Ruling — A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition)

← A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition)

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition)bg-169255-en-1e

A Game of Thrones: The Card Game is played over a series of rounds.[1] Each round is divided into the following seven phases: Plot, Draw, Marshaling, Challenges, Dominance, Standing, and Taxation.[1][2]

Phase 1: Plot

1. Choose Plot Cards: Each player looks at all cards in his or her plot deck and chooses one to reveal by placing it facedown on the table.[1]

2. Reveal Plot Cards: Each player simultaneously reveals their chosen plot card.[1]

3. Determine Initiative: The player with the highest total initiative value wins initiative; ties are broken by the player with the lowest power total (if still tied, a player is selected randomly).[1]

4. Choose First Player: The winner of initiative chooses the first player for the round and places the first player token in front of them.[1]

5. Resolve Abilities: Any "When Revealed" abilities on plot cards resolve after the first player is chosen, in an order decided by the first player.[1]

Challenges Phase

1. Initiate Challenges: Players initiate challenges (Military, Intrigue, or Power) by declaring attackers, which involves kneeling them.[3]

2. Defend Challenges: The defending player may declare defenders by kneeling them.[3]

3. Compare STR: Add the STR of all attacking characters and active modifiers to determine total attacking STR; add the STR of all defending characters and active modifiers to determine total defending STR.[4]

4. Determine Winner: The player with the higher total STR wins the challenge; in the event of a tie, the attacking player wins.[4] (Note: If the attacking player has no total STR of 1 or higher, or no participating characters, neither player wins or loses).[4]

5. Apply Unopposed Bonus: If the attacker wins and the defender has a total defending STR of 0, the attacker gains 1 bonus power.[4]

6. Resolve Claim Effects: Depending on the challenge type, the following occurs if the attacker wins:

* Military challenge: The defender must kill a number of different characters equal to the attacker's plot claim value.[4]

* Intrigue challenge: The defender must discard a number of cards at random from their hand equal to the attacker's plot claim value.[4]

* Power challenge: The defender removes power counters from their faction card and moves them to the attacker's faction card equal to the attacker's plot claim value.[4]

Phase 5: Dominance

1. Calculate Totals: Each player simultaneously counts their total combined STR of standing characters and adds 1 for each gold token in their gold pool.[5]

2. Determine Winner: The player with the highest total wins dominance for the round and gains 1 power for their faction; if there is a tie, no player wins dominance.[5]

Phase 6: Standing

1. Stand Characters: Each player simultaneously stands each kneeling card in play.[5]

Phase 7: Taxation

1. Return unspent gold: Each player simultaneously returns all unspent gold in their gold pool to the treasury.[5]

2. Check reserve: In player order, each player compares their current hand size to the reserve value on their revealed plot card; if the hand size is higher, the player must discard cards until the hand size equals the reserve value.[5]

The end of the taxation phase marks the end of the game round.[5] Play proceeds to the plot phase of the next round and continues until one player wins the game.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.7 · Phase Sequence · Phase 1: Plot · What do plots do?

[2] RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.16 · Phase Sequence · Keywords · Symbols & Icons

[3] RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.11

[4] RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.10 · Step 3. Compare STR and determine challenge

[5] RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.10 · Phase 5: Dominance · Phase 6: Standing · Phase 7: Taxation · What's Next?

Question closed. Friendships intact.

🔧 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 83 ms · ask 5809 ms · total 5893 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5893 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.048172, "snippet": "This Learn to Play book is written as an introduction to A Game of Thrones: The Card Game for new players. We recommend that new players learn the basics of the game using the joust (two-player) format-this format has the fewest steps and components, making it ideal for first time players. Games wit", "headingPath": "Using this Book", "sharpsignalDocId": 749}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "Each player simultaneously draws two cards from his or her draw deck. During the marshaling phase, each player (in player order) becomes the active player. The active player has the opportunity to marshal (bring into play) character, location, and attachment cards from his or her hand. When a player", "headingPath": "Phase 2: Draw · Phase 3: Marshaling · Event Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 749}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.046452, "snippet": "Each player simultaneously counts the total combined STR of his or her standing characters, and adds 1 to this total for each gold token in his or her gold pool. The player with the highest total wins dominance for the round, and gains 1 power for his or her faction. If there is a tie for the highes", "headingPath": "Phase 5: Dominance · Phase 6: Standing · Phase 7: Taxation · What's Next?", "sharpsignalDocId": 749}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "5 [ Learn To Play ] Play Area Example (Mid-game) ©George R.R. Martin ©FFGIllus. Tommy Arnold +2 Character Lord. Renown. Tywin Lannister gets +1 STR for each gold in your gold pool. 󲀋󲀋Tywin Lannister 90 6 7 ©George R.R. Martin ©FFGIllus. Tommy Arnold Character While Cersei Lannister is attacking duri", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 749}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045262, "snippet": "Characters in Play Locations in Play First Player Token Revealed Plot Card Plot Deck Gold Pool Faction Card Discard Pile Draw Deck Dead Pile", "headingPath": "Play Area Example (Mid-game)", "sharpsignalDocId": 749}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045245, "snippet": "Place all the gold tokens, power counters, and influence tokens in a pile within reach of each player. This area is known as the treasury . Place plot deck. Each player places the seven plot cards (listed in step one) facedown and in a stack next to his or her faction card. Shuffle draw decks. Each ", "headingPath": "Tutorial Joust Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 749}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.043445, "snippet": "To setup the tutorial game, players perform the following steps, in order. (Setup rules for all other formats are in the RR under the heading 'setup.') Select decks. The tutorial is a joust (two player) game using a Stark starter deck and a Lannister starter deck. Each player selects one of the deck", "headingPath": "Tutorial Joust Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 749}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.04311, "snippet": "The three to six player-or melee -game follows the same basic round structure and rules as the joust game. In addition to that basic structure, it also introduces the title cards to the game. Each of the six title cards represents a position on the Small Council at King's Landing. During each round ", "headingPath": "Melee Rules · Title Cards · Melee Plot Phase · Melee Taxation Phase · Melee Taxation Phase, Step 3. Return Titles: · Title Abilities · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 749}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase Sequence · Phase 1: Plot · What do plots do?", "sharpsignalDocId": 749}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase Sequence · Keywords · Symbols & Icons", "sharpsignalDocId": 749}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 749}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Step 3. Compare STR and determine challenge", "sharpsignalDocId": 749}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase 5: Dominance · Phase 6: Standing · Phase 7: Taxation · What's Next?", "sharpsignalDocId": 749}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 749 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 749 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 0.92023 of 2783 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 28, 2026 07:19 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 A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Using this Book	p.2	0.048172 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Phase 2: Draw · Phase 3: Marshaling · Event Cards	p.8	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
#3	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Phase 5: Dominance · Phase 6: Standing · Phase 7: Taxation · What's Next?	p.10	0.046452 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)		p.5	0.04598 (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))	302
#5	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Play Area Example (Mid-game)	p.5	0.045262 (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))	140
#6	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Tutorial Joust Game Setup	p.4	0.045245 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Tutorial Joust Game Setup	p.4	0.043445 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Melee Rules · Title Cards · Melee Plot Phase · Melee Taxation Phase · Melee Taxation Phase, Step 3. Return Titles: · Title Abilities · …	p.12	0.04311 (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 30 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 A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Phase Sequence · Phase 1: Plot · What do plots do?	p.7	#10	0.029211 (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
#2	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Phase 5: Dominance · Phase 6: Standing · Phase 7: Taxation · What's Next?	p.10	#3	0.046452 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Phase Sequence · Keywords · Symbols & Icons	p.16	#13	0.027971 (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
#4	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)		p.5	#11	0.028309 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)		p.11	#15	0.027032 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)		p.11	#19	0.025353 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Step 3. Compare STR and determine challenge	p.10	#18	0.026154 (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
#8	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Using this Book	p.2	#1	0.048172 (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 A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Phase Sequence · Phase 1: Plot · What do plots do?	p.7	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Phase Sequence · Keywords · Symbols & Icons	p.16	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)		p.11	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Step 3. Compare STR and determine challenge	p.10	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 749)	Phase 5: Dominance · Phase 6: Standing · Phase 7: Taxation · What's Next?	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 83 ms · first delta 2061 ms · total 5893 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 83 ms · ask 5809 ms · gateway work 5893 ms · total 5893 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3366
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 755
tok/sec: 200.3 tok/sec — 755 output tokens in 3.769 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 37s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 7s 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 683), 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.