Ruling — Neuroshima Hex

← Neuroshima Hex

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Neuroshima Hexbg-21241-en-1e

### Setup

1. The owner of the game starts the session as Player 1.[1]

2. The starting player places their HQ tile anywhere on the board.[1]

3. The opposing player places their HQ tile on the board.[1]

4. Player 1 draws one tile from their pile and places it face up in front of them.[1]

5. Player 1 may use the tile, save it for later, or discard it.[1]

6. Player 2 draws two tiles from their pile and places them face up in front of them.[1]

7. Player 2 may use, save, or discard these tiles.[1]

### Turn Sequence

1. Player 1 draws up to three tiles (if a tile was saved from a previous turn, they draw only two; if the previous tile was used or discarded, they draw three).[1]

2. The player puts the drawn tiles face up in front of themselves.[2]

3. The player must discard one of the three tiles into the discard pile.[2][1]

4. The player decides what to do with the remaining two tiles: they can use them, keep them for following turns, or discard them.[2][1]

5. If the player uses a Unit tile, they place it on a chosen, unoccupied hexagonal space on the board.[3]

6. If the player uses an Instant Action tile, the effects are introduced into the game and the tile is then discarded.[3]

7. When a player completes all desired actions (drawing, using, or discarding tiles), they inform the other player.[2]

8. Player 2 follows the same procedure, and the game continues.[1]

### Rules and Mechanics

* **Unlucky Draw:** If all tiles a player possesses after a draw are Instant tiles, they may discard them and draw new tiles.[2] This rule does not apply to the The Dancer army.[2]

* **Battles:** A battle starts when a Battle tile is played or when the board is filled with tiles such that no space remains for a new tile.[4]

* **Battle Phases:** Battles are divided into phases based on the Initiative values on the tiles (from 3 down to 0).[4] In each phase, units with the same Initiative act simultaneously.[4]

* **Winning the Game:** The first opposing side to destroy an enemy HQ wins.[5] If no HQ is destroyed, the side with the highest total of remaining Hit points wins.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook · p.4 · STARTING THE GAME

[2] RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook · p.4 · GAME SEQUENCE · Unlucky Draw

[3] RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook · p.5 · USING TILES

[4] RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook · p.5 · BATTLES

[5] RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook · p.13 · 3. 1 player vs a team · 4. Team match (optional) · 1. Team match

🔧 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 68 ms · ask 6686 ms · total 6756 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6756 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "If after the first few plays the game seems too chaotic to you, we recommend you play more to get to know the game better. During the next plays try to use the army reference charts which allow you to play more tactically. If you feel that some armies are stronger, others weaker, we recommend you pl", "headingPath": "TIPS FOR THE BEGINNERS · MORE TACTICAL GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 484}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "Player 1 (called The Loner) plays on his own, while Players 2 and 3 form a team. Before the game starts, the Loner sets his HQ damage counter to 20 and each team player to 13 before the game starts. The T eam players ' units are called friendly - the rules for friendly units are described below in t", "headingPath": "3. 1 player vs a team · 4. Team match (optional) · 1. Team match", "sharpsignalDocId": 484}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045037, "snippet": "In their decks of tiles (among the 35 tiles that make up a players ' armies) players have several Battle tiles, which are a special kind of Instant Action tile. As soon as a Battle tile is played, a battle starts on the board. During a battle, the players must check the effects of each tile on the b", "headingPath": "BATTLES", "sharpsignalDocId": 484}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "The owner of the game starts a game session (becomes Player 1). He may also choose a starting player or the starting player may be chosen randomly. The starting player places his HQ tile anywhere on the board. The opposing player subsequently does the same. The HQ tiles may even be placed adjacent t", "headingPath": "STARTING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 484}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "YOU CAN SKIP OVER THE RULES AND LEARN THE GAME WITH OUR VIDEO TUTORIAL! SCAN THE QR CODE OR VISIT OUR WEBSITE: www.portalgames.pl", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 484}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "• Starting the game....................................................................... • Game sequence........................................................................... • Using tiles.................................................................................. • Battles.............", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 484}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "If you are already familiar with Neuroshima Hex rules and just want to check the changes and clarifications in this new edition, you only need to read the sections marked with this symbol . The following rules refer to a two-player game. All adjustments necessary for a three or four player games are", "headingPath": "GAME RULES · GOAL OF THE GAME · SETTING UP · HQ tokens and the Damage track", "sharpsignalDocId": 484}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030366, "snippet": "After drawing the tiles, placing them face up and discarding the one (ideally the least useful one), the remaining two can be put into play. There are two kinds of tiles in the game: Instant Action tiles (see more on page 11) and Unit tiles (see page 7). Each tile is clearly marked so it ' s easy to", "headingPath": "USING TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 484}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "STARTING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 484}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SEQUENCE · Unlucky Draw", "sharpsignalDocId": 484}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "USING TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 484}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "BATTLES", "sharpsignalDocId": 484}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. 1 player vs a team · 4. Team match (optional) · 1. Team match", "sharpsignalDocId": 484}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 484 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 484 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 0.88739 of 1705 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 12:09

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 Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	TIPS FOR THE BEGINNERS · MORE TACTICAL GAME	p.6	0.047643 (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 Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	3. 1 player vs a team · 4. Team match (optional) · 1. Team match	p.13	0.04598 (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 Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	BATTLES	p.5	0.045037 (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 Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	STARTING THE GAME	p.4	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
#5	RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)		p.1	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))	129
#6	RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)		p.2	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
#7	RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	GAME RULES · GOAL OF THE GAME · SETTING UP · HQ tokens and the Damage track	p.4	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 Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	USING TILES	p.5	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

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 42 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 Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	TIPS FOR THE BEGINNERS · MORE TACTICAL GAME	p.6	#1	0.047643 (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 Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	GAME SEQUENCE · Unlucky Draw	p.4	#9	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
#3	RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	3. 1 player vs a team · 4. Team match (optional) · 1. Team match	p.13	#2	0.04598 (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 Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	USING TILES	p.5	#8	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
#5	RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	BATTLES	p.5	#3	0.045037 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	Turn 1 (Placing HQs) · Turn 2 (The Outpost) · Turn 3 (Hegemony) · Turn 4 (The Outpost) · Turn 5 (Hegemony) · Turn 6 (The Outpost)	p.19	#18	0.013699 (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 Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	1. Deathmatch · 2. Deathmatch with an optional score rule · THE MULTIPLAYER GAME	p.13	#10	0.028571 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	STARTING THE GAME	p.4	#4	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	STARTING THE GAME	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	GAME SEQUENCE · Unlucky Draw	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	USING TILES	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	BATTLES	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Neuroshima Hex — Rulebook (corpus doc 484)	3. 1 player vs a team · 4. Team match (optional) · 1. Team match	p.13	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 68 ms · first delta 4099 ms · total 6756 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 68 ms · ask 6686 ms · gateway work 6756 ms · total 6756 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3777
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 533
tok/sec: 204.5 tok/sec — 533 output tokens in 2.606 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 24s 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 415), 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.