Ruling — Bomb Busters

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Bomb Bustersbg-413246-en-1e

### Setup

1. Select a Mission card.[1]

2. Designate a Captain (at random for the first mission, then pass responsibility to the left before each subsequent mission) and place the "Captain" character card in front of them; all other players place a character card of their choice faceup in front of them.[1]

3. The Captain reads the Mission card aloud and places it, flipped over, to the bottom left of the board.[1]

4. Distribute tile stands based on the number of players: 2 players (2 stands for Captain, 2 for others), 3 players (2 for Captain, 1 for others), 4 players (1 for Captain, 1 for others), or 5 players (1 for Captain, 1 for others).[1]

5. Prepare the mission's Wire tiles: Collect all 48 blue wire tiles (except for training missions 1, 2 & 3).[2]

6. Draw the number of red and yellow wires shown on the Mission card at random.[2]

7. Indicate red and yellow values by placing appropriate markers on the board with the blank side faceup.[2]

8. Shuffle all Wire tiles (blue, red, and yellow) together facedown.[2]

9. Deal all wires facedown as equally as possible among all tile stands.[2]

10. Players place their dealt wires in their tile stand, sorted from left-to-right in ascending order with information facing the player.[2]

11. Each bomb disposal expert places 1 Info token of their choice in front of their stand, pointing to a blue wire in their hand with the matching value.[3]

12. Place Equipment cards faceup over the checkmark.[3]

13. Set the detonator dial to the section matching the number of bomb disposal experts.[3]

14. Place all Info tokens and the 12 Validation tokens on the board.[3]

### Gameplay

1. Starting with the Captain and going clockwise, each bomb disposal expert takes a turn.[4]

2. On their turn, the active bomb disposal expert must perform one of three actions:[4]

* **Dual Cut action**: The expert chooses a value on a tile in their hand, points to a teammate's tile, and guesses its value.[4][5]

* If correct: The teammate takes that wire and places it faceup in front of their tile stand, and the active expert also places their identical wire faceup in front of their tile stand.[4]

* If incorrect (blue or yellow): The detonator dial advances 1 space and an Info token of the true value is placed in front of the teammate's wire.[4][5]

* If incorrect (red): The bomb explodes and the mission ends in failure.[4]

* Note: If the last identical wires in the game are only in the active player's hand, they can cut them in pairs or a set of 4 without a teammate.[6]

* **Solo Cut action**: The active expert reveals 2 or 4 remaining wires of the same value and places them faceup in front of their tile stand.[5] This can only occur if the remaining uncut wires are all red.[6]

* **Reveal Your Red Wires action**: If all of the expert's remaining wires are red, they reveal them.[5]

3. Communication is limited: players may not talk about wires in hand, imply values, recall previous turn information, or share guesses/assumptions aloud; however, players may discuss general tactics, equipment, or special rules.[7]

### End of the Game

1. **Win**: The mission is a success when all tile stands are empty.[7]

2. **Loss**: The mission ends in failure if a red wire is cut or if the detonator dial reaches the skull/end.[1][4][7][5] If the mission fails, change the Captain and restart the mission.[7]

[1] RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook · p.2

[2] RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook · p.3 · 7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red

[3] RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook · p.4

[4] RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook · p.5 · The Game · Dual Cut Action

[5] RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook · p.8 · Setup · On Your Turn · End of the Game

[6] RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook · p.6 · Dual Cut Action · Reveal Your Red Wires Action · VALIDATION TOKENS · THE YELLOW WIRES

[7] RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook · p.7 · THE CHARACTER CARDS · Clarifications · End of the Game

🔧 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 75 ms · ask 5562 ms · total 5641 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5641 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "2 Aim of the Game Bomb Busters is a cooperative game. Each player is a bomb disposal expert and all players together form one team. The objective is to defuse the assigned mission’s bomb together. Beware! The bomb will explode if you cut a red wire or if the detonator dial reaches the end! Setup 1 S", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045805, "snippet": "5 Prepare the mission's Wire tiles: Collect all 48 blue wire tiles (except for training missions 1, 2 & 3). There are 4 copies of each number 1-12. T ake the number of red and yellow wires shown on the Mission card by drawing them at random. Look at the red and yellow tiles drawn and indicate the re", "headingPath": "7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Equipment becomes useable the first time 2 wires of the value shown on the card have been cut. space!) Each character has 1 personal equipment that can be used once per game . All the yellow wires are considered to have the same value: ' yellow '. There are 4 copies of each blue wire from 1 to 12. A", "headingPath": "REMEMBER: · Audio credits:", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "A game by Hisashi Hayashi, illustrated by Dom2D Install the dial on the board before the first game 12 Equipment cards 26 Info tokens (including 2 yellow ones) 12 Validation tokens 8 large Mission cards 5 Character cards 1 token \" = \" token 48 blue wires '1' to '12', 4 of each 11 red wires '1.5' to ", "headingPath": "1 board (with a dial) · 17 cards · 40 tokens · 70 Wire tiles · 7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Starting with the Captain and going clockwise, each bomb disposal expert takes a turn. On their turn, a bomb disposal expert (called the 'active bomb disposal expert') must do 1 of the following 3 actions: Dual Cut action, Solo Cut action, or Reveal Your Red Wires action. The active bomb disposal ex", "headingPath": "The Game · Dual Cut Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "If the last of identical wires still in the game appear only in the active bomb disposal expert's hand, then they can cut those identical wires in pairs (either 2 or 4). This can be done on their own, without involving another bomb disposal expert. If they are lucky enough to have a full set of 4, t", "headingPath": "Dual Cut Action · Reveal Your Red Wires Action · VALIDATION TOKENS · THE YELLOW WIRES", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Everyone takes 1 character card. Shuffle the 48 blue wires with the red / yellow wires as indicated by mission setup instructions. Then distribute all wires facedown among tile stands as equally as possible. With 2 bomb disposal experts, each bomb disposal expert will use 2 tile stands. With 3 bomb ", "headingPath": "Setup · On Your Turn · End of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "4 8 On the board: 9 Starting with the Captain and going clockwise, each bomb disposal expert places an Info token of their choice on the table in front of their stand, pointing to one of the blue wires in their hand with the matching value. T ake as many Equipment cards as there are bomb disposal ex", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The Game · Dual Cut Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup · On Your Turn · End of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Dual Cut Action · Reveal Your Red Wires Action · VALIDATION TOKENS · THE YELLOW WIRES", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE CHARACTER CARDS · Clarifications · End of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 280 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 280 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 0.89050 of 2767 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 13:14

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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)		p.2	0.046898 (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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red	p.3	0.045805 (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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	REMEMBER: · Audio credits:	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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	1 board (with a dial) · 17 cards · 40 tokens · 70 Wire tiles · 7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red	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))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	The Game · Dual Cut Action	p.5	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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	Dual Cut Action · Reveal Your Red Wires Action · VALIDATION TOKENS · THE YELLOW WIRES	p.6	0.03125 (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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	Setup · On Your Turn · End of the Game	p.8	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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)		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 11 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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)		p.2	#1	0.046898 (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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	The Game · Dual Cut Action	p.5	#5	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red	p.3	#2	0.045805 (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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	Dual Cut Action · Reveal Your Red Wires Action · VALIDATION TOKENS · THE YELLOW WIRES	p.6	#6	0.03125 (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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	THE CHARACTER CARDS · Clarifications · End of the Game	p.7	#9	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
#6	RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	REMEMBER: · Audio credits:	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
#7	RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)		p.4	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	Setup · On Your Turn · End of the Game	p.8	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	The Game · Dual Cut Action	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	Setup · On Your Turn · End of the Game	p.8	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	Dual Cut Action · Reveal Your Red Wires Action · VALIDATION TOKENS · THE YELLOW WIRES	p.6	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280)	THE CHARACTER CARDS · Clarifications · End of the Game	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 75 ms · first delta 1428 ms · total 5641 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 75 ms · ask 5562 ms · gateway work 5641 ms · total 5641 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3446
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 857
tok/sec: 205.6 tok/sec — 857 output tokens in 4.169 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 26s 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 209), 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.