RuleSage cited table rulings
← Tang Garden

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Tang Gardenbg-252153-en-1e

Starting with the first player and proceeding in clockwise order, each player takes a turn.[1] Each turn consists of a mandatory main action and three possible optional actions:[1]
1. Main Action (Mandatory): Perform either "Build the Garden" or "Place a Decoration".[1]
* Build the Garden: The active player chooses one face-up garden tile from the top of one of the four stacks in the corners of the garden board and places it on an available space on the garden board.[2] The placed tile must be adjacent to an existing tile, and the terrain types on all edges of adjacent tiles must match (walls can match any terrain).[2] After placing, the player examines the tile and collects rewards, such as advancing cubes on their player board for matching terrain or enclosing terrain, or gaining coins for matching footpath edges.[2]
* Place a Decoration: The active player draws two cards, plus one card for each face-down tile on top of each of the four garden tile piles.[3] The player examines the drawn cards, chooses one to decorate the garden with, and places it face up in front of them, sorted by type.[3] The player then takes the corresponding decoration from the supply, places it in a designated area on the garden board, and gains the one-time bonus indicated on the card.[3] Unchosen cards are discarded face up.[3] If no areas or decorations of the chosen type are available, the card cannot be selected.[3]
2. Optional Actions:
* Influence a Character: After the main action, a player may influence a character if they have reached the required level on their player board and there is at least one free character placement spot on the board.[1][4] To influence a new character, the player must choose and take one of the two revealed character cards or draw a face-down card from the deck, then take the corresponding miniature and place it on an available spot (a garden tile, bridge, or pavilion) on the garden board, facing one of the four cardinal directions.[4]
* Use a Lantern: Once per turn, a player may activate one of their lantern abilities along with their main action by flipping one of their lantern tokens face down.[1][5] Abilities include placing two garden tiles, placing two decorations, moving or adjusting the facing of a character, or choosing a specific character from the deck when influencing.[5]
* Refresh a Lantern: During their turn, a player may spend three landscape tokens of the same size (or four in a 2-player game) to refresh a previously used lantern token by flipping it to its unused side.[1][5]
The game ends when there are three or fewer landscape tokens on the garden board, or when one of the four piles of garden tiles is depleted.[5] The game continues until the player to the right of the player with the Engineer token completes their turn, ensuring all players have an equal number of turns.[5]
[1] RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook · p.3 · · Order of Play ·
[2] RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook · p.3 · · Build the Garden ·
[3] RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook · p.5 · · Place a Decoration ·
[4] RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook · p.7 · · Influence a Character · · IMPORTANT: After placing a character miniature on the garden board, its skill is no longer available.
[5] RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook · p.8 · · Use a Lantern · · · Refresh a Lantern (Optional) · · · End of Game ·

Rule found, game on.

🔧 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 95 ms · ask 4551 ms · total 30260 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 25612 ms · generation 4648 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 3, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Starting with the first player and proceeding in clockwise order, each player takes a turn. Each turn consists of a mandatory main action, and three possible optional actions. Main Action (mandatory): Build the Garden, or Place a Decoration. Influence a Character (optional): After the main action, t", "headingPath": "· Order of Play ·", "sharpsignalDocId": 981}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "The active player draws two cards, plus one card for each face down tile on top of each of the four garden tile piles. The player examines the drawn cards, chooses one to decorate the garden with, and places it face up in front of them with any previously played cards, sorting them by type. Next, th", "headingPath": "· Place a Decoration ·", "sharpsignalDocId": 981}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.046244, "snippet": "In this game mode, your goal is to complete the central part of the garden board, which is comprised of 28 spaces around the starting tile. This game mode does not use the spaces around the edges of the board. Decoration cards are not collected, character's abilities are not available, and player bo", "headingPath": "· Solo Variant 'Yin & Yang' · · · Setup ·", "sharpsignalDocId": 981}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.044563, "snippet": "Once you have enough coins, you may influence a character. You may influence one new character each time you gain at least 10, 20, or 30 coins. It's not possible to influence more than four characters (including the starting one). Each time you influence a new character, pick one of the two characte", "headingPath": "· Influencing Characters · · · Lantern Tokens · · · End of Game · · · Final Character Placement ·", "sharpsignalDocId": 981}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Name Starting Bonus Character Skill Sight Preference After a player's main action, they may choose to influence a character. Each player begins the game with a character and may take advantage of their character's skill during their turn. To influence a new character, the player must have advanced e", "headingPath": "· Influence a Character · · IMPORTANT: After placing a character miniature on the garden board, its skill is no longer available.", "sharpsignalDocId": 981}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The active player may choose to use a lantern ability once per turn. To do this, the player flips a lantern token on their player board face down, and activates the chosen lantern ability. There are four different abilities. When taking a Build the Garden action, the player places two garden tiles, ", "headingPath": "· Use a Lantern · · · Refresh a Lantern (Optional) · · · End of Game ·", "sharpsignalDocId": 981}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Place the garden board in the center of the table. Place the starting tile in the center of the garden board with either side face up. It can be oriented in any direction. Separate the four types of garden tiles by their backs and shuffle each pile. Place them face down in four stacks in the designa", "headingPath": "· Overview ·", "sharpsignalDocId": 981}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Count the coins obtained during the game, then add: Coins awarded for decoration cards in front of each player. Examples: Gain six coins for each single pair of lotus and peonies cards. Gain six coins for each single pair of birds and fish cards. The player with the most pavilion cards gains 12 coin", "headingPath": "· End of Game ·", "sharpsignalDocId": 981}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "· Order of Play ·", "sharpsignalDocId": 981}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "· Build the Garden ·", "sharpsignalDocId": 981}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "· Place a Decoration ·", "sharpsignalDocId": 981}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "· Influence a Character · · IMPORTANT: After placing a character miniature on the garden board, its skill is no longer available.", "sharpsignalDocId": 981}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "· Use a Lantern · · · Refresh a Lantern (Optional) · · · End of Game ·", "sharpsignalDocId": 981}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 981 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 981 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 0.92994 of 2398 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Sep 7, 2026 02:51 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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Order of Play · p.3 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 Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Place a Decoration · p.5 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 Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Solo Variant 'Yin & Yang' · · · Setup · p.9 0.046244 (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 Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Influencing Characters · · · Lantern Tokens · · · End of Game · · · Final Character Placement · p.11 0.044563 (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 Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Influence a Character · · IMPORTANT: After placing a character miniature on the garden board, its skill is no longer available. 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
#6 RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Use a Lantern · · · Refresh a Lantern (Optional) · · · End of Game · p.8 0.031746 (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 Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Overview · p.2 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
#8 RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · End of Game · p.9 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

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 18 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Order of Play · p.3 #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 Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Place a Decoration · p.5 #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
#3 RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Solo Variant 'Yin & Yang' · · · Setup · p.9 #3 0.046244 (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 Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Build the Garden · p.3 #11 0.014493 (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
#5 RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Influence a Character · · IMPORTANT: After placing a character miniature on the garden board, its skill is no longer available. p.7 #5 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 Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Use a Lantern · · · Refresh a Lantern (Optional) · · · End of Game · p.8 #6 0.031746 (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 Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Order of Play · · · Build the Garden · · · Landscape Tokens · 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
#8 RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Overview · p.2 #7 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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Order of Play · p.3 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Build the Garden · p.3 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Place a Decoration · p.5 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Influence a Character · · IMPORTANT: After placing a character miniature on the garden board, its skill is no longer available. p.7 no quote on the wire
[5] RULEBOOK Tang Garden — Rulebook (corpus doc 981) · Use a Lantern · · · Refresh a Lantern (Optional) · · · End of Game · p.8 no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split
retrieval 95 ms · first delta 1468 ms · total 30260 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 25612 ms · retrieval 95 ms · ask 4551 ms · gateway work 4648 ms · total 30260 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3617
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
630
tok/sec
201.7 tok/sec — 630 output tokens in 3.124 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 57s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage)
reachable (for 23h, 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
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 911), 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.