Ruling — Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan

← Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan

You asked

What does each player take, and what goes in the middle, before we begin?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khanbg-283948-en-1e

I looked through Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook · p.14 · The First Player · Example:

Whenever a player uses the Travel action, the first player for the next round can change. If you use a Travel action space that is higher than or equal to any previously-used Travel action spaces, you become the first player for the next round. If you are the new first player, take the hourglass to

RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook · p.15 · End of Game · Final Scoring · Tiebreakers · 3 Players · 2 Players · Start of a New Round

The game ends after 5 rounds have been completed. The number of offer tiles remaining shows how many rounds are left. The final round of the game will have the last offer tiles on the board. During final scoring, you score points for the following: For each improved guild seal shown on your goal car

RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook · p.5 · Player Setup · About The Rules · Introduction · A Game Turn

for ted cts If you are already familiar with The Voyages of Marco Polo , then you can skip some sections of this rulebook, which are the same as the corresponding rules in the original game. Be sure to read any rules marked with the gold seal ; the rules and actions described in these sections are e

RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook · p.4 · Player Setup

1 Choose a color. Take the player board of that color and place it in front of you. 3 Take the 11 trading posts in your color and place 1 on each space with a trading post in the top-left corner of your board. 4 Draw 1 starting contract and place it faceup on one of the two active contract spaces on

RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook · p.6 · Actions · How is an action carried out? · 1. Books · Sequence: · 2. Choose 1 of the available offers.

Keep the following in mind when resolving actions: You use only your own dice, not other players' dice. You must use as many dice as are shown on the action space you want to use. You can place your dice on either unoccupied spaces or occupied blue spaces, not occupied brown spaces. In order to use

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome

ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below

warm abstain

this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)

corpus profile

live

answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)

gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70

timings

search 346 ms · ask 5172 ms · total 5530 ms

single-flight (PR-5)

queued 0 ms · generation 5530 ms

retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read

[{"page": 14, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Whenever a player uses the Travel action, the first player for the next round can change. If you use a Travel action space that is higher than or equal to any previously-used Travel action spaces, you become the first player for the next round. If you are the new first player, take the hourglass to ", "headingPath": "The First Player · Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "The game ends after 5 rounds have been completed. The number of offer tiles remaining shows how many rounds are left. The final round of the game will have the last offer tiles on the board. During final scoring, you score points for the following: For each improved guild seal shown on your goal car", "headingPath": "End of Game · Final Scoring · Tiebreakers · 3 Players · 2 Players · Start of a New Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "for ted cts If you are already familiar with The Voyages of Marco Polo , then you can skip some sections of this rulebook, which are the same as the corresponding rules in the original game. Be sure to read any rules marked with the gold seal ; the rules and actions described in these sections are e", "headingPath": "Player Setup · About The Rules · Introduction · A Game Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "1 Choose a color. Take the player board of that color and place it in front of you. 3 Take the 11 trading posts in your color and place 1 on each space with a trading post in the top-left corner of your board. 4 Draw 1 starting contract and place it faceup on one of the two active contract spaces on", "headingPath": "Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Keep the following in mind when resolving actions: You use only your own dice, not other players' dice. You must use as many dice as are shown on the action space you want to use. You can place your dice on either unoccupied spaces or occupied blue spaces, not occupied brown spaces. In order to use ", "headingPath": "Actions · How is an action carried out? · 1. Books · Sequence: · 2. Choose 1 of the available offers.", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Blue action spaces can be occupied by multiple players and multiple dice. Brown action spaces can be occupied only by 1 player and 1 die each round. If you want to use an occupied blue action space, you must pay to do so . You must pay a number of coins equal to the die value of the lowest-value die", "headingPath": "Using an occupied action space · Black Dice · Compensation for Low Die Rolls · Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "1 Game board 1 First player marker (hourglass) 4 Player boards 7 City bonus markers 7 Character tiles 10 Outpost bonus tiles 16 Guild seals 18 Offer tiles 49 Contracts (42 red and 7 blue) 68 Coins (40×1, 18×5, 10×10) 4 50/100 point cards 14 Goal cards 25 City cards 18 Gold bars (14 small and 4 large", "headingPath": "Contents · 16 guild", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "(see page 15 for 2-3 player setup rules) Goal card front Offer tile 3 Place the coins (68 coins in denominations of 1, 5, and 10) next to the board to form a supply. Coins are not component-limited; use a substitute if they run out. 5 Randomly place 1 city bonus marker on each of the 6 cities with c", "headingPath": "16 guild", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}]

citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show

[]

boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)

no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 372 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true

base rulebook doc 372 boosted

answered-before recall

no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough

similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)

debug row retained until

Nov 6, 2026 18:21

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. How much wider that pool was is set gateway-side and is NOT REPORTED for this ruling, and neither are the answerer's final rows — so rulesage has nothing of its own to show beside these.

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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	The First Player · Example:	p.14	0.032787 (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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	End of Game · Final Scoring · Tiebreakers · 3 Players · 2 Players · Start of a New Round	p.15	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
#3	RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	Player Setup · About The Rules · Introduction · A Game Turn	p.5	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
#4	RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	Player Setup	p.4	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
#5	RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	Actions · How is an action carried out? · 1. Books · Sequence: · 2. Choose 1 of the available offers.	p.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))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	Using an occupied action space · Black Dice · Compensation for Low Die Rolls · Example:	p.14	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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	Contents · 16 guild	p.2	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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	16 guild	p.3	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.

the passages the answerer read: NOT RECORDED for this ruling. Any of three things leaves this empty, and they are all different from the answerer having had nothing to read: this ask may never have reached a gateway at all; a multi-book ask keeps each book's own context on that book's own page rather than here; or the gateway build that answered may simply not report it. What this NEVER means is that the answerer read nothing — an answer was composed from passages either way, and their absence here is a gap in what we were told, not in what it read.

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 346 ms · first delta 5410 ms · total 5530 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 346 ms · ask 5172 ms · gateway work 5530 ms · total 5530 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3842
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 9
tok/sec: 142.9 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.063 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 53s ago)
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: ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
abstain rationale: I don't have enough information.
the answerer's own words, verbatim — hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: BEFORE_FIRST_PLAY — "before the first turn" / "before we begin"
matched words (in the normalized question): before we begin

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 302), 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.