Ruling — Mindbug: First Contact

← Mindbug: First Contact

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Mindbug: First Contactbg-345584-en-1e

**Setup**

1. Deal each player 2 Mindbugs and place them face up in front of them.[1]

2. Set aside all double-sided cards (cards with a creature on both front and back).[1]

3. Shuffle the creature cards and deal each player 10 cards face down as their draw pile.[1]

4. Each player draws 5 cards from their personal draw pile as their starting hand.[1]

5. Each player starts the game with 3 life, tracked via a life tracker, dice, tokens, or 3 unused cards.[1][2]

6. To determine the starting player, each player reveals a random card from the pile of unused cards; the player with the higher power value is the starting player (repeat on a tie).[3]

**Taking Turns**

1. Players alternate taking turns.[3]

2. At the start of a turn, if you have less than 5 cards in hand, you must immediately draw from your draw pile until you have 5 cards (this occurs before any other effects).[3]

3. During each turn, you must take one of the following actions or you lose the game: Play a single card or Attack with a single creature.[3]

**Playing a Card**

1. Choose any card from your hand and place it face up on the table, turning it towards your opponent so they can read it.[4][5]

2. Your opponent may use one of their Mindbugs to take control of that card.[4]

3. If the opponent refuses to use a Mindbug or has none left: place the played creature card into your play area and resolve its Play effects if it has any.[4]

4. If the opponent uses a Mindbug: they immediately play that card instead of you, they lose one Mindbug (turn it face down), the card goes to their play area, and they resolve any Play effects as if they had played it from their hand.[4]

5. After playing a card (and if a Mindbug was used), end your turn.[4]

6. If your opponent used a Mindbug, you immediately take an extra turn after this one, during which you may play a card or attack with a creature.[4]

**Attacking**

1. Choose a single creature in your play area to attack.[6]

2. Your opponent may choose a single creature from their own play and use it to block the attack.[6]

3. If the opponent does not block, they lose 1 life.[6]

4. If the opponent blocks, the creature with the lower power is defeated and sent to its controller's discard pile; if the powers are equal, both creatures are defeated.[6]

**Ending the Game**

1. You immediately win the game when the opponent's life is reduced to zero.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook · p.5 · Step 1: Deal Mindbugs · Step 2: Set Aside All Evolution Cards · Step 3: Shuffle and Deal Decks · Step 4: Draw Hands · Step 5: Set Starting Life

[2] RULEBOOK Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook · p.6 · Step 5: Set Starting Life · Goal of the Game · Life · Play Area Player 1 · Playing the Game

[3] RULEBOOK Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook · p.8 · Drawing Cards · Taking Turns

[4] RULEBOOK Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook · p.9 · Play a Card · Option 1: Your opponent refuses to use a Mindbug · Option 2: Your opponent decides to use a Mindbug

[5] RULEBOOK Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook · p.24 · ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR BEGINNERS

[6] RULEBOOK Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook · p.11 · Attack with a Creature

🔧 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 85 ms · ask 4805 ms · total 4892 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4892 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 9, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Choose any card from your hand and place it face up on the table. Show it clearly to your opponent by turning it temporarily towards them so that they can read it. Now they have two options: Whenever you play a card from your hand, your opponent may use one of their Mindbugs to take control of that ", "headingPath": "Play a Card · Option 1: Your opponent refuses to use a Mindbug · Option 2: Your opponent decides to use a Mindbug", "sharpsignalDocId": 477}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.046676, "snippet": "Whenever you have less than 5 cards in hand, you immediately draw cards from your draw pile until you have 5 cards in hand. Do this before any other effects occur (e.g. before a card is mindbugged or its Play effect is triggered). If your draw pile runs out of cards, you don't draw additional cards.", "headingPath": "Drawing Cards · Taking Turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 477}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046032, "snippet": "Mindbugs You immediately win the game when the opponent's life is reduced to zero. You start the game with 3 life. Whenever you lose life, you reduce your life tracker by the corresponding number. Whenever you gain life, you increase your life tracker by the corresponding number. There is no limit t", "headingPath": "Step 5: Set Starting Life · Goal of the Game · Life · Play Area Player 1 · Playing the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 477}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "Most creatures have a special ability that triggers at a specific moment during the game. The corresponding effect happens for the creature's controller. The following triggers can be found on cards: Play: This effect triggers when the creature with this effect comes into play. It happens no matter ", "headingPath": "Triggers", "sharpsignalDocId": 477}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.045037, "snippet": "The Game Terms include a number of terms that players may encounter while playing the game. Allied Creature / Enemy Creature: When cards are in your play area, they are called allied creatures . When they are in the opponent's play area, they are called enemy creatures . If an effect affects both al", "headingPath": "Game terms", "sharpsignalDocId": 477}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.044949, "snippet": "Before playing a card from your hand, make sure that you will be able to protect yourself against it if your opponent decides to use a Mindbug on that card. · When you play a card from your hand, show it clearly to your opponent by turning it temporarily towards them so that they can read it and the", "headingPath": "ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR BEGINNERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 477}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.043124, "snippet": "Deal each player 2 Mindbugs and place them face up in front of them. Set aside all double-sided cards (cards with a creature on both front and back). These are not shuffled into the deck but may come into play through a special Evolve effect on certain cards. Shuffle the creature cards and deal each", "headingPath": "Step 1: Deal Mindbugs · Step 2: Set Aside All Evolution Cards · Step 3: Shuffle and Deal Decks · Step 4: Draw Hands · Step 5: Set Starting Life", "sharpsignalDocId": 477}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "http://mindbug.me/rules Y ou can also find a rules video, multiplayer modes and an up-to-date FAQ online at: “YOU ARE NOW UNDER MY CONTROL, EARTHLING! I HAVE CHOSEN YOU TO COMMAND MY CREATIONS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST MY ANCIENT FOES.” 2", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 477}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Step 1: Deal Mindbugs · Step 2: Set Aside All Evolution Cards · Step 3: Shuffle and Deal Decks · Step 4: Draw Hands · Step 5: Set Starting Life", "sharpsignalDocId": 477}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Step 5: Set Starting Life · Goal of the Game · Life · Play Area Player 1 · Playing the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 477}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Drawing Cards · Taking Turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 477}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Play a Card · Option 1: Your opponent refuses to use a Mindbug · Option 2: Your opponent decides to use a Mindbug", "sharpsignalDocId": 477}, {"page": 24, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR BEGINNERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 477}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Attack with a Creature", "sharpsignalDocId": 477}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 477 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 477 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 0.90160 of 1941 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 07:14

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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Play a Card · Option 1: Your opponent refuses to use a Mindbug · Option 2: Your opponent decides to use a Mindbug	p.9	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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Drawing Cards · Taking Turns	p.8	0.046676 (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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Step 5: Set Starting Life · Goal of the Game · Life · Play Area Player 1 · Playing the Game	p.6	0.046032 (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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Triggers	p.17	0.045724 (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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Game terms	p.20	0.045037 (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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR BEGINNERS	p.24	0.044949 (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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Step 1: Deal Mindbugs · Step 2: Set Aside All Evolution Cards · Step 3: Shuffle and Deal Decks · Step 4: Draw Hands · Step 5: Set Starting Life	p.5	0.043124 (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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)		p.2	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))	233

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 33 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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Play a Card · Option 1: Your opponent refuses to use a Mindbug · Option 2: Your opponent decides to use a Mindbug	p.9	#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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Drawing Cards · Taking Turns	p.8	#2	0.046676 (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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Game terms	p.20	#5	0.045037 (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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Attack with a Creature	p.11	#14	0.028006 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Step 1: Deal Mindbugs · Step 2: Set Aside All Evolution Cards · Step 3: Shuffle and Deal Decks · Step 4: Draw Hands · Step 5: Set Starting Life	p.5	#7	0.043124 (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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Triggers	p.17	#4	0.045724 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Step 5: Set Starting Life · Goal of the Game · Life · Play Area Player 1 · Playing the Game	p.6	#3	0.046032 (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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR BEGINNERS	p.24	#6	0.044949 (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 Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Step 1: Deal Mindbugs · Step 2: Set Aside All Evolution Cards · Step 3: Shuffle and Deal Decks · Step 4: Draw Hands · Step 5: Set Starting Life	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Step 5: Set Starting Life · Goal of the Game · Life · Play Area Player 1 · Playing the Game	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Drawing Cards · Taking Turns	p.8	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Play a Card · Option 1: Your opponent refuses to use a Mindbug · Option 2: Your opponent decides to use a Mindbug	p.9	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR BEGINNERS	p.24	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Mindbug: First Contact — Rulebook (corpus doc 477)	Attack with a Creature	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 85 ms · first delta 1876 ms · total 4892 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 85 ms · ask 4805 ms · gateway work 4892 ms · total 4892 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2082
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 609
tok/sec: 204.8 tok/sec — 609 output tokens in 2.973 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 31s 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 408), 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.