Ruling — Marrakesh

← Marrakesh

You asked

How should we prepare everything before the first turn?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Marrakeshbg-342810-en-1e

To prepare for the first turn, follow these steps:

1. Place the game board in the center of the playing area.[1]

2. Put the cube tower base next to the game board and insert the cube tower into its provided slot.[1]

3. Keep the "100/200" scoring tiles next to the scoring track.[1]

4. Sort the scrolls by their backs, mix each type separately, and stack them in 3 equal-sized facedown stacks on the corresponding academy on the game board, then reveal the top scroll of each stack.[1]

5. Mix the exchange offices facedown, choose three randomly, and stack them on the exchange office space, revealing the top exchange office.[1] Return any remaining exchange offices to the game box.[1]

6. Mix the luxury goods facedown and deal them to the 5 souk shops on the game board in 5 stacks of equal size, then reveal the top luxury good of each stack.[1]

7. Place all staircase tiles in the cloth bag, mix well, and draw one after the other with a random side up to place on a bonus space between the palace and mosque staircase, starting from the bottom left space.[2] Do not cover the dinar/points spaces directly next to staircases, the two topmost spaces ("any 2 keshis of identical color" and "any 1 keshi"), or the lowermost space ("1 step on the river track").[2] Return leftover tiles to the game box.[2]

8. Place the Sultan (white) and Imam (black) pawns on their respective starting spaces of the palace and mosque staircase.[2]

9. Place the fountain tile on the fountain between the palace and mosque.[2]

10. Sort river tiles by season icons and put them separately in a cloth bag, one season after the other; randomly draw 1 tile per season and place the 3 drawn tiles next to the game board with any side up.[3] Place the river tile for the first season on the right end of the river track and return remaining river tiles to the box.[3]

11. Put city gates in a cloth bag, mix well, and randomly draw 8 city gates for each workshop space on the game board to place there.[3]

12. Sort resources (water, dates, dinars) by type and keshis by color, keeping them next to the game board as a common supply.[3]

13. Put 8 keshis of each color (except yellow, purple, orange, and brown) in a cloth bag; each player draws 2 keshis randomly (or 3 in a 2-player game), placing them on the oases track spaces showing a keshi.[3]

14. Each player places their supply board above their player board, with their personal resource supply on the left and space for claimed oases to the right.[3]

15. Each player places their audience disc on the main square of their player board in any orientation, pink side up.[3]

16. Mix provision tiles facedown and deal 3 to each player; players place one faceup (to be active for the first season) and keep two facedown above their supply board.[3]

17. Each player takes 1 water, 1 dinar, 1 date, and 1 keshi of all 12 colors, keeping keshis hidden behind their screen and resources visible on their supply board.[3]

18. Mix all oases facedown; each player draws 6 and places them facedown on the designated Sahara spaces on their player board without looking.[1]

19. Each player takes a player board, 6 player pawns, 1 scoring marker, 1 screen, and 1 supply board plus 1 audience disc in their chosen color.[1]

20. Each player's scoring marker starts on space 10 of the scoring track.[1]

21. Deploy 3 pawns on the game board: the imam's student on the mosque stairway starting space, the fisherman on the river track starting space, and the sultan's courtier on the palace stairway starting space; keep the remaining 3 player assistants next to the player board.[1]

22. Choose a start player at random and give them the season tracker and the round tracker (camel).[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Marrakesh — Rulebook · p.4 · General Components · Player components

[2] RULEBOOK Marrakesh — Rulebook · p.16 · GAME COMPONENTS: · Changes in SETUP : · Changes in GAME PLAY : · GAME COMPONENTS

[3] RULEBOOK Marrakesh — Rulebook · p.5 · Player components

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 195 ms · ask 16535 ms · total 41865 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 25126 ms · generation 16739 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 14, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Discard the exchange offi ce tile from the game board. Reveal the next exchange offi ce, which will be the active offi ce for the next season. Place the river tile for the next season on the end of the river track. Again, each player takes 1 keshi of each color (12 in total) from the common supply a", "headingPath": "Preparing the 2nd and 3rd season: · END OF THE GAME AND FINAL SCORING · 1) Completely fi lled sectors: · 2) Oasis tiles:", "sharpsignalDocId": 452}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "1 step forward on the black mosque staircase 1 step forward on the white palace staircase 1 step forward on the river track (+ more steps by spending water if desired) 1 date from the common supply *If the number of spectators allows to take more than one goods keshi they must all be of the same col", "headingPath": "Summary of bonuses on the main square:", "sharpsignalDocId": 452}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Mix the additional exchange offi ces and those of the base game together. There is no further change in setup or game play. B Hint: If all players agree, they may use these new exchange offi ces only. The tile shown on the right off ers 1 additional bonus besides 1 ressource: 1 date + 1 step on the ", "headingPath": "Changes in SETUP : · OR", "sharpsignalDocId": 452}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Just before their fi rst purchase during each round, the player may pay 1 dinar to exchange the top scrolls of all three stacks of one color. They put each top tile at the bottom of the stack and reveal the new top tile. The player must acquire at least 1 of these new scrolls. Exactly when a scroll ", "headingPath": "Madrasa", "sharpsignalDocId": 452}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Each round consists of the following 4 phases, which are played in sequence: U Select keshis & deploy assistants U Claim keshis & deploy them U Use your assistants U River bonus & end of the round The player holding the round counter is the start player during the complete round. Simultaneously, all", "headingPath": "ROUND SEQUENCE · U Select keshis & deploy assistants · Claim keshis & deploy them", "sharpsignalDocId": 452}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The scrolls have unique abilities or bonuses, explained below. For quick reference look for the number of the tile in the bottom left corner. Any eff ects that are essentially identical and diff er only in minor details are merged in this summary. You take the depicted keshi from the common supply a", "headingPath": "SCROLLS · 01-12 u · 13-16 v · 19 u · 20 u · 21 u · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 452}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "4 Audience discs (reverse side) 12 Desert towns 8 Covering tiles (2 per player) Each player takes 2 covering tiles. They place one tile (the smaller one) on the start oasis . This oasis and its associated keshi spaces are not available during this game. They place the other covering tile (the larger", "headingPath": "GAME COMPONENTS · Changes in SETUP :", "sharpsignalDocId": 452}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "The following is a general outline of how to play the game. Later on, you may refer to it to look up the most important rules and to fi nd the corresponding rules pages. Marrakesh is played over 3 seasons with 4 rounds each: The player holding the round counter (camel) is the start player during the", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME · Select keshis & deploy assistants (p. 7) · U Claim keshis & deploy them (p. 7) · U Use your assistants (p. 8)", "sharpsignalDocId": 452}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "General Components · Player components", "sharpsignalDocId": 452}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME COMPONENTS: · Changes in SETUP : · Changes in GAME PLAY : · GAME COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 452}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player components", "sharpsignalDocId": 452}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 452 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 452 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)
debug row retained until: Nov 7, 2026 05:08

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 Marrakesh — Rulebook (corpus doc 452)	Preparing the 2nd and 3rd season: · END OF THE GAME AND FINAL SCORING · 1) Completely fi lled sectors: · 2) Oasis tiles:	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 Marrakesh — Rulebook (corpus doc 452)	Summary of bonuses on the main square:	p.9	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 Marrakesh — Rulebook (corpus doc 452)	Changes in SETUP : · OR	p.16	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 Marrakesh — Rulebook (corpus doc 452)	Madrasa	p.11	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 Marrakesh — Rulebook (corpus doc 452)	ROUND SEQUENCE · U Select keshis & deploy assistants · Claim keshis & deploy them	p.7	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 Marrakesh — Rulebook (corpus doc 452)	SCROLLS · 01-12 u · 13-16 v · 19 u · 20 u · 21 u · …	p.22	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 Marrakesh — Rulebook (corpus doc 452)	GAME COMPONENTS · Changes in SETUP :	p.17	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 Marrakesh — Rulebook (corpus doc 452)	PLAYING THE GAME · Select keshis & deploy assistants (p. 7) · U Claim keshis & deploy them (p. 7) · U Use your assistants (p. 8)	p.6	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
[1]	RULEBOOK Marrakesh — Rulebook (corpus doc 452)	General Components · Player components	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Marrakesh — Rulebook (corpus doc 452)	GAME COMPONENTS: · Changes in SETUP : · Changes in GAME PLAY : · GAME COMPONENTS	p.16	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Marrakesh — Rulebook (corpus doc 452)	Player components	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 195 ms · first delta 8327 ms · total 41865 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 25126 ms · retrieval 195 ms · ask 16535 ms · gateway work 16739 ms · total 41865 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3635
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 934
tok/sec: 111.5 tok/sec — 934 output tokens in 8.375 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 17s 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: 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: 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 the first turn

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 377), 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.