Ruling — Zombicide

← Zombicide

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Zombicidebg-113924-en-1e

### Setup

1. Choose a Mission.[1]

2. Place the tiles.[1]

3. Place the doors, the cars, and Objectives.[1]

4. Put aside the pimpmobile cards (Evil Twins and Ma's Shotgun), Molotov, Pan, and Wounded cards; also keep a single Fire Axe, Crowbar, and Pistol card.[1]

5. Shuffle the Zombie cards into one deck and the Equipment cards into another, then place them face down close to the board.[1]

6. Each player chooses his Survivors based on the number of players: 1 player: 4 Survivors; 2 players: 3 Survivors per player; 3 players: 2 Survivors per player; 4 to 6 players: 1 Survivor per player.[1]

7. Place the miniatures representing the chosen Survivors on the starting area as indicated by the Mission.[1]

8. On each Survivor's Identity Card, place an experience tracker on the first square in the blue area of the Danger Bar, and place a Skill counter on the first corresponding Skill.[1]

9. Randomly deal the starting equipment: a Fire Axe, Crowbar, Pistol, and enough Pans so that each Survivor gets one card; if a Survivor's starting Skill lists any starting weapons, he receives those cards now.[1]

10. Decide who will be the first player and give him or her the 'first player' token.[1]

### Gameplay

The game is played over a series of game turns.[1]

**Players' Phase**

1. The player with the 'first player' token takes his turn, activating his Survivors one at a time, in the order of his choice.[1][2]

2. Each Survivor can initially perform three Actions per turn, though Skills may allow for extra Actions.[1][2]

3. Survivors use Actions to perform tasks such as:

* Moving one Zone.[2]

* Searching (Indoor only; drawing a card from the Equipment deck).[2][3]

* Opening a Door (may require special Equipment or Skill).[2][3]

* Reorganizing Inventory (exchanging equipment with another Survivor in the same Zone).[2]

* Ranged or Melee Combat (requires equipped weapons).[2]

* Getting in or out of a car.[2]

* Changing seats in a car.[2]

* Driving a car (if allowed by the Mission).[2]

* Taking an Objective Token or activating an Object.[2]

* Making Noise.[2]

* Doing Nothing.[2]

4. Once a player has activated all his Survivors, the player to his left takes his turn, activating his Survivors in the same manner.[1]

5. The Players' Phase ends when all players have completed their turns.[1]

**Zombies' Phase**

1. Once the players have activated all their Survivors, the Zombies play.[4]

2. Zombies perform the following steps in order:

* Each Zombie activates and spends its Action on either an Attack or a Move.[4]

* First, resolve all Attacks: Each Zombie in the same Zone as a Survivor performs an Attack, which is always successful and does not require dice rolls.[4] This may result in the Survivor losing an Equipment card and receiving a Wounded card.[4]

* Then, resolve all Moves: Zombies that did not Attack, Move.[4][2] Zombies favor visible Survivors, then noise, and choose the shortest path.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Zombicide — Rulebook · p.4 · #2 SURVIVE AND WIN · PLAYERS' PHASE

[2] RULEBOOK Zombicide — Rulebook · p.32 · TURN SUMMARY · EACH TURN BEGINS WITH: · WHEN EVERY PLAYER'S FINISHED: · ZOMBIES ECOLOGY

[3] RULEBOOK Zombicide — Rulebook · p.10 · SEARCH · OPEN A DOOR

[4] RULEBOOK Zombicide — Rulebook · p.12 · DO NOTHING · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION · ATTACK

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 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 88 ms · ask 9996 ms · total 25737 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 15651 ms · generation 10086 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 12, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "Once the players have activated all their Survivors, the Zombies play. Nobody takes their role; they do it themselves, performing the following steps in order: Each Zombie activates and spends its Action on either an Attack or a Move, depending on its situation. First resolve all the Attacks, then a", "headingPath": "DO NOTHING · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION · ATTACK", "sharpsignalDocId": 687}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "1  Choose a Mission. 2  Place the tiles. 3  Place the doors, the cars, and Objectives. 4  Put aside the pimpmobile cards (Evil Twins and Ma's Shotgun), Molotov, Pan, and Wounded cards. Also keep a single Fire Axe, Crowbar, and Pistol card. 5  Shuffle the Zombie cards into one deck and the Equip", "headingPath": "#2 SURVIVE AND WIN · PLAYERS' PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 687}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "The following pages contain a Tutorial Mission to help get you acquainted with the game and ten Missions to thoroughly put your Zombicide survival to the test! You can play these Missions in sequence, or you can tackle whichever one suits you best at the time, given that they vary greatly in style, ", "headingPath": "CAR ATTACK · OBJECTIVE · SPECIAL RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 687}, {"page": 32, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "FIRST STEP PLAYERS' PHASE (as explained by Ned) ZOMBIES' PHASE (as observed by Josh) (as written down by Amy) TARGETING PRIORITY (as defined by Phil) (by courtesy of your favorite Survivors) Chose the rst player (he rec ivs the ' rst player' token) GAME RULES OVERRIDE THIS TURN SUMMARY RULES. The fi", "headingPath": "TURN SUMMARY · EACH TURN BEGINS WITH: · WHEN EVERY PLAYER'S FINISHED: · ZOMBIES ECOLOGY", "sharpsignalDocId": 687}, {"page": 29, "score": 0.046154, "snippet": "MEDIUM / SPECIAL / 90 MINUTES We've found a shelter, and we have enough supplies to feed a small army. There's also a radio that's still working. Thanks to this, we've found another group of survivors in the suburbs. They are defenseless and surrounded by zombies. There's no reason for this to be a ", "headingPath": "09 MIGHT MAKES RIGHT · OBJECTIVES · SPECIAL RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 687}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "You can only Search Zones inside a building and only if there are no Zombies in the Zone. The player draws a card from the Equipment deck. He may then place it in the Survivor's inventory or immediately discard it. A Survivor can only perform a single Search Action per turn, even if it's an extra, f", "headingPath": "SEARCH · OPEN A DOOR", "sharpsignalDocId": 687}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Some game effects, like the Lock it down Skill, allow an open door to be locked back. If it is opened again afterwards, it won't trigger a new Zombie Spawn. At the cost of one Action, a Survivor can reorganize the cards in his inventory in any way he wishes. The Survivor can simultaneously exchange ", "headingPath": "OPEN A DOOR · REORGANIZE YOUR INVENTORY AND TRADE WITH ANOTHER SURVIVOR · RANGED COMBAT · MELEE COMBAT · GET IN OR OUT OF A CAR · CHANGE SEATS IN A CAR · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 687}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "8 ZOMBICIDE - RULES Place the unused Equipment here. Place the readied Equipment here. The experience tracker is placed here at the beginning. When the Survivor kills his first Zombie, the tracker moves here. When the Survivor kills a second Zombie, the tracker moves here. Third Zombie and so on. Wh", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 687}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "#2 SURVIVE AND WIN · PLAYERS' PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 687}, {"page": 32, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TURN SUMMARY · EACH TURN BEGINS WITH: · WHEN EVERY PLAYER'S FINISHED: · ZOMBIES ECOLOGY", "sharpsignalDocId": 687}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SEARCH · OPEN A DOOR", "sharpsignalDocId": 687}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "DO NOTHING · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION · ATTACK", "sharpsignalDocId": 687}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 687 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 687 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 0.88509 of 2428 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 22, 2026 17:40 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 Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	DO NOTHING · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION · ATTACK	p.12	0.048412 (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 Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	#2 SURVIVE AND WIN · PLAYERS' PHASE	p.4	0.048131 (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 Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	CAR ATTACK · OBJECTIVE · SPECIAL RULES	p.20	0.046696 (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 Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	TURN SUMMARY · EACH TURN BEGINS WITH: · WHEN EVERY PLAYER'S FINISHED: · ZOMBIES ECOLOGY	p.32	0.046402 (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 Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	09 MIGHT MAKES RIGHT · OBJECTIVES · SPECIAL RULES	p.29	0.046154 (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 Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	SEARCH · OPEN A DOOR	p.10	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 Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	OPEN A DOOR · REORGANIZE YOUR INVENTORY AND TRADE WITH ANOTHER SURVIVOR · RANGED COMBAT · MELEE COMBAT · GET IN OR OUT OF A CAR · CHANGE SEATS IN A CAR · …	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
#8	RULEBOOK Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)		p.8	0.029412 (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 52 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 Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	DO NOTHING · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION · ATTACK	p.12	#1	0.048412 (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 Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	#2 SURVIVE AND WIN · PLAYERS' PHASE	p.4	#2	0.048131 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	#2 SURVIVE AND WIN	p.3	#19	0.012658 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	CAR ATTACK · OBJECTIVE · SPECIAL RULES	p.20	#3	0.046696 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)		p.5	#22	0.012195 (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 Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	TURN SUMMARY · EACH TURN BEGINS WITH: · WHEN EVERY PLAYER'S FINISHED: · ZOMBIES ECOLOGY	p.32	#4	0.046402 (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 Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	SEARCH · OPEN A DOOR	p.10	#6	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
#8	RULEBOOK Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	LINE OF SIGHT	p.5	#14	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	#2 SURVIVE AND WIN · PLAYERS' PHASE	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	TURN SUMMARY · EACH TURN BEGINS WITH: · WHEN EVERY PLAYER'S FINISHED: · ZOMBIES ECOLOGY	p.32	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	SEARCH · OPEN A DOOR	p.10	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Zombicide — Rulebook (corpus doc 687)	DO NOTHING · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION · ATTACK	p.12	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 88 ms · first delta 4251 ms · total 25737 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 15651 ms · retrieval 88 ms · ask 9996 ms · gateway work 10086 ms · total 25737 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3663
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 761
tok/sec: 132.4 tok/sec — 761 output tokens in 5.748 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 46s 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 2s 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 620), 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.