Ruling — Nova Luna

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Nova Lunabg-284435-en-1e

To play Nova Luna, follow these steps:

1. **Setup**: Place the Moon Wheel in the middle of the table.[1] Place the Meeple on the space above the golden field of the outer selection track, above the new moon.[1] Shuffle all tiles face down and place 1 randomly drawn tile face up on each of the remaining 11 spaces.[1] Form any number of draw piles from the remaining tiles and place them face down around the Moon Wheel.[1] Select your player color and take the 21 tokens of your color (note: for 3 players, take 18; for 4 players, take 16).[1]

2. **Determine Order**: Each player places 1 token from their personal supply in the middle of the table; the person who slept the latest draws the tokens blindly until all are drawn.[1] Form a pile of these tokens in the order they were drawn (first token at the bottom) and set this pile on the new moon of the moon track.[1]

3. **Taking a Turn**: It is always the turn of the player whose token is furthest back on the moon track (if several share the position, the player whose token is at the top goes).[1][2] Every turn, you must take a tile from the selection track of the Moon Wheel; you cannot skip selecting a tile.[2] You always have access to the next three tiles in clockwise order from the Meeple.[2]

4. **Placing Tiles**: Any tiles taken must be placed immediately.[2] Place the first tile in front of you, and as the game progresses, place exactly 1 tile horizontally or vertically adjacent to a tile you have already placed.[3] Tiles are placed with their task side face up.[3]

5. **Advancing Tokens**: Whenever you take a tile, move your token on the moon track forward as many spaces as the number on the tile indicates, moving in clockwise order.[2] If you reach an occupied space, place your token on top of the other player(s).[2] After taking a tile, place the Meeple on the space from which you took the tile.[2]

6. **Completing Tasks**: Tasks are completed by placing tiles such that the colors of adjacent tiles match the colors and frequency required by the task.[1][3] The color of the tile the task is written on does not count.[4][3] When you complete a task, you may cover it with a token from your personal supply.[2][3]

7. **Refilling the Track**: If at the beginning of your turn there are only one or two tiles left on the selection track, or if no tiles are left, you may fill the empty spaces with randomly drawn tiles from the draw piles, starting with the space closest to the Meeple and continuing clockwise.[2]

8. **Ending the Game**: The game ends when the first player manages to place all their tokens on their tiles.[5][6] The game also ends when a player cannot take any more tiles because all tiles have been laid out.[5] The game also ends if a player takes all tiles from the selection track.[7]

9. **Winning**: The player who places all their tokens first wins.[5][6] If the game ends because all tiles are laid out, the player with the fewest remaining tokens wins.[5] In the event of a tie, the player with the fewest tokens remaining that would have taken the next turn wins.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook · p.2 · Distribution: · THE GAME STRUCTURE · THE ORDER OF PLAY · THE TILES

[2] RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook · p.3 · THE COURSE OF THE GAME · How do you take the tiles? · Important: · Filling the selection track · How are the tokens advanced on the moon track? · When can you place tokens on your tiles?

[3] RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook · p.4 · How do you place the tiles? · Important: · The number · The tasks · Some examples of how to complete tasks:

[4] RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook · p.5 · Some examples of how to complete tasks:

[5] RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook · p.3 · THE END

[6] RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook · p.1 · THE AIM OF THE GAME · CREDITS · Distribution:

[7] RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook · p.6 · Author's note · Comments: · Important:

🔧 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 100 ms · ask 5070 ms · total 5172 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5172 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "The tiles all have the same structure. They are available in 4 different colors: red, blue, turquoise, and yellow. At the top left of the tile is a number (from 1-7) indicating the 'time' it costs you to take a tile and place it. Place the Moon Wheel in the middle of the table so that everyone can r", "headingPath": "Distribution: · THE GAME STRUCTURE · THE ORDER OF PLAY · THE TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "The inspiration for this game was provided by Habitats from the Dutch publisher Cwali (published 2016). Unlike 'NOVA LUNA', the tiles in Corné van Moorsel's game have a maximum of one task, and the number of points for completion varies depending on the difficulty level. Nova Luna contrasts the diff", "headingPath": "Author's note · Comments: · Important:", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "As the game progresses, you take tiles from the Moon Wheel and place them in your display, trying to complete your tasks. You take the tiles from the selection track of the Moon Wheel. You always have access to the next three tiles in a clockwise order, as seen from the Meeple. Spaces where there is", "headingPath": "THE COURSE OF THE GAME · How do you take the tiles? · Important: · Filling the selection track · How are the tokens advanced on the moon track? · When can you place tokens on your tiles?", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Place the first tile you take in this game in front of you. As you progress through the game, always place exactly 1 tile horizontally or vertically adjacent to a tile you have already placed. Tiles are always placed with their task side face up. Everyone builds their own display. So make sure that ", "headingPath": "How do you place the tiles? · Important: · The number · The tasks · Some examples of how to complete tasks:", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "A solo game lasts about 15 minutes. All rules of the multiplayer game apply with the following exceptions: Take the tokens of one color and form two stacks. One stack consists of 8 tokens, the other of 13 tokens. There is no token on the moon track -it is not used in the solo game. Place the Meeple ", "headingPath": "Some examples of how to complete tasks: · Important:", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The game ends when the first player manages to place all their tokens on their tiles. This player wins. The game also ends when a player cannot take any more tiles, as all the tiles have been laid out. In this case, the player with the fewest remaining tokens wins. The remaining places will depend o", "headingPath": "THE END", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The clever tile laying game from Uwe Rosenberg for 1 - 4 players. The game is based on an idea by Corné van Moorsel. The moon has its influence over our life on earth for ages. It affects the tides and keeps people wake at night. The new moon is a symbol for a new start; it is the perfect time to st", "headingPath": "THE AIM OF THE GAME · CREDITS · Distribution:", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Example 4 shows a 7-tile whose three tasks can be completed with only 3 tiles. In the ideal case, the tiles help each other to perform the tasks. Example 5 shows how two tiles do not need any more tiles at all to complete a task on each of them. In example 6, two more tiles help to also fulfill the ", "headingPath": "Some examples of how to complete tasks:", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Distribution: · THE GAME STRUCTURE · THE ORDER OF PLAY · THE TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE COURSE OF THE GAME · How do you take the tiles? · Important: · Filling the selection track · How are the tokens advanced on the moon track? · When can you place tokens on your tiles?", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "How do you place the tiles? · Important: · The number · The tasks · Some examples of how to complete tasks:", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Some examples of how to complete tasks:", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE END", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE AIM OF THE GAME · CREDITS · Distribution:", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Author's note · Comments: · Important:", "sharpsignalDocId": 601}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 601 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 601 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 0.90934 of 2526 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 14, 2026 07:09

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 Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	Distribution: · THE GAME STRUCTURE · THE ORDER OF PLAY · THE TILES	p.2	0.048652 (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 Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	Author's note · Comments: · Important:	p.6	0.04598 (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 Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	THE COURSE OF THE GAME · How do you take the tiles? · Important: · Filling the selection track · How are the tokens advanced on the moon track? · When can you place tokens on your tiles?	p.3	0.032787 (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 Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	How do you place the tiles? · Important: · The number · The tasks · Some examples of how to complete tasks:	p.4	0.031746 (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 Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	Some examples of how to complete tasks: · Important:	p.6	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
#6	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	THE END	p.3	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
#7	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	THE AIM OF THE GAME · CREDITS · Distribution:	p.1	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
#8	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	Some examples of how to complete tasks:	p.5	0.029412 (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 8 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 Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	Distribution: · THE GAME STRUCTURE · THE ORDER OF PLAY · THE TILES	p.2	#1	0.048652 (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 Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	THE COURSE OF THE GAME · How do you take the tiles? · Important: · Filling the selection track · How are the tokens advanced on the moon track? · When can you place tokens on your tiles?	p.3	#3	0.032787 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	THE END	p.3	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	Some examples of how to complete tasks:	p.5	#8	0.029412 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	Author's note · Comments: · Important:	p.6	#2	0.04598 (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 Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	THE AIM OF THE GAME · CREDITS · Distribution:	p.1	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	How do you place the tiles? · Important: · The number · The tasks · Some examples of how to complete tasks:	p.4	#4	0.031746 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	Some examples of how to complete tasks: · Important:	p.6	#5	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	Distribution: · THE GAME STRUCTURE · THE ORDER OF PLAY · THE TILES	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	THE COURSE OF THE GAME · How do you take the tiles? · Important: · Filling the selection track · How are the tokens advanced on the moon track? · When can you place tokens on your tiles?	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	How do you place the tiles? · Important: · The number · The tasks · Some examples of how to complete tasks:	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	Some examples of how to complete tasks:	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	THE END	p.3	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	THE AIM OF THE GAME · CREDITS · Distribution:	p.1	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Nova Luna — Rulebook (corpus doc 601)	Author's note · Comments: · Important:	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 100 ms · first delta 1528 ms · total 5172 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 100 ms · ask 5070 ms · gateway work 5172 ms · total 5172 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3447
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 737
tok/sec: 205.0 tok/sec — 737 output tokens in 3.595 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 33s 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 533), 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.