Ruling — Downforce

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Downforcebg-215311-en-1e

A game of Downforce consists of three parts: The Auction, The Race, and The Betting.[1]

The Auction

1. After players look at their hands of cards, cars are auctioned off one at a time.[1]

2. Flip over the top Speed-8 card and the top power card from the decks to reveal the car color and power up for bid.[1]

3. To bid, each player chooses a card from their hand and places it face down on the table.[1]

4. After everyone has chosen a card, flip over the cards.[1]

5. The player whose speed card has the highest value of the car color shown wins the bid.[1]

6. If two or more cards have the same value, the card with more cars on it wins.[1]

7. If both tied cards have the same number of cars, the one without the wild symbol wins.[1]

8. The winner of the bid writes the amount on their score sheet, adds the matching Speed-8 card to their hand, puts the power card face up in front of them, and takes the matching driver plaque.[1]

9. All bid cards are returned to players' hands to be used again for the next car.[1]

10. Continue revealing new cars and power cards until all cars are auctioned off.[1]

11. If the number of cars remaining equals the number of players without cars, only players without cars can bid.[1]

12. If only one car is left and there is a player without a car, they reveal the card in their hand with the lowest value of that color and bid that much.[1]

13. After all cars are auctioned, any player with more than one power card selects one and returns the others to the box.[1]

The Race

1. The player who controls the car on the space takes the first turn.[2]

2. Each player plays one speed card from their hand and resolves it.[2]

3. The player to the left of the previous player takes the next turn.[2]

4. Each car whose color appears on the card is moved the number of spaces indicated on the card.[2]

5. Cars are moved in order from top to bottom, unless the player has the Tricky power.[2]

6. The player who played the card moves all cars on the card, even if they belong to other players, unless the car is controlled by someone with the Cunning power.[2]

7. White cars are wild; the player who played the card may pick any color car to move, other than a color already on the card, unless that player has the Unpredictable power.[2]

8. A player may pick a color of a car that has already finished the race or one that is blocked.[2]

9. If a card has two wild cars, the player must choose two different color cars.[2]

10. Cars move forward to the next adjacent space, either straight or diagonally; cars may not move sideways, backwards, or through other cars.[3]

11. Each car must be moved the full number of spaces if possible, or as far as possible if they cannot move the full amount.[3]

12. If there is a legal move for a car, the player must move it.[3]

13. After the card is resolved, place it face up in the discard pile.[2]

14. Play continues until all cars have finished the race or no more cards can be played.[2]

15. As soon as a car crosses the finish line, it is placed in the appropriate winner's space near the race track.[4]

16. When all of a player's cars have finished the race, they discard the rest of their hand and play no more cards in the race.[4]

The Betting

1. Betting takes place during the race.[1]

2. Players bet on which car is going to be the winner.[1]

Winning the Game

1. After all cars have finished the race, players mark on their score sheets how much money they earn for each of their cars based on how they finished.[5]

2. Players circle any money won through betting.[5]

3. The total money earned is calculated by adding the earned money and betting winnings, then subtracting the initial bid money.[5]

4. The player with the most winnings wins the game; in a tie, the player whose car finished higher wins.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook · p.3 · PLAYING THE GAME · THE AUCTION

[2] RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook · p.4 · THE RACE · PLAYING SPEED CARDS: · WILDS:

[3] RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook · p.4 · MOVING CARS ON THE TRACK:

[4] RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook · p.6 · POWER CARDS: · AGGRESSIVE · CUNNING · DETERMINED · STRATEGIC · TRICKY · …

[5] RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook · p.6 · WINNING THE GAME

Answer in hand — your move.

🔧 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 198 ms · ask 6338 ms · total 6538 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6538 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 7, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "For a simpler game for younger players, make the following changes: Do not auction off the cars. Instead, randomly deal the Speed-8 cards (and their matching driver plaques) to each player so that everyone has the same number of cars. Any leftover cards remain out of play, and their corresponding ca", "headingPath": "Beginner's Game · Two Player Game · Long Distance Races · World Tour Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 558}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "The player who controls the car on the space takes the first turn. During the race, each player will play one speed card from their hand and resolve it. Then the player to their left takes the next turn. Play continues until all the cars have finished the race or no more cards can be played. Each ca", "headingPath": "THE RACE · PLAYING SPEED CARDS: · WILDS:", "sharpsignalDocId": 558}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "A game of Downforce has three parts: The Auction: The cars are auctioned off to the highest bidder. The Race: The cars race around the track. The Betting, which takes place during the race, when players bet on who the winning car is going to be. After the race is over, players add up all their money", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME · THE AUCTION", "sharpsignalDocId": 558}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "Cars move forward on the track to the next adjacent space, either straight or diagonally. A car may not move sideways or backwards. Cars may not move through other cars, though they may move diagonally between two cars that are adjacent diagonally. A space is considered 'forward' if the front end of", "headingPath": "MOVING CARS ON THE TRACK:", "sharpsignalDocId": 558}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "1 3 5 4 6 2 1 Double-Sided Game Board River Station and Marina Bay tracks 6 Race Car Pawns 42 Regular Speed Cards COMPONENTS SET-UP 6 Speed-8 Speed Cards 6 Power Cards 6 Driver Plaques 1 Pad of Score Sheets Place the game board in the center of the table on either side. (Each side has a unique track", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 558}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "After all cars have finished the race, players mark on their score sheets how much money they earn for each of their cars based on how they finished. They then circle any money they won through betting. This money is added up, and the initial bid money is subtracted from it. The money remaining is t", "headingPath": "WINNING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 558}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030159, "snippet": "Each player has a power card that can affect movement or one of the other rules. When a power contradicts a rule, the power takes precedent over the rule. Example: If you control the red car and play this card, you can move the red car 7 spaces instead of 6. Note: This power does not work if a wild ", "headingPath": "POWER CARDS: · AGGRESSIVE · CUNNING · DETERMINED · STRATEGIC · TRICKY · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 558}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Yellow moves 5 spaces. It's only option for its first move is to move to space 1 , which works because the front end lies ahead of the front end of the space where it started. Likewise, the rest of the path shows the only possible movement options for yellow . Green may not move into space 2 or spac", "headingPath": "MOVING CARS ON THE TRACK: · THE BETTING", "sharpsignalDocId": 558}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME · THE AUCTION", "sharpsignalDocId": 558}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE RACE · PLAYING SPEED CARDS: · WILDS:", "sharpsignalDocId": 558}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MOVING CARS ON THE TRACK:", "sharpsignalDocId": 558}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "POWER CARDS: · AGGRESSIVE · CUNNING · DETERMINED · STRATEGIC · TRICKY · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 558}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "WINNING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 558}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 558 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 558 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 0.90868 of 3088 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 26, 2026 03:41 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 Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	Beginner's Game · Two Player Game · Long Distance Races · World Tour Game	p.7	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	THE RACE · PLAYING SPEED CARDS: · WILDS:	p.4	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 Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	PLAYING THE GAME · THE AUCTION	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
#4	RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	MOVING CARS ON THE TRACK:	p.4	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
#5	RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)		p.2	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 Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	WINNING THE GAME	p.6	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 Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	POWER CARDS: · AGGRESSIVE · CUNNING · DETERMINED · STRATEGIC · TRICKY · …	p.6	0.030159 (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 Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	MOVING CARS ON THE TRACK: · THE BETTING	p.5	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 16 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 Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	THE RACE · PLAYING SPEED CARDS: · WILDS:	p.4	#2	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	MOVING CARS ON THE TRACK:	p.4	#4	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
#3	RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	POWER CARDS: · AGGRESSIVE · CUNNING · DETERMINED · STRATEGIC · TRICKY · …	p.6	#7	0.030159 (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 Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)		p.2	#5	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	AUCTION EXAMPLE	p.3	#11	0.014493 (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 Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	WINNING THE GAME	p.6	#6	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
#7	RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	PLAYING THE GAME · THE AUCTION	p.3	#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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	Beginner's Game · Two Player Game · Long Distance Races · World Tour Game	p.7	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	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 Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	PLAYING THE GAME · THE AUCTION	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	THE RACE · PLAYING SPEED CARDS: · WILDS:	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	MOVING CARS ON THE TRACK:	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	POWER CARDS: · AGGRESSIVE · CUNNING · DETERMINED · STRATEGIC · TRICKY · …	p.6	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Downforce — Rulebook (corpus doc 558)	WINNING THE GAME	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 198 ms · first delta 1742 ms · total 6538 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 198 ms · ask 6338 ms · gateway work 6538 ms · total 6538 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2759
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 961
tok/sec: 202.1 tok/sec — 961 output tokens in 4.755 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 50s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 9s 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 490), 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.