Ruling — Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set)

← Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set)

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set)bg-359609-en-1e

To set up the first game:

1. Choose Investigator(s): Each player chooses an investigator and takes that investigator's pack of cards.[1]

2. Gather Decks: Each player places their investigator card faceup in their play area and shuffles their starter deck.[1]

3. Choose Lead Investigator: Choose one investigator to be the lead investigator, and give that player the lead investigator token and the Campaign Guide.[1]

4. Place Reference Card: Place the scenario reference card for “The Gathering” (card 104a) next to the agenda deck.[2]

5. Place Locations: Put the Study (card 111) into play with its unrevealed side faceup, then set aside all remaining locations.[2]

6. Assemble Encounter Deck: Set aside the Ghoul Priest (card 116) and Lita Chantler (card 117), then shuffle the remaining encounter cards together to create the encounter deck.[2]

7. Read Scenario Introduction: Read the scenario introduction for “The Gathering” and the text on the faceup agenda and act cards.[2]

8. Place Investigators: Place each investigator’s mini-card next to the Study; when placed, the Study is revealed, and clue tokens equal to its clue value are placed on it.[2]

During play:

1. After the mythos phase is resolved, play proceeds to the investigator phase.[3]

2. Investigators can perform various actions, such as:

* Draw: The investigator draws one card from the top of their deck.[4]

* Resource: The investigator gains one resource from the token pool.[4]

* Activate: The investigator resolves an action trigger ability on a card in play (under their control, at their location, or on the current act or agenda card).[4]

* Play: The investigator selects an asset or event card in their hand, pays its resource cost by moving resources from their pool to the general token pool, and plays it.[4]

* Investigate: An investigator may use the Investigate action to attempt to find clues to advance the act deck.[5]

3. Skill Tests: To determine the outcome of situations, investigators make skill tests using four stats (willpower, intellect, combat, and agility).[6] One or more tokens are revealed from the chaos bag to modify the skill; the investigator succeeds if their skill equals or exceeds the test's difficulty.[6]

4. Card Types:

* Event cards: The investigator resolves the effects, then places the card in their discard pile.[4]

* Asset cards: The investigator places the card in their play area, where it remains until removed.[4] Note that assets may be restricted by slots (ally, body, accessory, hand, or arcane).[7]

* Skill cards: These are not played but are committed to a skill test from the investigator's hand.[4]

5. Game Progression: Continue resolving game rounds until players reach the scenario's resolution.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook · p.6 · First Game Setup · Roland Banks · Daisy Walker · Agnes Baker · Wendy Adams

[2] RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook · p.9

[3] RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook · p.18 · What's Next? · Custom Deckbuilding · Why Build a Custom Deck?

[4] RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook · p.12 · Draw · Resource · Activate · Play

[5] RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook · p.11 · Tutorial Tip

[6] RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook · p.5

[7] RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook · p.12 · Slots

The table has its answer — dice up.

🔧 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 200 ms · ask 4134 ms · total 4340 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4340 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 12, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "The investigator using this action draws one card from the top of their deck. The investigator using this action gains one resource from the token pool. (Resources are often used to pay for cards and effects.) Strategy Tip: Spending actions to draw cards and gain resources can be effective when you ", "headingPath": "Draw · Resource · Activate · Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.044949, "snippet": "After the mythos phase is resolved, play proceeds to the investigator phase as usual. Continue resolving game rounds until players reach the scenario's resolution (see 'Winning and Losing' on page 4). After you've completed the game, you may wish to continue the campaign. To do so, read 'Expanded Ca", "headingPath": "What's Next? · Custom Deckbuilding · Why Build a Custom Deck?", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.044758, "snippet": "At the beginning of the game, the investigators are trapped in the Study. How should they proceed? In this situation, some actions are better than others. If an investigator has asset cards in hand that seem as if they might be useful, that investigator should consider using the Play action to play ", "headingPath": "Tutorial Tip", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.044733, "snippet": "To set up the first game, perform the following steps in order. The game is best learned with one or two players. 1 Choose Investigator(s): Each player chooses an investigator and takes that investigator's pack of cards. If playing solo, Roland Banks is the recommended investigator choice. Roland is", "headingPath": "First Game Setup · Roland Banks · Daisy Walker · Agnes Baker · Wendy Adams", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.044415, "snippet": "LEARN TO PLAY", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.04374, "snippet": "A location enters play with its unrevealed side faceup. When an investigator enters a location for the first time, it is revealed (turned to its revealed side), and clues equal to that location’s clue value are placed on that location (from the token pool). A location card may be revealed during set", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.04207, "snippet": "In the investigation phase, the investigators take center stage. What they choose to do depends on the circumstances and the investigator in question. During this phase, each investigator takes a separate turn. The investigators, as a group, choose which investigator takes the first turn. When that ", "headingPath": "The Investigation Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.042005, "snippet": "The lead investigator (chosen during setup) is the player who breaks ties and makes decisions for the group whenever there is a conflict. The lead investigator is identified by the lead investigator token, which they place in their play area. If the players are required to make a choice among two or", "headingPath": "Lead Investigator · 'In Player Order' · Per Investigator (  ) · Locations", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "First Game Setup · Roland Banks · Daisy Walker · Agnes Baker · Wendy Adams", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "What's Next? · Custom Deckbuilding · Why Build a Custom Deck?", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Draw · Resource · Activate · Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Tutorial Tip", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Slots", "sharpsignalDocId": 295}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 295 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 295 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 0.91234 of 2293 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 5, 2026 23:08 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 Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	Draw · Resource · Activate · Play	p.12	0.046696 (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 Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	What's Next? · Custom Deckbuilding · Why Build a Custom Deck?	p.18	0.044949 (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 Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	Tutorial Tip	p.11	0.044758 (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 Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	First Game Setup · Roland Banks · Daisy Walker · Agnes Baker · Wendy Adams	p.6	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 Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)		p.1	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))	13
#6	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)		p.5	0.04374 (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 Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	The Investigation Phase	p.11	0.04207 (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 Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	Lead Investigator · 'In Player Order' · Per Investigator (  ) · Locations	p.4	0.042005 (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 48 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 Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)		p.1	#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 Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	What's Next? · Custom Deckbuilding · Why Build a Custom Deck?	p.18	#2	0.044949 (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 Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	Draw · Resource · Activate · Play	p.12	#1	0.046696 (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 Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	Tutorial Tip	p.11	#3	0.044758 (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 Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	First Game Setup · Roland Banks · Daisy Walker · Agnes Baker · Wendy Adams	p.6	#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
#6	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	Slots	p.12	#20	0.02578 (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 Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)		p.5	#6	0.04374 (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 Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)		p.9	#9	0.02885 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	First Game Setup · Roland Banks · Daisy Walker · Agnes Baker · Wendy Adams	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)		p.9	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	What's Next? · Custom Deckbuilding · Why Build a Custom Deck?	p.18	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	Draw · Resource · Activate · Play	p.12	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	Tutorial Tip	p.11	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)		p.5	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Arkham Horror: The Card Game (Revised Core Set) — Rulebook (corpus doc 295)	Slots	p.12	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 200 ms · first delta 1072 ms · total 4340 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 200 ms · ask 4134 ms · gateway work 4340 ms · total 4340 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2983
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 645
tok/sec: 201.9 tok/sec — 645 output tokens in 3.194 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 45s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 2h, checked 9s 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 223), 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.