Ruling — Mottainai

← Mottainai

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Mottainaibg-175199-en-1e

Setup

1. Each player takes a temple mat.[1][2]

2. Shuffle the deck of cards and deal a five card hand to each player.[1][2]

3. Deal one face-down card into each temple's task slot.[1][2]

4. To determine who goes first, each player draws and discards the top card of the deck to form the floor; the player who discarded the card closest to A alphabetically goes first.[1][2]

Turn Sequence

1. Perform each opponent's task, going clockwise from yourself; if an opponent has no task, skip that player.[3]

2. Check to see if you have more than five cards in your hand; if you do, return cards to the bottom of the deck until you have five.[4]

3. Perform your task.[3]

4. If you have no task, take one Prayer action instead.[4][3]

5. Perform any 'In the morning' effects on works you've already completed; if you have more than one, you can do them in any order, but each can be used at most once per turn.[4]

6. Discard the card in your temple's task slot to the floor.[4]

7. You may place a new task from your hand under your temple in the task slot; if you do not, the slot remains empty and you will take a prayer action later instead of a task.[4]

8. Perform any 'At night' effects on works you've already completed.[3]

9. Draw the cards in your waiting area into your hand.[3]

10. Play passes clockwise to the next player's turn.[4]

Game End and Scoring

1. The game ends immediately when the deck becomes empty or a player completes five works in one wing of their temple.[5][6]

2. The player with the most points wins.[6]

3. In the case of a tie, the winner is the current player, or the player in turn order closest to the current player.[6]

4. Total your score using the following:

* The values of each of your works in the Gift Shop or the Gallery.[6]

* The values of each of your covered sales.[6]

* Backorders: For each type of material, identify the player with the most sales (covered or uncovered); that player counts cards of that type in their hand as backorders (if there is a tie for a type, nobody scores points for it).[6]

* Points given by card effects on completed works.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook · p.4 · SETUP · WHAT'S THAT?

[2] RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook · p.4

[3] RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook · p.10 · YOUR TURN · WAITING AREA

[4] RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook · p.9 · YOUR TURN

[5] RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook · p.8

[6] RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook · p.16

That's the page. Back to the table.

🔧 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 225 ms · ask 4478 ms · total 4706 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4706 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "Perform each opponent's task, going clockwise from yourself. If an opponent has no task, skip that player. Perform your task. If you have no task, take one Prayer action instead. Perform any 'At night' effects on works you've already completed. Draw the cards in your waiting area into your hand. Any", "headingPath": "YOUR TURN · WAITING AREA", "sharpsignalDocId": 1077}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.047712, "snippet": "Your turn is divided into three parts of the day: Morning , Noon , and Night . You take your complete turn, and then play passes clockwise to the next player's turn. First, check to see if you have more than five cards in your hand. If you do, return (place on the bottom of the deck) cards until you", "headingPath": "YOUR TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 1077}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "3 @AsmadiGames facebook.com/AsmadiGames Mottainai (もったいない) -- Don’t waste, use everything: every little thing has a soul. TABLE OF CONTENTS pg 4-5 pg 6-7 pg 8 pg 9-10 pg 11 pg 12 pg 13 pg 14-15 pg 16-17 pg 18 pg 19-21 pg 22-23 Hello! We are Motes, here to help! Mottainai is a game that takes a coupl", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1077}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.046244, "snippet": "18 asmadigames.com EXTENDED GAME If you’d like to play an extended game of Mottainai, change the end-game condition from five works in one wing to six. No other rule changes are necessary. FOUR / FIVE PLAYER RULES Mottainai Deluxe comes with two decks. Playing with four or five players requires both", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1077}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "12 asmadigames.com Any action can be replaced by a Craft or Prayer action. CRAFT: Complete a work from your hand, using materials from your craft bench as support. The work must be the same type as the action you replaced (Ex: a Craft replacing a Potter lets you complete a Clay work). PRAYER: Draw o", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1077}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Each player takes a temple mat. Shuffle the deck of cards and deal a five card hand to each player. Also deal one face-down card into each temple's task slot. To see who goes first, each player draws and discards the top card of the deck to form the floor. The player that discarded the closest card ", "headingPath": "SETUP · WHAT'S THAT?", "sharpsignalDocId": 1077}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "8 asmadigames.com FLOW OF THE GAME A game of Mottainai consists of many turns, taken individually by players. On the following two pages are a description of what you do on your turn, divided into three parts: Morning, Noon, and Night. Each turn, you’ll be using various actions to build up the cards", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1077}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "4 asmadigames.com Each player takes a temple mat. Shuffle the deck of cards and deal a five card hand to each player. Also deal one face-down card into each temple’s task slot. To see who goes first, each player draws and discards the top card of the deck to form the floor. The player that discarded", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1077}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP · WHAT'S THAT?", "sharpsignalDocId": 1077}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1077}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "YOUR TURN · WAITING AREA", "sharpsignalDocId": 1077}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "YOUR TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 1077}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1077}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1077}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1077 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1077 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 0.88947 of 1719 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 13:17 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 Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)	YOUR TURN · WAITING AREA	p.10	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
#2	RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)	YOUR TURN	p.9	0.047712 (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 Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)		p.3	0.046898 (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 Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)		p.18	0.046244 (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 Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)		p.12	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
#6	RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)	SETUP · WHAT'S THAT?	p.4	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
#7	RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)		p.8	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
#8	RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)		p.4	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 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 Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)	YOUR TURN	p.9	#2	0.047712 (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 Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)	SETUP · WHAT'S THAT?	p.4	#6	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
#3	RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)		p.18	#4	0.046244 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)		p.8	#7	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 Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)		p.16	#13	0.014085 (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 Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)		p.4	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)	Q: If I gain a helper during a task, or if one becomes covered, do I get extra actions? · Q: Can I claim backorders with 0 sales if I have Quilt or Lampshade? · Q: Do I have to use effects on my cards? · KEYWORDS:	p.23	#10	0.02758 (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 Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)	YOUR TURN · WAITING AREA	p.10	#1	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)	SETUP · WHAT'S THAT?	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)	YOUR TURN · WAITING AREA	p.10	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)	YOUR TURN	p.9	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)		p.8	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Mottainai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1077)		p.16	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 225 ms · first delta 1843 ms · total 4706 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 225 ms · ask 4478 ms · gateway work 4706 ms · total 4706 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2239
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 565
tok/sec: 201.3 tok/sec — 565 output tokens in 2.807 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 23s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 3s 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 1007), 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.