Ruling — Catacombs (Third Edition)

← Catacombs (Third Edition)

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Catacombs (Third Edition)bg-195137-en-1e

The Battle Phase proceeds as follows:

1. The heroes take their turns first.[1]

2. Players take their turns by performing one action for each hero.[1]

3. There is no set order for which hero goes first; players may confer to decide who performs their action next.[1]

4. An action consists of either a hero's shot sequence found on their Hero Rules card, or playing an Item, Spell, or Ability card, but not both (unless a card rule or a Combo item overrides this).[1]

5. Once all players have performed an action with the heroes, the Overseer takes a turn for each monster using the shot sequences described on the Monster cards.[1]

6. Once all monsters have taken a turn, the round is over.[1]

7. At the end of the round, heroes assess any additional end of round effects that may have occurred.[1]

8. A new round begins with the heroes taking their turns again.[1]

Rounds continue until all monsters in the room have been destroyed or all heroes are dead.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook · p.10 · Game Phases: Exploring The Catacomb · Character Shots

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 97 ms · ask 3656 ms · total 6341 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 2578 ms · generation 3763 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.046147, "snippet": "The heroes always take their turns first during the Battle Phase. Rounds continue until all the monsters in the room have been destroyed or all the heroes are dead. The players take their turns by performing one action for each hero. There is no set order for which hero goes first: players are encou", "headingPath": "Game Phases: Exploring The Catacomb · Character Shots", "sharpsignalDocId": 1058}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "The players place a hero player board in front of them for each hero they control and take the corresponding wooden hero piece and cards. Place the Hero Portrait and Rules cards in the spaces showing a Hero card back on the player board. If the hero has any other cards, place them on the board as we", "headingPath": "Hero Player Boards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1058}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "One or more shots can be performed during a player's turn when controlling a character; this is called a shot sequence . All shots in a shot sequence are optional. If a piece leaves the playmat during a shot sequence, place it back on the edge of the playmat at the point where it left and continue t", "headingPath": "Battle Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1058}, {"page": 34, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Be Aggressive: The heroes are given the first chance to act in each room. If you can remove some of the starting monsters from the playmat on turn one each time, it will save you damage in the long run. Coordinate: To be aggressive effectively, you'll need to plan out your turn in advance. Where do ", "headingPath": "Core Strategy · Addendum", "sharpsignalDocId": 1058}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "One or more shots can be performed during a player’s turn when controlling a character; this is called a shot sequence. All shots in a shot sequence are optional. If a piece leaves the playmat during a shot sequence, place it back on the edge of the playmat at the point where it left and continue th", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1058}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "A character can open a Magic Portal to switch the positions of any two friendly characters on the playmat (including themselves). This includes characters that are frozen. Unlike teleportation, no pieces leave the playmat, their positions are simply switched. Elani the Thief only has one point of he", "headingPath": "Advanced Shots · Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1058}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.030282, "snippet": "Performing the shot sequence on the given Hero's Rules card Playing a card (typically an Ability , Spell or Item card Example: Varesh the Wizard could play one of the following... Heroes can play different cards during their turn instead of their base sequence: Spell cards can only be used by charac", "headingPath": "Healing Damage · Playing Spell, Ability, or Item Cards · Spell Cards · Refreshing Ability or Item Cards: · Ability Cards · Important:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1058}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Unlike character shots, ranged shots involve flicking a separate ranged piece . This ranged piece is placed anywhere within 2.5cm (1') of the character and then shot across the playmat 5 . This simulates a character shooting a projectile during battle. When a ranged shot is complete, the ranged piec", "headingPath": "Battle Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1058}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Phases: Exploring The Catacomb · Character Shots", "sharpsignalDocId": 1058}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1058 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1058 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 0.91888 of 789 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 12:26 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 Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Game Phases: Exploring The Catacomb · Character Shots	p.10	0.046147 (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 Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Hero Player Boards	p.7	0.032787 (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 Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Battle Phase	p.12	0.031746 (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 Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Core Strategy · Addendum	p.34	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
#5	RULEBOOK Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)		p.12	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
#6	RULEBOOK Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Advanced Shots · Example:	p.28	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
#7	RULEBOOK Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Healing Damage · Playing Spell, Ability, or Item Cards · Spell Cards · Refreshing Ability or Item Cards: · Ability Cards · Important:	p.15	0.030282 (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 Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Battle Phase	p.11	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 48 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 Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Core Strategy · Addendum	p.34	#4	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
#2	RULEBOOK Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Game Phases: Exploring The Catacomb · Character Shots	p.10	#1	0.046147 (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 Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Advanced Shots · Example:	p.28	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Important: · Example:	p.25	#13	0.028475 (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 Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)		p.12	#5	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 Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Monster Cards · Example: · Advanced Shots	p.27	#15	0.027912 (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 Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Hero Player Boards	p.7	#2	0.032787 (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 Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Battle Phase	p.12	#3	0.031746 (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 Catacombs (Third Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 1058)	Game Phases: Exploring The Catacomb · Character Shots	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 97 ms · first delta 2510 ms · total 6341 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 2578 ms · retrieval 97 ms · ask 3656 ms · gateway work 3763 ms · total 6341 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3394
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 230
tok/sec: 200.2 tok/sec — 230 output tokens in 1.149 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 21s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, checked 2s 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 988), 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.