Ruling — Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battlebg-199042-en-1e

Each turn consists of four steps:[1]

1. Reveal and resolve Dark Arts event cards.[2][1] One at a time, reveal and resolve these events, placing the cards in a discard pile beside the stack; if the Dark Arts stack runs out, shuffle the resolved cards to form a new stack.[1]

2. Resolve Villain abilities.[2][1] Some abilities happen each turn, while others are triggered by Dark Arts events or other Villains.[1]

3. Play HOGWARTS cards and take Hero actions.[3][2][4] As the active Hero, you may do the following in any order you choose:[3]

* Play cards to gain resources (& tokens) and generate effects, setting them to the side to indicate they have been played.[3]

* Assign (Attack) to Villains; when the number of tokens assigned to a Villain equals its Health, the Villain is defeated.[3]

* Use (Influence) to acquire new cards from the six face up HOGWARTS cards available to build a more powerful deck.[3] Newly acquired cards must be immediately placed in your Discard Pile (not in your hand) unless otherwise noted.[3]

4. End your turn.[2][4] After playing cards, taking actions, and using tokens, do the following:[5][2]

* Check if the Villains have the required to Control the Location; if they do, remove the and discard the Location, revealing the next one in the stack.[5][2]

* If you assigned enough to defeat a Villain this turn, replace it with the next one from the Villains stack.[5][2][6]

* Refill empty spaces for HOGWARTS cards.[5][2][6]

* Place all cards played this turn in your discard pile, as you cannot save cards for your next turn.[5][2][6]

* Discard any unused and tokens.[5][2][6] (Note: If you played cards that allow other Heroes to gain tokens, they do get to keep them to use on their turn).[5][6]

* Draw a new hand of five cards.[5][2][6][4]

Gameplay continues clockwise, with the next player taking the same four steps as the active Hero.[5][6]

[1] RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook · p.6 · OBJECTIVE · GAMEPLAY · STEP 1. Reveal and resolve Dark Arts events. · STEP 2. Resolve Villain abilities.

[2] RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook · p.10

[3] RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook · p.8 · STEP 3. Play HOGWARTS cards and take Hero actions.

[4] RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook · p.9 · STEP 3. Play HOGWARTS cards and take Hero actions.

[5] RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook · p.10 · STEP 4. END YOUR TURN. · THE NEXT HERO'S TURN · See the following pages for more information on:

[6] RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook · p.10

🔧 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 5182 ms · total 5272 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5272 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "As the active Hero, you may do all of the following in any order you choose. Play cards to gain resources ( & tokens) and generate effects. As you play out cards, set them to the side to indicate that they have been played. Tokens you gain are collected on your player board. Cards and resources cann", "headingPath": "STEP 3. Play HOGWARTS cards and take Hero actions.", "sharpsignalDocId": 490}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "After playing cards, taking actions, and using tokens, do the following at the end of your turn. ❶ Check if the Villains have the required to Control the Location. If they Control it, remove the and discard the Location, revealing the next one in the stack. ❷ If you assigned enough to defeat a Villa", "headingPath": "STEP 4. END YOUR TURN. · THE NEXT HERO'S TURN · See the following pages for more information on:", "sharpsignalDocId": 490}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045956, "snippet": "Draw ❶ GAME 1 1. Reveal and resolve Dark Arts event cards 2. Resolve Villain abilities ™ 3. Play HOGWARTS cards and take Hero actions 4. End your turn - Discard any remaining cards and tokens, then draw five new cards. HARRY POTTER ™ HERO 'I can't be a-a-a wizard. I mean, I'm just… Harry. Just Harry", "headingPath": "STEP 3. Play HOGWARTS cards and take Hero actions.", "sharpsignalDocId": 490}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.045921, "snippet": "❷ If you assigned enough to defeat a Villain this turn, replace it with the next one from the Villains stack. ❸ Refill empty spaces for HOGWARTS cards. ❹ Place all cards played this turn in your discard pile. Y ou cannot save cards for your next turn. ❺ Discard any unused and tokens. If you played c", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 490}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.043124, "snippet": "Proceed to the next page for the active Hero's chance to play cards and take actions.", "headingPath": "STEP 2. Resolve Villain abilities.", "sharpsignalDocId": 490}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.04257, "snippet": "When the tokens assigned to a Villain equal its (Health), the Villain is defeated! You immediately gain the reward listed on the Villain card, and place it in the discard space in the center of the board. Return the tokens assigned to the Villain back to the pile. At the end of your turn, replace th", "headingPath": "Defeating a Villain · Location Control *", "sharpsignalDocId": 490}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "After reading these rules, if you are familiar with deckbuilding games, you may proceed directly to Game 3. You will open boxes for Games 1-3, review the additional rules enclosed in each, and start your adventure there. You can also increase the difficulty of each game by starting with 1 or 2 on th", "headingPath": "Advanced Wizards", "sharpsignalDocId": 490}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "For Game 1 there will only be one active Villain at a time. Reveal the top card face up in space below. Villain cards Discard Pile (face up) Shuffle and stack your Hero deck of 10 cards face down, then draw 5 cards. Choose your Hero Place an oversized Turn Order and Hero card face up above your Play", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 490}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "OBJECTIVE · GAMEPLAY · STEP 1. Reveal and resolve Dark Arts events. · STEP 2. Resolve Villain abilities.", "sharpsignalDocId": 490}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 490}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "STEP 3. Play HOGWARTS cards and take Hero actions.", "sharpsignalDocId": 490}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "STEP 3. Play HOGWARTS cards and take Hero actions.", "sharpsignalDocId": 490}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "STEP 4. END YOUR TURN. · THE NEXT HERO'S TURN · See the following pages for more information on:", "sharpsignalDocId": 490}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 490}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 490 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 490 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 0.87732 of 1565 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 11:32

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 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	STEP 3. Play HOGWARTS cards and take Hero actions.	p.8	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 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	STEP 4. END YOUR TURN. · THE NEXT HERO'S TURN · See the following pages for more information on:	p.10	0.047371 (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 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	STEP 3. Play HOGWARTS cards and take Hero actions.	p.9	0.045956 (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 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)		p.10	0.045921 (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 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	STEP 2. Resolve Villain abilities.	p.7	0.043124 (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))	85
#6	RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	Defeating a Villain · Location Control *	p.12	0.04257 (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 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	Advanced Wizards	p.14	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
#8	RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)		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 32 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 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	STEP 3. Play HOGWARTS cards and take Hero actions.	p.8	#1	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	Advanced Wizards	p.14	#7	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 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	STEP 4. END YOUR TURN. · THE NEXT HERO'S TURN · See the following pages for more information on:	p.10	#2	0.047371 (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 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)		p.10	#9	0.029469 (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 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	HOGWARTS cards · Drawing and Discarding cards · Placing Cards on top of your Deck · Saving Influence and Attacks · Villains and Dark arts cards · LOCATION CARDS ™ Storing the game	p.14	#10	0.028629 (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 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	OBJECTIVE · GAMEPLAY · STEP 1. Reveal and resolve Dark Arts events. · STEP 2. Resolve Villain abilities.	p.6	#16	0.02632 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)		p.10	#4	0.045921 (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 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	STEP 3. Play HOGWARTS cards and take Hero actions.	p.9	#3	0.045956 (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 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	OBJECTIVE · GAMEPLAY · STEP 1. Reveal and resolve Dark Arts events. · STEP 2. Resolve Villain abilities.	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)		p.10	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	STEP 3. Play HOGWARTS cards and take Hero actions.	p.8	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	STEP 3. Play HOGWARTS cards and take Hero actions.	p.9	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)	STEP 4. END YOUR TURN. · THE NEXT HERO'S TURN · See the following pages for more information on:	p.10	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle — Rulebook (corpus doc 490)		p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 87 ms · first delta 2745 ms · total 5272 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 5182 ms · gateway work 5272 ms · total 5272 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2996
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 513
tok/sec: 206.8 tok/sec — 513 output tokens in 2.481 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 35s 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 421), 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.