Dune/docs/RECRUITS_RULES.md

Recruits and existing revival rules

Audit: 2026-09-06. Scope: the Recruits card interacting with prior revivals, existing unlimited/expanded allowances, prevention, Fremen ally grants and pending declarations. No runtime changes. This supplements ECAZ_TREACHERY_RULES.md, which contains the original component figure and card-face provenance.

Runtime follow-up — 8 October 2026: the content-first prototype now uses recorded actual free usage after paid returns, preserving payments and total returns without refund. This is an explicitly provisional implementation choice, not an answer to the publisher/user question below. See the current runtime contract.

Native Homeworld follow-up — 16 October 2026: the clean classic prototype composes the original separate-request threshold calculation with doubled current rates. One accepted low-Fremen group may take7;1 first reaching high leaves5 further free. Prior accepted prices/free classifications remain; no phase-wide snapshot or paid Fremen permission is added. This timing is visibly provisional, not a new FAQ or resolution of all later-rate questions. See the native contract.

Native grant follow-up — 24 October 2026: the earlier direct-commit and later-grant absence claims below are superseded by the source-bound Fremen grant protocol. The existing optional action now offers Karama before commitment; current-Recruits rate symmetry and denial of that grant for this Revival are explicit prototype choices. This does not settle unrelated timing/combination questions or certify full modes.

Primary evidence

Source	Relevant verified rule
GF9 Ecaz & Moritani rulebook, pp. 11, 16	Recruits is played during Revival, doubles all factions' current free-revival rates, and raises the turn's revival limit to 7. The FAQ applies this to low-threshold Fremen: their rate 4 would double, but only 7 are free under that limit. Discard after use.
Designer Jack Reda's unboxing, 8:25-8:48	Describes the cap as the normal revival limit and compares Recruits with Tleilaxu permission to reach 5. Examples: Fremen 3→6, Atreides 2→4, Guild 1→2.
GF9 base rulebook, pp. 6, 9, 16	Faction advantages override general rules. Normal force revival combines the faction's free allowance and paid revivals under a per-turn cap. Fremen cannot purchase additional revivals and may permit their ally 3 free force revivals.
GF9 Ixians & Tleilaxu rulebook, pp. 6-7, 12	Tleilaxu have 2 free force revivals, no own revival limits, half-price payment, and can raise another faction's cap from 3 to 5. Its Karama table removes the unlimited/expanded advantage and specifies 3 forces, alongside other canceled benefits.
GF9 November 2020 FAQ, pp. 6-7	Explicitly confirms unlimited own Tleilaxu forces and leaders in one Revival phase. Karama can prevent an alliance ability; its general rule stops one use of a faction ability.
GF9 CHOAM & Richese rulebook, pp. 7, 12	CHOAM's printed free rate is 0, with unlimited paid force revival at 1 spice each. La La La prevents a target taking free revival during Revival. Canceling CHOAM's revival advantage restores 2-spice pricing and cap 3, or 5 with Tleilaxu permission.

Publisher-indexed text was checked for these anchors. The previously inspected publisher-authored Ecaz/Ixian PDF mirrors corroborate the relevant general paragraphs; no new printing conflict was found here. The November 2020 FAQ predates Recruits and CHOAM: it is evidence of underlying rules, not a direct answer about the later card. No community amendment or fan implementation was used.

Results and confidence

Interaction	Source-grounded conclusion	Confidence / limit
Earlier free revivals only	The larger allowance is a turn total, not seven additional forces. Preserve completed returns and account for their already-used entitlement. Atreides 2 free before Recruits would have 2 more free available and at most 5 more normal revivals under cap 7, provided the phase is still open.	Strong composition of the per-turn base rule and card rate; no separate official worked example of late play was located.
Earlier paid revivals	The card does not explicitly authorize undoing completed returns or refunding spice. The available text does not determine whether prior paid units consume newly enlarged free entitlement.	Material unresolved accounting issue; see example below. Absence of a refund instruction is not a separately published no-refunds ruling.
Active CHOAM/Tleilaxu unlimited advantage	Retain the separate unlimited advantage while Recruits changes the normal cap and free rate. Native CHOAM's 0 doubles to 0; native Tleilaxu's 2 doubles to 4.	Strong rule composition, supported by the designer's normal-limit wording. No direct Recruits/unlimited-faction FAQ was retrieved. The engine's 20 sentinel represents its physical roster, not a printed numerical revival cap.
Canceled CHOAM unlimited advantage	Recruits' independent ordinary cap should remain 7; CHOAM resumes normal pricing unless another valid discount applies.	Recommended composition, not a direct official combined ruling. CHOAM p. 12 already allows an independent Tleilaxu raise after cancellation, which argues against treating its printed 3 as an absolute cap on every other effect.
Canceled Tleilaxu limit advantage	Remove unlimited/5-force permission; the independent Recruits cap should remain 7. Do not cancel the Recruits card itself as though it were a Tleilaxu advantage.	Recommended composition. The older explicit Karama-table 3 and the newer card-provided 7 have no retrieved combined FAQ; keep this interpretation visible in implementation notes.
La La La remains effective	A doubled numerical rate does not grant permission to take a prohibited free revival. A settled free-revival prevention still yields 0 available free revivals, including after Recruits.	Supported composition: prevention governs eligibility, while Recruits changes a rate. This is not a claim of a retrieved explicit La La La/Recruits example. It does not decide retroactive treatment of free revivals already completed before prevention.
Fremen ally permission already settled	Treat the grant as the ally's current free rate 3, then Recruits gives 6, subject to the applicable total allowance and prior use. Do not add 6 on top of the ally's original free rate.	Strong reading of current rate together with the existing implementation's replacement grant. No direct official worked example was found.
Fremen permission after Recruits	Apply the same current-rate calculation once permission becomes effective; do not make the result depend merely on which scalar was assigned first.	Recommended symmetric implementation. The texts do not explicitly specify whether the doubling snapshots rates at card play or continually applies to later grants. This is material when grants or Homeworld thresholds change during Revival.
Karama aimed at Fremen ally permission	General FAQ permits canceling an alliance ability. Recruits cannot independently recreate canceled permission; calculate from the ally's remaining valid rate.	General-rule application. The exact grant response point/duration is not newly established here. grantRevival currently commits directly, so this audit does not certify that existing cancellation coverage is complete.
Unlimited faction hypothetically has free rate 4	Do not infer a universal maximum 7 free revivals from the FAQ's Fremen example. That example has ordinary cap 7; it does not address a faction whose valid total allowance remains unlimited.	Unresolved combined scenario. A compositional result would allow 8, but that must not be labeled explicitly confirmed. Outside current native CHOAM/Tleilaxu rates, this matters only with another modifier.
Pending revival declaration	No retrieved primary source defines the engine's declaration, price quote, interruption, acceptance and settlement boundaries for Recruits.	Material unresolved timing choice. Preserve pending custody and pricing rather than accidentally repricing after acceptance.

Earlier-paid example that needs a concrete choice

Suppose Atreides has already revived 2 forces free and 1 for 2 spice, then Recruits is played while Revival remains open. The effective free rate becomes 4 and the ordinary cap 7. Three distinguishable policies are possible in software:

1. Preserve the payment; give 2 additional free revivals because only 2 actual free revivals were used.
2. Preserve the payment; give 1 additional free revival because all 3 prior returns consume the enlarged free allowance.
3. Refund the earlier payment under a retroactive reclassification, with resulting free usage recalculated.

The retrieved primary passages do not explicitly choose among these. These are alternatives to clarify, not recommended house rules. Current freeRevivalRemaining subtracts p.revived, which combines paid and free ordinary returns; simply multiplying its rate would silently select option 2. The stored total cannot reconstruct option 1 or 3 reliably without additional history. Likewise, silently restricting Recruits to the beginning of Revival would remove its printed during-Revival opportunity.

The clean source-supported case is play before any revival, or play after only free revivals with no unresolved declaration. This is a useful fixture boundary, not permission to represent the whole card as complete with a narrowed timing rule.

Proposed software boundary

A pure helper should receive already-resolved facts, without deciding unsettled rules through parameter names:

• Is the card active for this turn?
• What is the current valid free rate after permissions/modifiers?
• Is taking free revival currently prohibited?
• What ordinary cap applies, and is a separate unlimited advantage still valid?
• What usage is being deducted, under an explicitly selected prior-paid policy?

Do not collapse prevention, free rate, ordinary limit, faction exceptions and earlier usage into one number. For example, free rate 0 is not equivalent to losing an unlimited paid allowance. Do not model La La La by permanently changing faction metadata.

Current integration points are forceRevivalLimit, freeRevivalRemaining, forceRevivalQuote, beginRevival, finishRevival, CHOAM/Tleilaxu response settlement, and grantRevival. Existing checks compare totals against hardcoded 3 to decide whether an advantage response is required. With an independent card cap, crossing 3 alone no longer proves that a player is exercising the Tleilaxu unlimited/expanded advantage. A pure quote helper alone cannot correct that response classification.

Pending transaction options also require an explicit policy: finish the already accepted request before allowing Recruits; permit withdrawal and a newly validated request; or allow the card to alter an uncommitted quote. Whichever boundary is chosen, persist the suspended request, actor, physical card ID, phase/turn, previous payment and exact continuation. Never consume Recruits and then reject its effect after mutating someone else's resources. Repeated requests and JSON reconnects must settle once.

Verification and open decisions

This was a bounded source/document audit. No runtime test, helper edit, complete Recruits game, or direct combined-expansion publisher ruling is claimed. Findings were sent to baliset_audit, which owns the separate pure helper and tests.

oxfmt --check docs/RECRUITS_RULES.md validates document formatting only. Later behavior tests should name their interpretation and cover native unlimited factions, canceled versus independent limit sources, settled prevention, grant ordering, prior-free versus prior-paid usage, pending declarations and next-turn expiry. The remaining material decisions are earlier-paid accounting/refunds, late-changing current rates, and pending-transaction timing; direct confirmation would also strengthen the proposed independent-cap precedence and hypothetical unlimited/free 8 combination.