Ruling — Cartographers Heroes

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Cartographers Heroesbg-315767-en-1e

1. Place the season cards in a face-up stack, arranged from top to bottom by the progression of the seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter.[1]

2. Shuffle the ambush cards to form a face-down deck and place it off to one side of the play area.[1]

3. Shuffle the hero cards to form a face-down deck and place it off to one side of the play area.[1]

4. Shuffle the explore cards to form a face-down deck, then take the top card of the ambush deck and the hero deck and shuffle them into this explore deck without revealing them.[1]

5. Place the explore deck next to the season stack.[1]

6. Give each player a blank map sheet and a pencil.[2]

7. Have each player write a name for their cartographer at the top of their map sheet, optionally adding a title and family crest.[2]

8. Place the edict cards in a face-up row in the center of the play area, arranged in alphabetical order: edict A > edict B > edict C > edict D.[2]

9. Sort the scoring cards into four stacks by their card backs, shuffle each stack separately, then draw one card from each stack and place one scoring card face up below each edict card, assigning them at random.[2]

10. The game is played over four seasons, with each season divided into multiple turns.[3]

11. Each turn consists of three phases: the Explore Phase, Draw Phase, and Check Phase.[3]

12. During the Explore Phase, reveal the top card of the explore deck and place it face up in the center of the play area in a column so that all time values are visible.[3]

13. Each player independently chooses one available terrain type and one available shape from the revealed explore card, then draws the chosen shape on their map and fills it with the chosen terrain type.[3]

14. During the Draw Phase, if an ambush card is revealed, players pass their map sheets in the direction indicated by the card's arrow (clockwise or counter-clockwise); each player draws the depicted monster shape on their neighbor's map and fills it with the monster terrain type and the monster's initial (or draws a 1x1 square if the shape cannot be legally drawn).[4]

15. If a hero card is revealed, each player draws a 1x1 square on their map, fills it with the hero terrain type, and marks spaces in the depicted attack pattern relative to the hero space.[4]

16. During the Check Phase, check if the end of the season has been reached by adding the time values of all revealed explore cards in the column and comparing the total to the current season's time threshold.[5]

17. If the total meets or exceeds the threshold, the season ends; otherwise, the turn returns to the Explore Phase.[5]

18. At the end of a season, discard the top season card to reveal the next season, then reshuffle the explore deck including all explore cards revealed during that season, and shuffle a new card from the ambush and hero decks into the explore deck.[6]

19. The game ends once winter has ended and players have been evaluated for the fourth time.[6]

20. To score, players total the reputation stars earned across all four seasons and write the final score on their map sheet; the player with the most reputation stars wins (with tie-breakers involving fewest reputation stars lost to monster terrain).[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook · p.5 · Game Setup v

[2] RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook · p.4 · Game Setup v

[3] RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook · p.6 · How to Play v · 1. EXPLORE PHASE · 2. DRAW PHASE

[4] RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook · p.8 · RESOLVING AMBUSHES · RESOLVING HEROES

[5] RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook · p.9 · DESTROYING SPACES · 3. CHECK PHASE

[6] RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook · p.11 · PREPARING FOR THE NEXT SEASON · End of the Game v · Scoring Cards v

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 84 ms · ask 4816 ms · total 4901 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4901 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "The game is played over four seasons . Each season is divided into multiple turns , and each turn has three phases : the Explore Phase, Draw Phase, and Check Phase. At the end of each season, players earn reputation stars. Reveal the top card of the explore deck and place it face up in the center of", "headingPath": "How to Play v · 1. EXPLORE PHASE · 2. DRAW PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 467}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "Place the season cards in a face-up stack. Arrange them in order, from top to bottom, by the progression of the seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter. Shuffle the ambush cards to form a face-down deck. Place this ambush deck off to one side of the play area. Shuffle the hero cards to form a face-dow", "headingPath": "Game Setup v", "sharpsignalDocId": 467}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "Give each player a blank map sheet . Players collectively decide whether to use the wilderness side (C) or the wastelands side (D). Give each player a pencil . If playing with more than four players, additional pencils will need to be provided. Have each player write a name for their cartographer at", "headingPath": "Game Setup v", "sharpsignalDocId": 467}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "Learn and playLearn and play on your mobile deviceon your mobile device Scan QR Code to learn more! on your on your desktop atdesktop at www.happymeeple.comwww.happymeeple.com", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 467}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "on your mobile device Scan QR Code to learn more! on your desktop at www.happymeeple.com", "headingPath": "Learn and play", "sharpsignalDocId": 467}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Discard the top season card from the stack and return it to the game box. This will reveal the next season card in the stack. Reshuffle the explore deck , including all explore cards revealed this season. Take the top card of the ambush deck and hero deck, then shuffle them into the explore deck, wi", "headingPath": "PREPARING FOR THE NEXT SEASON · End of the Game v · Scoring Cards v", "sharpsignalDocId": 467}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.029877, "snippet": "Set off as a lone cartographer to explore the Western Lands. In solo mode, you attempt to earn a prestigious title from Queen Gimnax at the end of your journey! Gameplay has the following changes: Do not write a title on your map sheet. This is where you'll record the title appointed to you by Queen", "headingPath": "Solo Mode v · CHANGES TO SETUP · CHANGES TO AMBUSHES", "sharpsignalDocId": 467}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "When an ambush card is revealed, check the direction of the arrow shown on the card: clockwise or counter-clockwise. Each player immediately passes their map sheet to their neighbor in that direction. Each player draws the depicted monster shape on their neighbor's map, then fills it with the monste", "headingPath": "RESOLVING AMBUSHES · RESOLVING HEROES", "sharpsignalDocId": 467}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup v", "sharpsignalDocId": 467}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup v", "sharpsignalDocId": 467}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "How to Play v · 1. EXPLORE PHASE · 2. DRAW PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 467}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "RESOLVING AMBUSHES · RESOLVING HEROES", "sharpsignalDocId": 467}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "DESTROYING SPACES · 3. CHECK PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 467}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PREPARING FOR THE NEXT SEASON · End of the Game v · Scoring Cards v", "sharpsignalDocId": 467}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 467 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 467 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 0.92854 of 2631 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 28, 2026 08:16 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 Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	How to Play v · 1. EXPLORE PHASE · 2. DRAW PHASE	p.6	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	Game Setup v	p.5	0.048131 (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 Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	Game Setup v	p.4	0.047379 (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 Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)		p.16	0.047371 (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))	175
#5	RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	Learn and play	p.16	0.045455 (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))	88
#6	RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	PREPARING FOR THE NEXT SEASON · End of the Game v · Scoring Cards v	p.11	0.030769 (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 Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	Solo Mode v · CHANGES TO SETUP · CHANGES TO AMBUSHES	p.15	0.029877 (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 Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	RESOLVING AMBUSHES · RESOLVING HEROES	p.8	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

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 17 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 Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	How to Play v · 1. EXPLORE PHASE · 2. DRAW PHASE	p.6	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	Game Setup v	p.5	#2	0.048131 (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 Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	RESOLVING AMBUSHES · RESOLVING HEROES	p.8	#8	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
#4	RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	DESTROYING SPACES · 3. CHECK PHASE	p.9	#12	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 Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	PREPARING FOR THE NEXT SEASON · End of the Game v · Scoring Cards v	p.11	#6	0.030769 (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 Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)		p.16	#4	0.047371 (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 Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	Solo Mode v · CHANGES TO SETUP · CHANGES TO AMBUSHES	p.15	#7	0.029877 (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 Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	Game Setup v	p.4	#3	0.047379 (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 Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	Game Setup v	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	Game Setup v	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	How to Play v · 1. EXPLORE PHASE · 2. DRAW PHASE	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	RESOLVING AMBUSHES · RESOLVING HEROES	p.8	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	DESTROYING SPACES · 3. CHECK PHASE	p.9	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Cartographers Heroes — Rulebook (corpus doc 467)	PREPARING FOR THE NEXT SEASON · End of the Game v · Scoring Cards v	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 84 ms · first delta 1129 ms · total 4901 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 84 ms · ask 4816 ms · gateway work 4901 ms · total 4901 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2192
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 755
tok/sec: 202.6 tok/sec — 755 output tokens in 3.727 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 41s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 0s 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 397), 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.