Ruling — World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

← World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich Kingbg-342848-en-1e

Players take turns in clockwise order, following these 4 steps each turn:[1][2]

1. Do 4 Actions [1][2]

2. Draw 2 Hero Cards [1][3][2]

3. Spawn Ghouls [1][3][2]

4. Activate Abominations [1][2]

Do 4 Actions

During your turn, you can do up to 4 actions, and you can do the same action multiple times, each time counting as 1 action.[1][2] You can also perform free actions during this step, which do not count towards your 4 actions.[4] Some hero cards and abilities provide free actions, such as "Travel," "Heal," or "Defend".[5][4]

Possible actions include:

* Move: Move your hero to an adjacent space connected by a line.[1][2] Enemies do not affect hero movement.[1][2]

* Fight: While on a space with enemies, use the fight action to remove them.[1][2] To fight, roll both dice; for each [symbol], deal 1 damage to an enemy on your space.[1][2] Ghouls are removed after 1 damage and abominations after 3 damage.[1][2] Damage dealt to enemies is not tracked between actions, so to remove an abomination, you must deal 3 damage to it in a single action.[1][2] After dealing damage, each ghoul and abomination on your space deals 1 damage to you; for each [symbol] result, you can reduce the damage you suffer by 1.[1][2]

* Other actions: Some heroes have special actions only they can do.[1]

Draw 2 Hero Cards

After doing 4 actions, draw the top 2 cards of the hero deck together at the same time.[3]

* If your draw includes a "Stronghold" card, immediately place 1 stronghold on any space on the board that is not a quest space or a space that already has a stronghold, then return the card to the box.[3][5][4]

* If your draw includes a "The Scourge Rises" card, resolve it by advancing the Scourge marker 1 space to the right, drawing the bottom card of the Scourge deck, moving the Lich King to that region's space, adding ghouls to that space until there are 3, and placing 1 abomination on that space.[3] After resolving, shuffle the Scourge discard pile and place it face down on top of the Scourge deck, then return the card to the box.[3]

* If you draw both a "Stronghold" and a "The Scourge Rises" card at the same time, fully resolve "The Scourge Rises" before resolving "Stronghold".[3]

Spawn Ghouls

Flip over, one at a time, as many Scourge cards from the top of the Scourge deck as the current Scourge rate (shown by the Scourge track).[3] For each card flipped, place 1 ghoul on the matching space and discard the card faceup to the Scourge discard pile.[3] If a space already has 3 ghouls, an overrun occurs instead of placing a fourth.[3]

Activate Abominations

[The provided sources do not contain the specific steps for the "Activate Abominations" step.]

[1] RULEBOOK World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook · p.5 · Playing the Game · Do 4 Actions · Move · Fight

[2] RULEBOOK World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook · p.5

[3] RULEBOOK World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook · p.8

[4] RULEBOOK World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook · p.7

[5] RULEBOOK World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook · p.7

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 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 209 ms · ask 8542 ms · total 8753 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8753 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "You can play solo, coordinating the efforts of 3 heroes using a single hand of cards. Set up the game as normal, with the following change: Choose 3 heroes, placing their hero sheets in a row in front of you. Prepare each hero as normal (health, starting spaces, etc.). Place the solo marker on top o", "headingPath": "Solo Play · Setup · Playing the Game · Playing Cards · Quests · Fine Points", "sharpsignalDocId": 1062}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "PLAYING THE GAMEPLAYING THE GAME fiGHt CarD example Thrall and Jaina are on Warsong Hold, along with 1 ghoul and 1 abomination. Thrall does a fight action, rolling 2 and 1 . After rolling the dice, Thrall plays a “Fight (1 )” card from his hand to add 1 . Jaina also plays a “Fight (1 )” card from he", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1062}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045591, "snippet": "PLAYING THE GAMEPLAYING THE GAME plaYinG tHe GameplaYinG tHe Game Players take turns in clockwise order, following these 4 steps each turn: 1 Do 4 Actions 2 Draw 2 Hero Cards 3 Spawn Ghouls 4 Activate Abominations Do 4 Actions During your turn, you can do up to 4 actions. You can do the same action ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1062}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.044388, "snippet": "8 PLAYING THE GAMEPLAYING THE GAME Draw 2 Hero Cards After doing 4 actions, draw the top 2 cards of the hero deck together at the same time. stronGHolD If your draw includes a “Stronghold” card, resolve it immediately (see “Stronghold” on page 7). tHe sCourGe rises If your draw includes a “The Scour", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1062}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.044246, "snippet": "Players take turns in clockwise order, following these 4 steps each turn: scourge track scourge deck 1 Do 4 Actions 2 Draw 2 Hero Cards 3 Spawn Ghouls 4 Activate Abominations SHADOW VAULT THE AVALANCHE During your turn, you can do up to 4 actions. You can do the same action multiple times, each time", "headingPath": "Playing the Game · Do 4 Actions · Move · Fight", "sharpsignalDocId": 1062}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.042196, "snippet": "Blocks prevent damage your hero would suffer. The two dice are identical. Quests The heroes of Azeroth must defeat the major threats of Northrend to clear the way to the Lich King’s fortress of Icecrown Citadel. These threats are represented by quests, which must be completed to win the game. At the", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1062}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Heroes can suffer damage during the game. When your hero suffers damage, reduce your current health that amount by moving the slider that many spaces. instead. press ForWArd! Action: Move another hero up to 2 spaces. If your hero loses all of their health, they are defeated, and you follow these ste", "headingPath": "Damage and Defeat 'Put your faith in the Light!' AsHbringer When you fight, you may treat any number of as", "sharpsignalDocId": 1062}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029877, "snippet": "WINNING & LOSINGWINNING & LOSING WinninG & losinGWinninG & losinG If the despair marker reaches the bottom of the despair track, the invasion of Northrend fails, the Lich King’s terrible plans come to fruition, and all players immediately lose the game. If you complete all 3 quests, and then complet", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1062}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing the Game · Do 4 Actions · Move · Fight", "sharpsignalDocId": 1062}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1062}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1062}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1062}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1062}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1062 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1062 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 0.87645 of 2234 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 15:35 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 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)	Solo Play · Setup · Playing the Game · Playing Cards · Quests · Fine Points	p.10	0.048916 (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 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)		p.7	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
#3	RULEBOOK World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)		p.5	0.045591 (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 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)		p.8	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
#5	RULEBOOK World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)	Playing the Game · Do 4 Actions · Move · Fight	p.5	0.044246 (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 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)		p.4	0.042196 (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 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)	Damage and Defeat 'Put your faith in the Light!' AsHbringer When you fight, you may treat any number of as	p.9	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 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)		p.9	0.029877 (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 80 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 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)	Solo Play · Setup · Playing the Game · Playing Cards · Quests · Fine Points	p.10	#1	0.048916 (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 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)	Playing the Game · Do 4 Actions · Move · Fight	p.5	#5	0.044246 (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 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)		p.8	#4	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
#4	RULEBOOK World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)	Damage and Defeat 'Put your faith in the Light!' AsHbringer When you fight, you may treat any number of as	p.9	#7	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
#5	RULEBOOK World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)	Hero Cards THUNDERFALL · Alexstrasza's Cleansing · Blessing of the Light · Borrowed Time · Gunship Support · New Allies · …	p.11	#12	0.027921 (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 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)		p.7	#15	0.026289 (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 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)		p.7	#2	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
#8	RULEBOOK World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)		p.5	#3	0.045591 (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 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)	Playing the Game · Do 4 Actions · Move · Fight	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)		p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)		p.8	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)		p.7	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — Rulebook (corpus doc 1062)		p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 209 ms · first delta 4897 ms · total 8753 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 209 ms · ask 8542 ms · gateway work 8753 ms · total 8753 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3781
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 763
tok/sec: 200.7 tok/sec — 763 output tokens in 3.801 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 18s 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 992), 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.