Ruling — Summoner Wars (Second Edition)

← Summoner Wars (Second Edition)

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Summoner Wars (Second Edition)bg-332800-en-1e

To play Summoner Wars, follow these procedures:

**Setup**

1. Place the battlefield between the players.[1]

2. Create a supply of damage and boost tokens within reach of both players.[1]

3. Each player chooses a faction deck or builds a custom deck.[1]

4. Each player places their summoner, 2 starting units, and starting gate on the battlefield as shown on the back of their summoner's card.[1]

5. Each player shuffles their remaining cards, places them face down into their draw pile, and then draws 5 cards.[1]

6. Randomly determine which player will go first.[1]

7. That player places their magic token on the 2 space and the other player places their magic token on the 3 space of their magic tracks.[1]

**A Turn**

1. A turn consists of a player completing 5 phases in order: Summon, Move, Build, Attack, and Magic.[2][3]

2. The turn includes any effects that happen at the start or end of a player's turn.[3]

3. During the Summon Phase, a player may choose a unit in their hand, pay its cost, and place it on an empty space on the battlefield, unless otherwise specified, units must be summoned adjacent to a gate you control.[3]

4. During the Magic Phase, a player may play event cards on their turn during the phase listed on the card by paying its cost, resolving its effects, and then discarding it.[4][5][6]

5. If playing an event with the ACTIVE keyword, the player places it in their active area instead of discarding it; these effects remain active while in the active area, and the player must discard all events in their active area at the start of their next turn.[5][6]

6. At the end of a turn, if a player has fewer than 5 cards in their hand, they draw back up to 5 cards.[5]

7. After completing all 5 phases and drawing back up to 5 cards, any "end of turn" effects are resolved.[4]

**Winning the Game**

1. A player wins when only 1 player's summoner remains on the battlefield.[5][6]

2. A player loses the game if their summoner ever leaves the battlefield (e.g., by being destroyed).[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.5 · Game Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.17 · Glossary

[3] RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.18 · Glossary

[4] RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.15 · Glossary

[5] RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.9 · Phase 5: Magic · End of Turn: Draw · Empty Draw Pile · Event Cards · Active Event Effects · Winning the Game

[6] RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.9

🔧 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 77 ms · ask 5004 ms · total 5083 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5083 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 14, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "COMMON: A class of unit. Each deck has 16, with up to 4 copies of each. The starting units do not count against these limits. CONTROL: A player controls any cards that began in their deck and are now in play or being resolved, unless a game effect gives control to their opponent. Every card in play ", "headingPath": "Glossary", "sharpsignalDocId": 440}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.045445, "snippet": "OWNER: A player is the owner of a card if they started the game with that card in their deck. PAY: A player must pay before playing any card with a cost by spending magic equal to the card's cost. PHASE: One of the 5 parts of a player's turn. In order, the phases are Summon, Move, Build, Attack, Mag", "headingPath": "Glossary", "sharpsignalDocId": 440}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.045037, "snippet": "FRONT: A card is in front of another card if it is in a row that is farther from that other card's controlling player. GATE: A card with Gate in its name, usually a structure. Each player starts with 1 gate (with 10 life) on the battlefield and 3 gates (with 5 life each) in their draw pile. Gates se", "headingPath": "Glossary", "sharpsignalDocId": 440}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.045009, "snippet": "SUMMON: Choose a unit in your hand, pay its cost, and place it on an empty space on the battlefield during your Summon Phase. Unless otherwise specified, units must be summoned adjacent to a gate you control. Any card with a class of unit can be summoned, even if it is also a structure. SUMMONER: A ", "headingPath": "Glossary", "sharpsignalDocId": 440}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "To set up a game of Summoner Wars, follow these steps: Place the battlefield between the players. Create a supply of damage and boost tokens within reach of both players. Each player chooses a faction deck or builds a custom deck. Each player places their summoner, 2 starting units, and starting gat", "headingPath": "Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 440}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "A card or space is adjacent to another one if they share an edge. Diagonals are not adjacent. Players will alternate taking turns until a player has won the game by destroying their opponent's summoner. On a player's turn, they must complete the following 5 phases in order: After the active player c", "headingPath": "Adjacency · Turn Sequence · 1: Summon 2: Move 3: Build 4: Attack 5: Magic · Phase 1: Summon · Example: Summoning a Unit · Spending/Gaining Magic", "sharpsignalDocId": 440}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Move up to 3 different units you control 1 or 2 spaces each. Units can only move into or through empty, adjacent spaces. A unit that is also a structure cannot move unless an effect allows it to. Build any number of gates or other structures from your hand to the battlefield. To build a structure, p", "headingPath": "Phase 2: Move · Phase 3: Build · Your Side", "sharpsignalDocId": 440}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Force T o force a card 1 or more spaces, slide it that many clear straight spaces in a single direction (horizontal or vertical). Forcing a card is NOT considered moving it. Timing Conflicts Whenever 2 or more game effects occur at the same time, the player whose turn it is chooses the order in whic", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 440}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 440}, {"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Glossary", "sharpsignalDocId": 440}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Glossary", "sharpsignalDocId": 440}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Glossary", "sharpsignalDocId": 440}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase 5: Magic · End of Turn: Draw · Empty Draw Pile · Event Cards · Active Event Effects · Winning the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 440}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 440}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 440 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 440 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 0.89843 of 1654 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 08:16

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 Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Glossary	p.14	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
#2	RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Glossary	p.17	0.045445 (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 Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Glossary	p.16	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
#4	RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Glossary	p.18	0.045009 (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 Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Game Setup	p.5	0.032258 (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 Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Adjacency · Turn Sequence · 1: Summon 2: Move 3: Build 4: Attack 5: Magic · Phase 1: Summon · Example: Summoning a Unit · Spending/Gaining Magic	p.6	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
#7	RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Phase 2: Move · Phase 3: Build · Your Side	p.7	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
#8	RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)		p.10	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

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 40 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 Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Glossary	p.17	#2	0.045445 (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 Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Glossary	p.15	#12	0.028205 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Glossary	p.14	#1	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
#4	RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Glossary	p.15	#11	0.029211 (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 Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Game Setup	p.5	#5	0.032258 (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 Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Phase 5: Magic · End of Turn: Draw · Empty Draw Pile · Event Cards · Active Event Effects · Winning the Game	p.9	#10	0.029462 (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 Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)		p.9	#9	0.029907 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Glossary	p.18	#4	0.045009 (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 Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Game Setup	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Glossary	p.17	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Glossary	p.18	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Glossary	p.15	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)	Phase 5: Magic · End of Turn: Draw · Empty Draw Pile · Event Cards · Active Event Effects · Winning the Game	p.9	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Summoner Wars (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 440)		p.9	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 77 ms · first delta 2543 ms · total 5083 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 77 ms · ask 5004 ms · gateway work 5083 ms · total 5083 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3272
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 515
tok/sec: 206.0 tok/sec — 515 output tokens in 2.500 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 39s 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 371), 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.