Ruling — Pandemic Legacy: Season 2

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Pandemic Legacy: Season 2bg-221107-en-1e

Setup

1. Shuffle Event cards, all Produce Supplies cards, and the City cards together.[1]

2. Deal cards to each player based on the number of players: 4 cards for 2 players, 3 cards for 3 players, and 2 cards for 4 players.[1]

3. Divide the remaining Player deck into 5 face down piles, as equal in size as possible.[1]

4. Shuffle 1 Epidemic card into each pile.[1]

5. Stack these piles to form the Player deck, placing smaller piles at the bottom.[1]

6. Each player selects a character and player color and takes the corresponding pawn and Reference cards.[1]

7. Place each pawn at their home.[1]

Gameplay

1. Randomly select one of the pawns to determine who goes first; play proceeds clockwise.[1]

2. Each player turn is divided into 4 steps:

1. Check for exposure.[1]

2. Do 4 actions.[1]

3. Draw 2 Player cards.[1]

4. Infect cities.[1]

3. After a player is done infecting cities, the turn ends and the player on their left goes next.[1]

4. Event cards can be played at any time, except in between drawing and resolving a card.[2] Playing an Event card is not an action.[2]

Epidemic Resolution

If an Epidemic card is drawn, do the following in order:

1. Increase: Move the Infection Rate marker forward 1 space on the Infection Rate track (if the marker is already at 5, it remains at 5).[2]

2. Infect: Draw the bottom card from the Infection deck, remove all Supply cubes from that city and put them in the stockpile, and discard the Epidemic card to the Infection discard pile.[2]

3. Intensify: Shuffle the Infection discard pile and place it on top of the Infection deck.[2]

Ending the Game

1. If there are fewer than 2 cards left in the Player deck as you are about to draw, the game ends and your team has lost.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook · p.9 · Player discard pile · ADD EPIDEMICS TO THE PLAYER DECK · SELECT CHARACTERS · BEGIN PLAY · ON YOUR TURN

[2] RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook · p.13 · DRAW CARDS · EPIDEMIC CARDS · EVENT CARDS · HAND LIMIT

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 111 ms · ask 7953 ms · total 8065 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8065 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Unlike most games, which fully reset every time you play, Pandemic Legacy carries some elements forward from one game to the next. Decisions you make in game 1 will be there in game 2, 3, and every game played with your copy of the game. Different groups will make different decisions and will have a", "headingPath": "PLAYING A LEGACY GAME · LEGACY DECK · IF YOU'VE PLAYED SEASON 1", "sharpsignalDocId": 274}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "6b. Shuffle these Event cards, all Produce Supplies cards, and the City cards together. Deal cards to each player according to the number of players: | # of players | Cards | | 2 players | 4 | | 3 players | 3 | | 4 players | 2 | Players keep their hands face up at all times. Divide the remaining Pla", "headingPath": "Player discard pile · ADD EPIDEMICS TO THE PLAYER DECK · SELECT CHARACTERS · BEGIN PLAY · ON YOUR TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 274}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.045635, "snippet": "7 Characters have little experience outside the havens – perhaps they’ve never seen the mainland at all. But they will grow into something more. Players do not need to play the same character each game. Before the prologue, create the five starting characters. As you play the campaign, you may find ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 274}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.04311, "snippet": "I f you win, advance to the next month and decrease your rationing by 2 . If you lose the first half of the month, play the second half of the month and increase your rationing by 2 . If you lose in the second half of the month, increase your rationing by 2 , then proceed to the next month. Rationin", "headingPath": "GAME CALENDAR", "sharpsignalDocId": 274}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.042878, "snippet": "You win as soon as you complete the necessary number of objectives (which must include all mandatory objectives) or you trigger a losing condition. The game ends immediately, even if it is the middle of a player's turn or a series of outbreaks. You cannot finish out your turn after you win or lose, ", "headingPath": "GAME END · TRACKING YOUR CAMPAIGN · RULE STICKER U", "sharpsignalDocId": 274}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Instructor: Once on your turn, as an action, give any 1 Player card to a player in your location. Farmer: You teach the history of the world so we do not forget the past. the havens' citizens fed. Laborer: SCARS You do the work that few others volunteer for or are capable of. If you scratch off a ci", "headingPath": "from your Character card. DEATH", "sharpsignalDocId": 274}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "3 8 3 2 2 6 2 5 5 2 4 1 4 1 1 4 1 0 0 0 JOBS 3 3 3 3 3 3 1 Recovering Surviving Struggling 2 Falling Forsaken 3 3 3 3 3 location on the grid by 1. (Maximum population is 8.) 3 2 3 2 3 1 3 7 7 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 6 6 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 Add a character ability to any created character (even one w", "headingPath": "Instructor: Once on your turn, as an action, give any 1 Player card to a player in your location. Farmer: Once on your turn, when doing the Make Supplies action, you may immediately do 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 Add a City Improvement sticker to a City card with an empty improvement slot. (instead of your current location) . CHARACTER ABILITIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 274}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "There is an element of discovery in this game - players will explore the world and find new information that they may want to track. It is perfectly acceptable to take notes as you go. Also, all cards in the reserve, the Infection discard pile, and the Player discard pile may be looked at by players", "headingPath": "TAKING NOTES AND LOOKING AT CARDS · WHAT HAPPENS IF WE MESS UP A RULE SINCE WE CAN'T GO BACK?", "sharpsignalDocId": 274}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player discard pile · ADD EPIDEMICS TO THE PLAYER DECK · SELECT CHARACTERS · BEGIN PLAY · ON YOUR TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 274}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "DRAW CARDS · EPIDEMIC CARDS · EVENT CARDS · HAND LIMIT", "sharpsignalDocId": 274}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 274 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 274 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 0.88561 of 1425 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 26, 2026 07:05 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 Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	PLAYING A LEGACY GAME · LEGACY DECK · IF YOU'VE PLAYED SEASON 1	p.4	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	Player discard pile · ADD EPIDEMICS TO THE PLAYER DECK · SELECT CHARACTERS · BEGIN PLAY · ON YOUR TURN	p.9	0.046642 (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 Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)		p.7	0.045635 (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 Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	GAME CALENDAR	p.18	0.04311 (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 Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	GAME END · TRACKING YOUR CAMPAIGN · RULE STICKER U	p.15	0.042878 (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 Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	from your Character card. DEATH	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
#7	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	Instructor: Once on your turn, as an action, give any 1 Player card to a player in your location. Farmer: Once on your turn, when doing the Make Supplies action, you may immediately do 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 Add a City Improvement sticker to a City card with an empty improvement slot. (instead of your current location) . CHARACTER ABILITIES	p.20	0.030303 (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 Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	TAKING NOTES AND LOOKING AT CARDS · WHAT HAPPENS IF WE MESS UP A RULE SINCE WE CAN'T GO BACK?	p.17	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 at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)		p.7	#3	0.045635 (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 Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	GAME CALENDAR	p.18	#4	0.04311 (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 Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	Player discard pile · ADD EPIDEMICS TO THE PLAYER DECK · SELECT CHARACTERS · BEGIN PLAY · ON YOUR TURN	p.9	#2	0.046642 (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 Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	from your Character card. DEATH	p.16	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	Instructor: Once on your turn, as an action, give any 1 Player card to a player in your location. Farmer: Once on your turn, when doing the Make Supplies action, you may immediately do 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 Add a City Improvement sticker to a City card with an empty improvement slot. (instead of your current location) . CHARACTER ABILITIES	p.20	#21	0.02393 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	Instructor: Once on your turn, as an action, give any 1 Player card to a player in your location. Farmer: Once on your turn, when doing the Make Supplies action, you may immediately do 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 Add a City Improvement sticker to a City card with an empty improvement slot. (instead of your current location) . CHARACTER ABILITIES	p.20	#12	0.026847 (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 Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	SHARE KNOWLEDGE · BUILD SUPPLY CENTER	p.10	#23	0.023529 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	DRAW CARDS · EPIDEMIC CARDS · EVENT CARDS · HAND LIMIT	p.13	#10	0.028787 (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

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	Player discard pile · ADD EPIDEMICS TO THE PLAYER DECK · SELECT CHARACTERS · BEGIN PLAY · ON YOUR TURN	p.9	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 — Rulebook (corpus doc 274)	DRAW CARDS · EPIDEMIC CARDS · EVENT CARDS · HAND LIMIT	p.13	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 111 ms · first delta 5676 ms · total 8065 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 111 ms · ask 7953 ms · gateway work 8065 ms · total 8065 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4191
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 461
tok/sec: 197.4 tok/sec — 461 output tokens in 2.335 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 2s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, 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 202), 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.