Ruling — Among the Stars

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Among the Starsbg-110277-en-1e

The game can be played in two modes: Non-Aggressive and Aggressive.[1]

**Setup**

1. Separate all Basic Location Cards from Special Location Cards.[1]

2. For a 3-player game, remove Basic Location Cards with a '4' in the lower, right-hand corner and place them in the box.[1]

3. Separate Power Reactor Cards to form a new deck.[1]

4. Without looking at the cards, draw 6 Special Location Cards per player and add them to the Basic Location Cards to form the Location Deck.[1]

5. Each player takes a Player Marker and places it on the Score Board at 0.[1]

6. Place the Score Board on the table where it is easily seen.[1]

7. Each player takes a Main Reactor Card and places it in front of them with 2 Energy Cubes on it.[1]

8. Place the remaining Credits and Energy Cubes in the center of the table to form the Supply.[1]

9. Each player chooses a race and takes the tile with its Racial Ability.[1]

10. Shuffle the Objective Cards and randomly draw as many Objectives as there are players, placing them face up on the table.[1]

**Gameplay**

1. The game is played over 4 years (rounds).[2]

2. At the beginning of every round, each player takes 10 credits and draws 6 cards from the Location Deck to form their hand.[2]

3. The player responsible for tracking the score moves the Turn Marker to the correct year; the symbol around the year determines the direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise) cards are passed between players.[3]

4. Every round consists of 6 turns, and all players play simultaneously.[3]

5. Every turn, each player selects a card from their hand and places it face down in front of them.[3]

6. After everyone has placed a card, players pass their remaining cards to the next player based on the direction determined by the year.[3]

7. Players simultaneously reveal their selected card and choose one of these actions:

* Build Location [3]

* Build Power Reactor [3]

* Discard and Gain 3 Credits [3]

8. To Build a Location:

* The location must be placed adjacent (orthogonally) to an existing location, such as the Main Reactor.[3]

* The player must pay the credit cost listed on the card.[3]

* If the card lists an energy requirement, it must be paid by a location in the player's Space Station with Energy Cubes on it that is within a distance of 2 (counted orthogonally).[3]

* Upon building, the player gains the Victory Points listed on the card and follows any instructions in white boxes immediately.[3]

9. If a player selects a Conflict Card (used in Aggressive Mode), they cannot "build" it; instead, they apply its effect by paying 1 credit.[4]

10. When a location's ability involves another player (e.g., taking credits), that action is carried out after all other players' actions are completed, unless otherwise stated.[5]

11. If multiple players perform actions at the same time (such as using Racial Abilities or playing Conflict Cards), they act in order of their Player Markers on the Score Board (highest score first; if tied, the player with the most credits goes first; if still tied, the order is random).[5]

**Game End and Scoring**

1. The game ends when the 4th round ends.[6]

2. To calculate the final score, players must:

* Check if any Objectives are met and gain bonus VPs.[6]

* Check all cards in their Space Station with abilities in yellow boxes for any VPs gained.[6]

* Gain 1 VP for every Power Reactor that does not contain any Energy Cubes.[6]

* Gain 1 VP for every 3 credits remaining.[6]

3. The player with the most Victory Points wins.[6]

4. In the event of a tie, the winner is the player with the most locations in their Station (excluding Power Reactors); if still tied, the player with the most remaining credits wins; if still tied, all tied players share the victory.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook · p.2

[2] RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook · p.2 · Round Overview

[3] RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook · p.3 · Round Overview · Turn Overview · Build Location

[4] RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook · p.6 · Game End

[5] RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook · p.8 · Playing Order · Can I pay the cost in Energy using Energy Cubes from more than one Power Reactor? · In the setup shown in this diagram, what is the distance between locations A and B? 2 or 4? · Card / Race Specific Questions

[6] RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook · p.5 · Game End

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 76 ms · ask 6332 ms · total 32711 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 26301 ms · generation 6410 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "The game can be played in two modes: Aggressive and Non-Aggressive. The core game is the Non-Aggressive Mode. The Aggressive Mode is for players who want more direct confrontation in their game. What follows are the rules for the Non-Aggressive Mode. It is suggested you play a few Non-Aggressive gam", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "He then gives the remaining cards to his opponent. If done correctly, all the players (both actual and virtual) should have the same number of cards in front of them each turn. Any racial ability that allows a player to interact with the hands of the other players may be used on the virtual players'", "headingPath": "Game End", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "For the Aggressive Mode, you will need the 12 Conflict Cards. Play the 1st round the same as in the Non-Aggressive Mode. Then, before drawing any cards for the 2nd round, shuffle as many Conflict Cards as 3 times the number of players into the Location Deck (e.g. 9 in a 3-player game, randomly chose", "headingPath": "Game End", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046175, "snippet": "The game is played over a period of 4 years, each of them represented by a single round. At the beginning of every round, each player should: Race Tile  Take 10 credits and put them in their play area.  \u0007 Draw 6 cards from the Location Deck. These form their hand and are kept secret from the other", "headingPath": "Round Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "These are a couple of variants that we have thought of which you can try in your games. Instead of the normal setup, take all the Location Cards (both basic and special) and shuffle them together. This will be the Location Deck from which you will draw. Take the bottom 20 cards from that Deck (witho", "headingPath": "Game End · All-in Variant · Limited Space Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045921, "snippet": "The player responsible for tracking the score moves the Turn Marker to the correct year. The symbol around each year shows the direction in which the cards are going to be handed from player to player (clockwise or counter-clockwise) and the Turn Marker should be flipped accordingly. Every round con", "headingPath": "Round Overview · Turn Overview · Build Location", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.044343, "snippet": "When the 4th round ends, the game is over. To calculate his final score, every player should do the following:  Check if any Objectives are met, and gain the bonus VPs they provide (only if you play with Objectives).  Check all the cards in his Space Station with abilities in yellow boxes for any ", "headingPath": "Game End", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030366, "snippet": "Most of the players' actions in the game are performed simultaneously. However, there are cases where timing issues arise. Whenever a location's ability asks the player to do something regarding another player (for example, take credits from him), that action is carried out after all other players' ", "headingPath": "Playing Order · Can I pay the cost in Energy using Energy Cubes from more than one Power Reactor? · In the setup shown in this diagram, what is the distance between locations A and B? 2 or 4? · Card / Race Specific Questions", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Round Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Round Overview · Turn Overview · Build Location", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game End", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing Order · Can I pay the cost in Energy using Energy Cubes from more than one Power Reactor? · In the setup shown in this diagram, what is the distance between locations A and B? 2 or 4? · Card / Race Specific Questions", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game End", "sharpsignalDocId": 978}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 978 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 978 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 0.90578 of 3078 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 27, 2026 02:49 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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)		p.2	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.6	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))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.6	0.047643 (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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Round Overview	p.2	0.046175 (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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End · All-in Variant · Limited Space Variant	p.7	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
#6	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Round Overview · Turn Overview · Build Location	p.3	0.045921 (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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.5	0.044343 (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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Playing Order · Can I pay the cost in Energy using Energy Cubes from more than one Power Reactor? · In the setup shown in this diagram, what is the distance between locations A and B? 2 or 4? · Card / Race Specific Questions	p.8	0.030366 (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 20 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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)		p.2	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Round Overview · Turn Overview · Build Location	p.3	#6	0.045921 (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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.6	#3	0.047643 (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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Playing Order · Can I pay the cost in Energy using Energy Cubes from more than one Power Reactor? · In the setup shown in this diagram, what is the distance between locations A and B? 2 or 4? · Card / Race Specific Questions	p.8	#8	0.030366 (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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.5	#7	0.044343 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.6	#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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End · All-in Variant · Limited Space Variant	p.7	#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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Round Overview	p.2	#4	0.046175 (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 Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Round Overview	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Round Overview · Turn Overview · Build Location	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.6	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Playing Order · Can I pay the cost in Energy using Energy Cubes from more than one Power Reactor? · In the setup shown in this diagram, what is the distance between locations A and B? 2 or 4? · Card / Race Specific Questions	p.8	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Among the Stars — Rulebook (corpus doc 978)	Game End	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 76 ms · first delta 1620 ms · total 32711 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 26301 ms · retrieval 76 ms · ask 6332 ms · gateway work 6410 ms · total 32711 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3376
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 931
tok/sec: 198.9 tok/sec — 931 output tokens in 4.681 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 908), 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.