Dune/docs/RULE_DECISIONS.md

Rule decision index

Updated 14 September 2026. This is the authoritative navigation index for existing decisions, not a replacement rulebook or a new ruling. Detailed linked contracts retain their source citations and exact supported boundaries. Runtime follow-ups supersede historical absence claims; passing tests establish software behavior, not publisher authority.

Recorded contracts and implementation boundaries

Topic	Decision to preserve	Detailed authority and evidence
Expansion-faction setup	Selecting Ecaz/Moritani factions does not select their independent three-card variant. Ordinary decks contain 33/35/47 cards; Richese's ten-card cache stays separate. Ecaz allocates six total forces within Imperial Basin sectors 9–11, retaining fourteen reserves. Flexible sector allocation is the literal printed territory constraint; Fremen→Ecaz→Advanced BG order is an implementation inference, while Moritani-last is printed.	Source and profile contract
Ixian Technology on Richese lots	Replacement-card ownership, income and unsold disposition remain unresolved. A saved explicit per-lot decline permits an unchanged offer to proceed and leaves Technology available later. This development continuation does not implement the exchange or settle its custody.	Auction source boundary
Spice Banker battle spending	Secret own-spice commitment is separate from support; only the surviving selected disc gains strength. Core Battle Plan payment rules spend it on death/loss and waive it for a sole traitor-call winner. This payment composition is explicit; upper deferred-income custody remains pending.	Source contract and prototype
Smuggler shipping	Optional free companion is included in the actual total; apply Guild rounding to the reduced priced count. Ordinary Fremen reserves are on planet. The officially permitted owned No-Field plus a separate free force is now prototyped at the unchanged one-marker price. Legacy unstamped ordinary declarations keep their quoted full price.	Ordinary contract, No-Field combination
Sandmaster movement	One optional board spice per distinct entered territory on an explicit legal route; source-only repositioning earns none. Per-movement Hajr reset is a documented grammatical inference. Canceled moves earn nothing; multiple-pile collection remains guarded.	Source and connected prototype
Diplomat defense	With no actual defense, one physical Worthless card in either Battle Plan slot may copy the opponent's canonical base Shield or Snooper. The same native trained disc may protect itself. The public after-reveal/before-traitor choice and mandatory discard after traitor preemption are documented implementation inferences. Lower retreat and modified or multirole defenses remain guarded.	Source and connected prototype
Bureaucrat payments	Once per phase, optionally divert two from an actual third-party payment of at least five; payer cost is unchanged. Bribes trigger at transfer to the recipient's shield, not later collection. Native income is offered after Karama allowance as an explicit outcome-based inference; split contributions, split recipients and remaining payment families need further integration.	Source and connected boundary
Mentat question preview	The physical card says to show the card to the questioner, privately; it stays in hand and does not bind a plan. Ask before posture/faction powers. A uniform target response protects held/absent privacy but awaits approval as an exception to skipping forced confirmations; standard activation stays disabled. Empty hands skip with no fabricated answer.	Source and preview
Leader battle effects	Rihani normal peek and reshuffle precede a separate committed optional draw; ordering is an explicit printed-order inference. Unused excludes actual calls, not mere disclosure. Mentat/Bureaucrat change scores; Sandmaster adds board spice. Multiple piles and Face Dancer composition stay guarded.	Source contract and prototype
Source and readiness	Separate published rules, explicit implementation choices and unfinished interpretations; Advanced/expansion gates stay closed.	Base/Advanced audit, checklist
Setup and Fremen movement	Preserve source-ordered setup and the distinct declared-movement cancellation; do not recreate fixed historical gaps.	Setup contract, Fremen Karama
Guild payment	Rate, transport permission and income are distinct; power owner, shipper, contributors and independent rate-card beneficiary remain distinct.	Rate/cancellation sources, implemented payment routing
Truthtrance	Current facts are boolean disclosures, not promises to preserve resources. Structured Basic and base Advanced active-opportunity shipment promises bind within their documented scope (Advanced excludes Guild and optional modules); prose is not automatically enforced.	Spice facts, card facts, shipment promises, remaining audit
Truthtrance hand categories	Count current physical hand custody by explicitly named primary role; alternate battle slots and faction powers do not reclassify cards. Only an aggregate answer is disclosed.	Hand inventory
Truthtrance recorded knowledge	Questions compare an already recorded BG prediction, active submitted storm dial or actually known native Fremen forecast. Missing knowledge is unknown; only the aggregate answer is published. No future promise or unknown deck peek is created.	Connected predicates and evidence
Nexus lifecycle	Twelve physical cards, phase draw/replacement and alliance forfeiture; native Cunning, absent-faction Secret Ally and Betrayal have separate effects. No blanket Karama immunity.	Common source contract, lifecycle runtime
Nexus faction effects	Preserve physical custody, original faction identity and durable effect receipts; use each printed family instead of borrowing another faction's rules by analogy.	Atreides, Harkonnen, BG, Emperor, Fremen, Guild
Expansion Nexus families	Source audit coverage does not imply every panel is playable; consult later runtime records in the status log.	Ixian Cunning, Ixian replacement, Tleilaxu, CHOAM, Richese, Ecaz, Moritani
CHOAM Secret Ally	Absent-faction Collection trade spends one actual Worthless card and the Nexus for two bank spice. It is separate from native Cunning and Auditor; the battle inspection alternative remains missing.	Prototype contract
Sapho movement	At a clean boundary, first reorders only remaining unstarted turns; completed turns stay completed. Advanced Guild must have finished or be absent. Last retains existing protection after Guild.	Existing source contract, runtime
Leader Skills	Fourteen physical cards, variant setup order, public/hidden assignment, death return, own-leader revival and captured lower-band effects are sourced. Five battle disciplines, Planetologist movement/Special substitution, Suk Graduate rescues and common lifecycle are prototyped; Rihani, lower Mentat/Bureaucrat/Sandmaster, normal Smuggler and normal Diplomat now have connected follow-ups. Remaining bands and combinations stay missing. Known skilled capture identifies the leader through its unique public card.	Source contract, capture inference, runtime, Diplomat, Planetologist, Suk Graduate
Discoveries	Preserve seven sourced Spice Cards and eight physical tokens, private faction peeks and Collection choices. Revealed locations are separate territories; only Jacurutu counts toward stronghold victory. Next-turn free entry, sole-occupant Cistern income and later-turn Ornithopter spending are prototyped; Jacurutu income, Testing Station and Shrine have bounded prototypes; Orgiz and contested/mixed cases remain pending.	Component authority, prototype boundary
Guild Secret Ally	One explicit Guild-priced ordinary shipment; borrowed prices/routes preserve native identity. Free Fremen reinforcement remains a separate choice.	Route contract, verified runtime
Homeworld custody and mobility	Physical home/visitor groups, population thresholds, tariffs and transport permissions retain distinct sources; Homeworld immunity is not universal immunity.	Homeworld rules, benefits, mobility, invasion, Guild transport
Homeworld effects	Keep original payment/revival/placement identities and qualification observations; observations alone do not choose an occupied-benefit owner.	Payments, card economy, Collection, revival deployment, victory reinforcement, replacement, Tupile

Pending interpretations: preserve existing questions

These are unresolved in the cited records. Do not infer an answer from elapsed time, a fixture, a related card or this index. Check subsequent recorded user/source decisions before proceeding; do not send duplicate questions.

Boundary	Still unresolved	Existing record
Ambassador/Terror arrival priority	Both optionally react to the same entry, but no publisher/designer priority was found. The order can change Fremen relocation versus Atomics losses. A user question has been sent: keep the overlap gated pending an official ruling, or use explicitly provisional storm order. No answer is assumed; Baliset remains a separate pre-entry prevention effect.	Reproduction and source boundary
Sapho remaining timing	First versus unspent Advanced Guild priority, partly completed combined turns, cyclic auction duration and remaining battle timing stay guarded. Prior questions remain unanswered.	Source audit, battle review
Mirror Weapon	Whether copied Tooth/Artillery mandatory-discard rules attach to the physical Mirror remains unanswered; arithmetic helpers do not admit the full battle card.	Engine audit
Semuta Drug	Full-hand take-before-discard and the privacy-neutral immediate reaction protocol remain unresolved. Typed discard continuations already exist; they are not activation.	Source update, privacy review
Leader Skills edge cases	Capture/replacement eligibility, Banker escrow custody (user question sent), Smuggler survival settlement, Mentat empty-hand fallback (private historical observations persist after death), Diplomat lower retreat ordering, modified-defense inheritance and remaining simultaneous optional timing need resolution before those cases are enabled. These are recorded source gaps, not answered user rulings.	Material boundaries, Diplomat boundary
Suk Graduate / Atreides	Whether rescued dialed casualties count toward the seven-loss Kwisatz Haderach threshold remains unresolved. The user question has been sent; Advanced Atreides rescue stays guarded.	Source and runtime boundary
Ordinary Guild cancellation	Unaffordable repricing, replacement/retry/decline, consumed opportunity, contributor adjustment and ordering with special shipment-stop. The affordability question was already sent.	Material timing
Base special Karama	Unfunded auction recovery, stopped-shipment settlement and Atreides full-plan commitment order remain provisional. Native full-plan/Voice/Prescience/Truthtrance/Ghola interactions now have genuine-setup focused evidence, but the source audit does not settle the special offer/deadline or target-first interpretation.	Explicit base interpretations, full-plan interaction audit
Guild Secret Ally/Homeworlds	Whether the reserve-return grant overrides the Homeworld return restriction. The question was already sent; that route stays guarded.	Homeworld return, checkpoint
Occupied Homeworlds	Entitlement/expiry after departure, replacement or contest; unique powers and shared income. The first-occupier/current-occupier question was already sent.	Occupation questions, lifecycle audit
Nexus responses and composition	Betrayal private-response timing, partial revival/payment choices, Emperor fewer-than-five, fresh advisor/storm cases, Duke restoration and remaining faction-specific combinations.	Common boundaries and the individual faction source/runtime documents above
Orgiz collection	User question pending: take one spice per positive board pile collected, or leave the effect pending? The publisher does not clarify stacked Spice Blows. The draft quote remains opt-in and is not enabled by the engine. Contested Cistern income also remains outside the ordinary sole-occupant prototype.	Discovery interpretations
Jacurutu physical dial	The user question asks whether the losing player should choose the physical normal/elite forces represented by its dial. When legal Advanced allocations produce different rewards, income remains explicitly unpaid; numeric wheel subtraction is not a ruling.	Discovery interpretations
Testing Station contest/timing	Only sole non-advisor occupation is prototyped. Two-occupant priority/stacking remains unresolved; opening after the ordinary storm-card window is an explicit source-timing inference. Weather Control is excluded by the printed text.	Discovery interpretations
CHOAM Secret Ally battle timing	The printed after-victory inspection is optional and the Nexus identity stays secret. No existing postbattle choice covers every winner: a pause only for a holder leaks ownership, precommitment removes the after-win choice, and a universal window makes nonholders pass. The product-exception question has been sent; no timing policy is implemented pending the answer. Ordinary Karama cancellation is also not established by the retrieved sources.	After-victory inspection audit
Emperor Secret Ally purchase timing	The purchase choice follows winning the bid. A holder-only payment pause exposes concealed card eligibility, while per-bid preauthorization moves the choice earlier. The user has been asked whether to permit a uniform winner payment confirmation, including sole spice payments, or retain the purchase gate. No answer is assumed; the independent three-force revival grant can proceed.	Purchase source contract
Discovery prototype inferences	Free entry uses storm order and ordinary source-storm restrictions; these are general-rule inferences. Great Maker currently follows ordinary first-turn worm skipping and Sandtrout suppression; an exhausted token type creates no replacement token. These preserve current source interpretation and physical inventory but are not separately confirmed rulings or complete combined-module certification.	Interpretations for refinement
Other Homeworld combinations	Population/force splitting, removal custody, replacement shortages, income accounting and placement ordering remain local to their detailed contracts.	Homeworld rules, occupation and the effect documents above

When a decision changes, record the exact source or user ruling in its detailed feature document, update affected implementation guidance/tests, and adjust this index and current status. Retain historical evidence without presenting a superseded proposal as current behavior.