Ruling — Slay the Spire: The Board Game

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Slay the Spire: The Board Gamebg-338960-en-1e

To play, follow these steps:

**Setup**

1. Pick a character and take the corresponding player board, mini, starter deck, card rewards deck, and rare rewards deck.[1]

2. Shuffle the decks.[1]

3. Take out the token tray.[1]

4. Set your player board by putting a cube on your character's Energy track at 3, on their Block track at 0, and on their HP track at the highest printed number.[1]

5. Prepare the decks by taking out the following: Encounter Act I, '1st Encounter!' cards, Encounter Act I Elite, Summon Act I, Don't shuffle! (Summons), Event Act I, Relic, Potion, and Boss Relic.[1]

6. Shuffle each deck except Summons, Daze, and Status/, then place them in separate piles.[1]

7. Keep the '1st Encounter!' cards separate from the Encounter deck.[1]

8. Prepare the board by taking out the Act I board and randomly choosing an Act I map.[1]

9. Shuffle map tokens face down, randomly place dark map tokens on dark spaces and light map tokens on light spaces, then flip them face up.[1]

10. Place your character figure on the board in the lowest open space.[1]

11. Reveal the Boss by randomly choosing an Act I Boss (you may roll the die and use the Boss with the matching result) and place it face down on the map icon.[1]

12. Place the boot meeple at the bottom of the map next to the bottom encounter.[1]

13. Set up the Merchant Board if you encounter a Merchant by flipping it over to the Merchant side.[1]

14. For Neow's Blessing, shuffle the deck, have each player draw one card, gain the red reward, and choose one of the three blue rewards.[1]

15. If playing solo, also gain the 'Loaded Die' solo relic.[1]

16. Set up the 1st Encounter and start combat.[1]

17. For combat setup, place one enemy in each player's row (except Bosses), placing Summons to the right of the enemy that summoned them.[2]

**Combat Round: Player Turn**

All players take these steps simultaneously during a shared Player Turn:

1. Reset: Set Energy to 3 and Block to 0.[3]

2. Draw: Draw 5 cards (there is no maximum hand size).[3] If the draw pile is empty, shuffle the discard pile to become the new draw pile.[3]

3. Roll: Roll the die; any abilities that change the die result must be used before resolving other abilities.[3] The result determines monster actions for the Enemy Turn and triggers die relic abilities.[3]

4. Trigger Start of Turn Abilities: Trigger "Start of turn" or "Start of round" abilities, "Start of combat" abilities (only on the first turn), and Die relic abilities in any order players choose.[3]

5. Play: Players may play cards, use potions, and activate abilities in any order they choose.[3] When playing a card:

* Pay the Energy cost on the upper left of the card and track it on your board.[4]

* Choose targets for the card (you can target any enemy with effects; effects with a symbol affect all enemies in one row and always affect the Boss).[4]

* Resolve the card's printed effects from top to bottom (abilities triggered by the card do not take effect until after the card finishes resolving all text).[4][5]

* Cleanup: The card goes to your discard pile; if it is a Power, place it face up in front of you; if it Exhausts, it goes to your exhaust pile.[4][6]

**End of Turn**

1. Trigger End of turn abilities: Abilities with an "End of turn" effect trigger in any order players choose (this refers only to the end of the Player Turn).[4]

2. Discard: Discard all cards in your hand in any order.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.4 · Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.10 · Combat Setup · Encounter Setup · Enemy Cards · Special Abilities

[3] RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.12 · Combat Round - Player Turn · Player Turn · · Start of Turn · · Play

[4] RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.12 · To play a card: · · End of Turn

[5] RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.18 · Specific Card Interactions

[6] RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.6 · Your Play Area · Powers · Hit Points (HP) · Starting Ability

🔧 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 74 ms · ask 8460 ms · total 33906 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 25370 ms · generation 8536 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 12, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "Combat rounds consist of a Player Turn followed by an Enemy Turn. Rounds repeat until combat ends. Shuffle your deck before combat starts. There's one shared Player Turn that's broken into the phases below: Start of Turn, Play, End of Turn. All players take these steps simultaneously. Reset Set Ener", "headingPath": "Combat Round - Player Turn · Player Turn · · Start of Turn · · Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "Below is a suggestion for how to organize your play area. Do whatever works for you! Draw Pile Shuffle your deck before combat begins to create your draw pile. Discard Pile After you play a card, it goes to your discard pile. Exhaust Pile When you Exhaust a card, place it in the exhaust pile. You ca", "headingPath": "Your Play Area · Powers · Hit Points (HP) · Starting Ability", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "Pay Pay the Energy cost on the upper left of the card. Track Energy on your board. Choose Make any decisions and choose targets for the card. You can target any enemy with your effects. Effects with a symbol affect all enemies in one row and always affect the Boss. Being Played While the card is bei", "headingPath": "To play a card: · · End of Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.044567, "snippet": "Pick a Character Each player chooses a character and takes the corresponding player board, mini, starter deck, card rewards deck, and rare rewards deck. Shuffle the decks. Token Tray Take out the token tray. Player Board Put a cube on your character's Energy track at 3, on their Block track at 0, an", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.042745, "snippet": "Rows Each player has a row. Enemies are placed in rows, except for Bosses. Summons -Some enemies will summon more enemies. If you see a green bar and this icon , then search for that enemy in the Summons deck and put them into play at the start of combat. Some enemy actions or special abilities can ", "headingPath": "Combat Setup · Encounter Setup · Enemy Cards · Special Abilities", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Whenever a card's text contradicts the rules, the card text takes precedence. When a player dies in a Boss fight, other players can continue fighting. Enemies in a row with a dead player target the nearest row with a player below them. If there are no players below them, they target the nearest row ", "headingPath": "Golden Rule · The Last Stand · Sequential Turns · Choose Your Relic", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Players heal at the start of Act IV, just like they do at the start of Acts II and III. Act IV must be unlocked (see page 20). To enter Act IV you must obtain all 3 keys by the end of Act III. The Act IV map is on the back of the Act IV Boss card. To obtain a key... Ruby Key - All players must simul", "headingPath": "Act IV · Quick Start Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "You start at the encounter on the bottom of the map. When you're done with a room, move the meeple up the map along one of the paths to the next room. See rules for each type of room below: 1st Encounter! - If this is the first encounter, place a '1st Encounter!' card in each player's row (see Comba", "headingPath": "The Map · Encounter · Elite · Event · Campfire · Treasure · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Combat Setup · Encounter Setup · Enemy Cards · Special Abilities", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Combat Round - Player Turn · Player Turn · · Start of Turn · · Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "To play a card: · · End of Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Specific Card Interactions", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Your Play Area · Powers · Hit Points (HP) · Starting Ability", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 257 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 257 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 0.89462 of 2809 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 13, 2026 13:19

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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Combat Round - Player Turn · Player Turn · · Start of Turn · · Play	p.12	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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Your Play Area · Powers · Hit Points (HP) · Starting Ability	p.6	0.047883 (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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	To play a card: · · End of Turn	p.12	0.045228 (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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Setup	p.4	0.044567 (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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Combat Setup · Encounter Setup · Enemy Cards · Special Abilities	p.10	0.042745 (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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Golden Rule · The Last Stand · Sequential Turns · Choose Your Relic	p.23	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
#7	RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Act IV · Quick Start Rules	p.22	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
#8	RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	The Map · Encounter · Elite · Event · Campfire · Treasure · …	p.9	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

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 32 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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	To play a card: · · End of Turn	p.12	#3	0.045228 (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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Your Play Area · Powers · Hit Points (HP) · Starting Ability	p.6	#2	0.047883 (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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Combat Setup · Encounter Setup · Enemy Cards · Special Abilities	p.10	#5	0.042745 (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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Setup	p.4	#4	0.044567 (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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Rewards	p.8	#14	0.026671 (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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Cards from Other Characters · Playing Copies	p.19	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Specific Card Interactions	p.18	#12	0.027757 (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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Combat Round - Player Turn · Player Turn · · Start of Turn · · Play	p.12	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Combat Setup · Encounter Setup · Enemy Cards · Special Abilities	p.10	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Combat Round - Player Turn · Player Turn · · Start of Turn · · Play	p.12	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	To play a card: · · End of Turn	p.12	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Specific Card Interactions	p.18	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Your Play Area · Powers · Hit Points (HP) · Starting Ability	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 74 ms · first delta 2105 ms · total 33906 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 25370 ms · retrieval 74 ms · ask 8460 ms · gateway work 8536 ms · total 33906 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2976
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 889
tok/sec: 139.2 tok/sec — 889 output tokens in 6.388 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 1s 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 185), 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.