Ruling — High Frontier 4 All

← High Frontier 4 All

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: High Frontier 4 Allbg-281655-en-1e

To play High Frontier, follow this sequence:

**Setup**

1. Deal each player a random Crew, then each player secretly chooses one side of the card they will play as.[1]

2. Each player takes a playmat and places their Crew into the slot labeled 'LEO' with the chosen Faction faceup.[2]

3. Near their playmat, each player places the following in their Reserve in their player color: 2 Rockets (one for map, one to indicate net thrust), 1 Dry Mass Chit, 1 blue/gray Wet Mass Chit, 7 small cubes, 7 domes, 9 disks, and 2 rectangular chits.[2]

4. Shuffle each of the six patent card decks (thruster, robonaut, refinery, generator, reactor, radiator) and place them White-Side up near the map.[2]

5. Give each player 6 blue Aqua beads, placed into the LEO slot on their playmat.[2]

6. Place a blue bead on each of the 6 starting positions of the Exploitation Tracks on the map.[2]

7. Place 1 glory chit on each Heliocentric Zone (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) with the '1 VP' side faceup.[2]

8. Unless playing solitaire or 2-player, place 1 'heroism' chit in each of the 4 Heroism spots on the map.[2]

**Yearly Play Sequence**

After setup, the game proceeds as a series of years. Each year consists of:

**I. Player Turns**

1. Starting with the 1st Player and going clockwise, each player takes one Turn.[3][4]

2. On a Turn, a player may do either or both of the following in any order: move their Rocket and/or perform an Operation.[3][4]

3. A player may move their Rocket once per Turn (some Modules allow multiple Spacecraft to move once per Turn).[3][4]

4. A player may perform one Operation per Turn.[3][4]

5. A player may perform any number of free actions on their Turn, including the same free action multiple as many times as they wish, except during movement or an Operation.[3][4]

**II. Sunspot Cycle Advance Phase**

1. The 1st Player advances the Sunspot Cube clockwise.[3][4]

2. If the cube crosses an "event" threshold, make an Event Roll and resolve the event, which applies to all players starting with the 1st Player.[3][4]

3. If the cube crosses the "SENIORITY" threshold, remove a Seniority Disk.[3][4]

4. If no Seniority Disks remain, the game immediately ends with scoring.[3][4]

[1] RULEBOOK High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook · p.9 · C2. Assign Factions & Crew

[2] RULEBOOK High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook · p.10 · C3. Reserves Setup · C4. Patent Deck Setup · C5. Starting Aquas · C6. Exploitation Track Setup · C7. Glory & Heroism Chit Setup

[3] RULEBOOK High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook · p.11

[4] RULEBOOK High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook · p.11 · D. Yearly Play Sequence · D1. Player Turn Phase · D2. Advance Sunspot Cycle Phase · E. Hands & Stacks · E1. Hand Cards

That's the page. Back to the table.

🔧 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 84 ms · ask 8560 ms · total 10191 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 1544 ms · generation 8647 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "In general, VP are scored for off-world Claims and Factories, the stock price of industrialized Sites, and glories (exploration achievements). Sequential Processes are presented in the order listed in the sequence of play, and are introduced by a simple overview followed by specific bullets. The Gol", "headingPath": "EXAMPLE [A2a]", "sharpsignalDocId": 711}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "After Setup, High Frontier proceeds as a series of years . Each year consists of: Player Turns . Starting with the 1st Player and going clockwise, each player takes one Turn (D1) Sunspot Cycle Advance . If a threshold is crossed, see (D2a,b). In this phase, each of the players takes a Turn. You may ", "headingPath": "D. Yearly Play Sequence · D1. Player Turn Phase · D2. Advance Sunspot Cycle Phase · E. Hands & Stacks · E1. Hand Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 711}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "11 CORE RULES | HIGH FRONTIER 4 ALL | D. Y early Play Sequence After Setup, High Frontier proceeds as a series of years. Each year consists of: a. Player Turns. Starting with the 1st Player and going clockwise, each player takes one Turn (D1). b. Sunspot Cycle Advance. If a threshold is crossed, see", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 711}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.041912, "snippet": "Each player takes a playmat and places their Crew into the slot labeled 'LEO' with the chosen Faction faceup. Near their playmat, they place the following components in their player color in their Reserve: 2 Rockets (one for map, one to indicate net thrust). 1 Dry Mass Chit and 1 blue/gray Wet Mass ", "headingPath": "C3. Reserves Setup · C4. Patent Deck Setup · C5. Starting Aquas · C6. Exploitation Track Setup · C7. Glory & Heroism Chit Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 711}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "A Stack is a collection of cards and/or FTs, placed in a designated slot on your playmat. In the core game, you can have up to 4 Stacks: LEO, Rocket, Outpost #1 , and Outpost #2 . Store these in the named slots on your playmat. Each has a location on the map as indicated by the location of its Figur", "headingPath": "E2. Stacks", "sharpsignalDocId": 711}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Your FTs, Hand cards, and Stacks are free for anyone to examine. E2. Stacks A Stack is a collection of cards and/or FTs, placed in a designated slot on your playmat. In the core game, you can have up to 4 Stacks: LEO, Rocket, Outpost #1, and Outpost #2. Store these in the named slots on your playmat", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 711}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "G See 'Read Me First'.", "headingPath": "A3. Introductory Games · B1. Component List", "sharpsignalDocId": 711}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The number of players can be from 2 to 5 (or 1 in some scenarios). Before starting, decide on any Modules or variants (separate booklet). Note the quick start game (V1) (recommended for 4 or more players), the Space Diamonds chit variant (iA) , and the solitaire/cooperative variant (V4) . Use the 'C", "headingPath": "C. Core Setup · C1. Seniority Disk Placement", "sharpsignalDocId": 711}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "C2. Assign Factions & Crew", "sharpsignalDocId": 711}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "C3. Reserves Setup · C4. Patent Deck Setup · C5. Starting Aquas · C6. Exploitation Track Setup · C7. Glory & Heroism Chit Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 711}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 711}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "D. Yearly Play Sequence · D1. Player Turn Phase · D2. Advance Sunspot Cycle Phase · E. Hands & Stacks · E1. Hand Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 711}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 711 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 711 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 0.87877 of 1856 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 25, 2026 12:38 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 High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	EXAMPLE [A2a]	p.3	0.048916 (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 High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	D. Yearly Play Sequence · D1. Player Turn Phase · D2. Advance Sunspot Cycle Phase · E. Hands & Stacks · E1. Hand Cards	p.11	0.047643 (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 High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)		p.11	0.046898 (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 High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	C3. Reserves Setup · C4. Patent Deck Setup · C5. Starting Aquas · C6. Exploitation Track Setup · C7. Glory & Heroism Chit Setup	p.10	0.041912 (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 High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	E2. Stacks	p.11	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 High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)		p.11	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 High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	A3. Introductory Games · B1. Component List	p.4	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))	22
#8	RULEBOOK High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	C. Core Setup · C1. Seniority Disk Placement	p.9	0.029851 (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 80 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 High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)		p.11	#3	0.046898 (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 High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	C2. Assign Factions & Crew	p.9	#10	0.028021 (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
#3	RULEBOOK High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)		p.11	#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
#4	RULEBOOK High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	WHAT IF A GLITCH DISABLES YOUR ROCKET?:	p.48	#14	0.025528 (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 High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	C3. Reserves Setup · C4. Patent Deck Setup · C5. Starting Aquas · C6. Exploitation Track Setup · C7. Glory & Heroism Chit Setup	p.10	#4	0.041912 (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 High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	EXAMPLE [O3] · O4. Lobby (new free action) · O5. Laws	p.42	#27	0.013889 (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 High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	E2. Stacks	p.11	#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
#8	RULEBOOK High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	D. Yearly Play Sequence · D1. Player Turn Phase · D2. Advance Sunspot Cycle Phase · E. Hands & Stacks · E1. Hand Cards	p.11	#2	0.047643 (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 High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	C2. Assign Factions & Crew	p.9	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	C3. Reserves Setup · C4. Patent Deck Setup · C5. Starting Aquas · C6. Exploitation Track Setup · C7. Glory & Heroism Chit Setup	p.10	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)		p.11	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK High Frontier 4 All — Rulebook (corpus doc 711)	D. Yearly Play Sequence · D1. Player Turn Phase · D2. Advance Sunspot Cycle Phase · E. Hands & Stacks · E1. Hand Cards	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 84 ms · first delta 5468 ms · total 10191 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 1544 ms · retrieval 84 ms · ask 8560 ms · gateway work 8647 ms · total 10191 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3774
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 616
tok/sec: 198.4 tok/sec — 616 output tokens in 3.105 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 22s 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.

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 645), 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.