Ruling — A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition)

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You asked

When a vassal is in a combat, how do the standard combat steps change — which house cards does the vassal play, and can its commander still use the Valyrian Steel Blade on it?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition)bg-103343-en-1e · A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) – Mother of Dragonsbg-257496-en-1e

When a vassal is in combat, the standard combat steps are altered as follows:

* **Step 3 (Choose and Reveal House Cards):** Vassals do not use standard house cards.[1] Instead, they use house cards from a common deck of vassal house cards.[1] The vassal's commander shuffles these cards and draws three to serve as a temporary hand, then chooses one card to play.[1]

* **Step 4 (Use Valyrian Steel Blade):** If a commander holds the Valyrian Steel Blade, they can use it to apply +1 to the combat strength of their vassal, provided they flip the token as normal.[1] The vassal does not need to be in the top position of the Fiefdoms track for this to occur.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) – Mother of Dragons — Rulebook · p.6 · Combat with Vassals · Power Reward · Bidding with Vassals · Dominance

🔧 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 106 ms · ask 5448 ms · total 5556 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5556 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 20, "score": 0.032522, "snippet": "If either the attacker or the defender holds the Valyrian Steel Blade token, that player now has the option of using its ability to provide +1 to his total Combat Strength. If used, flip the token to its faded side, as a reminder that it cannot be used again this round. Both sides now combine their ", "headingPath": "4. Use Valyrian Steel Blade · 5. Calculate Final Combat Strength · 6. Combat Resolution · 1. Determine Victor · 2. Casualties", "sharpsignalDocId": 373}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.032002, "snippet": "/The Valyrian Steel Blade Token /The player holding the Valyrian Steel Blade token may, once per game round, use the token in combat to grant himself a +1 Combat Strength bonus. Whenever a player uses the Valyrian Steel Blade, he flips the token over to its faded side, indicating it has been used th", "headingPath": "The Valyrian Steel Blade T oken · The King's Court Track", "sharpsignalDocId": 373}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.030798, "snippet": "Leader Name and Artwork: /The artwork and name identifying a personality from A Song of Ice and Fire . Combat Strength: /The Combat Strength of a revealed House card is added to its player's Combat Strength. Text Ability: /The House card's special ability that may affect the combat or some other asp", "headingPath": "H C B · 3. Choose and Reveal House Cards · The House Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 373}, {"page": 29, "score": 0.030331, "snippet": "Tides of Battle is an optional module to A Game of /Thrones: /The Board Game that adds an element of unpredictably and deadliness to combat. /This increased risk can make negotiation even more vital, gaining support in combat more critical; it creates additional drama (and casualties) in combat and ", "headingPath": "Tides of bATTLe", "sharpsignalDocId": 373}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.029877, "snippet": "Some cards do not have a text ability, instead they provide their player with one or more combat icons . /There are two combat icons in A Game of /Thrones: /The Board Game: /The Sword icon and the Fortification icon. T S I: During the 'Combat Resolution' step, the player who won the combat ", "headingPath": "the COmbat iCOnS", "sharpsignalDocId": 373}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.02904, "snippet": "Whenever a player marches one or more of his units into an area containing units from another House, combat ensues. Combat is resolved by comparing the total Combat Strength of the battling sides. /The victor is the player who gathers the highest Combat Strength. /The following elements can contribu", "headingPath": "combAT · U C S · 1. Call for Support", "sharpsignalDocId": 373}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.028624, "snippet": "/The game board features three different Influence tracks: /The Iron /Throne track, the Fiefdoms track, and the King's Court track. /The player in the highest position on each track receives a specific Dominance token: /The Iron /Throne, the Valyrian Steel Blade, or the Messenger Raven. /The effects", "headingPath": "T I T  D T · The Iron Throne Track · The Iron Throne Token · The Fiefdoms Track", "sharpsignalDocId": 373}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.028219, "snippet": "From the invasion of the First Men to the reign of the Andal kings; from the fiery conquest of the Targaryens to the rebellion of Robert Baratheon, the continent of Westeros has known constant military upheaval. Yet, the game of thrones is not always played on the battlefield. Intrigue, betrayal, an", "headingPath": "Westeros Card: Clash of Kings · Bidding on the Influence Tracks", "sharpsignalDocId": 373}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Combat with Vassals · Power Reward · Bidding with Vassals · Dominance", "sharpsignalDocId": 908}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 373 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 373 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 0.91344 of 543 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 12, 2026 23:50

retrieval — what the passage search returned

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 rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 373)	4. Use Valyrian Steel Blade · 5. Calculate Final Combat Strength · 6. Combat Resolution · 1. Determine Victor · 2. Casualties	p.20	0.032522 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 373)	The Valyrian Steel Blade T oken · The King's Court Track	p.11	0.032002 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 373)	H C B · 3. Choose and Reveal House Cards · The House Cards	p.19	0.030798 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 373)	Tides of bATTLe	p.29	0.030331 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 373)	the COmbat iCOnS	p.19	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 A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 373)	combAT · U C S · 1. Call for Support	p.17	0.02904 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 373)	T I T  D T · The Iron Throne Track · The Iron Throne Token · The Fiefdoms Track	p.11	0.028624 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 373)	Westeros Card: Clash of Kings · Bidding on the Influence Tracks	p.10	0.028219 (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 the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

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 80 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 at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) – Mother of Dragons — Rulebook (corpus doc 908)	Combat with Vassals · Power Reward · Bidding with Vassals · Dominance	p.6	#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 A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) – Mother of Dragons — Rulebook (corpus doc 908)		p.2	#13	0.014286 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) – Mother of Dragons — Rulebook (corpus doc 908)	Choosing Vassals · Ordering Vassals	p.5	#12	0.015152 (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
#4	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) – Mother of Dragons — Rulebook (corpus doc 908)	Wilding Attacks · Additional Vassal Rules · HOUSE TARGARYEN · Targaryen Victory	p.7	#10	0.015625 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 373)	combAT · U C S · 1. Call for Support	p.17	#6	0.02904 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) – Mother of Dragons — Rulebook (corpus doc 908)	9. Place and Adjust Influence Tokens · 10. Claim Dominance Tokens · 11. Place Vassal Markers and Assign Vassal Tokens · 12. Place Units	p.4	#11	0.015385 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) – Mother of Dragons — Rulebook (corpus doc 908)	13. Place Garrison and Neutral Force Tokens · 14. Prepare Braavos and the Iron Bank · 15. Gather Power Tokens · ESSOS BOARD · VASSALS	p.5	#14	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
#8	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) – Mother of Dragons — Rulebook (corpus doc 908)	Ordering Vassals	p.6	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition) – Mother of Dragons — Rulebook (corpus doc 908)	Combat with Vassals · Power Reward · Bidding with Vassals · Dominance	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 106 ms · first delta 4274 ms · total 5556 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 106 ms · ask 5448 ms · gateway work 5556 ms · total 5556 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4113
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 166
tok/sec: 137.2 tok/sec — 166 output tokens in 1.210 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 29s 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.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 301), 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.