Ruling — Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Gamebg-150376-en-1e

Dead of Winter is played over a series of rounds.[1] Each round is divided into two phases that must be played in order: the Player Turns Phase and the Colony Phase.[1]

Setup

1. Place the colony board in the center of the play area and place the 6 location cards around it.[2]

2. Deal 4 survivor cards to each player; each player chooses 2 to keep and returns the others to the deck, then re-shuffle the survivor deck.[2]

3. Each player collects a player reference sheet.[2]

4. Players choose or randomly pick a standard main objective, place it in its space on the colony board, and set up the game board according to that objective's instructions.[2]

5. Shuffle the non-betrayal secret objective cards and set aside 2 face-down per player.[2]

6. Shuffle the betrayal secret objective cards, add 1 to the non-betrayal cards set aside, and shuffle all these cards together to deal 1 to each player.[2]

7. Shuffle the crisis cards and place the deck on its space on the colony board.[2]

8. Shuffle and make decks of the survivor, exiled objective, and crossroad cards and place them off to the side.[2]

9. Shuffle all starter item cards and deal 5 to each player.[2]

10. Separate remaining item cards into decks according to their location, shuffle each, and place them on their corresponding location card.[2]

11. Each player chooses 1 of their 2 survivors to be their group leader, placing them in the respective space on their reference card, and places the other survivor in their "followers" area.[2]

12. Add the corresponding survivor standees for each player's survivors to the colony.[2]

Player Turns Phase

During this phase, the following three effects are resolved in order:

1. Reveal Crisis: Reveal the top card of the crisis deck; its effect will take place during the colony phase if not prevented by players contributing the correct type of cards.[1]

2. Roll Action Dice: Each player removes any remaining action dice from their used and unused pools.[1] Each player receives 1 action die, plus 1 additional die for each survivor they control.[1] Players must roll all action dice and keep the results in their unused action dice pool.[1]

3. Player Turns: Starting with the first player, each player takes a turn, with play continuing clockwise.[1]

* At the beginning of a player's turn, the player to her right draws a crossroads card.[1][3]

* On a turn, a player may perform multiple actions.[1]

* Some actions require spending an action die (moving it from the unused pool to the used pool), and some require specific die results.[1]

* Actions include: Playing a card (placing it on the waste pile, or equipping it to a survivor), Searching, Barricading, Cleaning Waste (3 cards), Attracting (2 zombies), Paying Food, and more.[4][5]

* Once a player finishes their desired actions or runs out of actions, play passes to the player on their left.[1]

Colony Phase

The Colony Phase begins once each player has taken a turn.[1] The steps in this phase are:

1. Pay Food.[4]

2. Check Waste.[4]

3. Resolve Crisis.[4]

4. Add Zombies.[4]

5. Check Main Objective.[4]

6. Move Round Tracker.[4]

7. Pass First Player Token.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook · p.8 · ROUND ORDER · PLAYER TURNS PHASE · PLAYER TURN ACTIONS

[2] RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook · p.6 · GAME SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook · p.12 · RESOLVING CROSSROADS CARDS · Example : REsolving a crisis

[4] RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook · p.7

[5] RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook · p.10 · Actions that do not require an Action Die

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 202 ms · ask 8521 ms · total 8725 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8725 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "Play a Card: As many times as he likes during his turn, a player may play a card from his hand. To play a card, place it on top of the waste pile. Reminder: For every 10 cards in the waste pile during the check waste step the colony will lose 1 morale. A card with an equip ability is not placed in t", "headingPath": "Actions that do not require an Action Die", "sharpsignalDocId": 383}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "Place the colony board in the center of the play area and place the 6 location cards around it as shown or as best accommodates your table. Deal 4 survivor cards to each player. Each player then chooses 2 to keep and returns the others to the deck. Re-shuffle the survivor deck. Each player collects ", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 383}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "Dead of Winter is played over a series of rounds. Each round is divided into 2 phases that must be played in order. Player Turns Phase Colony Phase During the player turns phase resolve the following 3 effects in order. Reveal Crisis: Reveal the top card of the crisis deck. This card's effect will t", "headingPath": "ROUND ORDER · PLAYER TURNS PHASE · PLAYER TURN ACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 383}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.045945, "snippet": "Stop! If you want us to teach you how to play, you can visit plaidhatgames.com and watch a video explanation.", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 383}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.044557, "snippet": "7 Library HOSPITAL GAS STATION POLICE STATION GROCERY STORE SCHOOL ROUND SUMMARY GROUP LEADER SECRET OBJECTIVE FOLLOWERS PLAYER TURN ACTIONS PLAYER TURNS PHASE 1. Reveal Crisis 2. Roll Action Dice 3. Player T urns COLONY PHASE 1. Pay Food 2. Check W aste 3. Resolve Crisis 4. Add Zombies 5. Check Mai", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 383}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.044468, "snippet": "If you revealed any outsider cards you may place 1 into your hand. Shuffle the remaining cards back into the search deck. 2 3 ALEXIS GREY Librarian 46 LIBRARY: Once per round, when performing a search at the library you may look at and keep 1 additional card. 5 4 ROUND SUMMARY GROUP LEADER SECRET OB", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 383}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.044337, "snippet": "Add a Card to the Crisis: A player may add 1 or more cards from his hand and/or cards that are equipped to survivors he controls to the currently revealed crisis card. Cards added to a crisis from a player's hand are added face down so that no other player can see them. Adding cards that match a sym", "headingPath": "Actions that do not require an Action Die", "sharpsignalDocId": 383}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.030886, "snippet": "During the game players may be given the option to vote with a thumbs up or down, either because a player initiated a vote to exile or because a crossroads card called for a vote to be cast. Players may take time to deliberate before casting their vote. Once players are ready to vote, count down fro", "headingPath": "VOTING · CARD TEXT · ROLEPLAYING, SECRET OBJECTIVES AND GAME BALANCE · CO-OP VARIANT · 2 PLAYER VARIANT · BETRAYER VARIANT · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 383}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ROUND ORDER · PLAYER TURNS PHASE · PLAYER TURN ACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 383}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 383}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "RESOLVING CROSSROADS CARDS · Example : REsolving a crisis", "sharpsignalDocId": 383}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 383}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Actions that do not require an Action Die", "sharpsignalDocId": 383}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 383 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 383 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 0.89524 of 2625 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 26, 2026 21:56 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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)	Actions that do not require an Action Die	p.10	0.047883 (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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)	GAME SETUP	p.6	0.047875 (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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)	ROUND ORDER · PLAYER TURNS PHASE · PLAYER TURN ACTIONS	p.8	0.046635 (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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)		p.1	0.045945 (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))	109
#5	RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)		p.7	0.044557 (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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)		p.7	0.044468 (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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)	Actions that do not require an Action Die	p.11	0.044337 (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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)	VOTING · CARD TEXT · ROLEPLAYING, SECRET OBJECTIVES AND GAME BALANCE · CO-OP VARIANT · 2 PLAYER VARIANT · BETRAYER VARIANT · …	p.15	0.030886 (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 55 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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)		p.1	#4	0.045945 (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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)	PLAYER ELIMINATION VARIANT	p.15	#12	0.027619 (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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)	ROUND ORDER · PLAYER TURNS PHASE · PLAYER TURN ACTIONS	p.8	#3	0.046635 (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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)		p.3	#19	0.013889 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)		p.7	#6	0.044468 (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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)	RESOLVING CROSSROADS CARDS · Example : REsolving a crisis	p.12	#13	0.027151 (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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)	Actions that do not require an Action Die	p.10	#1	0.047883 (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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)	GAME SETUP	p.6	#2	0.047875 (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 Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)	ROUND ORDER · PLAYER TURNS PHASE · PLAYER TURN ACTIONS	p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)	GAME SETUP	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)	RESOLVING CROSSROADS CARDS · Example : REsolving a crisis	p.12	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)		p.7	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 383)	Actions that do not require an Action Die	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 202 ms · first delta 4803 ms · total 8725 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 202 ms · ask 8521 ms · gateway work 8725 ms · total 8725 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2932
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 780
tok/sec: 201.4 tok/sec — 780 output tokens in 3.873 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 46s 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 312), 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.