The game lasts for four Cycles. Each Cycle consists of five phases:

I Action phase : Players resolve actions by boarding ships with their Crew. The majority of the game is spent in this phase.

II Recall phase : Various components are reset and the turn order is updated.

III Skirmish phase : The Voidborn attack, damaging and potentially destroying ships.

IV Rift phase : New Voidborn ships appear to threaten the fleet.

V Hyperjump phase : If the players have decided to charge up the hyperdrive of the Revenant, the fleet now escapes to the next star system.

Track the current phase with the Phase marker on the Sequence board.

The Rift phase and Hyperjump phase are mutually exclusive. In every Cycle only one of them will be resolved, depending on which of them is covered by the Phase Skip token of that Cycle.

After the Skirmish phase of the 4th Cycle, you skip both the Rift and Hyperjump phase and proceed directly to the Final scoring.