Ruling — Specter Ops

← Specter Ops

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Specter Opsbg-155624-en-1e

To play Specter Ops: Shadow of Babel, follow these steps:

**Setup**

1. Decide which player will be the A.R.K. agent; the rest of the players will be Raxxon hunters.[1]

2. Unfold the game board and place it in the center of the play area.[1]

3. Make separate piles of each token type within reach of all players.[1]

4. Place the 'occupy vehicle' card to the side of the game board and place the vehicle token on space K17.[1]

5. Determine the location of the 4 mission objectives by having the agent player roll a 6-sided die for each objective to find the corresponding location in sections 1 through 4 of the map, circling them on the movement sheet and placing a mission token (blue Raxxon side up) on the board.[1][2]

6. If playing with 3 players, each hunter player chooses 1 hunter, placing the chosen hunter figure on the occupy vehicle card and the chosen hunter character card face up in front of him.[1]

7. In a 2-player game, the hunter player selects 2 hunters to play.[1][2]

8. The agent player secretly chooses an agent and places that agent's character card face down in front of her.[1][3][2]

9. The agent player takes all the equipment cards (unique and generic) and secretly chooses 3 to place face down in front of her, then places the remaining cards back in the game box.[1][3][2]

**Gameplay**

1. The agent player takes the first turn of the game.[4][5]

2. On her turn, the agent player moves her agent (up to 4 spaces orthogonally and/or diagonally, without moving onto or through hunters or structures) and may choose to use an equipment card.[4][5] The agent tracks movement secretly on a movement sheet rather than using a figure on the board.[4][5]

3. If the agent ends her move on a space visible to a hunter, she must place her figure on that space; if she moves through visible spaces but ends on an invisible space, she must place her figure and a "last seen" token on the last visible space.[4]

4. When the agent is done with her turn, play passes to the hunter player(s).[4]

5. The hunter players decide which of them will go first and which will go second.[6]

6. On a hunter player's turn, they move their hunter (up to 4 spaces orthogonally and/or diagonally, without moving onto or through structures) and may attack a visible agent.[6]

7. After each hunter player has taken a turn, play passes back to the agent player.[6]

**Objectives**

* **Agent Objective:** Complete any 3 of the 4 mission objectives and reach 1 of the escape points before time runs out.[4][5]

* **Hunter Objective:** Defeat the agent by bringing her down to 0 hit points or by preventing her from escaping before the end of the 40th round.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Specter Ops — Rulebook · p.3 · GAME SET UP

[2] RULEBOOK Specter Ops — Rulebook · p.3

[3] RULEBOOK Specter Ops — Rulebook · p.3 · GAME SET UP

[4] RULEBOOK Specter Ops — Rulebook · p.4

[5] RULEBOOK Specter Ops — Rulebook · p.4 · DETERMINING MISSION OBJECTIVES B 14 C 14 D 14 E 14 F 14 H 14 G 14 J 14 I 14 L 14 K 14 1 · PLAYING AS AN AGENT · OBJECTIVE · MOVEMENT

[6] RULEBOOK Specter Ops — Rulebook · p.5 · PLAYING AS A HUNTER · OBJECTIVE · MOVEMENT

That settles it — whose turn was it?

🔧 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 86 ms · ask 6744 ms · total 6832 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6832 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.047712, "snippet": "Note: This section of the rules is written as if there are 2 hunter players controlling 1 hunter each. The rules are the same for a single hunter player, except that player controls both hunters. After the agent player has taken a turn, each hunter player will take 1 turn. The hunter players decide ", "headingPath": "PLAYING AS A HUNTER · OBJECTIVE · MOVEMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 817}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.04741, "snippet": "4 PLAYING AS AN AGENT The agent player takes the first turn of the game. On her turn she will move her agent and may choose to use an equipment card. When she is done with her turn, play passes to the hunter player(s). OBJECTIVE The agent player’s objective is to have her agent complete any 3 of the", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 817}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "If none of the players have ever played a game of Specter Ops, we recommended starting with the 2- or 3-player version of the game. With fewer rules in the 2-3 player version, it is a good way to learn the game. The main portion of this rulebook describes the setup and gameplay for the 2-3 player ga", "headingPath": "GAME SET UP", "sharpsignalDocId": 817}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045635, "snippet": "In the 2-player game, the hunter player selects 2 hunters to play. 6. The agent player secretly chooses an agent and places that agent’s character card face down in front of her. During the game, when the agent’s figure would be placed on the board, the agent player reveals her character card and pl", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 817}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045541, "snippet": "3 3 If none of the players have ever played a game of Specter Ops, we recommended starting with the 2- or 3-player version of the game. With fewer rules in the 2-3 player version, it is a good way to learn the game. The main portion of this rulebook describes the setup and gameplay for the 2-3 playe", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 817}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045235, "snippet": "ENT: B 1 1 C B B 2 3 B 4 B 5 B The agent player takes the first turn of the game. On her turn she will move her agent and may choose to use an equipment card. When she is done with her turn, play passes to the hunter player(s). The agent player's objective is to have her agent complete any 3 of the ", "headingPath": "DETERMINING MISSION OBJECTIVES B 14 C 14 D 14 E 14 F 14 H 14 G 14 J 14 I 14 L 14 K 14 1 · PLAYING AS AN AGENT · OBJECTIVE · MOVEMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 817}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Having rolled a two for section 1, she circles that mission objective on her movement sheet. The agent player then places a mission token on the corresponding location on the game board with the blue Raxxon side of that token facing up. The agent player repeats this to determine the remaining 3 miss", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 817}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "At the end of a hunter's move, the agent player must say 'clear' if the agent is NOT visible to that hunter. If the agent IS visible to that hunter the agent player must place her figure on the game board on the space the agent currently occupies. (See the Hunter Vision section on page 6 for details", "headingPath": "SEEING AN AGENT · ATTACKING", "sharpsignalDocId": 817}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SET UP", "sharpsignalDocId": 817}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 817}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SET UP", "sharpsignalDocId": 817}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 817}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "DETERMINING MISSION OBJECTIVES B 14 C 14 D 14 E 14 F 14 H 14 G 14 J 14 I 14 L 14 K 14 1 · PLAYING AS AN AGENT · OBJECTIVE · MOVEMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 817}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYING AS A HUNTER · OBJECTIVE · MOVEMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 817}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 817 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 817 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 0.89826 of 2182 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 25, 2026 21:47 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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)	PLAYING AS A HUNTER · OBJECTIVE · MOVEMENT	p.5	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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)		p.4	0.04741 (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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)	GAME SET UP	p.3	0.046875 (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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)		p.3	0.045635 (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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)		p.3	0.045541 (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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)	DETERMINING MISSION OBJECTIVES B 14 C 14 D 14 E 14 F 14 H 14 G 14 J 14 I 14 L 14 K 14 1 · PLAYING AS AN AGENT · OBJECTIVE · MOVEMENT	p.4	0.045235 (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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)		p.3	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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)	SEEING AN AGENT · ATTACKING	p.5	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 42 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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)		p.4	#2	0.04741 (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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)		p.2	#11	0.026631 (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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)	DETERMINING MISSION OBJECTIVES B 14 C 14 D 14 E 14 F 14 H 14 G 14 J 14 I 14 L 14 K 14 1 · PLAYING AS AN AGENT · OBJECTIVE · MOVEMENT	p.4	#6	0.045235 (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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)	RAXXON GLOBAL · INTRODUCTION · CHARACTER CARD · EQUIPMENT CARD	p.2	#13	0.025604 (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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)	GAME SET UP	p.3	#3	0.046875 (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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)	GAME SET UP	p.3	#16	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
#7	RULEBOOK Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)		p.3	#4	0.045635 (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 Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)	PLAYING AS A HUNTER · OBJECTIVE · MOVEMENT	p.5	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)	GAME SET UP	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)	GAME SET UP	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)	DETERMINING MISSION OBJECTIVES B 14 C 14 D 14 E 14 F 14 H 14 G 14 J 14 I 14 L 14 K 14 1 · PLAYING AS AN AGENT · OBJECTIVE · MOVEMENT	p.4	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Specter Ops — Rulebook (corpus doc 817)	PLAYING AS A HUNTER · OBJECTIVE · MOVEMENT	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 86 ms · first delta 3359 ms · total 6832 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 86 ms · ask 6744 ms · gateway work 6832 ms · total 6832 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3809
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 685
tok/sec: 201.1 tok/sec — 685 output tokens in 3.407 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 45s 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 2s 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 752), 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.