Ruling — Zombicide: Black Plague

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How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Zombicide: Black Plaguebg-176189-en-1e

The game is played over a series of Game Rounds, which consist of the following sequence:

Players’ Phase

1. The player with the first player token takes their Turn, activating their Survivors one at a time in any order of their choice.[1]

2. Each Survivor can initially perform three Actions per Turn, though Skills may allow for extra Actions as the game progresses.[1]

3. Survivors use Actions to move, kill Zombies, perform other tasks to accomplish Quest objectives, make noise, or other specific actions.[1][2] Available actions include:

* Move: Move one Zone.[2]

* Search: Draw a card from the Equipment deck (Building Zones only; 1x per Activation per Survivor).[2]

* Open a door: Requires a Melee weapon; spawns Zombies inside a building if it is the first door.[2]

* Reorganize/Trade: Exchange equipment with another Survivor in the same Zone.[2]

* Combat Action: Includes Magic, Melee, Ranged, or Enchantment Actions, depending on equipped items.[2]

* Take or activate an Objective in the Survivor’s Zone.[2]

* Make Noise: Place a Noise token in the Survivor's Zone.[2]

* Do Nothing: All remaining Actions are lost.[2]

4. Once a player has activated all their Survivors, the player to their left takes their Turn, activating their Survivors in the same manner.[1]

5. The Players’ Phase ends when all players have completed their Turns.[1]

Zombies’ Phase

1. Step 1 – Activation: All Zombies on the board activate and spend one Action either attacking a Survivor next to them or, if they have nobody to attack, moving toward Survivors or noisy Zones.[1][2]

* Zombies in the same Zone as at least one Survivor attack.[2]

* Zombies that did not attack Move.[2]

* Runners get two Actions per Activation; after all Zombies (including Runners) resolve their first Action, Runners go through the Activation step again to resolve their second Action.[1][3][2]

* Zombies follow a priority of visible Survivors, then noise, choosing the shortest path.[2]

2. Step 2 – Spawn: New Zombies appear in all active Spawn Zones on the board.[1]

* Draw Zombie cards for all Spawn Zones, proceeding clockwise.[3][2]

* Use the Danger Level corresponding to the highest Danger Level among active Survivors (Blue, Yellow, Orange, or Red).[3][2]

* Place the number and type of Zombies shown on the card.[3]

* If there are no miniatures of a specified type available, all Zombies of that type receive an extra Activation.[2]

End Phase

1. All Noise tokens are removed from the board.[1][2]

2. The first player hands the first player token to the player to their left, and the next player receives it (play clockwise).[1][2]

3. Another Game Round begins.[1]

Winning and Losing

* The game is won immediately when all Quest objectives have been accomplished.[1]

* The game is lost if all Survivors have been eliminated or if too many Necromancers escape.[1]

* Some Missions can be lost when certain conditions are met, such as losing a single Survivor.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook · p.8

[2] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook · p.56

[3] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook · p.25

That's the page. Back to the table.

🔧 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 83 ms · ask 10507 ms · total 10592 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 10592 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 56, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "1 FIRST STEP Choose the first player at the beginning of the game . He receives the “first player” token . 2– PLAYERS’ PHASE The first player activates all of his or her Survivors, one after the other, in any order . When he or she’s done, the next player’s Turn begins . Play clockwise . Each Surviv", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.04741, "snippet": "SETUP 1 . Choose a Quest . 2 . Place the tiles . 3 . Place the doors, Objectives, and all tokens as indicated by the Quest . 4 . Each player gathers 1 to 6 Survivors for him to play . Play- ers sit around the table in any order they choose . As they cooperate against the game, all players form a sin", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "PLAYING RUNNERS T he ones we call “runners” use their predatory instinct and unnatural speed to compensate for their lack of judgment. They can tear a man to shreds in seconds, so act accordingly. Keep your trusty crossbow ready, and don’t let any of them get close to you. Runners have two Actions p", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 56, "score": 0.044658, "snippet": "All Zombies of specified type get an extra Activation! END PHASE • Remove all Noise tokens from the board . • The next player receives the “first player” token (play clockwise) . GAME ROUND SUMMARY GAME RULES OVERRIDE THIS ROUND SUMMARY RULES . TARGETING PRIORITY ORDER When several targets share the", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.042838, "snippet": "ZOMBIES’ PHASE For all their ferocity, zombies are dumb as dirt. You pretty much know what they’re gonna do. Unless there’s a necromancer around, of course. That’s when you’ve gotta be smarter. A determined group, even a small one, can hold the stupid hordes at bay. Just keep careful, keep quiet, an", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "8 . Shuffle the Zombie cards into one deck and the Equip - ment cards into another . Place both decks face down close to the board . 9 . Place the miniatures representing the chosen Survivors on the starting Zone(s) indicated by the Quest . 10 . Each player places his Survivors’ Dashboard(s) in fron", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "PLAYERS’ PHASE Starting with whoever holds the first player token, each player activates his Survivors one after another, in the order of his choice . Each Survivor can execute three Actions at the Blue Danger Level (not counting any free Action his Blue Level Skill may give him) . The possible Acti", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 54, "score": 0.02967, "snippet": "All Zombies standing in the selected Zone immediately gain an extra Activation: They try to reach the taunting Survivor by any means available . Taunted Zombies ignore all other Survi- vors . They do not attack them and cross the Zone they stand in if needed to reach the taunting Survivor . Tough – ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 56, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 25, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 371 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 371 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 0.89463 of 2477 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 24, 2026 17:08 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	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.56	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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.6	0.04741 (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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.25	0.045228 (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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.56	0.044658 (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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.23	0.042838 (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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.7	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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.19	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
#8	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.54	0.02967 (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	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.6	#2	0.04741 (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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.8	#11	0.027402 (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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.7	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.23	#5	0.042838 (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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.11	#38	0.01087 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.31	#10	0.027757 (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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.25	#3	0.045228 (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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.56	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.56	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371)	p.25	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 83 ms · first delta 4902 ms · total 10592 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 83 ms · ask 10507 ms · gateway work 10592 ms · total 10592 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3994
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 733
tok/sec: 131.1 tok/sec — 733 output tokens in 5.592 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 14s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, 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 300), 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.