Ruling — Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game

← Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Gamebg-146652-en-1e

To play, follow these steps:

**Setup**

1. Each player chooses a Role Avatar and takes the corresponding Role Character card.[1]

2. Each player takes 7 Specialists, 5 Grunts, and their Role card, shuffles them to create a personal 13-card deck, and draws a hand of 6 cards.[1]

3. Shuffle the Sergeants and shuffle the Strikes, then place them face down on their appropriate spaces.[1]

4. Place 14 Hatchery cards face up on the Hatchery space.[1]

5. Choose a Location and place it face-up on the Location space.[1]

6. Choose one Objective 1, one Objective 2, and one Objective 3 and place them face-up on the Objective space (with Objective 1 on top and Objective 3 on the bottom).[1]

7. Find the three Hive mini-decks matching those Objectives.[1]

8. Shuffle 1 random Drone card for each player into the Objective 3 mini-deck and place it face-down on the Hive space.[1]

9. Repeat this process for the Objective 2 and 1 mini-decks so there is one Hive deck with the Objective 1 mini-deck on top and the Objective 3 mini-deck on the bottom.[1]

10. Choose four characters, shuffle all of their cards together, and place them face down on the Barracks.[1]

11. Place the top 5 cards from the Barracks into the Headquarters (HQ) face up.[1][2]

**Gameplay**

Players take turns in clockwise order.[2] During your turn, complete the following phases in order:

1. **Hive Phase**: Draw a Hive card (keeping it face down) and add it to the Complex.[1][2] At the beginning of your turn, without looking at it, put the top card of the Hive face down into the closest space in the Complex.[2]

2. **Action Phase**: Play cards from your hand in any order, one at a time, to recruit, scan, and fight.[3][1][2] Each time you play a card, do what that card says immediately.[3] You do not have to play every card in your hand.[3]

3. **Strike Phase**: Each enemy in the Combat Zone strikes.[1] Each enemy in the Combat Zone will attack a player at the end of that player's turn, starting with the enemy that has been in the Combat Zone the longest (farthest right) and resolving cards from right to left.[2]

4. **Cleanup Phase**: Discard your hand and all played cards, then draw six new cards.[1]

**Winning and Losing**

* **Winning**: Players win if at least one player survives to complete the final objective.[4]

* **Losing**: The aliens win if all players die.[4] A player dies if they take strike damage equal to or greater than their health.[4] If a player is "impregnated" by a Facehugger, they gain a Chestburster card which will eventually kill them; if they die this way, they may re-enter the game as an Alien playing against the team.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook · p.28 · Quick Reference Guide Setup · Initial Setup · During your turn, you do the following:

[2] RULEBOOK Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook · p.8 · Starting the Game · On Your Turn · A Card Might Get Pushed to the Combat Zone · Hive Phase: Add a Hive Card to the Complex · Push Other Cards Forward If Necessary · Action Phase: Play cards from your hand, using them to recruit, scan, and fight.

[3] RULEBOOK Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook · p.9 · Action Phase: Play cards from your hand, using them to recruit, scan, and fight. · Class and Crew Abilities

[4] RULEBOOK Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook · p.2 · ™ · Game Summary · How to Win · Your First Game · If You've Played Legendary™ : A Marvel Deck-Building Game…

[5] RULEBOOK Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook · p.3 · Roles · Alien Players

🔧 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 91 ms · ask 6098 ms · total 6191 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6191 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.047183, "snippet": "Put the top five cards of the Barracks into the five spaces of the Headquarters (HQ). Each player shuffles their own personal deck of 13 cards and draws a hand of 6 cards from it. Choose a player to go first. Players take turns in clockwise order. During your turn, complete the following phases in o", "headingPath": "Starting the Game · On Your Turn · A Card Might Get Pushed to the Combat Zone · Hive Phase: Add a Hive Card to the Complex · Push Other Cards Forward If Necessary · Action Phase: Play cards from your hand, using them to recruit, scan, and fight.", "sharpsignalDocId": 334}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046486, "snippet": "was not already revealed in The Complex. At the end of each player’s turn, the enemies in the Combat Zone strike that player causing them to draw cards from the Strike Deck equal to the number of those enemies. When players take too many strikes they die. Roles Each player chooses one of ten roles a", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 334}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "After you add a Hive card, you play cards from your hand. Some of your cards produce 'Recruit Points' that let you recruit more characters. Other cards produce 'Attack' that let you scan rooms and kill enemies. Some cards give you special abilities like drawing cards or healing. Here's what you do: ", "headingPath": "Action Phase: Play cards from your hand, using them to recruit, scan, and fight. · Class and Crew Abilities", "sharpsignalDocId": 334}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.044283, "snippet": "Each player chooses one of ten roles at the beginning of the game. Your role determines how much health you have and gives you a special Role Character card that starts in your deck. If a Facehugger is revealed, your team must kill it quickly. Otherwise a player will become 'impregnated' and gain a ", "headingPath": "Roles · Alien Players", "sharpsignalDocId": 334}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.044071, "snippet": "Give each player their own personal 12-card deck made up of these cards: 7 Specialists 5 Grunts Each player then selects one of the ten Roles and takes the appropriate Role Avatar and Role Character Card. (You can choose which ones you like or you can randomly deal out the Avatars. Another method is", "headingPath": "Player Cards · Avatar Card · Game Stacks · Location and Objectives", "sharpsignalDocId": 334}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.043511, "snippet": "There are many different types of Objectives. Some require you to find and reveal certain cards. Some require you to attach special cards to a room in the Complex. And some require you to kill a specific alien. The players can only be on one 'current objective' at a time. Whenever an Objective is co", "headingPath": "Completing Objectives", "sharpsignalDocId": 334}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.042351, "snippet": "Note: Only the Sergeant, Strikes, Hatchery, Location, Objective, Hive and Barracks spaces on the board are used when you set up the game. The other spaces will be used once the game begins. Each player chooses a Role Avatar and takes the Role Character card that goes with it. Each player takes 7 Spe", "headingPath": "Quick Reference Guide Setup · Initial Setup · During your turn, you do the following:", "sharpsignalDocId": 334}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.04207, "snippet": "These are rules you should only use once you feel like you have mastered the game. 'There's a monster in your chest. It's a really nasty one. And in a few hours it's gonna burst through your ribcage, and you're gonna die. Any questions?' - Ripley No. 8 In the standard rules, when a player dies to a ", "headingPath": "Advanced Rules · Advanced Rule: Player Aliens", "sharpsignalDocId": 334}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 28, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Quick Reference Guide Setup · Initial Setup · During your turn, you do the following:", "sharpsignalDocId": 334}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Starting the Game · On Your Turn · A Card Might Get Pushed to the Combat Zone · Hive Phase: Add a Hive Card to the Complex · Push Other Cards Forward If Necessary · Action Phase: Play cards from your hand, using them to recruit, scan, and fight.", "sharpsignalDocId": 334}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Action Phase: Play cards from your hand, using them to recruit, scan, and fight. · Class and Crew Abilities", "sharpsignalDocId": 334}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "™ · Game Summary · How to Win · Your First Game · If You've Played Legendary™ : A Marvel Deck-Building Game…", "sharpsignalDocId": 334}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Roles · Alien Players", "sharpsignalDocId": 334}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 334 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 334 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 0.88536 of 2172 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 09:10

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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Starting the Game · On Your Turn · A Card Might Get Pushed to the Combat Zone · Hive Phase: Add a Hive Card to the Complex · Push Other Cards Forward If Necessary · Action Phase: Play cards from your hand, using them to recruit, scan, and fight.	p.8	0.047183 (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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)		p.3	0.046486 (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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Action Phase: Play cards from your hand, using them to recruit, scan, and fight. · Class and Crew Abilities	p.9	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
#4	RULEBOOK Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Roles · Alien Players	p.3	0.044283 (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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Player Cards · Avatar Card · Game Stacks · Location and Objectives	p.6	0.044071 (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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Completing Objectives	p.12	0.043511 (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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Quick Reference Guide Setup · Initial Setup · During your turn, you do the following:	p.28	0.042351 (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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Advanced Rules · Advanced Rule: Player Aliens	p.20	0.04207 (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 38 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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Action Phase: Play cards from your hand, using them to recruit, scan, and fight. · Class and Crew Abilities	p.9	#3	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
#2	RULEBOOK Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Coordinate	p.13	#11	0.028992 (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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Completing Objectives	p.12	#6	0.043511 (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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Vigilant · Sacrifice · Mobilize	p.14	#12	0.028739 (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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Roles · Alien Players	p.3	#4	0.044283 (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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Quick Reference Guide Setup · Initial Setup · During your turn, you do the following:	p.28	#7	0.042351 (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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	™ · Game Summary · How to Win · Your First Game · If You've Played Legendary™ : A Marvel Deck-Building Game…	p.2	#9	0.029139 (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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Starting the Game · On Your Turn · A Card Might Get Pushed to the Combat Zone · Hive Phase: Add a Hive Card to the Complex · Push Other Cards Forward If Necessary · Action Phase: Play cards from your hand, using them to recruit, scan, and fight.	p.8	#1	0.047183 (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 Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Quick Reference Guide Setup · Initial Setup · During your turn, you do the following:	p.28	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Starting the Game · On Your Turn · A Card Might Get Pushed to the Combat Zone · Hive Phase: Add a Hive Card to the Complex · Push Other Cards Forward If Necessary · Action Phase: Play cards from your hand, using them to recruit, scan, and fight.	p.8	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Action Phase: Play cards from your hand, using them to recruit, scan, and fight. · Class and Crew Abilities	p.9	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	™ · Game Summary · How to Win · Your First Game · If You've Played Legendary™ : A Marvel Deck-Building Game…	p.2	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 334)	Roles · Alien Players	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 91 ms · first delta 2763 ms · total 6191 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 91 ms · ask 6098 ms · gateway work 6191 ms · total 6191 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3359
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 691
tok/sec: 204.5 tok/sec — 691 output tokens in 3.379 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 29s 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 262), 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.