You asked
How do I play?
Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstainAsked with: Hoplomachus: Victorumbg-313889-en-1e
Answered before
This question didn't get an answer just now — but Hoplomachus: Victorum has been asked something like it before. The corpus may have changed since, so check the date and the answerer on each one before you rule from it.
I looked through Hoplomachus: Victorum's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.
The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.
In this step, you may play one tactic. Playing a tactic is optional, and you cannot play more than one tactic per turn. Just as for the rival, you can play tactics on any of your non-elite units, or on any opponent that is adjacent to one of your units. Having a unit in combat that has the Tactical
How to Play
For your Tactic Placement Step, you choose to place the Stun tactic on the rival's Defender. This is possible because Krakenlance has a Prowess that grants him I Tactical, allowing you to play tactics on non-adjacent opponents. Stun is a temporary tactic, so it will sit on top of the rival Defender
Refer to 'Hero Details' on page 38-39 for information and stats for each of the heroes. You'll need information from that section to complete the steps below. Hero. Select your troop's hero from among the eight options. Place your hero's chip in your camp-the empty area below the hero tracking pad-w
You also have a lineup in combat. However, your lineup does not require advance setup like the rival's does, and the order of the icons does not imply an order of deployment. Instead, you will choose turn by turn - up to the limit of units shown on the event card - which, if any, units from your cam
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
- outcome
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- warm abstain
-
- this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)
- corpus profile
- live,vps
- answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
- gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
- timings
- search 127 ms · ask 4519 ms · total 4649 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 4649 ms
- retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
- [{"page": 25, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "In this step, you may play one tactic. Playing a tactic is optional, and you cannot play more than one tactic per turn. Just as for the rival, you can play tactics on any of your non-elite units, or on any opponent that is adjacent to one of your units. Having a unit in combat that has the Tactical ", "headingPath": "Tactic Placement Step", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.044835, "snippet": "How to Play", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.04257, "snippet": "For your Tactic Placement Step, you choose to place the Stun tactic on the rival's Defender. This is possible because Krakenlance has a Prowess that grants him I Tactical, allowing you to play tactics on non-adjacent opponents. Stun is a temporary tactic, so it will sit on top of the rival Defender ", "headingPath": "Player Tactic Placement Example: · Movement Step · Player Movement Example: · Abilities Step · Player Abilities Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.042534, "snippet": "Refer to 'Hero Details' on page 38-39 for information and stats for each of the heroes. You'll need information from that section to complete the steps below. Hero. Select your troop's hero from among the eight options. Place your hero's chip in your camp-the empty area below the hero tracking pad-w", "headingPath": "Hero Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "You also have a lineup in combat. However, your lineup does not require advance setup like the rival's does, and the order of the icons does not imply an order of deployment. Instead, you will choose turn by turn - up to the limit of units shown on the event card - which, if any, units from your cam", "headingPath": "YOUR LINEUP · The Flow of Combat · Turn Structure", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Draw the Event. Take the top card of the Sport or Bloodshed deck, as appropriate, and place it on the designated spot to the left of the map of the ancient world. Place the Arena. Find the reference card that matches the region of the ancient world where your encampment is currently located on the g", "headingPath": "Preparing for Combat", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "In this step, you may attack or use a Special skill with each of your units in the order you choose. Follow this procedure for each unit: Decide whether the unit will attack or use a Special (if it has one). If using a Special, carry out its effects as described on the Unit Skills reference. After y", "headingPath": "Engage Step · Player Engage Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "In this step, rival units either attack or use their Special skills. You may freely choose the order in which they act, but each rival must attack or use a Special if it can. When you select a rival unit to act, follow this procedure: If the rival unit has a Special skill, check whether the conditio", "headingPath": "Rival Engage Step", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}]
- citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
- []
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 854 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 854 boosted
- answered-before recall
-
past answered rulings were found and offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
- ruling 6491 — matched by the same question (normalized, punctuation folded) — measured similarity 1.0
- debug row recorded
- Sep 5, 2026 15:18 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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | Tactic Placement Step | p.25 | 0.048652 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | p.1 | 0.044835 (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)) | 11 | |
| #3 | RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | Player Tactic Placement Example: · Movement Step · Player Movement Example: · Abilities Step · Player Abilities Example: | p.26 | 0.04257 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | Hero Setup | p.9 | 0.042534 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | YOUR LINEUP · The Flow of Combat · Turn Structure | p.20 | 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 |
| #6 | RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | Preparing for Combat | 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 |
| #7 | RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | Engage Step · Player Engage Example: | p.27 | 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 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | Rival Engage Step | p.24 | 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 80 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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | p.1 | #2 | 0.044835 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | p.26 | #11 | 0.02748 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | You are a Hero! · Overview | p.6 | #14 | 0.026621 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | Preparing for Combat | p.18 | #6 | 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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | Player Tactic Placement Example: · Movement Step · Player Movement Example: · Abilities Step · Player Abilities Example: | p.26 | #3 | 0.04257 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | Blessings · The Structure of Play | p.13 | #12 | 0.027151 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | Engage Step · Player Engage Example: | p.27 | #7 | 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 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854) | Tactic Placement Step | p.25 | #1 | 0.048652 (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
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.
| # | document | heading | page | quote chars |
|---|
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 127 ms · first delta 4547 ms · total 4649 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 127 ms · ask 4519 ms · gateway work 4649 ms · total 4649 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 2708
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 9
- tok/sec
- 169.8 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.053 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 58s ago)
- answerer host (measured by rulesage)
- reachable (for 23h, checked 9s 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
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- abstain rationale
-
I don't have enough information.
BOILERPLATE, not reasoning: this is the answerer's fixed abstention phrase, the same sentence it emits whenever it declines. It records THAT the answerer declined and never why — no per-ruling reason was captured, because none was sent. Hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped
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 789), 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.