Ruling — Battles of Westeros

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How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Battles of Westerosbg-67492-en-1e

Every BOW battle is played over a series of game rounds.[1] Each round is divided into four phases, performed in the following order:

1. Rally Phase [1]

2. Marshaling Phase [1]

3. Command Phase [1]

4. Regroup Phase [1]

Rally Phase

The Rally Phase is executed simultaneously by both players to determine who acts first in subsequent phases.[1] The following actions are performed in order:

1. Determine Advantage [1]

2. Refresh Commanders [1]

3. Rally Units [1]

Command Phase

During the game, players can use order tokens or Leadership cards to issue orders.[2][3]

* Order Tokens: To issue an order, a player declares which token they intend to use and which active unit they intend to order.[3] The player then discards the token from their Order Pool and places it back into the supply.[3] The specific order carried out depends on the token type (green, blue, red, valor, or morale).[3]

* Leadership Cards: To play a Leadership card, the active player reveals the card they intend to play and selects one of their commanders to play it on.[2] For each command resolved, the player moves one command token from their command board to the chosen commander's card.[2] The card is then discarded to the player's Leadership discard pile.[2] All units ordered by the card must be in the chosen commander's zone of control at the time the card is played.[2]

* Passing: A player can choose to pass instead of using an order token or Leadership card.[2] Once a player passes, they cannot use order tokens or Leadership cards until the next round.[2] An opponent can continue taking actions until they also choose to pass.[2] A player is forced to pass if they are unable to play an order token or Leadership card on their turn.[2]

Movement

To move a unit, a player must order that unit.[4]

1. A player must complete one unit's movement before moving another on their turn.[4]

2. A player must move all units they wish to move before attacking with any unit.[4]

3. Units must move into whole hexes and cannot move into or through a hex occupied by another unit.[4]

Regroup Phase

Players perform the following upkeep actions in order:

1. Resolve Status Conditions [2]

2. Score Victory Points [2]

3. Check Victory Conditions [2]

4. Discard Excess Resources [2]

5. Recover Morale [2]

6. Advance Round Marker [2]

After checking victory conditions, if the game has not ended, the Regroup Phase is completed and a new round begins with a new Rally Phase.[2][1] The game continues until the last round is finished or a player achieves a victory condition.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook · p.10 · Forming Units · Playing the Game · 1. Rally Phase

[2] RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook · p.13 · Play Leadership Card · Pass · 4. Regroup Phase

[3] RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook · p.12 · Use Order Token · Play Leadership Card

[4] RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook · p.17 · Moving Units

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 180 ms · ask 4146 ms · total 4328 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4328 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "Before executing the following steps, players must lay out the banners required by their House's setup as described on page 9. = = 1) Find the unit symbol on the battlefield map to determine what figures are used to make up the unit. If the symbol on the map is a commander, the player must instead l", "headingPath": "Forming Units · Playing the Game · 1. Rally Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "special abilities before or after resolving the command text on the card as indicated by the card's tactic box (if present). To play a Leadership card, the active player reveals which card from his hand he intends to play. He then selects one of his commanders to play the Leadership card on. For eac", "headingPath": "Play Leadership Card · Pass · 4. Regroup Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "Besides the battles found in the Battle Plans, players can utilize the following rules to play a randomly generated battle called a skirmish . Instead of a battle plan, a skirmish uses cards to generate a House's commanders, unit types, and number of units, as well as terrain to be placed. A skirmis", "headingPath": "Skirmish (Optional Rule) · Skirmish Setup · 1. Choose a Skirmish and Houses · 2. Create the Battlefield · 3. Take Commanders", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.044388, "snippet": "To execute a tactic, the player follows these steps: Tactics are always written as an if-then statement. The text in the 'if ' portion of the statement presents the requirements for using the tactic. The text in the 'then' portion of the statement gives the effect of the tactic that is resolved if t", "headingPath": "Tactics · 1. Check Requirements", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.041899, "snippet": "The active player rolls a number of dice equal to the number beside the battle plan's Order Rating icon. That player then takes order tokens from the supply that match the results of the dice rolled and adds them to any order token he carried over from the previous round. This combination of order t", "headingPath": "A. Receive Order Tokens · B. Draw Leadership Cards · 3. Command Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Players determine who has the advantage by comparing the amount of command tokens currently on each player's command board. The player who has the most tokens on his command board gains the advantage and acts first for the rest of the round. If there is a tie, the player who has the momentum token w", "headingPath": "A. Determine Advantage · B. Refresh Commanders · C. Rally Units", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Every battle features a variety of different unit combinations; therefore it is necessary to assemble a set of banners at the start of each battle. Each banner has two parts: the plastic banner pole and the punchboard banner. Players should execute the following steps to properly assemble their bann", "headingPath": "Assembling Banners", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030214, "snippet": "These tokens represent important personages that are present on the battlefield but are not taking part in the battle directly. Their function is described in individual battle plans. These battle-specific tokens have different functions as described in individual battle plans and on certain Skirmis", "headingPath": "Catelyn Token and Edmure Tokens · Tent Tokens, Siege Tower Tokens, Commander Discs, and Catapult Targeting Tokens · MomentumToken · Preparing for Battle · Setting Up · 1. Choose a Battle and a House to Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Forming Units · Playing the Game · 1. Rally Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Play Leadership Card · Pass · 4. Regroup Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Use Order Token · Play Leadership Card", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Moving Units", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1272 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1272 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 0.90028 of 2136 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 14, 2026 04:43 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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Forming Units · Playing the Game · 1. Rally Phase	p.10	0.04866 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Play Leadership Card · Pass · 4. Regroup Phase	p.13	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
#3	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Skirmish (Optional Rule) · Skirmish Setup · 1. Choose a Skirmish and Houses · 2. Create the Battlefield · 3. Take Commanders	p.28	0.046402 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Tactics · 1. Check Requirements	p.17	0.044388 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	A. Receive Order Tokens · B. Draw Leadership Cards · 3. Command Phase	p.12	0.041899 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	A. Determine Advantage · B. Refresh Commanders · C. Rally Units	p.10	0.031746 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Assembling Banners	p.9	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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Catelyn Token and Edmure Tokens · Tent Tokens, Siege Tower Tokens, Commander Discs, and Catapult Targeting Tokens · MomentumToken · Preparing for Battle · Setting Up · 1. Choose a Battle and a House to Play	p.6	0.030214 (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 59 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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Play Leadership Card · Pass · 4. Regroup Phase	p.13	#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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Forming Units · Playing the Game · 1. Rally Phase	p.10	#1	0.04866 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Moving Units	p.17	#29	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
#4	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	4. Build Leadership Decks · Assembling Figures · 1. Determine the Figure's Base: · 2. Insert the Figure into the Base:	p.7	#13	0.02748 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Use Order Token · Play Leadership Card	p.12	#24	0.023575 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Calling the Banners	p.2	#17	0.025808 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Skirmish (Optional Rule) · Skirmish Setup · 1. Choose a Skirmish and Houses · 2. Create the Battlefield · 3. Take Commanders	p.28	#3	0.046402 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Leadership Card Order Example	p.13	#23	0.02381 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Forming Units · Playing the Game · 1. Rally Phase	p.10	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Play Leadership Card · Pass · 4. Regroup Phase	p.13	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Use Order Token · Play Leadership Card	p.12	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Moving Units	p.17	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 180 ms · first delta 1161 ms · total 4328 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 180 ms · ask 4146 ms · gateway work 4328 ms · total 4328 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2976
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 625
tok/sec: 201.2 tok/sec — 625 output tokens in 3.106 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 29s 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 1202), 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.