Ruling — Reef — RuleSage

← Reef

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Reefbg-244228-en-1e

1. Reef is played over a series of rounds.[1]

2. Players take turns clockwise, starting with the first player, until the game ends.[1]

3. On your turn, you must perform one of the following two actions: [1]

* A: Take a card from the card display (or from the deck) into your hand.[1]

* Choose one of the 3 cards from the display and put it in your hand; if there are point tokens on that card, place them in your personal point stock.[1]

* Alternatively, you may take the top card from the face-up draw deck and put it in your hand, but you must immediately place one 1-point token from your personal point stock onto the card in the display with the lowest printed point value (or a tie of your choice).[1] You cannot do this if your personal point stock is empty.[1]

* After taking a card, bring the display back up to 3 cards by moving the top card from the deck to the display.[1]

* Note: You have a hand limit of 4 cards; if you have 4, you cannot take another card and must perform action B instead.[1]

* B: Play a card from your hand to grow your reef and (if possible) score a pattern.[1]

* Play a card by placing it onto your face-up discard pile, next to your player board.[2]

* From the supplies of their respective colors, take both coral pieces shown on the top of your played card and place each of them anywhere on your player board (on any blank space or on top of a piece or stack).[2]

* You may stack these two pieces in any order or place them separately, but once placed, they remain there for the rest of the game.[2]

* Note: There is a stack limit; you cannot place a piece on a stack that already contains 4 coral pieces.[2]

* Afterwards, you may score the pattern shown on the bottom of the card.[2]

* If the pattern does not appear, nothing happens.[2]

* If the pattern appears once, take the number of points shown in the bottom right corner of the card from the points supply and place them in your personal point stock.[2]

* If the pattern appears multiple times, take the shown number of points as many times as the pattern appears.[2]

* To determine pattern completion: If a pattern shows pieces with no printed numbers, your top pieces' heights do not matter.[2] If a pattern shows printed numbers, only your top pieces of the right color and height count.[2]

4. The game ends after players finish the current round of play once at least one color of coral pieces runs out, or in rare cases, if the card deck runs out.[3]

5. If players have cards left in hand at the end, they may score the patterns of those cards (without taking coral pieces first), but they may only score a completed pattern once per card.[3]

6. The player with the highest score wins.[3]

7. In case of a tie, the winner is the tied player with the most covered spaces on their player board; if still tied, the player with the most stacks of 4 corals wins; if still tied, the victory is shared.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Reef — Rulebook · p.2 · PLAYING THE GAME

[2] RULEBOOK Reef — Rulebook · p.2 · B Play a card from your hand to grow your reef and (if possible) score a pattern

[3] RULEBOOK Reef — Rulebook · p.3 · B Play a card from your hand to grow your reef and (if possible) score a pattern · END OF THE GAME

🔧 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 86 ms · ask 7392 ms · total 44258 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 36777 ms · generation 7481 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Reef is played over a series of rounds. Each player will take one turn each round, starting with the first player and going clockwise until the game end is reached (see 'End of the game' on page 4). On your turn, you must perform one of the following two actions: A Take a card from the card display ", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 790}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "Play a card from your hand by placing it onto your face-up discard pile, next to your player board. Then perform the two following steps in this specific order: 1 From the supplies of their respective colors, take both coral pieces shown on the top of your played card and place each of them anywhere", "headingPath": "B Play a card from your hand to grow your reef and (if possible) score a pattern", "sharpsignalDocId": 790}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "If a pattern shows printed numbers with a '+' next to them, all of your top pieces of the right color and with a height equal to or higher than the printed number count. If patterns show wild pieces (a 4-colored shape) with printed numbers, only the height of those top pieces is relevant, not their ", "headingPath": "B Play a card from your hand to grow your reef and (if possible) score a pattern · END OF THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 790}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045476, "snippet": "Observe the growth of nature's most beautiful and exotic natural structure: the coral reef. Found primarily in the Indo-Pacific region, it has taken reefs thousands of years to grow. Over that time, they have mesmerized marine life and created amazing aquatic ecosystems. Prepare yourselves to do the", "headingPath": "OBJECT OF THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 790}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Sort the 112 coral pieces by color to form 4 separate supplies (A). Depending on the number of players, each of these 4 supplies must comprise a certain number of coral pieces: In a 4-player game: Use all 28 coral pieces of each color. In a 3-player game: Use 24 coral pieces of each color. In a 2-pl", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 790}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "A GAME BY EMERSON MATSUUCHI SECOND EDITION", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 790}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "During the last round, when you must take coral pieces of a color whose supply does not contain enough pieces, take as many as you can from that supply and continue your turn as usual. At any time, you may exchange point tokens between your personal point stock and the points supplies (or between a ", "headingPath": "GENERAL NOTES · CREDITS · Development by: · © 2020 Plan B Games Inc.", "sharpsignalDocId": 790}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 790}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "B Play a card from your hand to grow your reef and (if possible) score a pattern", "sharpsignalDocId": 790}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "B Play a card from your hand to grow your reef and (if possible) score a pattern · END OF THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 790}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 790 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 790 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 0.92308 of 2353 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 14, 2026 20:28

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 Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	PLAYING THE GAME	p.2	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	B Play a card from your hand to grow your reef and (if possible) score a pattern	p.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))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	B Play a card from your hand to grow your reef and (if possible) score a pattern · END OF THE GAME	p.3	0.047123 (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 Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	OBJECT OF THE GAME	p.2	0.045476 (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 Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	SETUP	p.2	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
#6	RULEBOOK Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)		p.1	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))	42
#7	RULEBOOK Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	GENERAL NOTES · CREDITS · Development by: · © 2020 Plan B Games Inc.	p.3	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 7 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 Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	PLAYING THE GAME	p.2	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	B Play a card from your hand to grow your reef and (if possible) score a pattern · END OF THE GAME	p.3	#3	0.047123 (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 Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	OBJECT OF THE GAME	p.2	#4	0.045476 (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 Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)		p.1	#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
#5	RULEBOOK Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	GENERAL NOTES · CREDITS · Development by: · © 2020 Plan B Games Inc.	p.3	#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
#6	RULEBOOK Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	SETUP	p.2	#5	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
#7	RULEBOOK Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	B Play a card from your hand to grow your reef and (if possible) score a pattern	p.2	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	PLAYING THE GAME	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	B Play a card from your hand to grow your reef and (if possible) score a pattern	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Reef — Rulebook (corpus doc 790)	B Play a card from your hand to grow your reef and (if possible) score a pattern · END OF THE GAME	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 86 ms · first delta 1457 ms · total 44258 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 36777 ms · retrieval 86 ms · ask 7392 ms · gateway work 7481 ms · total 44258 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2361
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 721
tok/sec: 120.5 tok/sec — 721 output tokens in 5.982 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 27s 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 725), 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.