Ruling — Townsfolk Tussle

← Townsfolk Tussle

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Asked with: Townsfolk Tusslebg-312859-en-1e

A game of Townsfolk Tussle consists of 4 rounds, split between a Town Phase and a Fight Phase.[1]

Setup

1. Lay out the main board and place the sideboard to the right, Town Phase face up.[2]

2. Flip all Ruffian tokens face down, select four at random, and place them on the Town Map.[2]

3. Each player chooses a townsfolk and receives their townsfolk card.[2]

4. Place a counter on the highlighted starting number on each stat bar.[2]

5. Each player receives 10 Coins and the starting gear listed on their townsfolk card.[2]

6. Place each townsfolk's token on the Buyin'/Beatin' Order bar in the order of your choice.[2]

7. Shuffle Town Events, Peddler gear, and Feats of Mettle.[2]

The Town Phase

1. Each townsfolk draws back up to 3 unaccomplished Feats of Mettle (in the first Town Phase, each draws 3).[1]

2. Each townsfolk receives a Town Event card and resolves them out loud in Buyin' Order.[1]

3. Lay out 10 items from the Peddler deck onto the Town Phase board.[1]

4. Players may buy or sell one item on their turn in Buyin' Order; this continues until no players wish to buy or sell.[1]

5. Players may freely exchange non-starting gear with one another during the Town Phase (in Trading Mode).[3]

6. Once all townsfolk are done purchasing, put all unpurchased gear on the bottom of the Peddler deck and begin the Fight Phase.[1]

The Fight Phase

1. Flip and fight the next facedown Ruffian token on the Town Map, from top to bottom.[4]

2. On a Ruffian's turn, play and discard the next card in the Ruffian action.[5]

3. Follow the actions on the card from start to finish to resolve the Ruffian's turn.[5]

4. During an attack, pay the weapon's MOX cost, roll for accuracy, and add/subtract the townsfolk's ACC modifier; a hit occurs if the result is equal to or greater than the weapon's ACC requirement.[3]

5. If a Ruffian reaches a Breaking Point, the current townsfolk's turn ends and the Ruffian immediately takes an action.[3]

Winning the Game

1. The townsfolk win if they manage to take down all 4 Ruffians invading Eureka Springs.[1]

2. To win specifically against Pepin Milkfrog, you must defeat him.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook · p.6 · THE TOWN PHASE · The game begins in the Town Phase, where the townsfolk get a chance to prepare for the battles to come. In the Town Phase:

[2] RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook · p.4 · SETUP & PREPARATION · CHOOSING A TOWNSFOLK · 1. Townsfolk Introduction · 3. Stat Bars · Health (HP)

[3] RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook · p.18 · All for One, One for All (Trading Mode)

[4] RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook · p.6 · Selling · The Town Map

[5] RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook · p.8 · 6. Landscape Setup · RUFFIA N' S TURN · On the Ruffian's turn, all you need to do is play and discard the next card in the Ruffian action · Targeting · Moving the Ruffian

So says the rulebook. So plays the table.

🔧 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 133 ms · ask 8264 ms · total 45951 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 37552 ms · generation 8399 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "'For quick setup, check the back of this booklet!' Looking for a quicker game? We highly recommend playing 3-Round Mode! View the rules for 3-Round Mode on p. 34. 6 \u0007 Lay out the main board and place the sideboard to the right, Town Phase face up. \u0007 Keep the game box nearby to grab components when n", "headingPath": "SETUP & PREPARATION · CHOOSING A TOWNSFOLK · 1.\t Townsfolk Introduction · 3.\t Stat Bars · Health (HP)", "sharpsignalDocId": 1243}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "Ranged Attacks Some Move/Act steps on a Ruffian card will be labeled as a ‘ranged attack’ . These actions require the target to be within a certain number of squares from the Ruffian . Unlike townsfolk, Ruffians can deal DMG with ranged attacks even if an obstacle is blocking the path to the target ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1243}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.044136, "snippet": "Receive the Ruffian’s Gear marked with a ( ) on their rewards. Y ou may equip it immediately. If this has already been activated this fight, the attack deals +1 DMG instead. 2 3 4 Each player chooses a townsfolk, receives their starting gear and 10 Coins, and places their tokens on the Buyin'/Beatin", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1243}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "When a Ruffian moves, they will face the target and try to take the shortest route possible to reach them . If the Ruffian can take multiple paths to reach their target, all which take the least amount of MVMT, the players may choose the path the Ruffian takes . If one of those paths would involve t", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1243}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "'Prepare while you still can!' A game of Townsfolk Tussle consists of 4 rounds, split between a Town Phase and a Fight Phase. If the townsfolk manage to take down all 4 Ruffians invading Eureka Springs, they win! \u0007 Each townsfolk draws back up to 3 unaccomplished Feats of Mettle. In the first Town P", "headingPath": "THE TOWN PHASE · The game begins in the Town Phase, where the townsfolk get a chance to prepare for the battles to come. In the Town Phase:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1243}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "When a Ruffian is 'moved' (move towards the target, move completely into target, etc.) , they will use their indicated MVMT to move through squares across the board. When someone is 'placed' , their character is placed directly on the indicated position, regardless of distanceno actual moving is don", "headingPath": "Placing VS. Moving · Ruffian Movement & Terrain · Ranged Attacks · Colliding with Townsfolk · Reshuffling the Action Deck", "sharpsignalDocId": 1243}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "A townsfolk's movement (MVMT) determines how far they can move on each of their turns. It takes one MVMT to move to one orthogonal square . Townsfolk and Ruffians cannot move diagonally. For example, if your townsfolk has 4 MVMT, you can move up to 4 squares each turn. Movement can be split ; for in", "headingPath": "Moving · Interacting with Terrain · Activating Gear Abilities · Activating Townsfolk Abilities", "sharpsignalDocId": 1243}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029828, "snippet": "Shows the terrain to be placed on the board before the fight begins. Final Fight Rules Describes the unique setup for the fourth Fight Phase, also known as the Final Fight. Do not read this information unless it is the Final Fight! Read more about Final Fights on page 21. Roll (+ counters on jug, if", "headingPath": "6.\t Landscape Setup · RUFFIA N' S TURN · On the Ruffian's turn, all you need to do is play and discard the next card in the Ruffian action · Targeting · Moving the Ruffian", "sharpsignalDocId": 1243}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE TOWN PHASE · The game begins in the Town Phase, where the townsfolk get a chance to prepare for the battles to come. In the Town Phase:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1243}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP & PREPARATION · CHOOSING A TOWNSFOLK · 1.\t Townsfolk Introduction · 3.\t Stat Bars · Health (HP)", "sharpsignalDocId": 1243}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "All for One, One for All (Trading Mode)", "sharpsignalDocId": 1243}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Selling · The Town Map", "sharpsignalDocId": 1243}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "6.\t Landscape Setup · RUFFIA N' S TURN · On the Ruffian's turn, all you need to do is play and discard the next card in the Ruffian action · Targeting · Moving the Ruffian", "sharpsignalDocId": 1243}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1243 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1243 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 0.89638 of 1766 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:11 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 Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	SETUP & PREPARATION · CHOOSING A TOWNSFOLK · 1. Townsfolk Introduction · 3. Stat Bars · Health (HP)	p.4	0.048139 (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 Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)		p.8	0.045928 (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 Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)		p.19	0.044136 (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 Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)		p.8	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
#5	RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	THE TOWN PHASE · The game begins in the Town Phase, where the townsfolk get a chance to prepare for the battles to come. In the Town Phase:	p.6	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 Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	Placing VS. Moving · Ruffian Movement & Terrain · Ranged Attacks · Colliding with Townsfolk · Reshuffling the Action Deck	p.8	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
#7	RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	Moving · Interacting with Terrain · Activating Gear Abilities · Activating Townsfolk Abilities	p.10	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 Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	6. Landscape Setup · RUFFIA N' S TURN · On the Ruffian's turn, all you need to do is play and discard the next card in the Ruffian action · Targeting · Moving the Ruffian	p.8	0.029828 (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 80 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 Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	6. Landscape Setup · RUFFIA N' S TURN · On the Ruffian's turn, all you need to do is play and discard the next card in the Ruffian action · Targeting · Moving the Ruffian	p.8	#8	0.029828 (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
#2	RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	THE TOWN PHASE · The game begins in the Town Phase, where the townsfolk get a chance to prepare for the battles to come. In the Town Phase:	p.6	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	Selling · The Town Map	p.6	#24	0.013158 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	GAMEPLAY VARIANTS · 3-Round Mode · For 3-Round Mode, all rules and setup remain the same, except: · Solo Mode · Doublin' Down (2 Townsfolk Mode)	p.18	#10	0.028259 (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 Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	Novelty Nose · Sleep Mask · Bard's Ukulele · Waterproof Boots · Fishy Cap · Pepin Milkfrog · …	p.17	#11	0.027921 (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 Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	All for One, One for All (Trading Mode)	p.18	#32	0.011494 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)		p.8	#4	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	SETUP & PREPARATION · CHOOSING A TOWNSFOLK · 1. Townsfolk Introduction · 3. Stat Bars · Health (HP)	p.4	#1	0.048139 (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 Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	THE TOWN PHASE · The game begins in the Town Phase, where the townsfolk get a chance to prepare for the battles to come. In the Town Phase:	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	SETUP & PREPARATION · CHOOSING A TOWNSFOLK · 1. Townsfolk Introduction · 3. Stat Bars · Health (HP)	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	All for One, One for All (Trading Mode)	p.18	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	Selling · The Town Map	p.6	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Townsfolk Tussle — Rulebook (corpus doc 1243)	6. Landscape Setup · RUFFIA N' S TURN · On the Ruffian's turn, all you need to do is play and discard the next card in the Ruffian action · Targeting · Moving the Ruffian	p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 133 ms · first delta 5448 ms · total 45951 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 37552 ms · retrieval 133 ms · ask 8264 ms · gateway work 8399 ms · total 45951 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3504
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 579
tok/sec: 200.7 tok/sec — 579 output tokens in 2.885 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 27s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 7s 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 1173), 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.