RuleSage cited table rulings
← A Distant Plain

You asked

How do I play?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: A Distant Plainbg-127518-en-1e

I looked through A Distant Plain's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK A Distant Plain — Rulebook · p.5 · 1.9 Victory Markers · 2.1 Set Up · 2.2 Start
NOTE: The 12 'Deception' markers are for a victo -ry-related optional rule (7.3). Follow the instructions on pages 23 to 24 of this rule book to choose a scenario and various play options, assign Factions to players, prepare the deck, and set up markers and forces. Begin play by revealing the top ca
RULEBOOK A Distant Plain — Rulebook · p.12 · 8.1 Non-Player Sequence of Play
Event, Ops, or Pass? For a decision, consult first any Special Event Instructions (8.3.1) then the Pass, Event or Operations? box in each Faction's flowchart. Ineffective Events. Non-player Factions do not opt for Events that do not have an effect. EXAMPLE: If no Coalition pieces are Out of Play, th
RULEBOOK A Distant Plain — Rulebook · p.17 · 8.8.2 Pass, Event, or Operations?
If the current card is a Capability Event, play it per 8.1 Capability. Otherwise, if the current card is a Momentum Event, play it per 8.1 Momentum. Otherwise, play the shaded part of the current card if it is effective AND either part of the card could: shift Support down, Opposition or Taliban Res
RULEBOOK A Distant Plain — Rulebook · p.12 · 8 Non-Player Factions
This section governs actions by any Factions beyond those represented by a player. In a 1-Player game, the player may play any one Faction. The Non-players can also be used to handle any Faction in multi-player games. NOTE: Non-player Factions may not act only in their own direct inter -est. Like pl
RULEBOOK A Distant Plain — Rulebook · p.4 · 1.5 Players & Factions · 1.6 Support and Opposition
A Distant Plain is playable by 1, 2, 3, or 4 players. The 1st player plays the Coalition (tan) or the Taliban (black), the 2nd the other, the 3rd the Government (blue), and the 4th the Warlords (green) (2.1). Coalition and Government are Counterinsurgent (COIN) Factions; Taliban and Warlords are Ins
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
outcome
ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
warm abstain
  • this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)
corpus profile
live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings
search 87 ms · ask 4426 ms · total 39223 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 34708 ms · generation 4515 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 5, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "NOTE: The 12 'Deception' markers are for a victo -ry-related optional rule (7.3). Follow the instructions on pages 23 to 24 of this rule book to choose a scenario and various play options, assign Factions to players, prepare the deck, and set up markers and forces. Begin play by revealing the top ca", "headingPath": "1.9 Victory Markers · 2.1 Set Up · 2.2 Start", "sharpsignalDocId": 1152}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "Event, Ops, or Pass? For a decision, consult first any Special Event Instructions (8.3.1) then the Pass, Event or Operations? box in each Faction's flowchart. Ineffective Events. Non-player Factions do not opt for Events that do not have an effect. EXAMPLE: If no Coalition pieces are Out of Play, th", "headingPath": "8.1 Non-Player Sequence of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 1152}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.046452, "snippet": "If the current card is a Capability Event, play it per 8.1 Capability. Otherwise, if the current card is a Momentum Event, play it per 8.1 Momentum. Otherwise, play the shaded part of the current card if it is effective AND either part of the card could: shift Support down, Opposition or Taliban Res", "headingPath": "8.8.2 Pass, Event, or Operations?", "sharpsignalDocId": 1152}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.045245, "snippet": "This section governs actions by any Factions beyond those represented by a player. In a 1-Player game, the player may play any one Faction. The Non-players can also be used to handle any Faction in multi-player games. NOTE: Non-player Factions may not act only in their own direct inter -est. Like pl", "headingPath": "8 Non-Player Factions", "sharpsignalDocId": 1152}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "A Distant Plain is playable by 1, 2, 3, or 4 players. The 1st player plays the Coalition (tan) or the Taliban (black), the 2nd the other, the 3rd the Government (blue), and the 4th the Warlords (green) (2.1). Coalition and Government are Counterinsurgent (COIN) Factions; Taliban and Warlords are Ins", "headingPath": "1.5 Players & Factions · 1.6 Support and Opposition", "sharpsignalDocId": 1152}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.04212, "snippet": "A Distant Plain 1 by Brian Train and Volko Ruhnke 3rd Printing", "headingPath": "RULES OF PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 1152}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.041667, "snippet": "To execute a Non-player Faction's Operations, Special Activities or a specific Event, see the Non-player flowcharts and the relevant priorities below. GUIDELINES: Unless otherwise specified, carry out whatever actions apply to the maximum extent (such as with the most pieces and in most spaces allow", "headingPath": "8.2 Non-Player Events, Operations, and Special Activities", "sharpsignalDocId": 1152}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "In so far as the Event text or the Operation and Special Activity priorities do not specify this, use the guidelines below, both, to select the spaces and, once the spaces have been selected, to place, remove or relocate pieces in them. Target or remove enemy Players' before Non-players' Resources a", "headingPath": "8.2.1 Procedure Guidelines", "sharpsignalDocId": 1152}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1152 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1152 boosted
answered-before recall
no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
debug row retained until
Nov 27, 2026 02:48 UTC

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 1.9 Victory Markers · 2.1 Set Up · 2.2 Start p.5 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) 300
#2 RULEBOOK A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 8.1 Non-Player Sequence of Play p.12 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
#3 RULEBOOK A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 8.8.2 Pass, Event, or Operations? p.17 0.046452 (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 A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 8 Non-Player Factions p.12 0.045245 (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 A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 1.5 Players & Factions · 1.6 Support and Opposition p.4 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
#6 RULEBOOK A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) RULES OF PLAY p.1 0.04212 (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)) 62
#7 RULEBOOK A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 8.2 Non-Player Events, Operations, and Special Activities p.12 0.041667 (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 A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 8.2.1 Procedure Guidelines p.12 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 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 78 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 8.8.2 Pass, Event, or Operations? p.17 #3 0.046452 (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 A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 1.0 INTRODUCTION · 1.1 General Course of Play p.2 #19 0.025321 (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 A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 8.1 Non-Player Sequence of Play p.12 #2 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 A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 8 Non-Player Factions p.12 #4 0.045245 (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 A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 2.3 Event Card p.5 #17 0.026133 (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 A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 2.3.4 Options for Eligible Factions. p.5 #12 0.026993 (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
#7 RULEBOOK A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 8.6.1 Capability and Momentum Events · 8.6.2 Pass, Event or Operations? p.14 #11 0.028439 (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 A Distant Plain — Rulebook (corpus doc 1152) 1.9 Victory Markers · 2.1 Set Up · 2.2 Start p.5 #1 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
timing split
retrieval 87 ms · first delta 4416 ms · total 39223 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 34708 ms · retrieval 87 ms · ask 4426 ms · gateway work 4515 ms · total 39223 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
2609
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
9
tok/sec
187.5 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.048 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 53s 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.
outcome
ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
abstain rationale
I don't have enough information.
the answerer's own words, verbatim — hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 1082), 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.