Ruling — Pandemic

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Pandemicbg-30549-en-1e

In Pandemic, players work together as a disease-fighting team to discover cures for four deadly diseases (Blue, Yellow, Black, and Red).[1]

Turn Sequence

1. Do up to 4 actions.[2][3]

2. Draw 2 cards.[3]

3. Resolve any epidemics.[3]

4. Discard to 7 cards.[3]

5. Infect cities.[3]

6. After infecting cities and discarding Infection cards, your turn is over, and the player on your left begins a turn.[4]

Actions

* Drive / Ferry: Move to a city connected by a white line.[5][2]

* Direct Flight: Discard the City card that matches the city you are in to move to any city.[5][2]

* Charter Flight: Discard the City card that matches the city you are in to move to any city.[5][2]

* Shuttle Flight: Move from a city with a research station to any other city that has a research station.[5][2]

* Build a Research Station: Discard the City card that matches the city you are in to place a research station there.[5][2]

* Treat Disease: Remove 1 disease cube from the city you are in.[5][2] If this color is cured, remove all cubes of that color from the city.[2]

* Discover a Cure: At any research station, discard 5 City cards of the same disease color to cure that disease.[5] (Note: The Scientist needs only 4 cards of the same color to do this action [5]).

* Share Knowledge: Either give the card that matches the city you are in to another player, or take that card from another player, provided both players are in the city with you.[5][2]

Infection Process

The infection process involves:

1. Increase: Move the Infection Rate marker forward 1 space.[6]

2. Infect: Draw the bottom card from the Infection Deck and put 3 cubes on that city, then discard that card.[6]

3. Intensify: Shuffle the cards in the Infection Discard Pile and put them on top of the Infection Deck.[5][6]

Outbreaks

When a disease outbreak occurs, move the outbreaks marker forward 1 space on the Outbreaks Track.[4] Place 1 cube of the disease color on every city connected to the city.[4] If a city already has 3 cubes of that color, a chain reaction outbreak occurs.[4]

Winning and Losing

* Winning: The players win as soon as cures to all 4 diseases are discovered.[7]

* Losing: The players lose if:

* The outbreaks marker reaches the last space of the Outbreaks Track.[7][1][4]

* You are unable to place the number of disease cubes actually needed on the board.[7][1]

* A player cannot draw 2 Player cards after doing his actions.[7][1]

[1] RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook · p.1 · by Matt Leacock · CONTENTS · 59 Player cards · OVERVIEW

[2] RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook · p.4 · ACTIONS · Drive / Ferry · Direct Flight · Charter Flight · Shuttle Flight CITY · Build a Research Station · …

[3] RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook · p.5

[4] RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook · p.7 · OUTBREAKS · TURN END · EVENT CARDS

[5] RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook · p.1

[6] RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook · p.3

[7] RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook · p.7 · PLAYER CARDS i StanBul Baghdad · GAME END São Paulo

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 77 ms · ask 7593 ms · total 16492 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 8820 ms · generation 7672 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 7, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "delhi When playing the Introductory game (4 Epidemic cards), place your cards face up in front of you, for all players to see. algierS Madrid Baghdad karachi karachi Only Player cards count towards your hand limit. Your Role and your Reference cards are not part of your hand. cairo When playing the ", "headingPath": "PLAYER CARDS i StanBul Baghdad · GAME END São Paulo", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047073, "snippet": "You may do up to 4 actions each turn. Select any combination of the actions listed below. You may do the same action several times, each time counting as 1 action. Your role's special abilities may change how an action is done. Some actions involve discarding a card from your hand; all these discard", "headingPath": "ACTIONS · Drive / Ferry · Direct Flight · Charter Flight · Shuttle Flight CITY · Build a Research Station · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "3 San FranciS co chicago MontrÉal new York waShington atlanta loS angeleS Mexico citY liMa Santiago BuenoS aireS São Paulo lagoS kinS haS a JohanneSBurg khartouM riYadh cairo algierS Madrid london eSSen PariS Milan St. PeterSBurg MoS cow iStanB ul Baghdad tehran karachi MuMBai chennai delhi kolkata ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.046147, "snippet": "Each player has a role with special abilities to improve your team's chances. The Contingency Planner may, as an action, take an Event card from anywhere in the Player Discard Pile and place it on his Role card. Only 1 Event card can be on his role card at a time. It does not count against his hand ", "headingPath": "ROLES · CONTINGENCY PLANNER · DISPATCHER · MEDIC · COMMONLY OVERLOOKED RULES · OPERATIONS EXPERT", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.045476, "snippet": "3-INTENSIFY SHUFFLE THE CARDS IN THE INFECTION DISCARD PILE AND PUT THEM ON TOP OF THE INFECTION DECK. 575,000 2,800/KM2 GERMANY GERMANY ESSEN ESSEN Play any time. Not an action. EVENT reMove Any 1 cArd in the infection discArd pile froM the GAMe. you MAy plAy this between the infect And intensify s", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "5 Play Example: On the first turn, Ben does 4 actions: (1) Drive to Chicago (from Atlanta), (2) Drive to San Francisco, (3) Treat Disease in San Francisco, removing a blue disease cube there, and (4) Treat Disease in San Francisco again, removing a second blue disease cube. Ben has finished the Acti", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "2 San FranciS co chicago MontrÉal new York waShington atlanta loS angeleS Mexico citY liMa Santiago BuenoS aireS São Paulo lagoS kinS haS a JohanneSBurg khartouM riYadh cairo algierS Madrid london eSSen PariS Milan St. PeterSBurg MoS cow iStanB ul Baghdad tehran karachi MuMBai chennai delhi kolkata ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030282, "snippet": "When a disease outbreak occurs, move the outbreaks marker forward 1 space on the Outbreaks Track. Then, place 1 cube of the disease color on every city connected to the city. If any of them already has 3 cubes of the disease color, do not place a 4 th cube in those cities. Instead, in each of them, ", "headingPath": "OUTBREAKS · TURN END · EVENT CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "by Matt Leacock · CONTENTS · 59 Player cards · OVERVIEW", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ACTIONS · Drive / Ferry · Direct Flight · Charter Flight · Shuttle Flight CITY · Build a Research Station · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "OUTBREAKS · TURN END · EVENT CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER CARDS i StanBul Baghdad · GAME END São Paulo", "sharpsignalDocId": 174}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 174 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 174 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 0.85534 of 2060 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 24, 2026 17:40 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 Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)	PLAYER CARDS i StanBul Baghdad · GAME END São Paulo	p.7	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
#2	RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)	ACTIONS · Drive / Ferry · Direct Flight · Charter Flight · Shuttle Flight CITY · Build a Research Station · …	p.4	0.047073 (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 Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)		p.3	0.046635 (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 Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)	ROLES · CONTINGENCY PLANNER · DISPATCHER · MEDIC · COMMONLY OVERLOOKED RULES · OPERATIONS EXPERT	p.8	0.046147 (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 Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)		p.1	0.045476 (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 Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)		p.5	0.045455 (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 Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)		p.2	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 Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)	OUTBREAKS · TURN END · EVENT CARDS	p.7	0.030282 (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 20 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 Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)	PLAYER CARDS i StanBul Baghdad · GAME END São Paulo	p.7	#1	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)		p.1	#5	0.045476 (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 Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)	ROLES · CONTINGENCY PLANNER · DISPATCHER · MEDIC · COMMONLY OVERLOOKED RULES · OPERATIONS EXPERT	p.8	#4	0.046147 (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 Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)	ACTIONS · Drive / Ferry · Direct Flight · Charter Flight · Shuttle Flight CITY · Build a Research Station · …	p.4	#2	0.047073 (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 Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)	by Matt Leacock · CONTENTS · 59 Player cards · OVERVIEW	p.1	#10	0.029412 (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 Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)	OUTBREAKS · TURN END · EVENT CARDS	p.7	#8	0.030282 (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 Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)		p.3	#17	0.012987 (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 Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)		p.5	#6	0.045455 (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	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)	by Matt Leacock · CONTENTS · 59 Player cards · OVERVIEW	p.1	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)	ACTIONS · Drive / Ferry · Direct Flight · Charter Flight · Shuttle Flight CITY · Build a Research Station · …	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)		p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)	OUTBREAKS · TURN END · EVENT CARDS	p.7	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)		p.1	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Pandemic — Rulebook (corpus doc 174)	PLAYER CARDS i StanBul Baghdad · GAME END São Paulo	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 77 ms · first delta 2407 ms · total 16492 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 8820 ms · retrieval 77 ms · ask 7593 ms · gateway work 7672 ms · total 16492 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4304
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 681
tok/sec: 131.7 tok/sec — 681 output tokens in 5.172 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 57s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, checked 8s 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 43), 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.