Ruling — Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Geniebg-354544-en-1e

### Setup

1. Choose a battlefield and place it on the table.[1]

2. Each player chooses a hero and takes the corresponding action cards, character card, hero miniature, sidekick token (if any), and health dials.[1]

3. Set the hero's and sidekick's starting health on the matching health dials using the values found on the character cards.[1]

4. Each player shuffles their action cards to form a single deck, places it face down, and draws a starting hand of 5 cards.[1]

5. The younger player places their hero in the 1 space on the battlefield, and if they have a sidekick, places it in a separate space within the same zone as their hero.[1]

6. The older player places their hero in the space on the battlefield, then places their sidekick, if they have any, using the same rules as the younger player.[1]

### Gameplay

**Turn Structure**

1. Players take turns maneuvering fighters, playing schemes, and attacking the opponent's fighters.[2][3]

2. The younger player takes the first turn.[1]

3. On a turn, a player must take 2 actions and cannot skip an action; they may choose two different actions or the same action twice.[4]

4. At the end of a turn, if a player has more than 7 cards in hand, they must discard down to 7 cards into their discard pile.[4]

5. After a player's turn, it becomes the opponent's turn.[4]

**Actions**

* **Maneuver**:

1. Draw the top card of your deck and add it to your hand.[4]

2. Move each fighter one at a time a number of spaces equal to or less than your move value.[4]

3. Each space moved must be adjacent to the previous space.[4]

4. You may move through spaces occupied by your own fighters, but cannot end movement in an occupied space, and cannot move through spaces occupied by opposing fighters.[4]

5. You may choose to BOOST movement by discarding 1 card from your hand and adding its BOOST value to your move value.[4]

* **Scheme**:

1. Choose a scheme card from your hand and play it face up on the table.[5]

2. Declare which fighter is playing the card (the active fighter).[5]

3. Resolve the card's effect, then place the card into your discard pile.[5]

* **Attack**:

1. Declare which fighter is performing the attack (the active fighter).[5]

2. You may not attack if you have no attack card in hand or if no fighters have valid targets.[5]

3. Target a fighter in an adjacent space (for melee attacks) or a fighter in the same zone (for ranged attacks).[5]

4. Choose an attack card from your hand and play it face down.[5]

5. The defender may choose a defense card from their hand and place it face down.[5]

6. Reveal both cards at the same time.[5]

**Winning the Game**

1. To win, you must be the first to defeat your opponent's hero by reducing them to zero health.[2][3]

[1] RULEBOOK Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook · p.4 · HOW TO PLAY · SETUP · SPACES AND ZONES

[2] RULEBOOK Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook · p.3 · CONTENTS · HOUDINI · THE GENIE · HEROES& SIDEKICKS · HOW TO PLAY

[3] RULEBOOK Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook · p.3

[4] RULEBOOK Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook · p.5 · YOUR TURN · ACTION: MANEUVER · STEP 1 : DRAW A CARD (MANDATORY) · DRAWING CARDS · STEP 2: MOVE YOUR FIGHTERS (OPTIONAL)

[5] RULEBOOK Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook · p.6 · STEP 2: MOVE YOUR FIGHTERS (OPTIONAL) · ACTION: SCHEME · DISCARD PILES · ACTION: ATTACK · STEP 1 : DECLARE TARGET · STEP 2: CHOOSE AND REVEAL

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 89 ms · ask 7975 ms · total 8065 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8065 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "NOTE: You cannot use Team Play rules with just the Houdini vs. The Genie set. You will need more figures and maps that have and spaces. You can play Unmatched in teams of 2 . Teammates sit next to each other on the same side of the battlefield, and they may communicate about their cards and tactics,", "headingPath": "TEAM PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 833}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "When you take the maneuver action, you may BOOST your movement. To do this, discard 1 card from your hand and add that card's BOOST value to your move value. Ignore any effect on the discarded card. Certain effects (like Houdini's The Big Reveal card) allow you to boost other things, such as the val", "headingPath": "STEP 2: MOVE YOUR FIGHTERS (OPTIONAL) · ACTION: SCHEME · DISCARD PILES · ACTION: ATTACK · STEP 1 : DECLARE TARGET · STEP 2: CHOOSE AND REVEAL", "sharpsignalDocId": 833}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046544, "snippet": "These setup instructions and the following rules are for games with 2 players . For rules on team play with 3 or 4 players, see page 1 8 . NOTE 1 . Choose a battlefield and place it on the table. Each player chooses a hero and takes the corresponding action cards, character card, hero miniature, sid", "headingPath": "HOW TO PLAY · SETUP · SPACES AND ZONES", "sharpsignalDocId": 833}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045695, "snippet": "Before you play for the first time, assemble the health dials by punching out the circles for each character and connecting them with a rivet. 2 MINIATURES2 CHARACTER CARDS 11 GAME BOARD 11 SIDEKICK TOKEN 60 ACTION CARDS 3 HEALTH DIALS All of your characters in the battle are All of your characters ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 833}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045688, "snippet": "When you take the attack action, you must declare which of your fighters is performing the attack; they are the active fighter. You may not take the attack action if you do not have an attack card in hand or if none of your fighters have valid targets to attack. STEP 11: DECLARE TARGET Any fighter m", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 833}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.045037, "snippet": "1 Most cards have effects, with labels indicating when they occur: immediately , during combat , or after combat . Unless otherwise specified, card effects are mandatory (which can result in dealing damage to your own fighters or other negative effects). If two effects would ever appear to resolve a", "headingPath": "VERSATILE CARDS · STEP 3: RESOLVE COMBAT · WINNING THE COMBAT · DEFEATING A FIGHTER · WINNING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 833}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.044343, "snippet": "2 MINIATURES 2 CHARACTER CARDS 30 action cards 1 Houdini hero miniature 1 Houdini character card 1 Bess sidekick token 3 HEALTH DIALS 30 action cards 1 Genie hero miniature 1 Genie character card 1 Health dial 2 Health dials Before you play for the first time, assemble the health dials by punching o", "headingPath": "CONTENTS · HOUDINI · THE GENIE · HEROES& SIDEKICKS · HOW TO PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 833}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "On your turn, you must take 2 actions ; you cannot skip an action. You may choose two different actions or the same action twice. The possible actions are: MANEUVER SCHEME ATTACK You have a hand limit of 7 cards. At the end of your turn, if you have more than 7 cards in your hand, you must discard d", "headingPath": "YOUR TURN · ACTION: MANEUVER · STEP 1 : DRAW A CARD (MANDATORY) · DRAWING CARDS · STEP 2: MOVE YOUR FIGHTERS (OPTIONAL)", "sharpsignalDocId": 833}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "HOW TO PLAY · SETUP · SPACES AND ZONES", "sharpsignalDocId": 833}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CONTENTS · HOUDINI · THE GENIE · HEROES& SIDEKICKS · HOW TO PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 833}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 833}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "YOUR TURN · ACTION: MANEUVER · STEP 1 : DRAW A CARD (MANDATORY) · DRAWING CARDS · STEP 2: MOVE YOUR FIGHTERS (OPTIONAL)", "sharpsignalDocId": 833}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "STEP 2: MOVE YOUR FIGHTERS (OPTIONAL) · ACTION: SCHEME · DISCARD PILES · ACTION: ATTACK · STEP 1 : DECLARE TARGET · STEP 2: CHOOSE AND REVEAL", "sharpsignalDocId": 833}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 833 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 833 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 0.89132 of 2236 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 23, 2026 16:59 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 Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	TEAM PLAY	p.10	0.04866 (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 Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	STEP 2: MOVE YOUR FIGHTERS (OPTIONAL) · ACTION: SCHEME · DISCARD PILES · ACTION: ATTACK · STEP 1 : DECLARE TARGET · STEP 2: CHOOSE AND REVEAL	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
#3	RULEBOOK Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	HOW TO PLAY · SETUP · SPACES AND ZONES	p.4	0.046544 (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 Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)		p.3	0.045695 (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 Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)		p.6	0.045688 (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 Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	VERSATILE CARDS · STEP 3: RESOLVE COMBAT · WINNING THE COMBAT · DEFEATING A FIGHTER · WINNING THE GAME	p.7	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
#7	RULEBOOK Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	CONTENTS · HOUDINI · THE GENIE · HEROES& SIDEKICKS · HOW TO PLAY	p.3	0.044343 (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 Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	YOUR TURN · ACTION: MANEUVER · STEP 1 : DRAW A CARD (MANDATORY) · DRAWING CARDS · STEP 2: MOVE YOUR FIGHTERS (OPTIONAL)	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

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 21 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 Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	HOW TO PLAY · SETUP · SPACES AND ZONES	p.4	#3	0.046544 (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 Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	CONTENTS · HOUDINI · THE GENIE · HEROES& SIDEKICKS · HOW TO PLAY	p.3	#7	0.044343 (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 Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	STEP 2: MOVE YOUR FIGHTERS (OPTIONAL) · ACTION: SCHEME · DISCARD PILES · ACTION: ATTACK · STEP 1 : DECLARE TARGET · STEP 2: CHOOSE AND REVEAL	p.6	#2	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
#4	RULEBOOK Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	COMBAT EXAMPLE · Genevieve has a few options:	p.8	#10	0.028665 (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 Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)		p.8	#9	0.029462 (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 Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	YOUR TURN · ACTION: MANEUVER · STEP 1 : DRAW A CARD (MANDATORY) · DRAWING CARDS · STEP 2: MOVE YOUR FIGHTERS (OPTIONAL)	p.5	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)		p.3	#4	0.045695 (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 Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	TEAM PLAY	p.10	#1	0.04866 (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 Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	HOW TO PLAY · SETUP · SPACES AND ZONES	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	CONTENTS · HOUDINI · THE GENIE · HEROES& SIDEKICKS · HOW TO PLAY	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	YOUR TURN · ACTION: MANEUVER · STEP 1 : DRAW A CARD (MANDATORY) · DRAWING CARDS · STEP 2: MOVE YOUR FIGHTERS (OPTIONAL)	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie — Rulebook (corpus doc 833)	STEP 2: MOVE YOUR FIGHTERS (OPTIONAL) · ACTION: SCHEME · DISCARD PILES · ACTION: ATTACK · STEP 1 : DECLARE TARGET · STEP 2: CHOOSE AND REVEAL	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 89 ms · first delta 2537 ms · total 8065 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 89 ms · ask 7975 ms · gateway work 8065 ms · total 8065 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3931
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 717
tok/sec: 130.8 tok/sec — 717 output tokens in 5.481 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 35s 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 3s 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 768), 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.