Ruling — Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game

← Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Gamebg-184151-en-1e

To play the game, follow these procedures:

Setup

1. Each player shuffles their dynasty and conflict decks separately, then presents them to the opponent for a final cut.[1]

2. Each player places their dynasty deck to the left of their play area and their conflict deck to the right.[1]

3. Each player secretly selects one province, places it facedown above their dynasty deck, and places their stronghold card on top of it.[1]

4. Each player places their other four provinces facedown between their dynasty and conflict decks, in any order.[1]

5. Each player places one honor dial near their conflict deck.[1]

6. Each player places one card from the top of their dynasty deck facedown onto each of their empty nonstronghold provinces.[1]

The Round Sequence

A round is divided into five phases: Dynasty, Draw, Conflict, Fate, and Regroup.[2]

Dynasty Phase

1. In player order, each player turns all facedown dynasty cards in their provinces faceup, starting from the leftmost province with a facedown card and proceeding to the right.[2]

2. Each player collects fate equal to the fate value on their stronghold card (noting that other cards may modify this amount).[2]

3. In player order, players alternate opportunities to do one of the following: play a character card from their provinces, trigger an appropriate card ability, or pass.[2]

4. The first player to pass gains 1 fate and forfeits the opportunity to play characters or trigger actions for the remainder of the phase.[2]

5. The remaining player continues to play characters and trigger actions alone until they also pass.[2]

Playing a Character from a Province

1. A player must pay the card's cost by spending that much fate from their fate pool to the general token pool.[3]

2. Move the card from the province into the player's home area.[3]

3. The player has the option of placing any number of fate tokens from their pool on that character to keep it in play for additional game rounds.[3]

4. Once the option to place fate is completed or passed, the province is refilled by taking a card from the dynasty deck and placing it facedown on the province without looking at it.[3]

Conflict Actions

1. During the conflict phase, the defending player has the first opportunity to act, and opportunities alternate between players until both pass consecutively.[4]

2. With an action opportunity, a player may:

* Activate an action ability on a card (from a character, attachment in play, unbroken faceup province, holding, or stronghold).[4]

* Play an event card from their hand by paying its fate cost.[4]

* Play an attachment card from their hand by paying its cost and attaching it to a character in play.[4]

* Play a character from their hand by paying its cost; the controller may place it in the conflict or in their home area and may choose to place any amount of fate from their pool on that character.[4]

* Pass (if a player passes and the opponent takes an action other than "pass," the passing player may re-enter the sequence).[4]

3. After using an action opportunity, the player must announce the total relevant skill present on both sides of the conflict.[4]

4. Once both players pass consecutively, proceed to the next step.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.6 · 4. Shuffle Dynasty and Conflict Decks · 5. Place Provinces and Stronghold · 6. Fill Provinces

[2] RULEBOOK Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.8 · Phase Sequence · Phase 1: Dynasty · Step 1. Reveal Facedown Cards in Provinces · Step 2. Collect Fate · Step 3. Play Characters from Provinces

[3] RULEBOOK Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.8 · Playing a Character from a Province · Strategy: Placing Additional Fate

[4] RULEBOOK Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.12 · Step 3. Conflict Actions

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 87 ms · ask 6745 ms · total 6833 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6833 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.047712, "snippet": "This Learn to Play book is written as an introduction to Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game . It should be used as a guide for new players while learning and playing the first game. The first part of this book takes players through an entire game round, teaching the rules and introducing the st", "headingPath": "Using this Book · A Living Card Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1216}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "In order to play a character from a province, a player must first pay that card's cost (indicated in the upper left corner of the card) by spending that much fate from their fate pool to the general token pool. Next, move that card from the province into that player's home area - the part of the pla", "headingPath": "Playing a Character from a Province · Strategy: Placing Additional Fate", "sharpsignalDocId": 1216}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "During this step, the players take turns using action abilities to influence the conflict and gain the upper hand. 0 The defending player has the first opportunity to act, and the opportunities alternate back and forth between the players until both players pass consecutively. EVENT With an action o", "headingPath": "Step 3. Conflict Actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 1216}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game is played over a series of rounds. During a round, players bring new characters into play from their provinces, decide how honorably they will act in the coming conflicts, declare military and political conflicts against one another's provinces, check the fate", "headingPath": "Phase Sequence · Phase 1: Dynasty · Step 1. Reveal Facedown Cards in Provinces · Step 2. Collect Fate · Step 3. Play Characters from Provinces", "sharpsignalDocId": 1216}, {"page": 29, "score": 0.042784, "snippet": "A triggered ability is an ability that is initiated by a player at a specified point in the game. The player controlling a card has the option of triggering its ability or not. (Forced abilities are an exception to this, as forced abilities are initiated automatically by the game.) Each instance of ", "headingPath": "Triggered Abilities", "sharpsignalDocId": 1216}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The defending player now has the option to declare characters as defenders. h h This player declares which ready characters (under the defending player's control) are being committed as defenders and slides them forward, separate from their non-committed characters. The defending player may declare ", "headingPath": "Step 2. Declare Defenders", "sharpsignalDocId": 1216}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "After placing these cards during setup, each player has one opportunity to look at their facedown cards, choose which ones they wish to keep, and replace the rest (known as a mulligan). Set aside the cards to be replaced and deal a new facedown card into each empty province. Then shuffle the replace", "headingPath": "6. Fill Provinces · 7. Draw Starting Hand · 8. Gain Starting Honor", "sharpsignalDocId": 1216}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Then shuffle the replaced cards back into the dynasty deck. Note: After this point, players are not permitted to look at facedown cards in their provinces. 7. Draw Starting Hand Each player draws four cards from their conflict deck to form their starting hand. These cards are typically used during t", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1216}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4. Shuffle Dynasty and Conflict Decks · 5. Place Provinces and Stronghold · 6. Fill Provinces", "sharpsignalDocId": 1216}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase Sequence · Phase 1: Dynasty · Step 1. Reveal Facedown Cards in Provinces · Step 2. Collect Fate · Step 3. Play Characters from Provinces", "sharpsignalDocId": 1216}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing a Character from a Province · Strategy: Placing Additional Fate", "sharpsignalDocId": 1216}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Step 3. Conflict Actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 1216}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1216 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1216 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 0.92500 of 2680 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 6, 2026 13:11 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 Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Using this Book · A Living Card Game	p.3	0.047712 (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 Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Playing a Character from a Province · Strategy: Placing Additional Fate	p.8	0.047123 (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 Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Step 3. Conflict Actions	p.12	0.046898 (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 Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Phase Sequence · Phase 1: Dynasty · Step 1. Reveal Facedown Cards in Provinces · Step 2. Collect Fate · Step 3. Play Characters from Provinces	p.8	0.046696 (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 Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Triggered Abilities	p.29	0.042784 (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 Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Step 2. Declare Defenders	p.11	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
#7	RULEBOOK Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	6. Fill Provinces · 7. Draw Starting Hand · 8. Gain Starting Honor	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
#8	RULEBOOK Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)		p.7	0.029412 (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 77 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 Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Playing a Character from a Province · Strategy: Placing Additional Fate	p.8	#2	0.047123 (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 Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Strategy: Attack and Defense	p.13	#21	0.024569 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	4. Shuffle Dynasty and Conflict Decks · 5. Place Provinces and Stronghold · 6. Fill Provinces	p.6	#16	0.025816 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Strategy: Unicorn Clan	p.28	#35	0.020948 (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 Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Dueling	p.29	#39	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
#6	RULEBOOK Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Phase Sequence · Phase 1: Dynasty · Step 1. Reveal Facedown Cards in Provinces · Step 2. Collect Fate · Step 3. Play Characters from Provinces	p.8	#4	0.046696 (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 Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Strategy: Scorpion Clan	p.27	#36	0.019844 (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 Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Step 3. Conflict Actions	p.12	#3	0.046898 (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 Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	4. Shuffle Dynasty and Conflict Decks · 5. Place Provinces and Stronghold · 6. Fill Provinces	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Phase Sequence · Phase 1: Dynasty · Step 1. Reveal Facedown Cards in Provinces · Step 2. Collect Fate · Step 3. Play Characters from Provinces	p.8	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Playing a Character from a Province · Strategy: Placing Additional Fate	p.8	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1216)	Step 3. Conflict Actions	p.12	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 87 ms · first delta 3151 ms · total 6833 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 87 ms · ask 6745 ms · gateway work 6833 ms · total 6833 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2294
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 737
tok/sec: 202.6 tok/sec — 737 output tokens in 3.637 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 24s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 3s 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 1146), 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.