Ruling — The Fox Experiment

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How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Fox Experimentbg-368432-en-1e

The goal of the game is to score the most points by the end of the 5th round (generation) by breeding the friendliest foxes, completing the most studies, and attracting patrons.[1] Each round consists of four phases:

1. Selection Phase:

* Players take turns in order according to their turn order tokens.[1]

* Turn order is clockwise in the first round, but may not be in future rounds.[1]

* Each player takes a total of 3 turns during each Selection phase.[1]

* Each time a player takes a turn, they select one of the following: a female fox parent, a male fox parent, or a supply track position.[1]

* Over the course of the 3 turns, a player must select one of each of these three items.[1]

* To select a male or female parent, take the desired fox card from the kennel and place it to the left of your player mat; you may instead draw a random fox from the male or female parent decks.[2]

* After everyone finishes selecting, players may have an opportunity to unlock upgrades before moving to the next phase.[1]

2. Breeding Phase:

* Players roll dice to make new fox pups, attempting to complete trait symbols (Tails, Ears, Barking, or Spots).[1]

3. Research Phase:

* Players use the completed trait symbols on their new pups to complete studies to score points and gain trait tokens to unlock upgrades.[1]

4. Administration Phase:

* Pups are judged for their overall friendliness based on the number of completed trait symbols.[1]

* Pups are then made available as parents in the next generation.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK The Fox Experiment — Rulebook · p.8 · Overview · Phase 1: Selection

[2] RULEBOOK The Fox Experiment — Rulebook · p.8 · SELECTING FOX PARENTS

The table has its answer — dice up.

🔧 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 137 ms · ask 5130 ms · total 5270 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5270 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "Player Components: Each player chooses a color and takes the following components: Í Their player mat Í 1 player color gear token Í 10 player color fox meeples Í 12 player color blank fox cards Í 1 green friendly die Í 1 dry-erase marker Í 1 player aid card Player Foxes: Each player shuffles their b", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP · 2 PLAYER & SOLO SETUP:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1049}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "Game Board: Place the board in the center of the table, with the 1-4 player side faceup (with 5 spaces on the supply track). Use the other side of the board if you are playing with the 5-6 player expansion. Science Cards: Shuffle the Science deck and place it facedown in the marked space on the boar", "headingPath": "BOARD & KENNEL SETUP · Fox Kennel:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1049}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.046432, "snippet": "Each player has 10 fox meeples in five different shapes. Sometimes this symbol is used to represent a fox meeple on the board. You can use any fox shape and it does not need to match. When playing solo, you will compete against a simple automated opponent. It competes against you for foxes and suppl", "headingPath": "FOX MEEPLES: · Solo Mode · EXTRA COMPONENTS · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1049}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "After players earn friendliness rewards at the end of the 5th round (and the friendliness rewards track has fox meeples on all 5 spaces), the game ends. Use the scorecard and a dry erase marker to tally players' final scores. Players score points as follows: The player with the most points wins. In ", "headingPath": "Game End & Scoring · WINNING", "sharpsignalDocId": 1049}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Claiming a position on the supply track provides you with immediate supplies and determines your place in turn order for the next round. When you claim a space on the track: Immediately collect all supplies shown on that space from the public piles (including ALL icons shown on the supply tile AND a", "headingPath": "SELECTING A SUPPLY TRACK POSITION · SUPPLIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1049}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Í Make sure you have enough space, then deal out a faceup row of male parents and a faceup row of female parents . Each row should have 1 more card than the number of players. For example, in a 3-player game, there should be 4 males and 4 females. Í Place the decks at the end of each row. Leave room", "headingPath": "Fox Kennel:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1049}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.030282, "snippet": "With this card, the A.I. would select 1 supply track position and one female fox. With this card, the A.I. would select one male and one female fox. Card backs of the A.I. selection deck feature an arrow to the left or right. These are used when the A.I. is tied when selecting foxes from the kennel.", "headingPath": "End of Game Scoring Example · 2-Player Mode · EXTRA COMPONENTS · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1049}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Completing studies with your pups is an important way to gain points. Each study card is divided into 3 levels (shown as columns ) which can be completed over the course of the game. At the end of the game, you will add up the points printed at the bottom of the highest completed level on each of yo", "headingPath": "SCORE STUDIES 1", "sharpsignalDocId": 1049}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Overview · Phase 1: Selection", "sharpsignalDocId": 1049}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SELECTING FOX PARENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1049}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1049 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1049 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 0.92413 of 1239 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 02:59 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 The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	PLAYER SETUP · 2 PLAYER & SOLO SETUP:	p.6	0.047938 (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 The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	BOARD & KENNEL SETUP · Fox Kennel:	p.4	0.047883 (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 The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	FOX MEEPLES: · Solo Mode · EXTRA COMPONENTS · SETUP	p.28	0.046432 (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 The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	Game End & Scoring · WINNING	p.22	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
#5	RULEBOOK The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	SELECTING A SUPPLY TRACK POSITION · SUPPLIES	p.9	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 The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	Fox Kennel:	p.5	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 The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	End of Game Scoring Example · 2-Player Mode · EXTRA COMPONENTS · SETUP	p.24	0.030282 (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 The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	SCORE STUDIES 1	p.13	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 47 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 The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	BOARD & KENNEL SETUP · Fox Kennel:	p.4	#2	0.047883 (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 The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	FOX MEEPLES: · Solo Mode · EXTRA COMPONENTS · SETUP	p.28	#3	0.046432 (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 The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	PHASE 1: SELECTION	p.24	#9	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
#4	RULEBOOK The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	Overview · Phase 1: Selection	p.8	#23	0.0125 (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 The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	SELECTING FOX PARENTS	p.8	#16	0.013699 (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 The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	PLAYER SETUP · 2 PLAYER & SOLO SETUP:	p.6	#1	0.047938 (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 The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	End of Game Scoring Example · 2-Player Mode · EXTRA COMPONENTS · SETUP	p.24	#7	0.030282 (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 The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	Fox Kennel:	p.5	#6	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

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	Overview · Phase 1: Selection	p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Fox Experiment — Rulebook (corpus doc 1049)	SELECTING FOX PARENTS	p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 137 ms · first delta 3461 ms · total 5270 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 137 ms · ask 5130 ms · gateway work 5270 ms · total 5270 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2709
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 355
tok/sec: 201.8 tok/sec — 355 output tokens in 1.759 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 12s 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 979), 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.