Ruling — 1989: Dawn of Freedom

← 1989: Dawn of Freedom

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: 1989: Dawn of Freedombg-26997-en-1e

The play of the game involves the following procedures:

**Card Play and Turn Sequence**

1. Players take turns in Action Rounds as the "Phasing Player".[1]

2. Cards may be played as Events or for Operations points ('Ops').[2]

3. All actions required by a card must be resolved before the next player starts their Action Round.[1]

4. A player may not forgo their turn by declining to play a card or by discarding a card from their hand.[2]

5. If a player has no cards in hand at the start of an Action Round, they must forfeit that Action Round and take no action.[1]

6. Ordinarily, a player will hold one card in their hand at the end of the turn.[2]

7. Scoring cards may never be held from one turn to the next; if a player is holding a scoring card at the end of the turn, they lose the game.[1]

8. After Action Rounds, a player may take a free Support Check if entitled by progress on the Tiananmen Square track.[1]

9. The Turn Marker is moved to the next turn.[1]

10. If it is the end of Turn 3 or Turn 7, the Middle Year or Late Year cards are shuffled into the draw deck, respectively.[1]

11. If it is the end of Turn 10 and a winner has not been determined, Final Scoring is performed.[1]

**Power Struggle Procedure**

1. The player who played the Scoring card begins the Power Struggle with the initiative.[3]

2. The player with the initiative is the attacker, and their opponent is the defender.[3]

3. Power Struggles are conducted in rounds one at a time until a winner is determined.[4]

4. **Step 1:** The attacker plays a Power Struggle card (a suited card, a leader card if they control a space of that leader's type, or a wild card).[4] If a wild card is played, follow its instructions, skip Steps 2 and 3, and begin a new battle round with the defender as the new attacker.[4] If the attacker has no playable cards, the defender wins.[4]

5. **Step 2:** The defender attempts to match the attacker's card using a card of the same suit (or a leader card if they control a space of that leader's type).[4] The defender may play "Tactic Fails" to prevent any further play in that suit for the rest of the Power Struggle, but they cannot counterattack in that round.[4] If the defender cannot or chooses not to match the card, the attacker wins.[4]

6. **Step 3:** The defender rolls a die to attempt to gain initiative; they must roll equal to or higher than the rank of the attacker's card (Rally in the Square cards have a rank of 1, which results in an automatic counterattack without a roll).[5] If the defender gains initiative, they become the attacker in the next round; if not, the attacker maintains initiative.[5]

**Tiananmen Square Attempts**

1. A player may make one attempt per turn.[6]

2. A player spends Operations points to attempt to advance their marker to the next box by rolling a die and adding the card's Operations value.[6]

3. The total is modified by +1 if the card is the player's own Event, +1 if it is a second or subsequent attempt, and +1 if the 'Li Peng' Event is in play and the player is the Communist.[6]

4. If the total matches or exceeds the number required for the box, the marker moves forward.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook · p.6 · 4.5 The Turn Sequence · 5.0 CARD PLAY

[2] RULEBOOK 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook · p.6 · 5.1 Events or Operations

[3] RULEBOOK 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook · p.10 · 8.3 PLAY CARDS

[4] RULEBOOK 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook · p.11 · 8.3 PLAY CARDS

[5] RULEBOOK 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook · p.11 · 8.3 PLAY CARDS

[6] RULEBOOK 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook · p.8 · 6.3 Tiananmen Square Attempt

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 105 ms · ask 7608 ms · total 28187 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 20472 ms · generation 7715 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 11, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "NOTE: If the attacker received no cards because he did not control any spaces, the defender immediately wins the Power Struggle. Proceed to Aftermath of the battle (8.4). 8.3.2 Battle Rounds: The card play phase of a Power Struggle is divided into Power Struggle Rounds. Players conduct Power Struggl", "headingPath": "8.3 PLAY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046964, "snippet": "All actions required by each card must be resolved before the next player starts his Action Round by playing a card. The player taking his Action Round is called the 'Phasing Player.' Ordinarily a player will have a card left over after the completion of all Action Rounds. This card is considered 'h", "headingPath": "4.5 The Turn Sequence · 5.0 CARD PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "The defender may not counterattack in the round in which he plays this card: skip Step 3 and begin a new Power Struggle Round with the attacker maintaining the initiative. NOTE: If the defender cannot or chooses not to match the attacker's card, the Power Struggle is over and the attacker is the win", "headingPath": "8.3 PLAY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.044733, "snippet": "8.3.1 The player who played the Scoring card begins the Power Struggle with the initiative. Initiative may change back and forth several times before the Power Struggle is resolved. The player who currently has the initiative is considered the attacker and his opponent is considered the defender. EX", "headingPath": "8.3 PLAY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.044415, "snippet": "Cards may be played in one of two ways: as Events or for Operations points ('Ops'). Ordinarily, players will hold one card in their hand at the end of the turn. All other cards will be used for Events or Operations. Players may not forgo their turn by declining to play a card or by discarding a card", "headingPath": "5.1 Events or Operations", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 32, "score": 0.042803, "snippet": "Deal Strategy Cards Play Action Rounds Make Extra Support Check (if applicable) Verify Held Cards Celebrate New Year's Eve Party (if applicable) Advance Turn Marker Calculate Final Scoring (after turn 10) Presence: A player has Presence in a country if it controls at least one space in that country.", "headingPath": "Turn Sequence · 9.2 Country Scoring Terms · 6.2 SUPPORT CHECKS · DIE ROLL MODIFIERS: · Appendix A: Distribution of Power Struggle Deck", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.039952, "snippet": "1989 — Rules of Play © 2011 GMT Games, LLC \u0018\u0018 Illustration shows the positon of Support Points after setup. Support Points highlighted in yellow indicate spaces that received one or more discre- tionary Support Points.", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Some spaces contain small numbers with blue or red backgrounds in the lower left or lower-right portions of the space. These numbers indicate SPs placed in that space at set up. 2.1.9 Scoring Boxes: Each country has a Scoring Box on the map. The Scoring Box shows the VPs players score for Presence, ", "headingPath": "2.1 THE GAME MAP", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4.5 The Turn Sequence · 5.0 CARD PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5.1 Events or Operations", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "8.3 PLAY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "8.3 PLAY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "8.3 PLAY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "6.3 Tiananmen Square Attempt", "sharpsignalDocId": 963}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 963 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 963 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 0.90697 of 2569 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 27, 2026 02:48 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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	8.3 PLAY CARDS	p.11	0.047379 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	4.5 The Turn Sequence · 5.0 CARD PLAY	p.6	0.046964 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	8.3 PLAY CARDS	p.11	0.046642 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	8.3 PLAY CARDS	p.10	0.044733 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	5.1 Events or Operations	p.6	0.044415 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	Turn Sequence · 9.2 Country Scoring Terms · 6.2 SUPPORT CHECKS · DIE ROLL MODIFIERS: · Appendix A: Distribution of Power Struggle Deck	p.32	0.042803 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)		p.25	0.039952 (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))	218
#8	RULEBOOK 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	2.1 THE GAME MAP	p.3	0.029412 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	5.1 Events or Operations	p.6	#5	0.044415 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	8.3 PLAY CARDS	p.11	#1	0.047379 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	8.3 PLAY CARDS	p.11	#3	0.046642 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	6.3 Tiananmen Square Attempt	p.8	#11	0.027222 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)		p.1	#30	0.022722 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	4.5 The Turn Sequence · 5.0 CARD PLAY	p.6	#2	0.046964 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	5.2 Events Associated With Your Opponent	p.6	#9	0.028589 (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
#8	RULEBOOK 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	8.3 PLAY CARDS	p.10	#4	0.044733 (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 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	4.5 The Turn Sequence · 5.0 CARD PLAY	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	5.1 Events or Operations	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	8.3 PLAY CARDS	p.10	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	8.3 PLAY CARDS	p.11	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	8.3 PLAY CARDS	p.11	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK 1989: Dawn of Freedom — Rulebook (corpus doc 963)	6.3 Tiananmen Square Attempt	p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 105 ms · first delta 3725 ms · total 28187 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 20472 ms · retrieval 105 ms · ask 7608 ms · gateway work 7715 ms · total 28187 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3020
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 790
tok/sec: 201.7 tok/sec — 790 output tokens in 3.916 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 1s 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 7s 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 893), 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.