Ruling — The Fox in the Forest

← The Fox in the Forest

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How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Fox in the Forestbg-221965-en-1e

The Fox in the Forest is a trick-taking game for two players.[1]

**Setup**

1. Randomly select a dealer for the first round; for subsequent rounds, alternate which player is the dealer.[2]

2. The dealer shuffles the 33 game cards.[2]

3. The dealer deals both players a hand of 13 cards, which players may look at but must keep hidden from the other player.[2]

4. The dealer sets aside the remaining 7 cards face down to create a draw deck.[2]

5. The dealer takes the top card of the draw deck and places it face up next to the deck; this is the decree card.[2]

**Gameplay**

1. Each round consists of 13 turns for each player, called tricks.[3]

2. On the first trick of a round, the non-dealer leads.[3]

3. The leader plays one card from their hand face up into the middle, and the suit of that card is the lead suit.[3]

4. The second player must follow the lead by playing a card that matches the lead suit if possible.[3]

5. The leader can choose to play any card from their hand without restriction.[3]

6. After the first trick, the winner of the previous trick leads the following trick (unless specified otherwise).[3]

7. Players may score points during a round by winning tricks containing specific cards.[1]

8. Certain cards have special abilities that activate when played.[4] For example, the 3 (Fox) and 5 (Woodcutter) abilities occur immediately when the card is played, before another card is played or a winner is determined.[5]

**Scoring and Ending the Game**

1. After all 13 tricks have been played, players count how many tricks they won.[4]

2. Players gain points at the end of the round based on the number of total tricks won.[1] Points are awarded as follows:

* 0-3 tricks: 6 points (Humble) [4]

* 4 tricks: 1 point (Defeated) [4]

* 5 tricks: 2 points (Defeated) [4]

* 6 tricks: 3 points (Defeated) [4]

* 7-9 tricks: 6 points (Victorious) [4]

* 10-13 tricks: 0 points (Greedy) [4]

3. The game ends if either player has at least 21 points.[6]

4. If the game does not end, play another round, with the dealer of the next round being the player who did not deal the current round.[6]

5. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.[6]

6. In the event of a tie, the player who gained the most points during the last round wins.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook · p.2 · Overview

[2] RULEBOOK The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook · p.3 · Overview · Setup

[3] RULEBOOK The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook · p.4 · Round Overview · Trick Details

[4] RULEBOOK The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook · p.6 · Abilities · End-of-Round Scoring

[5] RULEBOOK The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook · p.11 · Appendix: Common Questions · Who wins a trick with two 9 (Witch) cards in it?

[6] RULEBOOK The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook · p.7 · End-of-Round Scoring · End of Game

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 169 ms · ask 4413 ms · total 4584 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4584 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "Each round consists of a series of 13 turns for each player, called tricks . Every trick, both players will play one card from their hand face up into the middle: one player will lead (that is, play the first card of the trick), and the other player will then follow (that is, play the second card of", "headingPath": "Round Overview · Trick Details", "sharpsignalDocId": 592}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046671, "snippet": "After the end-of-round scoring, if either player has at least 21 points, then the game is over. Otherwise, play another round (with the dealer of the next round being the player who did not deal the current round). Play complete rounds until either player has at least 21 points. The player with the ", "headingPath": "End-of-Round Scoring · End of Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 592}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "All the cards of odd rank (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11) have special abilities printed on them, which activate when the card is played. They may change what your opponent can play, how the winner of the trick is determined, or who leads the next trick; they may let you take a special action when you play ", "headingPath": "Abilities · End-of-Round Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 592}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "follower does not have a card in the lead suit, they may play any card without restriction. Determining the Trick Winner: After both cards have been played (and any abilities activated; see Abilities on page 6), players determine the winner of the trick. Typically, the card with the highest rank in ", "headingPath": "T he fox, puzzling over the riddle, turned to the girl and grinned. She chose the path the fox had identified, and the companions journeyed back into the woods.", "sharpsignalDocId": 592}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045262, "snippet": "A Trick-Taking Game for 2 Players A Game by Joshua Buergel The Fox in the Forest is a trick-taking game for two players, each playing cards to win tricks against the other over multiple rounds. Players score points during a round by winning tricks containing specific cards and at the end of a round ", "headingPath": "Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 592}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045235, "snippet": "Win Tricks After each complete round of 13 tricks, the players each gain points based on how many tricks they won in the round: 11 Monarch: When you lead this, if your opponent has a card of this suit, they must play either the Swan of this suit or their highest ranked card of this suit. 9 Witch: Wh", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 592}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.044118, "snippet": "This expansion consists of three separate modules that can be used individually or together: special cards, goal cards, and poison cards . Before the game begins, select two special cards at random. Shuffle those cards into the main deck without looking at them. Return the remainder to the box. Spec", "headingPath": "Overview · Special Cards (9x) · Unsuited Cards: · Identical Cards:", "sharpsignalDocId": 592}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "D eep in the woods lived a witch well known for her potions. Desperate travelers would brave the depths of the dark forest in order to consult with her. Each game consists of multiple rounds. In each round, one player will be the dealer. (For the first round, randomly select the dealer. For each rou", "headingPath": "Overview · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 592}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 592}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Overview · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 592}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Round Overview · Trick Details", "sharpsignalDocId": 592}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Abilities · End-of-Round Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 592}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Appendix: Common Questions · Who wins a trick with two 9 (Witch) cards in it?", "sharpsignalDocId": 592}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "End-of-Round Scoring · End of Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 592}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 592 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 592 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 0.87466 of 1851 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 26, 2026 10:57 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 The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Round Overview · Trick Details	p.4	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 The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	End-of-Round Scoring · End of Game	p.7	0.046671 (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 The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Abilities · End-of-Round Scoring	p.6	0.046402 (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 The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	T he fox, puzzling over the riddle, turned to the girl and grinned. She chose the path the fox had identified, and the companions journeyed back into the woods.	p.5	0.045928 (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 The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Overview	p.2	0.045262 (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 The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)		p.2	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 The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Overview · Special Cards (9x) · Unsuited Cards: · Identical Cards:	p.8	0.044118 (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 The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Overview · Setup	p.3	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

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 13 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 The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Round Overview · Trick Details	p.4	#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
#2	RULEBOOK The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Overview · Setup	p.3	#8	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
#3	RULEBOOK The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	End-of-Round Scoring · End of Game	p.7	#2	0.046671 (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 The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Overview	p.2	#5	0.045262 (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 The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Appendix: Common Questions · Who wins a trick with two 9 (Witch) cards in it?	p.11	#10	0.030214 (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 The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Overview · Special Cards (9x) · Unsuited Cards: · Identical Cards:	p.8	#7	0.044118 (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 The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Abilities · End-of-Round Scoring	p.6	#3	0.046402 (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 The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)		p.2	#9	0.030886 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Overview	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Overview · Setup	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Round Overview · Trick Details	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Abilities · End-of-Round Scoring	p.6	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	Appendix: Common Questions · Who wins a trick with two 9 (Witch) cards in it?	p.11	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK The Fox in the Forest — Rulebook (corpus doc 592)	End-of-Round Scoring · End of Game	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 169 ms · first delta 1417 ms · total 4584 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 169 ms · ask 4413 ms · gateway work 4584 ms · total 4584 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2664
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 634
tok/sec: 203.2 tok/sec — 634 output tokens in 3.120 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 31s 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 9s 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 524), 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.