RuleSage cited table rulings
← Pax Porfiriana

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Pax Porfirianabg-128780-en-1e

To play, follow these steps:
**Setup**
1. Separate the 27 double-sided Era I cards (Play Aid, Hacendado, Regime, and Public Cards) from the Era II cards.[1]
2. Build the Era I Play Deck by removing 4 Topple cards.[1]
3. Count 50 cards plus 8 cards per player.[1]
4. Shuffle and create 6 stacks of approximately the same size.[1]
5. Shuffle 1 Topple card into 4 of the 6 stacks.[1]
6. Place the 6 stacks on top of each other, ensuring the 2 stacks without a Topple are uppermost.[1]
7. Lay out 12 faceup cards in 2 rows of 6 each to the left of the Play Deck to create the Market (for 5- or 6-player games, draw these 12 cards from the unused cards instead of the Play Deck).[1]
8. Place the 2 Public Cards (Catholic Church and Teddy Roosevelt) in the 2 angled spaces on the right side of the board.[1]
**Sequence of Play**
1. Each player performs the following 4 phases, then play passes to the player on the left.[2]
2. **Action Phase**: Perform up to 3 Actions (or 2 Actions in a 5- or 6-player game).[2] A Jailed player receives 1 less Action.[2] Actions can be performed in any order from the following list:[3]
* **Buy Market Card Action**: Purchase cards into your Hand (up to a limit of 5 cards).[4] You may buy a maximum of 2 Market Cards in your turn.[5] Headlines are played immediately after purchase; you choose an 'event' or 'status quo' orientation.[4] Public Cards are played into your Tableau and never go to your Hand.[5]
* **Buy Public Card Action**: Buy a Public Card at the price indicated in its top right corner.[5]
* **Play Card Action**: Play a card from your Hand and pay the Gold cost listed in its top right corner.[3] This includes playing Protest Cards against enterprises to steal Gold and add Unrest.[3]
* **Sell Card Action**: Discard a card and take Gold from the pool equal to the Economy listed on the current Regime.[5] You may sell a card from your Hand or In Play.[5]
3. **Discard Headlines**: Discard any Headlines in the 0-cost column in the Market without effect.[2] If both 0-cost columns are occupied by Headlines, the active player decides the order of discard.[2] Discarded Headlines go faceup into the Bull-Bear Discards.[2]
[1] RULEBOOK Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook · p.11 · C. SETUP
[2] RULEBOOK Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook · p.13 · D. SEQUENCE OF PLAY
[3] RULEBOOK Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook · p.15 · E. ACTIONS · 1. Play Card Action
[4] RULEBOOK Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook · p.17 · 2. Buy Market Card Action
[5] RULEBOOK Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook · p.18 · 2. Buy Market Card Action · 3. Buy Public Card Action · 4. Sell Card Action

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 202 ms · ask 5829 ms · total 6034 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 6034 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 11, "score": 0.047712, "snippet": "Era I Cards. Separate the 27 double-sided cards from the others. These are Play Aid (6), Hacendado (9), Regime (8), and Public Cards (4). Separate the Era I from the Era II cards. Play Deck is built from Era I as follows: Remove the 4 Topple cards for now (a). Count 50 cards plus 8 cards per player ", "headingPath": "C. SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 713}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.046432, "snippet": "During your turn, you may expend from 0 to 3 Actions, in any order, from this list: Play a card from your Hand and pay the cost of Gold listed in the top right corner. Any effects of the Regime Change listed on a card take effect immediately after playing it. ➢ A Protest Card is played against an en", "headingPath": "E. ACTIONS · 1. Play Card Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 713}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.046154, "snippet": "E3. For 18 Gold, you purchase and play the Public Card with Teddy Roosevelt side up (a). This changes the Regime to US intervention (b), and then causes red-blue Strife for all players, including you (c). E4. Place the card facedown in the Discard pile, and gain money according to the Economy of the", "headingPath": "2. Buy Market Card Action · 3. Buy Public Card Action · 4. Sell Card Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 713}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.045591, "snippet": "Each player performs these 4 phases, and then play passes to the next player to the left. Secrecy. Your Hand is kept hidden, but all Gold, and cards in discard pile, Grudge Piles, and Tableaux are open for opponents to examine. Action Phase - Perform up to 3 Actions (or 2 Actions in a 5- or 6-player", "headingPath": "D. SEQUENCE OF PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 713}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.045536, "snippet": "Hand Limit. Except for Headlines, purchased cards go into your Hand. Your Hand Limit is 5 cards. If at your limit, you cannot buy new cards into your Hand, but you can buy Play-Immediately Cards (Headlines and Public Cards). Play Headlines immediately after purchase. When playing a Headline (includi", "headingPath": "2. Buy Market Card Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 713}, {"page": 36, "score": 0.045445, "snippet": "K2. Pink player initiates a showdown by buying a Topple and issuing a manifesto, flipping their Hacendado for an extra Prestige (a). During green player's turn in the showdown, they also issue a manifesto (b), and play an Assassination for 3 Gold to murder the pink player's Hacendado (c). Starting w", "headingPath": "Easily missed · 2. Topple Showdown. · 3. Toppling Success", "sharpsignalDocId": 713}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.044343, "snippet": "D2. Depression ends when 2 bull cards are discarded on top of each other. D4. During the Income Phase Green player receives 4 Gold. The cube on the right Mine is suffering Unrest. You may never transfer cards or money; but otherwise may make any deal during the game. Deals extending into future turn", "headingPath": "D. SEQUENCE OF PLAY · Deal-Making", "sharpsignalDocId": 713}, {"page": 37, "score": 0.04146, "snippet": "the amount of Topple Prestige of your 2 opponents with the least Topple Prestige. 2-Player Game. This minimum is 3 (instead of 2) plus the amount of matching Topple Prestige of your opponent. Díaz Senility Variant (recommended for the 3-player game). With experienced players, it is often difficult t", "headingPath": "3. Toppling Success · 4. Determine The Winner", "sharpsignalDocId": 713}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "C. SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 713}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "D. SEQUENCE OF PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 713}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "E. ACTIONS · 1. Play Card Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 713}, {"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. Buy Market Card Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 713}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. Buy Market Card Action · 3. Buy Public Card Action · 4. Sell Card Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 713}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 713 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 713 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 0.87444 of 1784 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until
Nov 25, 2026 05:03 UTC

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) C. SETUP p.11 0.047712 (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 Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) E. ACTIONS · 1. Play Card Action p.15 0.046432 (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 Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) 2. Buy Market Card Action · 3. Buy Public Card Action · 4. Sell Card Action p.18 0.046154 (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 Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) D. SEQUENCE OF PLAY p.13 0.045591 (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 Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) 2. Buy Market Card Action p.17 0.045536 (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 Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) Easily missed · 2. Topple Showdown. · 3. Toppling Success p.36 0.045445 (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 Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) D. SEQUENCE OF PLAY · Deal-Making p.14 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 Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) 3. Toppling Success · 4. Determine The Winner p.37 0.04146 (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 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 45 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) 2. Buy Market Card Action p.17 #5 0.045536 (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 Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) C. SETUP p.11 #1 0.047712 (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 Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) 2. Buy Market Card Action · 3. Buy Public Card Action · 4. Sell Card Action p.18 #3 0.046154 (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 Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) G. PLAY OR REDEPLOY TROOPS · 1. Extorting Troop Requirements p.26 #10 0.028485 (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 Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) This Rules Manual p.7 #13 0.027673 (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 Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) E. ACTIONS · 1. Play Card Action p.15 #2 0.046432 (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 Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) J. THE STRAW MAN · 1. Limitations · 2. Scapegoat Plays p.34 #9 0.030679 (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 Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) D. SEQUENCE OF PLAY p.13 #4 0.045591 (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

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) C. SETUP p.11 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) D. SEQUENCE OF PLAY p.13 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) E. ACTIONS · 1. Play Card Action p.15 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) 2. Buy Market Card Action p.17 no quote on the wire
[5] RULEBOOK Pax Porfiriana — Rulebook (corpus doc 713) 2. Buy Market Card Action · 3. Buy Public Card Action · 4. Sell Card Action p.18 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 202 ms · first delta 3074 ms · total 6034 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 202 ms · ask 5829 ms · gateway work 6034 ms · total 6034 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
2469
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
593
tok/sec
203.4 tok/sec — 593 output tokens in 2.915 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 0s 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 647), 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.