The first phase of Project Aleutian is the chase. During the chase, players will choose one of the “available” cards from the two adjacent displays to perform an action. An available card is a card in one of the two adjacent displays to a nation’s play area and that isn’t partially covered by other cards. Once the card is played, any available cards that are face down are revealed. 

During the chase, players start to accumulate prosperity cards which provide victory points, crystal contracts that provide access to resources, and tools in the form of action cards that will help in their pursuit of the stone cloud.  

As cards are removed from the display it represents the progress of each nation’s aeronauts as they race toward the stone cloud. At the top of each display during the chase is one of the stone cloud’s core crystals. When the first core crystal is removed from the game, it triggers a few things. First, the nation who removes the first core crystal gains bonus prosperity points for getting the first survey of the cloud up close. The nations sharing a border where the crystal was removed both gain bonus prosperity points due to the resources it will bring their nations once it fully lands on their border. Finally, the next phase of the game begins, cloudfall.