Ruling — Seas of Strife

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Seas of Strifebg-225482-en-1e

To play Seas of Strife, follow these steps:

1. Setup:

* For 3-6 players, shuffle the cards and deal them out equally: 15 cards each for 3 or 4 players, 12 cards each for 5 players, and 10 cards each for 6 players.[1]

* In a 3-player game, remove the orange (doldrums) and dark red (Kraken) cards from the game.[1] (Note: An alternative 3-player variation involves removing the lowest 3 sets of cards: orange, red, and gray [2]).

* After dealing, each player chooses two cards from their hand and passes them to the player on their left; in each subsequent hand, pass to one player farther than before (two to the left on the second hand, etc.), unless passing to yourself.[2]

2. The Trick-Taking Process:

* A round consists of as many tricks as the number of cards each player had at the start of the round.[3]

* The player with the 0 card opens the first trick by placing it in the center (in a 3-player game, the player with the 11 starts the first trick by playing that card instead).[3] (Note: In a 3-player variation, the player with the blue (iceberg) 31 card plays the first card).[2]

* Play proceeds clockwise.[3]

* Each player plays one card from their hand into the center.[3]

* Players must play a card of the same suit as a card already in the trick if possible; if they cannot, they may play any card from their hand.[3]

* If a Face card (the highest value of a suit) is played, it "zeroes out" the count for that suit, meaning that suit can no longer be considered the highest suit in the trick.[4]

3. Determining the Winner of a Trick:

* Once everyone has played, determine the winner by finding which suit has the most cards in the trick.[3]

* The player who played the highest-ranked card of that suit takes the trick.[3]

* If two or more suits are tied for the most cards, the player who played the highest card of any of the tied colors takes the trick.[3]

* If all suits are "zeroed out" by Face cards, all cards are considered a single suit, and the highest card played wins.[4]

* The player who takes a trick puts the cards in a single face-down pile; subsequent tricks taken are kept in separate piles.[3]

4. Continuing the Game:

* As a general rule, the player who takes a trick opens the next one and may choose any card from their hand.[5]

* Exception: If a player takes a trick with the highest-ranked card of a particular suit, they may decide which player opens the next trick.[6]

* Exception: Under "Strife" rules, if a player takes a trick with a Face card, they are not allowed to pick who leads the next trick.[4]

5. Ending the Game and Scoring:

* The round ends when all cards have been played from everyone's hands.[6]

* Each player receives 1 penalty point for each trick they have taken.[6]

* (Note: In the recommended 3 or 4-player game, each Face card won at the end of a hand cancels out one trick taken).[2]

* The game continues for multiple rounds until at least one player reaches or exceeds a specific penalty point threshold: 15 points for 3 or 4 players, 12 points for 5 players, and 10 points for 6 players.[6]

* The player with the fewest points wins (if there is a tie, all tied players win).[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Seas of Strife — Rulebook · p.1 · Components · Card anatomy · Game setup

[2] RULEBOOK Seas of Strife — Rulebook · p.4 · 'STRIFE' EXAMPLE TRICK 2: · 3-player Setup Changes · Other Variations:

[3] RULEBOOK Seas of Strife — Rulebook · p.1 · Playing the game · Who takes the trick?

[4] RULEBOOK Seas of Strife — Rulebook · p.3 · Background · 'STRIFE' EXAMPLE TRICK 1:

[5] RULEBOOK Seas of Strife — Rulebook · p.2 · EXAMPLE TRICK 1: · EXAMPLE TRICK 2: · Who leads the next trick?

[6] RULEBOOK Seas of Strife — Rulebook · p.2 · End of a round

Answer in hand — your move.

🔧 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 217 ms · ask 5043 ms · total 5262 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5262 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 1, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "Seas of Strife is played over several rounds. A round consists of as many 'tricks' as the number of cards each player has at the beginning of the round. A trick consists of each player playing one card from their hand and putting the card face up in the center of the table. The player who has the 0 ", "headingPath": "Playing the game · Who takes the trick?", "sharpsignalDocId": 1183}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "Anna starts the first trick of the round by playing the orange (doldrums) 0 card. Beth must play an orange card if she has one, so she plays the orange 2 card. Connor must follow suit, and he plays the orange 1 card. David chooses to play the orange 6 card. Eve has no orange cards, so she can play a", "headingPath": "EXAMPLE TRICK 1: · EXAMPLE TRICK 2: · Who leads the next trick?", "sharpsignalDocId": 1183}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "David opens the trick by playing the green (rocks) 43 card. Eve must play a green card if she has one, but she does not. So, she plays an 11, which belongs to the red (reef) suit. Anna must now play either a green (rocks) or a red (reef) card. She decides to play the 13, which also belongs to the re", "headingPath": "'STRIFE' EXAMPLE TRICK 2: · 3-player Setup Changes · Other Variations:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1183}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "Seas of Strife was originally self-published by the designer as 'Strife.' The game was later released in Germany by Amigo Games in 2015 as 'Texas Showdown.' The rules represented in the main rules follow the 'Texas Showdown' rules. Due to a misunderstanding, Amigo used a different version of the rul", "headingPath": "Background · 'STRIFE' EXAMPLE TRICK 1:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1183}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "When all cards have been played out of each player's hand, the round ends. Each player scores 1 penalty point for each trick they have taken. Note down all the players' scores for the round and start the next one by reshuffling and dealing the cards as before. Keep playing rounds until at least one ", "headingPath": "End of a round", "sharpsignalDocId": 1183}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.045688, "snippet": "3-6 players | ages 14+ | playtime: 45 minutes A clear and beautiful day at sea! That is what you had planned when you left port this morning. Unfortunately, the ocean is often fickle, and today has turned out to be no exception. Now you must face a variety of hazards before you can reach safety! Can", "headingPath": "Components · Card anatomy · Game setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1183}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Components · Card anatomy · Game setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1183}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "'STRIFE' EXAMPLE TRICK 2: · 3-player Setup Changes · Other Variations:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1183}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing the game · Who takes the trick?", "sharpsignalDocId": 1183}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Background · 'STRIFE' EXAMPLE TRICK 1:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1183}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "EXAMPLE TRICK 1: · EXAMPLE TRICK 2: · Who leads the next trick?", "sharpsignalDocId": 1183}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "End of a round", "sharpsignalDocId": 1183}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1183 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1183 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 0.89694 of 2581 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 14:34 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 Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	Playing the game · Who takes the trick?	p.1	0.04866 (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 Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	EXAMPLE TRICK 1: · EXAMPLE TRICK 2: · Who leads the next trick?	p.2	0.048139 (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 Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	'STRIFE' EXAMPLE TRICK 2: · 3-player Setup Changes · Other Variations:	p.4	0.047883 (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 Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	Background · 'STRIFE' EXAMPLE TRICK 1:	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
#5	RULEBOOK Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	End of a round	p.2	0.046402 (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 Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	Components · Card anatomy · Game setup	p.1	0.045688 (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 6 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 Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	Playing the game · Who takes the trick?	p.1	#1	0.04866 (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 Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	'STRIFE' EXAMPLE TRICK 2: · 3-player Setup Changes · Other Variations:	p.4	#3	0.047883 (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 Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	Components · Card anatomy · Game setup	p.1	#6	0.045688 (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 Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	Background · 'STRIFE' EXAMPLE TRICK 1:	p.3	#4	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	End of a round	p.2	#5	0.046402 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	EXAMPLE TRICK 1: · EXAMPLE TRICK 2: · Who leads the next trick?	p.2	#2	0.048139 (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 Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	Components · Card anatomy · Game setup	p.1	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	'STRIFE' EXAMPLE TRICK 2: · 3-player Setup Changes · Other Variations:	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	Playing the game · Who takes the trick?	p.1	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	Background · 'STRIFE' EXAMPLE TRICK 1:	p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	EXAMPLE TRICK 1: · EXAMPLE TRICK 2: · Who leads the next trick?	p.2	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Seas of Strife — Rulebook (corpus doc 1183)	End of a round	p.2	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 217 ms · first delta 1008 ms · total 5262 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 217 ms · ask 5043 ms · gateway work 5262 ms · total 5262 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2704
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 849
tok/sec: 202.1 tok/sec — 849 output tokens in 4.201 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 29s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, 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 1113), 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.