Ruling — Forbidden Island

← Forbidden Island

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Forbidden Islandbg-65244-en-1e

To play Forbidden Island, follow these steps:

Setup

1. Create the island by shuffling 24 Island tiles and placing them face up in a specific grid pattern.[1]

2. Place the four treasure figurines around the island.[1]

3. Separate cards into three decks: Flood deck (blue back), Treasure deck (red back), and Adventurer cards.[2]

4. Shuffle the Flood deck, place it face down, draw 6 cards one at a time to form a Flood discard pile, and flip the corresponding Island tiles to their flooded side.[2]

5. Shuffle the 6 Adventurer cards and deal 1 to each player; players take a pawn matching their card color and place it on the corresponding Island tile.[2]

6. Thoroughly shuffle the Treasure deck and deal 2 cards to each player, placing them face up.[2]

7. Set the Water Level marker on the Water Meter to the chosen difficulty level.[2]

Order of Play

1. The player who last visited an island goes first, and play continues to the left.[3]

2. On every turn, perform these three things in order:[3]

* Take up to 3 actions.[3] Actions can include:

* Move: Move your pawn to an adjacent Island tile (up, down, left, or right).[3]

* Shore Up: Flip an adjacent or occupied Island tile to its un-flooded side.[3]

* Give a Treasure Card: Give 1 or more Treasure cards to another player if both pawns are on the same tile (costs 1 action per card).[4]

* Capture a Treasure: Discard 4 matching Treasure cards while on a corresponding island tile (costs 1 action).[4]

* Draw 2 Treasure deck cards and add them to your face-up hand.[5] (If a "Waters Rise!" card is drawn, follow its instructions and discard it [5]).

* Draw Flood cards equal to the current Water Level.[3] For each card drawn, flip the matching Island tile to its flooded side, or if already flooded, remove the tile and card from the game.[6]

Winning and Losing

1. To win, you must collect all four treasures,[7] move all pawns to the Fools' Landing tile,[7] and have one player discard a Helicopter Lift card to escape.[7]

2. You lose the game if:

* Both tiles for a specific treasure sink before it is collected.[7]

* The Fools' Landing tile sinks.[7]

* A player is on a tile that sinks and has no adjacent tile to swim to.[7]

* The water level reaches the skull and crossbones.[7]

* The island sinks before tasks are completed.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook · p.2 · Object · Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook · p.3 · Setup · 5. The Adventurers Appear: · 6. Hand Out Treasure Deck Cards:

[3] RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook · p.4 · Order of Play · 1. Take Up to 3 Actions · Move · Exceptions: · Shore Up

[4] RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook · p.5 · Give a Treasure Card · Exceptions: · Capture a Treasure · Notes

[5] RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook · p.6 · 2. Draw 2 Treasure Deck Cards · Treasure Cards · Special Action Cards · Waters Rise! Cards · Notes:

[6] RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook · p.7 · When the Treasure Deck Runs Out · Hand Limit · 3. Draw Flood Cards · Pawns on Flooded Tiles

[7] RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook · p.8 · When the Flood Draw Pile Runs Out · Winning the Game · There are four possible ways to lose: · Difficulty · A Word from Gamewright

Rule found, game on.

🔧 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 81 ms · ask 4137 ms · total 4220 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4220 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "The player who last visited an island goes first and play continues to the left. On every turn, do the following three things in order: Take up to 3 actions. Draw 2 Treasure deck cards. Draw Flood cards equal to the water level. The parts of each turn are described below. Also note that the back of ", "headingPath": "Order of Play · 1. Take Up to 3 Actions · Move · Exceptions: · Shore Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "If the Flood draw pile ever runs out, immediately shuffle the Flood discard pile and stack the cards face down to form a new Flood draw pile. If this happens in the middle of a turn, continue drawing Flood cards as necessary from the new pile. Get to Fools' Landing! Once you have collected all four ", "headingPath": "When the Flood Draw Pile Runs Out · Winning the Game · There are four possible ways to lose: · Difficulty · A Word from Gamewright", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "3. Divide the Cards: Separate the cards into three decks according to card back: Flood deck (blue back), Treasure deck (red back), and Adventurer cards (6 cards). The Island Starts to Sink: Shuffle the Flood deck and place it face down on one side of the island to form the Flood draw pile. Draw the ", "headingPath": "Setup · 5. The Adventurers Appear: · 6. Hand Out Treasure Deck Cards:", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "After taking actions, you must draw 2 cards from the top of the Treasure deck and add them to your face up hand. Draw cards 1 at a time. If you draw a Waters Rise! card, do not add it to your hand, but follow the instructions on the card and then discard it to the Treasure discard pile. There are 5 ", "headingPath": "2. Draw 2 Treasure Deck Cards · Treasure Cards · Special Action Cards · Waters Rise! Cards · Notes:", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "When the last card of the Treasure deck is drawn, immediately shuffle the Treasure discard pile and turn it over to form a new Treasure deck. You may only have 5 cards in your hand, including Treasure and Special Action cards. If you ever find that you have 6 or more cards (for example because you d", "headingPath": "When the Treasure Deck Runs Out · Hand Limit · 3. Draw Flood Cards · Pawns on Flooded Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045921, "snippet": "Your team of adventurers must work together to keep Forbidden Island from sinking, in order to buy enough time to capture its four treasures. Once you've captured them, you must make it to Fools' Landing and escape by helicopter to win. If however, the island sinks before you can complete your tasks", "headingPath": "Object · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "You may give 1 or more of your Treasure cards to another player if both of your pawns are on the same island tile. It costs 1 action for each card you give away. (See 'Hand Limit' for restrictions.) You may not give Special Action cards. The Messenger may give cards without having to be on the same ", "headingPath": "Give a Treasure Card · Exceptions: · Capture a Treasure · Notes", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "2 -4 Players | Ages 10 and up orbidden Island was the secluded retreat of an ancient mystical empire known as the Archeans. Legend has it that the Archeans possessed the ability to control the Earth's core elements - fire, wind, water, and earth - through four sacred treasures: The Crystal of Fire, ", "headingPath": "58 cards, divided as follows: · 24 double-sided Island tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Object · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup · 5. The Adventurers Appear: · 6. Hand Out Treasure Deck Cards:", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Order of Play · 1. Take Up to 3 Actions · Move · Exceptions: · Shore Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Give a Treasure Card · Exceptions: · Capture a Treasure · Notes", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. Draw 2 Treasure Deck Cards · Treasure Cards · Special Action Cards · Waters Rise! Cards · Notes:", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "When the Treasure Deck Runs Out · Hand Limit · 3. Draw Flood Cards · Pawns on Flooded Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "When the Flood Draw Pile Runs Out · Winning the Game · There are four possible ways to lose: · Difficulty · A Word from Gamewright", "sharpsignalDocId": 184}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 184 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 184 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 0.89071 of 1894 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 28, 2026 05:15 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 Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	Order of Play · 1. Take Up to 3 Actions · Move · Exceptions: · Shore Up	p.4	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 Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	When the Flood Draw Pile Runs Out · Winning the Game · There are four possible ways to lose: · Difficulty · A Word from Gamewright	p.8	0.048387 (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 Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	Setup · 5. The Adventurers Appear: · 6. Hand Out Treasure Deck Cards:	p.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))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	2. Draw 2 Treasure Deck Cards · Treasure Cards · Special Action Cards · Waters Rise! Cards · Notes:	p.6	0.046696 (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 Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	When the Treasure Deck Runs Out · Hand Limit · 3. Draw Flood Cards · Pawns on Flooded Tiles	p.7	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
#6	RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	Object · Setup	p.2	0.045921 (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 Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	Give a Treasure Card · Exceptions: · Capture a Treasure · Notes	p.5	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))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	58 cards, divided as follows: · 24 double-sided Island tiles	p.1	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))	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 8 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 Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	Order of Play · 1. Take Up to 3 Actions · Move · Exceptions: · Shore Up	p.4	#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 Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	Setup · 5. The Adventurers Appear: · 6. Hand Out Treasure Deck Cards:	p.3	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	When the Treasure Deck Runs Out · Hand Limit · 3. Draw Flood Cards · Pawns on Flooded Tiles	p.7	#5	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 Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	Give a Treasure Card · Exceptions: · Capture a Treasure · Notes	p.5	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	58 cards, divided as follows: · 24 double-sided Island tiles	p.1	#8	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
#6	RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	2. Draw 2 Treasure Deck Cards · Treasure Cards · Special Action Cards · Waters Rise! Cards · Notes:	p.6	#4	0.046696 (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 Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	When the Flood Draw Pile Runs Out · Winning the Game · There are four possible ways to lose: · Difficulty · A Word from Gamewright	p.8	#2	0.048387 (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 Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	Object · Setup	p.2	#6	0.045921 (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 Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	Object · Setup	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	Setup · 5. The Adventurers Appear: · 6. Hand Out Treasure Deck Cards:	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	Order of Play · 1. Take Up to 3 Actions · Move · Exceptions: · Shore Up	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	Give a Treasure Card · Exceptions: · Capture a Treasure · Notes	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	2. Draw 2 Treasure Deck Cards · Treasure Cards · Special Action Cards · Waters Rise! Cards · Notes:	p.6	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	When the Treasure Deck Runs Out · Hand Limit · 3. Draw Flood Cards · Pawns on Flooded Tiles	p.7	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Forbidden Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 184)	When the Flood Draw Pile Runs Out · Winning the Game · There are four possible ways to lose: · Difficulty · A Word from Gamewright	p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 81 ms · first delta 1142 ms · total 4220 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 81 ms · ask 4137 ms · gateway work 4220 ms · total 4220 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3117
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 604
tok/sec: 199.9 tok/sec — 604 output tokens in 3.022 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 11s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 10s 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 102), 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.