You asked
How do I play?
Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstainAsked with: 1989: Dawn of Freedombg-26997-en-1e
Answered before
This question didn't get an answer just now — but 1989: Dawn of Freedom has been asked something like it before. The corpus may have changed since, so check the date and the answerer on each one before you rule from it.
I looked through 1989: Dawn of Freedom's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.
The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.
NOTE: If the attacker received no cards because he did not control any spaces, the defender immediately wins the Power Struggle. Proceed to Aftermath of the battle (8.4). 8.3.2 Battle Rounds: The card play phase of a Power Struggle is divided into Power Struggle Rounds. Players conduct Power Struggl
All actions required by each card must be resolved before the next player starts his Action Round by playing a card. The player taking his Action Round is called the 'Phasing Player.' Ordinarily a player will have a card left over after the completion of all Action Rounds. This card is considered 'h
The defender may not counterattack in the round in which he plays this card: skip Step 3 and begin a new Power Struggle Round with the attacker maintaining the initiative. NOTE: If the defender cannot or chooses not to match the attacker's card, the Power Struggle is over and the attacker is the win
8.3.1 The player who played the Scoring card begins the Power Struggle with the initiative. Initiative may change back and forth several times before the Power Struggle is resolved. The player who currently has the initiative is considered the attacker and his opponent is considered the defender. EX
Cards may be played in one of two ways: as Events or for Operations points ('Ops'). Ordinarily, players will hold one card in their hand at the end of the turn. All other cards will be used for Events or Operations. Players may not forgo their turn by declining to play a card or by discarding a card
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
- outcome
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- warm abstain
-
- this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)
- corpus profile
- live,vps
- answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
- gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
- timings
- search 91 ms · ask 4263 ms · total 12230 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 7874 ms · generation 4356 ms
- retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
- [{"page": 11, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "NOTE: If the attacker received no cards because he did not control any spaces, the defender immediately wins the Power Struggle. Proceed to Aftermath of the battle (8.4). 8.3.2 Battle Rounds: The card play phase of a Power Struggle is divided into Power Struggle Rounds. Players conduct Power Struggl", "headingPath": "8.3 PLAY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046964, "snippet": "All actions required by each card must be resolved before the next player starts his Action Round by playing a card. The player taking his Action Round is called the 'Phasing Player.' Ordinarily a player will have a card left over after the completion of all Action Rounds. This card is considered 'h", "headingPath": "4.5 The Turn Sequence · 5.0 CARD PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "The defender may not counterattack in the round in which he plays this card: skip Step 3 and begin a new Power Struggle Round with the attacker maintaining the initiative. NOTE: If the defender cannot or chooses not to match the attacker's card, the Power Struggle is over and the attacker is the win", "headingPath": "8.3 PLAY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.044733, "snippet": "8.3.1 The player who played the Scoring card begins the Power Struggle with the initiative. Initiative may change back and forth several times before the Power Struggle is resolved. The player who currently has the initiative is considered the attacker and his opponent is considered the defender. EX", "headingPath": "8.3 PLAY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.044415, "snippet": "Cards may be played in one of two ways: as Events or for Operations points ('Ops'). Ordinarily, players will hold one card in their hand at the end of the turn. All other cards will be used for Events or Operations. Players may not forgo their turn by declining to play a card or by discarding a card", "headingPath": "5.1 Events or Operations", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 32, "score": 0.042803, "snippet": "Deal Strategy Cards Play Action Rounds Make Extra Support Check (if applicable) Verify Held Cards Celebrate New Year's Eve Party (if applicable) Advance Turn Marker Calculate Final Scoring (after turn 10) Presence: A player has Presence in a country if it controls at least one space in that country.", "headingPath": "Turn Sequence · 9.2 Country Scoring Terms · 6.2 SUPPORT CHECKS · DIE ROLL MODIFIERS: · Appendix A: Distribution of Power Struggle Deck", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.039952, "snippet": "1989 — Rules of Play © 2011 GMT Games, LLC \u0018\u0018 Illustration shows the positon of Support Points after setup. Support Points highlighted in yellow indicate spaces that received one or more discre- tionary Support Points.", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Some spaces contain small numbers with blue or red backgrounds in the lower left or lower-right portions of the space. These numbers indicate SPs placed in that space at set up. 2.1.9 Scoring Boxes: Each country has a Scoring Box on the map. The Scoring Box shows the VPs players score for Presence, ", "headingPath": "2.1 THE GAME MAP", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}]
- citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
- []
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 963 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 963 boosted
- answered-before recall
-
past answered rulings were found and offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
- ruling 5549 — matched by the same question (normalized, punctuation folded) — measured similarity 1.0
- debug row retained until
- Nov 23, 2026 21:53 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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | 8.3 PLAY CARDS | p.11 | 0.047379 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | 4.5 The Turn Sequence · 5.0 CARD PLAY | p.6 | 0.046964 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | 8.3 PLAY CARDS | p.11 | 0.046642 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | 8.3 PLAY CARDS | p.10 | 0.044733 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | 5.1 Events or Operations | p.6 | 0.044415 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | Turn Sequence · 9.2 Country Scoring Terms · 6.2 SUPPORT CHECKS · DIE ROLL MODIFIERS: · Appendix A: Distribution of Power Struggle Deck | p.32 | 0.042803 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | p.25 | 0.039952 (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)) | 218 | |
| #8 | RULEBOOK 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | 2.1 THE GAME MAP | p.3 | 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 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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | 5.1 Events or Operations | p.6 | #5 | 0.044415 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | 8.3 PLAY CARDS | p.11 | #1 | 0.047379 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | 8.3 PLAY CARDS | p.11 | #3 | 0.046642 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | 6.3 Tiananmen Square Attempt | p.8 | #11 | 0.027222 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | p.1 | #30 | 0.022722 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | 4.5 The Turn Sequence · 5.0 CARD PLAY | p.6 | #2 | 0.046964 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | 5.2 Events Associated With Your Opponent | p.6 | #9 | 0.028589 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963) | 8.3 PLAY CARDS | p.10 | #4 | 0.044733 (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
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.
| # | document | heading | page | quote chars |
|---|
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 91 ms · first delta 4237 ms · total 12230 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
- full breakdown
- queued 7874 ms · retrieval 91 ms · ask 4263 ms · gateway work 4356 ms · total 12230 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 3020
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 9
- tok/sec
- 136.4 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.066 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 41s 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 6s 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
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- abstain rationale
-
I don't have enough information.
the answerer's own words, verbatim — hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped
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 893), 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.