Ruling — Shadows over Camelot

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Shadows over Camelotbg-15062-en-1e

Setup

1. Randomly deal a Coat of Arms to each player.[1]

2. Each player takes stock of their Knight, introduces themselves and their Special Power, and places their Coat of Arms face up next to them.[1]

3. Lay a six-sided die with the four face visible on the reserved spot to track Life points.[1]

4. Place the Knight's miniature on its designated seat at the Round Table.[1]

5. Separate cards into White, Black, and Loyalty piles.[1]

6. Shuffle Black cards into a draw pile and place them in Camelot.[1]

7. Give one Merlin card to each player from the White cards, shuffle the remaining White cards, and deal 5 White cards to each player, placing the rest in a draw pile in Camelot.[1]

8. Shuffle all 8 Loyalty cards and randomly give one to each player; players secretly peek at their card to discover their allegiance before placing it face-down under their Coat of Arms.[1]

9. At the start of the game, each player selects one White card from their hand and places it face up on the Round Table.[2][3]

10. Players discuss how to share these cards; a Knight may take none, while others may take several; if there is disagreement, the cards are shuffled and redistributed randomly.[2][3]

Game Turn Structure

Play begins with King Arthur, or if he is not in play, the Knight played by the youngest player, and proceeds clockwise.[4] Each turn consists of two phases, separated by a check to see if the game ends:[4]

Phase 1: Progression of Evil

You must choose one of three actions:[4]

1. Draw a Black card from the Black draw pile, read it, and apply its effect.[4]

2. Add a Siege Engine around Camelot.[4]

3. Lose a Life point.[4]

Phase 2: Heroic Actions

After checking if the game ends, you must perform one of five possible Heroic Actions (you may occasionally perform more):[4]

1. Move to a new Quest.[4]

2. Perform an action related to the Quest you are on.[4]

3. Play a Special White Card (read text aloud, apply effect, and discard; you may never play more than one per turn).[5]

4. Heal yourself (discard three identical cards and turn your die to the next value up, up to a maximum of 6 Life points).[5]

5. Accuse another Knight of being a Traitor (forces them to reveal their Loyalty card; if the accused is Loyal, a White Sword turns to Black; if the accused is the Traitor, a new White Sword is added).[5]

Additional Turn Options and Rules:

* Sacrifice: Once per turn, you may sacrifice one Life point to perform a second Heroic Action.[6]

* Action Constraints: You may never perform the same Heroic Action twice in the same turn.[5]

* Collaboration: You may discuss choices, resources, and capabilities generally, but you must never reveal or discuss the explicit values of cards in your hand or specific game information not available to others.[7] You may lie about intent or resources, but you must never cheat.[7]

Ending the Game

The game ends when one of the following conditions is reached:[4]

1. The game is lost prematurely.[4]

2. A 12th Sword is laid on the Round Table, at which point the color of the majority of Swords determines victory or defeat.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook · p.7 · Object of the game · Important Note

[2] RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook · p.8

[3] RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook · p.8 · Important Note · Beginning the game · Recommendations for first-time play

[4] RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook · p.9 · First player · Order of the turn · The two Phases · Game Turn Overview

[5] RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook · p.16 · The Saxon and Pict Wars · c. Playing a Special White card · d. Healing yourself · Important Notes · e. Making an Accusation · Important Note

[6] RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook · p.16 · Additional Heroic Actions: Sacrifice

[7] RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook · p.8

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 135 ms · ask 5674 ms · total 5811 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5811 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "8 ; Beginning the game; At the start of the game, in a gesture of the collaboration to come, each player must select one White card from his hand and place it, face up, on the Round Table. A discussion should ensue about how to best share those cards among all the Knights. A Knight, in a noble gestu", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "8 8 ; At the start of the game, in a gesture of the collaboration to come, each player must select one White card from his hand and place it, face up, on the Round Table. A discussion should ensue about how to best share those cards among all the Knights. A Knight, in a noble gesture, may voluntaril", "headingPath": "Important Note · Beginning the game · Recommendations for first-time play", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.046964, "snippet": "As befits a monarch, King Arthur begins the game. If he is not in play, the Knight played by the youngest player starts. Play proceeds clockwise in successive turns until: The game is lost prematurely; Or A 12 th Sword is laid on the Round Table, at which point the color of the majority of Swords la", "headingPath": "First player · Order of the turn · The two Phases · Game Turn Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.045285, "snippet": "10 10 At the beginning of each turn, you are faced with selecting one of three unappealing choices, all designed to help the forces of Evil in their campaign against you. Deciding which is the lesser of these evils will depend on the current game circumstances, but you must choose from one of the fo", "headingPath": "Game Turn Overview · 1. Progression of Evil · a. Drawing a Black card · Special Blacks", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.044468, "snippet": "16 16 Special White cards are easily identifiable by their Special White symbol. Convocation Fate Heroism Lady of the Lake Messenger Piety Reinforcements Special White card symbol Clairvoyance Merlin To play a Special White card, read its text aloud and apply its effect immediately, then discard the", "headingPath": "The Saxon and Pict Wars · c. Playing a Special White card · d. Healing yourself · Important Notes · e. Making an Accusation · Important Note", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.044071, "snippet": "9 the role of the various llow players as you set rd up. Randomly deal a Coat of Arms to each player. Everyone takes stock of their Knight and introduces himself and his Special Power to the group. Place your Coat of Arms face up next to you and lay a six-sided die, with the (four) face visible, on ", "headingPath": "Object of the game · Important Note", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.043817, "snippet": "18 18 The Black and White Swords on the Round Table are then tallied up separately. If the number of White Swords laid is strictly greater than the number of Black ones, the loyal Knights win the game. Otherwise, the forces of Evil win, along with their treacherous friend, if any. Any Knight (includ", "headingPath": "Important Note · Joining in Mid-Game · Expert Rules · The Squire , s Challenge · The Traitor Among Us", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Players:␣3-7 Ages:␣10+ Time:␣60-90␣minutes Players:␣3-7 Ages:␣10+ Time:␣60-90␣minutes Rulebook", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Object of the game · Important Note", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Important Note · Beginning the game · Recommendations for first-time play", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "First player · Order of the turn · The two Phases · Game Turn Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The Saxon and Pict Wars · c. Playing a Special White card · d. Healing yourself · Important Notes · e. Making an Accusation · Important Note", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Additional Heroic Actions: Sacrifice", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 560}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 560 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 560 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 0.90004 of 2571 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 27, 2026 00:43 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 Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)		p.8	0.047938 (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 Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	Important Note · Beginning the game · Recommendations for first-time play	p.8	0.047131 (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 Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	First player · Order of the turn · The two Phases · Game Turn Overview	p.9	0.046964 (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 Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	Game Turn Overview · 1. Progression of Evil · a. Drawing a Black card · Special Blacks	p.10	0.045285 (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 Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	The Saxon and Pict Wars · c. Playing a Special White card · d. Healing yourself · Important Notes · e. Making an Accusation · Important Note	p.16	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
#6	RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	Object of the game · Important Note	p.7	0.044071 (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 Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	Important Note · Joining in Mid-Game · Expert Rules · The Squire , s Challenge · The Traitor Among Us	p.18	0.043817 (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 Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)		p.1	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))	94

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 28 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 Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)		p.8	#1	0.047938 (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 Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)		p.8	#16	0.026743 (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 Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	First player · Order of the turn · The two Phases · Game Turn Overview	p.9	#3	0.046964 (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 Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	Object of the game · Important Note	p.7	#6	0.044071 (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 Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	Important Note	p.13	#18	0.026709 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	The Saxon and Pict Wars · c. Playing a Special White card · d. Healing yourself · Important Notes · e. Making an Accusation · Important Note	p.16	#5	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
#7	RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	Important Note · Beginning the game · Recommendations for first-time play	p.8	#2	0.047131 (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 Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	Additional Heroic Actions: Sacrifice	p.16	#11	0.028986 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	Object of the game · Important Note	p.7	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)		p.8	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	Important Note · Beginning the game · Recommendations for first-time play	p.8	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	First player · Order of the turn · The two Phases · Game Turn Overview	p.9	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	The Saxon and Pict Wars · c. Playing a Special White card · d. Healing yourself · Important Notes · e. Making an Accusation · Important Note	p.16	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)	Additional Heroic Actions: Sacrifice	p.16	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Shadows over Camelot — Rulebook (corpus doc 560)		p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 135 ms · first delta 1890 ms · total 5811 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 135 ms · ask 5674 ms · gateway work 5811 ms · total 5811 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3666
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 774
tok/sec: 201.4 tok/sec — 774 output tokens in 3.843 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 49s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, 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 492), 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.