Ruling — Splendor: Marvel

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Splendor: Marvelbg-293296-en-1e

To play the game, follow these steps:

Setup

1. Separate Character cards by level and shuffle each deck separately, placing them facedown in a column with level 1 at the bottom, level 2 in the middle, and level 3 at the top.[1]

2. Deal 4 cards from each level and place them to the right of their respective decks.[1]

3. Select a number of Location tiles at random equal to the number of players and place them with a random side faceup above the Character cards.[1]

4. Place the Infinity Gauntlet tile and the Avengers Assemble tile above the Locations.[1]

5. Place the S.H.I.E.L.D. tokens next to the Locations.[1]

6. Place the 4 Green tokens in a pile near the Infinity Gauntlet tile.[1]

7. Place the 5 remaining Infinity Stone token piles (sorted by color) within reach of all players.[1]

8. Adjust token counts based on player count:

* For 2 players: Remove 3 Yellow, Red, Orange, Blue, and Purple tokens; remove 2 Green tokens; keep all 5 Gray tokens; and select 2 random Location tiles.[1]

* For 3 players: Remove 2 Yellow, Red, Orange, Blue, and Purple tokens; remove 1 Green token; keep all 5 Gray tokens; and select 3 random Location tiles.[1]

Gameplay

1. The youngest player begins, and play proceeds clockwise.[2]

2. On a turn, a player must perform one of the following four actions:

* Take 3 tokens of 3 different colors, excluding Gray or Green.[2] If there are not enough tokens to take 3 different colors, you may take 2 different colors or 1 token.[2]

* Take 2 tokens of the same color, provided there are at least 4 tokens of that color available before the action; this cannot be used for Gray or Green tokens.[2]

* Reserve 1 Character card and take 1 S.H.I.E.L.D. (Gray) token.[2] To reserve, a player takes a faceup character from the middle or draws the top card from one of the three decks without showing others.[2] Reserved cards are kept in hand (maximum of 3) and cannot be discarded.[3]

* Recruit 1 faceup Character card from the middle of the play area or one previously reserved.[2] To recruit, a player must spend the tokens shown on the card.[3]

3. After an action, if a player has more than 10 tokens in total (including Gray and Green), they must return tokens of their choice to the middle until they have 10 remaining, though Green tokens cannot be returned.[2]

4. At the end of a turn, a player checks Location tiles; if they have the required quantity and types of bonuses (not tokens), they must take the tile, place it in front of them, and gain the 3 Infinity Points depicted.[4] Taking a Location is not an action.[4]

5. When a Character card is recruited or reserved, it must be immediately replaced by a card of the same level.[3]

Winning the Game

1. The game ends when a player meets the conditions for the Infinity Gauntlet: having at least 16 Infinity Points, 1 bonus of each color, and 1 Green token.[4]

2. Complete the current round so every player has played the same number of turns.[5]

3. The winner is determined as follows:

* If the player meeting the Infinity Gauntlet conditions is the last to play in the round, they win immediately.[5]

* If no one meets the conditions at the end of the final round, the player meeting the conditions wins.[5]

* If multiple players meet the conditions, the player with the most Infinity Points wins.[5]

* If tied, the player owning the Avenger tile wins.[5]

* If still tied, the player with the fewest Character cards wins.[5]

* If a tie persists, players share victory.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook · p.2 · GAME SETUP · With 2 players · With 3 players

[2] RULEBOOK Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook · p.3 · Game Overview · GAMEPLAY · Token Pool Limit · CHARACTER CARDS · Reserving a Character Card

[3] RULEBOOK Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook · p.3 · The player then takes a S.H.I.E.L.D. token . · Recruiting a Character Card · Bonuses

[4] RULEBOOK Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook · p.4 · Location Tiles · End of the Game · The Time Stone · The Avengers Assemble Tile

[5] RULEBOOK Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook · p.4 · WINNING THE GAME

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 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 85 ms · ask 5322 ms · total 8195 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 2786 ms · generation 5409 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "At the end of their turn, a player must check the Location tiles in the middle of the play area. If they have the required quantity and types of bonuses (tokens are not taken into account) shown on that Location tile, they must take that tile, place it in front of them and gain the 3 Infinity Points", "headingPath": "Location Tiles · End of the Game · The Time Stone · The Avengers Assemble Tile", "sharpsignalDocId": 534}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "During the game, the players collect tokens. With these tokens, they recruit Character cards, which are worth Infinity Points and/or provide a bonus. These bonuses allow players to recruit subsequent Character cards at a discount. When a player has enough bonuses, they immediately take the matching ", "headingPath": "Game Overview · GAMEPLAY · Token Pool Limit · CHARACTER CARDS · Reserving a Character Card", "sharpsignalDocId": 534}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "The reserved cards are kept in hand and cannot be discarded. Players cannot have more than 3 reserved cards in hand, and the only way to remove a card from their hand is to recruit it (see below). Reserving a card is the only way to get a S.H.I.E.L.D. token. If there are no Gray tokens left, you can", "headingPath": "The player then takes a S.H.I.E.L.D. token . · Recruiting a Character Card · Bonuses", "sharpsignalDocId": 534}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "Complete the current round so that each player has played the same number of turns. If the player meeting the Infinity Gauntlet conditions is the last one to play in the round, they win immediately. If no other player has met the conditions for assembling the Infinity Gauntlet at the end of the fina", "headingPath": "WINNING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 534}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046154, "snippet": "In Splendor: Marvel, you are in command of a team of Super Heroes who are trying to prevent Thanos from collecting Infinity Stones. Bring together a powerful team, acquire iconic Locations, and score enough Infinity Points to claim the Gauntlet! Separate the Character cards by their level and shuffl", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP · With 2 players · With 3 players", "sharpsignalDocId": 534}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP · With 2 players · With 3 players", "sharpsignalDocId": 534}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Overview · GAMEPLAY · Token Pool Limit · CHARACTER CARDS · Reserving a Character Card", "sharpsignalDocId": 534}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The player then takes a S.H.I.E.L.D. token . · Recruiting a Character Card · Bonuses", "sharpsignalDocId": 534}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Location Tiles · End of the Game · The Time Stone · The Avengers Assemble Tile", "sharpsignalDocId": 534}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "WINNING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 534}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 534 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 534 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 0.90070 of 2860 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 26, 2026 09:35 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 Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	Location Tiles · End of the Game · The Time Stone · The Avengers Assemble Tile	p.4	0.04866 (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 Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	Game Overview · GAMEPLAY · Token Pool Limit · CHARACTER CARDS · Reserving a Character Card	p.3	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
#3	RULEBOOK Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	The player then takes a S.H.I.E.L.D. token . · Recruiting a Character Card · Bonuses	p.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))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	WINNING THE GAME	p.4	0.047371 (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 Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	GAME SETUP · With 2 players · With 3 players	p.2	0.046154 (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 5 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 Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	Game Overview · GAMEPLAY · Token Pool Limit · CHARACTER CARDS · Reserving a Character Card	p.3	#2	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 Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	The player then takes a S.H.I.E.L.D. token . · Recruiting a Character Card · Bonuses	p.3	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	WINNING THE GAME	p.4	#4	0.047371 (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 Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	Location Tiles · End of the Game · The Time Stone · The Avengers Assemble Tile	p.4	#1	0.04866 (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 Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	GAME SETUP · With 2 players · With 3 players	p.2	#5	0.046154 (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 Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	GAME SETUP · With 2 players · With 3 players	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	Game Overview · GAMEPLAY · Token Pool Limit · CHARACTER CARDS · Reserving a Character Card	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	The player then takes a S.H.I.E.L.D. token . · Recruiting a Character Card · Bonuses	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	Location Tiles · End of the Game · The Time Stone · The Avengers Assemble Tile	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Splendor: Marvel — Rulebook (corpus doc 534)	WINNING THE GAME	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 85 ms · first delta 927 ms · total 8195 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 2786 ms · retrieval 85 ms · ask 5322 ms · gateway work 5409 ms · total 8195 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2470
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 897
tok/sec: 202.6 tok/sec — 897 output tokens in 4.428 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 35s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, 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 466), 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.