Ruling — Marvel United

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Marvel Unitedbg-298047-en-1e

2 to 4 players take the role of Heroes working together to thwart the master plan of a Villain.[1] The game always starts with the Villain taking their turn.[2]

Villain Turn

1. Draw the top card from the Master Plan deck and place it faceup on the table.[2]

2. Move the Villain clockwise (unless otherwise indicated) a number of Locations equal to the number shown on the card.[2]

3. If there is a Threat card with the symbol in the Location where the Villain ends their movement, immediately resolve the effect described on that Threat card.[2]

4. Resolve effects in order, from top to bottom.[3]

5. Resolve BAM! effects on Villain and Threat cards.[3]

6. Add the indicated tokens to the Locations around the Villain.[3]

7. Resolve any special effect on the card.[3]

Hero Turn

Players take turns in clockwise order.[2][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 a Hero was KO'd, they draw up of 4 cards instead.[3][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] You may play the same Hero as the last card played.[5]

3. RESOLVE ACTIONS: In any order, the player resolves all symbols at the bottom of the card just played and the previous Hero card in the Storyline.[3][4] Actions include:

* Move to an adjacent Location.[3]

* Deal 1 damage to an enemy at your Location (Defeat 1 Thug, or Remove 1 Health from a Henchman, or Remove 1 Health from Villain after completing 2 Missions).[3]

* Rescue 1 Civilian or place 1 Heroic Action token on the Threat at your Location (3 needed to clear it).[3]

* Resolve any action.[3]

* Resolve any Special Effects on your card.[3]

* Spend any action tokens to resolve their action.[3]

4. LOCATION EFFECT: The player may resolve the visible 'End of Turn' effect of their Location.[3]

Game Progression and Rules

* Turn Sequence: 1 Villain Turn, then 3 clockwise Hero Turns.[3] After the first Mission is completed, the sequence becomes 1 Villain Turn every 2 Hero Turns.[6][3]

* Master Plan: Each time 3 Hero cards are added to the Storyline, a new Master Plan card is drawn, added to the end of the Storyline, and resolved.[6]

* Missions: Heroes must complete at least 2 of the 3 available Missions to damage the Villain directly.[1][2] Once the first Mission is complete, the Villain becomes "Under Pressure".[7][6]

* Damage and KO: For each damage a Hero takes, they must discard 1 card from their hand to the bottom of their deck.[7][3] If a Hero discards their last card, they are immediately KO'd.[7][3] A KO'd Hero's piece is laid down and ignored by all effects until the start of their next turn.[7][3]

* Winning and Losing:

* Heroes win if they remove all Health tokens from the Villain.[7][3]

* Heroes lose if the Villain completes their master plan, which happens if: the Villain achieves the conditions of the Villainous Plot on their Dashboard; the Villain must draw a Master Plan card but their deck is empty; or a Hero starts their turn with no cards in both their deck and hand.[2][3]

[1] RULEBOOK Marvel United — Rulebook · p.2 · overview

[2] RULEBOOK Marvel United — Rulebook · p.5 · components · WINNING & LOSING · Villain Turn · MOVE VILLAIN

[3] RULEBOOK Marvel United — Rulebook · p.12 · RULES SUMMARY · VILLAIN TURN · HERO TURN · HERO DAMAGE · WINNING & LOSING

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

[5] RULEBOOK Marvel United — Rulebook · p.11 · SPECIAL RULES:

[6] RULEBOOK Marvel United — Rulebook · p.9 · Turn Sequence · UNDER PRESSURE · Rescue Civilians · Defeat Thugs

[7] RULEBOOK Marvel United — Rulebook · p.10 · Completing Missions · KO

The table has its answer — dice up.

🔧 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 197 ms · ask 6653 ms · total 6852 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6852 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 7, "score": 0.048916, "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": 438}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Turns are resolved in the normal sequence, with you playing every Hero turn. Each turn, you may play the card of any Hero in your hand, even if it's the same Hero as the last card played. You always benefit normally from the symbols on the previously played card (but not from their Special Effect, e", "headingPath": "SPECIAL RULES:", "sharpsignalDocId": 438}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "Remember that Missions can be completed in any order. Once all slots of 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 the", "headingPath": "Completing Missions · KO", "sharpsignalDocId": 438}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "Shuffle the Villain's Threat cards and place 1 faceup on the slots 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 numbe", "headingPath": "components · WINNING & LOSING · Villain Turn · MOVE VILLAIN", "sharpsignalDocId": 438}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045695, "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": 438}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "1 Villain Turn, then 3 clockwise Hero Turns. Continue until first Mission is completed, then 1 Villain Turn every 2 Hero Turns. Add 1 Master Plan card to the Storyline. Resolve effects in order, from top to bottom. Move clockwise this number of Locations . Trigger final Location. effect on Resolve B", "headingPath": "RULES SUMMARY · VILLAIN TURN · HERO TURN · HERO DAMAGE · WINNING & LOSING", "sharpsignalDocId": 438}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.044589, "snippet": "In Marvel United , 2 to 4 players take the role of Heroes working together to thwart the master plan of a Villain. You'll build a Storyline by drawing the Villain's cards and playing your own Hero cards to counter the Villain's schemes. Your cards allow you to move your Hero around, rescue Civilians", "headingPath": "overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 438}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.044343, "snippet": "SOLO MODE ................................................11 CREDITS ........................................................................11 RULES SUMMARY .........................................................12 overviewoverview In Marvel United, 2 to 4 players take the role of Heroes working ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 438}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 438}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "components · WINNING & LOSING · Villain Turn · MOVE VILLAIN", "sharpsignalDocId": 438}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "RULES SUMMARY · VILLAIN TURN · HERO TURN · HERO DAMAGE · WINNING & LOSING", "sharpsignalDocId": 438}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Hero Turn · 1. DRAW A CARD · 2. PLAY A CARD · 3. RESOLVE ACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 438}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SPECIAL RULES:", "sharpsignalDocId": 438}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Turn Sequence · UNDER PRESSURE · Rescue Civilians · Defeat Thugs", "sharpsignalDocId": 438}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Completing Missions · KO", "sharpsignalDocId": 438}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 438 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 438 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 0.88586 of 2637 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 26, 2026 20:09 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 — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	Hero Turn · 1. DRAW A CARD · 2. PLAY A CARD · 3. RESOLVE ACTIONS	p.7	0.048916 (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 — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	SPECIAL RULES:	p.11	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 Marvel United — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	Completing Missions · KO	p.10	0.047619 (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 — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	components · WINNING & LOSING · Villain Turn · MOVE VILLAIN	p.5	0.046402 (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 — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	Turn Sequence · UNDER PRESSURE · Rescue Civilians · Defeat Thugs	p.9	0.045695 (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 — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	RULES SUMMARY · VILLAIN TURN · HERO TURN · HERO DAMAGE · WINNING & LOSING	p.12	0.044796 (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 — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	overview	p.2	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
#8	RULEBOOK Marvel United — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)		p.2	0.044343 (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 22 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 — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	SPECIAL RULES:	p.11	#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 Marvel United — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	overview	p.2	#7	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Marvel United — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	components · WINNING & LOSING · Villain Turn · MOVE VILLAIN	p.5	#4	0.046402 (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 Marvel United — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	Additional Rules · S.H.I.E.L.D. Solo Mode · SPECIAL SETUP:	p.11	#9	0.029514 (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 Marvel United — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	Completing Missions · KO	p.10	#3	0.047619 (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 — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	Turn Sequence · UNDER PRESSURE · Rescue Civilians · Defeat Thugs	p.9	#5	0.045695 (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 Marvel United — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	RULES SUMMARY · VILLAIN TURN · HERO TURN · HERO DAMAGE · WINNING & LOSING	p.12	#6	0.044796 (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 — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	Hero Turn · 1. DRAW A CARD · 2. PLAY A CARD · 3. RESOLVE ACTIONS	p.7	#1	0.048916 (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 — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	overview	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Marvel United — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	components · WINNING & LOSING · Villain Turn · MOVE VILLAIN	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Marvel United — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	RULES SUMMARY · VILLAIN TURN · HERO TURN · HERO DAMAGE · WINNING & LOSING	p.12	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Marvel United — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	Hero Turn · 1. DRAW A CARD · 2. PLAY A CARD · 3. RESOLVE ACTIONS	p.7	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Marvel United — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	SPECIAL RULES:	p.11	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Marvel United — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	Turn Sequence · UNDER PRESSURE · Rescue Civilians · Defeat Thugs	p.9	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Marvel United — Rulebook (corpus doc 438)	Completing Missions · KO	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 197 ms · first delta 2685 ms · total 6852 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 197 ms · ask 6653 ms · gateway work 6852 ms · total 6852 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3169
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 830
tok/sec: 202.0 tok/sec — 830 output tokens in 4.109 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 47s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, checked 8s 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 369), 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.