Ruling — Virgin Queen

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Virgin Queenbg-41066-en-1e

The game is played in seven or less turns.[1] Each turn covers five or six years and consists of eight phases.[1]

Sequence of Play:[1][2]

1. Card Draw Phase (includes adding new personages, adding fortresses and Jesuits, adding new cards to deck, and shuffling/dealing cards) [2]

2. [Phase 2 not listed]

3. [Phase 3 not listed]

4. Action Phase (includes a variable number of rounds called "impulses" where each major power plays one card) [1]

5. [Phase 5 not listed]

6. [Phase 6 not listed]

7. [Phase 7 not listed]

8. Victory Determination Phase (used to decide if a winner is declared or if another turn is required) [1]

The Action Phase:[3][4][1][5]

* Impulse Activities: Each impulse starts by completing one of three activities:

1. Playing a card for Command Points (CP).[5] All cards except Mandatory Event cards can be played for CP; the card provides CP equal to the number in the shield in the upper-left corner, which is then expended to perform actions listed on the power's Power Card.[5]

2. Playing a card as an event.[5] Mandatory Event, Home, Event, and some Response cards may be played as events.[5] Mandatory Events must be played during the turn they are drawn and, when played, the event is resolved first and the playing power receives 2 CP.[4]

3. Passing.[5] Late in the Action Phase, powers may pass for their impulse.[3] A player may not pass during their impulse if a Mandatory Event card is still in their hand.[4]

* Extending an Impulse: Unless the power passed, they may extend their impulse by playing a treasure.[5]

* Response Cards: Response cards can be played as an event during any player's impulse to interrupt a player's impulse, a battle, or an Event card play.[4] They can also be played for CP during a player's impulse if the player does not wish to use the card's special ability to interrupt.[4]

Diplomacy Phase (Negotiation Segment):[6]

* Players may conduct secret negotiations away from the game board with one or more opponents.[6]

* This is the only time players may make private deals.[6]

* Players may discuss general strategic considerations and reveal cards or treasures in their hand.[6]

* Players may make a limited set of agreements that change the game state, such as altering the position of units, leaders, cards, or markers.[6]

Field Battle Procedure:[7]

1. Both sides (starting with the attacker) have one final chance to play the Response card *Reiters* to change the number of units in the space.[7]

2. The attacker adds up battle dice: 1 die for each land unit in the moving formation and 1 die for each Battle Rating point from the highest-rated leader in the attacking force.[7] (Note: If the attacker has more units than allowed in the moving formation, excess units do not contribute dice).[7]

3. The defender adds up battle dice.[7]

[1] RULEBOOK Virgin Queen — Rulebook · p.10 · Spanish and Portuguese Treasures · Receiving Treasures · Mixed Hand of Cards and Treasures · 7. SEQUENCE OF PLAY

[2] RULEBOOK Virgin Queen — Rulebook · p.10

[3] RULEBOOK Virgin Queen — Rulebook · p.15 · 11. THE ACTION PHASE

[4] RULEBOOK Virgin Queen — Rulebook · p.8 · Mandatory Event Cards · Response Cards

[5] RULEBOOK Virgin Queen — Rulebook · p.15 · 11. THE ACTION PHASE

[6] RULEBOOK Virgin Queen — Rulebook · p.11 · 9.1 Negotiations

[7] RULEBOOK Virgin Queen — Rulebook · p.19 · Field Battle Procedure

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 212 ms · ask 7976 ms · total 8192 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8192 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 15, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "During the Action Phase, the powers take impulses in the order described in Section 3.2. The power initiating an activity is referred to as the 'active power' throughout these rules. Each impulse starts by completing one of the following three activities: Playing a card for Command Points (CP) Playi", "headingPath": "11. THE ACTION PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.046486, "snippet": "If a player has a hand that consists of both cards and treasures, the random draw could be either a card or treasure, even though the text always refers to drawing a “card.” Whether the random choice is a card or treasure depends on the number of each of these two types of items in the target power’", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.046432, "snippet": "Their Home card has not been played, A Mandatory Event is in their hand that has not been played, or They have more cards in their hand than their ruler's Administrative Rating. A power must pass if it has no cards left in its hand. A power holding one or more cards that passes during an impulse doe", "headingPath": "11. THE ACTION PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.046394, "snippet": "The game play in Virgin Queen is driven by a single deck of 112 cards supplemented by a pool of 30 treasure counters. This section explains each of the different types of cards, and how to manage adding and removing cards from the deck. It also describes management of the treasures, which are treate", "headingPath": "6. CARDS AND TREASURES · 6.1 Card Types · Home Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "Cards with the name of the card in red and the word 'Mandatory' printed on them are Mandatory Event cards. Mandatory Events must be played during the Action Phase of the turn in which they are drawn. When played, the event is always resolved first, then the playing power receives 2 command points to", "headingPath": "Mandatory Event Cards · Response Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.04526, "snippet": "After being played as an event, the card is placed on the discard pile, unless the card text states 'Remove from deck if played as an event'; such cards are permanently removed from the game. The cards Virgin Queen , Gouvernante de France and Papal Bull allow a player to retrieve cards from the disc", "headingPath": "11. THE ACTION PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.043128, "snippet": "Play Response Cards: Both sides (starting with the attacker) have one final chance to play the Response card Reiters to change the number of units in the space. If the attacker has more units in the space than allowed in the moving formation, excess units do not contribute dice in step 2 below. Atta", "headingPath": "Field Battle Procedure", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.040906, "snippet": "considered the defender in a field battle. The defender adds up the number of dice he will roll as follows: 1 die for each defending land unit in the space. 1 die for each Battle Rating point from the highest-rated leader in the defending force. 1 die for being the defender. Attacker Declares Combat", "headingPath": "Field Battle Procedure", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Spanish and Portuguese Treasures · Receiving Treasures · Mixed Hand of Cards and Treasures · 7. SEQUENCE OF PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "11. THE ACTION PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Mandatory Event Cards · Response Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "11. THE ACTION PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "9.1 Negotiations", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}, {"page": 19, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Field Battle Procedure", "sharpsignalDocId": 1024}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1024 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1024 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 0.89243 of 2352 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 6, 2026 11:54 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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	11. THE ACTION PHASE	p.15	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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)		p.10	0.046486 (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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	11. THE ACTION PHASE	p.16	0.046432 (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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	6. CARDS AND TREASURES · 6.1 Card Types · Home Cards	p.8	0.046394 (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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	Mandatory Event Cards · Response Cards	p.8	0.045724 (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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	11. THE ACTION PHASE	p.15	0.04526 (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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	Field Battle Procedure	p.19	0.043128 (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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	Field Battle Procedure	p.20	0.040906 (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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	11. THE ACTION PHASE	p.15	#6	0.04526 (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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	Field Battle Procedure	p.19	#7	0.043128 (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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	Mandatory Event Cards · Response Cards	p.8	#5	0.045724 (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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	9.1 Negotiations	p.11	#41	0.018576 (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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	Spanish and Portuguese Treasures · Receiving Treasures · Mixed Hand of Cards and Treasures · 7. SEQUENCE OF PLAY	p.10	#10	0.028992 (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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	11. THE ACTION PHASE	p.15	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	19.2 Plant Operative · 19.3 Assassination	p.31	#24	0.022634 (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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)		p.10	#2	0.046486 (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 Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	Spanish and Portuguese Treasures · Receiving Treasures · Mixed Hand of Cards and Treasures · 7. SEQUENCE OF PLAY	p.10	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)		p.10	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	11. THE ACTION PHASE	p.15	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	Mandatory Event Cards · Response Cards	p.8	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	11. THE ACTION PHASE	p.15	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	9.1 Negotiations	p.11	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Virgin Queen — Rulebook (corpus doc 1024)	Field Battle Procedure	p.19	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 212 ms · first delta 4596 ms · total 8192 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 212 ms · ask 7976 ms · gateway work 8192 ms · total 8192 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2951
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 714
tok/sec: 201.9 tok/sec — 714 output tokens in 3.537 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 24h, 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 954), 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.