Ruling — FlipToons

← FlipToons

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: FlipToonsbg-449185-en-1e

To play FlipToons, follow these steps:

Setup

1. Give each player a reference card and a fame card.[1]

2. Give each player a deck of six starting cards: 2 caterpillars, 1 skunk, 1 dragonfly, 1 bee, and 1 snail.[1]

3. Place the five price cards face up in the center of the table, in ascending order from left to right.[1]

4. Shuffle the toon cards and place them face down to create the toon deck.[1]

5. Reveal and place the top five cards from the toon deck to create the market, sorting them by rank so the lowest rank is below the leftmost price card and the highest rank is below the rightmost price card.[1]

6. Place the critic's choice card face up near the toon deck.[1]

7. Give the player who most recently watched a cartoon the first player card.[1]

Gameplay

The game is played over a series of rounds, with all players performing the following four phases simultaneously:[2]

1. Flip: Each player shuffles their deck face-down.[2] Players reveal cards from the top of their deck one at a time and place them in a 3-by-2 grid, from left to right, top row followed by bottom row.[2] Players continue revealing and placing cards until all six slots in their grid are occupied, or until they run out of cards.[2] Some toon cards have abilities that activate when placed, which may occur before the next card is revealed.[2] If multiple abilities resolve at the same time, they are resolved left to right, starting with the top row.[2]

2. Check Fame: (Note: The specific actions for the Check Fame phase are not explicitly detailed in the provided text, though it is identified as a required phase of the round [2]).

3. Market: Players complete actions in the Market phase.[3] Once a player completes their actions, if there are fewer than five cards in the market, the market is refilled from the toon deck and rearranged by rank.[3] The next player in clockwise order completes the Market phase.[3]

4. Cleanup: All players collect the cards in their grid and add them to their deck.[4] (If playing with two players, after refilling the market during the last player's market phase, the leftmost and rightmost cards in the market are discarded, and the market is refilled and rearranged again [4]).

Ending the Game

1. If any player generated at least 30 fame during the previous Check Fame phase, the end of the game is triggered.[4]

2. Proceed to the Final Flip, where all players complete one last Flip phase and check their fame.[4]

3. If a player has the critic's choice card, they add +3 to their total.[4]

4. The player who generated the most fame on the Final Flip wins.[4]

5. In the event of a tie for most fame, tied players collect all cards in their grid and deck, shuffle, and perform a Flip and Check Fame phase again until a winner is determined.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook · p.4 · SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook · p.6 · HOW TO PLAY · 1. FLIP

[3] RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook · p.9 · 3. MARKET

[4] RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook · p.11 · 4. CLEANUP · FINAL FLIP

So says the rulebook. So plays 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 114 ms · ask 5029 ms · total 18598 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 13453 ms · generation 5145 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "FlipToons is played over a series of rounds. Each round is divided into the following four phases: Flip , Check Fame , Market , Cleanup . All players do this phase simultaneously. First, each player shuffles their deck face-down. Next, they reveal cards from the top of their deck one at a time and p", "headingPath": "HOW TO PLAY · 1. FLIP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1076}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "During each turn, complete the Flip, Check Fame, Market, and Cleanup phases as in the multiplayer game. After refilling the market at the end of the Market phase, discard the leftmost and rightmost cards in the market. Refill the market again and rearrange the cards by rank, as needed. 7 10 15 3 Whe", "headingPath": "SOLO: HOW TO PLAY · ADJUSTING SOLO DIFFICULTY", "sharpsignalDocId": 1076}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "To win in a solo play game, you must generate 30 fame in a single Check Fame phase before the toon deck runs out.", "headingPath": "SOLO PLAY RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1076}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.045541, "snippet": "To win in a solo play game, you must generate 30 fame in a single Check Fame phase before the toon deck runs out. SOLO PLA Y RULESSOLO PLA Y RULES SOLO SETUPSOLO SETUP ● Use a starting deck containing: 1 dragonfly, 1 bee, 1 snail, and 3 caterpillars (instead of 2 as in the multiplayer game). !! The ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1076}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "For additional information or support, please visit us at www.thunderworksgames.com © 2025 Thunderworks Games LLC. All Rights Reserved. 7182 US Hwy 14 Suite #402, Middleton, WI 53562 USA During each turn, complete the Flip, Check Fame, Market, and Cleanup phases as in the multiplayer game. After ref", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1076}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "1 Give each player a reference card and a fame card . 2 Give each player a deck of six starting cards : 2 caterpillars, 1 skunk, 1 dragonfly, 1 bee, and 1 snail. Leave space for your dismissed cards. ! All starting cards are gray and have a rank of 0. Return all unused starting cards, reference card", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1076}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Starting with the first player and going clockwise, each player spends their fame to perform up to two actions . There are two types of actions: Hire a Toon or Dismiss a Toon . A player may perform both actions once, or one action twice. They may also choose to skip one or both of their actions. Hir", "headingPath": "3. MARKET", "sharpsignalDocId": 1076}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "All players simultaneously review each toon in their grid to determine how much fame they have generated. Each player marks their fame by overlaying their reference card on their fame card so the arrow points to their total. ! Once calculated, this amount does not change until spent during the Marke", "headingPath": "2. CHECK FAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1076}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1076}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "HOW TO PLAY · 1. FLIP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1076}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. MARKET", "sharpsignalDocId": 1076}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4. CLEANUP · FINAL FLIP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1076}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1076 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1076 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 0.90885 of 2304 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 15:34 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 FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	HOW TO PLAY · 1. FLIP	p.6	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	SOLO: HOW TO PLAY · ADJUSTING SOLO DIFFICULTY	p.16	0.048131 (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 FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	SOLO PLAY RULES	p.15	0.046635 (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))	113
#4	RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)		p.15	0.045541 (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 FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)		p.16	0.045455 (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 FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	SETUP	p.4	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
#7	RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	3. MARKET	p.8	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
#8	RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	2. CHECK FAME	p.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))	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 22 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 FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	HOW TO PLAY · 1. FLIP	p.6	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	SETUP	p.4	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)		p.15	#4	0.045541 (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 FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	KEYWORDS	p.14	#14	0.013699 (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
#5	RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	FINAL FLIP	p.13	#18	0.012821 (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
#6	RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	3. MARKET	p.9	#12	0.014286 (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 FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	4. CLEANUP · FINAL FLIP	p.11	#10	0.029418 (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 FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	SOLO: HOW TO PLAY · ADJUSTING SOLO DIFFICULTY	p.16	#2	0.048131 (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 FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	SETUP	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	HOW TO PLAY · 1. FLIP	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	3. MARKET	p.9	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK FlipToons — Rulebook (corpus doc 1076)	4. CLEANUP · FINAL FLIP	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 114 ms · first delta 1739 ms · total 18598 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 13453 ms · retrieval 114 ms · ask 5029 ms · gateway work 5145 ms · total 18598 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2467
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 674
tok/sec: 201.6 tok/sec — 674 output tokens in 3.343 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 15s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 5s 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 1006), 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.