Ruling — Thunder Road: Vendetta

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Thunder Road: Vendettabg-342070-en-1e

Setup

1. Choose a starting rear road tile (either 1a: The Parking Lot or 1b: Runway to Ruin) and place it on the table.[1]

2. Shuffle the remaining road tiles to make a draw pile.[1]

3. Draw the top tile and place it in front of the rear road tile to be the middle road tile, then draw another to be the lead road tile.[1]

4. Leave remaining tiles in the draw pile and place the finish line nearby.[1]

5. Shuffle hazard tokens without looking and place one face down on each hazard space on all three tiles; place remaining tokens in a pile near the play area.[1]

6. Shuffle damage tokens without looking and place them face down in a pile near the play area.[1]

7. Place the FX dice near the play area.[1]

8. Each player chooses a crew color and takes the matching command board, 3 dashboards, 3 cars, chopper, and 4 movement dice.[1]

9. Players set up dashboards in a row and place all cars in the starting area behind the rear tile.[1]

10. Each player rolls their movement dice; players keep this roll to use during the first round.[1]

11. The player with the lowest total becomes the first player for the first round (reroll ties).[1]

12. The first player rolls the road die and places it near the board.[1]

A Turn

A turn is complete when one player finishes these four steps, in order:[2]

1. Assign one die to an operable car.[2] (Assign an unused movement die to an operable car you have not previously moved this round, placing it in the center of its dashboard; if no available cars remain, you may assign a die to the coast space on a previously moved car, up to a maximum of two times).[2]

2. Activate a COMMAND (once per round).[2] (You may assign an unused movement die to one of the commands on your command board; the command activates before your assigned car moves).[2]

3. MOVE that car.[2] (The number on the die determines how many spaces the vehicle moves; if using Nitro, increase the number of moves by the value of the assigned die, and you must move the full amount).[2]

4. SHOOT with that car (if you can).[2] (You may NOT shoot on the $1^{st}$ round).[2]

End of Turn and Round

* End of Turn: Slide the movement die on the dashboard of the moved car into the "end turn" space; that car cannot be assigned another die for regular movement this round.[3] Any cars in a space with a chopper are eliminated.[3] The player on the left (who is still in the game) takes the next turn.[3]

* End of Round: After each player has taken three turns, pass the road die to the player on the left, who becomes the first player in the next round.[3]

Moving Off the Front of the Board

When a car moves off the front of the lead road tile:

1. If it was the final tile and the car moved onto the finish line, the game ends and that player wins.[3]

2. If it was not the final tile:

* All cars on the rear tile are eliminated.[3]

* All hazard tokens on the rear tile are discarded.[3]

* All choppers on the rear tile are returned to their respective players.[3]

* Remove the rear tile, flip it, and place it on the bottom of the draw pile.[3]

* Slide the middle and lead tiles backward (they become the new rear and middle tiles).[3]

* Take the top tile from the draw pile and place it in front of the middle tile (the new lead tile).[3]

* Place random hazard tokens face down on spaces marked with double triangles on the new lead tile.[3]

* Check if the new tile is the final tile.[3]

* If the car has remaining moves, it continues moving on the new tile.[3]

Winning the Game

The game ends and you win if:

* Your car moves onto the finish line.[4]

* You are the only player left with operable cars.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook · p.4 · BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME

[2] RULEBOOK Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook · p.8 · TURNS AND ROUNDS · START OF ROUND · ON YOUR TURN · AIRSTRIKE (ANY DIE) · NITRO (1-3) · DRIFT (3-5)

[3] RULEBOOK Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook · p.11 · MOVING OFF THE FRONT OF THE BOARD · THE FINAL TILE · 2 players: · 3 or more players: · END OF TURN · END OF ROUND

[4] RULEBOOK Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook · p.11 · OUT OF THE GAME · WINNING THE GAME

So says the rulebook. So plays 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 86 ms · ask 6063 ms · total 17391 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 11240 ms · generation 6151 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "1 Choose a starting rear road tile (either 1a: The Parking Lot -OR- 1b: Runway to Ruin) and place it on the table. Shuffle the remaining road tiles to make a draw pile. Draw the top tile and place it in front of the rear road tile, making it the middle road tile . Draw another one to be the lead roa", "headingPath": "BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 359}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "Thunder Road: Vendetta is played in turns and rounds. A turn is complete when one player finishes steps 1-4 (see below) . A round is complete when each player has taken three turns. All players roll their four movement dice. (On the first round, use the dice you rolled during setup when determining ", "headingPath": "TURNS AND ROUNDS · START OF ROUND · ON YOUR TURN · AIRSTRIKE (ANY DIE) · NITRO (1-3) · DRIFT (3-5)", "sharpsignalDocId": 359}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "Thunder Road: Vendetta is a game of fast turns and dicey decisions. Command your crew of cars as they race over perilous roads, dodge hazards, slam into cars, and fire those guns. When all else fails, call in the chopper! Be the first player to move one of your cars onto the Finish Line -ORbe the la", "headingPath": "READY. AIM. DRIVE! · HOW TO WIN THIS RACE · BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 359}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "Left edge Right edge The game is played on a series of road tiles. Three tiles are used at a time: a rear tile, a middle tile, and a lead tile (collectively referred to as the board ). Cars travel from the rear tile to the middle tile to the lead tile. When a car moves off the front edge of the lead", "headingPath": "BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME · ROAD TILES & THE BOARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 359}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "A player is out of the game if all of their cars are eliminated or inoperable. Remove that player's chopper from play. That player's inoperable cars stay on the board. That player takes no more turns for the rest of the game. The game ends and you win if either: µ Your car moves onto the finish line", "headingPath": "OUT OF THE GAME · WINNING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 359}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.045688, "snippet": "When a car moves off the FRONT of the lead road tile, one of two things happens: µ If it WAS the final tile and the car moved onto the finish line, the game ends and that player wins! µ If it WASN'T the final tile, update the board: 1 All cars on the rear tile are eliminated. 2 All hazard tokens on ", "headingPath": "MOVING OFF THE FRONT OF THE BOARD · THE FINAL TILE · 2 players: · 3 or more players: · END OF TURN · END OF ROUND", "sharpsignalDocId": 359}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "10 First Round: Skip this step in the first round. Your guns are not online until the second round. The car you moved, or the chopper you placed, may shoot according to these rules: µ You can shoot a road vehicle in the front arc of your car or chopper (see Front Arc, page 9) . µ If you have more th", "headingPath": "SLAMMING · THE SHOOTING DIE", "sharpsignalDocId": 359}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "If two road vehicles are ever stacked in the same space, they slam into each other. This can happen during a move or from hazards or damage effects. When this happens, the moving road vehicle loses any remaining moves it has. Then, immediately resolve the slam: 1 Roll the slam die and direction die ", "headingPath": "SLAMMING", "sharpsignalDocId": 359}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 359}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TURNS AND ROUNDS · START OF ROUND · ON YOUR TURN · AIRSTRIKE (ANY DIE) · NITRO (1-3) · DRIFT (3-5)", "sharpsignalDocId": 359}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MOVING OFF THE FRONT OF THE BOARD · THE FINAL TILE · 2 players: · 3 or more players: · END OF TURN · END OF ROUND", "sharpsignalDocId": 359}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "OUT OF THE GAME · WINNING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 359}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 359 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 359 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 0.90081 of 2954 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 26, 2026 12:13 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 Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME	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 Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	TURNS AND ROUNDS · START OF ROUND · ON YOUR TURN · AIRSTRIKE (ANY DIE) · NITRO (1-3) · DRIFT (3-5)	p.8	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 Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	READY. AIM. DRIVE! · HOW TO WIN THIS RACE · BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME	p.2	0.047123 (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 Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME · ROAD TILES & THE BOARD	p.5	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 Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	OUT OF THE GAME · WINNING THE GAME	p.11	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
#6	RULEBOOK Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	MOVING OFF THE FRONT OF THE BOARD · THE FINAL TILE · 2 players: · 3 or more players: · END OF TURN · END OF ROUND	p.11	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 Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	SLAMMING · THE SHOOTING DIE	p.10	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
#8	RULEBOOK Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	SLAMMING	p.9	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 17 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 Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME · ROAD TILES & THE BOARD	p.5	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	TURNS AND ROUNDS · START OF ROUND · ON YOUR TURN · AIRSTRIKE (ANY DIE) · NITRO (1-3) · DRIFT (3-5)	p.8	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	OUT OF THE GAME · WINNING THE GAME	p.11	#5	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
#4	RULEBOOK Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	A car is eliminated if it:	p.6	#9	0.028259 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME	p.3	#10	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 Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	MOVING OFF THE FRONT OF THE BOARD · THE FINAL TILE · 2 players: · 3 or more players: · END OF TURN · END OF ROUND	p.11	#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 Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	READY. AIM. DRIVE! · HOW TO WIN THIS RACE · BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME	p.2	#3	0.047123 (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 Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	TURNS AND ROUNDS · START OF ROUND · ON YOUR TURN · AIRSTRIKE (ANY DIE) · NITRO (1-3) · DRIFT (3-5)	p.8	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	MOVING OFF THE FRONT OF THE BOARD · THE FINAL TILE · 2 players: · 3 or more players: · END OF TURN · END OF ROUND	p.11	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Thunder Road: Vendetta — Rulebook (corpus doc 359)	OUT OF THE GAME · WINNING THE GAME	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 86 ms · first delta 1455 ms · total 17391 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 11240 ms · retrieval 86 ms · ask 6063 ms · gateway work 6151 ms · total 17391 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2430
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 942
tok/sec: 202.6 tok/sec — 942 output tokens in 4.650 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 58s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, 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 288), 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.