RuleSage cited table rulings
← Return to Dark Tower

You asked

What does each player take, and what goes in the middle, before we begin?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Return to Dark Towerbg-256680-en-1e

In the competitive game mode setup, each player takes four heroic test cards (one of each type) face down and one Amulet of Hope quest item.[1] The sources do not state what goes in the middle before the game begins.

[1] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.24 · Competitive Game ·  OVERVIEW  ·  SETUP CHANGES  ·  HERO GOALS  · COMPLETING HEROIC TESTS
🔧 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 79 ms · ask 2163 ms · total 2245 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 2245 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 14, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "In the middle of your turn, you may MOVE , take a HEROIC ACTION , and take a REINFORCE ACTION . These steps are optional, and you can perform them in any order. You can even split up your move, taking actions before, in the middle of, and after moving. Move a number of spaces up to your move value. ", "headingPath": "2. Middle of Turn ·  MOVEMENT ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "The game is played in a series of months . If the heroes do not complete the main goal and then defeat the adversary before the end of the sixth month, they lose the game. In the first month, the first turn is taken by the start player. Then play continues in clockwise order. Each player takes exact", "headingPath": "Sequence of Play ·  INDIVIDUAL TURNS  ·  MONTHLY QUESTS  · Taking Your Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Decide which player will play as which hero or assign them randomly. Choose who will be the start player. Each player then carries out their own setup. 1 Place your hero board in front of you. 1 2 Place the 3 hero virtue tiles for your hero in empty slots on your hero board, inactive side up. 2 3 Pl", "headingPath": "Hero Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "At the start of your turn, you may take the BANNER ACTION listed on your hero board. This action is optional. However, you cannot save your Banner action for later. Other game effects that apply 'at the start of your turn' happen now. You can resolve these effects and your Banner action in any order", "headingPath": "1. Start of Turn ·  MAKING TRADES  ·  SPENDING VS. LOSING ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "You lose the game immediately in any of the following situations: /rightArrow When a hero would gain their third corruption. /rightArrow When you have to take a skull from the supply and there are none. /rightArrow When the sixth month ends. If you lose the game, press the 'game lost' button on the ", "headingPath": " LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Once you have completed the main goal, you can battle the adversary. This works like a normal battle, but with three key exceptions: /rightArrow You must resolve five battle cards in a single battle to defeat the adversary. /rightArrow You may retreat from a battle with the adversary. You must resol", "headingPath": " BATTLING THE ADVERSARY ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "At the end of your turn, you must take a skull from the supply and drop it into the Tower. If you cannot drop a skull because the supply is empty, the heroes lose! When you drop a skull, it might emerge from the Tower, cause the Tower to rotate, or cause events to occur. If skulls emerge, place them", "headingPath": "3. End of Turn ·  PLACING SKULLS ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "3. End of Turn (cont.) Events happen at the end of most player turns. The app will alert you. Read the event aloud and follow its instructions, with the player who dropped the skull into the Tower making any choices required. Once the event is resolved, press 'confirm.' Repeat as needed for each eve", "headingPath": " PLACING SKULLS  ·  EVENTS ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 24, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Competitive Game ·  OVERVIEW  ·  SETUP CHANGES  ·  HERO GOALS  · COMPLETING HEROIC TESTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 379 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 379 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 0.95480 of 177 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until
Nov 12, 2026 22:54

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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379) 2. Middle of Turn ·  MOVEMENT  p.14 0.032787 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379) Sequence of Play ·  INDIVIDUAL TURNS  ·  MONTHLY QUESTS  · Taking Your Turn p.12 0.032258 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379) Hero Setup p.6 0.031746 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379) 1. Start of Turn ·  MAKING TRADES  ·  SPENDING VS. LOSING  p.13 0.03125 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)  LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE  p.23 0.030769 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)  BATTLING THE ADVERSARY  p.17 0.030303 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379) 3. End of Turn ·  PLACING SKULLS  p.21 0.029851 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)  PLACING SKULLS  ·  EVENTS  p.22 0.029412 (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 27 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 — not 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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379) Sequence of Play ·  INDIVIDUAL TURNS  ·  MONTHLY QUESTS  · Taking Your Turn p.12 #2 0.032258 (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
#2 RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)  HEROIC ACTIONS  · A) CLEANSE ·  ADVANTAGES  p.15 #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
#3 RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)  PLACING SKULLS  ·  EVENTS  p.22 #8 0.029412 (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
#4 RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379) Competitive Game ·  OVERVIEW  ·  SETUP CHANGES  ·  HERO GOALS  · COMPLETING HEROIC TESTS p.24 #11 0.014085 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379) 3. End of Turn ·  PLACING SKULLS  p.21 #7 0.029851 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379) 1. Start of Turn ·  MAKING TRADES  ·  SPENDING VS. LOSING  p.13 #4 0.03125 (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
#7 RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379) Hero Setup p.6 #3 0.031746 (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
#8 RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379) 2. Middle of Turn ·  MOVEMENT  p.14 #1 0.032787 (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 Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379) Competitive Game ·  OVERVIEW  ·  SETUP CHANGES  ·  HERO GOALS  · COMPLETING HEROIC TESTS p.24 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 79 ms · first delta 1840 ms · total 2245 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 79 ms · ask 2163 ms · gateway work 2245 ms · total 2245 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3020
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
50
tok/sec
138.1 tok/sec — 50 output tokens in 0.362 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 49s 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
NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched
BEFORE_FIRST_PLAY — "before the first turn" / "before we begin"
matched words (in the normalized question)
before we begin

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 308), 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.