Ruling — Cosmic Encounter

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Cosmic Encounterbg-39463-en-1e

To play a game of Cosmic Encounter, follow these steps:

**Setup**

1. Choose Player Color: Each player chooses a player color and takes the colony marker, five planets, and 20 ships of that color.[1][2]

2. Set Up Warp, Planets, Ships, and Colonies: Players place their planets in front of them, stacking four of their ships on each of their planets.[1][2] Then, players place the warp in the center of the play area.[1][2] Finally, players place their colony markers at “0” on the colony track.[1][2]

3. Prepare Destiny Deck: Take the three destiny cards that correspond to the color that each player has chosen and shuffle them with the wild and special destiny cards to create the destiny deck.[1][2] Any cards that correspond to a color that was not chosen are returned to the game box.[1][2]

**Gameplay**

1. Players take turns in clockwise order starting with the first player, who is determined during setup.[3]

2. During a player’s turn, they have an encounter, which is an interaction between two or more players trying to either establish or defend a colony.[3] The player taking their turn is the offense, and the player who opposes the offense is the defense.[3]

3. An encounter consists of the following eight phases resolved in order:

1. Start Turn: If the offense does not have any encounter cards, they must discard their hand and draw eight new cards, repeating this until they have an encounter card (attack, negotiate, or morph) in hand.[3]

2. Regroup: The offense retrieves one of their ships from the warp and places it on any of their home or foreign colonies, stacking it on top of another of their ships.[3]

3. Destiny: The offense draws the top card of the destiny deck and follows its instructions to determine which player the offense will have an encounter with.[3]

4. Launch: The offense chooses the planet where the encounter occurs and commits their ships to the encounter by taking the hyperspace gate and pointing it at the target planet indicated on their destiny card.[3]

5. Alliance [3]

6. Planning [3]

7. Reveal [3]

8. Resolution [3]

**Winning the Game**

The winner is the first player to establish five colonies on foreign planets.[4] If two or more players establish their fifth foreign colony at the same time, they win together.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook · p.4 · Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook · p.4

[3] RULEBOOK Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook · p.7

[4] RULEBOOK Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook · p.2 · Quick-Start Guide · Game Overview · Preparing to Play

🔧 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 99 ms · ask 5142 ms · total 5243 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5243 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 7, "score": 0.046147, "snippet": "To play a game of Cosmic Encounter , players take turns in clockwise order starting with the first player, who is determined during setup. During a player's turn, they have an encounter . An encounter is an interaction between two or more players who are trying to either establish or defend a colony", "headingPath": "Playing The Game · Start Turn Phase · Regroup Phase · Destiny Phase · Launch Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 231}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.045805, "snippet": "Once players are comfortable with the core rules of the game, they should add flare cards to their future games. Flare cards provide players with powerful abilities that can be used repeatedly. Each flare has a blue bar indicating the prerequisities for it to be played. When a player plays a flare c", "headingPath": "Advanced Game · Flare Cards · Advanced Setup · Variants · Four Planets · Single-Encounter Turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 231}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.045445, "snippet": "7 Playing The Game T o play a game of Cosmic Encounter, players take turns in clockwise order starting with the first player, who is determined during setup. During a player’s turn, they have an encounter. An encounter is an interaction between two or more players who are trying to either establish ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 231}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "We should all place our planets in front of us and stack four of our ships on each planet—like this. Trader, do we get extra because there are two of us? No, Clone. That’s not how your power works. Quick-Start Guide Welcome! I am Oracle, and we aliens are ready to play a game of Cosmic Encounter. Yo", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 231}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.043298, "snippet": "This section contains the basic concepts for Cosmic Encounter that players need to understand before learning how to play the game. During the game, each player controls an alien that can alter the rules of the game. To understand how alien powers work, the players must first understand the basic me", "headingPath": "Basic Concepts · Aliens · Planets and Systems · Ships and Colonies · Moving Ships · The Warp", "sharpsignalDocId": 231}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Players win the game by establishing foreign colonies. The foreign colony track along the edge of the warp is used to indicate the number of foreign colonies each player has. Both the yellow and red player have two foreign colonies, and the blue player has four foreign colonies. When a player establ", "headingPath": "Winning The Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 231}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Choose Aliens: Shuffle the cosmic combo cards and reveal the top card of the deck. Then, gather the alien sheets indicated for the appropriate number of players and deal one randomly to each player. Experienced players can use the alien selection rules described in 'Advanced Game' on page 16. Prepar", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 231}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Destiny Destiny Blue Have an encounter with the blue player in his or her home system. However, if you are the blue player, either: A) Have an encounter with any other player in your home system or, B) Discard this card and draw again. Destiny Destiny Blue Have an encounter with the blue player in h", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 231}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 231}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 231}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 231}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Quick-Start Guide · Game Overview · Preparing to Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 231}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 231 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 231 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 0.91198 of 1886 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 10:02

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 Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)	Playing The Game · Start Turn Phase · Regroup Phase · Destiny Phase · Launch Phase	p.7	0.046147 (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 Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)	Advanced Game · Flare Cards · Advanced Setup · Variants · Four Planets · Single-Encounter Turns	p.16	0.045805 (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 Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)		p.7	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
#4	RULEBOOK Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)		p.3	0.044796 (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 Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)	Basic Concepts · Aliens · Planets and Systems · Ships and Colonies · Moving Ships · The Warp	p.6	0.043298 (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 Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)	Winning The Game	p.6	0.032787 (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 Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)	Setup	p.5	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
#8	RULEBOOK Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)		p.4	0.029851 (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 55 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 Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)		p.3	#4	0.044796 (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 Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)	Setup	p.4	#17	0.026014 (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 Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)		p.11	#35	0.012195 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)		p.11	#22	0.025356 (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 Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)	Quick-Start Guide · Game Overview · Preparing to Play	p.2	#10	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
#6	RULEBOOK Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)	Basic Concepts · Aliens · Planets and Systems · Ships and Colonies · Moving Ships · The Warp	p.6	#5	0.043298 (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 Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)		p.7	#3	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
#8	RULEBOOK Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)		p.4	#23	0.025166 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)	Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)		p.7	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Cosmic Encounter — Rulebook (corpus doc 231)	Quick-Start Guide · Game Overview · Preparing to Play	p.2	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 99 ms · first delta 2561 ms · total 5243 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 99 ms · ask 5142 ms · gateway work 5243 ms · total 5243 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3823
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 540
tok/sec: 204.5 tok/sec — 540 output tokens in 2.641 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 46s 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 157), 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.