Ruling — Middle-Earth Quest

← Middle-Earth Quest

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Middle-Earth Questbg-31563-en-1e

To play Middle-earth Quest, follow these procedures:

Setup

1. Choose Sides: Players determine who takes the role of Sauron and who takes the role of heroes.[1]

2. Place Game Board: Unfold the two halves of the game board in the center of the play area.[1]

3. Hero Setup:

* Each hero player selects a different hero sheet and matching figure, placing them in their play areas.[1]

* Place all favor and character tokens in the Favor and Character area of the game board.[1]

* Each hero player places his figure on the hero's starting location as listed on his hero sheet.[1]

* Separate all Hero cards into five Hero decks and one Skill deck; each hero player takes their corresponding deck, shuffles it, and places it facedown next to their "Life Pool".[1]

* Each hero player randomly selects one of his Starting Quest cards, follows its "Setup" instructions, and places it in front of himself.[1]

* Each hero receives an Advanced Quest card, though it cannot be used until the Starting Quest is completed.[1]

* Separate Event cards by stage, shuffle the three decks, and place them facedown adjacent to the top of the game board.[1]

* Separate Encounter cards by region (six decks total), shuffle them, and place them facedown on their respective areas to the left of the game board.[2]

4. Sauron Setup:

* Place all influence tokens on the Influence area of the game board.[2]

* Place the 'Black Serpent' and 'Mouth of Sauron' figures on their starting locations, and place the other three minion figures off to the side.[2]

* Randomly select one of three Starting Plot cards, place it on the '1' space of the Active Plot Track, and place the matching plot marker on the affected location.[2]

* Shuffle the Shadow, Corruption, Peril, and Advanced Plot decks individually and place them facedown on the appropriate spaces of the game board.[2]

* Place the Monster Reference cards faceup and shuffle the three Monster Combat decks separately, placing them facedown adjacent to the game board.[2]

* Separate the five types of monster tokens by color, randomize them separately, and place them in five piles with the artwork side down.[3][2]

* Place damage tokens, Sauron action markers, level tokens, and the event marker off to the side of the game board.[3]

* Place the '2' and '3' plot markers adjacent to the Plot deck.[3]

* Shuffle the Sauron Mission deck and Hero Mission deck separately; each side secretly draws one card and places it facedown near their play area without sharing information.[3]

5. Start the Game: After all players complete setup, proceed to the first Sauron turn.[3]

Game Turns

1. The game is played over a number of turns until the Finale is triggered, usually by a story marker reaching the end of the track.[4]

2. Starting with the Sauron player and proceeding clockwise, players take turns.[4]

3. A turn is either a Sauron turn (where the Sauron player acts) or a hero turn (where one hero player acts).[4]

4. In a four-player game, the order is: Sauron Turn, Hero 1 Turn, Hero 2 Turn, and Hero 3 Turn.[4]

5. After the last hero completes their turn, Sauron begins his next turn.[4]

The Plot Step

During this step (which is skipped on the first turn of the game), Sauron may perform one of the following:

1. Play a Plot Card: Sauron may choose a single Plot card from his hand to play if he fulfills the card's requirements and there is an empty space on the Active Plot Track; he then places the corresponding plot marker in the affected location.[5]

2. Discard an Active Plot Card: Sauron may discard one of his Plot cards from the Active Plot Track.[5]

3. Do Nothing: Sauron may choose to do nothing if he does not wish to play or discard a card.[5]

Combat

1. Sauron Setup: The Sauron player takes the appropriate Monster Reference card and matching Monster Combat deck.[6]

2. Preparation: The Sauron player draws a number of cards equal to his combatant's fortitude from the Monster Combat deck; the hero player announces how much agility they will spend from their life pool and draws that number of cards (unspent agility provides +1 strength until the end of combat).[6]

3. Combat Rounds: Each round, both players play a Combat card facedown, which are then simultaneously revealed [4

[1] RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook · p.8 · Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook · p.8 · Setup

[3] RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook · p.8 · Setup

[4] RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook · p.10 · Gameplay Overview · Game Turns

[5] RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook · p.13 · The Plot Step · Plot Cards · Playing Plot Cards · Affected Locations on Plot Cards

[6] RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook · p.28 · Steps of Combat

That's the page. Back to the table.

🔧 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 179 ms · ask 10131 ms · total 10312 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 10312 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 17, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "Whenever Sauron wishes to play a Shadow card, he must have a number of Shadow influence in the Shadow Pool equal to or greater than the amount required by the card (found in the upper left corner). He must also follow the timing instructions on the card. For example, a Shadow card reading ' Play at ", "headingPath": "Playing Shadow Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 830}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "During this step, Sauron may perform one of the following activities. This step is skipped on the first turn of the game. · Play a Plot Card: Sauron may choose a single Plot card from his hand to play. To play the card, Sauron must fulfill the requirements on the card and place it on an empty space ", "headingPath": "The Plot Step · Plot Cards · Playing Plot Cards · Affected Locations on Plot Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 830}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046676, "snippet": "'Keep to the green grass. Don't you go a-meddling with old stone or cold wights or prying in their houses, unless you be strong folk with hearts that never falter.' - Tom Bombadil speaking to Frodo and his hobbit companions The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring The object of the game is ", "headingPath": "Getting started · Object of the Game · Number of Players · Reading these rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 830}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045957, "snippet": "Before playing a game of Middle-earth Quest , players must perform the following steps: Choose Sides: 1. Players first determine which player should take the role of Sauron. The remaining players will take the role of heroes of Middle-earth. Place Game Board: 2. Unfold the two halves of the game boa", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 830}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.044563, "snippet": "During each Sauron turn, story markers may advance (even the hero's story marker), Sauron is able to play a single Plot card, and Sauron takes actions to advance and defend his plots. The steps of each Sauron turn are described below, summarized on the game board, and detailed on pages 11-19. Hero R", "headingPath": "Sauron Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 830}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.041756, "snippet": "All Quests require the hero player to fulfill specific objectives in order to complete them. Once a hero player completes the requirements of one of his Quests (requirements are always listed as bullet points in the card text), he receives the indicated reward. Completed Quests are returned to the g", "headingPath": "Completing Quests", "sharpsignalDocId": 830}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "During each hero turn, the active hero moves, fights, explores, and resolves an Encounter card in his final location. The steps of each hero turn are described below, summarized on the game board, and detailed on pages 20-25. Rest Step: 1. If there are no monster tokens or minions in the hero's loca", "headingPath": "Hero Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 830}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "'Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,' said Gimli. 'Maybe,' said Elrond, 'but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not yet seen the nightfall.' - Exchange between Gimli and Elrond, from the chapter 'The Ring Goes South' The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring T", "headingPath": "Hero Game Rules · Hero Turn in Detail · The Rest Step · Discarding Corruption Cards · Healing · Understanding the Hero Sheet · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 830}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 830}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 830}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 830}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Gameplay Overview · Game Turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 830}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The Plot Step · Plot Cards · Playing Plot Cards · Affected Locations on Plot Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 830}, {"page": 28, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Steps of Combat", "sharpsignalDocId": 830}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 830 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 830 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 0.92047 of 3508 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 15:26 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 Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Playing Shadow Cards	p.17	0.047619 (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 Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	The Plot Step · Plot Cards · Playing Plot Cards · Affected Locations on Plot Cards	p.13	0.046696 (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 Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Getting started · Object of the Game · Number of Players · Reading these rules	p.7	0.046676 (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 Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Setup	p.8	0.045957 (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 Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Sauron Turn	p.10	0.044563 (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 Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Completing Quests	p.25	0.041756 (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 Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Hero Turn	p.10	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
#8	RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Hero Game Rules · Hero Turn in Detail · The Rest Step · Discarding Corruption Cards · Healing · Understanding the Hero Sheet · …	p.20	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 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 73 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 Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Playing Shadow Cards	p.17	#1	0.047619 (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 Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	The Plot Step · Plot Cards · Playing Plot Cards · Affected Locations on Plot Cards	p.13	#2	0.046696 (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 Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Setup	p.8	#24	0.023297 (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 Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Steps of Combat	p.28	#12	0.026199 (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 Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Steps of Combat	p.29	#9	0.027289 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Setup	p.8	#51	0.011628 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Gameplay Overview · Game Turns	p.10	#25	0.023088 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Setup	p.8	#4	0.045957 (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 Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Setup	p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Setup	p.8	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Setup	p.8	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Gameplay Overview · Game Turns	p.10	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	The Plot Step · Plot Cards · Playing Plot Cards · Affected Locations on Plot Cards	p.13	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Middle-Earth Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 830)	Steps of Combat	p.28	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 179 ms · first delta 5019 ms · total 10312 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 179 ms · ask 10131 ms · gateway work 10312 ms · total 10312 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3319
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 197.5 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 5.186 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 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.

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 765), 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.