Ruling — Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death

← Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Deathbg-150997-en-1e

To play, follow these steps:

**Setup**

1. Decide on the number of Heroes participating.[1]

2. Thoroughly shuffle all card decks and place them around the table.[1]

3. Shuffle all 12 Exploration Tokens and create a face-down stack for players to draw from when finding a new room.[1]

4. Prepare each Hero.[1] To create a new Hero:

* Choose a Hero Class.[2]

* Find the Starting Items printed on the Character Sheet and locate them among the Starting Gear cards.[2]

* Draw one Personal Item card.[2]

* Choose one of the three Hero Starting Upgrades available to the Hero Class.[2]

* Select any Class Specific Cards if noted on the Hero Character Sheet.[2]

* Take a Side Bag card (which can hold up to 5 Tokens).[2]

* Choose one starting Token for free from Whiskey, Bandages, Dynamite, or Tonic.[2]

* Choose a name for the Hero.[2]

5. One Hero receives the Old Lantern card, which players may choose who takes at the start of each Adventure.[1]

6. Select a Mission.[1]

7. Place the Depth Track where all players can see it.[1]

8. Position the Darkness marker on the Darkness Start space and the Hero Party marker on the Mine Entrance space.[1]

9. Set the Entrance Map Tile in the center of the table.[1]

10. Place each Hero model on the Entrance Map Tile in one of the 8 Starting Area spaces.[1]

**A Turn**

1. After a Hero has moved, they are allowed to make one Attack.[3]

2. An attack can be a Melee Attack using basic Combat or a Ranged Attack using a Ranged Weapon.[3]

3. To perform a Melee Attack, roll the Hero's Combat value (plus any bonuses from Items or Abilities) and check if the rolls are equal to or greater than the Melee To Hit value on the Character Sheet.[3]

4. To perform a Ranged Attack, roll the number of Shots provided by the Ranged Weapon and check if the rolls are equal to or greater than the Ranged To Hit value on the Character Sheet.[3]

5. Any dice that roll a 6+ counts as a Critical Hit.[3]

6. After rolling, the Hero assigns Hits one at a time to any Enemies within Range.[3]

7. For Melee Attacks, Hits may only be assigned to adjacent Enemies.[3]

8. For Ranged Attacks, Hits may be assigned to any Enemies within the Weapon's Range and the Hero's Line of Sight, but if Enemies are adjacent, the Hero must always assign and resolve Ranged Hits against them first.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook · p.10 · GAME SET UP · 1) Number of Players/Heroes · 2) Shuffle Card Decks · 3) Prepare Exploration Tokens · 4) Ready Heroes · 5) Select Mission · …

[2] RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook · p.7 · CREATING A NEW HERO · Choose Hero Class · Get Starting Items · Draw a Personal Item · Choose Your Starting Upgrade · Select Any Class Specific Cards · …

[3] RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook · p.26 · HERO ATTACKS · Melee Attacks · Ranged Attacks · Roll 'To Hit' · Assigning Hits

Settled. Play on.

🔧 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 88 ms · ask 6311 ms · total 6400 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6400 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.045536, "snippet": "To Set Up for an Adventure, complete the following steps in the order listed. This covers everything needed to start the basic Mission ' A Fistful of Dark Stone' , and includes preparing the card decks, shuffling up the Exploration Tokens, placing the Mine Entrance, and getting the Heroes ready to g", "headingPath": "GAME SET UP · 1) Number of Players/Heroes · 2) Shuffle Card Decks · 3) Prepare Exploration Tokens · 4) Ready Heroes · 5) Select Mission · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.042838, "snippet": "This marks the current position of the Heroes on the Depth Track and moves down the track as the Heroes explore the Mine. Several additional counters have been provided. Most of these are not needed for the main game but can be used for house rules or future official content. XP and Gold are only ne", "headingPath": "Hero Party Marker · Additional Counters · XP and Gold · Figures and Bases · Shadows of Brimstone CD Soundtrack", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 29, "score": 0.04207, "snippet": "Once all of the currently Activating Enemies have targeted a Hero and been moved, it is time for each of them to Attack! Rolling To Hit for Enemy Attacks works just like it does for a Hero Attack. The only difference is that Enemies DO NOT get Critical Hits on rolls of 6+. Some Enemies do, however, ", "headingPath": "ENEMY ATTACKS · Rolling 'To Hit' · Hero Defense Rolls · Taking Damage · COMPLETING A FIGHT · Catch Your Breath", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "At the start of a Hero's Activation, the first thing they should do is to roll a single die for Movement . The Hero may Move a number of spaces up to the amount rolled on the die. Models have no facing and may move forward, back, side to side, and even diagonally. Models may NOT move through other m", "headingPath": "Hero Movement · Map Tile Puzzle Connections", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "There are many things in the game that require you to determine a Random Hero. There are two simple ways to do this - use the Hero Tokens provided to draw one randomly, or simply roll a die. A Hero Token for each Hero in this Core Set has been provided and these can be used to draw from without look", "headingPath": "A RANDOM HERO", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "To make a Skill test, the Hero rolls a number of dice equal to their value in that Skill. As long as any one of those dice is equal to or greater than the target number, the test is successfully passed. For example, if a Hero needs to make a Lore 5+ test, they roll a number of dice equal to their Lo", "headingPath": "Making a Skill Test · Skill Tests Outside of an Encounter · Multiple Encounters", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "To be able to see an Enemy and assign Hits to them, you must be able to draw a straight line from the center of the Hero's space to the center of the target's space without it crossing a Wall (the thick black border of the Map Tiles). Only Walls block Line of Sight; other models have no effect on it", "headingPath": "Line of Sight", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Each Game Turn has four steps that are completed in the following order: Hold Back the Darkness Models Activate in Initiative Order Room Exploration End of the Turn Once all four steps are complete, a new Game Turn begins. As noted above, at the start of each turn, the Hero that has the Old Lantern ", "headingPath": "THE GAME TURN · Hold Back the Darkness · Models Activate in Initiative Order · Room Exploration · End of the Turn · HERO ACTIVATION", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SET UP · 1) Number of Players/Heroes · 2) Shuffle Card Decks · 3) Prepare Exploration Tokens · 4) Ready Heroes · 5) Select Mission · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CREATING A NEW HERO · Choose Hero Class · Get Starting Items · Draw a Personal Item · Choose Your Starting Upgrade · Select Any Class Specific Cards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 26, "quote": null, "headingPath": "HERO ATTACKS · Melee Attacks · Ranged Attacks · Roll 'To Hit' · Assigning Hits", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 822 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 822 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 0.90106 of 1880 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 25, 2026 19:53 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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	GAME SET UP · 1) Number of Players/Heroes · 2) Shuffle Card Decks · 3) Prepare Exploration Tokens · 4) Ready Heroes · 5) Select Mission · …	p.10	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
#2	RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	Hero Party Marker · Additional Counters · XP and Gold · Figures and Bases · Shadows of Brimstone CD Soundtrack	p.3	0.042838 (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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	ENEMY ATTACKS · Rolling 'To Hit' · Hero Defense Rolls · Taking Damage · COMPLETING A FIGHT · Catch Your Breath	p.29	0.04207 (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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	Hero Movement · Map Tile Puzzle Connections	p.13	0.032787 (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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	A RANDOM HERO	p.18	0.032258 (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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	Making a Skill Test · Skill Tests Outside of an Encounter · Multiple Encounters	p.19	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
#7	RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	Line of Sight	p.26	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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	THE GAME TURN · Hold Back the Darkness · Models Activate in Initiative Order · Room Exploration · End of the Turn · HERO ACTIVATION	p.13	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 75 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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	Hard-Core Mode · Themed Threat Decks · Dangerous Dynamite	p.38	#14	0.026495 (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
#2	RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	CREATING A NEW HERO · Choose Hero Class · Get Starting Items · Draw a Personal Item · Choose Your Starting Upgrade · Select Any Class Specific Cards · …	p.7	#10	0.028778 (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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	Multiple Heroes of the Same Class · HERO ATTACK DICE LIMIT · DUAL WIELDING RANGED WEAPONS · The Attack may NOT get Critical Hits for either of the two weapons. · Dice rolled for Off-Hand Ranged Weapons need to roll 1 higher than normal on To Hit rolls.	p.33	#22	0.021808 (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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	Loot Cards for Gear and Artifacts · SWAMPS OF JARGONO · Global Rules · CAMPAIGN PLAY	p.36	#16	0.02481 (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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	HERO ATTACKS · Melee Attacks · Ranged Attacks · Roll 'To Hit' · Assigning Hits	p.26	#29	0.013514 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	MAP TILES	p.5	#32	0.012821 (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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	A RANDOM HERO	p.18	#5	0.032258 (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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	GAME SET UP · 1) Number of Players/Heroes · 2) Shuffle Card Decks · 3) Prepare Exploration Tokens · 4) Ready Heroes · 5) Select Mission · …	p.10	#1	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	GAME SET UP · 1) Number of Players/Heroes · 2) Shuffle Card Decks · 3) Prepare Exploration Tokens · 4) Ready Heroes · 5) Select Mission · …	p.10	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	CREATING A NEW HERO · Choose Hero Class · Get Starting Items · Draw a Personal Item · Choose Your Starting Upgrade · Select Any Class Specific Cards · …	p.7	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822)	HERO ATTACKS · Melee Attacks · Ranged Attacks · Roll 'To Hit' · Assigning Hits	p.26	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 88 ms · first delta 3340 ms · total 6400 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 88 ms · ask 6311 ms · gateway work 6400 ms · total 6400 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4017
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 601
tok/sec: 200.3 tok/sec — 601 output tokens in 3.000 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 757), 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.