Ruling — The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth

← The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earthbg-269385-en-1e

To play a first campaign of Journeys in Middle-earth, follow these setup steps:

1. Select Campaign and Difficulty: Select the 'New Game' button on the app's title screen, then follow the app's prompts to select a campaign, difficulty, and save slot.[1]

2. Create Party and Select Heroes: Each player selects a hero in the app, takes that hero's corresponding figure and hero card, and places them in their play area.[1] Single players choose two heroes and control both.[1]

3. Gather Starting Items: Find the item cards that match the name and tier displayed in the app for each hero and place them near their hero card.[1]

4. Create Damage, Fear, and Weakness Decks: Shuffle damage cards, fear cards, and weakness skill cards into separate decks and place them in the center of the play area.[1][2]

5. Create Supply: Separate exploration/inspiration, search/threat, person, and enemy banner tokens, as well as the three types of boon cards, into separate piles.[1][2]

6. Set aside map tiles and enemy figures, and return battle map tiles and terrain tokens to the box.[1][2]

7. Begin Campaign: Input a group name, select 'Begin' in the app, and watch the introductory cutscene.[1][2]

8. Choose Role: Each player selects a role in the app for their hero's first adventure.[1][2]

The game is played over a series of rounds, each consisting of three phases resolved in this order:

1. Action Phase: Heroes move around the map, interact with the world, and attack enemies.[3] During a hero's turn, they can perform two actions (which may be the same action twice) from the following: Travel, Attack, or Interact.[3] Heroes take turns in an order of their choice, which can change each round.[3]

2. Shadow Phase: Enemies move and attack heroes, and other dark threats grow stronger.[3]

3. Rally Phase: Heroes prepare for the next round.[3]

After all heroes have taken a turn in the action phase, players select the hourglass button in the app to proceed to the shadow phase.[3] Players continue resolving rounds until the adventure ends.[3] An adventure is won if the heroes complete the final objective before the threat bar is full.[4] An adventure is lost if the heroes do not complete the final objective by the start of the next shadow phase.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook · p.4 · FirST cAmpAign SeTUp

[2] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook · p.4

[3] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook · p.6 · plAying The gAme · AcTion phASe · TrAvel AcTion

[4] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook · p.9 · compleTing An AdvenTUre · objecTiveS

🔧 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 78 ms · ask 4912 ms · total 4992 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4992 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Each game of The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth is one adventure of a greater campaign. During each adventure, the heroes attempt to complete a series of objectives before they are overwhelmed by the evils of Middle-earth. No matter the outcome of a particular adventure, the heroes and ", "headingPath": "An epic cAmpAign · The App · USing ThiS docUmenT", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "To set up their first campaign of Journeys in Middle-earth , players follow the steps presented in this section. Select Campaign and Difficulty: Select the 'New Game' button on the app's title screen. Then, the app will guide the players through a series of screens for selecting a campaign, a diffic", "headingPath": "FirST cAmpAign SeTUp", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.04728, "snippet": "A game of Journeys in Middle-earth is played over a series of rounds. Each round has three phases that players resolve in the following order: Action Phase: During this phase, the heroes move around the map, interact with the world, and attack enemies. Shadow Phase: During this phase, the enemies mo", "headingPath": "plAying The gAme · AcTion phASe · TrAvel AcTion", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "This section describes additional details related to the app. During an adventure, the heroes may be rewarded with lore and experience. These resources are tracked in the app and allow the heroes to upgrade items and purchase new skills between adventures. Players can ignore lore and experience for ", "headingPath": "App elemenTS · lore And experience · Fog · whAT now?", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "Hidden If you are attacked, before you test, prevent all  and discard this boon. When you attack, you may discard this boon to add 1 . At the end of your turn, if there are no nearby enemies, discard this boon. If you suffer  or , discard this boon. When you attack, add 2 hits. Emboldened When y", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.044337, "snippet": "Gather Skill Cards: Each hero gathers the following 15 skill cards: \u0003 one copy of each skill card numbered 1-6 that has the word 'Basic' on the bottom of the card \u0003 the skill cards numbered 1-5 that have the name of their hero on the bottom of the card \u0003 the skill cards numbered 1-3 that have their ", "headingPath": "FirST cAmpAign SeTUp", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.044283, "snippet": "Players may select different starting items in the app if they wish. 4. C reate Damage, Fear, and Weakness Decks: Shuffle the damage cards, fear cards, and weakness skill cards (only weakness skill cards, not other skill cards) into separate decks and place them in the center of the play area where ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Tests are the primary way that heroes interact with the world and attack enemies. Heroes regularly perform tests when they are exploring, encountering threats, attacking enemies, and interacting with the people of Middle-earth. Each test requires a hero to use one of their stats , which are listed o", "headingPath": "TeSTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "FirST cAmpAign SeTUp", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "plAying The gAme · AcTion phASe · TrAvel AcTion", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "compleTing An AdvenTUre · objecTiveS", "sharpsignalDocId": 312}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 312 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 312 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 0.91293 of 1872 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 10:03

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 The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	An epic cAmpAign · The App · USing ThiS docUmenT	p.2	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 The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	FirST cAmpAign SeTUp	p.4	0.047379 (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 The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	plAying The gAme · AcTion phASe · TrAvel AcTion	p.6	0.04728 (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 The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	App elemenTS · lore And experience · Fog · whAT now?	p.15	0.045928 (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 The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)		p.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))	300
#6	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	FirST cAmpAign SeTUp	p.5	0.044337 (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 The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)		p.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))	300
#8	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	TeSTS	p.10	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

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 37 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 The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	plAying The gAme · AcTion phASe · TrAvel AcTion	p.6	#3	0.04728 (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 The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	FirST cAmpAign SeTUp	p.4	#2	0.047379 (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 The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	compleTing An AdvenTUre · objecTiveS	p.9	#10	0.028778 (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 The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	AddiTionAl rUleS · enemieS · reAdied And exhAUSTed · provoking enemieS · inTerrUpTing enemy AcTivATionS · plAcing enemieS	p.13	#12	0.026709 (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 The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	Adding mAp TileS	p.7	#18	0.014085 (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
#6	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	keywordS	p.16	#23	0.012658 (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
#7	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	App elemenTS · lore And experience · Fog · whAT now?	p.15	#4	0.045928 (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 The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)		p.4	#7	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	FirST cAmpAign SeTUp	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	plAying The gAme · AcTion phASe · TrAvel AcTion	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 312)	compleTing An AdvenTUre · objecTiveS	p.9	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 78 ms · first delta 2362 ms · total 4992 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 78 ms · ask 4912 ms · gateway work 4992 ms · total 4992 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3241
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 534
tok/sec: 206.3 tok/sec — 534 output tokens in 2.588 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 240), 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.