Ruling — War of the Ring: Second Edition

You asked

How do I take my turn?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: War of the Ring: Second Editionbg-115746-en-1e

Each turn is divided into six phases:[1]

1. Phase 1) Recover Action Dice and Draw Event Cards: Each player recovers the Action dice used in the previous turn, adjusted for any dice added to or removed from the Action Dice Pool.[1] Each player then draws 2 cards from their respective Event decks.[1] During this phase, the Free Peoples player may declare the Fellowship's position (which may activate a Nation and heal Ring-bearers) and may change the Guide of the Fellowship.[1] The Shadow player may place Action dice in the Hunt Box, up to the number of remaining Companions in the Fellowship, and must place at least one die if the Free Peoples player retrieved at least one die from the Hunt Box during this phase.[1][2]

2. Phase 2) Fellowship Phase.[1]

3. Phase 3) Hunt Allocation.[1]

4. Phase 4) Action Roll: Players roll their Action dice, excluding dice already in the Hunt Box.[1][2] The Shadow player immediately takes all rolled dice showing the 'Eye' result and adds them to the Hunt Box.[1][2]

5. Phase 5) Action Resolution: Players alternate actions, starting with the Free Peoples player, by selecting and removing one available die result to take an action.[1][2][3] If a player has fewer unused Action dice than their opponent, they can pass instead of taking an action.[2][3] If a player runs out of actions before their opponent, the opponent takes all remaining actions consecutively.[2] When the Free Peoples player uses an Action die to move the Fellowship, that die is placed in the Hunt Box after the action is completed; all other used dice are set aside until the next turn.[1][2][3] During this phase, a player may also use an Elven Ring to change the result of one unused Action die.[4]

6. Phase 6) Victory Check: Players check for Military Victory conditions.[5][2] If no victory conditions are met, a new game turn begins.[5][2] (Note: Ring-based Victory conditions may end the game immediately at any time during a turn [5][6]).

[1] RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook · p.18 · CHAPTER IV: THE GAME TURN · SUMMARY OF THE TURN · Phase 2) Fellowship Phase · Phase 3) Hunt Allocation · Phase 4) Action Roll · Phase 5) Action Resolution

[2] RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook · p.5

[3] RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook · p.19 · USING ACTION DICE

[4] RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook · p.21 · THE ELVEN RINGS

[5] RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook · p.18 · Phase 6) Victory Check · THE ACTION DICE · ACTION DICE POOL

[6] RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook · p.44 · CHAPTER X: WINNING THE GAME · RING-BASED VICTORY CONDITIONS · MILITARY VICTORY CONDITIONS

Rule found, game on.

🔧 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 144 ms · ask 3833 ms · total 8626 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 4646 ms · generation 3980 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 18, "score": 0.048172, "snippet": "W ar of the Ring is played over a series of turns , until either player wins the game. Each turn is divided into six phases . The phases of the turn are: Phase 1) Recover Action Dice and Draw Event Cards Each player recovers the Action dice he used in the previous turn, plus any dice which were adde", "headingPath": "CHAPTER IV: THE GAME TURN · SUMMARY OF THE TURN · Phase 2) Fellowship Phase · Phase 3) Hunt Allocation · Phase 4) Action Roll · Phase 5) Action Resolution", "sharpsignalDocId": 250}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "Starting with the Free Peoples, players alternate actions selecting one of their Action dice and immediately taking the action made available by the specific die result. Each Action die is printed with a set of distinctive icons, corresponding to different game actions. Each action is detailed later", "headingPath": "USING ACTION DICE", "sharpsignalDocId": 250}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "RESOLVING A BA TTLE RESOLVING A BA TTLE A battle is resolved in a series of Combat Rounds. During each round, both players follow the steps below: 1) Play a Combat Card (optional) 2) Roll the Dice for the Combat Roll 3) Roll the Dice for the Leader Re-roll 4) Remove Casualties 5) Choose to Cease the", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 250}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Players now check to see whether either player has achieved the Military Victory conditions. If not, a new game turn begins. Note: If a Ring-based Victory condition (see page 44) occurs at any time during a turn, the game ends immediately, without waiting for the Victory Check phase. The Action dice", "headingPath": "Phase 6) Victory Check · THE ACTION DICE · ACTION DICE POOL", "sharpsignalDocId": 250}, {"page": 37, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "If all Companions have left the Fellowship, the Ringbearers are alone and Gollum becomes the Guide of the Fellowship. When this happens, the Gollum Character card is placed in the Guide of the Fellowship Box. To keep track of the secret movements of the Ring-bearers, players employ the Fellowship Tr", "headingPath": "Gollum as a Guide · THE FELLOWSHIP TRACK · MOVING THE FELLOWSHIP", "sharpsignalDocId": 250}, {"page": 38, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The numbered steps on the Fellowship Track represent the distance (measured in regions) traveled by the Fellowship from its last known position (the region where the Ringbearers figure is located). The actual position of the Fellowship is determined only if one of two things happen: The Free Peoples", "headingPath": "LOCATING THE FELLOWSHIP", "sharpsignalDocId": 250}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "B efore you start playing, you should decide who will play the Free Peoples and who will play the Shadow. Then, get the game ready to play by following these steps. Place the game board on a suitable surface, possibly large enough to leave some room along the sides of the board (to place discarded c", "headingPath": "S E T T I N G U P THE GAME · STEP 1 · STEP 2 · STEP 3 · STEP 4 · STEP 5 · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 250}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029644, "snippet": "The Shadow player must place at least one Action Die if the Free Peoples player retrieved at least 1 die from the Hunt Box during Phase 1. He may allocate only as many dice as the number of Companions remaining in the Fellowship. These dice are not rolled during the following Action Roll phase. Phas", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 250}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CHAPTER IV: THE GAME TURN · SUMMARY OF THE TURN · Phase 2) Fellowship Phase · Phase 3) Hunt Allocation · Phase 4) Action Roll · Phase 5) Action Resolution", "sharpsignalDocId": 250}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 250}, {"page": 19, "quote": null, "headingPath": "USING ACTION DICE", "sharpsignalDocId": 250}, {"page": 21, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE ELVEN RINGS", "sharpsignalDocId": 250}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase 6) Victory Check · THE ACTION DICE · ACTION DICE POOL", "sharpsignalDocId": 250}, {"page": 44, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CHAPTER X: WINNING THE GAME · RING-BASED VICTORY CONDITIONS · MILITARY VICTORY CONDITIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 250}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 250 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 250 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 0.90631 of 1633 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 24, 2026 19:39 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 War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	CHAPTER IV: THE GAME TURN · SUMMARY OF THE TURN · Phase 2) Fellowship Phase · Phase 3) Hunt Allocation · Phase 4) Action Roll · Phase 5) Action Resolution	p.18	0.048172 (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 War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	USING ACTION DICE	p.19	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 War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)		p.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))	300
#4	RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	Phase 6) Victory Check · THE ACTION DICE · ACTION DICE POOL	p.18	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 War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	Gollum as a Guide · THE FELLOWSHIP TRACK · MOVING THE FELLOWSHIP	p.37	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
#6	RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	LOCATING THE FELLOWSHIP	p.38	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 War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	S E T T I N G U P THE GAME · STEP 1 · STEP 2 · STEP 3 · STEP 4 · STEP 5 · …	p.14	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 War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)		p.5	0.029644 (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 War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	CHAPTER IV: THE GAME TURN · SUMMARY OF THE TURN · Phase 2) Fellowship Phase · Phase 3) Hunt Allocation · Phase 4) Action Roll · Phase 5) Action Resolution	p.18	#1	0.048172 (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 War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	Phase 6) Victory Check · THE ACTION DICE · ACTION DICE POOL	p.18	#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
#3	RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	THE ELVEN RINGS	p.21	#11	0.02782 (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 War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	S E T T I N G U P THE GAME · STEP 1 · STEP 2 · STEP 3 · STEP 4 · STEP 5 · …	p.14	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	CHAPTER X: WINNING THE GAME · RING-BASED VICTORY CONDITIONS · MILITARY VICTORY CONDITIONS	p.44	#10	0.02895 (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 War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	Using the Ring · THE ONE RING AND THE QUEST FOR MOUNT DOOM · TRACKING CORRUPTION	p.42	#12	0.027206 (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
#7	RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)		p.5	#8	0.029644 (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
#8	RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	USING ACTION DICE	p.19	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	CHAPTER IV: THE GAME TURN · SUMMARY OF THE TURN · Phase 2) Fellowship Phase · Phase 3) Hunt Allocation · Phase 4) Action Roll · Phase 5) Action Resolution	p.18	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)		p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	USING ACTION DICE	p.19	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	THE ELVEN RINGS	p.21	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	Phase 6) Victory Check · THE ACTION DICE · ACTION DICE POOL	p.18	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK War of the Ring: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 250)	CHAPTER X: WINNING THE GAME · RING-BASED VICTORY CONDITIONS · MILITARY VICTORY CONDITIONS	p.44	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 144 ms · first delta 1563 ms · total 8626 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 4646 ms · retrieval 144 ms · ask 3833 ms · gateway work 3980 ms · total 8626 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3690
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 468
tok/sec: 201.3 tok/sec — 468 output tokens in 2.325 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 3s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child): schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 5h, 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 176), 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.