RuleSage cited table rulings
← ISS Vanguard

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: ISS Vanguardbg-325494-en-1e

To play ISS Vanguard, you can follow these methods:
Starting the Game
* Tutorial: For your first time, it is highly recommended to play the Tutorial.[1] This teaches most rules through a simplified Planetary Exploration.[1] You can use the text version in the Rulebook or the Tutorial Video.[1]
* Campaign: This is the main mode.[1] You can continue from the Tutorial using the same Crewmembers,[1] or use the Quickstart rules to start a new Campaign.[1]
* Operations: These are single Planetary Exploration missions that can be played as part of the Campaign or as stand-alone scenarios.[1]
The Dice Check Process
A Dice Check is used to try and match icons on rolled dice to Dice Combinations of Section cards in your hand.[2] The steps are:
1. Choose dice: Take all 5 dice from your Crew board and place them into your hand.[3] Other Crewmembers may choose to Assist you by adding dice to your Dice Check.[2][4]
2. Add Injury & Danger dice: This step can be skipped.[3] If used, add your Injury die to the dice chosen in step 1.[4]
3. Roll dice: Roll all dice in your hand.[3] If you roll 3 or more Accidents, reroll all dice until you roll fewer than 3 Accidents (specific to the Tutorial).[3]
4. Modify the results: You may play Section cards from your hand or use other dice modifier effects (such as certain Equipment cards) to change results to meet the requirements of a desired Outcome.[5][2] After resolving a Section card, place it face up in your discard pile.[5][3]
5. Check for Dice Combinations: Match the icons on your rolled dice to Dice Combinations of Section cards in your hand.[2] (Note: Accident results cannot be used to make Dice Combinations [4]).
6. Resolve Injury & Danger dice: Resolve any Injury or Danger dice rolled.[4]
7. Resolve Special Effects: For each Accident in your Roll Pool, progress the red track once and then place that die in your Spent Pool.[6] Then, for each remaining die in your Roll Pool, progress the green track and then place that die in your Spent Pool.[6]
8. Mark Outcomes: This step is skipped for Dice Checks with tracks.[6]
9. Spend dice: Move all dice from the Roll Pool to the Spent Pool.[6] Dice are moved to the Spent Pool when used or at the end of a Dice Check.[5]
General Rules
* Dice Movement: Dice are taken from Section dice slots into your hand, rolled, and placed in your Roll Pool.[5] They are moved back to dice slots by Resting or other Refresh effects.[5]
* Section Cards: You may play the upper part of Section cards at any point indicated on the card.[7] Dice Combinations in the lower part of Section cards may only be used during Step 5 of a Dice Check.[7] If your Section card deck is empty, shuffle your discard pile to create a new deck.[7]
* Vanguard Icon: This icon can be treated as any of the three icons required to obtain an Outcome.[5] It can even be treated as an icon that is not present on the die itself.[5]
[1] RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook · p.9 · Starting Your Game · >> TUTORIAL · >> CAMPAIGN · >> OPERATIONS
[2] RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook · p.22
[3] RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook · p.19
[4] RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook · p.35
[5] RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook · p.16
[6] RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook · p.19
[7] RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook · p.36

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 120 ms · ask 12839 ms · total 25397 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 12436 ms · generation 12961 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 27, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "a b c E D f g h i j k l 27 Chapter III - Campaign Before playing the/uni00A0Campaign, at least one of the/uni00A0players (and ideally everyone) must have watched the tutorial video (see page/uni00A010) or played through the/uni00A0Tutorial as that/uni00A0teaches you the/uni00A0main rules for/uni00A0", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.045262, "snippet": "Dice are taken from your Section dice slots into your hand, rolled and placed in/uni00A0your Roll Pool, and then moved to your Spent Pool when used (or at the/uni00A0end of a/uni00A0Dice Check). Dice are moved back to your dice slots by/uni00A0Resting or other effects which Refresh dice. Step 4: Mod", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.042616, "snippet": "• Make a/uni00A0Dice Check to try and match the/uni00A0icons on your rolled dice to Dice Combinations of Section cards in your hand (Dice Combinations are explained on the next page). This follows the/uni00A0normal process as described on page 1 5 (you must include any Injury dice, other players may", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "10) Begin your Exploration! Go to Log 1. 3) Read the/uni00A0Starting Log Open your Logbook or App and read the/uni00A0Starting Log (The very first Log in the Logbook) that/uni00A0begins Vanguard’s story. 4) Choose Sections Players should discuss between themselves which Sections each of them will con", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "16 Step 3: Roll dice At this point, you would normally roll all of the/uni00A0dice in your hand. Together, all dice rolled by the/uni00A0player and any assisting players form a/uni00A0single Roll Pool. For/uni00A0this Tutorial, instead of rolling the/uni00A0dice, place them in your Roll Pool, above ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "12 Prepare the Away Team Read this section after reading Log 1. 1) Remove from the/uni00A0game the/uni00A0“This Side Up” card from the/uni00A0top of/uni00A0Tutorial deck A. Note: Anything that is removed from the game should be placed in the “Removed from the Game” compartment in Card Tray B. 2) Tak", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029907, "snippet": "ISS Vanguard offers a Tutorial, a Campaign, and several Operations (one-off scenarios). Estimated Playtime: 3-4 hours Players: 1-4 (1 recommended) For your first time playing, it is highly recommended to play through the Tutorial using either the text version in this Rulebook or the Tutorial Video l", "headingPath": "Starting Your Game · >> TUTORIAL · >> CAMPAIGN · >> OPERATIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "3 Players Two players control 1 Section, one player controls 2 Sections. 4 Players Each player controls 1 Section. Players should discuss between themselves which Sections each of/uni00A0them will control during the/uni00A0game. Since this is a/uni00A0cooperative game, make sure each player is happy", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Starting Your Game · >> TUTORIAL · >> CAMPAIGN · >> OPERATIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}, {"page": 22, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}, {"page": 19, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}, {"page": 35, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}, {"page": 19, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}, {"page": 36, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 316}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 316 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 316 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 0.88925 of 2456 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Aug 25, 2026 16:15 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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.27 0.045928 (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 ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.16 0.045262 (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 ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.22 0.042616 (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 ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.28 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
#5 RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.16 0.032258 (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 ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.12 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
#7 RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) Starting Your Game · >> TUTORIAL · >> CAMPAIGN · >> OPERATIONS p.9 0.029907 (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 ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.11 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 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) Starting Your Game · >> TUTORIAL · >> CAMPAIGN · >> OPERATIONS p.9 #7 0.029907 (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
#2 RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.16 #2 0.045262 (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 ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.19 #9 0.029469 (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
#4 RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.22 #3 0.042616 (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 ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.36 #18 0.025129 (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 ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.35 #29 0.021698 (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 ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.27 #1 0.045928 (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 ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.19 #22 0.023344 (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

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) Starting Your Game · >> TUTORIAL · >> CAMPAIGN · >> OPERATIONS p.9 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.22 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.19 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.35 no quote on the wire
[5] RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.16 no quote on the wire
[6] RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.19 no quote on the wire
[7] RULEBOOK ISS Vanguard — Rulebook (corpus doc 316) p.36 no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split
retrieval 120 ms · first delta 7258 ms · total 25397 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 12436 ms · retrieval 120 ms · ask 12839 ms · gateway work 12961 ms · total 25397 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
4036
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
735
tok/sec
130.7 tok/sec — 735 output tokens in 5.624 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 13s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage)
reachable (for 23h, checked 4s 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 245), 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.