Star Trek: Spock & Kirk’s Official 3D Chess Rules

• Spock plays it, Kirk plays it, even Sheldon Cooper from “The Big Bang Theory” plays it, the 3D chess from “Star Trek”. And with the official rules, you’ll definitely be able to play it soon too!
• In contrast to the traditional chess game, 3D chess has several levels and therefore some fields are duplicated, but don’t worry. It’s not as complicated as it first sounds!

Star Trek: Watch Now❯

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

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

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

Probably the biggest difference to traditional 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 “Notice 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) can be seen. These are attached via pins slightly above the main game boards so that they “float” above the actual playing field.

A regular 2D chessboard is square and has lines (a to h) and rows (1 to 8). The rows are the ones that run towards the opponent from the player’s perspective, the lines, on the other hand, are horizontal in front of us, where our playing pieces are placed from the tower to the king to the other tower.

In 3D chess there are also 8 rows that separate us from the other person, although some playing fields are duplicated. (The playing field is sometimes expanded by the attack decks, but more on that later.)

Star Trek: The Overlap of the Game Boards

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

You’ll notice that some row numbers are double because the neutral board in the middle overlaps the white board at the bottom in two rows and the noticeboard at the top in turn overlaps the other two rows of the neutral board. The fields a3, a4, a5, a6 as well as b3, b4, b5, b6, c3, c4, c5, c6, and d3, d4, d5, d6 are there twice in the game.

Star Trek: This is how the attack decks come into play!

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

The decks can be moved like game pieces to “jump” from pin to pin. A deck can only be moved one pin per turn; it doesn’t matter whether it’s forward, sideways, up or down. 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. Here too there is overlapping. Due to the agility of the attack decks, the playing field is constantly changing and some fields such as z0 can cease to “exist” due to 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 on them. When an attack deck is empty, it can be moved backwards again by the person who initially “owned” it.

Star Trek: The figures in 3D chess

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

As in traditional chess, at the beginning of the game the pawns stand as a protective line in front of the “important” pieces. The attack deck is also included in the initial lineup, 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. The knights are at the corners.

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

Star Trek: This is how the pieces move in 3D chess

Once the pieces are set up correctly, things continue mainly like regular 2D chess. The characters behave the same and one exception is that the characters can move not only horizontally but also vertically from top to bottom or vice versa.

No special move is required to jump up or down. The fields that exist twice because the boards overlap are treated equally. If a piece is moved to square c5 by a move, the person playing can choose which floor the piece moves to. This means that two figures can stand on the same field – but at different heights.

The attack decks are also traded as figures in the sense of a turn. As explained above, these can move like a king, only one step at a time, in no matter which direction. In this case, movement occurs via pins at the respective corners of each main game board. The aim of the game is of course to checkmate the opponent.

Click here for Jens Meder’s complete set of rules. You can buy a “Star Trek” chess set on Amazon, for example. If you prefer to stick with “Star Trek” in theory, you can also look forward to new roles for our heroes in the upcoming “Star Trek” series and films.