Ruling — Fauna — RuleSage

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Faunabg-35497-en-1e

The game is played over several rounds.[1] One round consists of the following phases:

1. Placing the Guess tokens [1]

* The starting player reads the name of the frontmost animal in the Card Box.[1]

* Everyone looks at the Animal card's available information to decide where to place Guess tokens, though the card must not be fully revealed.[1]

* Beginning with the starting player and proceeding in clockwise order, each player places one Guess token on a free area on the Map or on a free space in one of the Scales.[1]

* A Guess token can be placed on an empty land or sea area on the Map where no other token is present.[1]

* This phase is repeated after each player has placed a Guess token, starting again with the starting player and moving clockwise.[2]

* Players can then choose to either place another Guess token or pass.[2]

* A player may pass if they have no Guess tokens left or do not want to place more; once a player passes, they cannot place any more tokens for the rest of the round.[2]

2. Evaluation [1]

* After all players have passed, the Evaluation phase begins.[2]

* The active Animal card is removed from the Card Box so the whole card is visible.[2]

* The areas on the Map are evaluated first, then the Scales.[2]

* To assist with area evaluation, Evaluation Markers (black tokens) can be placed on each area specified on the bottom half of the card to indicate they are correct.[2]

* Players receive points for Guess tokens on a correct area.[2] If the animal appears in 16 or fewer areas, points are also awarded for tokens on an area adjacent to a correct one.[2]

* For the Scales, players receive points for each Guess token placed on a correct space, as well as for each token on a space adjacent to a correct space.[3]

* Points are gained immediately and counted on the Scoring Track.[3][2]

* After the evaluation is over, all Evaluation Markers are removed.[2]

3. Starting player change & new round preparation [1]

* All Guess tokens that scored points during Evaluation are returned to their owners.[4]

* All Guess tokens that did not score points are placed back in the supply.[4]

* The active Animal card is placed at the back of the Card Box.[4]

* If no player has reached or exceeded the required number of points to trigger the game end, the Card Box is passed to the player left of the starting player, who becomes the starting player for the new round.[4]

* Each player retrieves one of their Guess tokens from the supply if available.[4]

* If a player has fewer than 3 Guess tokens, they replenish them until they have 3.[4]

The game ends as soon as a player reaches or exceeds a specific number of points after the Evaluation phase:[4]

* 2 or 3 Players: 120 Points [4]

* 4 or 5 Players: 100 Points [4]

* 6 Players: 80 Points [4]

The player with the most points wins; in the event of a tie, all tied players win.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Fauna — Rulebook · p.4 · HOW TO PLAY · I. Placing the Guess tokens · Placing it on the Map

[2] RULEBOOK Fauna — Rulebook · p.5 · Placing it on a Scale · Placing more Guess tokens · Pass · II. Evaluation · Evaluation of the Areas

[3] RULEBOOK Fauna — Rulebook · p.6 · Evaluation of the Areas · Evaluation of the Scales

[4] RULEBOOK Fauna — Rulebook · p.7 · Placed Guess tokens cleanup · III. Starting player change & new round preparation · GAME END · NOTE ON THE METRIC & IMPERIAL MEASUREMENT SCALES IN THIS VERSION

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 186 ms · ask 4475 ms · total 4663 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4663 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "The game is played over several rounds. One round consists of the following phases: Placing the Guess tokens Evaluation Starting player change & new round preparation The starting player reads the name of the frontmost animal in the Card Box. Everyone looks at the Animal card's available information", "headingPath": "HOW TO PLAY · I. Placing the Guess tokens · Placing it on the Map", "sharpsignalDocId": 1085}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "Before you start the game, decide whether to play with the Common Animals (Blue) or the Exotic Animals (Yellow), using the corresponding side during play. Alternatively, you can mix the cards, using both Common and Exotic Animals for your session, placing them in the Card Box accordingly. A card's u", "headingPath": "ANIMAL CARDS · GOAL OF THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1085}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "1 Double-Sided Board (World Map) Metric / Imperial 180 Double-Sided Animal Cards with 360 Animals Place the World Map in the middle of your play area with the side of your preference face up ( Metric / Imperial Units). Each player receives 7 Guess tokens in the color of their choice, placing 1 of th", "headingPath": "CONTENTS · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1085}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "All Guess tokens that scored points during the Evaluation are returned to their owners. All Guess tokens that didn't score points are placed back in the supply (next to the game board). They will be available to use later (see phase III). After using the active Animal card for the Evaluation phase, ", "headingPath": "Placed Guess tokens cleanup · III. Starting player change & new round preparation · GAME END · NOTE ON THE METRIC & IMPERIAL MEASUREMENT SCALES IN THIS VERSION", "sharpsignalDocId": 1085}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "You can place a Guess token on an empty space in one of the applicable Scales. Note: Not all Scales are applicable for all animals. The applicable Scales (measurement aspects) for an animal are noted on the top half of its card. After each player has placed a Guess token, this phase is repeated , be", "headingPath": "Placing it on a Scale · Placing more Guess tokens · Pass · II. Evaluation · Evaluation of the Areas", "sharpsignalDocId": 1085}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The number of points scored from each token depends on the number of areas where the active animal can be found (as depicted on its card). Example: If an animal's habitat is in 7 areas, a player receives 6 points for a token placed on a correct area and 2 points for a token placed adjacent to a corr", "headingPath": "Evaluation of the Areas · Evaluation of the Scales", "sharpsignalDocId": 1085}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "A family game for 2 to 6 players, ages 10 and up. Did you know? The Giraffe can grow more than 5 meters high and the Yacare caiman weighs just 60 kilograms. But how long is the Polar bear's tail and where does the Pumpkin toadlet actually live? These and many more questions are posed to the players ", "headingPath": "THE ANIMAL TRIVIA GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1085}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "\u0007 Is the Mediterranean Sea Adjacent to the North Atlantic Ocean? Yes. \u0007 Do the different shades of blue in the sea areas affect gameplay? No, they only reflect the water depth. \u0007 Are the Iberian Peninsula and the Atlas Mountains adjacent? No, the Strait of Gibraltar separates them. \u0007 Is Tasmania adj", "headingPath": "Listed below are some Frequently Asked Questions that may arise during the game: · Notes on Central America and Katanga:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1085}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "HOW TO PLAY · I. Placing the Guess tokens · Placing it on the Map", "sharpsignalDocId": 1085}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Placing it on a Scale · Placing more Guess tokens · Pass · II. Evaluation · Evaluation of the Areas", "sharpsignalDocId": 1085}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Evaluation of the Areas · Evaluation of the Scales", "sharpsignalDocId": 1085}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Placed Guess tokens cleanup · III. Starting player change & new round preparation · GAME END · NOTE ON THE METRIC & IMPERIAL MEASUREMENT SCALES IN THIS VERSION", "sharpsignalDocId": 1085}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1085 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1085 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 0.91731 of 2334 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 6, 2026 16:15 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 Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	HOW TO PLAY · I. Placing the Guess tokens · Placing it on the Map	p.4	0.048916 (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 Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	ANIMAL CARDS · GOAL OF THE GAME	p.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))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	CONTENTS · SETUP	p.2	0.046642 (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 Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	Placed Guess tokens cleanup · III. Starting player change & new round preparation · GAME END · NOTE ON THE METRIC & IMPERIAL MEASUREMENT SCALES IN THIS VERSION	p.7	0.032258 (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 Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	Placing it on a Scale · Placing more Guess tokens · Pass · II. Evaluation · Evaluation of the Areas	p.5	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
#6	RULEBOOK Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	Evaluation of the Areas · Evaluation of the Scales	p.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))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	THE ANIMAL TRIVIA GAME	p.1	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 Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	Listed below are some Frequently Asked Questions that may arise during the game: · Notes on Central America and Katanga:	p.8	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 8 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 Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	HOW TO PLAY · I. Placing the Guess tokens · Placing it on the Map	p.4	#1	0.048916 (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 Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	CONTENTS · SETUP	p.2	#3	0.046642 (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 Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	THE ANIMAL TRIVIA GAME	p.1	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	Listed below are some Frequently Asked Questions that may arise during the game: · Notes on Central America and Katanga:	p.8	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	Placed Guess tokens cleanup · III. Starting player change & new round preparation · GAME END · NOTE ON THE METRIC & IMPERIAL MEASUREMENT SCALES IN THIS VERSION	p.7	#4	0.032258 (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 Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	Evaluation of the Areas · Evaluation of the Scales	p.6	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	Placing it on a Scale · Placing more Guess tokens · Pass · II. Evaluation · Evaluation of the Areas	p.5	#5	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
#8	RULEBOOK Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	ANIMAL CARDS · GOAL OF THE GAME	p.3	#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))	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 Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	HOW TO PLAY · I. Placing the Guess tokens · Placing it on the Map	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	Placing it on a Scale · Placing more Guess tokens · Pass · II. Evaluation · Evaluation of the Areas	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	Evaluation of the Areas · Evaluation of the Scales	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Fauna — Rulebook (corpus doc 1085)	Placed Guess tokens cleanup · III. Starting player change & new round preparation · GAME END · NOTE ON THE METRIC & IMPERIAL MEASUREMENT SCALES IN THIS VERSION	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 186 ms · first delta 1070 ms · total 4663 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 186 ms · ask 4475 ms · gateway work 4663 ms · total 4663 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2950
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 712
tok/sec: 201.4 tok/sec — 712 output tokens in 3.535 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 10s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 1s 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 1015), 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.