Dune/docs/PLANETOLOGIST_RULES.md

Planetologist rule contract

Updated 24 October 2026. This note audits the movement and battle effects of the Planetologist Leader Skill against its physical card, the common Leader Skills rules, the GF9 base battle rules and designer Jack Reda's walkthrough. The connected prototype is described below; other Leader Skill effects remain separate work.

Printed effect and legal card role

The physical Planetologist card instructs its owner to reveal one green Special card, other than a Cheap Hero, as part of the Battle Plan “in place of a weapon.” It adds 2 to that skilled leader disc and says to discard the Special after the battle. The card therefore creates a distinct legal role for the physical Special card:

• it occupies the Battle Plan's weapon slot;
• it is revealed as a Special used in place of a weapon, rather than converted into a Weapon Treachery Card;
• it supplies no projectile, poison, lasgun or other attack and does not satisfy a skill or rule that requires an actual named Weapon type;
• its printed utility effect is not activated; and
• the exact physical card is committed to that plan and cannot also be spent for its ordinary effect, Karama, Truthtrance or another pending use.

The designer gives Hajr and Thumper as examples, then specifically describes using Family Atomics for +2 without blowing the Shield Wall. This confirms that Planetologist grants an alternate battle use despite the Special card's ordinary phase or trigger. Jack Reda walkthrough, 10:36–11:05

The substitution is available only when the assigned Planetologist leader is the leader actually used in the Battle Plan. Moving the skilled leader and skill card behind the shield as a bluff, then selecting another leader, turns off both skill bands. The other leader cannot place a green Special in the weapon slot through Planetologist. GF9 CHOAM & Richese rulebook, p. 9

Current base-deck inventory

The current 33-card base deck contains these eligible printed green Special cards:

Printed card	Physical copies	Current identities
Family Atomics	1	effect: atomics
Weather Control	1	effect: weather
Hajr	1	effect: hajr
Tleilaxu Ghola	1	effect: ghola
Harvester	1	effect: harvester
Karama	2	effect: karama
Truthtrance	2	effect: truthtrance

All nine physical copies may take the Planetologist weapon-slot role. Their ordinary timing does not need to be legal because that printed effect is not being played. A pending or already committed physical card remains unavailable because Planetologist does not create a second copy.

Cheap Hero and Cheap Heroine are printed green Special components but are excluded. “Cheap Hero” is the rules' generic component class for both named copies; each instead occupies the leader position with strength zero. The base FAQ also says a Cheap Hero cannot substitute for a weapon or defense. GF9 base rulebook and Q&A, pp. 10, 23

For today's baseDeck(), kind === 'special' happens to select the nine eligible non-Hero copies. That coincidence is not the printed rule. Eligibility should be bound to a canonical printed-green-Special classification or explicit physical identities, because the code's generic special kind is also used by later expansion modules. The designer's Thumper example proves that expansion cards can qualify, but it does not make every future card encoded as special green or eligible.

Survival and scoring

The common Leader Skills rule says a skill applies in the current battle unless its assigned leader is killed in that battle. Planetologist adds 2 to the leader disc, so the receipt is conditional on that exact leader surviving weapon, traitor and explosion resolution. If the leader dies, neither its printed strength nor the Planetologist +2 contributes to the battle total. GF9 CHOAM & Richese rulebook, p. 9

A captured skilled leader follows the expansion's general Harkonnen Q&A: the captor has only the lower battle band and only while actually using that captured leader. A surviving captured Planetologist may therefore use the same green-Special substitution and +2; the original faction has no normal movement band while the leader and skill are captured.

Mandatory discard

The Special card's own final instruction is unconditional once it is revealed through this substitution: discard it after the battle. This is more specific than the base rule allowing an ordinary winner to keep cards played in its plan. The physical outcome is:

Battle outcome	Planetologist Special disposition
Ordinary win	Discard; the winner has no retention choice for this card.
Ordinary loss	Discard under both the base loser rule and the skill card.
Opponent reveals the Planetologist leader as a traitor	Discard with the traitored player's played cards; the leader dies and supplies no +2.
Both leaders are traitors	Discard with the played cards; the Planetologist leader dies and supplies no +2.
Lasgun–shield explosion	Discard after the battle; a killed Planetologist supplies no +2.
Planetologist owner reveals the opposing leader as a traitor	Discard under Planetologist's later, card-specific instruction even though the base traitor winner ordinarily loses nothing.

The last row is a rules-specificity inference. No located publisher Q&A asks about Planetologist versus a successful traitor call. The physical Leader Skill plainly says to discard after the battle and prints no winner or traitor exception, so retaining it would require adding an exception absent from the later card. The GF9 November 2020 FAQ confirms the general winner-retention rule, while the Planetologist card supplies the narrower override.

“Unused bluff” needs a physical distinction. A green Special actually revealed in the weapon slot through Planetologist has been used in that alternate role and is discarded even when +2 cannot affect the result or the winner is decided by a traitor. A Special merely carried behind the shield but omitted from the Battle Plan remains in hand; no rule reveals or discards it. A plan using a different leader cannot legally commit the Special in Planetologist's role.

Persistent evidence

The source archive at /home/quintine/.local/share/dune/sources contains:

• leader-skills-tabletopfinder-all-upscaled.png, on which the complete Planetologist face is readable;
• leader-skills-designer-video-auto-transcript.txt, with the Planetologist explanation at transcript seconds 594–666;
• choam-richese-rulebook-en.pdf and its layout-preserving text extraction; and
• dune-rulebook-gf9-mirror.pdf and its extraction, preserving the common battle disposition and traitor rules.

The designer's official expansion page links the GF9 rulebook. The full local source hashes and retrieval URLs are recorded in leader-skills-source-provenance.txt.

Implementation boundary

A focused implementation can expose the nine base physical copies as weapon slot choices only for the selected, concealed Planetologist leader. It should record the selected physical identity and alternate role in the sealed plan, apply +2 only after confirming that leader survives, suppress the card's native effect, and force exactly one discard after every revealed outcome. Rejected or canceled plan changes must release the reservation without discarding the card.

Expansion eligibility should be added from each component's printed category, not inferred from the shared TypeScript special bucket. The traitor-winner discard row should remain documented as the explicit later-card reading because the sources contain no direct Q&A for that collision.

Normal movement and supported prototype

The first band gives a choice for one movement: add one to normal range with a maximum of three, or gather physical forces from exactly two different territories to one shared destination using each group's ordinary range. These alternatives do not stack. Moving multiple selected sectors of the same territory remains one origin. Both groups retain normal storm, path, occupancy and force-selection rules; the combined move spends one movement. Hajr can provide another normal movement. See the physical-card contract and the designer's example.

Fremen's native range and Planetologist are independent. With the range alternative, a distance-two move needs only ordinary range one plus Planetologist. Distance three without city ornithopters uses the Fremen advantage and opens its real Karama response. Cancellation leaves forces and the movement opportunity in place; the replacement may still use Planetologist. A gather using Fremen range two also retains that response, with both origins saved and revalidated before continuation. This applies the existing cancellation contract, not a new phase-wide restriction or an automatic shortened destination.

Mixed advisor and fighter gather — 18 October 2026

The earlier November FAQ and base rules review supplies the original determined-destination stance. The authorized local revision UNOFFICIAL_Revised_Dune_Rulebook_v.2.3_web.pdf, physical28 / logical26, likewise requires one BG stance per territory, matching existing BG forces, and permits moved advisors to flip in an otherwise enemy-held territory. Physical17 / logical15 permits Karama against one token-group flip; physical16 / logical14 permits a legal modified action after cancellation. The current publisher FAQ URL redirects rather than returning that PDF; no fresh web summary substitutes for the authorized local text.

Neither examined passage specifies an arrival order for a simultaneous mixed Planetologist gather. Under the standing choose-recommended instruction, the prototype adopts an explicit common-fighter, precommit flip policy:

• With no existing BG group and another faction present, mixed origins require a declared fighter arrival. Before either group moves, open one original native advisor-flip response. This grants no chosen order that turns incoming fighters into advisors.
• Allowing revalidates the living original trainer, both groups, ordinary ranges and destination, then moves them together as fighters for one movement. Source positions and usage remain unchanged while the response waits.
• Canceling spends the original counter, leaves both groups and their postures untouched and spends no movement or shipment. A turn/movement stamp prevents repeating the canceled flip for the same opportunity. A legal replacement without that flip remains available; this is not a phase-wide movement ban.
• Fresh accompanying advisors still cannot become fighters that turn. Empty destinations and an existing BG destination group retain their original compulsory common stance. Uniform origins and already-opened ordinary flip windows keep their existing timing.

The 24 October resident follow-up retains that final resident stance but adds one precommit matching counter per incoming origin that changes type. Two changing origins require two responses. Partial allowance leaves both origins untouched; prevention stops the whole gather and shares the prevented origin packet's normal movement denial. The original living trainer, complete movement and approved receipt queue stay bound privately until the atomic movement can resume once. The earlier enemy-only/empty policy and already-recorded one-shot responses remain separate.

This is visibly provisional product composition, not a retrieved combined FAQ or a separately answered numerical ruling. The shared quote drives the engine, human gather control and legal bot candidates. The exact original movement is carried by the native response; no counters or private cards are duplicated. Original normal-lobby setup, paid Carthag shipment and Imperial Basin accompaniment produce a genuine source-bound regression position.

The runtime now follows the shared native skill profiles, including per-origin Ixian cyborg range and its independent cancellation window. Canonical Base and Ix green components remain exact physical matches. The bounded native Richese continuation adds printed Richese Special/Special - Movement components, not the broadly encoded Stone/Mirror weapons or Portable Snooper defense. Actual Box and Residual Poison substitution proves native effect/fee suppression and single disposal, including a zero-marker battle. Other optional modules, mixed No-Field movement/ battle combinations and Discovery/flight interactions retain their own boundaries.

The movement control builds ordinary authoritative actions with an explicit range or gather choice. Bots use the same range helper and submit physical source/elite counts. Saved Fremen continuations bind the selected skill leader, choice and exact two-origin list; stale custody or receipts reject before spending a response card. The weapon selector exposes eligible Specials only for the selected skilled leader and explains +2 and mandatory discard. Bot candidates use that same eligibility and pair validation. This is a connected prototype with partial combination coverage, not complete Leader Skills compliance or a publication gate.

Changed-path evidence — 18 October 2026

Related20-file191/191 and types/lint/build pass. Original controllers and three source-bound regressions cover common-fighter allowance before either source moves, one-Karama whole-gather cancellation, a blocked immediate retry, a legal fighter-only replacement and a fresh accompanying-advisor rejection. The actual normal lobby/shipments/turns are not fabricated; one original Karama is conserved from its deck and labelled, not called a natural purchase.

Actual390px GameTable source counts, provisional notice, native Allow/Cancel, disabled retry/reason, ordinary replacement and fresh lock render and execute against real engine actions in isolated memory, with no errors/root overflow. Owned routes/memory are removed, with no stored room/DB change or dev restart. Four legal bot-policy programmes include three mixed gathers into empty destinations; they do not exercise the new contested response or certify calibrated strategy. Compiler/lint and checkpoint evidence are recorded in current status and runtime scope. No full-mode, combination, deployed or deferred assurance claim follows.

Verification evidence, 13 September 2026

The final focused union passes 84 cases, including the 24-case Planetologist union and existing skills, Fremen cancellation and battle quote regressions. Independent movement and battle review closed after the stale already-dead disc reproducer was fixed. First-choice tests prove all four bot profiles actually use both alternatives in suitable fixtures. Two source-bound full-game samples finish with zero rejected actions and six saved restorations each; Basic executes both movement choices, Advanced executes boosted range. These do not establish full combination acceptance or calibrated difficulty ordering.

The browser journey verifies genuine setup, range availability, physical gather, private refresh and the weapon selector's Special role. A separately staged battle in that new QA room verifies traitor-loss cleanup, one Special discard, skill death return and the unchanged Shield Wall. The checkpoint record separates those fixtures from the complete-game samples. Required broad check results, source fingerprints and saved-game comparisons are retained privately outside the checkout and reported in the verified commit.