RuleSage cited table rulings
← Star Wars: The Card Game

You asked

How do I play?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: Star Wars: The Card Gamebg-103886-en-1e

I looked through Star Wars: The Card Game'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.

RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.14 · playing unit cards · playing enhancement cards · 5. Conflict Phase
Unit cards are always played faceup into their owner's play area. Enhancement cards are typically used to enhance unit cards, but other game elements (such as a player's play area, an objective card, an affiliation card, or even a deck) can be enhanced. The text of each enhancement card designates t
RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.27 · Advanced Concepts · cannot · in play and out of play · put into play · sacrifice · then
Certain terms in Star Wars: The Card Game are imbued with specific, sometimes subtle, meaning. The following section describes these terms in detail. If an effect includes the word 'cannot' in its description, that effect is absolute and cannot be overridden by other effects. In exception to the 'Go
RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.10 · Setup · 1. Select Force Allegiances · 2. Select and Create Decks · Jedi Deck · Rebel Alliance Deck · Sith Deck · …
To prepare for a game of Star Wars: The Card Game , players must take the following steps: instances of objective sets 18 and 36 are found in the Core Set): Players agree on who will represent the dark side of the Force (i.e. be the DS player) and who will represent the light side of the Force (i.e.
RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.11 · 6. Prepare Tokens · 7. Prepare Death Star Dial · 8. Select Objective Cards · 9. Draw Starting Hands · 10. Reveal Objectives · The Golden Rule
Players gather all focus, damage, and shield tokens and place them within easy reach. This area is hereafter referred to as the token pool. The DS player sets the Death Star dial to '0' and then places the dial within easy view of both players. Each player looks at the top four cards of his objectiv
RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.16 · Resources · generating resources
When playing Star Wars: The Card Game , players are frequently required to spend resources in order to play cards or use abilities. A card's resource cost is found in its upper left corner (only unit, event, and enhancement cards have a resource cost). When a player wishes to play a card or is requi
🔧 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 192 ms · ask 2913 ms · total 3108 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 3108 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 14, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "Unit cards are always played faceup into their owner's play area. Enhancement cards are typically used to enhance unit cards, but other game elements (such as a player's play area, an objective card, an affiliation card, or even a deck) can be enhanced. The text of each enhancement card designates t", "headingPath": "playing unit cards · playing enhancement cards · 5. Conflict Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "Certain terms in Star Wars: The Card Game are imbued with specific, sometimes subtle, meaning. The following section describes these terms in detail. If an effect includes the word 'cannot' in its description, that effect is absolute and cannot be overridden by other effects. In exception to the 'Go", "headingPath": "Advanced Concepts · cannot · in play and out of play · put into play · sacrifice · then", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "To prepare for a game of Star Wars: The Card Game , players must take the following steps: instances of objective sets 18 and 36 are found in the Core Set): Players agree on who will represent the dark side of the Force (i.e. be the DS player) and who will represent the light side of the Force (i.e.", "headingPath": "Setup · 1. Select Force Allegiances · 2. Select and Create Decks · Jedi Deck · Rebel Alliance Deck · Sith Deck · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.0463, "snippet": "Players gather all focus, damage, and shield tokens and place them within easy reach. This area is hereafter referred to as the token pool. The DS player sets the Death Star dial to '0' and then places the dial within easy view of both players. Each player looks at the top four cards of his objectiv", "headingPath": "6. Prepare Tokens · 7. Prepare Death Star Dial · 8. Select Objective Cards · 9. Draw Starting Hands · 10. Reveal Objectives · The Golden Rule", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.044388, "snippet": "When playing Star Wars: The Card Game , players are frequently required to spend resources in order to play cards or use abilities. A card's resource cost is found in its upper left corner (only unit, event, and enhancement cards have a resource cost). When a player wishes to play a card or is requi", "headingPath": "Resources · generating resources", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.044306, "snippet": "Star Wars: The Card Game is played over a number of player turns . After the first player has taken his turn, his opponent takes a turn. Players take alternating turns in this way until a player wins the game (see 'Winning the Game' on page 15). Each player turn consists of the following phases: Bal", "headingPath": "Playing the Game · Phase Detail · 1. Balance Phase · ds player is the active player · ls player is the active player", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.040489, "snippet": "During the conflict phase, when the active player engages an enemy objective card, the players resolve the following engagement steps: Declare Objective Declare Attackers Declare Defenders Fight Edge Battle Resolve Strikes Reward Unopposed The active player cannot initiate an engagement if he is una", "headingPath": "Resolving an Engagement · 1. Declare Objective · 2. Declare Attackers · 3. Declare Defenders · Participating Units · 4. Fight Edge Battle", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.040281, "snippet": "Deployment phase begins. As an action, the active player may play a unit or enhancement card from his hand. Deployment phase ends. Proceed to conflict phase. Conflict phase begins. Active player may engage one enemy objective. No Engage Resolve Engagement Conflict phase ends. Proceed to Force phase.", "headingPath": "4. Deployment Phase · PLAYER ACTIONS · 5. Conflict Phase · 6. Force Phase · Engagement Resolution", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}]
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 997 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 997 boosted
answered-before recall
no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
debug row recorded
Sep 5, 2026 15:23 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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) playing unit cards · playing enhancement cards · 5. Conflict Phase p.14 0.047379 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) Advanced Concepts · cannot · in play and out of play · put into play · sacrifice · then p.27 0.047163 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) Setup · 1. Select Force Allegiances · 2. Select and Create Decks · Jedi Deck · Rebel Alliance Deck · Sith Deck · … p.10 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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) 6. Prepare Tokens · 7. Prepare Death Star Dial · 8. Select Objective Cards · 9. Draw Starting Hands · 10. Reveal Objectives · The Golden Rule p.11 0.0463 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) Resources · generating resources p.16 0.044388 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) Playing the Game · Phase Detail · 1. Balance Phase · ds player is the active player · ls player is the active player p.12 0.044306 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) Resolving an Engagement · 1. Declare Objective · 2. Declare Attackers · 3. Declare Defenders · Participating Units · 4. Fight Edge Battle p.18 0.040489 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) 4. Deployment Phase · PLAYER ACTIONS · 5. Conflict Phase · 6. Force Phase · Engagement Resolution p.31 0.040281 (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 61 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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) Preparing the Decks p.32 #15 0.026993 (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
#2 RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) spending resources · resource match p.16 #11 0.028382 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) Setup · 1. Select Force Allegiances · 2. Select and Create Decks · Jedi Deck · Rebel Alliance Deck · Sith Deck · … p.10 #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
#4 RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) 2. Refresh Phase · 3. Draw Phase p.12 #13 0.027619 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) playing unit cards · playing enhancement cards · 5. Conflict Phase p.14 #1 0.047379 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) Deck Customizing Rules · Organized Play p.28 #22 0.024444 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) Resources · generating resources p.16 #5 0.044388 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997) p.32 #27 0.022602 (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

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
timing split
retrieval 192 ms · first delta 2994 ms · total 3108 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 192 ms · ask 2913 ms · gateway work 3108 ms · total 3108 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3726
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
9
tok/sec
180.0 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.050 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 52s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage)
reachable (for 22h, checked 8s 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
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
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 927), 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.