Ruling — Bonsai

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Bonsaibg-366994-en-1e

The game is played in turns in clockwise order, starting with the first player.[1]

On your turn, you must perform one of these two actions:

1. Meditate: Choose one of the face-up cards on the board and take it, along with any bonsai tiles shown below the card you draw from the common supply.[1] After taking the card, slide all face-up cards on the board to the right to fill the vacated space, then draw the top card from the deck to refill the empty space.[1]

2. Cultivate: Place tiles from your personal supply into your bonsai.[2] You can place as many tiles as there are symbols depicted on your Seishi tile and any of your Growth cards.[2][3] Each placement is optional.[3]

* Wood tile: Must be placed adjacent to another wood tile.[2]

* Leaf tile: Must be placed adjacent to a wood tile.[2]

* Fruit tile: Must be placed between two leaf tiles that are adjacent to one another; one side of the fruit must touch the first leaf and the other side must touch the second leaf.[2] You cannot place a fruit adjacent to another fruit.[2]

* Flower tile: Must be placed adjacent to a leaf tile.[2] (Note: Each time you take a Cultivate action, you must place a flower on your bonsai, provided you have this flower in your supply before taking the action; this rule does not apply to the Helper card).[4]

* Note: If it is not possible to add a wood tile at the start of your turn, you may remove the minimum number of tiles from your bonsai to make it possible again.[2]

After performing your action:

1. Check if you can claim a Goal tile.[1] During the turn in which your bonsai matches or exceeds the requirements of a Goal tile that is still in the middle of the table, you must immediately choose whether to claim it or renounce it to try for a harder Goal tile.[5] If you claim a tile, take it and keep it beside your bonsai; you may only claim one Goal tile per color, but there is no limit to the number of different colored Goal tiles you can claim in one turn.[5] If you renounce a tile, you cannot claim that specific tile in subsequent turns.[5]

2. Your turn ends and passes to the next player in clockwise order.[1]

Capacity Limit:

Your Seishi tile shows a maximum of 5 tiles you can keep in your supply.[1] If you have more than 5 tiles at the end of your turn, you must discard tiles of your choice until you have 5.[1] You can extend this limit by acquiring Tool cards.[1]

End of the Game:

The game is triggered when the last card from the deck is revealed.[5] All players, including the one who triggered the end, get one more turn, and then the game ends and points are tallied.[5]

Scoring:

1. Each tile in your bonsai is worth a certain number of points.[5]

2. Add points provided by your Parchment cards and by claimed Goal tiles.[5]

3. Leftover tiles in your supply are worth no points.[5]

4. The player with the most points is the winner.[5] In the event of a tie, the winner is the player farthest from the starting player in clockwise order.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook · p.4 · THE GAME · Meditate

[2] RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook · p.5 · Cultivate · Wood · Fruit · Flower

[3] RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook · p.12 · Growth cards · Tool cards · Helper cards · Master cards · Parchment cards · Kengai Style Goal

[4] RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook · p.8 · Setup · Rules adjustments · Goal

[5] RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook · p.6 · Claiming a Goal tile · END OF THE GAME

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 105 ms · ask 5098 ms · total 5205 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5205 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "The game is played in turns in clockwise order, starting with the first player. On your turn, choose and perform one of these two actions: meditate or cultivate , then check if you can claim a Goal tile . After performing the action, and eventually claimed a Goal tile, your turn ends and pass to the", "headingPath": "THE GAME · Meditate", "sharpsignalDocId": 1100}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "The rules that follow apply to a game with 2 - 4 players. All modifications for a solo game are shown on page 7. a Place the board in the middle of the table. b \u0007 Place all the bonsai tiles in an area which is within reach of all players. This is the common supply . c \u0007 Choose three colors at random", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1100}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "A tokonoma is a recessed space in a Japanese-style reception room, in which items for artistic appreciation, such as parchments or bonsai, are displayed. After a few games, you may try this game variant which offers a more controlled experience by putting all Parchment cards in the first half of the", "headingPath": "Game variant 'Tokonoma'", "sharpsignalDocId": 1100}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "The rules for a 2-player game apply, with the following changes. Choose a difficulty level according to the table below: | LEVEL | Gakusei | Senmon | Sensei | YUsha | | Difficulty | Low | Medium | High | Extreme | | Points | 80 | 100 | 120 | 140 | During setup , take 1 wood and 1 leaf tile as starti", "headingPath": "END OF THE GAME · Solo scenarios · During the game :", "sharpsignalDocId": 1100}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "During the turn in which your bonsai matches or exceeds the requirements of a Goal tile that is still in the middle of the table (i.e., the Goal tile has not been claimed yet by any player), you must immediately choose whether you want to claim that tile or if you want to renounce it in order to try", "headingPath": "Claiming a Goal tile · END OF THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1100}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Use only the Goal tiles shown above. \u0007 Each time you take a Cultivate action, you must place a flower on your bonsai. You need to have this flower in your supply before taking the action, otherwise you cannot take it. This rule does not apply to the Helper card. Score at least 130 points. Claim all ", "headingPath": "Setup · Rules adjustments · Goal", "sharpsignalDocId": 1100}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Place tiles in your bonsai. You can place tiles which are in your personal supply in your Bonsai. You can place as many tiles as there are symbols depicted on your Seishi tile and any or all of your Growth cards. Each symbol will let you place one tile of the corresponding type. During a Cultivate a", "headingPath": "Cultivate · Wood · Fruit · Flower", "sharpsignalDocId": 1100}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Growth cards stay in front of you for the rest of the game . When you Cultivate, you may place all tiles represented on your Growth cards in addition to the ones you can place thanks to your Seishi tile. If you have multiple copies of the same card, their effects add up. Choose freely the order in w", "headingPath": "Growth cards · Tool cards · Helper cards · Master cards · Parchment cards · Kengai Style Goal", "sharpsignalDocId": 1100}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE GAME · Meditate", "sharpsignalDocId": 1100}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Cultivate · Wood · Fruit · Flower", "sharpsignalDocId": 1100}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Growth cards · Tool cards · Helper cards · Master cards · Parchment cards · Kengai Style Goal", "sharpsignalDocId": 1100}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup · Rules adjustments · Goal", "sharpsignalDocId": 1100}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Claiming a Goal tile · END OF THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1100}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1100 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1100 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 0.90909 of 2464 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 15:24 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 Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	THE GAME · Meditate	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 Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	SETUP	p.3	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
#3	RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	Game variant 'Tokonoma'	p.3	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
#4	RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	END OF THE GAME · Solo scenarios · During the game :	p.7	0.047371 (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 Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	Claiming a Goal tile · END OF THE GAME	p.6	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
#6	RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	Setup · Rules adjustments · Goal	p.8	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
#7	RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	Cultivate · Wood · Fruit · Flower	p.5	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
#8	RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	Growth cards · Tool cards · Helper cards · Master cards · Parchment cards · Kengai Style Goal	p.12	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 15 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 Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	THE GAME · Meditate	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 Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	Game variant 'Tokonoma'	p.3	#3	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
#3	RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	Claiming a Goal tile · END OF THE GAME	p.6	#5	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	Setup · Rules adjustments · Goal	p.8	#6	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
#5	RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	Cultivate · Wood · Fruit · Flower	p.5	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	Growth cards · Tool cards · Helper cards · Master cards · Parchment cards · Kengai Style Goal	p.12	#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 Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	END OF THE GAME · Solo scenarios · During the game :	p.7	#4	0.047371 (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 Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	SETUP	p.3	#2	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

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	THE GAME · Meditate	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	Cultivate · Wood · Fruit · Flower	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	Growth cards · Tool cards · Helper cards · Master cards · Parchment cards · Kengai Style Goal	p.12	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	Setup · Rules adjustments · Goal	p.8	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Bonsai — Rulebook (corpus doc 1100)	Claiming a Goal tile · END OF THE GAME	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 105 ms · first delta 1490 ms · total 5205 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 105 ms · ask 5098 ms · gateway work 5205 ms · total 5205 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3451
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 732
tok/sec: 201.2 tok/sec — 732 output tokens in 3.638 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 12s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 2s 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 1030), 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.