Ruling — Xia: Legends of a Drift System

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Xia: Legends of a Drift Systembg-82222-en-1e

To play, follow these procedures:

Setup

1. Shuffle the Sector Tiles and place them face down in a stack.[1]

2. Deal one Sector tile per player (3 for a 3-player game, 4 for a 4-player game, 5 for a 5-player game) face up in the center of the play area, lining up edge symbols to the previously laid Sector.[1] If a Sector without a Spawn Point is drawn, re-shuffle it and draw another.[1]

3. Shuffle the Exploration Tokens and place them face down within reach of all players.[1]

4. Place an Exploration Token face down on any Exploration Spaces on the starting tiles.[1]

5. Shuffle the Mission Cards and Title Cards and place the decks face down.[1]

6. Place the Cargo Cubes, Damage Markers, Outfits, Credits, and Dice within reach of all players.[1]

7. Give each player one How To Win Card and 3,000 Credits (3 silver coins).[1]

8. Shuffle the three NPC Cards and deal one face up to each player (in 4 or 5-player games, not everyone gets one).[1]

9. Players take the corresponding NPC miniature and place it on the NPC Card.[1]

10. Place the Fame Point Track in the play area and decide the number of Fame Points needed for victory, placing the Victory Marker on the track accordingly.[1]

11. Separate the blue Tier 1 Ship Mats and matching Ability Cards.[1]

12. Each player rolls a d20; the player with the highest roll chooses a Tier 1 Ship Mat, Miniature, and Ability Card, continuing counter-clockwise until all have chosen.[1][2]

13. Players place their chosen items closest to them.[1]

14. Each player takes an Impulse Token and a set of Markers.[1]

15. Place the Impulse Token on the Impulse Space of the Ship Mat face up (yellow side).[2]

16. Place one Marker on the Fame Point Track at 0.[2]

17. Place one Marker on the highest number of the Ship Mat's Energy Meter.[2]

18. Place the remaining four Markers on the Ship Mat to fill out the Armed section.[2]

19. In the same order as ship selection, players may spend Credits to purchase Outfits, placing them in the Ship Mat's Hold (only if they fit).[2]

Player Turn

1. Action Phase: Players take Actions by declaring the Action, spending any required Energy or Armed Markers and associated dice, and resolving the Action.[3] A player may continue taking Actions until they decide to stop or are unable to take further Actions.[3]

* Move Actions: Players can use Engine Outfits (spending 1 Armed Marker and rolling the associated die) or Impulse (flipping the Impulse Token face down to move up to the Impulse value) to move.[3][4] (Minor) Actions can be taken during a Move Action without ending the movement.[5]

* Attack Actions: Players can use Blasters, Missiles, or Ram (using Engine Outfits) by spending Armed Markers.[3]

* Missions: Players on a Mission Point may draw Mission Cards (if they have no active mission), complete objectives, or turn in completed missions for payment.[3]

* Cargo Cubes: Players may buy cubes from a planet's Buy Space, Mine, Salvage, or Harvest cubes from marked spaces, Sell cubes at a planet's Sell Spaces, or Collect cubes from a space their ship occupies.[3]

* Explore: A player adjacent to an unexplored edge may spend 1 Energy to Scan a Sector (drawing and placing a new tile).[3][6]

2. Transition: After the Action Phase, a player must move to either the Business Phase or the Status Phase.[5]

* Business Phase: Players may purchase Outfits (if they fit in the Hold), rearrange Outfits (unless damaged), or sell Outfits for half their cost.[7] To conduct Business, a player must end their Action Phase on a Planet.[5]

* Status Phase: Players may move Disarmed or Used Markers to Armed Spaces on their Ship Mat at a cost of 1 Energy per Marker.[7] The Impulse Token is also refreshed (placed face up) during this phase.[4]

NPC Turns

1. At the beginning of the game, NPC Cards are shuffled and dealt to the first three players.[8]

2. A player takes a turn for the NPC they control directly after their own turn.[8]

3. To take an NPC turn, the player reads the NPC card from top to bottom

[1] RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook · p.2 · Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook · p.2 · Setup

[3] RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook · p.10 · Player Turn Detail

[4] RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook · p.9 · Example Tier 2 ^ or 3 & :

[5] RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook · p.10 · Other

[6] RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook · p.11 · Exploration

[7] RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook · p.6 · Outfits Overview

[8] RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook · p.16 · Mine / Salvage / Harvest

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 168 ms · ask 6177 ms · total 6349 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6349 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Shuffle the Sector Tiles and place them face down in a stack within reach of all players. Deal one Sector tile per player (3 for a 3-player game, 4 for a 4-player game, 5 for a 5-player game) face up in the center of the play area, one at a time, lining up the edge symbols to the previously laid Sec", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "Game Overview small starship. Players fly their ships about the system completing a variety of Missions, exploring new Sectors, and battling other ships. Captains vie with each other for Titles, riches, and, most importantly, Fame. The most adaptive, risk-taking, and creative players will excel. One", "headingPath": "Overview: Become a Legend", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "Titles are a mark of Fame for pilots who complete certain exploits. Once a Title is drawn, all players compete to complete its objective and claim the Title for their own. Titles are unique and range in difficulty and reward. Titles are worth 1 @ to 3 @ Fame Points and grant small abilities called S", "headingPath": "Titles", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045475, "snippet": "Fly to Neo Damascus and sell your Cargo Cubes. Use your Shield in case of attack. Worker: Buy Halon Engine and Targe Shield. Fly to the nearest Mission Point and Draw Missions. Look for Research and Shuttle Missions to complete. Pirate: Buy M-22 Engine and Saker V Blaster. Attack everything that mov", "headingPath": "Overview: Become a Legend", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.043905, "snippet": "The Action Phase includes fighting, flying, using abilities, collecting, trading, and working on/completing Missions. The player will use the inherent abilities of his ship, Outfits he has equipped on his ship, and his bonus abilities from Ability Cards to take Actions. A player may continue taking ", "headingPath": "1. Action Phase · 3. Status Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "During their Action Phase, players take Actions. To take an Action, the player: · Declares the Action they are taking; Spends any required Energy or Armed Markers and associated dice; and Resolves the Action. (ex. Player 1 first declares he will take a Move Action using his Engine Outfit. He spends ", "headingPath": "Player Turn Detail", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "NPC Turns At the beginning of the game, the NPC Cards are shuffled and dealt to the first three players. A player takes a turn for the NPC he controls directly after his turn. NPC turns do not have phases like player turns. To take an NPC turn, the player simply reads the NPC card from top to bottom", "headingPath": "Mine / Salvage / Harvest", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Player 2 turn - Player 1 is attacked and dies in Tier 2 ^ or 3 & ship. Player 3 turn Player 1 turn - This turn is skipped. Player 2 turn Player 3 turn Player 1 turn - Respawn, then take turn as normal. (Note: If Player 1 had died on her own turn, she still would have skipped the denoted turn.) Move ", "headingPath": "Example Tier 2 ^ or 3 & :", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player Turn Detail", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Example Tier 2 ^ or 3 & :", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Other", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Exploration", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Outfits Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Mine / Salvage / Harvest", "sharpsignalDocId": 332}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 332 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 332 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 0.89048 of 3342 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 6, 2026 01:46 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 Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Setup	p.2	0.048652 (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 Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Overview: Become a Legend	p.3	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 Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Titles	p.13	0.047123 (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 Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Overview: Become a Legend	p.3	0.045475 (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 Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	1. Action Phase · 3. Status Phase	p.3	0.043905 (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 Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Player Turn Detail	p.10	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
#7	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Mine / Salvage / Harvest	p.16	0.030303 (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 Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Example Tier 2 ^ or 3 & :	p.9	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 67 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 Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Setup	p.2	#1	0.048652 (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 Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Player Turn Detail	p.10	#6	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
#3	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Outfits Overview	p.6	#31	0.011111 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Setup	p.2	#18	0.013514 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Example Tier 2 ^ or 3 & :	p.9	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Other	p.10	#16	0.013889 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Exploration	p.11	#14	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
#8	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Mine / Salvage / Harvest	p.16	#7	0.030303 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Setup	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Setup	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Player Turn Detail	p.10	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Example Tier 2 ^ or 3 & :	p.9	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Other	p.10	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Exploration	p.11	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Outfits Overview	p.6	no quote on the wire
[8]	RULEBOOK Xia: Legends of a Drift System — Rulebook (corpus doc 332)	Mine / Salvage / Harvest	p.16	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 168 ms · first delta 1136 ms · total 6349 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 168 ms · ask 6177 ms · gateway work 6349 ms · total 6349 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3962
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 200.2 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 5.114 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 51s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 2h, checked 3s 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 260), 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.