ship tokens among eligible locations. Away Teams can also build presence at locations, subject to the restrictions in the rules and card text.

Presence serves several jobs at once: competing for control, supporting card effects and scoring points at the normal ending.

Complete missions

When you satisfy a mission’s requirements, resolve its reward and place a Mission Completion token. Cards that were beamed or committed to the mission may leave play as specified.

Missions also unlock the value of Focus scoring: the core scoring rules require at least one completed mission before your Focus icons score through their Specialty multipliers. Ignoring missions entirely can therefore suppress points from an otherwise strong deck.

4. Clean-up

Clean-up resolves clean-up operations, checks Stardate effects, handles Glory placement, clears the Staging Area, draws back to hand size, refreshes exhausted cards and restores the normal action-token supply.

This is also where the game’s clock advances. Keep the Stardate state visible: it tells both players how much time remains before the normal Resolution ending.

Normal ending: Resolution

When the final Stardate empties, the game enters Resolution. Both players complete the appropriate final turn sequence defined by the rules, then score.

Normal final scoring includes Glory, neutral-location tokens, endgame operations, printed VP on owned cards and Specialty/Focus scoring. Advanced mode also adds the printed VP of completed missions.

Alternate ending: the Burn

If the Incident deck empties, the Burn takes priority—even if the game was already approaching normal Resolution. Play stops and each player counts Incidents in the zones specified by the rules. Fewer Incidents wins immediately; a tie proceeds to ordinary final scoring.

This means pushing Incidents is not simply defensive deck pollution. If the Incident supply is close to empty, the strategic value of adding even one more can change dramatically.

Common rules mistakes

• Spending all three actions on card plays by default. Many useful operations are free; pay attention to which effects actually show the action cost.
• Using staged cards as if they were deployed. Their table operations are not automatically active.
• Trying to control a merely contested location. You need the secured threshold before taking control.
• Ignoring the Reserve/Development cycle. Your captain-specific growth depends on deck cycling.
• Forgetting the mission requirement for Focus scoring. A pile of Focus icons can score zero if you never complete a mission.
• Assuming every game ends on points. The Burn can end the game on Incident count instead.

Sources and scope

Checked 6 October 2026 against WizKids’ official rulebook listing, the current WizKids product line and a page-referenced rules reference that maps setup, turn structure and scoring back to the core rulebook. The BGG-hosted PDF was not directly renderable in our web reader during this update, so exact card text, icons and captain-specific exceptions should be checked in the official rulebook. This page is an original teaching summary, not a reproduction of the manual. Editorial policy and corrections.