Ruling — Mage Wars Arena

You asked

How do I take my turn?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Mage Wars Arenabg-101721-en-1e

The player with the initiative takes the first Action Phase.[1] During an Action Phase, you take turns back and forth with your opponent until all creatures in the arena have had an Action Phase.[1]

To take an Action Phase:

1. Determine if you must act: You must activate one of your active creatures, unless your opponent has more active creatures in the arena than you, in which case you may choose to pass.[1] You must take an Action Phase once the number of active creatures is equal.[1]

2. Activate a creature: Choose a creature and activate it by flipping its action marker to the inactive side and removing its guard marker, if any.[2][3]

3. Choose an action: Your creature can perform one of the following options:

* Take a move action to move the creature one zone to an adjacent zone, then optionally take a quick action.[2] If you choose to move, you must complete the move before taking a quick action.[2] A creature can use a quick action to move a second time, which completes its Action Phase.[3]

* Take a full action.[2] Full actions do not allow you to move first.[2]

* Do nothing.[2] Even if nothing is done, you must still flip the creature's action marker to the inactive side.[2]

* Perform a special action, if the creature has one.[2]

* An attack or spell with a quick action icon can be taken as a quick action.[2]

Additionally, a Mage may use a special quickcast action at three specific times during the Action Stage: during the First Quickcast Phase, immediately before or after any creature you control takes its Action Phase, or during the Final Quickcast Phase.[1] To use this, flip your quickcast marker face down and play a prepared quick spell.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook · p.10 · QUICKCAST ACTION · Action Phases

[2] RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook · p.13 · STEP 6: Entering Zone Effects · WHAT CAN A CREATURE DO DURING ITS ACTION PHASE? · TAKE A MOVE ACTION FIRST, AND THEN TAKE A QUICK ACTION · TAKE A FULL ACTION · DO NOTHING · TAKE ANOTHER MOVE ACTION · …

[3] RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook · p.11 · Creature Actions · MOVEMENT

Settled. Play on.

🔧 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 108 ms · ask 5610 ms · total 5720 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5720 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 48, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "Initiative Phase Initiative is passed to the other player. Reset Phase Flip all action markers, quickcast markers, and ready markers to the active side (face-up). Channeling Phase Each Mage and object that channels adds mana equal to their channeling to their mana supply. Upkeep Phase Pay any upkeep", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.045805, "snippet": "A quickcast action is a special action that only a Mage may take during a round, in addition to his regular actions during his Action Phase. This action can only be used to cast one quick spell (a spell with the quick action symbol), and cannot be used to take any other action. You can use your quic", "headingPath": "QUICKCAST ACTION · Action Phases", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "When you choose a creature to take an Action Phase, you activate it. You must flip over the creature's action marker to the inactive side, and you must discard any guard marker (if it has one). Then your creature may take its actions for the round (see 'What Can A Creature Do' on page 11). Important", "headingPath": "Creature Actions · MOVEMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "OR ACTIVATION: First, choose a creature and activate it: Flip over its action marker to the inactive side, and remove its guard marker (if any). Now you are ready to act with it! Choose one of the 3 options below. Your creature can either: First, move the creature one zone to an adjacent zone. Then,", "headingPath": "STEP 6: Entering Zone Effects · WHAT CAN A CREATURE DO DURING ITS ACTION PHASE? · TAKE A MOVE ACTION FIRST, AND THEN TAKE A QUICK ACTION · TAKE A FULL ACTION · DO NOTHING · TAKE ANOTHER MOVE ACTION · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "this manner the initiative marker alternates back and forth between players. The player with the initiative acts first during the Action Stage, and goes first whenever you must determine the order of events. Reset all action markers, quickcast markers, and ready markers on your cards by flipping the", "headingPath": "THE GAME ROUND · Phase 2: RESET · THE READY STAGE · THE ACTION STAGE · Phase 1: INITIATIVE", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "THE GAME ROUND THE READY STAGE Initiative Reset Channel Upkeep Planning Deployment THE ACTION STAGE First Quickcast Phase Creature Action Phases Final Quickcast Phase Mage Wars is played over a series of rounds, which continue until one Mage takes enough damage to be destroyed. The last Mage standin", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Familiars are objects that have the ability to cast spells. Often, these objects can channel mana as well. When a Familiar gains mana, place the appropriate mana counters on the object. If you control a Familiar during the Planning Phase, you may select a spell for it to cast during the round. The F", "headingPath": "FAMILIARS", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "When all the creatures in the arena have taken their Action Phases (and are now inactive), each player has a final opportunity to use his quickcast action for the round (if he wants to), starting with the player who has the initiative. You may only do this if you have not already used the quickcast ", "headingPath": "Final Quickcast Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "QUICKCAST ACTION · Action Phases", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "STEP 6: Entering Zone Effects · WHAT CAN A CREATURE DO DURING ITS ACTION PHASE? · TAKE A MOVE ACTION FIRST, AND THEN TAKE A QUICK ACTION · TAKE A FULL ACTION · DO NOTHING · TAKE ANOTHER MOVE ACTION · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Creature Actions · MOVEMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 572 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 572 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 0.92924 of 1385 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 17, 2026 21:58 UTC

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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)		p.48	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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	QUICKCAST ACTION · Action Phases	p.10	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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	Creature Actions · MOVEMENT	p.11	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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	STEP 6: Entering Zone Effects · WHAT CAN A CREATURE DO DURING ITS ACTION PHASE? · TAKE A MOVE ACTION FIRST, AND THEN TAKE A QUICK ACTION · TAKE A FULL ACTION · DO NOTHING · TAKE ANOTHER MOVE ACTION · …	p.13	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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	THE GAME ROUND · Phase 2: RESET · THE READY STAGE · THE ACTION STAGE · Phase 1: INITIATIVE	p.8	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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)		p.8	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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	FAMILIARS	p.18	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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	Final Quickcast Phase	p.11	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 80 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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	QUICKCAST ACTION · Action Phases	p.10	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	STEP 6: Entering Zone Effects · WHAT CAN A CREATURE DO DURING ITS ACTION PHASE? · TAKE A MOVE ACTION FIRST, AND THEN TAKE A QUICK ACTION · TAKE A FULL ACTION · DO NOTHING · TAKE ANOTHER MOVE ACTION · …	p.13	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	Initiative · Legendary · Level · Life · Life +/- X · LoS (Line of Sight) · …	p.44	#12	0.024246 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	Step 3: Counter Spell · Step 4: Resolve Spell	p.15	#43	0.010417 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	Voltaric Shield	p.36	#54	0.009346 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	Creature Actions · MOVEMENT	p.11	#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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	Revealing Enchantments	p.20	#11	0.026084 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	WHEN CAN YOU REVEAL?	p.21	#10	0.026779 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	QUICKCAST ACTION · Action Phases	p.10	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	STEP 6: Entering Zone Effects · WHAT CAN A CREATURE DO DURING ITS ACTION PHASE? · TAKE A MOVE ACTION FIRST, AND THEN TAKE A QUICK ACTION · TAKE A FULL ACTION · DO NOTHING · TAKE ANOTHER MOVE ACTION · …	p.13	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	Creature Actions · MOVEMENT	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 108 ms · first delta 3723 ms · total 5720 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 108 ms · ask 5610 ms · gateway work 5720 ms · total 5720 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3997
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 390
tok/sec: 201.4 tok/sec — 390 output tokens in 1.936 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 29s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child): schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 60h, checked 7s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
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 504), 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.