Ruling — Onitama

← Onitama

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Onitamabg-160477-en-1e

Setup:

1. Shuffle the 16 Move cards.[1][2][3]

2. Give two random cards to each player, face up, which serves as the player's "hand".[1][2][3]

3. Each player places both starting cards in front of them, face up.[1][2][3]

4. Turn over one more Move card and examine the stamp in the lower right hand corner.[1][2][3]

5. The player with the pawns that are the same color as that stamp goes first.[1][2][3]

6. Place this card on the right side of the game mat with respect to the player going first.[1][2][3]

7. Return the unused Move cards to the box.[1][2][3]

Gameplay:

1. On your turn, examine and choose one of the two Move cards in front of you.[4]

2. Move one of your pawns (student or master) as shown on that card.[4]

3. Other pawns (yours or your opponents) and Temple Arches do not block the movement of your pawn across the board.[5][4][6]

4. If you have a legal move, you must take it.[7][8]

5. Take the Move card you just used and place it to the left side of the playmat, rotating it 180 degrees to face your opponent.[7][1][3]

6. Take the card that is on the right side of your playmat and add it to your hand.[7][1][3]

7. If you cannot use any of your cards to make a legal move, you must pass your turn, and none of your pawns will move.[7][8]

8. Even when passing, you must still choose one of the two cards in front of you, place it to the left of the playmat and rotate it, then take the card from the right side of the board.[7][8]

9. The opponent then takes a turn following the same two steps.[7][1][3]

10. Continue taking turns until one player has won the game.[7][1][8][3]

[1] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook · p.8

[2] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook · p.5 · GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1

[3] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook · p.5

[4] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook · p.6 · PLAYER 1 · It is time to prove the power of your Art. · STEP 1: MOVE & ATTACK · PAWN CAN MOVE TO ANY ONE OF THESE

[5] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook · p.7

[6] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook · p.6

[7] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook · p.8 · STEP 2: EXCHANGE CARDS · WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO MOVE?

[8] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook · p.5

🔧 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 84 ms · ask 4283 ms · total 4368 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4368 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 7, "score": 0.045702, "snippet": "Other pawns (yours or your opponents) and Temple Arches do not block the movement of your pawn across the board. HOW DO I PLAY? STEP 1: MOVE & ATTACK “These words are written in the presence of the scribes of Onitama. I have unlocked the mysteries of my Art, which I believe to be the true Art. I hav", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045002, "snippet": "Other pawns (yours or your opponents) and Temple Arches do not block the movement of your pawn across the board. HOW DO I PLAY? STEP 1: MOVE & ATTACK “These words are written in the presence of the scribes of Onitama. I have unlocked the mysteries of my Art, which I believe to be the true Art. I hav", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Take the Move card you just used, and place it to the left side of the playmat, rotating it 180 degrees to face your opponent. Then take the card that is on the right side of your playmat and add it to your hand. You may use that card starting next turn, as one of the two Move cards you can choose f", "headingPath": "STEP 2: EXCHANGE CARDS · WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO MOVE?", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "superior strategy and superior skill that the Master of Masters will be known, and the true Art will be revealed.' - The Book of Heaven, Second Scroll FACE UP Shuffle the 16 Move cards. Give two random cards to each player, face up - this is the player's 'hand'. Each player places both of their star", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031498, "snippet": "You may use that card starting next turn, as one of the two Move cards you can choose from. Now it is time for your opponent to take a turn, following the same two steps. You shall continue to take turns until one of you has won the game, demonstrating mastery of your Martial Art. STEP 2: EXCHANGE C", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.031498, "snippet": "You may use that card starting next turn, as one of the two Move cards you can choose from. Now it is time for your opponent to take a turn, following the same two steps. You shall continue to take turns until one of you has won the game, demonstrating mastery of your Martial Art. STEP 2: EXCHANGE C", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "'These words are written in the presence of the scribes of Onitama. I have unlocked the mysteries of my Art, which I believe to be the true Art. I have listened to the Spirits, and have studied the manuals of my ancestors, passing Combat at Onitama is simple and elegant, as befits a contest between ", "headingPath": "PLAYER 1 · It is time to prove the power of your Art. · STEP 1: MOVE & ATTACK · PAWN CAN MOVE TO ANY ONE OF THESE", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "'These are the words of the Enlightened Ones: there are two paths to superiority: to best another Master as the larger stone breaks the smaller; or to wrest control away from his Art, as the stream carries away all within it.' - The Book of Heaven, Golden Scroll There are two ways to prove that your", "headingPath": "WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO MOVE? · HOW DO I WIN?", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER 1 · It is time to prove the power of your Art. · STEP 1: MOVE & ATTACK · PAWN CAN MOVE TO ANY ONE OF THESE", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "STEP 2: EXCHANGE CARDS · WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO MOVE?", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 448 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 448 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 0.83705 of 1301 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 10:29

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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)		p.7	0.045702 (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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)		p.6	0.045002 (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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)	STEP 2: EXCHANGE CARDS · WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO MOVE?	p.8	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
#4	RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)	GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1	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
#5	RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)		p.5	0.031498 (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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)		p.8	0.031498 (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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)	PLAYER 1 · It is time to prove the power of your Art. · STEP 1: MOVE & ATTACK · PAWN CAN MOVE TO ANY ONE OF THESE	p.6	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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)	WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO MOVE? · HOW DO I WIN?	p.9	0.029412 (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 28 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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)		p.7	#1	0.045702 (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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)	STEP 2: EXCHANGE CARDS · WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO MOVE?	p.8	#3	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)		p.8	#14	0.014493 (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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)	GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1	p.5	#4	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
#5	RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)		p.5	#5	0.031498 (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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)		p.5	#15	0.014286 (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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)	PLAYER 1 · It is time to prove the power of your Art. · STEP 1: MOVE & ATTACK · PAWN CAN MOVE TO ANY ONE OF THESE	p.6	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)		p.6	#2	0.045002 (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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)		p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)	GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)		p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)	PLAYER 1 · It is time to prove the power of your Art. · STEP 1: MOVE & ATTACK · PAWN CAN MOVE TO ANY ONE OF THESE	p.6	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)		p.7	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)		p.6	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)	STEP 2: EXCHANGE CARDS · WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO MOVE?	p.8	no quote on the wire
[8]	RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448)		p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 84 ms · first delta 1897 ms · total 4368 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 84 ms · ask 4283 ms · gateway work 4368 ms · total 4368 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3039
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 501
tok/sec: 206.0 tok/sec — 501 output tokens in 2.432 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 379), 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.