RuleSage cited table rulings
← Race for the Galaxy

You asked

Playing Race for the Galaxy with The Gathering Storm, how many cards may I keep in hand at the end of a round, and what does the Budget Surplus goal reward?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Race for the Galaxybg-28143-en-1e · Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Stormbg-34499-en-1e

At the end of a round, players must discard down to a hand limit of 10 cards.[1][2][3] However, if the start world Ancient Race is in play, its owner must discard down to three, not four, cards before selecting a first round action.[4] The Budget Surplus goal can be claimed at the end of a round.[4] The provided sources do not state what the Budget Surplus goal rewards.

[1] RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook · p.3 · PLAYING THE GAME
[2] RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook · p.3 · I: EXPLORE
[3] RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook · p.7 · GAME END
[4] RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm — Rulebook · p.2 · ADDING CARDS · GOALS
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile
live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings
search 89 ms · ask 3156 ms · total 3246 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 3246 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 1, "score": 0.032266, "snippet": "Explore, Settle, Develop, Trade, Consume, or Produce? Which do you need the most? Which of Earth's former colonies will be most successful at settling the galaxy, now that JumpDrive exists? Who will discover the secrets of the mysteriously vanished Alien Overlords? Your goal: to build the most prosp", "headingPath": "TOM LEHMANN · OVERVIEW", "sharpsignalDocId": 239}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.031754, "snippet": "The game ends at the end of the round (including discarding) in which: a player has 12 or more face up cards in their card tableau, or (A player can end with more than 12 cards in their card tableau by placing both a development and a world in the final round.) the last victory point chip is given o", "headingPath": "GAME END", "sharpsignalDocId": 239}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031258, "snippet": "A game is played over several rounds (typically 7 to 11). At the start of a round, players simultaneously and secretly choose one action card, placing it face down in front of themselves. Once all players have done so, they turn these action cards face up. Then, the players perform the selected phas", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 239}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03055, "snippet": "Shuffle the unused start worlds and game cards. Each player gets 6 cards and discards 2 of them. The remaining cards form the card supply. Cards in the card supply and the discard pile are both face down. To tell them apart, keep the card supply neat and the discard pile a bit 'messy'. Use 12 VPs pe", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 239}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029877, "snippet": "Action: place a good on each production world (worlds with colored, solid circles) without a good , by taking a card face down - without looking at it - from the card supply and putting it on top of the world's lower right portion (to avoid hiding the world's VPs and powers). This good is of the kin", "headingPath": "V: PRODUCE · ROUND END, CARDS, AND CHIPS", "sharpsignalDocId": 239}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029437, "snippet": "Action: each player places a world card from their hand face down, or no card if a player doesn't intend to place a world. Once all players have done so, they simultaneously turn them face up and then pay for (or conquer) them. Many worlds contain a black number, ranging from 0-6, in a black circle;", "headingPath": "III: SETTLE", "sharpsignalDocId": 239}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.02901, "snippet": "Draw 1 or 2 more cards to select from. These powers do not alter the number of cards that a player keeps. Draw 1 card at the start of the Develop phase. Keep 1 more card. Reduce the cost to place a development ( ) by 1 or 2 cards. Draw 2 more cards to select from; keep 1 more card. Draw 1 card after", "headingPath": "Draw Extra · Draw · Keep Extra · Reduce Cost · Draw and Keep Extra · Draw After · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 239}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.028405, "snippet": "For these developments, score end of the game VPs for every card in its owner's tableau that satisfies one of the conditions listed on that development (and for every 3 VPs in chips its owner has in the case of Galactic Renaissance ). For each 6-cost development, a given card can score in only one o", "headingPath": "6-COST DEVELOPMENTS POWERS · ALIEN TECH INSTITUTE · GALACTIC IMPERIUM · NEW GALACTIC ORDER · FREE TRADE ASSOCIATION · GALACTIC RENAISSANCE · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 239}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 239}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "I: EXPLORE", "sharpsignalDocId": 239}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME END", "sharpsignalDocId": 239}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ADDING CARDS · GOALS", "sharpsignalDocId": 870}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 239 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 239 boosted
answered-before recall
this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence
passed — letter density 0.91475 of 305 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until
Nov 12, 2026 20:49

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) TOM LEHMANN · OVERVIEW p.1 0.032266 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) GAME END p.7 0.031754 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#3 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) PLAYING THE GAME p.3 0.031258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#4 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) SETUP p.2 0.03055 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#5 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) V: PRODUCE · ROUND END, CARDS, AND CHIPS p.7 0.029877 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#6 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) III: SETTLE p.5 0.029437 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#7 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) Draw Extra · Draw · Keep Extra · Reduce Cost · Draw and Keep Extra · Draw After · … p.9 0.02901 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#8 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) 6-COST DEVELOPMENTS POWERS · ALIEN TECH INSTITUTE · GALACTIC IMPERIUM · NEW GALACTIC ORDER · FREE TRADE ASSOCIATION · GALACTIC RENAISSANCE · … p.12 0.028405 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 37 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm — Rulebook (corpus doc 870) TOM LEHMANN · Th e Gathering Storm · OVERVIEW · CONTENTS p.1 #9 0.016393 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#2 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) TOM LEHMANN · OVERVIEW p.1 #1 0.032266 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#3 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm — Rulebook (corpus doc 870) ADDING CARDS · GOALS p.2 #10 0.016129 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#4 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) SETUP p.2 #14 0.013514 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#5 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) PLAYING THE GAME p.3 #3 0.031258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#6 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) I: EXPLORE p.3 #21 0.012346 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#7 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm — Rulebook (corpus doc 870) Resolving Robot Actions / Responses · DRAFTING VARIANT (2-3 players) · BLANK CARDS / CONTEST ENTRY p.10 #12 0.014706 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#8 RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) GAME END p.7 #2 0.031754 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) PLAYING THE GAME p.3 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) I: EXPLORE p.3 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy — Rulebook (corpus doc 239) GAME END p.7 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm — Rulebook (corpus doc 870) ADDING CARDS · GOALS p.2 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 89 ms · first delta 2495 ms · total 3246 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 0 ms · retrieval 89 ms · ask 3156 ms · gateway work 3246 ms · total 3246 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3750
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
93
tok/sec
136.4 tok/sec — 93 output tokens in 0.682 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 3s ago)
stream path
streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog
first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture
both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 165), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.