Ruling — Marvel Champions: The Card Game

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Marvel Champions: The Card Gamebg-285774-en-1e

To play the game, follow these procedures:

**Setup**

1. Select Identities: Each player selects one identity, placing their alter-ego side face up.[1]

2. Set Hit Points: Each player sets their hit point dial equal to the starting hit points of their character, found at the bottom of their identity card.[1]

3. Select First Player: As a group, the players select a first player and place the first player token in front of that player.[1]

4. Set Aside Obligations: For each identity being played, set aside their obligation card.[1]

5. Set Aside Nemesis Sets: For each identity being played, set aside their nemesis and the encounter cards of that nemesis.[1]

6. Shuffle Player Decks: Each player shuffles their player deck.[1]

7. Collect Tokens and Status Cards: Collect a pool of damage tokens, threat tokens, acceleration tokens, and all-purpose counters within reach of each player; place stacks of stunned, confused, and tough status cards near this pool.[1]

8. Select Scenario: Select a scenario and put its villain deck and main scheme deck into play near the center of the play area.[1]

9. Set the Villain's Hit Points: Set the villain's hit point dial to the value indicated by the villain card.[1]

10. Create the Encounter Deck: Shuffle the encounter sets listed on side 1A of the main scheme card with the obligation cards set aside during setup step four to create the encounter deck.[1]

11. Put Setup Cards Into Play: Search each deck and the set aside area for any cards with the setup keyword and put them into a play area.[1]

12. Resolve Scenario Setup and When Revealed Abilities: Resolve any 'Setup' abilities on main scheme card 1A, flip the main scheme card to side 1B and resolve any 'When Revealed' abilities on that side, and resolve any 'Setup' and 'When Revealed' abilities on the villain.[1]

13. Campaign Setup: If playing in campaign mode, resolve the Setup campaign instructions listed for the scenario in its associated rulebook.[1]

14. Draw Cards: Each player draws cards from their deck until they have cards equal in number to their hand size (including modifiers), as listed near the bottom of their identity card.[1]

15. Resolve Mulligans: Each player may discard any number of cards from hand, and then draw up to their starting hand size.[1]

16. Resolve Player Setup Abilities: Resolve any 'Setup' abilities on player cards in play.[1]

**A Player's Turn**

During their turn, a player may perform the following options, in any order:[2]

1. Change form from hero to alter-ego, or from alter-ego to hero (this option may only be performed once each turn).[2]

2. Play an ally, upgrade, support, or player side scheme card from hand.[2]

3. Perform other actions as long as the player is able to pay required costs:[2]

* Use their alter-ego's basic recovery (if in alter-ego form) or their hero's basic attack or thwart power (if in hero form).[3]

* Use an ally card they control in play to attack an enemy or thwart a scheme.[3]

* Trigger an 'Action' ability on a card in play they control, an encounter card in play, any card in play with text that allows that player to trigger its action ability, or an event card in their hand (by playing that event).[3]

* Ask another player to trigger any 'Action' ability that player could trigger on their own turn.[3]

**Playing a Card**

When a player wishes to play a card, they must follow these steps:

1. Declare intent and place the card faceup on the table in front of them (the card is not yet in play).[4]

2. Check play restrictions, including whether the card can be played at this time, if it has valid targets, and if the player meets any form requirements.[4]

3. Determine the cost(s) to play the card or initiate the ability and the player's ability to pay them.[4]

4. Apply any modifiers to the cost(s).[4]

5. Pay the cost(s); if costs cannot be paid, the process is aborted without paying any costs.[4]

6. The card enters play (or, in the case of an event card, resolves its ability and is placed in the discard pile).[5] Playing a card involves paying the card's cost and placing it in the play area.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.51 · APPENDIX II: SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.34 · PLAYER TURN

[3] RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.35 · PLAYER TURN · PLAYER'S PLAY AREA · PLAYING CARDS

[4] RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.24 · INITIATING ABILITIES

[5] RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.32 · PLAY, PUT INTO PLAY

🔧 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 67 ms · ask 11423 ms · total 53115 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 41623 ms · generation 11492 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 33, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "When a card is put into play, its resource cost is ignored. Unless otherwise stated by the 'put into play' effect, cards that are put into play must do so in a play area or state that matches the rules of playing the card. See also : Enters Play, In Play and Out of Play, Initiating Abilities, Leaves", "headingPath": "PLAY, PUT INTO PLAY · PLAY AREA · PLAY RESTRICTIONS AND PERMISSIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 263}, {"page": 32, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "Playing a card involves paying the card's cost and placing the card in the play area. This causes the card to enter play (or, in the case of an event card, to resolve its ability and be placed in the discard pile) . Cards are played from a player's hand. Some abilities cause cards to be put into pla", "headingPath": "PLAY, PUT INTO PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 263}, {"page": 35, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "Use their alter-ego's basic recovery (if in alter-ego form) or their hero's basic attack or thwart power (if in hero form) . Use an ally card they control in play to attack an enemy or thwart a scheme. Trigger an ' Action ' ability on: A card in play they control. An encounter card in play. Any card", "headingPath": "PLAYER TURN · PLAYER'S PLAY AREA · PLAYING CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 263}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.043269, "snippet": "When a player wishes to play a card or initiate a triggered ability, that player first declares their intent. Then, the player checks the following conditions in order: If playing a card, the player places that card faceup on the table in front of them. (This card is not in play.) Check play restric", "headingPath": "INITIATING ABILITIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 263}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.042399, "snippet": "A card leaves play when it moves from a play area to an out-of-play area. If a card is double-sided (having game text on each side of the card) , the facedown side is out of play. See also : Ability, Enters Play, Leaves Play, Play, Play Restrictions and Permissions, Set Aside, Target, Victory Displa", "headingPath": "IN PLAY AND OUT OF PLAY · IN PLAYER ORDER · INCITE X", "sharpsignalDocId": 263}, {"page": 33, "score": 0.041345, "snippet": "A player is a person who is playing in a game of Marvel Champions . Each player in the game has their own personal play area containing their identity card, their identity's hit point dial, their hand of cards, their deck that they draw from, their discard pile that they place their discarded cards ", "headingPath": "PLAYER · PLAYER CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 263}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.039562, "snippet": "When instructed to find a card, a player searches each game area where that card could be found (play area, set-aside area, player deck, discard pile, encounter deck, etc.) . Players should not unnecessarily search game areas if they know where the card they are looking for can be found. All game ar", "headingPath": "FIND · FIRST PLAYER", "sharpsignalDocId": 263}, {"page": 34, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "During their turn, a player may perform the following options, in any order. Each option, except 'change form,' may be performed as many times as the player is able, so long as they are able to pay the required costs. Change form from hero to alter-ego, or from alterego to hero. This option may only", "headingPath": "PLAYER TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 263}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 51, "quote": null, "headingPath": "APPENDIX II: SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 263}, {"page": 34, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 263}, {"page": 35, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER TURN · PLAYER'S PLAY AREA · PLAYING CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 263}, {"page": 24, "quote": null, "headingPath": "INITIATING ABILITIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 263}, {"page": 32, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAY, PUT INTO PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 263}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 263 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 263 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 0.91170 of 3386 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 13, 2026 13:37

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 Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	PLAY, PUT INTO PLAY · PLAY AREA · PLAY RESTRICTIONS AND PERMISSIONS	p.33	0.048139 (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 Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	PLAY, PUT INTO PLAY	p.32	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
#3	RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	PLAYER TURN · PLAYER'S PLAY AREA · PLAYING CARDS	p.35	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
#4	RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	INITIATING ABILITIES	p.24	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
#5	RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	IN PLAY AND OUT OF PLAY · IN PLAYER ORDER · INCITE X	p.24	0.042399 (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 Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	PLAYER · PLAYER CARD	p.33	0.041345 (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 Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	FIND · FIRST PLAYER	p.19	0.039562 (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 Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	PLAYER TURN	p.34	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

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 80 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 Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	PLAY, PUT INTO PLAY	p.32	#2	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 Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	PLAY, PUT INTO PLAY · PLAY AREA · PLAY RESTRICTIONS AND PERMISSIONS	p.33	#1	0.048139 (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 Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	APPENDIX II: SETUP	p.51	#17	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
#4	RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	PLAYER TURN · PLAYER'S PLAY AREA · PLAYING CARDS	p.35	#3	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
#5	RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	PLAYER TURN	p.34	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	IN PLAY AND OUT OF PLAY	p.23	#10	0.029387 (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 Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	INITIATING ABILITIES	p.24	#4	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
#8	RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	IN PLAY AND OUT OF PLAY · IN PLAYER ORDER · INCITE X	p.24	#5	0.042399 (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 Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	APPENDIX II: SETUP	p.51	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	PLAYER TURN	p.34	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	PLAYER TURN · PLAYER'S PLAY AREA · PLAYING CARDS	p.35	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	INITIATING ABILITIES	p.24	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Marvel Champions: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 263)	PLAY, PUT INTO PLAY	p.32	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 67 ms · first delta 4256 ms · total 53115 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 41623 ms · retrieval 67 ms · ask 11423 ms · gateway work 11492 ms · total 53115 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2976
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 999
tok/sec: 139.1 tok/sec — 999 output tokens in 7.183 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 16s 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 191), 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.