Ruling — Smash Up: Monster Smash

← Smash Up: Monster Smash

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Smash Up: Monster Smashbg-160018-en-1e

Setup

1. Each player chooses two factions and shuffles them together to make a 40-card deck.[1][2]

2. Shuffle all the base cards together to make a deck.[3]

3. Place one more base card than you have players in the middle of the table.[3][2]

4. Place the bases face up in the middle of the table.[3]

5. Each player draws a hand of five cards.[3][2]

6. If you have no minions in your opening hand, show your hand, discard it, and draw a new hand of five cards; you must keep the second hand.[3]

7. Whoever got up the earliest this morning goes first.[3]

A Turn

1. Some abilities happen at the start of your turn.[4]

2. Play one minion, play one action, or play one of each in any order.[4][2] You can also choose to play fewer cards.[4][2]

3. To play a minion, choose a base and put the minion card beside it, facing toward you, and do what the card says.[4]

4. To play an action, show your card and do what it says, then discard the action (unless it has a Talent or Ongoing ability).[4]

5. After playing cards, check to see whether any bases are ready to score.[4][2]

6. If any bases are ready, you must start scoring.[4]

7. Draw two cards.[4][2]

8. If you have more than 10 cards in your hand, discard down to 10.[4][2]

9. If you need to draw or reveal a card and your deck is empty, shuffle your discard pile to create a new deck.[4]

10. Anything that happens at the end of the turn happens here.[4]

11. Play passes to the player on the left.[4] (Note: Play continues clockwise [3]).

Scoring

1. A base scores if the total power of all minions on that base equals or exceeds the base's breakpoint.[5][2]

2. If more than one base is ready to score, the player whose turn it is decides which one to score first.[4][5]

3. When a base is chosen to score, each player first gets to use any Special abilities that happen "before" the base scores.[5]

4. If multiple players want to use a Special ability, start with the current player and go around the table clockwise until all players pass in sequence.[5]

5. The player with the most power on a base is the winner and gains victory points equal to the first number.[5][2]

6. The second highest player is the runner up and receives the middle number.[5]

7. The third highest player receives the third number.[5][2]

8. In case of a tie, each player receives full victory points for the highest place he or she qualified for.[2]

9. Resolve the ability on the base, discard minions there, and then replace it.[2]

10. Dispense VP tokens in the appropriate amounts to everyone who scored.[5]

Ending the Game

1. After scoring bases, check to see if any players have 15 or more victory points.[4][2]

2. If a player has 15 or more victory points at the end of a turn, he or she wins.[2]

3. If two or more players have more than 15 VP, the one with the most victory points wins.[2]

4. In case of a tie for most victory points, play another turn.[2]

5. If playing with the Obligatory Cthulhu Set, check for Madness cards VP reduction at the end of the game; if players are tied for most victory points, the player with the lowest number of Madness cards wins.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook · p.3 · TABLE OF CONTENTS · Kickin' It Queensberry

[2] RULEBOOK Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook · p.16 · Set Up · On Your Turn · Scoring · Winning · Additional Rules

[3] RULEBOOK Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook · p.4 · Kickin' It Queensberry

[4] RULEBOOK Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook · p.5 · 1. Crank It Up · 2. Play Cards · Minions · Actions · 3. Check for Scoring · 4. Draw 2 Cards · …

[5] RULEBOOK Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook · p.7 · THE BIG SCORE · Me First! · Awarding VP

So says the rulebook. So plays the table.

🔧 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 106 ms · ask 5936 ms · total 6133 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 88 ms · generation 6045 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Some abilities happen at the start of your turn. This is when that goes down. Yo. On your turn play one minion, play one action, or play one of each… for free! You can play your cards in any order. You don't have to play any cards. To play a minion, choose a base and put the minion card beside it, f", "headingPath": "1. Crank It Up · 2. Play Cards · Minions · Actions · 3. Check for Scoring · 4. Draw 2 Cards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1136}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "Play: You play a card when it's one of the free cards you get in step 2, or any time an ability specifically says that you're playing it. A card's ability happens when you play it. When cards are moved, placed, or returned, they're not being played, and their abilities don't happen. Return: This mea", "headingPath": "TERMS AND RESTRICTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1136}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.04741, "snippet": "Shuffle all the base cards together to make a deck. Draw one base per player, plus one (for example, use four bases for three players). Place the bases face up in the middle of the table. Each player draws five cards. If you have no minions in your opening hand, show your hand, discard it, and draw ", "headingPath": "Kickin' It Queensberry", "sharpsignalDocId": 1136}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "Each player chooses two factions and shuffles them together to make a 40-card deck. Draw a hand of five cards. Place one more base card than you have players in the middle of the table (that is, use five bases for four players). Play 1 minion and 1 action in either order. You can play less if you wa", "headingPath": "Set Up · On Your Turn · Scoring · Winning · Additional Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 1136}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "Often, card text and rules text will conflict. When there's a fight, card text always wins. It has a black belt in rule-fu. If cards conflict, the one that says you can't do something beats the one that says you can. If multiple effects would happen at the same time, the player whose turn it is choo", "headingPath": "VOID WHERE PROHIBITED", "sharpsignalDocId": 1136}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.045475, "snippet": "Score a base if the total power of all minions on that base equals or exceeds the base's breakpoint (see page 9). If more than one base is ready to score, the player whose turn it is decides which one to score first. When a base has been chosen to score, each player first gets to use any Special abi", "headingPath": "THE BIG SCORE · Me First! · Awarding VP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1136}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.043905, "snippet": "Each player shuffles together two different 20-card factions to make a 40-card deck. Werewolves! Vampire Werewolves! If you have two copies of Monster Smash, different players can use the same faction pitting Vampires against Vampires, for instance. But one player can't play with two copies of the s", "headingPath": "TABLE OF CONTENTS · Kickin' It Queensberry", "sharpsignalDocId": 1136}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "After scoring, players can use Special abilities that happen 'after' a base scores. Then all cards still on that base go to their owners' discard piles. This does not destroy them, but might trigger abilities that happen when they go to the discard pile. Put the scored base into the base discard pil", "headingPath": "Back to Your Corners · Tie Fighter", "sharpsignalDocId": 1136}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TABLE OF CONTENTS · Kickin' It Queensberry", "sharpsignalDocId": 1136}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Set Up · On Your Turn · Scoring · Winning · Additional Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 1136}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Kickin' It Queensberry", "sharpsignalDocId": 1136}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. Crank It Up · 2. Play Cards · Minions · Actions · 3. Check for Scoring · 4. Draw 2 Cards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1136}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE BIG SCORE · Me First! · Awarding VP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1136}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1136 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1136 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 0.87677 of 2540 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 6, 2026 13:26 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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	1. Crank It Up · 2. Play Cards · Minions · Actions · 3. Check for Scoring · 4. Draw 2 Cards · …	p.5	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	TERMS AND RESTRICTIONS	p.11	0.047619 (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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	Kickin' It Queensberry	p.4	0.04741 (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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	Set Up · On Your Turn · Scoring · Winning · Additional Rules	p.16	0.047379 (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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	VOID WHERE PROHIBITED	p.12	0.045928 (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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	THE BIG SCORE · Me First! · Awarding VP	p.7	0.045475 (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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	TABLE OF CONTENTS · Kickin' It Queensberry	p.3	0.043905 (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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	Back to Your Corners · Tie Fighter	p.8	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 16 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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	1. Crank It Up · 2. Play Cards · Minions · Actions · 3. Check for Scoring · 4. Draw 2 Cards · …	p.5	#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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	Kickin' It Queensberry	p.4	#3	0.04741 (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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	VOID WHERE PROHIBITED	p.12	#5	0.045928 (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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	TERMS AND RESTRICTIONS	p.10	#9	0.029469 (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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	THE BIG SCORE · Me First! · Awarding VP	p.7	#6	0.045475 (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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	TABLE OF CONTENTS · Kickin' It Queensberry	p.3	#7	0.043905 (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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	TERMS AND RESTRICTIONS	p.11	#2	0.047619 (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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	Set Up · On Your Turn · Scoring · Winning · Additional Rules	p.16	#4	0.047379 (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 Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	TABLE OF CONTENTS · Kickin' It Queensberry	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	Set Up · On Your Turn · Scoring · Winning · Additional Rules	p.16	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	Kickin' It Queensberry	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	1. Crank It Up · 2. Play Cards · Minions · Actions · 3. Check for Scoring · 4. Draw 2 Cards · …	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Smash Up: Monster Smash — Rulebook (corpus doc 1136)	THE BIG SCORE · Me First! · Awarding VP	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 106 ms · first delta 1734 ms · total 6133 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 88 ms · retrieval 106 ms · ask 5936 ms · gateway work 6045 ms · total 6133 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2744
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 859
tok/sec: 201.8 tok/sec — 859 output tokens in 4.257 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 31s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 24h, 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 1066), 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.