Ruling — Zombicide: Undead or Alive

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Zombicide: Undead or Alivebg-331224-en-1e

The game is played over a series of Game Rounds.[1]

1. Player Phase

* The player with the First Player token takes their Turn, activating their Survivors one at a time in any order of their choice.[1]

* Each Survivor can initially perform 3 Actions per Turn.[1] Unless stated otherwise, each Action may be performed several times per Turn.[2]

* Available Actions include:

* MOVE: Move 1 Zone (spend extra Actions if there are Zombies).[2]

* SEARCH: (1X per turn, except Townsfolk) In a building Zone free of Zombies only; draw a card from the Equipment deck.[2]

* REORGANIZE/TRADE: Reorganize inventory or exchange any number of cards with 1 other Survivor in the same Zone.[2]

* COMBAT ACTION: Melee Action (requires equipped Melee weapon) or Ranged Action (requires equipped Ranged weapon).[2]

* TAKE OR ACTIVATE AN OBJECTIVE: In the Survivor's Zone.[2]

* MAKE NOISE: Place a Bang! Noise token in the Survivor's Zone.[2]

* DO NOTHING: All remaining Actions are lost.[2]

* Runners (a type of Zombie) have 2 Actions per Activation.[3] After all Zombies (including Runners) have resolved their first Action, Runners go through the Activation step again to use their second Action to Attack a Survivor in their Zone, or Move if there is nobody to Attack.[3]

* Once a player has activated all Survivors, the player to their left takes their Turn.[1]

* When all players have completed their Turns, the Player Phase ends.[1]

* If a mobile Train is in the Mission, it moves at the end of the Player Phase, before the Zombie Phase.[4][1]

2. Zombie Phase

* All Zombies on the board activate.[1]

* Each Zombie spends 1 Action on either an Attack or a Move, depending on its situation.[5]

* All Attacks are resolved first, then all Moves.[5]

* ATTACK: Zombies in the same Zone as at least 1 Survivor perform an Attack.[5][2] A Zombie's Attack is always successful and inflicts 1 Wound.[5]

* MOVE: Zombies that did not Attack use their Action to Move 1 Zone toward Survivors.[5] They select their destination Zone based on this priority:

1. The Zone with Survivors in Line of Sight that has the Noise token (Bang! or BOOM!).[5]

2. The Zone with the most Survivors in Line of Sight with no Noise token.[5]

3. If no Survivors are visible, they move toward the Zone with the Noise token.[5]

* Zombies move via the shortest available path.[5][2] If multiple paths of equal length exist, Zombies split into equal groups (players decide the direction of any extra/odd-numbered Zombies).[5][2]

* After all Zombies have performed their Actions, new Zombies appear in all active Spawn Zones.[1]

3. End Phase

* The Noise token is flipped from its BOOM! side to its Bang! side.[1][2] If it was already on its Bang! side, it is moved to the Zone with the most Survivors.[1][2]

* The First Player token is passed to the player on the left.[1][2]

* A new Game Round begins.[1]

Winning and Losing

* Winning: The game is won immediately when all Mission Objectives have been accomplished.[1]

* Losing: The game is lost if:

* Any Survivor is eliminated (when their Wound Bar reaches 0).[5][1]

* Mission Objectives can no longer be fulfilled.[1]

* The seventh Spawn Zone becomes ACTIVE on the board.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook · p.9 · ZOMBICIDE THROUGH SPACE AND TIME · BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!!!! · PLAYER PHASE · ZOMBIE PHASE · END PHASE · WINNING AND LOSING

[2] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook · p.60 · GAME ROUND SUMMARY · 1 PLAYER PHASE · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION: ATTACK OR MOVE · STEP 2 - SPAWN · 3 END PHASE

[3] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook · p.25 · PLAYING RUNNERS

[4] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook · p.40 · A TRAIN ENTERING THE BOARD · A TRAIN MOVING ON THE BOARD

[5] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook · p.25 · TOWNSFOLK CLASS · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION · ATTACK · MOVE · SPLITTING ZOMBIES

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 124 ms · ask 20316 ms · total 56126 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 35684 ms · generation 20442 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 60, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "EACH ROUND BEGINS WITH: The first player activates all of their Survivors, one after the other, in any order. When they're done, the next player's Turn begins. Play clockwise. Each Survivor has 3 Actions to spend, chosen from the following list. Unless stated otherwise, each Action may be performed ", "headingPath": "GAME ROUND SUMMARY · 1 PLAYER PHASE · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION: ATTACK OR MOVE · STEP 2 - SPAWN · 3 END PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1295}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.046751, "snippet": "Y'all, we might be surrounded. Nope. My mistake. - Molly Undead or Alive is played over a series of Game Rounds, which proceed as follows: The player with the First Player token takes their Turn, activating their Survivors one at a time, in the order of their choice. Each Survivor can initially perf", "headingPath": "ZOMBICIDE THROUGH SPACE AND TIME · BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!!!! · PLAYER PHASE · ZOMBIE PHASE · END PHASE · WINNING AND LOSING", "sharpsignalDocId": 1295}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "Runners have 2 Actions per Activation. After all Zombies (including Runners) have gone through the Activation Step and resolved their first Action, Runners go through the Activation step again, using their second Action to attack a Survivor in their Zone, or Move if there is nobody to Attack. EXAMPL", "headingPath": "PLAYING RUNNERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1295}, {"page": 58, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Shove The Survivor can use this Skill, for free, once during each of their Turns. Select a Zone at Range 1 from the Survivor. Both Zones need to share a clear path. All Zombies standing in the Survivor's Zone are pushed to the selected Zone. This is not a Movement. Slippery The Survivor does not spe", "headingPath": "SPECIAL RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1295}, {"page": 40, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "IMPORTANT: Train moves are resolved at the end of the Player Phase, before the Zombie Phase. A Mission featuring an empty railroad may feature a Train entering the board (after taking Objectives, for example). When it happens, at the end of the Player Phase, flip tile 10V to its 10R side as the loco", "headingPath": "A TRAIN ENTERING THE BOARD · A TRAIN MOVING ON THE BOARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 1295}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Once the players have activated all their Survivors, the Zombies activate. No single player controls them, they do it themselves, performing the following steps in order. Bang!-Bang!-Bang!-Bang!-Bang!-Bang! They're still coming?!? They're grabbier than this guy in San Pedro who… No, forget about it.", "headingPath": "TOWNSFOLK CLASS · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION · ATTACK · MOVE · SPLITTING ZOMBIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1295}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Starting with whoever holds the First Player token, each player activates their Survivors, one after the other, in the order of their choice. Each Survivor can perform up to 3 Actions at the Blue Danger Level (not counting any free Action their Blue Level Skill may give them). The possible Actions a", "headingPath": "RUNNER · MOVE · SEARCH · REORGANIZE/TRADE · COMBAT ACTIONS · MELEE ACTION", "sharpsignalDocId": 1295}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "26 • UNDEAD OR ALIVE RULES STEP 2 – SPAWN Using Zombie Spawn tokens, the Mission map shows where Zombies appear at the end of each Zombie Phase . These are the Spawn Zones . Z ombie Spawn tokens mark the Spawn Zones’ locations. During the Spawn Step, always start from the Starting Spawn Zone, in yel", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1295}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ZOMBICIDE THROUGH SPACE AND TIME · BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!!!! · PLAYER PHASE · ZOMBIE PHASE · END PHASE · WINNING AND LOSING", "sharpsignalDocId": 1295}, {"page": 60, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME ROUND SUMMARY · 1 PLAYER PHASE · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION: ATTACK OR MOVE · STEP 2 - SPAWN · 3 END PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1295}, {"page": 25, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYING RUNNERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1295}, {"page": 40, "quote": null, "headingPath": "A TRAIN ENTERING THE BOARD · A TRAIN MOVING ON THE BOARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 1295}, {"page": 25, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TOWNSFOLK CLASS · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION · ATTACK · MOVE · SPLITTING ZOMBIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1295}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1295 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1295 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 0.87402 of 2691 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:14 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 Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	GAME ROUND SUMMARY · 1 PLAYER PHASE · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION: ATTACK OR MOVE · STEP 2 - SPAWN · 3 END PHASE	p.60	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	ZOMBICIDE THROUGH SPACE AND TIME · BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!!!! · PLAYER PHASE · ZOMBIE PHASE · END PHASE · WINNING AND LOSING	p.9	0.046751 (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 Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	PLAYING RUNNERS	p.25	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
#4	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	SPECIAL RULES	p.58	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 Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	A TRAIN ENTERING THE BOARD · A TRAIN MOVING ON THE BOARD	p.40	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 Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	TOWNSFOLK CLASS · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION · ATTACK · MOVE · SPLITTING ZOMBIES	p.25	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 Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	RUNNER · MOVE · SEARCH · REORGANIZE/TRADE · COMBAT ACTIONS · MELEE ACTION	p.21	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
#8	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)		p.26	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))	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 Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	PLAYING RUNNERS	p.25	#3	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	A TRAIN ENTERING THE BOARD · A TRAIN MOVING ON THE BOARD	p.40	#5	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	COMPANIONS GENERAL TRAITS · EASY / 10 MINUTES · OBJECTIVES · SPECIAL RULES	p.44	#10	0.026743 (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 Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)		p.2	#14	0.015385 (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))	full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	A TRAIN LEAVING THE BOARD · - Henry and Meg · ESCORTING A COMPANION	p.42	#11	0.026161 (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 Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	TOWNSFOLK CLASS · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION · ATTACK · MOVE · SPLITTING ZOMBIES	p.25	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	ZOMBICIDE THROUGH SPACE AND TIME · BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!!!! · PLAYER PHASE · ZOMBIE PHASE · END PHASE · WINNING AND LOSING	p.9	#2	0.046751 (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 Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	GAME ROUND SUMMARY · 1 PLAYER PHASE · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION: ATTACK OR MOVE · STEP 2 - SPAWN · 3 END PHASE	p.60	#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 Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	ZOMBICIDE THROUGH SPACE AND TIME · BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!!!! · PLAYER PHASE · ZOMBIE PHASE · END PHASE · WINNING AND LOSING	p.9	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	GAME ROUND SUMMARY · 1 PLAYER PHASE · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION: ATTACK OR MOVE · STEP 2 - SPAWN · 3 END PHASE	p.60	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	PLAYING RUNNERS	p.25	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	A TRAIN ENTERING THE BOARD · A TRAIN MOVING ON THE BOARD	p.40	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Undead or Alive — Rulebook (corpus doc 1295)	TOWNSFOLK CLASS · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION · ATTACK · MOVE · SPLITTING ZOMBIES	p.25	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 124 ms · first delta 4751 ms · total 56126 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 35684 ms · retrieval 124 ms · ask 20316 ms · gateway work 20442 ms · total 56126 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4154
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 879
tok/sec: 56.5 tok/sec — 879 output tokens in 15.560 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 23h, checked 5s 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 1225), 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.