Ruling — Radlands

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Radlandsbg-329082-en-1e

**Setup**

1. Draw 6 cards from the camp deck.[1] (Note: For the best first experience, give the most experienced player Arcade, Victory Totem, and Mercenary Camp, and give the other player Garage, Railgun, and Supply Depot [1]).

2. Place 3 of your drawn camps facedown in your play area in a row.[1]

3. Leave space for 2 cards in front of each camp.[1]

4. Once both players have selected, flip your camps faceup and return all unselected camps and the camp deck to the box.[1]

5. Take a Water Silo and Raiders card and place them faceup in your play area.[1]

6. Form a supply of 3 water discs in your play area.[1]

7. Take a player aid card.[1]

8. Draw a number of cards to your hand equal to the total sum of cards shown in the black rectangles on your camps.[1]

**Actions**

* **Play Card (Person):**

1. Play a person card from your hand in front of any one of your camps (even a destroyed camp).[2]

2. If there is already a person in that column, place the new person in front or behind the existing person, moving the existing person forward.[2]

3. Spend water discs onto the card equal to its cost shown in the top left.[2]

4. The turn a person is played, it is not ready.[2]

5. If you have no space in any of your columns, you may play a person but you must first destroy one of your existing people.[2][3]

* **Play Card (Event):**

1. Play an event card from your hand to your event queue.[2]

2. Place the event in the space corresponding to the numbered bomb icon at the top of its yellow effect box.[2]

3. If that space is already occupied by another event, you must put the new event in the first available space behind (up to space G).[2]

4. Spend water discs onto the card equal to its cost shown in the top left.[2]

5. An event is not placed in the queue; instead, resolve its effect immediately and discard it and the water required to play it.[2]

* **Draw Card:**

1. Spend 2 water and draw a card.[2]

* **Junk Card:**

1. Discard a card from your hand and receive the junk effect related to the icon pictured in the top left corner of the card.[2]

* **Take Water Silo:**

1. Spend 1 water to take your Water Silo into your hand.[4]

* **Use Ability:**

1. Use an ability on one of your ready camps or people in any column.[4]

2. Spend water onto it equal to the cost of the ability you are using.[4]

3. Resolve all text and effect icons in the ability box.[4]

4. After using an ability on a card, the card is not ready.[4]

**Game End**

* You win immediately when all your opponent's camps are destroyed.[4]

* If the deck runs out during the game, shuffle the discard pile to form a new deck.[4]

* If the deck runs out a second time, the game ends in a draw.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook · p.5 · Each player sets up their own play area with the following steps:

[2] RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook · p.10 · PLAY CARD (PERSON) · When playing a person: · PLAY CARD (EVENT) · When playing an event: · DRAW CARD · JUNK CARD

[3] RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook · p.14 · PEOPLE F.A.Q.

[4] RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook · p.11 · TAKE WATER SILO · USE ABILITY · When using an ability: · IS MY CARD 'READY'? · GAME END

🔧 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 87 ms · ask 5321 ms · total 5410 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5410 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Play a person card from your hand in front of any one of your camps (even a destroyed camp ). Spend water discs A onto the card equal to its cost shown in the top left B . The turn a person is played, it is not ready . If there is already a person in that column, place the new person in front C or b", "headingPath": "PLAY CARD (PERSON) · When playing a person: · PLAY CARD (EVENT) · When playing an event: · DRAW CARD · JUNK CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Draw 6 cards from the camp deck . For the best possible first experience with Radlands: skip this step, and instead give the most experienced player Arcade , Victory Totem , and Mercenary Camp . Give the other player Garage , Railgun , and Supply Depot . Place 3 of your drawn camps facedown in your ", "headingPath": "Each player sets up their own play area with the following steps:", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.046432, "snippet": "Full Columns: If you have no space in any of your columns, you may play a person but you must first destroy one of your existing people . This option to destroy applies whenever playing a person , whether by performing the Play Card action, resolving an event effect, card trait, junk effect, or card", "headingPath": "PEOPLE F.A.Q.", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "Game Design: Daniel Piechnick Development Lead: Matt Tolman Development: Gavan Brown, Adam Wyse Art: Manny Trembley, Damien Mammoliti, Mr. Cuddington Graphic Design Lead: Gavan Brown Graphic Design: Gui Landgraf, Owen Hill, James Van Niekerk Rulebook: Adam Wyse, Gui Landgraf Box Design: Gabriel Mart", "headingPath": "CREDITS · RULES OF PLAY V2.1 · OVERVIEW · GAME TURNS", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.046394, "snippet": "When resolving the raid icon ( ), play or advance your Raiders event card. If your Raiders event is not already in the event queue , place it on the space (see 'Play Card ( Event )' , pg 10). If your Raiders event is already in the event queue , advance it 1 space forward. If it is already on the sp", "headingPath": "RAID · TURN SEQUENCE · 1. EVENTS · 2. REPLENISH · 3. ACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.045079, "snippet": "Learn to play video: ROXLEY.COM/LEARNRADLANDS", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.044343, "snippet": "Bombardment: As usual, camps already damaged will be destroyed. High Ground: You can rearrange people back into the same positions. Radiation: ' All people ' is all people currently in play, which includes your own people . Raiders: See 'Raid' , pg 9. You can resolve the raid icon ( ) more than once", "headingPath": "EVENTS F.A.Q. · USING THE OFFICIAL PLAYMAT", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.030366, "snippet": "Incinerator : You must discard two nonWater Silo cards from your hand in order to use the ability. Then you may activate the junk effect from either or both of the discarded cards, in any order you choose. Juggernaut: If Juggernaut has advanced once, you can play a person in front of and/or behind i", "headingPath": "CAMPS F.A.Q.", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Each player sets up their own play area with the following steps:", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAY CARD (PERSON) · When playing a person: · PLAY CARD (EVENT) · When playing an event: · DRAW CARD · JUNK CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PEOPLE F.A.Q.", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TAKE WATER SILO · USE ABILITY · When using an ability: · IS MY CARD 'READY'? · GAME END", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 357 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 357 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 0.88205 of 2162 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 09:33

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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	PLAY CARD (PERSON) · When playing a person: · PLAY CARD (EVENT) · When playing an event: · DRAW CARD · JUNK CARD	p.10	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	Each player sets up their own play area with the following steps:	p.5	0.047643 (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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	PEOPLE F.A.Q.	p.14	0.046432 (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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	CREDITS · RULES OF PLAY V2.1 · OVERVIEW · GAME TURNS	p.3	0.046402 (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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	RAID · TURN SEQUENCE · 1. EVENTS · 2. REPLENISH · 3. ACTIONS	p.9	0.046394 (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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)		p.1	0.045079 (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))	45
#7	RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	EVENTS F.A.Q. · USING THE OFFICIAL PLAYMAT	p.15	0.044343 (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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	CAMPS F.A.Q.	p.13	0.030366 (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 17 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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	PLAY CARD (PERSON) · When playing a person: · PLAY CARD (EVENT) · When playing an event: · DRAW CARD · JUNK CARD	p.10	#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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	PEOPLE F.A.Q.	p.14	#3	0.046432 (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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	TAKE WATER SILO · USE ABILITY · When using an ability: · IS MY CARD 'READY'? · GAME END	p.11	#12	0.028175 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	Each player sets up their own play area with the following steps: · CAMPS · PERSON · [ CARD TRAITS ] · PUNKS	p.6	#13	0.027598 (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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	EVENTS · PLAY AREA	p.7	#15	0.027444 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	EVENTS F.A.Q. · USING THE OFFICIAL PLAYMAT	p.15	#7	0.044343 (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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	CAMPS F.A.Q.	p.13	#8	0.030366 (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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	Each player sets up their own play area with the following steps:	p.5	#2	0.047643 (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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	Each player sets up their own play area with the following steps:	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	PLAY CARD (PERSON) · When playing a person: · PLAY CARD (EVENT) · When playing an event: · DRAW CARD · JUNK CARD	p.10	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	PEOPLE F.A.Q.	p.14	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357)	TAKE WATER SILO · USE ABILITY · When using an ability: · IS MY CARD 'READY'? · GAME END	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 87 ms · first delta 1695 ms · total 5410 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 87 ms · ask 5321 ms · gateway work 5410 ms · total 5410 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3052
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 750
tok/sec: 204.5 tok/sec — 750 output tokens in 3.667 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 14s 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 286), 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.