Ruling — Flamecraft Duals

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Flamecraft Dualsbg-439305-en-1e

To play the game, follow these steps:

Setup

1. Remove the 2-player reference cards, 6 coins, the deck of shop cards, and the bag containing the dragon tokens from the game box.[1]

2. Place the gameboard between the players.[1]

3. Give each player a 2-player reference card and 3 coins.[1]

4. Shuffle the deck of shop cards and put it face down beside the board.[1]

5. Each player draws 2 cards from the deck to form a secret hand.[1]

6. (Optional) For Fancy Mode, remove 8 fancy cards, have each player choose 1, and place them beside the board.[2] If Buddy is chosen, put the Buddy token into the bag.[2]

7. (Optional) For Solo Mode, put the fountain miniature in the center of the board, shuffle 6 fountain cards, reveal 1 face up beside the board, and set aside 6 artisan dragon tokens of different colors.[3]

8. (Optional) For The Fountain mode, put the fountain miniature and all 6 fountain cards face up beside the board, and set aside 6 artisan dragon tokens of different colors.[4]

Gameplay

1. Players take turns playing dragon tokens from the bag and scoring shop cards until the bag is empty or the deck runs out of cards.[5]

2. Each turn consists of three phases in order: PLAY, SCORE, and REFRESH.[5]

3. During the PLAY phase, pull a dragon token from the bag without looking.[5]

4. Decide where to place the token on any empty space or on top of an existing stack, provided the stack does not exceed 3 tokens.[5]

5. Optionally, FIRE UP the token you just placed to activate its special ability.[5]

6. Any time before the REFRESH phase, you may SPEND A COIN (only once per turn) to discard the coin and draw 2 shop cards.[6] If you do this, choose any 2 shop cards from your hand and put them on the bottom of the deck, then draw cards until you have a full hand of 2 cards.[6]

7. (Optional) During the SCORE phase in The Fountain mode, if 4 adjacent dragon tokens match a fountain card pattern, you may claim that card and put it in your scored cards pile.[4]

8. (Optional) During the SCORE phase in The Fountain mode, move the fountain miniature to any space on the board; if it moves to a space with a stack, return all but 1 token to the bag, and you will play that kept token on your next turn instead of pulling a new one.[4]

9. The REFRESH phase concludes the turn.[5]

10. Play then passes to your opponent.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook · p.4 · SET THE STAGE

[2] RULEBOOK Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook · p.13 · Fancy Mode · SETUP · GAMEPLAY · ACTIVE FANCIES · PASSIVE FANCIES

[3] RULEBOOK Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook · p.16 · Solo Mode · SETUP · GAMEPLAY

[4] RULEBOOK Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook · p.15 · The Fountain · SETUP · GAMEPLAY

[5] RULEBOOK Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook · p.6 · DETERMINE FIRST PLAYER · Taking a Turn · PLAY PHASE

[6] RULEBOOK Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook · p.11 · SPEND A COIN · REFRESH PHASE

Question closed. Friendships intact.

🔧 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 109 ms · ask 4292 ms · total 4403 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4403 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Your goal is to be the craftiest and most clever dragon at the table. You and your opponent will take turns playing dragon tokens from the bag and scoring shop cards, until either the bag is empty, or the deck runs out of cards. Each of your turns has 3 phases that are carried out in order: PLAY, SC", "headingPath": "DETERMINE FIRST PLAYER · Taking a Turn · PLAY PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1214}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "The Fountain provides a challenging mode of play that is recommended only for experienced players. The Fountain can be used in both the standard game and when using Fancy Mode! After setting up dragon tokens, put the fountain miniature and all 6 fountain cards face up beside the board. Remove an add", "headingPath": "The Fountain · SETUP · GAMEPLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 1214}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.046176, "snippet": "Fancy dragons love to play games too! When the fancies are around, you can play with advanced rules and new actions! Before setting up the board, remove the 8 fancy cards from the box. Each player chooses 1 fancy card that will be used in this game. The 2 chosen cards are placed beside the board for", "headingPath": "Fancy Mode · SETUP · GAMEPLAY · ACTIVE FANCIES · PASSIVE FANCIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1214}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045956, "snippet": "Pull a new dragon token from the bag and place this token in any permissible space on the board. Then you may fire up the token, activating its special ability. Pull 3 dragon tokens from the bag. Choose 1 of the tokens to place on a permissible space of the board, and return the others to the bag. D", "headingPath": "BREAD: PLAY ANOTHER DRAGON · CRYSTAL: PULL 3 DRAGONS & PLACE 1 · MEAT: MOVE 1 ADJACENT TO ANY SPACE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1214}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.045695, "snippet": "Solo Mode uses the fountain miniature and fountain cards, but cannot be combined with Fancy Mode. After setting up dragon tokens, put the fountain miniature in the center of the board. Shuffle all 6 fountain cards, and reveal only 1 face up beside the board. Remove an additional 6 artisan dragon tok", "headingPath": "Solo Mode · SETUP · GAMEPLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 1214}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.045002, "snippet": "COVER Rules of Play", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1214}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Open the game box and remove the 2-player reference cards, 6 coins, the deck of shop cards, and the bag containing the dragon tokens. Place the gameboard between the players. Give each player a 2-player reference card and 3 coins. Shuffle the deck of shop cards and put it face down beside the board.", "headingPath": "SET THE STAGE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1214}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029911, "snippet": "Sometimes, luck isn't on your side - that's what your coins are for! At any time before you REFRESH , but only once per turn, you may SPEND A COIN. If you do, discard the coin, and draw 2 shop cards. Then choose any 2 shop cards from your hand, and put them on the bottom of the deck. Dragons love co", "headingPath": "SPEND A COIN · REFRESH PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1214}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SET THE STAGE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1214}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Fancy Mode · SETUP · GAMEPLAY · ACTIVE FANCIES · PASSIVE FANCIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1214}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Solo Mode · SETUP · GAMEPLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 1214}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The Fountain · SETUP · GAMEPLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 1214}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "DETERMINE FIRST PLAYER · Taking a Turn · PLAY PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1214}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SPEND A COIN · REFRESH PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1214}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1214 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1214 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 0.90204 of 1909 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 15:39 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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	DETERMINE FIRST PLAYER · Taking a Turn · PLAY PHASE	p.6	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	The Fountain · SETUP · GAMEPLAY	p.15	0.047875 (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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	Fancy Mode · SETUP · GAMEPLAY · ACTIVE FANCIES · PASSIVE FANCIES	p.13	0.046176 (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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	BREAD: PLAY ANOTHER DRAGON · CRYSTAL: PULL 3 DRAGONS & PLACE 1 · MEAT: MOVE 1 ADJACENT TO ANY SPACE	p.8	0.045956 (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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	Solo Mode · SETUP · GAMEPLAY	p.16	0.045695 (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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)		p.1	0.045002 (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))	19
#7	RULEBOOK Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	SET THE STAGE	p.4	0.032258 (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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	SPEND A COIN · REFRESH PHASE	p.11	0.029911 (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 18 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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	DETERMINE FIRST PLAYER · Taking a Turn · PLAY PHASE	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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	SET THE STAGE	p.4	#7	0.032258 (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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)		p.1	#6	0.045002 (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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	SPEND A COIN · REFRESH PHASE	p.11	#8	0.029911 (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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	Fancy Mode · SETUP · GAMEPLAY · ACTIVE FANCIES · PASSIVE FANCIES	p.13	#3	0.046176 (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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	Solo Mode · SETUP · GAMEPLAY	p.16	#5	0.045695 (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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	BREAD: PLAY ANOTHER DRAGON · CRYSTAL: PULL 3 DRAGONS & PLACE 1 · MEAT: MOVE 1 ADJACENT TO ANY SPACE	p.8	#4	0.045956 (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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	The Fountain · SETUP · GAMEPLAY	p.15	#2	0.047875 (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 Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	SET THE STAGE	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	Fancy Mode · SETUP · GAMEPLAY · ACTIVE FANCIES · PASSIVE FANCIES	p.13	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	Solo Mode · SETUP · GAMEPLAY	p.16	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	The Fountain · SETUP · GAMEPLAY	p.15	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	DETERMINE FIRST PLAYER · Taking a Turn · PLAY PHASE	p.6	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Flamecraft Duals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1214)	SPEND A COIN · REFRESH PHASE	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 109 ms · first delta 1360 ms · total 4403 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 109 ms · ask 4292 ms · gateway work 4403 ms · total 4403 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 1713
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 606
tok/sec: 202.9 tok/sec — 606 output tokens in 2.987 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 1144), 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.