Ruling — Castle Panic

← Castle Panic

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Castle Panicbg-43443-en-1e

To play the game, follow these steps:

Setup

1. Separate the 6 Order of Play cards from the Castle cards and give 1 to each player.[1]

2. Set any remaining Order of Play cards aside.[1]

3. Shuffle the Castle cards and deal a hand faceup to each player; the number of cards depends on the number of players (2 players: 6 cards; 3-5 players: 5 cards; 6 players: 4 cards).[1]

4. Place the remainder of the Castle deck facedown as the draw pile.[1]

5. Leave room for a faceup discard pile next to the draw pile.[1]

6. Turn the remaining Monster tokens facedown and mix them up to create the Monster pile.[1]

7. Leave room nearby for a Monster discard pile.[1]

8. Place the Tar and Fortify tokens nearby for use when the Tar and Fortify cards are played.[1]

9. Choose a player to go first; play continues clockwise around the board.[1]

Turn Sequence

Each player's turn consists of these 6 phases in this order:

1. Draw up: Draw back up to a full hand of cards (players do not draw up on their first turn because they start with a full hand).[2]

2. Discard and draw 1 card (optional): A player may discard 1 card and draw a new card to replace it.[2]

3. Trade cards (optional): Players can trade cards with others to improve their hand; in a 2-5 player game, a player can trade 1 card with 1 card from another player, and in a 6-player game, a player can make 2 trades.[2]

4. Play cards: Players can play as many cards as possible to attack, slay, slow, or build Walls, or draw more cards; cards are placed faceup into a discard pile once played.[2]

5. Move Monsters: (Phase details not explicitly listed in the provided text).[1]

6. Draw 2 new Monsters: (Phase details not explicitly listed in the provided text).[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Castle Panic — Rulebook · p.3 · SAMPLE SETUP · Order of Play

[2] RULEBOOK Castle Panic — Rulebook · p.4 · 1. Draw Up · 2. Discard and Draw 1 Card · 3. Trade Cards · 4. Play Cards · Attacking Monsters

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 104 ms · ask 6118 ms · total 41362 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 35139 ms · generation 6223 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.047183, "snippet": "Draw back up to a full hand of cards. When the deck of Castle cards runs out, reshuffle the discards to make a new deck. Because each player has a full hand to start the game, players do not draw up on their first turn. At the start of a turn, the player may discard 1 (and only 1) card from their ha", "headingPath": "1. Draw Up · 2. Discard and Draw 1 Card · 3. Trade Cards · 4. Play Cards · Attacking Monsters", "sharpsignalDocId": 1199}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "So, players think the game's too easy? Try playing with some of these rules for more of a challenge: My Home Is My Castle At the start of the game, each player chooses 1 Tower as their own. Play continues as normal, but if a player's Tower is destroyed, that player is out of the game. When playing w", "headingPath": "A Little More Panic", "sharpsignalDocId": 1199}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "Many of the game's play details are summarized on this page. Keep this side up as a reference during play. Draw up Discard and draw 1 card (opt) Trade cards (opt) Play cards Move Monsters Draw 2 new Monsters | Hand Size | Hand Size | | PLayers | Cards | | 2 | 6 | | 3 - 5 | 5 | | 6 | 4 | | Trading Ca", "headingPath": "SUMMARY PAGE · Order of Play · Castle Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1199}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.046394, "snippet": "Choose 2 Monsters (including Boss Monsters), 2 Monster Effects tokens, or 1 of each from their hand. Roll the die for each Monster, placing them in the numbered arc of the Forest ring that matches the number rolled, and resolve the Monster Effects tokens as usual. 2. The Overlord can play up to 2 to", "headingPath": "OR · Solitaire Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1199}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.0463, "snippet": "During any of their turns, each player may place their Wall at any available Wall space during the Play Cards phase. The players do not need to play Brick and Mortar cards to put these Walls into play; the players simply choose where to place the Walls. Rough Start Instead of setting up the game by ", "headingPath": "A Little More Panic", "sharpsignalDocId": 1199}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.046032, "snippet": "After playing the standard game, players may want to include some of these optional rules to change the game. For an easier game, try playing with some of these rules: Easier Battles For younger players, or for a quicker game, try removing the following Monster tokens from the game: All for One! Pla", "headingPath": "OPTIONAL RULES: · Less Panic", "sharpsignalDocId": 1199}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045002, "snippet": "Separate the 6 Order of Play cards from the Castle cards and give 1 to each player. Keep this card in view to remember the steps of each turn. Set any remaining Order of Play cards aside; they will not be used in the game. 4. Shuffle the Castle cards and deal a hand faceup to each player. Since Cast", "headingPath": "SAMPLE SETUP · Order of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 1199}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.043301, "snippet": "Only a few cards can hit Monsters once they are in the Castle ring. Those cards have a symbol on them to indicate this. · Each time a Monster is hit, it takes 1 point of damage unless otherwise specified. · Rotate a hit Monster clockwise so that the next lowest number is now pointing toward the Cast", "headingPath": "Attacking Monsters · Slaying Monsters · Slowing Monsters · Building Walls · 5. Move Monsters · 6. Draw 2 New Monsters", "sharpsignalDocId": 1199}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SAMPLE SETUP · Order of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 1199}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. Draw Up · 2. Discard and Draw 1 Card · 3. Trade Cards · 4. Play Cards · Attacking Monsters", "sharpsignalDocId": 1199}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1199 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1199 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 0.88754 of 1405 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:08 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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	1. Draw Up · 2. Discard and Draw 1 Card · 3. Trade Cards · 4. Play Cards · Attacking Monsters	p.4	0.047183 (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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	A Little More Panic	p.13	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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	SUMMARY PAGE · Order of Play · Castle Cards	p.16	0.046696 (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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	OR · Solitaire Game	p.12	0.046394 (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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	A Little More Panic	p.13	0.0463 (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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	OPTIONAL RULES: · Less Panic	p.13	0.046032 (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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	SAMPLE SETUP · Order of Play	p.3	0.045002 (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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	Attacking Monsters · Slaying Monsters · Slowing Monsters · Building Walls · 5. Move Monsters · 6. Draw 2 New Monsters	p.5	0.043301 (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 22 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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	A Little More Panic	p.13	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	SUMMARY PAGE · Order of Play · Castle Cards	p.16	#3	0.046696 (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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	SAMPLE SETUP · Order of Play	p.3	#7	0.045002 (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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	Slowing Monsters · Drawing Cards	p.8	#9	0.030415 (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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	OR · Solitaire Game	p.12	#4	0.046394 (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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	1. Draw Up · 2. Discard and Draw 1 Card · 3. Trade Cards · 4. Play Cards · Attacking Monsters	p.4	#1	0.047183 (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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	OPTIONAL RULES: · Less Panic	p.13	#6	0.046032 (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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	A Little More Panic	p.13	#5	0.0463 (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 Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	SAMPLE SETUP · Order of Play	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Castle Panic — Rulebook (corpus doc 1199)	1. Draw Up · 2. Discard and Draw 1 Card · 3. Trade Cards · 4. Play Cards · Attacking Monsters	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 104 ms · first delta 2538 ms · total 41362 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 35139 ms · retrieval 104 ms · ask 6118 ms · gateway work 6223 ms · total 41362 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3397
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 464
tok/sec: 129.2 tok/sec — 464 output tokens in 3.591 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 24s 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 1129), 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.