Ruling — XCOM: The Board Game

You asked

How do I play?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: XCOM: The Board Gamebg-163602-en-1e

I looked through XCOM: The Board Game's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.1 · STOP! · USING THIS REFERENCE

This Rules Reference does not teach players how to play XCOM: The Board Game. It is recommended that players first play the tutorial available in the 'XCOM: the Board Game' app. Then use this Rules Reference or the Rules section of the app as needed while playing the game. This Rules Reference provi

RULEBOOK XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.11 · UFOS IN ORBIT · PANIC · PLAYER ROLES

The Central Officer inputs the number of UFOs in orbit when instructed by the app. » » UFOs in orbit will move to other continents at the start of the next round. » » UFOs left in orbit can also jam communications, changing the order that actions appear during the next round. Related Links: Assign,

RULEBOOK XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.17 · WIN/LOSS CONDITIONS

The app tracks victory conditions and will inform players when the game is over. The players win the game if they complete the final mission. The final mission is on the back of the invasion plan. » » The Squad Leader flips the invasion plan to its final mission side when instructed by the app. The

RULEBOOK XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.4 · CENTRAL OFFICER

The Central Officer is responsible for controlling the app and relaying instructions and information from the app to the other players. The Central Officer: » » Communicates the instructions provided by the app to the other players. » » Communicates forecasts provided by the app to the other players

RULEBOOK XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.16 · TASKS/ROLLING DICE · TECH · TECH CARD ANATOMY

There are many different tasks in the game. Each task is associated with a specific type of unit that is assigned to a specific space on the board. Whenever a player rolls dice, he or she rolls the alien die and a number of XCOM dice equal to the number of units assigned to the task. If the result o

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome

ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below

warm abstain

this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)

corpus profile

live,vps

answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)

gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70

timings

search 217 ms · ask 1506 ms · total 1725 ms

single-flight (PR-5)

queued 0 ms · generation 1725 ms

retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read

[{"page": 1, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "This Rules Reference does not teach players how to play XCOM: The Board Game. It is recommended that players first play the tutorial available in the 'XCOM: the Board Game' app. Then use this Rules Reference or the Rules section of the app as needed while playing the game. This Rules Reference provi", "headingPath": "STOP! · USING THIS REFERENCE", "sharpsignalDocId": 984}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "The Central Officer inputs the number of UFOs in orbit when instructed by the app. » » UFOs in orbit will move to other continents at the start of the next round. » » UFOs left in orbit can also jam communications, changing the order that actions appear during the next round. Related Links: Assign, ", "headingPath": "UFOS IN ORBIT · PANIC · PLAYER ROLES", "sharpsignalDocId": 984}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "The app tracks victory conditions and will inform players when the game is over. The players win the game if they complete the final mission. The final mission is on the back of the invasion plan. » » The Squad Leader flips the invasion plan to its final mission side when instructed by the app. The ", "headingPath": "WIN/LOSS CONDITIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 984}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The Central Officer is responsible for controlling the app and relaying instructions and information from the app to the other players. The Central Officer: » » Communicates the instructions provided by the app to the other players. » » Communicates forecasts provided by the app to the other players", "headingPath": "CENTRAL OFFICER", "sharpsignalDocId": 984}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "There are many different tasks in the game. Each task is associated with a specific type of unit that is assigned to a specific space on the board. Whenever a player rolls dice, he or she rolls the alien die and a number of XCOM dice equal to the number of units assigned to the task. If the result o", "headingPath": "TASKS/ROLLING DICE · TECH · TECH CARD ANATOMY", "sharpsignalDocId": 984}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Asset cards are components distributed to players during setup. » » Each card contains the name, icon, and color of the role to which it corresponds. Each asset card is given to the player who was assigned that role. » » Assets with the A symbol can be used any time during the timed phase, regardles", "headingPath": "ASSETS · ASSET CARD ANATOMY · ASSIGN", "sharpsignalDocId": 984}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "» » The Squad Leader may assign the same soldiers or different soldiers to the same base defense task or to a different base defense task for each roll. Damage to the base is tracked with the base damage token. After resolving all base defense tasks, the Squad Leader applies one damage to the base f", "headingPath": "RESOLVE BASE DEFENSE", "sharpsignalDocId": 984}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "The Squad Leader attacks each enemy in the order of his choice when instructed by the app. Unlike other tasks, threat does NOT reset to '1' between base defense tasks. Follow these steps: The Squad Leader attacks an enemy by assigning soldiers from the base defense space to the skill icons on any en", "headingPath": "RESOLVE BASE DEFENSE", "sharpsignalDocId": 984}]

citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show

[]

boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)

no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 984 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true

base rulebook doc 984 boosted

answered-before recall

no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough

similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)

debug row recorded

Sep 14, 2026 23:00 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 XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	STOP! · USING THIS REFERENCE	p.1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	UFOS IN ORBIT · PANIC · PLAYER ROLES	p.11	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 XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	WIN/LOSS CONDITIONS	p.17	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
#4	RULEBOOK XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	CENTRAL OFFICER	p.4	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 XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	TASKS/ROLLING DICE · TECH · TECH CARD ANATOMY	p.16	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 XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	ASSETS · ASSET CARD ANATOMY · ASSIGN	p.2	0.030303 (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 XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	RESOLVE BASE DEFENSE	p.3	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 XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	RESOLVE BASE DEFENSE	p.3	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 26 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 XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	STOP! · USING THIS REFERENCE	p.1	#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
#2	RULEBOOK XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	TASKS/ROLLING DICE · TECH · TECH CARD ANATOMY	p.16	#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 XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	ASSETS · ASSET CARD ANATOMY · ASSIGN	p.2	#6	0.030303 (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
#4	RULEBOOK XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	CENTRAL OFFICER	p.4	#4	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	CRISIS! · RESOLVE CRISES	p.6	#11	0.014085 (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
#6	RULEBOOK XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	WIN/LOSS CONDITIONS	p.17	#3	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
#7	RULEBOOK XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	ACTIONS (XCOM & ALIEN)	p.1	#9	0.014493 (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
#8	RULEBOOK XCOM: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 984)	UFOS IN ORBIT · PANIC · PLAYER ROLES	p.11	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 217 ms · first delta 1618 ms · total 1725 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 217 ms · ask 1506 ms · gateway work 1725 ms · total 1725 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2822
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 9
tok/sec: 163.6 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.055 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 14s 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: ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
abstain rationale: I don't have enough information.
BOILERPLATE, not reasoning: this is the answerer's fixed abstention phrase, the same sentence it emits whenever it declines. It records THAT the answerer declined and never why — no per-ruling reason was captured, because none was sent. Hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped

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 914), 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.