Ruling — Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game

← Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Gamebg-71721-en-1e

To play Death Angel, follow these procedures:

**Setup**

1. Shuffle the Genestealer deck and Event deck separately and place them at the top of the play area.[1]

2. Find the Setup Location card for the appropriate number of players and place it in the centre of the play area.[1]

3. Shuffle each numbered deck of Location cards separately, then create a deck of random face down Location cards based on the instructions on the 'Setup' Location card.[1]

4. Starting with a random player and proceeding clockwise, each player chooses a Combat Team Marker (if playing with three or less players, players choose more than one: 2 markers for 2 or 3 players, and 3 markers for 1 player).[1][2]

5. Each player keeps their chosen Combat Team Marker(s) face up and gains all Action cards matching their combat team(s) to form their hand.[1]

6. Place Terrain cards by following the instructions on the left side of the Location card (e.g., placing a 'Door' or 'Dark Corner') and then follow the placement instructions on the right hand side of the Location card.[3]

**A Game Round**

The game is played over a number of rounds until all Space Marines are slain or they have won.[4] Each round consists of these phases in order:

1. **Choose Actions Phase**: Each player simultaneously chooses one Action card from his hand and places it face down (if playing with three or fewer players, each player chooses more than one card, specifically one card matching the colour of each of his Combat Team Markers).[5][2] A player may not choose an Action card resolved during the previous game round.[5]

2. **Resolve Actions Phase**: Each player resolves their chosen Action cards in ascending order starting with the lowest numbered card.[4]

* Players may use "Move + Activate" cards to change a Space Marine's facing and activate certain Terrain cards.[6]

* Players may use "Attack" cards to attack swarms of Genestealers; the player chooses Space Marines one at a time and rolls the combat die; a skull result slays one Genestealer card in the swarm.[7]

3. **Genestealer Attack Phase**: Each swarm of Genestealers in play attacks the Space Marine it is Engaged with.[4]

4. **Event Phase**: The current player draws the top card of the Event deck and resolves it.[4]

**Travelling**

Travelling occurs automatically whenever there are 0 cards in any blip pile at the end of any phase.[8] When travelling, perform these steps in order:

1. Place New Location Card.[8]

2. Place Terrain Cards.[8]

3. Discard/Refill Blip Piles.[8]

4. Follow Location 'Upon entering' Ability.[8]

**Winning and Losing**

* **Winning**: Players win if Space Marines reach the final card in the Location deck and fulfill its winning condition, or if they eliminate all Genestealers in the formation and both blip piles while at the final Location.[4]

* **Losing**: All players lose if all Space Marines are slain before attaining victory.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook · p.7 · Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook · p.30 · Component Limitations · Playing with 1 to 3 players

[3] RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook · p.27 · Placing Terrain Cards Diagram · Slain Space Marines

[4] RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook · p.10 · Object of the Game · Playing the Game · A Game Round

[5] RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook · p.11 · A Game Round · 1. Choose Actions Phase

[6] RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook · p.18 · c. acTIvaTE TErraIn

[7] RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook · p.19 · Attack Action Cards · facIng and rangE

[8] RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook · p.25 · Travel

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 158 ms · ask 5095 ms · total 5255 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5255 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "The object of the game is for the Space Marines to travel to the final Location card in the deck and fulfil the winning condition listed on the card. Players can also win by eliminating all Genestealers in the formation and in both blip piles while at the final Location. As soon as they fulfil one o", "headingPath": "Object of the Game · Playing the Game · A Game Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "Before playing a game of Death Angel , players must perform the following steps in order: Setup decks: 1. Shuffle the Genestealer deck and Event deck separately, and place them at the top of the play area within easy reach of all players. Setup Starting Location: 2. Find the Setup Location card for ", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "After resolving the 'Event Phase', players proceed to resolve a new 'Choose Actions Phase'. This process continues until either all Space Marines are slain or the Space Marines have won the game. During this phase, each player simultaneously chooses one Action card from his hand and places it face d", "headingPath": "A Game Round · 1. Choose Actions Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}, {"page": 30, "score": 0.046244, "snippet": "All cards and tokens are limited to those provided in the game box. When a Support Token is spent or discarded, it returns to the pile of unused tokens. If a player is instructed to place a Support Token when there are zero tokens in this pile, he loses the ability to place this Support Token. When ", "headingPath": "Component Limitations · Playing with 1 to 3 players", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.045536, "snippet": "In order to win the game, players need to TravEl to new Locations in the Space Hulk to eventually reach the final card in the Location deck that will allow them to win the game. Note that TravEllIng refers to the entire formation going to a new Location, while movIng is the act that Space Marines an", "headingPath": "Travel", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.044563, "snippet": "This section describes additional specific rules that were not covered in the 'Playing the Game' section. The central line of Space Marine cards is known as the formaTIon . Space Marines may only exist in the formation, and may not move outside of this column. Each row of the formation is known as a", "headingPath": "Other Rules · The Formation · Action Card Types · Support Action Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "After changing the facing of any of his Space Marines, the player may activate any Terrain cards that one of his Space Marines is In fronT of (facing and in the same position). Only Terrain cards with the term acTIvaTE on them may be activated. The player simply follows the instructions on the Terra", "headingPath": "c. acTIvaTE TErraIn", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "1. A player is setting up Terrain cards at the start of the game. He first looks at the left side of the Location card and follows the setup instructions. The first icon instructs him to place a 'Door' on the top position of the formation. 2. The second icon instructs him to place a 'Dark Corner' on", "headingPath": "Placing Terrain Cards Diagram · Slain Space Marines", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}, {"page": 30, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Component Limitations · Playing with 1 to 3 players", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}, {"page": 27, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Placing Terrain Cards Diagram · Slain Space Marines", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Object of the Game · Playing the Game · A Game Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "A Game Round · 1. Choose Actions Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "c. acTIvaTE TErraIn", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}, {"page": 19, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Attack Action Cards · facIng and rangE", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}, {"page": 25, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Travel", "sharpsignalDocId": 725}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 725 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 725 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 0.91014 of 2415 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 25, 2026 11:15 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 Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Object of the Game · Playing the Game · A Game Round	p.10	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 Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Setup	p.7	0.048387 (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 Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	A Game Round · 1. Choose Actions Phase	p.11	0.047371 (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 Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Component Limitations · Playing with 1 to 3 players	p.30	0.046244 (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 Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Travel	p.25	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 Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Other Rules · The Formation · Action Card Types · Support Action Cards	p.15	0.044563 (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 Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	c. acTIvaTE TErraIn	p.18	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
#8	RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Placing Terrain Cards Diagram · Slain Space Marines	p.27	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

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 31 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 Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Setup	p.7	#2	0.048387 (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 Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	A Game Round · 1. Choose Actions Phase	p.11	#3	0.047371 (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 Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Placing Terrain Cards Diagram · Slain Space Marines	p.27	#8	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
#4	RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	c. acTIvaTE TErraIn	p.18	#7	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
#5	RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Attack Action Cards · facIng and rangE	p.19	#9	0.028259 (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 Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Travel	p.25	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Object of the Game · Playing the Game · A Game Round	p.10	#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
#8	RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Component Limitations · Playing with 1 to 3 players	p.30	#4	0.046244 (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 Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Setup	p.7	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Component Limitations · Playing with 1 to 3 players	p.30	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Placing Terrain Cards Diagram · Slain Space Marines	p.27	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Object of the Game · Playing the Game · A Game Round	p.10	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	A Game Round · 1. Choose Actions Phase	p.11	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	c. acTIvaTE TErraIn	p.18	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Attack Action Cards · facIng and rangE	p.19	no quote on the wire
[8]	RULEBOOK Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 725)	Travel	p.25	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 158 ms · first delta 1850 ms · total 5255 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 158 ms · ask 5095 ms · gateway work 5255 ms · total 5255 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2680
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 682
tok/sec: 202.7 tok/sec — 682 output tokens in 3.365 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 59s 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: 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 659), 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.