Ruling — Dominant Species

You asked

How do I take my turn?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Dominant Speciesbg-62219-en-1e

A turn in Dominant Species consists of three phases [1]: 1. **Planning Phase**: Players take turns, in left-to-right Initiative order, placing one available action pawn (AP) into any vacant "eyeball" action space of the action display [1]. Each eyeball space can hold a maximum of one AP [1]. This continues in rounds until all animals have run out of available APs to place or unplayed animals are skipped [1]. 2. **Execution Phase**: Once all available APs have been placed for the turn, APs are removed from the action display in top-to-bottom, left-to-right order [1]. The owning player performs the action indicated by the section's title bar for each removed AP [1]. The order of actions is: Initiative, Adaptation, Regression, Abundance, Wasteland, Depletion, Glaciation, Speciation, Wanderlust, Migration, Competition, and Domination [1]. 3. **Reset Phase**: Some species may go extinct and one player may score VPs via the Survival Card [1]. If the game has not ended, the action display is reset for the following turn [1].

[1] RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook · p.9 · Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 299 ms · ask 9344 ms · total 9653 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 9653 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 9, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Dominant Species is played in a series of turns in which all players take part more or less simultaneously. Each turn is divided into three Phases: During the Planning Phase, players will take turns placing their available action pawns (APs) into the 'eyeball' spaces of the action display that domin", "headingPath": "Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "At the start of the Execution Phase, remove any AP that was placed here. That player performs the following activities: On the Initiative track, swap his animal's initiative marker with that of the animal directly to the left of it-thus effectively moving one space forward on the Initiative track. I", "headingPath": "Initiative · Adaptation", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045285, "snippet": "Take two of each of the six element types and place them on the tiles of earth as indicated on the board. Place these element disks so that they slightly overlap each of the tiles that meet at that intersection. Gather up the rest of the elements and form a draw pool by placing them into the cloth b", "headingPath": "The elements · The species · Begin play", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Note: You do not need to perform this step if this is the last turn of the game (via play of the Ice Age card). Finally, in preparation for the next turn perform the following activities: board. Any cards already occupying this section remain where they are. If there are not enough cards remaining i", "headingPath": "Reseed · Endgame", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "After all Speciation actions have been performed, APs are removed from this section one at a time in left-to-right order. When an animal's AP is removed, that player selects one of the available face up large tiles (those atop the Wanderlust Tiles stacks). He then performs the following activities i", "headingPath": "Wanderlust", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "After all Competition actions have been performed, APs are removed from this section one at a time in left-to-right order. When an animal's AP is removed, that player selects one tile on earth that has not yet been chosen for Domination this turn. That tile is then scored by performing the following", "headingPath": "Domination", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Place the board - face up! - in the center of the table. Have each player choose the animal he would like to play. Give each player the animal display matching their choice. Alternately, you can assign one animal display to each player at random. See page 17 for a suggested alternate method of assig", "headingPath": "The Board · The Animals · The Tiles · The Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Actions are never mandatory: when a player's AP is removed from the action display he may choose to voluntarily forfeit the allowed action in its entirety. Most sections of the action display can be skipped if they contain no APs. Exceptions include: Regression-this section always affects all animal", "headingPath": "Voluntary Actions · Skipping sections", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 207 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 207 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)
debug row retained until: Nov 5, 2026 17:23

retrieval — what the search arm returned

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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase	p.9	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Initiative · Adaptation	p.10	0.048387 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	The elements · The species · Begin play	p.4	0.045285 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Reseed · Endgame	p.20	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
#5	RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Wanderlust	p.14	0.03125 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Domination	p.16	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
#7	RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	The Board · The Animals · The Tiles · The Cards	p.4	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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Voluntary Actions · Skipping sections	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207)	Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase	p.9	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 299 ms · first delta 7885 ms · total 9653 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 299 ms · ask 9344 ms · gateway work 9653 ms · total 9653 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4279
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 246
tok/sec: 146.2 tok/sec — 246 output tokens in 1.683 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 30s ago)
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 132), 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.