Ruling — The Thing: The Boardgame

← The Thing: The Boardgame

You asked

When does the game end?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Thing: The Boardgamebg-295293-en-1e

The game can end in several ways:

* The Alien wins if:

* It assimilates the last Human.[1]

* One or more Humans die frozen in the base.[1]

* The Freezing Marker reaches the end of the Freezing Track, causing all Humans still in the base to freeze.[2]

* The Alien escapes along with the Humans (via Rescue Helicopter, Base Helicopter, or Snow Cat).[1]

* The Alien escapes alone in Human form (via Rescue Helicopter, Base Helicopter, or Snow Cat).[1]

* The Rescue Helicopter leaves with passengers, and even just one Human remains on the ground.[3]

* The Humans win if:

* They all escape from the base, and no Aliens escape with them.[3]

* They manage to eliminate the Alien.[4]

* They run away without the Alien.[4]

* The Characters left on the ground after the Rescue Helicopter leaves are all Aliens.[3]

* The Humans attempt an escape (via Base Helicopter or Snow Cat) and are not interrupted by the Alien's sabotage.[5]

* The Characters use the Keys to start the escape process via the Base Helicopter or Snow Cat, and the players on the ground are revealed to be Aliens.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook · p.17 · The Alien wins if:

[2] RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook · p.6 · BOILER ROOM

[3] RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook · p.16 · OPTIONAL KENNEL RULE · Winning the Game · All the Humans win immediately if they ALL escape from the base, with no Aliens escaping with them.

[4] RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook · p.2 · THE THING - The Boardgame · Designers' Notes

[5] RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook · p.26 · DARKNESS · Escape of the Humans and Winning the Game

[6] RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook · p.17 · All the Humans win immediately if they ALL escape from the base, with no Aliens escaping with them. · ESCAPE ON THE BASE HELICOPTER OR SNOW CAT: If a Character

Settled. Play 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 175 ms · ask 2881 ms · total 7014 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 3955 ms · generation 3059 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 16, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "During your first few games, you may find that controlling the Dogs is too challenging for the Human players while they are still learning the game mechanics. If so, you may use this optional rule: Remove the Kennel Location Card from the game. Without this card, the Dogs in the Kennel will never ge", "headingPath": "OPTIONAL KENNEL RULE · Winning the Game · All the Humans win immediately if they ALL escape from the base, with no Aliens escaping with them.", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "It assimilates the last Human. There are one or more Humans that die frozen in the base. It escapes along with the Humans (through Rescue Helicopter, Base Helicopter, or Snow Cat). It escapes alone in Human form (through Rescue Helicopter, Base Helicopter, or Snow Cat). CLARIFICATIONS: Even if the H", "headingPath": "The Alien wins if:", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "IMPORTANT: The Rescue Helicopter remains at the base only as long as it has Fuel available. Each turn during Phase 2, the Fuel Token is moved 1 space on its track. If the Fuel Token is already on the last space, the helicopter leaves without any passengers, abandoning them to their fate. During Phas", "headingPath": "All the Humans win immediately if they ALL escape from the base, with no Aliens escaping with them. · ESCAPE ON THE BASE HELICOPTER OR SNOW CAT: If a Character", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "This mode comes into play when the Generator is not working and the base is in the dark. During the Character Actions Phase, the Action Dice are rolled only AFTER assigning them to a Character. Possession of a Flashlight allows a Character to reroll up to 3 dice. The dice may be rerolled one at a ti", "headingPath": "DARKNESS · Escape of the Humans and Winning the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "In this phase, all players (except for Exposed Aliens) return their Characters to the Leisure Room. Here, players may exchange Weapon and/or Item Cards (and Lab Tokens, without revealing them!) with each other another player of being an Alien, according to their suspicions. and may accuse After disc", "headingPath": "PHASE 5. LEISURE ROOM AND ACCUSATIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "During Phase 5, by their own decision, an Alien player may reveal their Role and start playing as an Exposed Alien. Alternatively, they may be forced to do so during Phase 6, as a consequence of a Test. When an Alien is exposed, they must remove their Character from the game and discard any cards (r", "headingPath": "EXPOSING YOURSELF AS AN ALIEN", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The actions of the Characters are now resolved (escape via the Rescue Helicopter, using the base rules, may be attempted at the beginning of this phase). To resolve each Character's action, the Leader rolls the 3 Action Dice and, after looking at the results, decides which Character to assign those ", "headingPath": "PHASE 5. CHARACTER ACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "The results of the Action Dice are 2 Alien Threat Advance and 1 Sabotage. By advancing the Character's Suspicion Disk by 3 spaces, all 3 Action Dice results will be canceled, but the Character will be laid down and cannot perform any action, as no results remain. The function of the Cooperation Bonu", "headingPath": "PHASE 5. CHARACTER ACTIONS · PHASE 6. LEISURE ROOM · PHASE 7. TESTS · PHASE 8. FOOD CONSUMPTION · PHASE 9. DOG MOVEMENT, LEADER CHANGE, & ALIEN THREAT MOVEMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The Alien wins if:", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "BOILER ROOM", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "OPTIONAL KENNEL RULE · Winning the Game · All the Humans win immediately if they ALL escape from the base, with no Aliens escaping with them.", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE THING - The Boardgame · Designers' Notes", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 26, "quote": null, "headingPath": "DARKNESS · Escape of the Humans and Winning the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}, {"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": "All the Humans win immediately if they ALL escape from the base, with no Aliens escaping with them. · ESCAPE ON THE BASE HELICOPTER OR SNOW CAT: If a Character", "sharpsignalDocId": 995}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 995 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 995 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 0.90146 of 893 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 24, 2026 20:23 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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	OPTIONAL KENNEL RULE · Winning the Game · All the Humans win immediately if they ALL escape from the base, with no Aliens escaping with them.	p.16	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	The Alien wins if:	p.17	0.048131 (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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	All the Humans win immediately if they ALL escape from the base, with no Aliens escaping with them. · ESCAPE ON THE BASE HELICOPTER OR SNOW CAT: If a Character	p.17	0.04598 (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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	DARKNESS · Escape of the Humans and Winning the Game	p.26	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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	PHASE 5. LEISURE ROOM AND ACCUSATIONS	p.14	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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	EXPOSING YOURSELF AS AN ALIEN	p.15	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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	PHASE 5. CHARACTER ACTIONS	p.25	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
#8	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	PHASE 5. CHARACTER ACTIONS · PHASE 6. LEISURE ROOM · PHASE 7. TESTS · PHASE 8. FOOD CONSUMPTION · PHASE 9. DOG MOVEMENT, LEADER CHANGE, & ALIEN THREAT MOVEMENT	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 52 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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	The Alien wins if:	p.17	#2	0.048131 (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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	OPTIONAL KENNEL RULE · Winning the Game · All the Humans win immediately if they ALL escape from the base, with no Aliens escaping with them.	p.16	#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
#3	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	THE THING - The Boardgame · Designers' Notes	p.2	#12	0.026496 (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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	BOILER ROOM	p.6	#11	0.026515 (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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	EXPOSING YOURSELF AS AN ALIEN	p.15	#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
#6	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	DARKNESS · Escape of the Humans and Winning the Game	p.26	#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
#7	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	WIRE · BURNING LOCATIONS	p.19	#9	0.028814 (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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	All the Humans win immediately if they ALL escape from the base, with no Aliens escaping with them. · ESCAPE ON THE BASE HELICOPTER OR SNOW CAT: If a Character	p.17	#3	0.04598 (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 The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	The Alien wins if:	p.17	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	BOILER ROOM	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	OPTIONAL KENNEL RULE · Winning the Game · All the Humans win immediately if they ALL escape from the base, with no Aliens escaping with them.	p.16	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	THE THING - The Boardgame · Designers' Notes	p.2	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	DARKNESS · Escape of the Humans and Winning the Game	p.26	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK The Thing: The Boardgame — Rulebook (corpus doc 995)	All the Humans win immediately if they ALL escape from the base, with no Aliens escaping with them. · ESCAPE ON THE BASE HELICOPTER OR SNOW CAT: If a Character	p.17	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 175 ms · first delta 1468 ms · total 7014 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 3955 ms · retrieval 175 ms · ask 2881 ms · gateway work 3059 ms · total 7014 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3438
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 293
tok/sec: 202.1 tok/sec — 293 output tokens in 1.450 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 32s 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 6s 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 925), 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.