RuleSage cited table rulings
← Coup

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Coupbg-131357-en-1e

Setup
1. For 3 players, each player starts with 2 influence cards and 2 coins.[1][2]
2. The remaining 9 character cards make up the Court deck.[1][2]
A Turn
1. The game is played in turns in clockwise order.[3]
2. Each turn, a player chooses one action only and may not pass.[3]
3. A player may choose any action they can afford.[4]
4. If a player starts their turn with 10 or more coins, they must launch a Coup as their only action.[4]
5. Possible actions include:
* Take 1 coin from the Treasury.[4]
* Take 2 coins from the Treasury (can be blocked by the Duke).[4]
* Take 3 coins from the Treasury.[4]
* Pay 7 coins to the Treasury to launch a Coup against another player, causing them to lose an influence (always successful).[4]
* Pay 3 coins to the Treasury to launch an assassination against another player (can be blocked by the Contessa).[4]
* Captain: Steal 2 coins from another player (can be blocked by the Ambassador or the Captain).[5][6]
* Ambassador: Exchange cards with the Court by taking 2 random cards from the Court deck, choosing which to exchange with face down cards, and returning two cards to the Court deck.[5][6]
6. If a player chooses a Character Action, they must claim the required character is one of their face down cards, either telling the truth or bluff and they do not need to reveal cards unless challenged.[4]
7. After an action or counteraction is declared, other players have an opportunity to challenge or counteract.[3]
8. Counteractions can be taken by other players to intervene or block an action.[5] Counteractions operate like character actions and can be used to:
* Block Foreign Aid (using the Duke).[5][6]
* Block Assassination (using the Contessa).[5][6]
* Block Stealing (using the Ambassador or the Captain).[5][6]
9. Challenges are resolved before any action or counteraction is resolved.[3]
10. If a player is challenged, they must prove they have the required influence by showing the relevant character card; if they cannot or do not wish to, they lose the challenge.[5][2]
11. If a player wins a challenge by showing the card, they return that card to the Court deck, re-shuffle the Court deck, and take a random replacement card.[1][5][2]
12. If an action is successfully challenged, the action fails and any coins paid as the cost are returned to the player.[1][5][2]
13. If an action is successfully counteracted, the action fails but any coins paid as the cost remain spent.[5]
14. If an action or counteraction is not challenged or counteracted, it automatically succeeds.[5][4][3]
Scoring and Ending the Game
1. The goal is to eliminate the influence of all other players and be the last survivor.[3]
2. Every time a player loses an influence, they must choose one of their face down cards to turn over and reveal.[3]
3. A player is out of the game when they have lost all influence and both cards are face up.[3]
4. When a player is out of the game, they leave their cards face up and return all coins to the Treasury.[3]
5. The game ends when there is only one player left.[3]
[1] RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook · p.5
[2] RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook · p.5 · Any action or counteraction using character influence can be challenged. · Whoever loses the challenge immediately loses an influence. · 3 players. Each start with 2 influence cards and 2 coins. The remaining 9 character cards make up the Court deck.
[3] RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook · p.2 · Goal · Influence · Game Play
[4] RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook · p.3 · Actions · General Actions · Income · Foreign Aid · Coup · Character Actions · …
[5] RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook · p.5
[6] RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook · p.4 · Counteractions · Duke - Blocks Foreign Aid · Contessa - Blocks Assassination · Ambassador/Captain - Blocks Stealing · Captain - Steal · Ambassador - Exchange

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 94 ms · ask 5097 ms · total 5192 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 5192 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 2, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "To eliminate the influence of all other players and be the last survivor. Face down cards in front of a player represent who they influence at court. The characters printed on their face down cards represents which characters that player influences and their abilities. Every time a player loses an i", "headingPath": "Goal · Influence · Game Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 180}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Captain – Steal Take 2 coins from another player. If they only have one coin, take only one. (Can be blocked by the Ambassador or the Captain) Ambassador – Exchange Exchange cards with the Court. First take 2 random cards from the Court deck. Choose which, if any, to exchange with your face down car", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 180}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "In the not too distant future, the government is run for profit by a new 'royal class' of multinational CEOs. Their greed and absolute control of the economy has reduced all but a privileged few to lives of poverty and desperation. Out of the oppressed masses rose The Resistance, an underground orga", "headingPath": "Contents · Set-Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 180}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "If a player wins a challenge by showing the relevant character card, they first return that card to the Court deck, re-shuffle the Court deck and take a random replacement card. (That way they have not lost an influence and other players do not know the new influence card they have). Then the action", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 180}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045476, "snippet": "Any other player can issue a challenge to a player regardless of whether they are the involved in the action. Once an action or counteraction is declared other players must be given an opportunity to challenge. Once play continues challenges cannot be retro-actively issued. If a player is challenged", "headingPath": "Any action or counteraction using character influence can be challenged. · Whoever loses the challenge immediately loses an influence. · 3 players. Each start with 2 influence cards and 2 coins. The remaining 9 character cards make up the Court deck.", "sharpsignalDocId": 180}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "A player may choose any action they want and can afford. Some actions (Character Actions) require influencing characters. If they choose a Character Action a player must claim that the required character is one of their face down cards. They can be telling the truth or bluffing. They do not need to ", "headingPath": "Actions · General Actions · Income · Foreign Aid · Coup · Character Actions · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 180}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Your local hobby store has the Reformation expansion that brings more roles, more actions and more players to Coup. If you enjoy Coup, look for other games in at your local hobby store. is the ultimate game of hidden identities, deduction and deception for 5 to 10 players. Hidden Agenda and Hostile ", "headingPath": "Like Coup? · The Resistance Universe · The Resistance", "sharpsignalDocId": 180}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030159, "snippet": "Natasha has 2 influence remaining (Contessa and Duke) and 1 coin. Sacha has 1 influence remaining (Captain) and 5 coins. Haig is out of the game. Two Assassins and One Contessa have been revealed and are face up on the table. It is possible to lose 2 influence in one turn if you unsuccessfully defen", "headingPath": "At this stage · Note: Double Dangers of Assasination · Total (Lack of) Trust · Two Player Coup & Two Player Variant · As a variant, Coup can be played with two players with these changes to the setup: · Credits", "sharpsignalDocId": 180}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 180}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Any action or counteraction using character influence can be challenged. · Whoever loses the challenge immediately loses an influence. · 3 players. Each start with 2 influence cards and 2 coins. The remaining 9 character cards make up the Court deck.", "sharpsignalDocId": 180}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Goal · Influence · Game Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 180}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Actions · General Actions · Income · Foreign Aid · Coup · Character Actions · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 180}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 180}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Counteractions · Duke - Blocks Foreign Aid · Contessa - Blocks Assassination · Ambassador/Captain - Blocks Stealing · Captain - Steal · Ambassador - Exchange", "sharpsignalDocId": 180}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 180 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 180 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 0.88810 of 2529 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Aug 27, 2026 01:54 UTC

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) Goal · Influence · Game Play p.2 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 Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) p.5 0.047643 (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 Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) Contents · Set-Up p.1 0.047163 (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 Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) 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 Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) Any action or counteraction using character influence can be challenged. · Whoever loses the challenge immediately loses an influence. · 3 players. Each start with 2 influence cards and 2 coins. The remaining 9 character cards make up the Court deck. p.5 0.045476 (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 Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) Actions · General Actions · Income · Foreign Aid · Coup · Character Actions · … p.3 0.03125 (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 Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) Like Coup? · The Resistance Universe · The Resistance p.8 0.030303 (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 Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) At this stage · Note: Double Dangers of Assasination · Total (Lack of) Trust · Two Player Coup & Two Player Variant · As a variant, Coup can be played with two players with these changes to the setup: · Credits p.7 0.030159 (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 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 10 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) 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 Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) p.5 #2 0.047643 (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 Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) Actions · General Actions · Income · Foreign Aid · Coup · Character Actions · … p.3 #6 0.03125 (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 + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#4 RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) Counteractions · Duke - Blocks Foreign Aid · Contessa - Blocks Assassination · Ambassador/Captain - Blocks Stealing · Captain - Steal · Ambassador - Exchange p.4 #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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#5 RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) Like Coup? · The Resistance Universe · The Resistance p.8 #7 0.030303 (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 + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#6 RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) At this stage · Note: Double Dangers of Assasination · Total (Lack of) Trust · Two Player Coup & Two Player Variant · As a variant, Coup can be played with two players with these changes to the setup: · Credits p.7 #8 0.030159 (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 Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) Any action or counteraction using character influence can be challenged. · Whoever loses the challenge immediately loses an influence. · 3 players. Each start with 2 influence cards and 2 coins. The remaining 9 character cards make up the Court deck. p.5 #5 0.045476 (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 Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) Goal · Influence · Game Play p.2 #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

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) p.5 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) Any action or counteraction using character influence can be challenged. · Whoever loses the challenge immediately loses an influence. · 3 players. Each start with 2 influence cards and 2 coins. The remaining 9 character cards make up the Court deck. p.5 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) Goal · Influence · Game Play p.2 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) Actions · General Actions · Income · Foreign Aid · Coup · Character Actions · … p.3 no quote on the wire
[5] RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) p.5 no quote on the wire
[6] RULEBOOK Coup — Rulebook (corpus doc 180) Counteractions · Duke - Blocks Foreign Aid · Contessa - Blocks Assassination · Ambassador/Captain - Blocks Stealing · Captain - Steal · Ambassador - Exchange p.4 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 94 ms · first delta 1175 ms · total 5192 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 94 ms · ask 5097 ms · gateway work 5192 ms · total 5192 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
2858
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
804
tok/sec
203.0 tok/sec — 804 output tokens in 3.960 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 22h, checked 6s 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 98), 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.