RuleSage cited table rulings
← Brass: Birmingham

You asked

How do I set up Brass: Birmingham for 4 players?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Brass: Birminghambg-224517-en-1e

1. Place the board on either the day or night side.[1]
2. Separate the Wild Location and Wild Industry cards and place them face up on 2 of the Card Draw Areas.[1]
3. Shuffle the remaining cards and place them face down on the remaining Card Draw Area; this is the Draw Deck.[1]
4. Shuffle the remaining Merchant tiles, and place 1 (face up) on each of the Merchant spaces marked with the number of players in your game, located near the edges of the board.[1]
5. Place 1 beer barrel on each beer barrel space beside a (non-blank) Merchant tile.[1]
6. Place 1 black cube on each space of the Coal Market, leaving 1 of the £ 1 spaces open.[1]
7. Place 1 orange cube on each space of the Iron Market, leaving both of the £ 1 spaces open.[1]
8. Place the remaining cubes and beer barrels beside the board; this is the General Supply.[1]
9. Take a Player Mat.[2]
10. Take £ 17 from the Bank.[2]
11. Choose a coloured Character tile.[2]
12. Place the matching coloured Link tiles in your player area in their appropriate slots on your Player Mat, with the side of the tiles face down.[2]
13. Place your Victory Point (VP) Marker on the '0' space of the Progress Track.[2]
14. Place your Income Marker on the '10' space of the Progress Track.[2]
15. Draw 8 cards from the Draw Deck; this is your Hand.[2]
16. Draw 1 additional card from the Draw Deck and place it face down in your player area; this is your Discard Pile.[2]
17. After all players have set up their player area, shuffle all players' Character tiles together and place them in a random order on the Turn Order Track.[2]
[1] RULEBOOK Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook · p.3 · BOARD SETUP
[2] RULEBOOK Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook · p.3 · PLAYER AREA 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 112 ms · ask 5216 ms · total 5329 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 5329 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 3, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Place the board on either the day or night side. For a player count of less than 4, remove all cards and Merchant tiles that show a player count greater than your number of players, and return them to the box. The 2-player ( ), 3-player ( ), and 4-player ( ) counts are shown in the bottom right corn", "headingPath": "BOARD SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 86}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Take a Player Mat. Take £ 17 from the Bank . Choose a coloured Character tile. Q Place the matching coloured Link tiles in your player area . their appropriate slots on your Player Mat. The side of the tiles face down. Place your Victory Point (VP) Marker on the '0' space of the Progress Track X . P", "headingPath": "PLAYER AREA SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 86}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Brass: Birmingham tells the story of competing entrepreneurs in the West Midlands during England's Industrial Revolution, between the years 1770-1870. During the game, you will expand your empire by establishing canals and rails, and building and developing various industries, including Cotton Mills", "headingPath": "AN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION", "sharpsignalDocId": 86}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Since Brass is such a deep game, some players may prefer to play a shorter introductory game for their first experience. The introductory game plays exactly like the full game, except you only play the Canal Era and there are additional scoring rules to make players' scores more closely reflect thei", "headingPath": "INTRODUCTORY GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 86}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "4 × Character tiles 56 × Link tiles (14 per colour) Rulebook v2018.11. This rule book is a living document. Download the latest version from roxley.com/brass-birmingham-rulebook 8 × Wild cards (4 × Wild location, 4 × Wild industry) 11 Manufacturers 11 Cotton Mills 7 Breweries 64 × Location and Indus", "headingPath": "COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 86}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Do not be afraid of taking loans. Your income level at the end of the game is not worth VPs. It is not uncommon for experienced players to win the game despite having a low income level. Level 2 or greater Industry tiles are not removed at the end of the Canal Era, so could score twice if built earl", "headingPath": "BEGINNER TIPS", "sharpsignalDocId": 86}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Take the lowest level tile L of the chosen industry from your Player Mat and place it (the side with the black top half face down) on an undeveloped space in your chosen build location, obeying the following rules: If possible, place it on a space displaying only that industry's icon M . Otherwise, ", "headingPath": "Moving Coal and Iron to the Market", "sharpsignalDocId": 86}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Score 1 VP for every £ 4 in your player area (up to a maximum of 15 VPs).", "headingPath": "Money", "sharpsignalDocId": 86}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "BOARD SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 86}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER AREA SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 86}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 86 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 86 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 0.88336 of 1286 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until
Nov 12, 2026 17:45

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 Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) BOARD SETUP p.3 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 Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) PLAYER AREA SETUP p.3 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 Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) AN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION p.1 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 Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) INTRODUCTORY GAME p.7 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 Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) COMPONENTS p.1 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 Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) BEGINNER TIPS p.7 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 Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) Moving Coal and Iron to the Market p.5 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 Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) Money p.7 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)) 73

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 66 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 Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) AN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION p.1 #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
#2 RULEBOOK Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) BOARD SETUP p.3 #1 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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#3 RULEBOOK Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) PLAYER AREA SETUP p.3 #2 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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#4 RULEBOOK Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) ROUNDS p.4 #18 0.012821 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#5 RULEBOOK Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) A C T I O N S p.5 #17 0.012987 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#6 RULEBOOK Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) LOCATION BANNERS p.3 #21 0.012346 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#7 RULEBOOK Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) INTRODUCTORY GAME p.7 #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
#8 RULEBOOK Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) COMPONENTS p.1 #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

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 Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) BOARD SETUP p.3 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Brass: Birmingham — Rulebook (corpus doc 86) PLAYER AREA SETUP p.3 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 112 ms · first delta 2321 ms · total 5329 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 112 ms · ask 5216 ms · gateway work 5329 ms · total 5329 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
1433
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
423
tok/sec
142.0 tok/sec — 423 output tokens in 2.979 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.
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)
set up

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 17), 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.