Ruling — Pandemic Legacy: Season 1

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1bg-161936-en-1e

Pandemic Legacy is a cooperative game where all players work together to develop cures and prevent disease outbreaks before four diseases contaminate humanity.[1][2] Players win or lose together.[1]

**A Player's Turn**

Each player's turn is divided into three steps:[3]

1. Do 4 actions.[2][3]

2. Draw 2 Player cards.[2][3]

* Resolve any epidemics.[2]

* Discard to 7 cards.[2]

3. Infect cities.[2][3]

After a player finishes infecting cities, the player on their left goes next.[3] Players may freely offer advice and opinions, but the player whose turn it is decides what to do.[3]

**Gameplay Mechanics**

* **Hands:** Players keep their hands faceup at all times.[4] Hands can contain City cards (used in some actions) and Event cards (which can be played at any time).[3]

* **Characters:** Each player selects a character and color, receiving a corresponding Reference card and pawn.[4][5] To create a character for game 1, select a Character card and give it a name.[6] Characters can be physically or mentally damaged; when this happens, you choose an available scar to add to the character's card.[6] If a character has no room for more scars or is in a city that falls, the character is lost and their card must be destroyed (ripped up).[6]

* **Progression:** The game is broken into 12 months.[7] If the group succeeds in a month, you move to the next month.[7] If you fail, you get one more chance to succeed in the current month using the rules and objectives for that month; if you lose again, you move to the next month.[7]

* **Funding:** If you win, advance to the next month and decrease funding by 2.[8] If you lose the first half of a month, play the second half and increase funding by 2.[8] If you lose in the second half, increase funding by 2 and proceed to the next month.[8] Funding stays between 0 and 10.[8]

[1] RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook · p.2 · by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau · STARTING CONTENTS · HOW DO YOU PLAY A LEGACY GAME?

[2] RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook · p.2

[3] RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook · p.4 · Place infection rate marker and infect 9 cities · PLAY

[4] RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook · p.4 · SETUP · Read the Mission Briefing · Set out the board and pieces · Place outbreaks, cure markers, and objectives · Select Funded Events, add them to the deck, and deal out Player cards · Prepare the Player Deck · …

[5] RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook · p.4

[6] RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook · p.3 · BAGHDAD CHARACTER REFERENCE · RULE STICKER A will go here · SCARS · LOST CHARACTERS

[7] RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook · p.2 · IF YOU'VE NEVER PLAYED PANDEMIC… · IF YOU HAVE PLAYED PANDEMIC… · WHAT STAYS AND WHAT GETS RESET? · GAME MONTHS

[8] RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook · p.9 · GAME CALENDAR

🔧 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 61 ms · ask 5330 ms · total 14727 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 9334 ms · generation 5393 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Unlike most games, which fully reset every time you play, Pandemic Legacy carries some elements forward from one game to the next. Decisions you make in game 1 will be there in game 2, 3, and every game played with your copy of the game. Different groups will make different decisions and will have a", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "We recommend that you play a few games without any of the special 'Legacy' rules to get a feel for the decisions you will have to make. Read this rulebook then play without using the following rules: Game Months, Legacy Deck, Dossiers Objectives, Funding, Game Calendar, Panic Level Scars and Lost Ch", "headingPath": "IF YOU'VE NEVER PLAYED PANDEMIC… · IF YOU HAVE PLAYED PANDEMIC… · WHAT STAYS AND WHAT GETS RESET? · GAME MONTHS", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046452, "snippet": "You may notice that some steps are missing. They will be added later. 1 When playing a month for the first time, draw cards off the top of the Legacy Deck until you reach one that says STOP . Read the mission briefing and integrate new cards (if any) to the game. 2 Put all structures (initially you'", "headingPath": "SETUP · Read the Mission Briefing · Set out the board and pieces · Place outbreaks, cure markers, and objectives · Select Funded Events, add them to the deck, and deal out Player cards · Prepare the Player Deck · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.044854, "snippet": "You win as soon as you meet the necessary number of objectives. The game ends immediately, even if it is the middle of a player's turn or a series of outbreaks. There are many ways for the game to end and the players to lose: Immediately when the outbreaks marker reaches the last space of the Outbre", "headingPath": "GAME END · IF YOU WIN THE GAME · IF YOU LOSE THE GAME · IN EITHER CASE (WIN OR LOSE) · GAME END UPGRADES · UNFUNDED EVENTS · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.043656, "snippet": "If you win, advance to the next month and decrease your funding by 2. If you lose the first half of the month, play the second half of the month and increase your funding by 2. If you lose in the second half of the month, increase your funding by 2, then proceed to the next month. Funding cannot go ", "headingPath": "GAME CALENDAR", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.043549, "snippet": "The Legacy Deck contains cards that will describe what happens over the course of the game's 12 months. It is arranged in a specific order - do not look through or shuffle these cards. At the start of a game, draw the cards and read them one at a time, until you get to a card that says STOP on the b", "headingPath": "THE LEGACY DECK · THE DOSSIERS U · THE PACKAGES", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.041292, "snippet": "As you go through the Legacy Deck, you will come across cards that have dossier numbers or letters on them. When you do, open up – and tear off using the precut corner – the dossier doors matching the numbers (or letters) on the card, one at a time, resolving each one before opening the next. Some o", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.04104, "snippet": "Funding Date Players and Characters Win or Lose ? Early Early Early Early Early Early Early Early Early Early Early Early Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Late January GAME CALENDAR May March July September November February June April August October December NOTES: If you win,", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau · STARTING CONTENTS · HOW DO YOU PLAY A LEGACY GAME?", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Place infection rate marker and infect 9 cities · PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP · Read the Mission Briefing · Set out the board and pieces · Place outbreaks, cure markers, and objectives · Select Funded Events, add them to the deck, and deal out Player cards · Prepare the Player Deck · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "BAGHDAD CHARACTER REFERENCE · RULE STICKER A will go here · SCARS · LOST CHARACTERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "IF YOU'VE NEVER PLAYED PANDEMIC… · IF YOU HAVE PLAYED PANDEMIC… · WHAT STAYS AND WHAT GETS RESET? · GAME MONTHS", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME CALENDAR", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 255 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 255 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 0.88003 of 1517 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 13, 2026 13:16

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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)		p.2	0.047643 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	IF YOU'VE NEVER PLAYED PANDEMIC… · IF YOU HAVE PLAYED PANDEMIC… · WHAT STAYS AND WHAT GETS RESET? · GAME MONTHS	p.2	0.047643 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	SETUP · Read the Mission Briefing · Set out the board and pieces · Place outbreaks, cure markers, and objectives · Select Funded Events, add them to the deck, and deal out Player cards · Prepare the Player Deck · …	p.4	0.046452 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	GAME END · IF YOU WIN THE GAME · IF YOU LOSE THE GAME · IN EITHER CASE (WIN OR LOSE) · GAME END UPGRADES · UNFUNDED EVENTS · …	p.8	0.044854 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	GAME CALENDAR	p.9	0.043656 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	THE LEGACY DECK · THE DOSSIERS U · THE PACKAGES	p.2	0.043549 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)		p.2	0.041292 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)		p.9	0.04104 (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 41 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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau · STARTING CONTENTS · HOW DO YOU PLAY A LEGACY GAME?	p.2	#9	0.029958 (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
#2	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	SETUP · Read the Mission Briefing · Set out the board and pieces · Place outbreaks, cure markers, and objectives · Select Funded Events, add them to the deck, and deal out Player cards · Prepare the Player Deck · …	p.4	#3	0.046452 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)		p.2	#22	0.024286 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	BAGHDAD CHARACTER REFERENCE · RULE STICKER A will go here · SCARS · LOST CHARACTERS	p.3	#11	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))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	IF YOU'VE NEVER PLAYED PANDEMIC… · IF YOU HAVE PLAYED PANDEMIC… · WHAT STAYS AND WHAT GETS RESET? · GAME MONTHS	p.2	#2	0.047643 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	Place infection rate marker and infect 9 cities · PLAY	p.4	#15	0.027402 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)		p.4	#18	0.025004 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	GAME CALENDAR	p.9	#5	0.043656 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau · STARTING CONTENTS · HOW DO YOU PLAY A LEGACY GAME?	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	Place infection rate marker and infect 9 cities · PLAY	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	SETUP · Read the Mission Briefing · Set out the board and pieces · Place outbreaks, cure markers, and objectives · Select Funded Events, add them to the deck, and deal out Player cards · Prepare the Player Deck · …	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	BAGHDAD CHARACTER REFERENCE · RULE STICKER A will go here · SCARS · LOST CHARACTERS	p.3	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	IF YOU'VE NEVER PLAYED PANDEMIC… · IF YOU HAVE PLAYED PANDEMIC… · WHAT STAYS AND WHAT GETS RESET? · GAME MONTHS	p.2	no quote on the wire
[8]	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	GAME CALENDAR	p.9	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 61 ms · first delta 2206 ms · total 14727 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 9334 ms · retrieval 61 ms · ask 5330 ms · gateway work 5393 ms · total 14727 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3866
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 471
tok/sec: 150.0 tok/sec — 471 output tokens in 3.140 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 12s 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 182), 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.