Ruling — Commands & Colors: Napoleonics

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Commands & Colors: Napoleonicsbg-62222-en-1e

To play Commands & Colors: Napoleonics, follow these procedures:

**Setup**

1. Select a battle from the scenario booklet.[1]

2. Place the board in the center of the table, with players sitting on the side closest to the army they will command.[1]

3. Hand each player the applicable National Unit Reference Card, an infantry in square track, and a set of infantry in square counters numbered 1-4.[1]

4. Place terrain hexes onto the battlefield as indicated by the scenario map.[1]

5. Separate the French forces (dark blue) and British/Portuguese forces (red and brown blocks), then complete each Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery unit with its required number of blocks as detailed in the National Unit Reference Card.[1]

6. Shuffle the Command card deck thoroughly and deal Command cards to each side per the selected scenario's battle notes, keeping them secret from the opponent.[1]

7. Place the eight battle dice and Victory Banner counters within reach of both players.[1]

8. Review any special rules or victory conditions for the battle.[1]

**Game Turn (Sequence of Play)**

The starting player is indicated in the scenario's battle notes.[1] Players alternate turns until one player reaches the required number of Victory Banners.[2] During a turn, follow this sequence:

1. **COMMAND phase**: Play a Command card from your hand, placing it face up and reading it aloud.[2][3] If the card cannot order any of your units, disregard phases 2 through 4 and draw a new Command card to end your turn.[3]

2. **ORDER phase**: Announce all units and leaders you intend to order, within the limits of the Section or Tactic Command card just played.[2] Only units and leaders issued an order may move, battle, or take a special action during your turn.[4] You may only give one order to each unit or leader per single game turn.[4]

3. **MOVEMENT phase**: Move all ordered units and leaders, one at a time, respecting National Unit Regulations and terrain movement limitations.[2]

4. **COMBAT phase**: After all movement is completed, battle one ordered unit at a time, fighting each unit's combat to completion (including additional actions) before beginning another.[2]

5. **DRAW phase**: Draw a new Command card.[2]

**Scoring and Ending the Game**

* The object of the game is to be the first to capture a set number of Victory Banners (usually 5 to 9), depending on the scenario.[2]

* A Victory Banner is gained for each enemy leader or enemy unit entirely eliminated.[2]

* In some scenarios, additional banners can be earned by capturing certain terrain hexes or accomplishing other objectives.[2]

* Victory is achieved the instant the last required Victory Banner is gained.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook · p.5 · 3. SETTING UP A GAME

[2] RULEBOOK Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook · p.5 · 4. OBJECT OF THE GAME · 5. GAME-TURN (SEQUENCE OF PLAY)

[3] RULEBOOK Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook · p.6 · Phase 1. PLAY A COMMAND CARD

[4] RULEBOOK Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook · p.6 · Phase 2. ORDER YOUR UNITS & LEADERS

🔧 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 79 ms · ask 6901 ms · total 6981 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6981 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "At the start of your turn, play a Command card from your hand. Place it face up in front of you, and read it aloud. A Command card usually dictates the number of units or leaders ordered for the turn, as well as the section(s) of the battlefield to which they must belong. Hexes with a dotted line ru", "headingPath": "Phase 1. PLAY A COMMAND CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "The object of the game is to be the first to capture a set number of Victory Banners (usually 5 to 9), depending on the selected battle scenario's victory conditions. A Victory Banner is gained for each enemy leader or enemy unit entirely eliminated. When the last block of a unit, or a leader, is el", "headingPath": "4. OBJECT OF THE GAME · 5. GAME-TURN (SEQUENCE OF PLAY)", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "1. Select a battle from the scenario booklet. PLAY NOTE: If this is your first game of Commands & Colors: Napoleonics, we recommend that you set up and play the first battle in the Scenario Booklet-Rolica (French First Position) 17 August 1808, which is designed to introduce you to the basics of Nap", "headingPath": "3. SETTING UP A GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046244, "snippet": "After playing a Command card, announce which corresponding units and leaders you choose to order. Only those units and leaders that are issued an order may move, battle, or take a special action during your turn. You may only give one order to each unit or leader during the course of a single game t", "headingPath": "Phase 2. ORDER YOUR UNITS & LEADERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.044237, "snippet": "All units may engage in melee combat. An unattached leader may not engage in melee combat. A unit attacking an adjacent enemy unit is said to be engaging that enemy unit in melee. Targets engaged in melee are always considered within range and in line of sight of their attacker. A unit adjacent to a", "headingPath": "MELEE COMBAT · Melee Combat Procedure", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.043301, "snippet": "Command & Colors Napoleonics 1 Game Design by Richard Borg 4th Edition © 2018 GMT Games, LLC", "headingPath": "RULES OF PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.043269, "snippet": "When a cavalry unit is Battling Back. When an infantry unit is attacking a cavalry unit in melee and the cavalry unit plays a First Strike Command card. When all spaces on a player's square track are filled with Command cards. If the infantry unit does not choose to form square, the cavalry melee at", "headingPath": "Forming Square and Combat · French Player's Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The battlefield game board (hereafter referred to as the battlefield) is a hex grid, 13 hexes wide by 9 hexes deep. The battlefield is divided into three sections by two dotted lines, giving each player a Left Flank Section, a Center Section and a Right Flank Section. Where the dotted line cuts thro", "headingPath": "Battlefield Game Board · Terrain Tiles · Command Cards · Battle Dice", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. SETTING UP A GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4. OBJECT OF THE GAME · 5. GAME-TURN (SEQUENCE OF PLAY)", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase 1. PLAY A COMMAND CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase 2. ORDER YOUR UNITS & LEADERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 555 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 555 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 0.90938 of 2240 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 13, 2026 13:35

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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	Phase 1. PLAY A COMMAND CARD	p.6	0.04866 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	4. OBJECT OF THE GAME · 5. GAME-TURN (SEQUENCE OF PLAY)	p.5	0.048387 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	3. SETTING UP A GAME	p.5	0.047371 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	Phase 2. ORDER YOUR UNITS & LEADERS	p.6	0.046244 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	MELEE COMBAT · Melee Combat Procedure	p.10	0.044237 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	RULES OF PLAY	p.1	0.043301 (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))	92
#7	RULEBOOK Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	Forming Square and Combat · French Player's Turn	p.17	0.043269 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	Battlefield Game Board · Terrain Tiles · Command Cards · Battle Dice	p.2	0.030303 (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 56 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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	3. SETTING UP A GAME	p.5	#3	0.047371 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	Phase 2. ORDER YOUR UNITS & LEADERS	p.6	#4	0.046244 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	ATTACHED LEADERS:	p.7	#18	0.025123 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	Forming Square and Combat · French Player's Turn	p.17	#7	0.043269 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	Tactic Cards (22)	p.24	#16	0.025463 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	Section Cards (48)	p.22	#15	0.025989 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	4. OBJECT OF THE GAME · 5. GAME-TURN (SEQUENCE OF PLAY)	p.5	#2	0.048387 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	Phase 1. PLAY A COMMAND CARD	p.6	#1	0.04866 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	3. SETTING UP A GAME	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	4. OBJECT OF THE GAME · 5. GAME-TURN (SEQUENCE OF PLAY)	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	Phase 1. PLAY A COMMAND CARD	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555)	Phase 2. ORDER YOUR UNITS & LEADERS	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 79 ms · first delta 2479 ms · total 6981 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 79 ms · ask 6901 ms · gateway work 6981 ms · total 6981 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3599
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 609
tok/sec: 136.7 tok/sec — 609 output tokens in 4.455 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 18s 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 487), 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.