Ruling — 1960: The Making of the President

← 1960: The Making of the President

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: 1960: The Making of the Presidentbg-27708-en-1e

With the exception of Turn 6 (The Debates) and Turn 9 (Election Day), each turn follows this sequence of play: [1]

1. Initiative Phase: An Initiative Check is made to determine who gets to choose the start player for the turn.[1] The player with the initiative may select the start player, who will play first during each Activity Phase of this turn.[1]

2. Five Activity Phases: In each phase, both players play and resolve a single card, beginning with the start player.[2] During these phases, players have several options: [2]

* Play a Card as an Event: The event text is read and resolved.[2] When a card is played as an Event, it is removed from the game after resolution, unless it is a persistent event, in which case it is placed in the appropriate persistent event stack to be resolved later.[2][3]

* Play a Card for Campaign Points: A player spends the number of Campaign Points (CP) indicated on the card to perform one of three possible actions: [4]

* Campaigning in States: Increasing State Support by adding state support cubes to any states in the currently occupied region (1 CP per added cube; requires a support check if the state is carried or occupied by an opponent).[3]

* Advertising in Regions: Performing a support check per CP, where each success equals one media support cube placed in any region's advertising box.[3]

* Positioning on Issues: Adding issue support cubes to any issue (the first cube costs 1 CP, and each additional cube costs 2 CP).[3]

* Note: A player may choose only one of these options per phase, and points cannot be split between different types of action.[4] After resolution, the card is discarded, though an opponent may spend one momentum marker to trigger the Event on the card (unless preempted by spending 2 momentum markers).[4][3]

* Play a Candidate Card: A candidate card can only be played if it is not exhausted.[3] It is resolved in the same manner as a card played for Campaign Points, but instead of being discarded, it is flipped to its exhausted side.[3][5] (Additionally, a player may choose to play their Candidate Card for 5 CP instead of playing a card from their hand).[5]

* During any of these phases, players always collect the number of rest cubes indicated on their chosen card (if any).[2]

3. Momentum Phase: At the start of this phase, both players must discard half of their momentum markers, rounded down.[5]

4. Campaign Strategy Phase: During this phase, players' accumulated rest cubes are deposited into the Political Capital Bag.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook · p.6 · Setting Up The Game · Sequence of Play · 1. Initiative Phase

[2] RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook · p.6 · 2. Activity Phases · A) Play a Card as an Event

[3] RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook · p.20 · 1. Initiative Phase · 2. Five Activity Phases · Normal Event · Persistent Event · Player Aid · Play a Card for Campaign Points · …

[4] RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook · p.7 · B) Play a Card for Campaign Points · Triggering Events

[5] RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook · p.10 · C) Play a Candidate Card · Step 1 - Momentum Decay · Step 2 - Issue Shift

🔧 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 97 ms · ask 8329 ms · total 8428 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8428 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.048172, "snippet": "There are five Activity Phases per turn. Each phase, both players play and resolve a single card, beginning with the start player. On their turn, players have several options: Play a Card as an Event Play a Card for Campaign Points Play a Candidate Card Additionally, players always collect the numbe", "headingPath": "2. Activity Phases · A) Play a Card as an Event", "sharpsignalDocId": 397}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "When a card is played for Campaign Points, the player may spend the number of Campaign Points (CP) indicated on the card to perform one of three possible actions: B1) Campaigning in States B2) Advertising in Regions B3) Positioning on Issues A player may choose only one of these options during a par", "headingPath": "B) Play a Card for Campaign Points · Triggering Events", "sharpsignalDocId": 397}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "Instead of playing a card from his hand, a player may choose to play his Candidate Card for 5 CP . This is resolved in exactly the same way as playing any other card for Campaign Points, with one exception: Candidate Cards are flipped over to their Exhausted side after being played. While flipped to", "headingPath": "C) Play a Candidate Card · Step 1 - Momentum Decay · Step 2 - Issue Shift", "sharpsignalDocId": 397}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045956, "snippet": "Place the state seals face-up in their corresponding states. Place the appropriate number of state support cubes in each state as indicated by candidate icons; each icon represents one point of starting Support. Place the candidate tokens in their home states; Kennedy in Massachusetts, Nixon in Cali", "headingPath": "Setting Up The Game · Sequence of Play · 1. Initiative Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 397}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "New Cards: Both players draw cards. In turns 1-5: 6 cards; in turns 7-8: 7 cards. Initiative Check: To see who goes first in this turn. Play a Card as an Event or Player resolves the event text on the card. Once resolved, the card is removed from the game. Player places card in the appropriate persi", "headingPath": "1. Initiative Phase · 2. Five Activity Phases · Normal Event · Persistent Event · Player Aid · Play a Card for Campaign Points · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 397}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.044343, "snippet": "A player may prevent his opponent from triggering an event by spending two momentum markers at the time he plays a card. If the Event is preempted, the opposing player may not trigger it, and the card is discarded normally. A player may only preempt Events on his own cards. He may not prevent his op", "headingPath": "Preempting Events · B1. Campaigning in States", "sharpsignalDocId": 397}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.042964, "snippet": "Play a Card as an Event .............................................6 Persistent Events .......................................................7 Gaining State Support ...............................................7 Losing Support ..........................................................7 B. Play ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 397}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.041757, "snippet": "The goal in 1960: The Making of the President is to claim a majority of electoral votes on Election Day. To do so, you must win states worth a larger combined electoral value than your opponent. Electoral votes are won by gaining State Support in individual states. This support is represented by cub", "headingPath": "Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 397}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setting Up The Game · Sequence of Play · 1. Initiative Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 397}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. Activity Phases · A) Play a Card as an Event", "sharpsignalDocId": 397}, {"page": 20, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. Initiative Phase · 2. Five Activity Phases · Normal Event · Persistent Event · Player Aid · Play a Card for Campaign Points · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 397}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "B) Play a Card for Campaign Points · Triggering Events", "sharpsignalDocId": 397}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "C) Play a Candidate Card · Step 1 - Momentum Decay · Step 2 - Issue Shift", "sharpsignalDocId": 397}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 397 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 397 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 0.92422 of 2085 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 13, 2026 12:07

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 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	2. Activity Phases · A) Play a Card as an Event	p.6	0.048172 (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 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	B) Play a Card for Campaign Points · Triggering Events	p.7	0.048131 (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 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	C) Play a Candidate Card · Step 1 - Momentum Decay · Step 2 - Issue Shift	p.10	0.047875 (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 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	Setting Up The Game · Sequence of Play · 1. Initiative Phase	p.6	0.045956 (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 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	1. Initiative Phase · 2. Five Activity Phases · Normal Event · Persistent Event · Player Aid · Play a Card for Campaign Points · …	p.20	0.045455 (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 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	Preempting Events · B1. Campaigning in States	p.8	0.044343 (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 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)		p.2	0.042964 (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 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	Overview	p.3	0.041757 (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 48 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 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	2. Activity Phases · A) Play a Card as an Event	p.6	#1	0.048172 (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 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	Setting Up The Game · Sequence of Play · 1. Initiative Phase	p.6	#4	0.045956 (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
#3	RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	Vice President Cards	p.14	#14	0.026334 (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
#4	RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	B) Play a Card for Campaign Points · Triggering Events	p.7	#2	0.048131 (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
#5	RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)		p.2	#7	0.042964 (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
#6	RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	3. Set the Stage · 4. Debate! · Debate Icons	p.12	#10	0.027799 (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
#7	RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	1. Initiative Phase · 2. Five Activity Phases · Normal Event · Persistent Event · Player Aid · Play a Card for Campaign Points · …	p.20	#5	0.045455 (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
#8	RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	C) Play a Candidate Card · Step 1 - Momentum Decay · Step 2 - Issue Shift	p.10	#3	0.047875 (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 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	Setting Up The Game · Sequence of Play · 1. Initiative Phase	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	2. Activity Phases · A) Play a Card as an Event	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	1. Initiative Phase · 2. Five Activity Phases · Normal Event · Persistent Event · Player Aid · Play a Card for Campaign Points · …	p.20	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	B) Play a Card for Campaign Points · Triggering Events	p.7	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK 1960: The Making of the President — Rulebook (corpus doc 397)	C) Play a Candidate Card · Step 1 - Momentum Decay · Step 2 - Issue Shift	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 97 ms · first delta 4157 ms · total 8428 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 97 ms · ask 8329 ms · gateway work 8428 ms · total 8428 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2617
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 581
tok/sec: 137.7 tok/sec — 581 output tokens in 4.219 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 17s 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 326), 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.