Ruling — Mage Wars Arena

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Mage Wars Arenabg-101721-en-1e

Setup

1. Place the game board on the table.[1]

2. Each player chooses a Mage and takes the matching Mage Card and Ability Card for that Mage (note: in Apprentice Mode, do not use Ability Cards).[1]

3. Each player chooses red or blue and takes 10 action markers of that color.[1]

4. Each player takes 3 black status cubes, 1 red status cube, and 1 black quickcast marker.[1]

5. Place your Mage Card in the corner zone closest to you (marked with a door).[1]

6. Place one of your action markers and your quickcast marker on your Mage Card, with the white symbols up.[1]

7. Place your Mage status board near you.[1]

8. Place a black status cube on your Mage's starting Channeling, Mana Supply (all Mages start with 10 mana), and Life value.[1]

9. Place a red status cube on the '0' of your Mage's Life track to mark damage taken.[1]

10. Choose a spellbook and place the spell cards for your Mage into it.[1][2]

11. Place dice, condition markers, and other game markers in easy reach.[1]

12. Both players roll the effect die (d12); the higher roller decides who takes the initiative marker to act first in the first round.[1]

Turn Sequence and Actions

1. Initiative Phase: The player with the initiative marker takes the first Action Phase.[3] (In multiplayer games, pass the initiative marker to the player on your left).[4]

2. Action Phase:

* The player whose turn it is is the acting player, and the creature they activate is the acting creature.[3]

* You must activate one of your active creatures.[3]

* You may choose to pass your turn if your opponent has more active creatures in the arena than you.[3]

* You may continue passing as long as you have fewer active creatures than your opponent; once numbers are equal, you must take an Action Phase.[3]

* During an Action Phase, you activate and use one creature that you control.[3]

* Turns pass clockwise during the Action Stage.[4]

* Players continue taking turns back and forth until all creatures in the arena have had an Action Phase.[3]

3. Quickcast Action:

* A Mage may take one quickcast action during a round in addition to regular actions.[3]

* This action can only be used to cast one quick spell (a spell with the quick action symbol).[3]

* This action can be used at three specific times: during the First Quickcast Phase, immediately before or after any creature you control takes its Action Phase, or during the Final Quickcap Phase.[3]

* When using a quickcast action, flip your quickcast marker face down and play any prepared quick spell.[3]

Winning the Game

* Standard/Two-Player: The object is to kill the other Mage.[2]

* Team Games: Your team must eliminate all of the opposing team's Mages.[4]

* Free-For-All Games: The winner is the last Mage standing.[4][5]

[1] RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook · p.7 · The Mage Wars Arena · Setting Up the Game

[2] RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook · p.4 · Spellbooks · The Rules · The Magic Rule · The Sidebars

[3] RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook · p.10 · QUICKCAST ACTION · Action Phases

[4] RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook · p.41 · MULTIPLAYER

[5] RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook · p.41 · MULTIPLAYER

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 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 176 ms · ask 4641 ms · total 4820 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4820 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "You will need to assemble 2 spellbooks. Choose 2 Mages that you and a friend wish to play; we recommend the Warlock and Beastmaster. On page 3 is a list of spells each Mage will use during the game. Find the Mage card, and all of the spell cards on the list for each of the chosen Mages. The spell ca", "headingPath": "Spellbooks · The Rules · The Magic Rule · The Sidebars", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045635, "snippet": "THE GAME ROUND THE READY STAGE Initiative Reset Channel Upkeep Planning Deployment THE ACTION STAGE First Quickcast Phase Creature Action Phases Final Quickcast Phase Mage Wars is played over a series of rounds, which continue until one Mage takes enough damage to be destroyed. The last Mage standin", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045335, "snippet": "this manner the initiative marker alternates back and forth between players. The player with the initiative acts first during the Action Stage, and goes first whenever you must determine the order of events. Reset all action markers, quickcast markers, and ready markers on your cards by flipping the", "headingPath": "THE GAME ROUND · Phase 2: RESET · THE READY STAGE · THE ACTION STAGE · Phase 1: INITIATIVE", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 40, "score": 0.042961, "snippet": "After you've played a few Apprentice Mode games and you feel ready, we recommend using these new spellbooks. They are not recommended for first time players. These spellbooks were designed using the rules for building spellbooks, so they are 'legal' for any games. You can modify or 'tweak' these bas", "headingPath": "STARTING SPELLBOOKS", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.042745, "snippet": "Spellbinding is a trait that some objects have (usually equipment spells). This trait allows you to attach a spell card to the object. When you cast a spell with the Spellbind trait, you may immediately bind a spell to it. You can choose any spell from your spellbook that fulfills the limitations on", "headingPath": "SPELLBINDING", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Familiars are objects that have the ability to cast spells. Often, these objects can channel mana as well. When a Familiar gains mana, place the appropriate mana counters on the object. If you control a Familiar during the Planning Phase, you may select a spell for it to cast during the round. The F", "headingPath": "FAMILIARS", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Some objects, such as Familiars or Spawnpoints, have the ability to cast spells. You may choose one spell for each of these objects at this time. Place these spells face down next to the creature or object. Spells which are not cast during the round are returned to your spellbook at the beginning of", "headingPath": "Phase 5: PLANNING · Phase 6: DEPLOYMENT · THE ACTION STAGE · First Quickcast Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Mages (and a few other creatures and objects) have the ability to cast spells. You can only cast the spells that you prepared to cast during the Planning Phase. When you cast a spell, follow these 4 steps in order: Declare Spell Pay Costs Counter Spell Resolve Spell Announce that you are casting a s", "headingPath": "CASTING SPELLS · Step 1: Declare Spell · Step 2: Pay Costs", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The Mage Wars Arena · Setting Up the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Spellbooks · The Rules · The Magic Rule · The Sidebars", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "QUICKCAST ACTION · Action Phases", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 41, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MULTIPLAYER", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}, {"page": 41, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MULTIPLAYER", "sharpsignalDocId": 572}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 572 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 572 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 0.88913 of 2291 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 5, 2026 20:59 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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	Spellbooks · The Rules · The Magic Rule · The Sidebars	p.4	0.048916 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)		p.8	0.045635 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	THE GAME ROUND · Phase 2: RESET · THE READY STAGE · THE ACTION STAGE · Phase 1: INITIATIVE	p.8	0.045335 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	STARTING SPELLBOOKS	p.40	0.042961 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	SPELLBINDING	p.23	0.042745 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	FAMILIARS	p.18	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
#7	RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	Phase 5: PLANNING · Phase 6: DEPLOYMENT · THE ACTION STAGE · First Quickcast Phase	p.10	0.030769 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	CASTING SPELLS · Step 1: Declare Spell · Step 2: Pay Costs	p.15	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 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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	MULTIPLAYER	p.41	#9	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
#2	RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	MAGES	p.33	#11	0.028446 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	APPRENTICE SPELLBOOKS · ATTACKS · PRIESTESS · WIZARD	p.5	#26	0.014493 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	QUICKCAST ACTION · Action Phases	p.10	#15	0.024752 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	The Mage Wars Arena · Setting Up the Game	p.7	#13	0.026631 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	The Arena Calls… · STOP! · Learning Mage Wars · Apprentice Mode · The Arena · The Mages	p.4	#10	0.028624 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	Spellbooks · The Rules · The Magic Rule · The Sidebars	p.4	#1	0.048916 (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 Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	MULTIPLAYER	p.41	#27	0.014286 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	The Mage Wars Arena · Setting Up the Game	p.7	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	Spellbooks · The Rules · The Magic Rule · The Sidebars	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	QUICKCAST ACTION · Action Phases	p.10	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	MULTIPLAYER	p.41	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Mage Wars Arena — Rulebook (corpus doc 572)	MULTIPLAYER	p.41	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 176 ms · first delta 1217 ms · total 4820 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 176 ms · ask 4641 ms · gateway work 4820 ms · total 4820 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3918
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 710
tok/sec: 201.2 tok/sec — 710 output tokens in 3.529 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 46s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 2h, 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 504), 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.