Ruling — Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Menbg-158275-en-1e

To play the game, follow these steps:

1. Setup:

* Each player starts with a certain amount of life points (10 points in the first game; other formats use different amounts).[1]

* Each player gathers 8 Sidekick dice and places them in one of the provided bags.[2]

* (In specific variants, players choose a number of dice between 8 and 20 and start with that much life).[3]

* Choose a first player and a second player.[2]

* Players place their chosen character cards and matching dice near their side of the table.[2]

* (In Draft Teams, players alternate choosing card stacks and dice until all cards are chosen).[4]

2. A Turn:

* Clear and Draw Step: A player draws dice from their bag.[5]

* Roll and Reroll Step: The player rolls their dice.[5]

* Main Step:

* The player can purchase additional character dice and action dice using energy produced by their dice.[1]

* To pay for a purchase, move dice representing the proper amount of energy from the reserve pool to the used pile.[1]

* When purchasing a die, move the die purchased from the card to the used pile as well.[6]

* The player can use action faces on action dice by applying the effect and moving the die from the reserve pool to the used pile.[6]

* The player can field character dice by paying the character's fielding cost, moving them from the reserve pool to the field.[6]

* Both players can use any available global abilities by paying the energy cost and moving the used dice to the used pile.[6]

* Attack Step:

* The player assigns characters to attack.[5]

* Unblocked characters (and certain action dice) damage the other player, reducing their life.[1]

* Characters in the attack zone can be used to attack the enemy or protect the player.[1]

* Cleanup:

* Characters that blocked (or were blocked) but were not knocked out return to the field.[5]

* Place unblocked attacking characters in the player's used pile.[5]

* All damage to all dice is cleared, and all effects end (except 'while active' effects).[5]

* Move any actions still in a player's reserve pool to the used pile (only energy dice can remain in the reserve pool).[5]

* The turn ends.[5]

3. Winning the Game:

* The game ends and you win as soon as your opponent's life reaches zero.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook · p.5 · PLAY AREAS · HOW TO PLAY · Energy and Costs

[2] RULEBOOK Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook · p.4 · · Ambush, Enrage, Reckless Melee · PLAY AREAS

[3] RULEBOOK Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook · p.21 · Rarity · Draft Teams

[4] RULEBOOK Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook · p.22 · Draft Teams · Basic Teams

[5] RULEBOOK Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook · p.9 · CLEANUP · WINNING · EXAMPLE OF PLAY\ · Eric, Turn 1 · Mike, Turn 1 · Eric, Turn 2

[6] RULEBOOK Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook · p.7

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 161 ms · ask 6019 ms · total 6184 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6184 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Field: This area holds your characters who are ready to fight the forces of the opposing mastermind-either to smite the foe or to protect you. Attack Zone: This area is considered a special part of the field. It's where your characters go when they are ready to pummel the enemy. Characters in the at", "headingPath": "PLAY AREAS · HOW TO PLAY · Energy and Costs", "sharpsignalDocId": 1125}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047073, "snippet": "Then choose a first player and a second player. Each player gathers the cards listed below and the two character dice that match them. (Note that each character has three different variant cards supplied; be sure to take the right version.) First Player: Kitty Pryde, Sprite and Cyclops, Optic Blast ", "headingPath": "· Ambush, Enrage, Reckless Melee · PLAY AREAS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1125}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045476, "snippet": "Characters that blocked (or were blocked) but were not knocked out return to the field. Place unblocked attacking characters in the player's used pile (even if the defending player managed to prevent or redirect all the damage those characters dealt). All damage to all dice is cleared. All effects e", "headingPath": "CLEANUP · WINNING · EXAMPLE OF PLAY\\ · Eric, Turn 1 · Mike, Turn 1 · Eric, Turn 2", "sharpsignalDocId": 1125}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "Make sure that it is clear which dice are in which play area. The play mat helps with this immensely. You cannot change the face up side of any die without a card effect. You cannot use, roll, or spend other players' dice. You are allowed to look inside your bag to count how many dice you have left,", "headingPath": "H Basic Etiquette", "sharpsignalDocId": 1125}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Place all the dice, sorted by type, in the center of the table. Place all the available character and action cards in the center, stacking cards that share the same name together, even if they have different subtitles. Determine the first and second players. The second player picks first, choosing o", "headingPath": "Draft Teams · Basic Teams", "sharpsignalDocId": 1125}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Players alternate taking turns. During a player's turn, that player goes through the following steps in order. Once a step is completed, you cannot go back to that step. Move all dice still in your reserve pool to your used pile. Draw 4 dice from your bag. If your bag has less than 4 dice, draw all ", "headingPath": "TURN ORDER · Clear and Draw Step · Roll and Reroll Step · H Burst Symbols · Main Step", "sharpsignalDocId": 1125}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "For tournament competition, each player starts with 20 life. Build your team to the following specifications. Choose two different Basic Action cards. Choose up to 8 cards. You can choose any mix of characters and actions (except Basic actions), and you can mix teams, heroes with villains, etc. Howe", "headingPath": "Tournament Teams", "sharpsignalDocId": 1125}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.030622, "snippet": "During the main step and attack step, both players can use global abilities. In many cases, global abilities may be used more than once if the cost can be paid multiple times. As with purchasing dice, you can partially spend non-generic energy. Global abilities that are paid for in a batch resolve a", "headingPath": "Using Global Abilities · CUSTOMIZING YOUR TEAM", "sharpsignalDocId": 1125}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAY AREAS · HOW TO PLAY · Energy and Costs", "sharpsignalDocId": 1125}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "· Ambush, Enrage, Reckless Melee · PLAY AREAS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1125}, {"page": 21, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Rarity · Draft Teams", "sharpsignalDocId": 1125}, {"page": 22, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Draft Teams · Basic Teams", "sharpsignalDocId": 1125}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CLEANUP · WINNING · EXAMPLE OF PLAY\\ · Eric, Turn 1 · Mike, Turn 1 · Eric, Turn 2", "sharpsignalDocId": 1125}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1125}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1125 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1125 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 0.89236 of 1858 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 20, 2026 09:25 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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	PLAY AREAS · HOW TO PLAY · Energy and Costs	p.5	0.047643 (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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	· Ambush, Enrage, Reckless Melee · PLAY AREAS	p.4	0.047073 (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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	CLEANUP · WINNING · EXAMPLE OF PLAY\ · Eric, Turn 1 · Mike, Turn 1 · Eric, Turn 2	p.9	0.045476 (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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	H Basic Etiquette	p.19	0.045228 (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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	Draft Teams · Basic Teams	p.22	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
#6	RULEBOOK Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	TURN ORDER · Clear and Draw Step · Roll and Reroll Step · H Burst Symbols · Main Step	p.6	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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	Tournament Teams	p.22	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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	Using Global Abilities · CUSTOMIZING YOUR TEAM	p.21	0.030622 (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 35 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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	PLAY AREAS · HOW TO PLAY · Energy and Costs	p.5	#1	0.047643 (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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	· Ambush, Enrage, Reckless Melee · PLAY AREAS	p.4	#2	0.047073 (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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	CLEANUP · WINNING · EXAMPLE OF PLAY\ · Eric, Turn 1 · Mike, Turn 1 · Eric, Turn 2	p.9	#3	0.045476 (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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	Rarity · Draft Teams	p.21	#11	0.028139 (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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)		p.7	#14	0.027242 (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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	Tournament Teams	p.22	#7	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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	Draft Teams · Basic Teams	p.22	#5	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
#8	RULEBOOK Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	H Basic Etiquette	p.19	#4	0.045228 (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 Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	PLAY AREAS · HOW TO PLAY · Energy and Costs	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	· Ambush, Enrage, Reckless Melee · PLAY AREAS	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	Rarity · Draft Teams	p.21	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	Draft Teams · Basic Teams	p.22	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)	CLEANUP · WINNING · EXAMPLE OF PLAY\ · Eric, Turn 1 · Mike, Turn 1 · Eric, Turn 2	p.9	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men — Rulebook (corpus doc 1125)		p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 161 ms · first delta 3095 ms · total 6184 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 161 ms · ask 6019 ms · gateway work 6184 ms · total 6184 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3339
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 583
tok/sec: 194.9 tok/sec — 583 output tokens in 2.991 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 10s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 0s 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 1055), 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.