Ruling — 1846: The Race for the Midwest

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: 1846: The Race for the Midwestbg-17405-en-1e

1. Shuffle as many player cards as the number of players and draw to determine seating order.[1]

2. Give the first player the Priority Deal card.[1]

3. Randomly select and then reveal which companies and corporations are removed.[2]

4. When removing a corporation, return its mat, stock certificates, and tokens to the box, after placing one token face down in its Home City (the city circle whose colored symbol matches its tokens).[2]

5. Return 11, 9, or 6 $500s to the box, based on the number of players, to make a bank of the correct size from $12,000.[1]

6. Give each player $400 from the bank.[1]

7. Return extra Private Companies and, with fewer than 5 players, extra player cards and corporations to the box.[1]

8. Put the Phase and Round markers and trains on the board as shown on the next page (removing trains as indicated on the board when playing with fewer than five players).[1]

9. Place the track tiles, corporate mats, stocks, tokens, and two Independent Railroads' (yellow) trains nearby for later use.[1]

10. Shuffle the Private Company and player cards in play together to prepare the Private Company Distribution.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook · p.2 · 2. SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook · p.3 · 2. SETUP

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 90 ms · ask 6253 ms · total 6344 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6344 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "2.1 Seating: Shuffle as many player cards as the number of players and draw for seating order. Give the first player the Priority Deal card. 2.2 Prepare the Bank: Return 11, 9, or 6 $500s to the box, based on the number of players, to make a bank of the correct size (see chart) from $12,000. Give ea", "headingPath": "2. SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 632}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "1 1846 © 2021 GMT Games, LLC 1. Introduction ........................... 2 2. Setup ................................. 2 3. Private Co. Distribution ................. 4 4. Sequence of Play ....................... 4 5. Stock Round ........................... 5 6 Operating Rounds. . . . . . . . . . . .", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 632}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "10.1 The game ends after finishing the round sequence (Stock Round plus two Operating Rounds) in which the bank ran out of money. Add the $500s removed during setup to the bank so it can continue to make payments. TIP: When it is obvious that the bank will run out of money, players may find it faste", "headingPath": "10. GAME END / WINNING · 11. ETIQUETTE · 12. Two Player Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 632}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.043935, "snippet": "5.31 After possibly selling stock, a player may buy one stock certificate, subject to the limits below, either: a share from the Stock Market, or a share from a corporation's treasury, or an available President certificate, launching that corporation. 5.32 Buying from the Stock Market: To buy a shar", "headingPath": "5.3 BUYING STOCK", "sharpsignalDocId": 632}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Starting with the player to the right of the Priority Deal player (2.1) and proceeding counter-clockwise (i.e., in reverse player order), each player in turn draws from the deck of shuffled player and Private Companies as many cards as the number of players plus two, selects one card face down, shuf", "headingPath": "3.2 DISTRIBUTION PROCEDURE · 4. SEQUENCE OF PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 632}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "The game phase advances once a train belonging to the next phase is purchased. The new phase's effects take place immediately and persist until altered by a later game phase. NOTE: In some '18xx' games, corporations may not purchase trains from each other or purchase Private Companies from players u", "headingPath": "9. ADVANCING THE GAME PHASE · Phase I · Phase II · Phase III · Phase IV", "sharpsignalDocId": 632}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Plan ahead. Sometimes a player's decisions will affect your own, but often they won't. Planning your corporations' next tile lays, routes, and train purchases can dramatically speed the game. Similarly, in Stock Rounds, a given player can purchase only one certificate per turn. Picking a second choi", "headingPath": "Tips for Faster Play · Credits", "sharpsignalDocId": 632}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Railroad track is laid by placing tiles on the map, either in empty tan hexes or by upgrading preprinted or previously laid tiles. 6.41 Only yellow tiles can be laid in empty hexes. 6.42 Upgrades: Replacing a tile, even a yellow preprinted one, with another tile is an upgrade. Tiles have four colors", "headingPath": "6.4 LAYING TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 632}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 632}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 632}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 632 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 632 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)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.89229 of 947 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 12, 2026 13:44

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. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

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 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	2. SETUP	p.2	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)		p.1	0.047131 (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 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	10. GAME END / WINNING · 11. ETIQUETTE · 12. Two Player Variant	p.13	0.045228 (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 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	5.3 BUYING STOCK	p.5	0.043935 (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 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	3.2 DISTRIBUTION PROCEDURE · 4. SEQUENCE OF PLAY	p.4	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
#6	RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	9. ADVANCING THE GAME PHASE · Phase I · Phase II · Phase III · Phase IV	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
#7	RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	Tips for Faster Play · Credits	p.13	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
#8	RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	6.4 LAYING TILES	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.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 69 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	2. SETUP	p.3	#10	0.028992 (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))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)		p.1	#2	0.047131 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	10. GAME END / WINNING · 11. ETIQUETTE · 12. Two Player Variant	p.13	#3	0.045228 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	Detailed Example of Play · Private Company Distribution	p.14	#14	0.027032 (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))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	GLOSSARY	p.22	#11	0.02886 (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))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	9. ADVANCING THE GAME PHASE · Phase I · Phase II · Phase III · Phase IV	p.11	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	Experienced 18xx players: Points to Remember · Setup (only with 3-4 players) · Private Company Distribution (in reverse player order) · Stock Rounds · Operations · Issuing and Redeeming Shares	p.19	#12	0.028577 (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))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	2. SETUP	p.2	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	2. SETUP	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK 1846: The Race for the Midwest — Rulebook (corpus doc 632)	2. SETUP	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 90 ms · first delta 4229 ms · total 6344 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 90 ms · ask 6253 ms · gateway work 6344 ms · total 6344 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3478
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 285
tok/sec: 139.1 tok/sec — 285 output tokens in 2.049 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 24s 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: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 565), 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.