RuleSage cited table rulings
← Smash Up

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Smash Upbg-122522-en-1e

Setup
1. For formal play, put all factions in the middle of the table.[1]
2. Randomly determine who goes first.[1]
3. The first player chooses one faction, and choice continues clockwise.[1]
4. Once everyone has chosen one faction, the last player chooses a second faction, with choice continuing in reverse order.[1]
5. Shuffle all the base cards together to make a deck.[1]
6. Draw one base per player, plus one.[1]
7. Place the bases face up in the middle of the table.[1]
8. Each player chooses two factions and shuffles them together to make a 40-card deck.[2]
9. Each player draws a hand of five cards.[1][2]
10. If you have no minions in your opening hand, show your hand, discard it, and draw a new hand of five cards; you must keep the second hand.[1]
A Turn
1. Some abilities happen at the start of your turn.[3]
2. On your turn, you can play one minion, play one action, or play one of each for free.[3][2]
3. You can play your cards in any order.[3][4]
4. To play a minion, choose a base and put the minion card beside it, facing toward you, and do what the card says.[3]
5. To play an action, show your card and do what it says, then discard the action (unless it has an Ongoing ability).[3]
6. After you are done playing cards, check to see whether any bases are ready to score.[3][2]
7. If any bases are ready, you must start scoring.[3]
8. Draw two cards.[3][2]
9. The maximum number of cards you can have in your hand at this time is 10; if you have more than 10 after drawing, discard down to 10.[3]
10. Anything that happens at the end of the turn happens here.[3]
11. Play passes to the player on the left.[3]
Scoring
1. A base scores if the total power of all minions on that base equals or exceeds the base's breakpoint.[5][2]
2. If more than one base is ready to score, the player whose turn it is decides which one to score first.[5]
3. When a base has been chosen to score, each player first gets to use any Special abilities that happen "before" the base scores.[5]
4. If more than one player wants to use a Special ability, start with the current player and go around the base clockwise until all players pass in sequence.[5]
5. If your Special allows you to play extra cards, you must play those immediately or not at all.[5]
6. The player with the most power on a base is the winner and gains victory points equal to the number on the left.[5][2]
7. The second highest player is the runner up and receives the middle number.[5][2]
8. The third highest player receives the number on the right.[5][2]
9. If players are tied on a base, all involved players get points for the best position they tied for.[6]
10. If two players tie for runner up, no one gets third place.[6]
11. After scoring, players can use Special abilities that happen "after" a base scores.[5]
12. All cards still on that base go to their owners' discard piles.[5]
13. Put the scored base into the base discard pile.[5]
14. Replace the scored base with the top card of the base deck, if any.[5]
15. Check to see if another base is ready to be scored and score it the same way.[5]
Ending the Game
1. After scoring bases, check to see if any players have 15 or more victory points.[3]
2. At the end of any turn that someone reaches 15 VP, the player with the most victory points wins.[6]
3. If a player has 15 or more victory points at the end of a turn, he or she wins.[2]
4. If two or more players have more than 15 VP, the one with the most victory points wins.[2]
5. In case of a tie for the most victory points, keep playing turns until there isn't a tie.[6][2]
[1] RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook · p.3 · Smash Up Your iPad!
[2] RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook · p.12 · Set Up · On Your Turn · Scoring · Winning · Additional Rules
[3] RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook · p.4 · 1. Crank It Up · 2. Play Cards · Minions · Actions · 3. Check for Scoring · 4. Draw 2 Cards · …
[4] RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook · p.8 · Terms and Restrictions
[5] RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook · p.6 · The Big Score · Me First! · Awarding VP · Back to Your Corners
[6] RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook · p.7

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 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 133 ms · ask 6685 ms · total 7151 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 331 ms · generation 6820 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 4, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "Some abilities happen at the start of your turn. This is when that goes down. Yo. On your turn play one minion, play one action, or play one of each… for free! You can play your cards in any order. You don't have to play any cards. To play a minion, choose a base and put the minion card beside it, f", "headingPath": "1. Crank It Up · 2. Play Cards · Minions · Actions · 3. Check for Scoring · 4. Draw 2 Cards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1153}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047183, "snippet": "Ninjas! Robot Ninjas! If you have two copies of Smash Up, different players can use the same faction, pitting wizards versus wizards for instance. But one player can't play with two copies of the same faction. I mean, come on. Kickin' It Queensberry For formal play, put all the factions in the middl", "headingPath": "Smash Up Your iPad!", "sharpsignalDocId": 1153}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "Score a base if the total power of all minions on that base equals or exceeds the base's breakpoint (see page 7). If more than one base is ready to score, the player whose turn it is decides which one to score first. When a base has been chosen to score, each player first gets to use any Special abi", "headingPath": "The Big Score · Me First! · Awarding VP · Back to Your Corners", "sharpsignalDocId": 1153}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "Each player chooses two factions and shuffles them together to make a 40-card deck. Draw a hand of five cards. Place one more base card than you have players in the middle of the table (that is, use five bases for four players). Play 1 minion and 1 action in either order. You can play less if you wa", "headingPath": "Set Up · On Your Turn · Scoring · Winning · Additional Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 1153}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "Return: This means that a card goes back where it came from. When a card returns from a base, discard attachments on that card. Special: Most abilities happen when you play a card. Special abilities happen at unusual times or in unusual ways. Special abilities might be on a card already in play or h", "headingPath": "Terms and Restrictions · Void Where Prohibited", "sharpsignalDocId": 1153}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.045009, "snippet": "7 Get tO knOw YOUr cardS! Name Ability Game Over , Man! At the end of any turn that someone reaches 15 VP , the player with the most victory points wins. If there is a tie for the most, keep playing turns until there isn’t. No sharing! Except for your two factions. You guys are BFFs. Winner VP Runne", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1153}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030886, "snippet": "Some restrictions apply. See rules for details. Supplies limited. Affect: A card is affected if it is moved, returned, destroyed, or has an action attached. Destroy: When a card says to destroy another card, put the destroyed card in its owner's discard pile. Discard: When a card gets discarded, it ", "headingPath": "Terms and Restrictions", "sharpsignalDocId": 1153}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": ". . . . . . 9 The Factions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Roll Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 A ll Your Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 SmaSh Up YOUr ipad! To learn about the Smash Up iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch g", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1153}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Smash Up Your iPad!", "sharpsignalDocId": 1153}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Set Up · On Your Turn · Scoring · Winning · Additional Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 1153}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. Crank It Up · 2. Play Cards · Minions · Actions · 3. Check for Scoring · 4. Draw 2 Cards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1153}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Terms and Restrictions", "sharpsignalDocId": 1153}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The Big Score · Me First! · Awarding VP · Back to Your Corners", "sharpsignalDocId": 1153}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1153}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1153 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1153 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 0.87719 of 2907 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Sep 5, 2026 15:14 UTC

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) 1. Crank It Up · 2. Play Cards · Minions · Actions · 3. Check for Scoring · 4. Draw 2 Cards · … p.4 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 Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) Smash Up Your iPad! p.3 0.047183 (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 Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) The Big Score · Me First! · Awarding VP · Back to Your Corners p.6 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 Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) Set Up · On Your Turn · Scoring · Winning · Additional Rules p.12 0.046875 (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 Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) Terms and Restrictions · Void Where Prohibited p.9 0.04598 (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 Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) p.7 0.045009 (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 Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) Terms and Restrictions p.8 0.030886 (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 Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) p.2 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

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 13 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) 1. Crank It Up · 2. Play Cards · Minions · Actions · 3. Check for Scoring · 4. Draw 2 Cards · … p.4 #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 Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) Smash Up Your iPad! p.3 #2 0.047183 (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 Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) Terms and Restrictions p.8 #7 0.030886 (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 Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) The Big Score · Me First! · Awarding VP · Back to Your Corners p.6 #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)) vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#5 RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) p.2 #11 0.014286 (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 Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) p.7 #6 0.045009 (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 Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) Terms and Restrictions · Void Where Prohibited p.9 #5 0.04598 (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 Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) Set Up · On Your Turn · Scoring · Winning · Additional Rules p.12 #4 0.046875 (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

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) Smash Up Your iPad! p.3 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) Set Up · On Your Turn · Scoring · Winning · Additional Rules p.12 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) 1. Crank It Up · 2. Play Cards · Minions · Actions · 3. Check for Scoring · 4. Draw 2 Cards · … p.4 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) Terms and Restrictions p.8 no quote on the wire
[5] RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) The Big Score · Me First! · Awarding VP · Back to Your Corners p.6 no quote on the wire
[6] RULEBOOK Smash Up — Rulebook (corpus doc 1153) p.7 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 133 ms · first delta 1807 ms · total 7151 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 331 ms · retrieval 133 ms · ask 6685 ms · gateway work 6820 ms · total 7151 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3332
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
987
tok/sec
199.7 tok/sec — 987 output tokens in 4.943 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 27s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage)
reachable (for 22h, checked 7s 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 1083), 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.