Ruling — Fort — RuleSage

← Fort

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Fortbg-296912-en-1e

### Setup

1. Determine the starting player and seating order randomly.[1]

2. Give the first player card to the starting player.[1]

3. Collect supplies of all 30 pizza tokens and 30 toys tokens.[1]

4. Each player takes a player board, the 2 Best Friend kid cards (marked B to left of kid's name) listed on the back of their player board, and the score marker and fort level marker matching their board's color.[1]

5. Return the rest of these pieces to the box.[1]

6. Each player places their score marker on the '0' space of the Victory Track and their fort level marker on the '0' space of their Fort Level track on their player board.[1]

7. Place the macaroni sculpture card next to the Victory Track.[1]

8. Shuffle all 11 made-up rule cards and deal them into a facedown stack equal to the number of players plus one.[1]

9. Return the rest to the box.[1]

10. Shuffle all 9 perk cards and deal them into a face-up row equal to the number of players plus one.[1]

11. Return the rest to the box.[1]

12. Shuffle all 60 kid cards into a facedown Park deck, placing it near the Victory Track.[1]

13. Deal 3 kid cards from the Park deck into the Park below the Victory Track, making a face-up row.[1]

14. Each player draws 8 kid cards from the Park deck.[1]

15. Each player shuffles their 8 kid cards with their 2 Best Friend kid cards to form their own facedown deck.[1]

16. Each player draws 5 kid cards from their own deck.[1]

### Gameplay

Fort is played in a series of turns, starting with the first player and going clockwise around the table until the game ends.[2] The player taking the current turn is called the leader.[2]

**The Leader's Turn**

The leader's turn consists of five phases in the following order:[2]

1. **Cleanup**: Skip this phase during your first turn.[2] Discard all the cards in your Yard (above your player board), placing them face up in your discard pile (to the right of your player board).[2] Place any cards left in your hand into your Yard, face up and facing away from you.[3]

2. **Play**: Play one card from your hand.[2] If you cannot or choose not to play a card, you may skip this phase and continue to the Recruit phase.[2] You may use one or both of the card's actions (public, private, or both) in either order, but you must finish one action before starting the other.[2] You must use at least one action on your card fully.[4] You may add suits to improve some actions by playing more cards showing that suit (added cards) or adding cards showing that suit in your Lookout.[2]

3. **Recruit**: Recruit one card.[5] You may recruit in one of three ways: take any card from the Park and immediately replace it from the Park deck; take any card from a rival player's Yard (they do not draw a replacement); or draw a card from the Park deck.[3]

4. **Discard**: Discard all of your played cards, added cards, and any Best Friends cards left in your hand into your own discard pile.[3]

5. **Draw**: Draw five cards from your own deck.[3] If your deck is empty, shuffle your discard pile to form a new deck and continue drawing.[3]

**Other Players**

Other players may follow the leader's action.[2] You may follow by discarding a card with multiple suits, as long as at least one suit matches the leader's played card.[3] If it has two matching suits, you may count both if the action shows an x sign followed by the suit.[3] You may follow as many leaders as you wish before it gets back to your turn, as long as you discard a matching card each time.[3]

### End of Game

The end of the game is triggered in any one of these three ways:[6]

1. Any player has 25 or more victory points on the Victory Track.[6]

2. Any player reaches Fort Level 5.[6]

3. The Park deck is empty.[6]

When the end of the game triggers, the leader finishes their turn, then the players finish the current round of turns so that all players have taken the same number of turns.[6] At the end of that round, each player reveals their made-up rule (if any) and adds up their victory points from their Victory Track

[1] RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook · p.2 · Basic Setup · Advanced Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook · p.6 · How to Play · Phase 1: Cleanup · Skip this phase during your first turn. · Phase 2: Play

[3] RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook · p.9 · Specific Situations: · Time to make a new friend! Maybe you'lL take someone else's? · Didn't play with some of your friends? Maybe they'lL go hang out with someone else. · Your old friends show up to play again.

[4] RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook · p.7 · Phase 2: Play

[5] RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook · p.14 · Per · Then · Parentheses

[6] RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook · p.10 · Fort Level · End of Game

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 78 ms · ask 6586 ms · total 13259 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 6595 ms · generation 6664 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Fort is played in a series of turns, starting with the first player and going clockwise around the table until the game ends. The player taking the current turn is called the leader . The leader's turn has five phases in the following order: Cleanup Play Recruit Discard Draw The leader completes all", "headingPath": "How to Play · Phase 1: Cleanup · Skip this phase during your first turn. · Phase 2: Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 722}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046964, "snippet": "Play this for your first game as you learn the cards and actions. Determine the starting player and seating order randomly. Give the fi rst player card to the starting player. Collect supplies of all 30 pizza tokens and 30 toys tokens . Each player takes a player board , the 2 Best Friend kid cards ", "headingPath": "Basic Setup · Advanced Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 722}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "2-4 players | 20-40 mins | Ages 10+ You're a kid! And like many kids, you want to grow your circle of friends, grab a bunch of pizza and toys, and build the best fort. Naturally, by doing this cool stuff you'll score victory points, and at the end of the game, the player with the most victory points", "headingPath": "Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 722}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045688, "snippet": "You may follow by discarding a card with multiple suits , as long as at least one suit matches the leader's played card. If it has two matching suits, count both if the action shows an x sign followed by the suit. Yes, you can follow as many leaders as you wish before it gets back to your turn, as l", "headingPath": "Specific Situations: · Time to make a new friend! Maybe you'lL take someone else's? · Didn't play with some of your friends? Maybe they'lL go hang out with someone else. · Your old friends show up to play again.", "sharpsignalDocId": 722}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045541, "snippet": "Whenever you add a card to improve your played card, at least one of its suits must change the effect of at least one action that you use. Muhammad plays Doodles and uses the private (bottom) action fully. He also wants to use the public (top) action. He wants to add one card with g and one with wc ", "headingPath": "You cannot add a card if none of its suits serve a purpose. · FolLowing the Leader · Limitations: · Specific Situations:", "sharpsignalDocId": 722}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.044776, "snippet": "Gain the resource (pizza or toys) shown from the shared supply and place it in your Stuff. If this action lets you choose to gain either pizza or toys, you may only gain all pizza or all toys, not a mixture. Take one resource from your Stuff and place it in your Pack. Some actions and made-up rules ", "headingPath": "Gather Resource · Pack Resource · Why would I want to pack resources? · AdD Card to LoOkout · Trash Card · Trash This Card · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 722}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Do the action on the left side of this sign the number of times shown by the symbol on the right side of this sign. Actions without this sign happen once -they cannot be improved by adding suits. Gather toys equal to glue. Do the action on the left side of this sign, then do the action on the right ", "headingPath": "Per · Then · Parentheses", "sharpsignalDocId": 722}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Each player has a Fort, which starts at Level 0. You can increase your Fort Level by one with the Advance Fort action (page 12), spending the resources listed between your current Level and the next Level. At Level 0 , your Lookout can hold up to one card, and your Pack can hold up to one resource. ", "headingPath": "Fort Level · End of Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 722}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Basic Setup · Advanced Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 722}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "How to Play · Phase 1: Cleanup · Skip this phase during your first turn. · Phase 2: Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 722}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Specific Situations: · Time to make a new friend! Maybe you'lL take someone else's? · Didn't play with some of your friends? Maybe they'lL go hang out with someone else. · Your old friends show up to play again.", "sharpsignalDocId": 722}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase 2: Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 722}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Per · Then · Parentheses", "sharpsignalDocId": 722}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Fort Level · End of Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 722}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 722 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 722 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 0.89833 of 3285 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 24, 2026 16:35 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 Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	How to Play · Phase 1: Cleanup · Skip this phase during your first turn. · Phase 2: Play	p.6	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Basic Setup · Advanced Setup	p.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))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Overview	p.1	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
#4	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Specific Situations: · Time to make a new friend! Maybe you'lL take someone else's? · Didn't play with some of your friends? Maybe they'lL go hang out with someone else. · Your old friends show up to play again.	p.9	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
#5	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	You cannot add a card if none of its suits serve a purpose. · FolLowing the Leader · Limitations: · Specific Situations:	p.8	0.045541 (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 Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Gather Resource · Pack Resource · Why would I want to pack resources? · AdD Card to LoOkout · Trash Card · Trash This Card · …	p.12	0.044776 (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 Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Per · Then · Parentheses	p.14	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
#8	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Fort Level · End of Game	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

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 16 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 Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	How to Play · Phase 1: Cleanup · Skip this phase during your first turn. · Phase 2: Play	p.6	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Basic Setup · Advanced Setup	p.2	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Phase 2: Play	p.7	#10	0.02971 (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 Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Per · Then · Parentheses	p.14	#7	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
#5	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Gather Resource · Pack Resource · Why would I want to pack resources? · AdD Card to LoOkout · Trash Card · Trash This Card · …	p.12	#6	0.044776 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Fort Level · End of Game	p.10	#8	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
#7	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Overview	p.1	#3	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
#8	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Specific Situations: · Time to make a new friend! Maybe you'lL take someone else's? · Didn't play with some of your friends? Maybe they'lL go hang out with someone else. · Your old friends show up to play again.	p.9	#4	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))	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 Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Basic Setup · Advanced Setup	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	How to Play · Phase 1: Cleanup · Skip this phase during your first turn. · Phase 2: Play	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Specific Situations: · Time to make a new friend! Maybe you'lL take someone else's? · Didn't play with some of your friends? Maybe they'lL go hang out with someone else. · Your old friends show up to play again.	p.9	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Phase 2: Play	p.7	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Per · Then · Parentheses	p.14	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Fort — Rulebook (corpus doc 722)	Fort Level · End of Game	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 78 ms · first delta 1513 ms · total 13259 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 6595 ms · retrieval 78 ms · ask 6586 ms · gateway work 6664 ms · total 13259 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2961
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 200.7 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 5.101 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 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 656), 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.