Ruling — Ironwood

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How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Ironwoodbg-407343-en-1e

A game of Ironwood is played in rounds, with each round consisting of three phases.[1] Players follow a strict turn order where the Chieftain of the Woodwalkers always goes first, the Commander of the Ironclad goes second, and players continue alternating.[2][1]

Preparation Phase

1. Gain crystals: The Chieftain of the Woodwalkers gains 1 crystal and the Commander of the Ironclad gains 2 crystals.[1]

2. Draw cards: Each player draws the top 2 cards from their deck of special cards (in the first round, you may draw 4, keep 2, and shuffle the rest back into the deck).[1]

3. Remove markers (in turn order): Remove 1 marker from each of your ongoing special cards in play.[2][3] If there are markers on the map that you placed there, remove them as well, unless they are part of an ongoing effect still in play.[3]

Action Phase

1. Players take turns playing action cards until each has played 3 cards.[4]

2. On your turn, select and play a card from your hand and place it on the leftmost empty action card slot of your player board.[4]

3. Resolve the effects stated on the card in the order in which they appear.[4] You may choose to completely or partially forfeit any effects (such as moving fewer units than indicated) as long as you follow the card's order.[4]

4. If a card effect allows you to play an additional action card on the same turn, resolve the original card's effects first, then play and resolve the additional card.[4]

5. If you have no cards in your hand or choose not to play any, draw 1 special card instead and end your turn, placing a marker on the leftmost empty card slot to indicate you drew a card instead of playing one.[4]

6. End your turn.[4]

Round End Phase

1. Recover/discard cards: Take all base cards that were played or wagered during the round back into your hand.[5] Move ongoing special cards with markers to above your player board so action slots become available; discard all other special cards played as an action or wagered in combat during the round.[5] If you have more than 8 action cards in your hand (including base cards), discard special cards until you have a total of 8 (excluding vision cards).[5]

2. Fade Totems: If there are Totems on the map, flip them to their fading side; if they are already on their fading sides, remove them from the map.[5]

3. Recruit Fighters (in turn order): Players can recruit as many Fighters as they wish for 2 crystals per Fighter.[5] Woodwalker Fighters are placed on one or more outer forests, while Ironclad Fighters are placed on one or more mountains with a Forge.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Ironwood — Rulebook · p.5 · ROUND STEPS · Turn order · I/1. Gain crystals · 1/2. Draw cards

[2] RULEBOOK Ironwood — Rulebook · p.13 · Gain crystals · Draw 2 cards · Remove markers · Action Phase · Your turn

[3] RULEBOOK Ironwood — Rulebook · p.6 · 1/3. Remove markers

[4] RULEBOOK Ironwood — Rulebook · p.6 · II. Action Phase

[5] RULEBOOK Ironwood — Rulebook · p.6 · III/2. Fade Totems · Fighter · Golem · Drill · Warband

Now you know — make it count.

🔧 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 110 ms · ask 5670 ms · total 12227 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 6445 ms · generation 5782 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "In this phase, you and your opponent take turns playing action cards until you have each played 3 cards. Follow turn order (i.e. Woodwalker always goes first, then the Ironclad goes second, then continue alternating). On your turn, select and play a card from your hand and place it on the leftmost e", "headingPath": "II. Action Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1182}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045957, "snippet": "A game of Ironwood is played in rounds with each round consisting of three phases. While some phase steps can be resolved simultaneously, there are a few phase steps during which players must act in a strict turn order that can never be changed . When a phase step must be resolved in turn order , th", "headingPath": "ROUND STEPS · Turn order · I/1. Gain crystals · 1/2. Draw cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1182}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.045695, "snippet": "On the bot's turn, perform its Turn Procedure (unless it discovers a Totem during the 'Locate a Totem' step), as currently shown in the Turn Procedure box on the Bot Control Aid. See 'Keywords & key concepts'' to learn how to perform certain instructions. When directed to expend a card, place it fac", "headingPath": "Bot's turn - Turn Procedure · Your turn · Recover/discard action cards · Fade Totem", "sharpsignalDocId": 1182}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045139, "snippet": "Choose or randomly determine who will play which faction, the Ironclad or the Woodwalkers. Place the main board in the middle of the playing area with the 2-player side up . Each player takes their faction's player board with the 2-player side up . Each player takes their faction's 3 base cards (ind", "headingPath": "Beta Playtesters", "sharpsignalDocId": 1182}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.044557, "snippet": "Play a vision card by placing it from your hand next to the discard pile of your special cards, visible to your opponent. Then, add a Totem token with its full side up to a Woodwalker Warband that controls an inner forest adjacent to the mountain shown on the vision card. This mountain must be uncon", "headingPath": "Discover · Draw · Gain · Mark · Move · Ongoing · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1182}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.044404, "snippet": "At the beginning of each of the bot's turns, examine the stance change conditions on the open Bot Control Aid to determine the bot's Stance for the current turn. Move the 24 marker onto the indicated Stance box below the stance change conditions. On the bot's turn, perform its Turn Procedure, as cur", "headingPath": "Bot's turn · Recover/discard action cards · Fade Totem", "sharpsignalDocId": 1182}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.042232, "snippet": "WW03 Ransack Resolve 1 or Spend to Resolve 2: Move 5 .Attack Ferrum. Victory: Steal (rounded up). 1. Place the main board in the middle of the playing area with the solo mode side up . 2. Place the crystals within reach. 3. Take the Woodwalker player board and set out the Ironclad board with its sol", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1182}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.041667, "snippet": "CARGO Unload at Starting position First step: Place 2 crystals on the Cargo area of your player board. Second step: 1st Place 1 additional crystal on the Cargo area of your player board. Secretly look at the top card of the vision card deck and place it back on top of the deck. Recruit one Ironclad ", "headingPath": "DRILL TRACK Drill track", "sharpsignalDocId": 1182}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ROUND STEPS · Turn order · I/1. Gain crystals · 1/2. Draw cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1182}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Gain crystals · Draw 2 cards · Remove markers · Action Phase · Your turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 1182}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1/3. Remove markers", "sharpsignalDocId": 1182}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "II. Action Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1182}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "III/2. Fade Totems · Fighter · Golem · Drill · Warband", "sharpsignalDocId": 1182}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1182 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1182 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 0.92040 of 2123 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:07 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 Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	II. Action Phase	p.6	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	ROUND STEPS · Turn order · I/1. Gain crystals · 1/2. Draw cards	p.5	0.045957 (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 Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	Bot's turn - Turn Procedure · Your turn · Recover/discard action cards · Fade Totem	p.16	0.045695 (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 Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	Beta Playtesters	p.4	0.045139 (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 Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	Discover · Draw · Gain · Mark · Move · Ongoing · …	p.18	0.044557 (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 Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	Bot's turn · Recover/discard action cards · Fade Totem	p.13	0.044404 (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 Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)		p.12	0.042232 (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 Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	DRILL TRACK Drill track	p.8	0.041667 (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 49 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 Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	Discover · Draw · Gain · Mark · Move · Ongoing · …	p.18	#5	0.044557 (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 Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	Gain crystals · Draw 2 cards · Remove markers · Action Phase · Your turn	p.13	#9	0.028191 (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 Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	1/3. Remove markers	p.6	#17	0.025526 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	III/2. Fade Totems · Fighter · Golem · Drill · Warband	p.6	#15	0.026748 (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 Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	ROUND STEPS · Turn order · I/1. Gain crystals · 1/2. Draw cards	p.5	#2	0.045957 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)		p.12	#7	0.042232 (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 Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	Beta Playtesters	p.4	#4	0.045139 (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 Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	II. Action Phase	p.6	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	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 Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	ROUND STEPS · Turn order · I/1. Gain crystals · 1/2. Draw cards	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	Gain crystals · Draw 2 cards · Remove markers · Action Phase · Your turn	p.13	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	1/3. Remove markers	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	II. Action Phase	p.6	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Ironwood — Rulebook (corpus doc 1182)	III/2. Fade Totems · Fighter · Golem · Drill · Warband	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 110 ms · first delta 2600 ms · total 12227 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 6445 ms · retrieval 110 ms · ask 5670 ms · gateway work 5782 ms · total 12227 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3822
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 615
tok/sec: 200.3 tok/sec — 615 output tokens in 3.070 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 25s 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 1112), 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.