Ruling — Brew — RuleSage

← Brew

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Brewbg-332386-en-1e

To play Brew, follow these steps:

Setup

1. Place the Village board in the middle of the play area, with the Day side faceup.[1]

2. Remove Forest cards that do not match your player count, shuffle the deck, and place it face-down.[1]

3. Reveal Forest cards from the top of the deck and place them in a faceup row; the number of cards depends on player count.[1]

4. Shuffle all Potion cards, place them in a facedown pile, and reveal the first 4 cards to create the Potion market.[1]

5. Place ingredient tokens, scorch tokens, and VP tokens in separate piles.[1]

6. Divide Creature cards into 4 seasonal piles, shuffle each, and place them faceup.[1]

7. Each player chooses or is randomly dealt a Character board and places it in front of them.[2]

8. Collectively decide whether to use special powers on Character boards; if using them, all players turn boards to the power side.[2]

9. Each player takes 4 colored Forage dice matching their Character, 2 white Element dice, 1 Energy Berry, and 1 reference card.[2]

10. The last player to brew a cup of tea or coffee takes the first player marker.[2]

Gameplay

The game is played over 4 rounds.[3]

1. At the start of each round, all players roll all 6 dice in their dice pool (4 colored Forage dice and 2 white Element dice).[3]

2. Players take turns in clockwise order, starting with the player who has the first player marker.[3]

3. On a turn, a player may take these 3 steps in any order, provided they have at least 1 die left to place:[3][4]

* Place 1 die from your dice pool on a legal space on the Village board or a Forest card.[3]

* Brew 1 Potion from the market.[3]

* Drink 1 Potion from your hand.[3]

4. Players continue taking turns until everyone has run out of dice.[3] Once a player's turn is skipped because they have no dice, they may take no further turns for the rest of the round.[4]

5. Dice are "locked in" once rolled at the start of a round and cannot be rerolled until the next round unless a power is used.[3]

End of Round

1. Players claim Forests they control.[3] A player controls a Forest if they have more Forage dice there than each other player individually AND they have more Forage dice there than the total number of Element dice in that Forest.[5]

2. Players use Creature powers that trigger at the "end of round".[4]

3. Unclaimed Forests (those with no dice, ties, or where Element dice outnumber Forage dice) are discarded.[6]

4. Players take back their 4 Forage dice and 2 Element dice.[4][6]

5. The Village board is flipped to the opposite side (Day to Night or vice versa).[4][6]

6. A new row of Forest cards is revealed, ensuring any leftover unclaimed cards from the previous round are discarded.[6]

7. The first player marker is passed clockwise to the next player.[4][6]

Winning the Game

The game ends if the Forest deck is empty and a new row cannot be dealt.[4] The player with the most Victory Points at the end of the game wins.[3] Potions in hand and potions drunk during the game both score full VP.[7][4]

[1] RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook · p.2 · Game setup

[2] RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook · p.3 · Player Setup

[3] RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook · p.4 · Objective · Round Overview · Don't reroll your dice! · Player Turns · Placing a Die

[4] RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook · p.9 · No More Potions · Drinking a Potion · No More Dice · End of Round · Set Up Next Round:

[5] RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook · p.10 · Controlling Forests

[6] RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook · p.11 · Claiming Forests · UNCLAIMED FORESTS · ELEMENT DICE & CONTROL · Check for Game End · Setting Up the Next Round

[7] RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook · p.8

That settles it — whose turn was it?

🔧 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 197 ms · ask 5541 ms · total 5741 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5741 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "In Brew, you and your friends will place dice strategically to gather Potion ingredients, gain control of Forests , and train helpful Creatures with magical powers. The player with the most Victory Points at the end of the game wins! The game is played over 4 rounds . At the start of each round, all", "headingPath": "Objective · Round Overview · Don't reroll your dice! · Player Turns · Placing a Die", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "Red player ( Lello ) setup with first player token Characters: Each player chooses or is randomly dealt a Character board and places it on the table in front of them. Character Powers: Collectively decide whether you will all use the special powers on your Character boards. If you choose to use powe", "headingPath": "Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "Village Board: Place the Village board in the middle of the play area, with the Day side faceup. Forest Deck: Go through the Forest cards and remove any that do not match your player count (check the icon in the bottom center of each card). Shuffle the deck and place it face-down near the game board", "headingPath": "Game setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "On your turn, you can drink a Potion that you've brewed to manipulate your own dice and other players' dice. Each Potion has one of the following effects: CHANGE a die: Rotate one of the dice in your dice pool to a different face of your choice. REROLL dice: Choose any number of dice in your dice po", "headingPath": "Potions · 'Any placed die'", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Your hand Once you’ve brewed a Potion, you keep it in your hand, where it is hidden from other players until you decide to drink it. There is no limit to the number of Potions you can have in your hand at any time. Potions in your hand at the end of the game still score full VP. Return 1 of your pla", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "In the rare event that the Potion deck is empty and a new card must be revealed, all players return all Potions they have drank and take VP tokens equal to their value . Shuffle the returned Potions into a new Potions deck. Once you've brewed a Potion, you can drink it to use its power . Each turn y", "headingPath": "No More Potions · Drinking a Potion · No More Dice · End of Round · Set Up Next Round:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030159, "snippet": "Le/l_l o When placing a Forage die in a Forest: You may spend 1 to place on top of any other die. (Do not gather from the space) (MAX 3) If a Forage die’s symbol does not match a space, you may pay 1 of the ingredient on the space or 1 to place it there anyway. Do not gather when you do this. When p", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Creatures will be happier if you can release them into Forests that match their season type . For example, a Spring Creature prefers to live in a Spring Forest. Once you've released a Creature, you may at any time move it to a Forest you've claimed that has the same season type and does not already ", "headingPath": "RELEASING CREATURES TO FORESTS · Winning the Game · TIEBREAKER", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Objective · Round Overview · Don't reroll your dice! · Player Turns · Placing a Die", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "No More Potions · Drinking a Potion · No More Dice · End of Round · Set Up Next Round:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Controlling Forests", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Claiming Forests · UNCLAIMED FORESTS · ELEMENT DICE & CONTROL · Check for Game End · Setting Up the Next Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1242}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1242 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1242 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 0.89620 of 2476 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 6, 2026 11:15 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 Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Objective · Round Overview · Don't reroll your dice! · Player Turns · Placing a Die	p.4	0.048412 (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 Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Player Setup	p.3	0.048387 (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 Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Game setup	p.2	0.048139 (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 Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Potions · 'Any placed die'	p.13	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
#5	RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)		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
#6	RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	No More Potions · Drinking a Potion · No More Dice · End of Round · Set Up Next Round:	p.9	0.030303 (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 Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)		p.3	0.030159 (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 Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	RELEASING CREATURES TO FORESTS · Winning the Game · TIEBREAKER	p.15	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 30 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 Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Player Setup	p.3	#2	0.048387 (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 Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Objective · Round Overview · Don't reroll your dice! · Player Turns · Placing a Die	p.4	#1	0.048412 (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 Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)		p.8	#5	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
#4	RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Potions · 'Any placed die'	p.13	#4	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	No More Potions · Drinking a Potion · No More Dice · End of Round · Set Up Next Round:	p.9	#6	0.030303 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Controlling Forests	p.10	#24	0.011905 (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 Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Claiming Forests · UNCLAIMED FORESTS · ELEMENT DICE & CONTROL · Check for Game End · Setting Up the Next Round	p.11	#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
#8	RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Game setup	p.2	#3	0.048139 (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 Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Game setup	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Player Setup	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Objective · Round Overview · Don't reroll your dice! · Player Turns · Placing a Die	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	No More Potions · Drinking a Potion · No More Dice · End of Round · Set Up Next Round:	p.9	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Controlling Forests	p.10	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)	Claiming Forests · UNCLAIMED FORESTS · ELEMENT DICE & CONTROL · Check for Game End · Setting Up the Next Round	p.11	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Brew — Rulebook (corpus doc 1242)		p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 197 ms · first delta 1753 ms · total 5741 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 197 ms · ask 5541 ms · gateway work 5741 ms · total 5741 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3048
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 791
tok/sec: 201.4 tok/sec — 791 output tokens in 3.928 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 17s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 6s 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 1172), 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.