Ruling — Marvel United: X-Men

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Marvel United: X-Menbg-336382-en-1e

The game begins with the Villain taking their turn.[1] The sequence of turns is 1 Villain Turn, followed by 3 clockwise Hero Turns; after the first Mission is completed, the sequence becomes 1 Villain Turn every 2 Hero Turns.[2]

Villain Turn

1. At the start of their turn (including the start of the game), the Villain player draws the top card from the Master Plan deck.[3]

2. The Villain player chooses 1 card from their hand and plays it into the Storyline.[3]

3. The elements of the Master Plan card are executed in order, from top to bottom.[1][2]

4. Move the Villain clockwise the number of Locations indicated on the card.[1][2]

5. Resolve the effect on any Threat card in the Location where the Villain ends their movement.[1]

6. Trigger effects on Resolve BAM! from the Villain Dashboard and Threat cards.[2]

7. Resolve any special effect on the card.[2]

8. Add the indicated tokens to the Locations around the Villain.[2]

9. Resolve the Overflow effect on any Location where tokens could not be added.[2]

Hero Turn

Players collectively choose which Hero starts the game, and players take turns in clockwise order.[4] During a turn, players follow these steps in order:

1. DRAW A CARD: The active player draws the top card from their Hero deck into their hand.[4] If the Hero was KO'd, they draw up to 4 cards instead.[4] If the deck runs out, the player does not draw a card.[4]

2. PLAY A CARD: The active player chooses a Hero card from their hand and adds it to the end of the Storyline, to the right of the last card played.[4]

3. RESOLVE ACTIONS: The player can perform actions in any order based on the symbols at the bottom of the card just played and the bottom of the previous Hero card in the Storyline.[4] Actions include:

* Moving to an adjacent Location.[2]

* Dealing 1 damage to an enemy at the player's Location (defeating 1 Thug, removing 1 Health from a Henchman, or removing 1 Health from the Villain after completing 2 Missions).[2]

* Rescuing 1 Civilian or placing 1 Heroic Action token on the Threat at the player's Location.[2]

* Resolving any action.[2]

4. RESOLVE SPECIAL EFFECTS: Resolve any Special Effects on the card.[2]

5. SPEND ACTION TOKENS: Spend any Action tokens to resolve their action.[2]

6. LOCATION EFFECT: The player may resolve the visible End of Turn effect of their Location.[2]

Hero Damage and KO'd

* When taking damage, a player must discard 1 card from their hand to the bottom of their deck per damage suffered.[2]

* A Hero is KO'd if they discard the last card in their hand.[2]

* When KO'd, the player lays the Hero game piece down and activates the Villain's BAM!.[2] (In Solo Mode, if the player is KO'd, they immediately lose [5]).

* At the start of the next turn, the player places all Hero pieces back upright.[5]

Winning and Losing

* Heroes Win: If they defeat the Villain by removing all Health tokens (which requires completing at least 2 Missions first).[1][2]

* Heroes Lose: If the Villain completes their Villainous Plot on their Dashboard; if the Villain must draw a Master Plan card but their deck is empty; or if any Hero starts their turn with no cards in both their deck and their hand.[1][2]

[1] RULEBOOK Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook · p.5 · components · WINNING & LOSING · Villain Turn · MOVE VILLAIN

[2] RULEBOOK Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook · p.16 · RULES SUMMARY · VILLAIN TURN · HERO TURN · HERO DAMAGE · WINNING & LOSING · Heroes lose if:

[3] RULEBOOK Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook · p.12 · Villain Turn

[4] RULEBOOK Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook · p.7 · Hero Turn · 1. DRAW A CARD · 2. PLAY A CARD · 3. RESOLVE ACTIONS

[5] RULEBOOK Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook · p.14 · XAVIER Solo Mode · SPECIAL SETUP · SPECIAL RULES · SUPER VILLAIN VS XAVIER SOLO MODE · Special setup:

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 72 ms · ask 7312 ms · total 22067 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 14680 ms · generation 7387 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 7, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "Once the Master Plan card is fully resolved, it's time for the Heroes to act! Players collectively choose which Hero will start the game. Then, they will take their turns in clockwise order until the end of the game. During their turn, players follow these steps in order: DRAW A CARD PLAY A CARD RES", "headingPath": "Hero Turn · 1. DRAW A CARD · 2. PLAY A CARD · 3. RESOLVE ACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 516}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "At the start of each of their turns (including the start of the game) the Villain player draws the top card from the Master Plan deck, then chooses 1 card from their hand and plays it into the Storyline. (If the Master Plan deck is empty, the Villain simply plays a card from their hand. If they have", "headingPath": "Villain Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 516}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045743, "snippet": "Shuffle the Villain's Threat cards and place 1 faceup on the slot at the bottom of each Location (covering the End of Turn effect), adding a Threat token to the slots next to them. Some Threat cards contain Henchmen, characters in the service of the Villain. Each of their cards indicate the number o", "headingPath": "components · WINNING & LOSING · Villain Turn · MOVE VILLAIN", "sharpsignalDocId": 516}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045445, "snippet": "Once the active player has completed all the steps of their turn, the next player in clockwise order becomes the active player, performing their turn. Each time 3 Hero cards have been added to the Storyline, a new Master Plan card is drawn from the deck, added to the end of the Storyline, and resolv", "headingPath": "Turn Sequence · UNDER PRESSURE · Rescue Civilians · Defeat Thugs", "sharpsignalDocId": 516}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.044776, "snippet": "Remember that Missions can be completed in any order. Once all the slots on a Mission card are filled, the Mission is complete! Remove its card from the game, returning its tokens to the pool. If necessary, move the remaining Missions to the right so that the leftmost slots are left empty, unlocking", "headingPath": "Completing Missions · SPECIAL MISSION: USE CEREBRO · Hero Damage", "sharpsignalDocId": 516}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.044589, "snippet": "If a Hero discards the last card from their hand, they are immediately KO'd. Lay down that Hero's game piece to indicate that it must be ignored by all game effects, both negative and positive. Then, immediately resolve the BAM! effect listed on the Villain Dashboard (but not those on any Henchman T", "headingPath": "KO", "sharpsignalDocId": 516}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.044103, "snippet": "The basic game is designed to introduce the game to new players and provide a reasonable challenge for families. Players can add Challenges to the game in order to up the difficulty and introduce new twists. There are 3 Challenges included in this set. Other expansions will provide players with addi", "headingPath": "Challenges", "sharpsignalDocId": 516}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.042925, "snippet": "In Marvel United: X-Men, 1 to 4 players take the role(s) of Heroes working together to thwart the master plan of a Villain. Alternatively, in Super Villain Mode, 1 player takes the role of the Villain going up against up to 4 Hero players. Players build a Storyline by drawing the Villain's cards and", "headingPath": "overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 516}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "components · WINNING & LOSING · Villain Turn · MOVE VILLAIN", "sharpsignalDocId": 516}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "RULES SUMMARY · VILLAIN TURN · HERO TURN · HERO DAMAGE · WINNING & LOSING · Heroes lose if:", "sharpsignalDocId": 516}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Villain Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 516}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Hero Turn · 1. DRAW A CARD · 2. PLAY A CARD · 3. RESOLVE ACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 516}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "XAVIER Solo Mode · SPECIAL SETUP · SPECIAL RULES · SUPER VILLAIN VS XAVIER SOLO MODE · Special setup:", "sharpsignalDocId": 516}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 516 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 516 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 0.89232 of 2656 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 Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	Hero Turn · 1. DRAW A CARD · 2. PLAY A CARD · 3. RESOLVE ACTIONS	p.7	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
#2	RULEBOOK Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	Villain Turn	p.12	0.048131 (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 Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	components · WINNING & LOSING · Villain Turn · MOVE VILLAIN	p.5	0.045743 (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 Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	Turn Sequence · UNDER PRESSURE · Rescue Civilians · Defeat Thugs	p.9	0.045445 (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 Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	Completing Missions · SPECIAL MISSION: USE CEREBRO · Hero Damage	p.10	0.044776 (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 Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	KO	p.10	0.044589 (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 Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	Challenges	p.11	0.044103 (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 Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	overview	p.2	0.042925 (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 31 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 Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	Hero Turn · 1. DRAW A CARD · 2. PLAY A CARD · 3. RESOLVE ACTIONS	p.7	#1	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
#2	RULEBOOK Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	XAVIER Solo Mode · SPECIAL SETUP · SPECIAL RULES · SUPER VILLAIN VS XAVIER SOLO MODE · Special setup:	p.14	#9	0.030282 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)		p.2	#14	0.027242 (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 Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	Challenges	p.11	#7	0.044103 (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 Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	components · WINNING & LOSING · Villain Turn · MOVE VILLAIN	p.5	#3	0.045743 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	RULES SUMMARY · VILLAIN TURN · HERO TURN · HERO DAMAGE · WINNING & LOSING · Heroes lose if:	p.16	#12	0.02879 (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 Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	overview	p.2	#8	0.042925 (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 Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	Villain Turn	p.12	#2	0.048131 (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 Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	components · WINNING & LOSING · Villain Turn · MOVE VILLAIN	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	RULES SUMMARY · VILLAIN TURN · HERO TURN · HERO DAMAGE · WINNING & LOSING · Heroes lose if:	p.16	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	Villain Turn	p.12	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	Hero Turn · 1. DRAW A CARD · 2. PLAY A CARD · 3. RESOLVE ACTIONS	p.7	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Marvel United: X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 516)	XAVIER Solo Mode · SPECIAL SETUP · SPECIAL RULES · SUPER VILLAIN VS XAVIER SOLO MODE · Special setup:	p.14	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 72 ms · first delta 3318 ms · total 22067 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 14680 ms · retrieval 72 ms · ask 7312 ms · gateway work 7387 ms · total 22067 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3116
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 813
tok/sec: 202.3 tok/sec — 813 output tokens in 4.018 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 43s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 2s 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 448), 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.