Ruling — Dominant Species

You asked

How do I play

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Dominant Speciesbg-62219-en-1e

Dominant Species is played in a series of turns where all players take part more or less simultaneously.[1] Each turn is divided into three phases:

1. **Planning Phase**: Players take turns, in left-to-right Initiative order, placing one of their available action pawns (APs) into any vacant 'eyeball' action space of the action display.[1] Each eyeball space can hold a maximum of one AP.[1] This continues until the last animal in Initiative order has placed an AP, at which point the round ends and a new round begins with the animal at the front of the Initiative track.[1] Rounds continue until all animals have run out of available APs to place; any animal that has run out or is unplayed is skipped.[1]

2. **Execution Phase**: APs are removed from the action display in top-to-bottom, left-to-right order.[1] When an AP is removed, the owning player performs the action indicated by that section's title bar.[1] The specific order of actions is: Initiative, Adaptation, Regression, Abundance, Wasteland, Depletion, Glaciation, Speciation, Wanderlust, Migration, Competition, and Domination.[1]

3. **Reset Phase**: During this phase, some species may go extinct and one player may be able to score VPs via the Survival Card.[1] If the game has not ended, the action display is reset for the following turn.[1] Specific reset activities include:

* Sliding APs in the second, third, and fourth spaces of the Glaciation section one space to the left.[2]

* Removing all elements from the Regression, Depletion, and Wanderlust sections and placing them back into the draw bag.[2]

* Sliding elements from the Wasteland Box down into the Depletion Box, and from the Abundance section down into the Wasteland Box, and from the Adaptation section down into the Regression Box.[2]

* Drawing 4 random elements for the 'leaf' squares of the Adaptation, Abundance, and Wanderlust sections.[2]

* Drawing enough new Domination Cards to fill the 'Available Dominance Cards' section.[2]

* Flipping the top tile of each of the three large tile stacks face up if they were face down.[2]

The game continues from turn to turn until it ends and final scoring occurs.[1] If the game ends via the Ice Age card, players finish remaining Domination actions, perform Extinction, score the Survival Card, remove all Domination markers from earth, and score each tile of earth one last time.[2] The player with the highest VP total wins (in case of a tie, the animal closest to the top of the food chain wins for its controller).[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook · p.9 · Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase

[2] RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook · p.20 · Reseed · Endgame

🔧 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 87 ms · ask 6944 ms · total 7036 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 7036 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "Take two of each of the six element types and place them on the tiles of earth as indicated on the board. Place these element disks so that they slightly overlap each of the tiles that meet at that intersection. Gather up the rest of the elements and form a draw pool by placing them into the cloth b", "headingPath": "The elements · The species · Begin play", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "Dominant Species is played in a series of turns in which all players take part more or less simultaneously. Each turn is divided into three Phases: During the Planning Phase, players will take turns placing their available action pawns (APs) into the 'eyeball' spaces of the action display that domin", "headingPath": "Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.044916, "snippet": "Place the board - face up! - in the center of the table. Have each player choose the animal he would like to play. Give each player the animal display matching their choice. Alternately, you can assign one animal display to each player at random. See page 17 for a suggested alternate method of assig", "headingPath": "The Board · The Animals · The Tiles · The Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.044071, "snippet": "When playing Dominant Species with only 2 or 3 players, the following rules may be used which allow for each player to control multiple animals. These rules conflict with some of those found elsewhere in this rulebook: where there is conflict, the rules in this column take precedence. When assigning", "headingPath": "Optional 2- and 3-player Rules · Multiple animals · Actions · Final scoring · Optional (random) Earth Setup · Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.04329, "snippet": "Action Pawns (APs)The set of wooden cylinders that players will use each turn to mark the actions they wish to perform. AnimalMammal, reptile, bird, amphibian, arachnid or insect. One of the six animal classes that each player will be representing throughout the game. Each animal class is represente", "headingPath": "Glossary", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.043009, "snippet": "After all Competition actions have been performed, APs are removed from this section one at a time in left-to-right order. When an animal's AP is removed, that player selects one tile on earth that has not yet been chosen for Domination this turn. That tile is then scored by performing the following", "headingPath": "Domination", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.042925, "snippet": "At the start of the Execution Phase, remove any AP that was placed here. That player performs the following activities: On the Initiative track, swap his animal's initiative marker with that of the animal directly to the left of it-thus effectively moving one space forward on the Initiative track. I", "headingPath": "Initiative · Adaptation", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "After all Speciation actions have been performed, APs are removed from this section one at a time in left-to-right order. When an animal's AP is removed, that player selects one of the available face up large tiles (those atop the Wanderlust Tiles stacks). He then performs the following activities i", "headingPath": "Wanderlust", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 20, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Reseed · Endgame", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 207 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 207 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 0.92527 of 2101 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 13, 2026 00:27

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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	The elements · The species · Begin play	p.4	0.047938 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase	p.9	0.047619 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	The Board · The Animals · The Tiles · The Cards	p.4	0.044916 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Optional 2- and 3-player Rules · Multiple animals · Actions · Final scoring · Optional (random) Earth Setup · Tiles	p.17	0.044071 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Glossary	p.3	0.04329 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Domination	p.16	0.043009 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Initiative · Adaptation	p.10	0.042925 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Wanderlust	p.14	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

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 36 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 at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	The elements · The species · Begin play	p.4	#1	0.047938 (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 + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Glaciation	p.13	#24	0.0125 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase	p.9	#2	0.047619 (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 + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Competition	p.15	#19	0.026154 (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 + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Earth · Elements	p.6	#10	0.029116 (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 + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Optional 2- and 3-player Rules · Multiple animals · Actions · Final scoring · Optional (random) Earth Setup · Tiles	p.17	#4	0.044071 (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 + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Reseed · Endgame	p.20	#9	0.02971 (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 + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	The Board · The Animals · The Tiles · The Cards	p.4	#3	0.044916 (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 + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase	p.9	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Reseed · Endgame	p.20	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 87 ms · first delta 3063 ms · total 7036 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 87 ms · ask 6944 ms · gateway work 7036 ms · total 7036 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4135
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 585
tok/sec: 149.0 tok/sec — 585 output tokens in 3.926 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 52s 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 132), 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.