Ruling — Runebound (Third Edition)

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Runebound (Third Edition)bg-181530-en-1e

### Setup

1. Place the game board in the center of the play area.[1]

2. Place one adventure gem faceup on each of the matching hexes on the board (purple is social, green is exploration, and orange is combat).[1]

3. Sort the remaining tokens by type to create the token bank.[1]

4. Choose a scenario.[1]

5. Shuffle the corresponding story deck and return the other story cards to the box.[1]

6. Read both sides of the scenario card and follow any setup rules listed.[1]

7. Separate the sixty non-scenario adventure cards into three decks based on their card backs.[1]

8. Shuffle in the adventure cards associated with the chosen scenario and return the adventure cards from the other scenario to the box.[1]

9. Randomly determine a player to become the first player.[1]

10. Starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, each player chooses a hero.[1]

11. Each player takes gold from the token bank equal to his or her starting gold and the combat tokens associated with his or her hero.[1][2]

### The Game Turn

1. Players take turns in clockwise order, starting with the first player.[3]

2. During a turn, a player has three actions to spend.[3]

3. Actions can be spent to move, shop (city only), adventure (costs two actions), rest, or train.[3]

4. Actions can be spent to do the same thing multiple times.[3]

5. After all players take a turn, move the time token one space down the time track.[3]

6. Players continue resolving turns until a victory condition on the scenario card is fulfilled.[3]

### Combat

1. When you draw an enemy, you engage it in combat.[4]

2. The player to your right controls the enemy, making all choices and casting tokens for it.[4]

3. Before combat, you and your foe each collect your own combat tokens, including those from your hero and any extra tokens from assets.[4]

4. Each round of combat begins by casting combat tokens by shaking them like dice or tossing them like coins.[4]

5. After tokens are cast, you and your foe alternate taking combat actions by spending the combat symbols on your tokens.[4]

6. The combatant with initiative takes the first action; initiative is given to the player with the most tokens with faceup gold symbols, or the attacker if tied.[4]

7. A round of combat ends when all tokens are spent or both players pass.[4]

8. If neither combatant is defeated during a round, both players collect all tokens and start a new round.[4]

9. If you defeat an enemy, resolve the reward on the bottom of the card and take it as a trophy.[5]

10. If you are defeated, discard the enemy without taking it as a trophy or resolving its reward; while defeated, you may only spend actions to rest.[5]

11. If you heal at least 1 damage, you are no longer defeated and can perform any action.[5]

### Other Rules

* **Adventure Cards:** Each card is an event, quest, or enemy.[6] When drawing an event, read the card aloud and choose one of two options to resolve; you must resolve as much of the effect as possible.[6] Facedown adventure cards are trophies that can be spent to learn skill cards.[6]

* **Trophies and Skills:** To learn a skill, spend trophies equal to its cost (one trophy per orb, matching the trophy to the orb; any type can be used for a gray orb).[6] After learning a skill, place it faceup in front of you.[6]

* **Training:** You can spend one action to train, drawing skill cards equal to your maximum hand size from the skill deck and adding them to your hand, then discarding down to your maximum hand size.[7]

* **Story Cards:** Whenever the time token reaches a story space, draw the top card of the story deck.[7] If it is not a "Story Quest," discard it after resolving effects; if it is a "Story Quest," it has ongoing effects and you must be in the indicated red hex to interact with it.[7]

* **Acts:** The first time the time token moves through the track, it is Act 1; when it reaches the end, Act 1 ends, the token is returned to the start, and flipped to the side showing "2" to begin Act 2.[7]

* **Victory Conditions:** Each scenario has its own victory conditions.[7] In *The Ascendance of Margath*, players collect lore tokens to weaken Margath; the first player to defeat Margath wins, but if no one stops Margath, all

[1] RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook · p.4 · setuP · The Ascendance of Margath

[2] RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook · p.4

[3] RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook · p.6 · tHe Game turn · actIons · rune mAgic

[4] RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook · p.12 · enemy cards · rounds oF combat

[5] RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook · p.13 · deFeat EldEr Mok

[6] RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook · p.10 · adventure cards · troPHIes · event cards

[7] RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook · p.9 · traIn · story cards · acts 1 & 2 · vIctory condItIons

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 6770 ms · total 6954 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 95 ms · generation 6859 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 1, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "Learn to PLay 1 ®", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Place the game board in the center of the play area. Players can sit around the board in whatever order they wish. Place one adventure gem faceup on each of the matching hexes on the board (purple is social, green is exploration, and orange is combat). Sort the remaining tokens by type to create the", "headingPath": "setuP · The Ascendance of Margath", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "4 1 4 5 At the end of Act I, spawn Margath in Skydown. A hero in Margath’s hex may spend 1 � to flip this card and engage Margath in combat. If a hero defeats Margath, he or she wins the game. After Act 2 ends, whenever the time track would advance, the first player rolls 5 terrain dice instead. Mov", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "When you draw an enemy, you engage it in combat. The player to your right controls the enemy, casting tokens and making all choices for it. This allows other players to begin taking their turns while combat is resolving, if they wish. Before combat, you and your foe each collect your own combat toke", "headingPath": "enemy cards · rounds oF combat", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Players take turns in clockwise order, starting with the first player. After all players take a turn, move the time token one space down the time track. Players continue resolving turns until a victory condition on the scenario card is fulfilled. You have three actions, represented by /orn.01, to sp", "headingPath": "tHe Game turn · actIons · rune mAgic", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Adventuring is the heart of the game. Each adventure card is an event, quest, or enemy. The following sections explain how to resolve each type and take it as a trophy. Facedown adventure cards are trophies and can be spent to learn skill cards in your hand. Skills give you new abilities to use and ", "headingPath": "adventure cards · troPHIes · event cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "EldEr Mok You can spend one action to move. When you move, you can either move into an adjacent hex or roll terrain dice equal to your speed. Restore Spirit : Once per turn, you may exert to draw 1 skill. Each terrain die has various terrain symbols on it, and each hex on the board is one specific t", "headingPath": "move · exertInG", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Restore Spirit ELDER MOK : Once per turn, you may You can spend one action to train. Draw skill cards equal to your maximum hand size from the skill deck and add them to your hand. Then discard down to your maximum hand size. This allows you to refill your hand with skill cards and find new abilitie", "headingPath": "traIn · story cards · acts 1 & 2 · vIctory condItIons", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "setuP · The Ascendance of Margath", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "tHe Game turn · actIons · rune mAgic", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "enemy cards · rounds oF combat", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "deFeat EldEr Mok", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "adventure cards · troPHIes · event cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "traIn · story cards · acts 1 & 2 · vIctory condItIons", "sharpsignalDocId": 612}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 612 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 612 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 0.90442 of 3463 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 24, 2026 07:32 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 Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)		p.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))	17
#2	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	setuP · The Ascendance of Margath	p.4	0.048652 (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 Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)		p.4	0.04598 (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 Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	enemy cards · rounds oF combat	p.12	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
#5	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	tHe Game turn · actIons · rune mAgic	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
#6	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	adventure cards · troPHIes · event cards	p.10	0.030769 (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 Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	move · exertInG	p.6	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 Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	traIn · story cards · acts 1 & 2 · vIctory condItIons	p.9	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 30 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 Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	setuP · The Ascendance of Margath	p.4	#2	0.048652 (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 Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)		p.1	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)		p.4	#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
#4	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	deFeat EldEr Mok	p.13	#13	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
#5	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	adventure cards · troPHIes · event cards	p.10	#6	0.030769 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	traIn · story cards · acts 1 & 2 · vIctory condItIons	p.9	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	enemy cards · rounds oF combat	p.12	#4	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 Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	tHe Game turn · actIons · rune mAgic	p.6	#5	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	setuP · The Ascendance of Margath	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	tHe Game turn · actIons · rune mAgic	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	enemy cards · rounds oF combat	p.12	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	deFeat EldEr Mok	p.13	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	adventure cards · troPHIes · event cards	p.10	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Runebound (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 612)	traIn · story cards · acts 1 & 2 · vIctory condItIons	p.9	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 88 ms · first delta 1778 ms · total 6954 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 95 ms · retrieval 88 ms · ask 6770 ms · gateway work 6859 ms · total 6954 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2537
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 203.2 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 5.040 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 42s 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 9s 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 544), 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.