Ruling — Dead Man's Draw

You asked

How do I play?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: Dead Man's Drawbg-149155-en-1e

I looked through Dead Man's Draw's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook · p.5 · Draw a Card: · The Most Important Rule: · Draw if you Dare!

On your turn draw the top card from the Draw Pile and place it face up in the Play Area . Any time a card is placed in the Play Area , whether from the Draw Pile , Discard Pile or any player's Bank , you MUST activate the Suit Ability. The only exceptions are the Key & Chest cards whose Suit Abiliti

RULEBOOK Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook · p.8 · Key & Chest: · Map: · Oracle:

If there is a Key & Chest in the Play Area when you Collect, draw as many bonus cards from the Discard Pile as you moved into your Bank . Example: Zach chooses Collect and he has five cards in the Play Area . Two of them are a Key & Chest. After he moves five cards from the Play Area into his Bank ,

RULEBOOK Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook · p.6 · Collect, Bank: · End of Turn: · Game End: · Determining Winner: · Tie:

Instead of drawing another card you may Collect. When you Collect, move all the cards from the Play Area to your Bank . Organize the cards in your Bank by suit, creating one Suit Stack for each of the ten suits. Cards in each Suit Stack should be placed in descending order ( 7 on the top down to 2 o

RULEBOOK Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook · p.7 · Anchor: · Hook: · Cannon:

Collect all cards drawn before the Anchor, even if you Bust. Example: Eliza has two cards in the Play Area, a Mermaid and a Cannon. She draws an Anchor, then draws another Mermaid and gets a Bust. The first Mermaid and the Cannon are moved to her Bank . The Anchor and second Mermaid are discarded. C

RULEBOOK Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook · p.4 · Set up:

The Main Area in the center consists of three parts: To form the Discard Pile, remove the Loot Cards with the lowest number from each suit. (Nine Loot Cards with the value of 2 , and one Mermaid card with the value of 4 .) Shuffle these ten Loot Cards together. Place the Discard Pile face up on one

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome

ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below

warm abstain

this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)

corpus profile

live,vps

answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)

gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70

timings

search 165 ms · ask 1332 ms · total 1499 ms

single-flight (PR-5)

queued 0 ms · generation 1499 ms

retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read

[{"page": 5, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "On your turn draw the top card from the Draw Pile and place it face up in the Play Area . Any time a card is placed in the Play Area , whether from the Draw Pile , Discard Pile or any player's Bank , you MUST activate the Suit Ability. The only exceptions are the Key & Chest cards whose Suit Abiliti", "headingPath": "Draw a Card: · The Most Important Rule: · Draw if you Dare!", "sharpsignalDocId": 1211}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "If there is a Key & Chest in the Play Area when you Collect, draw as many bonus cards from the Discard Pile as you moved into your Bank . Example: Zach chooses Collect and he has five cards in the Play Area . Two of them are a Key & Chest. After he moves five cards from the Play Area into his Bank ,", "headingPath": "Key & Chest: · Map: · Oracle:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1211}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047073, "snippet": "Instead of drawing another card you may Collect. When you Collect, move all the cards from the Play Area to your Bank . Organize the cards in your Bank by suit, creating one Suit Stack for each of the ten suits. Cards in each Suit Stack should be placed in descending order ( 7 on the top down to 2 o", "headingPath": "Collect, Bank: · End of Turn: · Game End: · Determining Winner: · Tie:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1211}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046154, "snippet": "Collect all cards drawn before the Anchor, even if you Bust. Example: Eliza has two cards in the Play Area, a Mermaid and a Cannon. She draws an Anchor, then draws another Mermaid and gets a Bust. The first Mermaid and the Cannon are moved to her Bank . The Anchor and second Mermaid are discarded. C", "headingPath": "Anchor: · Hook: · Cannon:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1211}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045956, "snippet": "The Main Area in the center consists of three parts: To form the Discard Pile, remove the Loot Cards with the lowest number from each suit. (Nine Loot Cards with the value of 2 , and one Mermaid card with the value of 4 .) Shuffle these ten Loot Cards together. Place the Discard Pile face up on one ", "headingPath": "Set up:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1211}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "Dead Man's Draw is a tense push your luck game for 2-4 players. If you would like to play with 5-8 players, combine an additional copy of Dead Man's Draw and shuffle the two games together. At the beginning of the game you will have 20 cards in the Discard Pile and 100 cards in the Draw Pile . Mix a", "headingPath": "Pirate Party Game Variant: · A Note From Mayday Games:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1211}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.044337, "snippet": "Sword: Steal the top card from any other player's Suit Stack and place the stolen card in the Play Area . You must choose a Suit Stack of an opponent that you do not have in your own Bank , even if the chosen card will cause you to Bust. Example: Zach draws a Sword. Zach has Anchor, Hook, and Cannon", "headingPath": "Oracle: · Kraken:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1211}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.04374, "snippet": "Instead of picking one of three random cards from the Discard Pile , you may pick any one card from the entire Discard Pile . Discard the entire Suit Stack instead of just the top card. Place the card discarded by your Cannon into your Bank instead of the Discard Pile . Mystic, Oracle: Reveal three ", "headingPath": "Navigator, Map: · Master Gunner, Cannons: · Scavenger, Cannon: · Miser, Hook:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1211}]

citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show

[]

boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)

no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1211 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true

base rulebook doc 1211 boosted

answered-before recall

no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough

similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)

debug row recorded

Sep 6, 2026 14:06 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 Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Draw a Card: · The Most Important Rule: · Draw if you Dare!	p.5	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
#2	RULEBOOK Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Key & Chest: · Map: · Oracle:	p.8	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 Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Collect, Bank: · End of Turn: · Game End: · Determining Winner: · Tie:	p.6	0.047073 (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 Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Anchor: · Hook: · Cannon:	p.7	0.046154 (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 Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Set up:	p.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))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Pirate Party Game Variant: · A Note From Mayday Games:	p.15	0.045455 (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 Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Oracle: · Kraken:	p.9	0.044337 (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 Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Navigator, Map: · Master Gunner, Cannons: · Scavenger, Cannon: · Miser, Hook:	p.11	0.04374 (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 17 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 Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Collect, Bank: · End of Turn: · Game End: · Determining Winner: · Tie:	p.6	#3	0.047073 (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 Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Anchor: · Hook: · Cannon:	p.7	#4	0.046154 (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 Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Set up:	p.4	#5	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
#4	RULEBOOK Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Captain's Hook, Hook: · Safe Harbor, Anchor: · Fisherman, Kraken: · Beastmaster, Kraken: · Misfire, Cannon: · Parry, Sword:	p.12	#11	0.027984 (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 Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Traits: · Casanova, Mermaid: · Plunderer, Key & Chest: · Treasure Hunter, Key & Chest:	p.10	#12	0.027973 (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 Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Oracle: · Kraken:	p.9	#7	0.044337 (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 Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Key & Chest: · Map: · Oracle:	p.8	#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 Dead Man's Draw — Rulebook (corpus doc 1211)	Draw a Card: · The Most Important Rule: · Draw if you Dare!	p.5	#1	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 165 ms · first delta 1399 ms · total 1499 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 165 ms · ask 1332 ms · gateway work 1499 ms · total 1499 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2266
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 9
tok/sec: 180.0 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.050 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 36s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 24h, checked 8s 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: ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
abstain rationale: I don't have enough information.
BOILERPLATE, not reasoning: this is the answerer's fixed abstention phrase, the same sentence it emits whenever it declines. It records THAT the answerer declined and never why — no per-ruling reason was captured, because none was sent. Hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped

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 1141), 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.