You asked
How do I play?
Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstainAsked with: Earthbg-350184-en-1e
I looked through Earth'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.
10 Take a look at the scoring reminder and the iconography index on the bottom of your player board and you'll be 95% ready to play. The rest of the rules represent the other 5%; they include clarifications, examples and a Solo mode, and cover exceptions and specific details. 10 10 Are you looking f
16 TEAM MODE (2 VS 2) The team mode follows the same rules as the regular game, but it allows players to work together against another team. Set up the game as you would for a regular game, with teammates sitting beside each other A . Any time a player earns resources (cards, Compost, Soil, Sprouts,
On your turn, choose any 1 of the 4 action spaces shown at the top of your player board. To mark your choice, place the active-player token above the corresponding action. All other players place their 5th Leaf token on the bottom of the same action space as a way to track their action options. Play
Abilities are activated after taking their matching action ( GREEN activates GREEN , RED activates RED ... etc.). Multicoloured abilities (which consist of BLUE , YELLOW , and RED abilities) are also triggered when the BLUE , YELLOW , or RED action is chosen: these multicoloured abilities are activa
Cards on a player board may be activated before or after the tableau, but the tableau must be activated in order—from left column to right, then top row to bottom If the Earth deck runs out, shuffle the discard pile to create a new draw pile. Do not shuffle in any player’s Compost—these cards are wo
🔧 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 85 ms · ask 3594 ms · total 3681 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 3681 ms
- retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
- [{"page": 5, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "10 Take a look at the scoring reminder and the iconography index on the bottom of your player board and you'll be 95% ready to play. The rest of the rules represent the other 5%; they include clarifications, examples and a Solo mode, and cover exceptions and specific details. 10 10 Are you looking f", "headingPath": "FROM THIS POINT, YOU ARE 90% READY TO PLAY. 10", "sharpsignalDocId": 388}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.046147, "snippet": "16 TEAM MODE (2 VS 2) The team mode follows the same rules as the regular game, but it allows players to work together against another team. Set up the game as you would for a regular game, with teammates sitting beside each other A . Any time a player earns resources (cards, Compost, Soil, Sprouts,", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 388}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045079, "snippet": "On your turn, choose any 1 of the 4 action spaces shown at the top of your player board. To mark your choice, place the active-player token above the corresponding action. All other players place their 5th Leaf token on the bottom of the same action space as a way to track their action options. Play", "headingPath": "TURN/ACTION OVERVIEW · Planting (see page 6): · ACTIVATING ABILITIES · Composting (see page 7):", "sharpsignalDocId": 388}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.043009, "snippet": "Abilities are activated after taking their matching action ( GREEN activates GREEN , RED activates RED ... etc.). Multicoloured abilities (which consist of BLUE , YELLOW , and RED abilities) are also triggered when the BLUE , YELLOW , or RED action is chosen: these multicoloured abilities are activa", "headingPath": "ACTIVATING ABILITIES - CONTINUED · PLANTING: PLACE, DRAW, AND DRAFT CARDS · At the end of the game, you will score the base VP value of each card you have planted. · These 3 cards are not placed in their personal Compost.", "sharpsignalDocId": 388}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Cards on a player board may be activated before or after the tableau, but the tableau must be activated in order—from left column to right, then top row to bottom If the Earth deck runs out, shuffle the discard pile to create a new draw pile. Do not shuffle in any player’s Compost—these cards are wo", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 388}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The active player may draw 4 cards from the Earth pile, placing them in their hand. There is no limit to the number of cards a player may have in their hand. If the draw pile is ever depleted, simply shuffle the discard pile to create a new draw pile. Do not shuffle in any Compost from player boards", "headingPath": "GROWING: DRAW CARDS AND PLACE GROWTH", "sharpsignalDocId": 388}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The best players will be the ones that adapt quickly, just like plants and animals need to do to thrive. This game exists thanks to Isabelle Touchette, my love, who kindly asked me if I could create a game about plants.", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 388}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "That player places one of their Leaf tokens on the 7VP bonus space on the Fauna board, and then any remaining turns are taken to end the round—so that all players have an equal number of turns. If the active player and another player complete their tableaus on the same turn, the active player claims", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 388}]
- 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 388 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 388 boosted
- answered-before recall
-
no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
- debug row retained until
- Nov 25, 2026 00:44 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 Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | FROM THIS POINT, YOU ARE 90% READY TO PLAY. 10 | p.5 | 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 Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | p.9 | 0.046147 (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 Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | TURN/ACTION OVERVIEW · Planting (see page 6): · ACTIVATING ABILITIES · Composting (see page 7): | p.3 | 0.045079 (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 Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | ACTIVATING ABILITIES - CONTINUED · PLANTING: PLACE, DRAW, AND DRAFT CARDS · At the end of the game, you will score the base VP value of each card you have planted. · These 3 cards are not placed in their personal Compost. | p.4 | 0.043009 (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 Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | p.4 | 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 Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | GROWING: DRAW CARDS AND PLACE GROWTH | p.5 | 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 Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | p.9 | 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)) | 219 | |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | 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 58 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 Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | FROM THIS POINT, YOU ARE 90% READY TO PLAY. 10 | p.5 | #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 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | p.9 | #2 | 0.046147 (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 Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | p.8 | #10 | 0.028125 (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 Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | p.8 | #21 | 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 | |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | p.4 | #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 | |
| #6 | RULEBOOK Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | p.1 | #32 | 0.011765 (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 | |
| #7 | RULEBOOK Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | p.9 | #7 | 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)) | vector + the doc-priority boost arm | the re-ranker chose it | |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 388) | TURN/ACTION OVERVIEW · Planting (see page 6): · ACTIVATING ABILITIES · Composting (see page 7): | p.3 | #3 | 0.045079 (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 85 ms · first delta 3541 ms · total 3681 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 85 ms · ask 3594 ms · gateway work 3681 ms · total 3681 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 3324
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 9
- tok/sec
- 152.5 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.059 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 17s 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 4s 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 316), 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.