Ruling — The Lord of the Rings

← The Lord of the Rings

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Lord of the Ringsbg-823-en-1e

Setup

1. Lay out the Master Game Board on the table.[1]

2. Place Sauron on space '12' of the Corruption Track (or space '15' for the first time).[1]

3. Place an Activity marker on the 'Bag End' space of the Master Game Board.[1]

4. Place the Moria Conflict Game Board directly below the Master Game and place the Event marker on the space to the left of the Conflict title.[1]

5. Place one Activity marker on the first space of each of the Activity Tracks: Traveling, Hiding, and Fighting on the Moria Conflict Game Board.[1]

6. Place six shuffled gold Gandalf runes facedown next to the Game Boards.[1]

7. Place the remaining runes, the Threat die, and the Heart, Sun, and Ring Life tokens faceup next to the Game Boards.[1]

8. Shuffle the square Story tiles and place them facedown near the Moria Conflict Game Board to form the Story pile.[1]

9. Shuffle the Quest cards and place them facedown next to the Master Game Board to form the Quest deck.[1]

10. Sort the Legendary cards by location (Rivendell, Moria, Lothlórien, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair, and Mordor) and stack them faceup above their respective locations on the Master Game Board.[1]

11. Place the five Gandalf cards faceup, side by side, next to the Game Boards.[1]

12. Deal one Hobbit card facedown to each player (2 players: Frodo and Sam; 3 players: Frodo, Sam, Pippin; 4 players: Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry; 5 players: Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry, Fatty).[1][2]

13. Each player places their Hobbit card faceup in front of themselves.[1][2]

14. Each player places their matching Hobbit marker on the '0' on the Corruption Track.[2]

15. Frodo starts as the Ring-bearer; the player playing Frodo takes the Ring token and places it in front of himself.[2]

Turn Sequence During Conflicts

Players take turns beginning with the Ring-bearer and proceeding clockwise.[3] The active player performs the following steps in order:

1. Reveal Story Tiles: The active player reveals the top Story tile and places it faceup in front of all players.[3] Any icons on the tile are immediately resolved.[3] The player continues revealing tiles until a tile showing an Activity symbol (Fighting, Hiding, Friendship, or Traveling) appears, or until the Conflict ends due to the Event marker or Activity marker reaching the end of their respective tracks.[3] When an Activity symbol is revealed, the corresponding Activity marker is advanced by one space and the reward is carried out.[3]

2. Play Cards: Once a Story tile that advances an Activity Track marker is revealed, the active player may play up to two Quest or Legendary cards from his hand (a maximum of one brown and one grey).[4] Each card must be resolved before the next is played.[4] For each Activity symbol shown on one side of the card, the appropriate marker is advanced and resolved.[4] Legendary Story cards do not count toward the two-card limit.[4][5] The active player may also choose not to play any cards; if so, they may either draw two Quest cards from the facedown deck or move their Hobbit marker one space to the left on the Corruption Track.[6]

3. Conclude the Turn: The active player concludes the turn by placing the revealed Story tiles and any played cards faceup in their respective discard piles.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook · p.7 · Game Setup

[2] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook · p.7 · Game Setup

[3] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook · p.10 · Turn Sequence During Conflicts · 1. Reveal Story Tiles

[4] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook · p.10 · 2. Play Cards

[5] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook · p.18 · L egendary Story Cards

[6] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook · p.11 · 2. Play Cards · Refresh Option · 3. Conclude the Turn · The Power of the Ring

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 99 ms · ask 17646 ms · total 17748 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 17748 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 19, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "These optional game variants are included to provide a different gaming experience for each level of group expertise. When playing the game for the first time, place Sauron on space '15' of the Corruption Track. Once the Fellowship has successfully completed the introductory game, play future standa", "headingPath": "Game Variants · Introductory Game · Expert Game · Pass the Ring · Equal Turns · Competitive Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1097}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "Once a Story tile is revealed that advances a marker on an Activity Track, the Reveal Story Tiles step is over, and the active player may play up to two Quest or Legendary cards from his hand, a maximum of one brown and one grey . For each Activity symbol shown on one side of the card (Friendship, T", "headingPath": "2. Play Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1097}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "Some cards have star symbols, which are wild. These may be played as any Activity symbol (Fighting, Friendship, Hiding, or Traveling). When a card with more than one star symbol is played, all stars must be applied to the same Activity Track. For example, it is not possible to play a card with two s", "headingPath": "2. Play Cards · Refresh Option · 3. Conclude the Turn · The Power of the Ring", "sharpsignalDocId": 1097}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.045009, "snippet": "Deal out the Hobbit cards facedown, one to each player, according to the number of players: | 2 Player | Frodo and Sam | | 3 Player | Frodo, Sam, Pippin | | 4 Player | Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry | | 5 Player | Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry, Fatty | Each player places his Hobbit card faceup in front of hi", "headingPath": "Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1097}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.044103, "snippet": "Lay out the Master Game Board on the table and 1. place Sauron on space '12' of the Corruption Track (if you are playing for the first time, it is better to place Sauron on space '15' - see 'Game Variants,' on page 19). The Master Game Board remains on the table and in use throughout the entire game", "headingPath": "Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1097}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "During a Conflict, players take turns, beginning with the Ringbearer and proceeding clockwise. This section describes the actions that must be performed during a player's turn. The player currently taking his turn is referred to as the 'active player.' During his turn, the active player takes the fo", "headingPath": "Turn Sequence During Conflicts · 1. Reveal Story Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 1097}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Four locations on the Master Game Board are Conflicts : Moria u , Helm's Deep v , Shelob's Lair w , and Mordor x . Each of these locations has a corresponding Conflict Game Board. When the Activity marker is on one of these locations, the players shift their focus to the appropriate Conflict Game Bo", "headingPath": "Conflicts · Setting Up a New Conflict", "sharpsignalDocId": 1097}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "At any time during the game, unless otherwise stated, any one player may call Gandalf for help by discarding runes with a total value of '5.' The active player then decides which of the Gandalf cards to use and how to apply it. Gandalf cards are never part of a player's hand; they are applied immedi", "headingPath": "Gandalf Cards · Healing · Persistence", "sharpsignalDocId": 1097}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1097}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1097}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Turn Sequence During Conflicts · 1. Reveal Story Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 1097}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. Play Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1097}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "L egendary Story Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1097}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. Play Cards · Refresh Option · 3. Conclude the Turn · The Power of the Ring", "sharpsignalDocId": 1097}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1097 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1097 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 0.90795 of 2705 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 15:31 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 The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	Game Variants · Introductory Game · Expert Game · Pass the Ring · Equal Turns · Competitive Game	p.19	0.047643 (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 The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	2. Play Cards	p.10	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
#3	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	2. Play Cards · Refresh Option · 3. Conclude the Turn · The Power of the Ring	p.11	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 The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	Game Setup	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
#5	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	Game Setup	p.7	0.044103 (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 The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	Turn Sequence During Conflicts · 1. Reveal Story Tiles	p.10	0.032787 (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 The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	Conflicts · Setting Up a New Conflict	p.9	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 The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	Gandalf Cards · Healing · Persistence	p.17	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 45 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 The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	2. Play Cards	p.10	#2	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 The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	L egendary Story Cards	p.18	#10	0.028442 (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 The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	Game Setup	p.7	#5	0.044103 (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 The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	Turn Sequence During Conflicts · 1. Reveal Story Tiles	p.10	#6	0.032787 (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 The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	Game Variants · Introductory Game · Expert Game · Pass the Ring · Equal Turns · Competitive Game	p.19	#1	0.047643 (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 The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	Game Setup	p.7	#4	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 The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	Guidance · Foresight · Magic	p.18	#14	0.027598 (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 The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	2. Play Cards · Refresh Option · 3. Conclude the Turn · The Power of the Ring	p.11	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	Game Setup	p.7	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	Game Setup	p.7	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	Turn Sequence During Conflicts · 1. Reveal Story Tiles	p.10	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	2. Play Cards	p.10	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	L egendary Story Cards	p.18	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1097)	2. Play Cards · Refresh Option · 3. Conclude the Turn · The Power of the Ring	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 99 ms · first delta 2880 ms · total 17748 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 99 ms · ask 17646 ms · gateway work 17748 ms · total 17748 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3350
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 797
tok/sec: 54.3 tok/sec — 797 output tokens in 14.688 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 26s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, 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 1027), 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.