You asked
How do I play?
Answered counted as answeredAsked with: Dominant Speciesbg-62219-en-1e
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 89 ms · ask 5337 ms · total 5428 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 5428 ms
- retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
- [{"page": 4, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "Take two of each of the six element types and place them on the tiles of earth as indicated on the board. Place these element disks so that they slightly overlap each of the tiles that meet at that intersection. Gather up the rest of the elements and form a draw pool by placing them into the cloth b", "headingPath": "The elements · The species · Begin play", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "Dominant Species is played in a series of turns in which all players take part more or less simultaneously. Each turn is divided into three Phases: During the Planning Phase, players will take turns placing their available action pawns (APs) into the 'eyeball' spaces of the action display that domin", "headingPath": "Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.044916, "snippet": "Place the board - face up! - in the center of the table. Have each player choose the animal he would like to play. Give each player the animal display matching their choice. Alternately, you can assign one animal display to each player at random. See page 17 for a suggested alternate method of assig", "headingPath": "The Board · The Animals · The Tiles · The Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.044071, "snippet": "When playing Dominant Species with only 2 or 3 players, the following rules may be used which allow for each player to control multiple animals. These rules conflict with some of those found elsewhere in this rulebook: where there is conflict, the rules in this column take precedence. When assigning", "headingPath": "Optional 2- and 3-player Rules · Multiple animals · Actions · Final scoring · Optional (random) Earth Setup · Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.043756, "snippet": "Action Pawns (APs)The set of wooden cylinders that players will use each turn to mark the actions they wish to perform. AnimalMammal, reptile, bird, amphibian, arachnid or insect. One of the six animal classes that each player will be representing throughout the game. Each animal class is represente", "headingPath": "Glossary", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.043697, "snippet": "The wooden cubes represent the 'species' that each animal will use to represent itself on earth. Most species will begin the game in their owner's gene pool. Most or all of them will eventually occupy (be placed on) the tiles of earth. Species removed from earth for any reason other than Glaciation ", "headingPath": "Species · Gene pool · Victory Point Track · Action Display", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.043009, "snippet": "After all Competition actions have been performed, APs are removed from this section one at a time in left-to-right order. When an animal's AP is removed, that player selects one tile on earth that has not yet been chosen for Domination this turn. That tile is then scored by performing the following", "headingPath": "Domination", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "After all Speciation actions have been performed, APs are removed from this section one at a time in left-to-right order. When an animal's AP is removed, that player selects one of the available face up large tiles (those atop the Wanderlust Tiles stacks). He then performs the following activities i", "headingPath": "Wanderlust", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}]
- citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
- [{"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The elements · The species · Begin play", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 20, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Reseed · Endgame", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}]
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 207 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 207 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 0.91250 of 1680 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
- debug row recorded
- Aug 28, 2026 10:58 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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | The elements · The species · Begin play | p.4 | 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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase | p.9 | 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 |
| #3 | RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | The Board · The Animals · The Tiles · The Cards | p.4 | 0.044916 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Optional 2- and 3-player Rules · Multiple animals · Actions · Final scoring · Optional (random) Earth Setup · Tiles | p.17 | 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 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Glossary | p.3 | 0.043756 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Species · Gene pool · Victory Point Track · Action Display | p.8 | 0.043697 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Domination | p.16 | 0.043009 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Wanderlust | p.14 | 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 |
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 36 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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | The elements · The species · Begin play | p.4 | #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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Reseed · Endgame | p.20 | #9 | 0.029514 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Competition | p.15 | #19 | 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 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Optional 2- and 3-player Rules · Multiple animals · Actions · Final scoring · Optional (random) Earth Setup · Tiles | p.17 | #4 | 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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Glaciation | p.13 | #24 | 0.012346 (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 |
| #6 | RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Earth · Elements | p.6 | #10 | 0.029287 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase | p.9 | #2 | 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 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | The Board · The Animals · The Tiles · The Cards | p.4 | #3 | 0.044916 (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
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.
| # | document | heading | page | quote chars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [1] | RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase | p.9 | no quote on the wire |
| [2] | RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | The elements · The species · Begin play | p.4 | no quote on the wire |
| [3] | RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Reseed · Endgame | p.20 | no quote on the wire |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 89 ms · first delta 2853 ms · total 5428 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 89 ms · ask 5337 ms · gateway work 5428 ms · total 5428 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 4136
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 495
- tok/sec
- 200.7 tok/sec — 495 output tokens in 2.466 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 5s 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 132), 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.