Space Junk - Star Trek 3D Chess Set

Meldar16 Games (Mel and Sean) have too much danged Star Trek stuff. We'll highlight our favorites here on the Junk Drawer Blog as Space Junk.

This week I want to show off our 3d chess set! 3d chess goes all the way back to the Original Series' 1st season episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before," and it's been played or used as background props in Star Trek ever since.

Mel and I picked this up at a flea market about 10 years ago for a steal. I specifically remember trying to shove more money into the seller's hands, because we had been chatting with him about nerdy stuff in general, and this bad boy should be more than $20! Looking up prices on it now, I still want to mail the guy a check.

Apparently a few different versions of 3d chess have gone out over the years with different rule sets. For this one, for every space forward or backward your piece is moving, you have the option instead to move the piece up or down a level. In addition, those little 4 square platforms have pegs and can be placed in other positions on the board. So as a move, if it's only your pieces on the 4 square platform, you can move the whole platform as a move!

Playing this is really intense. Every time Mel and I have played, we've literally gone to a draw with only the kings left. After hours of playing. Our competitiveness keeps this as a rare game to play, but we do love the look as a display too.

The link below is for the fan wiki of our particular chess board. There are other versions and rulesets. While these particular sets go for big bucks these days, they do make cheaper sets now. The original prop was also built from hacking apart regular game boards, so you could DIY this too! 

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Tridimensional_Chess_Set

-Seandar16