Ruling — The Reckoners

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Reckonersbg-208024-en-1e

After a special Prologue Phase, the game is played in a continuous loop of phases until a victory or loss condition is met.[1][2][3]

The Reckoner Phase

The Reckoner Phase consists of four steps:[1]

1. Roll Dice: All players simultaneously roll and reroll their dice up to three times.[1][3]

* Roll all dice, including those from equipment, minus any taken by Steelheart.[1]

* Pick one or more dice to keep (at least one must be kept).[1]

* Reroll any remaining dice.[1]

* Repeat the process for any rerolled dice.[1]

* Place all rerolled dice in the Roll #3 section of the Player Tray.[1]

2. Use Dice: All players simultaneously use their dice.[3]

* Players work together to decide the order and way dice are used.[3][4]

* Choose a possible Dice Use and move the die from the Roll #1, #0, or #3 section to the top half of the Player Tray to signify it has been used.[4]

* A die must be completely used before using a different die.[4]

* Dice (or Plan Tokens) can be used to move, remove a Barricade, or activate Player Ability/Equipment Cards.[3][4]

* Use any die to move a Player Miniature to any other City District, provided there is no Barricade.[4]

* Use any die to remove a Barricade from any City District.[4]

3. Receive Rewards: Each Epic defeated during this phase grants a reward.[3]

4. Purchase Equipment: Players may collectively choose to spend money from the Money Track to buy Equipment Cards from the face-up Equipment Market.[5]

* Choose a card and subtract the price from the Money Track.[5]

* Decide which player receives the card (only one player may use its power).[5]

* Draw the next card from the Equipment Deck to replace it in the market.[5]

The Epic Phase

The game continues with the following sequence:[3]

1. Add an Epic Card to each City District without one, starting with Steelheart's City District and proceeding clockwise.[3]

2. Activate all Epics, starting with the Epic in Steelheart's City District and proceeding clockwise, finally activating Steelheart.[3]

Winning and Losing

* Victory: The players win if they defeat Steelheart by reducing his health value to 0.[2] To do this, players must first reduce Steelheart's research value to 0.[2]

* Loss: The players lose if the Population Track reaches 0.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook · p.10 · PLAY · EPIC PHASE · RECKONER PHASE · 1 ROLL DICE · HOW TO ROLL DICE

[2] RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook · p.5 · GAME COMPONENTS · OVERVIEW · VICTORY CONDITION · LOSS CONDITION · HIGHER PLAYER COUNTS · LOWER PLAYER COUNTS

[3] RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook · p.24 · RULE SUMMARY · Roll Dice · Use Dice · RECKONERS ACTIONS · NAUVOOGAMES.COM · Receive Rewards · …

[4] RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook · p.11 · 2 USE DICE · HOW TO USE DICE · IMPORTANT USE DICE RULES · MOVE · REMOVE BARRICADE · ACTIVATE PLAYER ABILITY / EQUIPMENT CARDS · …

[5] RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook · p.18 · 4 PURCHASE EQUIPMENT · HOW TO PURCHASE EQUIPMENT

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 93 ms · ask 5072 ms · total 7072 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 1904 ms · generation 5168 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "After the Prologue Phase, the game is played in a continuous loop of phases as shown below until either the victory or loss condition is met and the game ends. Figure 4: Order of Play The Reckoner Phase consists of four steps: Roll Dice, Use Dice, Receive Rewards, and Purchase Equipment. During this", "headingPath": "PLAY · EPIC PHASE · RECKONER PHASE · 1 ROLL DICE · HOW TO ROLL DICE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1169}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "Steelheart's Red Action Track provides the Game Board with Enforcement Miniatures each round. \u0007 Grab a number of Enforcement Miniatures equal to the number of Enforcement actions found to the left of the Action Bracket on Steelheart's Red Action Track. Set these near the Game Board. \u0007 Starting in th", "headingPath": "RED ACTION TRACK · HOW TO ACTIVATE THE RED ACTION TRACK · BLUE ACTION TRACK · HOW TO ACTIVATE THE BLUE ACTION TRACK · YOUR NEXT GAME · CREDITS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1169}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "The Reckoners begins with a special Prologue Phase (see page 9). After the Prologue Phase, the game is played in a continuous loop of phases as shown below until either the victory or loss condition is met and the game ends. 1 (see page 10) 2 (see page 11) All players simultaneously roll and reroll ", "headingPath": "RULE SUMMARY · Roll Dice · Use Dice · RECKONERS ACTIONS · NAUVOOGAMES.COM · Receive Rewards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1169}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Once all players have finished rolling their dice, all players will simultaneously use their dice. Players work together to decide the order and the way in which their dice are used. \u0007 Choose one of the possible Dice Uses that you wish to perform. \u0007 Move an appropriate die from the Roll #1, #2, or #", "headingPath": "2 USE DICE · HOW TO USE DICE · IMPORTANT USE DICE RULES · MOVE · REMOVE BARRICADE · ACTIVATE PLAYER ABILITY / EQUIPMENT CARDS · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1169}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Players may collectively opt to spend money from the Money Track to buy Equipment Cards. \u0007 Choose an Equipment Card from the face-up Equipment Market. Subtract the Equipment Price from the current value of the Money Track. \u0007 Decide which player will receive the Equipment Card. Only one player may us", "headingPath": "4 \u0007 PURCHASE EQUIPMENT · HOW TO PURCHASE EQUIPMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 1169}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Figure 1: Setup shown for a four-player game 1 \u0007 \u0007 Place a number of City District Trays on the table equal to 1+ the number of players. Arrange the City District Trays in a ring formation to form the Game Board. \u0007 NOTE: If table space does not permit a ring formation, then it is okay to place the t", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1169}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Steelheart will be moving clockwise around the City Districts throughout the game. Any player may choose to affect Steelheart when they use their dice as long as their Player Miniature is located in the same City District as the Steelheart Miniature. \u0007 Players may use their dice to Contain Epic on S", "headingPath": "STEELHEART · DEFEATING STEELHEART", "sharpsignalDocId": 1169}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "\u0007 Once all Epic Cards have been activated, activate Steelheart. \u0007 Execute each Epic Action that is currently to the left of the four Epic Action Brackets on his Action Tracks, moving from top to bottom. The red and blue Action Tracks are special and can affect multiple City Districts. \u0007 Roll the Ste", "headingPath": "HOW TO ACTIVATE STEELHEART · ON-GOING · ONCE PER ROUND - FREE · ONCE PER ROUND - COSTS · DETAILED ABILITY/EQUIPMENT CARD DESCRIPTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1169}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAY · EPIC PHASE · RECKONER PHASE · 1 ROLL DICE · HOW TO ROLL DICE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1169}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME COMPONENTS · OVERVIEW · VICTORY CONDITION · LOSS CONDITION · HIGHER PLAYER COUNTS · LOWER PLAYER COUNTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1169}, {"page": 24, "quote": null, "headingPath": "RULE SUMMARY · Roll Dice · Use Dice · RECKONERS ACTIONS · NAUVOOGAMES.COM · Receive Rewards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1169}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2 USE DICE · HOW TO USE DICE · IMPORTANT USE DICE RULES · MOVE · REMOVE BARRICADE · ACTIVATE PLAYER ABILITY / EQUIPMENT CARDS · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1169}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4 \u0007 PURCHASE EQUIPMENT · HOW TO PURCHASE EQUIPMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 1169}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1169 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1169 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 0.88238 of 1896 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 09:25 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 The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	PLAY · EPIC PHASE · RECKONER PHASE · 1 ROLL DICE · HOW TO ROLL DICE	p.10	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 The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	RED ACTION TRACK · HOW TO ACTIVATE THE RED ACTION TRACK · BLUE ACTION TRACK · HOW TO ACTIVATE THE BLUE ACTION TRACK · YOUR NEXT GAME · CREDITS	p.23	0.047131 (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 The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	RULE SUMMARY · Roll Dice · Use Dice · RECKONERS ACTIONS · NAUVOOGAMES.COM · Receive Rewards · …	p.24	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))	300
#4	RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	2 USE DICE · HOW TO USE DICE · IMPORTANT USE DICE RULES · MOVE · REMOVE BARRICADE · ACTIVATE PLAYER ABILITY / EQUIPMENT CARDS · …	p.11	0.032258 (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 The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	4 PURCHASE EQUIPMENT · HOW TO PURCHASE EQUIPMENT	p.18	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
#6	RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	GAME SETUP	p.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))	300
#7	RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	STEELHEART · DEFEATING STEELHEART	p.16	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 The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	HOW TO ACTIVATE STEELHEART · ON-GOING · ONCE PER ROUND - FREE · ONCE PER ROUND - COSTS · DETAILED ABILITY/EQUIPMENT CARD DESCRIPTIONS	p.20	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 28 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 The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	PLAY · EPIC PHASE · RECKONER PHASE · 1 ROLL DICE · HOW TO ROLL DICE	p.10	#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
#2	RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	GAME COMPONENTS · OVERVIEW · VICTORY CONDITION · LOSS CONDITION · HIGHER PLAYER COUNTS · LOWER PLAYER COUNTS	p.5	#9	0.02938 (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 The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	EPICS OVERVIEW · 2 STARTING RESEARCH VALUE · 3 STARTING HEALTH VALUE · WEAKENED HEALTH VALUE · 5 ACTION TRACK · 6 ACTION BRACKET · …	p.8	#11	0.027638 (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 The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	4 PURCHASE EQUIPMENT · HOW TO PURCHASE EQUIPMENT	p.18	#5	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
#5	RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	PLAN TOKENS · USING PLAN TOKENS · DICE AND PLAN TOKENS	p.13	#18	0.013158 (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 The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	RULE SUMMARY · Roll Dice · Use Dice · RECKONERS ACTIONS · NAUVOOGAMES.COM · Receive Rewards · …	p.24	#3	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	GAME SETUP	p.6	#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
#8	RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	2 USE DICE · HOW TO USE DICE · IMPORTANT USE DICE RULES · MOVE · REMOVE BARRICADE · ACTIVATE PLAYER ABILITY / EQUIPMENT CARDS · …	p.11	#4	0.032258 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	PLAY · EPIC PHASE · RECKONER PHASE · 1 ROLL DICE · HOW TO ROLL DICE	p.10	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	GAME COMPONENTS · OVERVIEW · VICTORY CONDITION · LOSS CONDITION · HIGHER PLAYER COUNTS · LOWER PLAYER COUNTS	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	RULE SUMMARY · Roll Dice · Use Dice · RECKONERS ACTIONS · NAUVOOGAMES.COM · Receive Rewards · …	p.24	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	2 USE DICE · HOW TO USE DICE · IMPORTANT USE DICE RULES · MOVE · REMOVE BARRICADE · ACTIVATE PLAYER ABILITY / EQUIPMENT CARDS · …	p.11	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK The Reckoners — Rulebook (corpus doc 1169)	4 PURCHASE EQUIPMENT · HOW TO PURCHASE EQUIPMENT	p.18	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 93 ms · first delta 2048 ms · total 7072 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 1904 ms · retrieval 93 ms · ask 5072 ms · gateway work 5168 ms · total 7072 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3824
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 599
tok/sec: 196.1 tok/sec — 599 output tokens in 3.055 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 10s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 1s 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 1099), 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.