Ruling — 20 Strong

← 20 Strong

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: 20 Strongbg-373167-en-1e

1. Choose a single deck from your collection and follow the setup instructions in that deck's rulebook.[1]

2. Identify one or more conflict cards to face.[2]

3. Roll dice.[2]

4. Make a series of decisions.[2]

5. Deal with the results.[2]

6. Each round consists of two parts: Activation and Engagement.[2]

7. During Activation, one or more conflict cards become active; choose the top card from one of the stacks and activate it by placing it in the active area.[2]

8. During the Strategy phase (part of Engagement), follow these steps:

a. Commit Dice: Select the dice from the dice pool you would like to use for this Strategy phase and place them in your active area.[3]

b. Roll Dice: Roll all the dice in your active area at once.[3]

c. Apply Dice: Apply hits to active cards, most commonly enemies, to deal damage to them.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK 20 Strong — Rulebook · p.9 · STAT DICE · CHIP · SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK 20 Strong — Rulebook · p.10 · GAME FLOW · ACTIVATION

[3] RULEBOOK 20 Strong — Rulebook · p.12 · ENGAGEMENT

Question closed. Friendships intact.

🔧 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 87 ms · ask 2126 ms · total 30400 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 28184 ms · generation 2216 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "2 In 20 Strong , you and 20 dice take on different challenges represented by a deck of cards. Different decks present diverse situations and obstacles, providing a unique gameplay experience that varies vastly from deck to deck.", "headingPath": "GENERAL RULES OF PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 1168}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.04741, "snippet": "20 Strong is played in rounds. Each round, you identify one or more conflict cards to face, roll dice, make a series of decisions, and deal with the results. Rounds continue until you win or lose. Each round has two parts: Activation and Engagement . In this part, one or more conflict cards become a", "headingPath": "GAME FLOW · ACTIVATION", "sharpsignalDocId": 1168}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "Each game uses only the cards from a single deck. Decks generally consist of three types of cards: Heroes are the characters you play as. They define your starting stats and grant a unique ability.", "headingPath": "DECKS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1168}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.045743, "snippet": "version 1.0", "headingPath": "GENERAL RULES OF PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 1168}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.045695, "snippet": "time, in any order, and you are not required to apply all rolled hits. Each time you apply a die, check to see if the state of play has changed. This most commonly happens when the amount of damage on a conflict card equals or exceeds its Health, at which point it is defeated . Any During effects on", "headingPath": "ENGAGEMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 1168}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "also has its own set of rules that supplement these rules. If two rules ever contradict each other, a deck’s specific rules take precedence over these general rules. Card text takes precedence over the rules in either rulebook, and effect text takes precedence over reward or hero ability text. The w", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1168}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "The Strategy phase has three steps. You may be able to repeat the phase, carrying out its steps again. Commit Dice. The first step of the Strategy phase is to Commit dice, which entails selecting the dice from the dice pool that you would like to use for this Strategy phase. Generally, you may commi", "headingPath": "ENGAGEMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 1168}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "24 Roll Dice: Dice are rolled during the Roll Dice step, which is the second step of the Strategy phase. You roll all dice in your active area that are not already applied to cards. This includes dice still in your active area from previous Strategy phases that were not applied to cards, as well as ", "headingPath": "KEY TERMS · UNIVERSAL HEROES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1168}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "STAT DICE · CHIP · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1168}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME FLOW · ACTIVATION", "sharpsignalDocId": 1168}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ENGAGEMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 1168}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1168 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1168 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 0.89474 of 684 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 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	GENERAL RULES OF PLAY	p.2	0.047875 (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))	228
#2	RULEBOOK 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	GAME FLOW · ACTIVATION	p.10	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 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	DECKS	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))	197
#4	RULEBOOK 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	GENERAL RULES OF PLAY	p.1	0.045743 (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))	11
#5	RULEBOOK 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	ENGAGEMENT	p.13	0.045695 (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 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)		p.5	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 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	ENGAGEMENT	p.12	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
#8	RULEBOOK 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	KEY TERMS · UNIVERSAL HEROES	p.24	0.029851 (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 30 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 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	GENERAL RULES OF PLAY	p.2	#1	0.047875 (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 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	DECKS	p.5	#3	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)		p.5	#6	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
#4	RULEBOOK 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	STAT DICE · CHIP · SETUP	p.9	#10	0.029052 (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 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	ENGAGEMENT	p.12	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	GENERAL RULES OF PLAY	p.1	#4	0.045743 (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 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	TABLE OF CONTENTS · WINNING & LOSING · COMPONENTS · RULES	p.4	#9	0.029762 (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 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	GAME FLOW · ACTIVATION	p.10	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	STAT DICE · CHIP · SETUP	p.9	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	GAME FLOW · ACTIVATION	p.10	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK 20 Strong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1168)	ENGAGEMENT	p.12	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 87 ms · first delta 1109 ms · total 30400 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 28184 ms · retrieval 87 ms · ask 2126 ms · gateway work 2216 ms · total 30400 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 1222
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 214
tok/sec: 202.5 tok/sec — 214 output tokens in 1.057 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 54s 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 0s 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 1098), 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.