Ruling — Empires of the Void II

← Empires of the Void II

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Empires of the Void IIbg-218509-en-1e

The game is played over a series of rounds.[1] Each round consists of the following:

1. The active player chooses and performs one action from the action track on the board.[1]

2. In clockwise order, each remaining player may choose to:

* FOLLOW: Perform the same action as the active player.[1]

* REFRESH: Collect income, reset command, and draw power cards up to your hand limit.[1]

* ANY ACTION: Pay 2 command to take any action.[1]

During play, players may perform various actions and follow specific procedures:

Action Cards

1. Pick an action card from your hand that says "Action" on the side bar.[2][3]

2. Reveal the card and read the title.[2]

3. Pay any costs and/or meet any requirements listed on the card, such as Presence (having at least 1 unit on the surface or orbit), Command (paying 1 command per symbol), Credit (paying 1 credit per symbol), or Goods Tokens (paying one unused token of that type).[2][3]

4. Follow the effect instructions.[2][3]

Diplomacy

1. Choose any number of power cards from your hand and play them face up.[4]

2. Roll a die.[4]

3. If the die result is equal to or lower than the sum of the power numbers of all cards played, place one influence on the system of your choice.[4]

Deliveries

1. Pick up cargo: When ending a group's movement at a specified location (orbit or surface), play the delivery card face up near your player board and place a cargo token from the supply with the group on that space.[5]

2. If you begin a turn at the specified location, you must spend 1 command and a move action to "end movement" there to pick up the cargo.[5]

3. Move the cargo token with a group to a specified destination (orbit or surface).[5]

4. End movement on the specified location to deliver the token (this must be done before any battles or other actions take place).[5][6]

5. Gain the rewards, discard the delivery card, and return the cargo token to the supply.[5]

Missions

1. Play the mission card immediately when you meet the "trigger" requirements.[7]

2. Follow the card instructions to gain a reward.[7]

Movement and Battles

1. Move a group to adjacent regions, paying one command for each region moved.[7]

2. If a group stops in a region with a control box and no cube, you may place a control cube on a small planet, or you must battle alien inhabitants on a large planet.[7]

3. If a group stops in a region with another player's cube and that player has units there, you must battle that player.[7]

4. If a group stops in a region with another player's cube but no units, you may remove their cube and replace it with your own without a battle.[7]

5. If a group stops in a region with no control box and other players' units are present, you may choose to attack.[7]

Ending the Game

1. The game ends when the last card of the power deck is drawn.[8]

2. After the last card is drawn, play continues until the player with the 1st Player card becomes the new active player, at which point there is one more normal round of play for each player.[8]

3. At the end of the game, players collect victory points from planets controlled, allies, buildings, technologies, empire cards, and battles won.[1][8]

4. The player with the highest total sum of victory points wins; ties are broken by most units on the board, then most influence, then most credits.[8]

[1] RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook · p.8 · Setup · Goal · Playing the Game

[2] RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook · p.19 · ACTION: Card Action or Diplomacy · Card Action · Influence and Allies

[3] RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook · p.28 · Victory Points for Buildings · Playing a Card Action · Colonization Card · GLOSSARY · Command

[4] RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook · p.21 · Diplomacy · ACTION: Recruit Units · Recruiting as the Active Player

[5] RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook · p.24 · DELIVERIES (power Cards)

[6] RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook · p.24 · Colonization Card · Cargo

[7] RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook · p.30 · Missions · Only Play One Mission at a Time · Move · Ending Movement

[8] RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook · p.25 · Score Card (power Deck) · Scoring · Game End

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 103 ms · ask 18237 ms · total 57247 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 38904 ms · generation 18343 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 23, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "Building bases can increase your hand limit. For each card symbol revealed on your player board when a base is built, your hand limit increases by 1. If the power deck runs out, reshuffle the discard pile to make a new draw pile. This triggers the end of the game, and is described further on page 25", "headingPath": "Learning the Game · Drawing Event Cards · Any Action (Non-Active Player) · MISSIONS (power Cards)", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "This rulebook is divided into two sections: \"Learning the Game\" and \"Glossary.\" After you read the \"Learning the Game\" section, you will know enough to start playing the game. The Glossary gives you a reference of the complete rules of the game, organized by subject. You can read that section before", "headingPath": "Setup · Goal · Playing the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.045688, "snippet": "Each player follows these steps to determine their total power (simultaneously): Choose up to 3 of your units in the region to participate in the battle. If you are the defender and you own any bases in the region, these do not count against the 3 unit limit and you may use them as well. Roll dice e", "headingPath": "Steps of a Battle · Victory Point for Winning a Battle · No Power Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.044776, "snippet": "Play an action card from your hand, perform a planet event action, OR attempt diplomacy using any of your power cards. First, pick an action card from your hand to play. The card must say \"Action\" on the side bar. (There are three types of power cards: the first is action cards, which can be played ", "headingPath": "ACTION: Card Action or Diplomacy · Card Action · Influence and Allies", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.043369, "snippet": "This section is a Glossary of all the rules for each aspect of the game. You do not need to read this entire section before playing the game. As questions arise, you can search in the appropriate section for answers. Action Spaces: The five actions at the top of the action track are the actions avai", "headingPath": "GLOSSARY · Action Track · Symbols · If you are the active player:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.042744, "snippet": "Control : When you move units to a plan -et's surface and end your movement there, you take control of that planet. Mark planet control with a control cube in the control box of the planet. You do not need to keep units on a planet indefinitely to retain control of it. Control Box Battle Symbol Cont", "headingPath": "Learning the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.041317, "snippet": "17. Shuffle the empire card deck and deal each player two cards. Each player must now choose one of the cards to keep and one to discard. Place the discarded cards in a face up discard pile next to the empire card deck. Keep the chosen card secret from the other players. 18. Give each player one ran", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "You take the commander token. You must choose an action on the action track and move the action token to the corresponding picture on the track. You cannot choose the same action that was chosen last round. Each round, the token must move to a new action. You cannot pass. You must choose an action e", "headingPath": "When it is your turn to be the active player... · Action Track", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup · Goal · Playing the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}, {"page": 19, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ACTION: Card Action or Diplomacy · Card Action · Influence and Allies", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}, {"page": 28, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Victory Points for Buildings · Playing a Card Action · Colonization Card · GLOSSARY · Command", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}, {"page": 21, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Diplomacy · ACTION: Recruit Units · Recruiting as the Active Player", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}, {"page": 24, "quote": null, "headingPath": "DELIVERIES (power Cards)", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}, {"page": 24, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Colonization Card · Cargo", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}, {"page": 30, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Missions · Only Play One Mission at a Time · Move · Ending Movement", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}, {"page": 25, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Score Card (power Deck) · Scoring · Game End", "sharpsignalDocId": 1092}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1092 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1092 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 0.90066 of 2738 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:02 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 Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Learning the Game · Drawing Event Cards · Any Action (Non-Active Player) · MISSIONS (power Cards)	p.23	0.047163 (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 Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Setup · Goal · Playing the Game	p.8	0.046898 (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 Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Steps of a Battle · Victory Point for Winning a Battle · No Power Cards	p.27	0.045688 (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 Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	ACTION: Card Action or Diplomacy · Card Action · Influence and Allies	p.19	0.044776 (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 Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	GLOSSARY · Action Track · Symbols · If you are the active player:	p.26	0.043369 (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 Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Learning the Game	p.11	0.042744 (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 Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Setup	p.7	0.041317 (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 Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	When it is your turn to be the active player... · Action Track	p.9	0.032787 (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 71 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 Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	ACTION: Card Action or Diplomacy · Card Action · Influence and Allies	p.19	#4	0.044776 (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 Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	DELIVERIES (power Cards)	p.24	#13	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
#3	RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Setup · Goal · Playing the Game	p.8	#2	0.046898 (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 Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Colonization Card · Cargo	p.24	#26	0.022634 (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 Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Diplomacy · ACTION: Recruit Units · Recruiting as the Active Player	p.21	#17	0.026257 (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 Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Victory Points for Buildings · Playing a Card Action · Colonization Card · GLOSSARY · Command	p.28	#10	0.028612 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Score Card (power Deck) · Scoring · Game End	p.25	#9	0.029572 (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 Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Missions · Only Play One Mission at a Time · Move · Ending Movement	p.30	#15	0.027418 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Setup · Goal · Playing the Game	p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	ACTION: Card Action or Diplomacy · Card Action · Influence and Allies	p.19	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Victory Points for Buildings · Playing a Card Action · Colonization Card · GLOSSARY · Command	p.28	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Diplomacy · ACTION: Recruit Units · Recruiting as the Active Player	p.21	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	DELIVERIES (power Cards)	p.24	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Colonization Card · Cargo	p.24	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Missions · Only Play One Mission at a Time · Move · Ending Movement	p.30	no quote on the wire
[8]	RULEBOOK Empires of the Void II — Rulebook (corpus doc 1092)	Score Card (power Deck) · Scoring · Game End	p.25	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 103 ms · first delta 3510 ms · total 57247 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 38904 ms · retrieval 103 ms · ask 18237 ms · gateway work 18343 ms · total 57247 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3858
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 838
tok/sec: 57.1 tok/sec — 838 output tokens in 14.686 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 44s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 4s 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 1022), 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.