RuleSage cited table rulings
← Hansa Teutonica

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Hansa Teutonicabg-43015-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:
1. Choose a game board.[1][2]
2. Place the chosen game board in the middle of the playing area.[1]
3. Take the 3 start bonus markers (gold) and randomly place one on each of the 3 Taverns so that the small arrow on the front of the markers clearly points to the assigned trade route.[1][2]
4. Place 3 merchants on the round spaces for the Book of Knowledge ability and 15 traders on the square spaces for the other 4 abilities on your writing desk, leaving the white-shaded, left-most spaces of each ability empty.[1]
5. Shuffle the remaining bonus markers and place them facedown next to the game board as a supply.[1]
6. Place the black wooden cube on field 0 of the Completed Cities track.[1][2]
7. Everyone chooses a color and takes the corresponding writing desk and tradesmen (1 Writing Desk, 27 Traders/wooden cubes, and 4 Merchants/wooden discs).[1]
8. Place 1 of your traders on the 0 space of the Prestige Points track.[1]
9. Determine a start player.[1]
10. Each player distributes their remaining tradesmen as follows:
* First, everyone places their single remaining merchant in their personal supply.[1]
* Then in clockwise order, the start player takes 5 traders and places them in their personal supply, and each successive player does the same but takes 1 more than the player before them (the second player takes 6 traders, the third takes 7 traders, etc.).[1]
* Place any remaining traders in the general stock where they are easily available.[1]
If playing with additional materials:
* For Mission Cards: Shuffle the 9 Mission cards and deal each player 1 card facedown; keep this card secret until the end of the game.[3]
* For Emperor's Favour: Mix the Emperor's Favour tiles together facedown, then randomly select a number of tiles equal to the player number and place them faceup next to the game board.[3]
[1] RULEBOOK Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook · p.3 · Game Setup
[2] RULEBOOK Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook · p.14 · Game Setup · A) Income · B) Place 1 tradesman · C) Displace 1 of your opponents' tradesmen and replace it with 1 of your own · E) Create 1 trade route · 1) Score Prestige Points
[3] RULEBOOK Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook · p.10 · Additional Material for The Hanseatic League Game Board for Experienced Merchants · Mission Cards · Emperor's Favour
🔧 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 79 ms · ask 5256 ms · total 5337 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 5337 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 3, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Take the game board of your choice and place it in the middle of the playing area. (For your first game we recommend using The Hanseatic League .) Take the 3 start bonus markers (gold) and randomly place one on each of the 3 Taverns so that the small arrow on the front of the markers clearly points ", "headingPath": "Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 313}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Choose a game board. Take the 3 start bonus markers (marked with gold) and randomly place one on each of the 3 Taverns pointing to their assigned trade route. Place the black wooden cube on field 0 of the Completed Cities track. Then, everyone chooses a color and takes the corresponding writing desk", "headingPath": "Game Setup · A) Income · B) Place 1 tradesman · C) Displace 1 of your opponents' tradesmen and replace it with 1 of your own · E) Create 1 trade route · 1) Score Prestige Points", "sharpsignalDocId": 313}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Players take turns in clockwise order until 1 of the 3 end game conditions has been triggered (see End of Game on page 7). On your turn, you have the following 5 actions to choose from: Income Place 1 tradesman Displace 1 of your opponent's tradesmen and replace it with 1 of your own Move your trade", "headingPath": "Game Play · A) Income · B) Place 1 tradesman", "sharpsignalDocId": 313}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "At the beginning of your turn, there will always be 3 bonus markers on the game board. When you create a trade route that has a bonus marker next to it, take it and place it faceup to the left of your writing desk (see also page 5 E) Create a trade route step 2) Take Bonus Marker .) Then, immediatel", "headingPath": "Bonus Markers", "sharpsignalDocId": 313}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "If there is a bonus marker next to the newly created trade route, take it and place it faceup next to the left side of your writing desk. You can use this bonus marker once at any time during any of your turns after completing this action - that is, on this or a later turn. Using a bonus marker does", "headingPath": "2) Take Bonus Marker", "sharpsignalDocId": 313}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "If there is a bonus marker next to the newly created trade route, take it and place it faceup next to the left side of your writing desk. You can use this bonus marker once at any time during any of your turns after completing this action. Using a bonus marker does not cost you an action. Immediatel", "headingPath": "2) Take Bonus Marker · 3a) Establish T rading Post · East-West Connection · 3b) Develop Ability · 3c) Special Prestige Points · End of Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 313}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The game board shows cities that are part of the Hanseatic League, each with 1 to 4 trading posts (square or round in 4 colors). Connecting the cities are trade routes with 2 to 4 connection points. Certain abilities can be developed (as shown by pictograms in a scroll) by creating a trade route nex", "headingPath": "The Gameboard · The Player's Writing Desk - Player Boards · City Keys · Actions [Actiones on your writing desk]", "sharpsignalDocId": 313}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Whenever you are displaced, you can place your displaced tradesmen on free connection points of trade routes of your choice instead of on adjacent trade routes. From now on, you have 1 additional action available each turn. (This makes it possible to perform more than 5 actions per turn.) Whenever a", "headingPath": "During the game · At the end of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 313}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 313}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup · A) Income · B) Place 1 tradesman · C) Displace 1 of your opponents' tradesmen and replace it with 1 of your own · E) Create 1 trade route · 1) Score Prestige Points", "sharpsignalDocId": 313}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Additional Material for The Hanseatic League Game Board for Experienced Merchants · Mission Cards · Emperor's Favour", "sharpsignalDocId": 313}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 313 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 313 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 0.90974 of 1551 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until
Nov 12, 2026 15:44

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) Game Setup p.3 0.048916 (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 Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) Game Setup · A) Income · B) Place 1 tradesman · C) Displace 1 of your opponents' tradesmen and replace it with 1 of your own · E) Create 1 trade route · 1) Score Prestige Points p.14 0.047643 (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 Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) Game Play · A) Income · B) Place 1 tradesman p.4 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 Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) Bonus Markers p.8 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 Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) 2) Take Bonus Marker p.5 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 Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) 2) Take Bonus Marker · 3a) Establish T rading Post · East-West Connection · 3b) Develop Ability · 3c) Special Prestige Points · End of Game 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 Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) The Gameboard · The Player's Writing Desk - Player Boards · City Keys · Actions [Actiones on your writing desk] 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 Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) During the game · At the end of the game p.10 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 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 31 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) Game Setup p.3 #1 0.048916 (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
#2 RULEBOOK Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) Additional Material for The Hanseatic League Game Board for Experienced Merchants · Mission Cards · Emperor's Favour p.10 #9 0.02938 (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
#3 RULEBOOK Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) Bonus Markers p.8 #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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#4 RULEBOOK Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) Game Play · A) Income · B) Place 1 tradesman p.4 #3 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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#5 RULEBOOK Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) 2) Take Bonus Marker p.5 #5 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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#6 RULEBOOK Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) Alternative Game Boards · The Eastern Hanseatic League or Britannia · The Eastern Hanseatic League · The City of Waren p.11 #10 0.028446 (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
#7 RULEBOOK Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) Britannia · The countries of England, Wales, and Scotland · Cardiff (Wales) · Carlisle (Scotland - only for 4-5 players) p.12 #11 0.027921 (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 Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) Game Setup · A) Income · B) Place 1 tradesman · C) Displace 1 of your opponents' tradesmen and replace it with 1 of your own · E) Create 1 trade route · 1) Score Prestige Points p.14 #2 0.047643 (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

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) Game Setup p.3 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) Game Setup · A) Income · B) Place 1 tradesman · C) Displace 1 of your opponents' tradesmen and replace it with 1 of your own · E) Create 1 trade route · 1) Score Prestige Points p.14 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Hansa Teutonica — Rulebook (corpus doc 313) Additional Material for The Hanseatic League Game Board for Experienced Merchants · Mission Cards · Emperor's Favour p.10 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 79 ms · first delta 2153 ms · total 5337 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 79 ms · ask 5256 ms · gateway work 5337 ms · total 5337 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
4303
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
464
tok/sec
149.4 tok/sec — 464 output tokens in 3.105 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 13s 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
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

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 241), 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.