Ruling — Forest Shuffle

← Forest Shuffle

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Forest Shufflebg-391163-en-1e

To play Forest Shuffle, follow these steps:

1. Setup:

* Place the clearing (game board) in the center of the play area.[1]

* Place 14 reference cards next to the clearing.[1]

* Each player takes a cave card and places it in front of themselves.[1]

* Set the 3 winter cards aside.[1]

* Shuffle the remaining cards and return a certain number to the game box unseen based on player count: 30 cards for 2 players, 20 cards for 3 players, 10 cards for 4 players, and none for 5 players.[1]

* Divide the remaining cards into three face-down piles of similar size.[1]

* Shuffle two winter cards into one pile and place the third winter card on top of that pile.[1]

* Place the other two piles on top of the pile containing the winter cards to form a deck, and place it on the left side of the clearing.[1]

* Each player draws 6 cards into their hand.[1]

2. Turn Sequence:

* The player who last took a walk in the forest starts, and players take turns in clockwise order.[1]

* On your turn, you must carry out exactly one of two possible actions:[1]

* Action A (Draw Two Cards): Draw two cards, one at a time.[2] For each card, you may choose to take a face-down card from the top of the deck or a face-up card from the clearing.[2] (Note: You are limited to 10 cards in hand; if you have 9 cards, you may only draw one).[2]

* Action B (Play a Card):

* Pay the card's cost by placing that many other cards from your hand face up into the clearing.[3] When playing a split card, choose one half to play and pay only its cost.[3]

* Place the card face up in front of yourself (your "forest").[3] Split cards must be placed next to a tree in an empty slot on the corresponding side (top, bottom, left, or right).[3][4] Alternatively, you may play any card from your hand face down as a universal tree sapling.[4]

* If you play a tree, you must also draw the top card from the deck and place it face up in the clearing.[3]

* Use the card's effect and bonus, if any (always use the effect before the bonus).[4]

* Check the Clearing: At the end of your turn, if there are 10 or more cards in the clearing, the clearing must be emptied by removing all cards and returning them to the game box.[5]

* End of Turn: Your turn ends, and the next player clockwise takes their turn, unless an effect or bonus allows for another turn.[5]

3. Game End and Scoring:

* The game ends immediately when the third winter card is revealed.[2][6] If a winter card is revealed during a turn, you may not finish your turn.[6]

* To score, total the points of all visible cards in your forest and add the number of cards under your cave, if any.[6]

* The player with the highest score wins; in the case of a tie, players share a victory.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Forest Shuffle — Rulebook · p.2 · Components · Setup · Game Flow · A) Draw Two Cards · B) Play a Card and Check the Clearing

[2] RULEBOOK Forest Shuffle — Rulebook · p.3 · A) Drawing Two Cards · Winter Cards · B) Playing a Card and Checking the Clearing

[3] RULEBOOK Forest Shuffle — Rulebook · p.4 · B) Playing a Card and Checking the Clearing · Playing a Card · Trees · Example:

[4] RULEBOOK Forest Shuffle — Rulebook · p.5 · Tree Sapling · Animals, Plants, and Mushrooms · Effect and Bonus

[5] RULEBOOK Forest Shuffle — Rulebook · p.6 · There are two types of effects: · Mushrooms · Bonus · Checking the Clearing

[6] RULEBOOK Forest Shuffle — Rulebook · p.7 · End of Game · Scoring · Scoring example: · Top/Bottom · Left/Right · Trees

Question closed. Friendships intact.

🔧 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 112 ms · ask 7870 ms · total 33736 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 25752 ms · generation 7984 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "4 To play a card from your hand, you must first pay its cost by placing that many (other) cards from your hand face up into the clearing . When playing a split card, choose one half to play and pay only its cost. Normally, it does not matter which cards you discard as payment. Some species, however,", "headingPath": "B) Playing a Card and Checking the Clearing · Playing a Card · Trees · Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 130}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "2 1 Place the clearing (i.e., the game board) in the center of the play area, within reach of all players. Place the 14 reference cards next to it. 2 Everyone: take a cave card and place it in front of yourself. 3 Set the 3 winter cards aside. Shuffle the remaining cards and return a certain number ", "headingPath": "Components · Setup · Game Flow · A) Draw Two Cards · B) Play a Card and Check the Clearing", "sharpsignalDocId": 130}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "Instead of playing a tree, you may play any card from your hand face down as a universal tree sapling . Like a tree, a tree sapling provides a card slot on each of its four sides. However, it does not belong to any of the eight tree species and is not considered a tree species of its own. The split ", "headingPath": "Tree Sapling · Animals, Plants, and Mushrooms · Effect and Bonus", "sharpsignalDocId": 130}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "When taking this action, draw two cards, one at a time , and add them to your hand. For each card you draw with this action, you have the choice of either taking a face-down card from the top of the deck or a face-up card from the clearing (which is empty at the start of the game). Important: You ar", "headingPath": "A) Drawing Two Cards · Winter Cards · B) Playing a Card and Checking the Clearing", "sharpsignalDocId": 130}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "Most cards provide an instant effect that you use once immediately after playing it. Some of them allow you to put cards in your cave. l e Mushrooms, however, provide a permanent effect , which you can use for the rest of the game, beginning on your next turn. Chaffi nch if on a Beech Mushrooms have", "headingPath": "There are two types of effects: · Mushrooms · Bonus · Checking the Clearing", "sharpsignalDocId": 130}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.045688, "snippet": "A card game by Kosch for 2-5 players, ages 10 and up Playing time: 60 minutes Life is bustling in the local forest: Animals scurry around the clearings looking for edible plants and insects. Some enjoy the dense treetops, while others prefer the lush undergrowth and only feel comfortable in the shel", "headingPath": "Forest Shuffle · Object of the Game · Components", "sharpsignalDocId": 130}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "When the 3rd winter card is revealed, the game ends immediately and you proceed to scoring. You may not finish your turn. Total the points of all visible cards in your forest, and add the number of cards under your cave, if any. This is your score. If you are unsure how a specific card scores, consu", "headingPath": "End of Game · Scoring · Scoring example: · Top/Bottom · Left/Right · Trees", "sharpsignalDocId": 130}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Sycamore Oak Designer: Kosch Illustrations: Toni Llobet, Judit Piella Graphik design: Klemens Franz | atelier198 R&D: Maren Holderbaum Translation: Sonja Hüttinger Forestry consultant: Felix Behnke Kosch says: Caro, without your inspiration this game would not have been invented. You always find the", "headingPath": "Tree symbols · Credits · Effect and Bonus", "sharpsignalDocId": 130}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Components · Setup · Game Flow · A) Draw Two Cards · B) Play a Card and Check the Clearing", "sharpsignalDocId": 130}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "A) Drawing Two Cards · Winter Cards · B) Playing a Card and Checking the Clearing", "sharpsignalDocId": 130}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "B) Playing a Card and Checking the Clearing · Playing a Card · Trees · Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 130}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Tree Sapling · Animals, Plants, and Mushrooms · Effect and Bonus", "sharpsignalDocId": 130}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "There are two types of effects: · Mushrooms · Bonus · Checking the Clearing", "sharpsignalDocId": 130}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "End of Game · Scoring · Scoring example: · Top/Bottom · Left/Right · Trees", "sharpsignalDocId": 130}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 130 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 130 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 0.88859 of 2217 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 25, 2026 17:48 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 Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	B) Playing a Card and Checking the Clearing · Playing a Card · Trees · Example:	p.4	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
#2	RULEBOOK Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	Components · Setup · Game Flow · A) Draw Two Cards · B) Play a Card and Check the Clearing	p.2	0.048412 (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 Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	Tree Sapling · Animals, Plants, and Mushrooms · Effect and Bonus	p.5	0.047379 (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 Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	A) Drawing Two Cards · Winter Cards · B) Playing a Card and Checking the Clearing	p.3	0.046898 (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 Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	There are two types of effects: · Mushrooms · Bonus · Checking the Clearing	p.6	0.045724 (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 Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	Forest Shuffle · Object of the Game · Components	p.1	0.045688 (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 Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	End of Game · Scoring · Scoring example: · Top/Bottom · Left/Right · Trees	p.7	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 Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	Tree symbols · Credits · Effect and Bonus	p.8	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))	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 8 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 Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	B) Playing a Card and Checking the Clearing · Playing a Card · Trees · Example:	p.4	#1	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 Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	A) Drawing Two Cards · Winter Cards · B) Playing a Card and Checking the Clearing	p.3	#4	0.046898 (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 Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	End of Game · Scoring · Scoring example: · Top/Bottom · Left/Right · Trees	p.7	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	There are two types of effects: · Mushrooms · Bonus · Checking the Clearing	p.6	#5	0.045724 (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 Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	Tree symbols · Credits · Effect and Bonus	p.8	#8	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 Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	Forest Shuffle · Object of the Game · Components	p.1	#6	0.045688 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	Tree Sapling · Animals, Plants, and Mushrooms · Effect and Bonus	p.5	#3	0.047379 (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 Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	Components · Setup · Game Flow · A) Draw Two Cards · B) Play a Card and Check the Clearing	p.2	#2	0.048412 (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 Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	Components · Setup · Game Flow · A) Draw Two Cards · B) Play a Card and Check the Clearing	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	A) Drawing Two Cards · Winter Cards · B) Playing a Card and Checking the Clearing	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	B) Playing a Card and Checking the Clearing · Playing a Card · Trees · Example:	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	Tree Sapling · Animals, Plants, and Mushrooms · Effect and Bonus	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	There are two types of effects: · Mushrooms · Bonus · Checking the Clearing	p.6	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Forest Shuffle — Rulebook (corpus doc 130)	End of Game · Scoring · Scoring example: · Top/Bottom · Left/Right · Trees	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 112 ms · first delta 2098 ms · total 33736 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 25752 ms · retrieval 112 ms · ask 7870 ms · gateway work 7984 ms · total 33736 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3220
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 768
tok/sec: 131.6 tok/sec — 768 output tokens in 5.836 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 52s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 1s 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 52), 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.