Ruling — Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.”

← Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.”

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.”bg-284653-en-1e

### Setup

1. One player volunteers or is randomly selected to play as the MIND MGMT Recruiter, while all other players are Rogue Agents.[1]

2. Place the game board face-up on the table, oriented so the Recruiter's side is closest to the Recruiter.[1]

3. The Recruiter places 1 Mayhem token first, then, going clockwise, each player places 1 Mayhem token until 5 tokens are placed, ensuring no token touches another.[1]

4. Place the Time Token next to '0':01:00-05:00' on the Time Track.[1]

5. Place the Rogue Agents' Action cards under the appropriate labels on the Rogue Agents' side of the board, and do the same for the Recruiter's Action card(s).[1]

6. Place Mental Note tokens, STEP tokens, and Recruit tokens in a supply off to the side.[1]

7. Use 1 Recruit token to cover each of the '15:00' and '16:00' spaces of the Time Track.[1]

8. Distribute the 4 Agent cards as evenly as possible among the Rogue Agents.[2]

9. Rogue Agents place their Agent card(s) in front of them with the side that does not have printed abilities face-up.[2]

10. Rogue Agents place their Agent figure(s) in any location(s) on the outside edge of the game board.[2]

11. Place both Potential Recruiter cards under the POTENTIAL label on the Rogue Agents' side of the board.[2]

12. Rogue Agents place any accessible Ally cards face-up under the ALLIES label.[2]

13. Rogue Agents choose a location on the board adjacent to one of the Temples and place the Recruiter's 2nd MIND SLIP token there.[2]

14. The Recruiter draws 2 additional Feature cards from the deck and places them face-up under the IMMORTAL RECRUITING label on their side of the board.[2]

15. The Recruiter secretly looks at their cards and places them face-up behind their screen.[3]

16. The Recruiter circles every Feature on their Secret Map that matches any of their 3 cards.[3]

17. The Recruiter performs 4 STEP Actions and marks them on their secret board as '2,' '3,' '4,' and '5'.[3]

18. The Recruiter counts the number of circled features on locations marked 1 through 5 and places that number of Recruit tokens from the supply next to the '01:00-05:00' space on the Time Track.[3]

19. The Recruiter places 4 Immortal figures on the board in different locations, ensuring they are not on the outside edges of the board.[3]

20. Start the game with the Recruiter's first turn.[2]

### Actions

**ASK Action**

* An Agent chooses one of the Features in their location and asks if the Recruiter has visited any location with that Feature (unless the Agent is at a location with an Immortal, in which case they cannot use the ASK action, nor can they ASK about Features in locations occupied by Immortals).[4]

* The Recruiter consults their Secret Map; if they have visited a location with that Feature, they must reveal one such location by placing a STEP token on it (choosing a location without an existing STEP or Confirmed Mental Note if possible).[4]

* If the Recruiter has not visited any locations with that Feature, or if all such locations already have tokens, they declare they cannot place a new token.[4]

**CAPTURE Action**

* An Agent at their location may attempt to capture the Recruiter (unless they are at a location with an Immortal).[5]

* The Recruiter consults their Secret Map; if they are currently at the Agent's location, the capture is a HIT and the Rogue Agents win.[5]

* If the Recruiter is not at that location, the capture is a MISS and play continues.[5]

### Winning the Game

* **Rogue Agents win if:** They CAPTURE the Recruiter.[6]

* **The Recruiter wins if:**

* The Time token reaches 14:00 and they have evaded capture.[6]

* They have contacted 9 Recruits.[6]

* The Time token reaches 16:00 and they have evaded capture.[6]

* They have contacted 12 Recruits.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook · p.3 · Game Area Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook · p.3 · ROGUE AGENTS SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook · p.3 · RECRUITER SETUP

[4] RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook · p.7 · Agent Action · ASK action · IMPORTANT:

[5] RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook · p.8 · CAPTURE action

[6] RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook · p.8 · 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 93 ms · ask 6886 ms · total 6981 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6981 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 9, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Each SHIFT TM Package contains an original mini-comic by Matt Kindt. On the back cover of the comic is a diagram of all the components that belong to that SHIFT TM Module (it does not show new standard components, as those are packed away in the main game box). When you put away the game, place the ", "headingPath": "Packing up the SHIFT TM System · All Packages Unlocked · Solo and Co-op", "sharpsignalDocId": 410}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "SHIFT TM Modules help balance the challenge of playing as the Recruiter or Rogue Agents. For example, if the Recruiter wins a game, the Rogue Agents open a SHIFT TM Module that they can use in the next game, giving them a new edge. Once you have opened multiple SHIFT TM Modules, you'll need to decid", "headingPath": "Using SHIFT TM Modules", "sharpsignalDocId": 410}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046964, "snippet": "A. One player volunteers or is randomly selected to play as the MIND MGMT Recruiter . All other players are Rogue Agents. B. Place the game board face-up on the table. The board should be oriented so the Recruiter's side is closest to the Recruiter (see diagram). The opposite side is the Rogue Agent", "headingPath": "Game Area Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 410}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.046394, "snippet": "You may use a CAPTURE action at your location to attempt to capture the Recruiter. If you are at a location with one of the Immortals , you may not use the CAPTURE action. EXAMPLE 13: Bill reaches the STEP token the Recruiter placed on Turn 9. He discards the STEP token and asks the Recruiter, 'When", "headingPath": "CAPTURE action", "sharpsignalDocId": 410}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The Recruiter must do the following, in any order: T ake 1 action Advance the Time Token The Recruiter must do the following, in any order: Take 1 action Move 1 Immortal (Optional) Place 1 STEP token to move 1 Immortal again The Recruiter then completes their turn by doing the following, in this ord", "headingPath": "Recruiter's Turn · Recording Hidden Movement · Recruiter Action · STEP action · MPORTANT:", "sharpsignalDocId": 410}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030366, "snippet": "They secretly look at them and place them face-up behind their screen where the Rogue Agents cannot see them. On their Secret Map , the Recruiter circles every Feature that matches any of their 3 cards. P. The Recruiter then performs 4 STEP Actions and marks them on their secret board (as '2,' '3,' ", "headingPath": "RECRUITER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 410}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The Rogue Agents take 1 dry-erase marker to share. Then they distribute the 4 Agent cards as evenly as possible between their players: 2-player game: The lone Rogue Agent controls all 4 3-player game: Each of the 2 Rogue Agents controls 2 Agents. Each of the 3 Rogue Agents controls 1 Agent. 4-player", "headingPath": "ROGUE AGENTS SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 410}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Instead of a regular STEP action, you can discard your MIND SLIP token to use the special MIND SLIP action detailed on your Recruiter card. Each Recruiter card has a different MIND SLIP ability. When you use a MIND SLIP: Write the next number on your new location on your Secret Map (as with a STEP).", "headingPath": "MIND SLIP action · IMPORTANT: · Recruiter Cards · 2nd MIND SLIP · Pipe Girl MIND SLIP: Smoke Screen", "sharpsignalDocId": 410}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Area Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 410}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ROGUE AGENTS SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 410}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "RECRUITER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 410}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Agent Action · ASK action · IMPORTANT:", "sharpsignalDocId": 410}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CAPTURE action", "sharpsignalDocId": 410}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game End", "sharpsignalDocId": 410}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 410 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 410 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 0.88935 of 3100 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 10:57

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 Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	Packing up the SHIFT TM System · All Packages Unlocked · Solo and Co-op	p.9	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	Using SHIFT TM Modules	p.9	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 Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	Game Area Setup	p.3	0.046964 (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 Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	CAPTURE action	p.8	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
#5	RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	Recruiter's Turn · Recording Hidden Movement · Recruiter Action · STEP action · MPORTANT:	p.4	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
#6	RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	RECRUITER SETUP	p.3	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
#7	RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	ROGUE AGENTS SETUP	p.3	0.030303 (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 Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	MIND SLIP action · IMPORTANT: · Recruiter Cards · 2nd MIND SLIP · Pipe Girl MIND SLIP: Smoke Screen	p.5	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 26 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 Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	Using SHIFT TM Modules	p.9	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	Game End	p.8	#10	0.028624 (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 Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	Game Area Setup	p.3	#3	0.046964 (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 Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	Agent Action · ASK action · IMPORTANT:	p.7	#13	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
#5	RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	ROGUE AGENTS SETUP	p.3	#7	0.030303 (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 Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	CAPTURE action	p.8	#4	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	Packing up the SHIFT TM System · All Packages Unlocked · Solo and Co-op	p.9	#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
#8	RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	RECRUITER SETUP	p.3	#6	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	Game Area Setup	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	ROGUE AGENTS SETUP	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	RECRUITER SETUP	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	Agent Action · ASK action · IMPORTANT:	p.7	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	CAPTURE action	p.8	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.” — Rulebook (corpus doc 410)	Game End	p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 93 ms · first delta 2007 ms · total 6981 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 93 ms · ask 6886 ms · gateway work 6981 ms · total 6981 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3354
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1005
tok/sec: 204.1 tok/sec — 1005 output tokens in 4.923 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 30s 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 339), 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.