Ruling — Oceans

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Oceansbg-232414-en-1e

Players take turns in clockwise order, beginning with the start player.[1] Each player's turn consists of 4 phases:

1. Playing Cards: Play 1 card (or 2 if the Cambrian Explosion has started).[1] Cards may be played to evolve a species or to migrate population.[2] To evolve, you may play a trait on a new species (placing a free species board from the supply) or an existing species.[2] You may also remove traits from your species during this phase.[2]

2. Feeding: Feed 1 species.[1] You may choose to migrate population, forage, or attack.[3]

* MIGRATE: Use a card to move a number of population tokens equal to the migrate number on the bottom left of the played card from one board location to another chosen location (either the Reef or an Ocean zone).[3] You must discard a card from your hand to do this.[3] If the migrate number is greater than the available population, only move what is available.[3]

* FORAGE: Add up the green icons on the feeding species' traits to get its forage value.[3] Take that number of population from the Reef and move them to the forager's species board.[3] A species without green icons automatically gets a forage value of 1.[3]

* ATTACK: Choose any other species to target (including your own).[3] Add up the red icons on the feeding species' traits to get its attack value.[3] Take that number of population from the target's species board and move them to the attacker's species board.[3] A species without red icons automatically gets an attack value of 1.[3]

* Note: A species may not forage or attack unless it would take at least 1 population, and it must have an open space on its species board.[3] A species cannot take more population than there are open spaces.[3] You may never place a population token on the space with the fishbones unless it is the only available space.[3] Whenever possible, a species must take its total forage or attack value.[3]

3. Aging: Age all of your species.[1] If the Cambrian Explosion has not yet started, remove 1 population from each species and place it in your score pile.[4] If the Cambrian Explosion has started, place 2 population from each species into your score pile.[4] A species goes extinct if it is unable to age the full amount.[4]

4. Drawing Cards: Discard and draw back up to 6 cards.[1] You may draw 1 Deep card (the top face-up card from a Gene Pool pile) or draw 3 cards from the Deep deck and choose 1 to keep, placing the others face-up on each Gene Pool pile.[4] You may discard any number of Surface cards from your hand, but you may not discard Deep cards.[4] Draw from the Surface deck until you have a total of 6 cards in your hand.[4] Your turn ends and play passes to the player to your left.[4]

The game ends when the final player in the turn order completes their turn.[5] The last round is triggered when every Ocean zone is completely empty of population.[5]

Scoring:

At the end of the game, you score:

* 1 point for each population token accumulated over the course of the game.[1]

* 1 point for each population in your score pile.[5]

* 1 point for each population on your surviving species.[5]

* The points listed on your Bonus Token.[5]

The player with the highest score wins; in case of a tie, the player with the most trait cards on their species wins.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook · p.6 · OVERVIEW · PLAYING THE GAME

[2] RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook · p.7 · Phase 1: Playing Cards · PLAYING A TRAIT ON A NEW SPECIES: · PLAYING A TRAIT ON AN EXISTING SPECIES:

[3] RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook · p.8 · PLAYING THE GAME (CONTINUED) · Phase 2: Feeding · Important Feeding Rules

[4] RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook · p.9 · Phase 3: Aging · Phase 4: Drawing Cards

[5] RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook · p.15 · END OF GAME · Players score:

Now you know — make it count.

🔧 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 94 ms · ask 5516 ms · total 5614 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5614 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "The goal of Oceans is to thrive in an ever-changing ecosystem where food is scarce and predators lurk. The population of your species can grow by foraging from the Reef , attacking other species , or passively gaining from the Ocean . So evolve your species to best ensure their survival. At the end ", "headingPath": "OVERVIEW · PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Play 1 Surface card during this phase if the Cambrian Explosion has not yet started. Once the Cambrian Explosion has started, you will play 2 cards (Surface and/or Deep). Cards may be played to evolve a species, or to migrate population. In addition, you may remove traits from your species anytime d", "headingPath": "Phase 1: Playing Cards · PLAYING A TRAIT ON A NEW SPECIES: · PLAYING A TRAIT ON AN EXISTING SPECIES:", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "Oceans was originally designed to be played without Scenario cards and without the Deep. If anyone at the table has never played Oceans , we recommend playing the Reef Variant. Otherwise, prepare to venture into the Deep! 1 . Place the Reef and the Ocean board in the center of the play area. Stack t", "headingPath": "Reef Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.045475, "snippet": "The last round of the game is triggered immediately when every Ocean zone is completely empty of population. Place the 60 population tokens from the 'reserve' zip-lock bag into the 3rd Ocean zone and continue playing as normal. The game ends when the final player in the turn order completes their tu", "headingPath": "END OF GAME · Players score:", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045002, "snippet": "MIGRATE: Instead of using a card to evolve , you will sometimes use a card to migrate population. The number of population tokens you migrate is equal to the migrate number on the bottom left of the card you play. Choose a board location; either the Reef or an Ocean zone. Discard a card from your ha", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME (CONTINUED) · Phase 2: Feeding · Important Feeding Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "Lurking deep below the surface lie mysteries so bizarre they seem unnatural when first discovered: massive predators, glowing horrors, and beautiful luminescent creatures. These species hardly seem possible in the realm of biology, and yet they turn out to be real. The Deep represents the wonder of ", "headingPath": "THE DEEP · To migrate population: · TAILORED FOR YOU", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "If the Cambrian Explosion has not yet started, remove 1 population from each of your species and place it behind your player screen in your score pile. If the Cambrian Explosion has started, place 2 population from each of your species into your score pile. Score all of your population if you cannot", "headingPath": "Phase 3: Aging · Phase 4: Drawing Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "7 . Create a supply of population tokens according to your player count (60 population + 20 population per player) and return any unused population tokens to the box. 2 players: use these tokens (100 total) 3 players: use these tokens (120 total) 4 players: use these tokens (140 total) 8 . Roughly d", "headingPath": "Reef Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "OVERVIEW · PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase 1: Playing Cards · PLAYING A TRAIT ON A NEW SPECIES: · PLAYING A TRAIT ON AN EXISTING SPECIES:", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME (CONTINUED) · Phase 2: Feeding · Important Feeding Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase 3: Aging · Phase 4: Drawing Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "END OF GAME · Players score:", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 621 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 621 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 0.91691 of 2696 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 26, 2026 04:18 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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	OVERVIEW · PLAYING THE GAME	p.6	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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	Phase 1: Playing Cards · PLAYING A TRAIT ON A NEW SPECIES: · PLAYING A TRAIT ON AN EXISTING SPECIES:	p.7	0.048652 (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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	Reef Variant	p.4	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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	END OF GAME · Players score:	p.15	0.045475 (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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	PLAYING THE GAME (CONTINUED) · Phase 2: Feeding · Important Feeding Rules	p.8	0.045002 (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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	THE DEEP · To migrate population: · TAILORED FOR YOU	p.14	0.044796 (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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	Phase 3: Aging · Phase 4: Drawing Cards	p.9	0.044796 (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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	Reef Variant	p.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))	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 16 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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	PLAYING THE GAME (CONTINUED) · Phase 2: Feeding · Important Feeding Rules	p.8	#5	0.045002 (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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	OVERVIEW · PLAYING THE GAME	p.6	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	END OF GAME · Players score:	p.15	#4	0.045475 (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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	Phase 3: Aging · Phase 4: Drawing Cards	p.9	#7	0.044796 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	25 SCENARIO CARDS · 120 SURFACE CARDS · 89 DEEP CARDS · 1 CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION CARD · 4 PLAYER SCREENS · 4 BONUS TOKENS	p.3	#13	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
#6	RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	Reef Variant	p.5	#8	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
#7	RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	Phase 1: Playing Cards · PLAYING A TRAIT ON A NEW SPECIES: · PLAYING A TRAIT ON AN EXISTING SPECIES:	p.7	#2	0.048652 (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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	Reef Variant	p.4	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	OVERVIEW · PLAYING THE GAME	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	Phase 1: Playing Cards · PLAYING A TRAIT ON A NEW SPECIES: · PLAYING A TRAIT ON AN EXISTING SPECIES:	p.7	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	PLAYING THE GAME (CONTINUED) · Phase 2: Feeding · Important Feeding Rules	p.8	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	Phase 3: Aging · Phase 4: Drawing Cards	p.9	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621)	END OF GAME · Players score:	p.15	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 94 ms · first delta 1612 ms · total 5614 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 94 ms · ask 5516 ms · gateway work 5614 ms · total 5614 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2761
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 793
tok/sec: 201.5 tok/sec — 793 output tokens in 3.936 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 56s 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 1s 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 553), 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.