The Player Phase is part of a Round where most of the player actions happen. During that phase, the following things happen, in this order:
1. Remove all Fatigue tokens from all Crew members for all players.
2. Refresh Order tokens for all players. Each player chooses three Order tokens in the Issued Orders area of their Ship Boards, and moves them to the Fresh Orders area. Some Traits and other effects may alter the number of Order tokens a player may refresh.
3. The players each take their Turn, beginning with the player with the First Player token, and then proceeding in clockwise order. During a player's Turn, that player takes any number of actions they have the resources for, then there is some End of Turn checks, and then the next player takes a Turn until all players have taken one Turn each.
When all players have taken their turns, the Player Phase ends and the Enemy Phase begins.
Turn
During the Player Phase, after some initial bookkeeping, each player, beginning with the player who currently holds the First Player token and proceeding clockwise, takes one Turn. During the player's turn, the player can perform a number of actions. Some actions can only be made once per turn, or when certain conditions are fulfilled.
The player's turn doesn't have any strict order of actions; players may take as many actions as they wish, as long as the conditions for being able to perform the action has been met, and as long as any required costs for the actions can be paid. Each action take must be completed before another action can be taken. When the player can't or doesn't want to take more actions, their turn ends.
The most common actions are paid for by giving Orders by spending an Order token of the type matching the action. There are three basic types of Orders: Crew Orders, Navigation Orders and Artillery Orders.
In addition to this, special actions are available if the player's ship is on specific types of hexes on the Game Board:
- On Port hexes, the player may Visit a Port. There is no cost for doing this, and a player can visit more than one Port on the same turn, but a player can't visit the same port more than once per turn.
- On Shipwreck hexes that hasn't already been looted, the player can Loot a Shipwreck. Looted shipwrecks are marked with an Explored token.
- On Altar hexes that haven't been purged, the player can purge the altar if it hasn't already been purged. Purged Altars are marked with an Explored token.
- On unexplored Island hexes, the player can decide to send an Expedition to the island. Explored islands are marked with an Explored token.
- When adjacent to another player's ship, the players may Trade.
- When another player ship is in Artillery range, the active player may perform a modified Artillery attack to Assist in combatting any On Deck enemies present on the other player's ship.
Note: when a player is on a Storm, the action associated with whatever hex is covered by the Storm can't be used, and the hex counts as a Rough Seas hex, no matter what the covered space was Storm.
When all players have finished their turns, the Enemy Phase begins.