Ruling — Viscounts of the West Kingdom

You asked

What does this expansion add?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Viscounts of the West Kingdombg-296151-en-1e · Viscounts of the West Kingdom: Gates of Goldbg-343468-en-1e

This expansion adds:

* **King's Orders**: A new type of card that players can add to their deck.[1] When gained, these must be placed in the Discard Pile and grant players the ability to discard a card if they choose.[1] They provide two options for interacting with Outsider Cards:

* **Welcoming an Outsider**: A player plays a King's Order Card onto their Player Board; when it drops off, the player takes one of three faceup Outsider Cards and adds it to their Discard Pile at no cost.[1] Welcomed Outsiders become part of the player's deck and score points at the end of the game based on specific conditions.[1]

* **Refusing an Outsider**: A player destroys a King's Order Card from their hand (via an effect that allows destroying cards).[1] The player gains 3 Silver and selects one of three faceup Outsider Cards to remove from the game, immediately resolving all effects shown in the top-right of that card.[1]

* **Outsider Cards**: A limited supply of cards that can be welcomed or refused.[1] When an Outsider Card is removed, it is replaced by the top card from the Outsider Draw Pile.[1]

* **New Bonus Cards**: The Diversified Builder Card and the Specialized Builder Card, which players compete for during setup.[2] These provide new ongoing abilities for players holding them, such as gaining Silver, flipping Debts or Deeds, increasing hand limits, or gaining Free Hires, depending on whether the player has King's Order Cards or Outsider Cards on their Player Board.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom: Gates of Gold — Rulebook · p.5 · king's orders and outsiders · Welcoming Outsiders 1 · Refusing Outsiders 2

[2] RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom: Gates of Gold — Rulebook · p.6 · building bonus cards

🔧 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 66 ms · ask 4427 ms · total 4494 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4494 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 15, "score": 0.032266, "snippet": "Trade can only be done on the outside path of the Main Board. To fund this action, players may count Merchant Icons and Criminal Icons on their Player Board, spend Silver (1 per extra Merchant Icon) or spend Silver to dismiss the Townsfolk Card adjacent to their Viscount. What they gain in return is", "headingPath": "Phase 3: Primary Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.031754, "snippet": "For example, the Red Player has chosen to construct 1 of their Workshops, which requires 3 Builder Icons. They have none on their Player Board, so decide to spend 2 Stone, plus 1 Silver to dismiss the Mason adjacent to their Viscount, giving them the 3 Builder Icons they require. First, they must re", "headingPath": "Phase 3: Primary Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}, {"page": 32, "score": 0.031258, "snippet": "Gain 1 Ink Well Gain 1 Gold Gain 1 Stone Gain 1 Silver Gain 1 Ink Well, Gold or Stone (not Silver) Gain 1 Debt (unpaid) Gain 1 Deed (acquired) Flip 1 unpaid Debt (to paid) Flip 1 acquired Deed (to approved) Flip 1 unpaid Debt or 1 acquired Deed Gain 1 free Manuscript of 3 or 4 cost from those visibl", "headingPath": "Unless specified, all effects are mandatory", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.030777, "snippet": "Constructing a Building can only be done on the outside path of the Main Board. To fund this action, players may count Builder Icons and Criminal Icons on their Player Board, spend Stone (1 per extra Builder Icon) or spend Silver to dismiss the Townsfolk Card adjacent to their Viscount. When constru", "headingPath": "Phase 3: Primary Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.03031, "snippet": "Transcribing Manuscripts can only be done on the inside path of the Main Board. To fund this action, players may count Cleric Icons and Criminal Icons on their Player Board, spend Ink Wells (1 per extra Cleric Icon) or spend Silver to dismiss the Townsfolk Card adjacent to their Viscount. To transcr", "headingPath": "Phase 3: Primary Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.029644, "snippet": "During this phase, players will take just 1 of the 4 possible primary actions. Regardless of which action they take, players will be using a combination of Icons on their Player Boards (excluding discard piles), spending resources, or using Icons on a dismissed Townsfolk, to help fund their chosen a", "headingPath": "Phase 3: Primary Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029211, "snippet": "Silver value for hiring, dismissing and movement Icons Name Card ability Viscounts of the West Kingdom is played over an undetermined series of Rounds. Each Round consists of each player taking 1 turn (beginning with the player with the Start Player Marker), followed by the player on their left (clo", "headingPath": "townsfolk card layout · gameplay overview · 3. Primary Action · See the back of this rulebook for details on what each icon means.", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.02879, "snippet": "8 Starting Scheme Cards (Brown Headers) For Solo Play 4 Multiplier Cards 1 AI Reference Card For Solo Play 8 Future Scheme Cards (Black Headers) For Solo Play 30 Debt Cards Front = Unpaid (unflipped) Back = Paid (flipped) 30 Deed Cards Front = Acquired (unflipped) Back = Approved (flipped) All the f", "headingPath": "4 Player Boards", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "king's orders and outsiders · Welcoming Outsiders 1 · Refusing Outsiders 2", "sharpsignalDocId": 889}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "building bonus cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 889}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 333 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 333 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 0.92569 of 1238 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 12, 2026 18:58

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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	Phase 3: Primary Action	p.15	0.032266 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	Phase 3: Primary Action	p.17	0.031754 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	Unless specified, all effects are mandatory	p.32	0.031258 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	Phase 3: Primary Action	p.16	0.030777 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	Phase 3: Primary Action	p.21	0.03031 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	Phase 3: Primary Action	p.14	0.029644 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	townsfolk card layout · gameplay overview · 3. Primary Action · See the back of this rulebook for details on what each icon means.	p.11	0.029211 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	4 Player Boards	p.5	0.02879 (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 43 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 — 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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom: Gates of Gold — Rulebook (corpus doc 889)	king's orders and outsiders · Welcoming Outsiders 1 · Refusing Outsiders 2	p.5	#11	0.014706 (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
#2	RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	Phase 1: Card Management	p.12	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	Phase 3: Primary Action	p.19	#20	0.0125 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	end of the game · Constructed Buildings · Workers in the Castle · Transcribed Manuscripts · Poverty Card (if revealed) · Prosperity Card (if revealed)	p.24	#31	0.010989 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom: Gates of Gold — Rulebook (corpus doc 889)	building bonus cards	p.6	#9	0.016393 (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 re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	Phase 3: Primary Action	p.19	#27	0.011494 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	virtue, corruption & criminals · Once Corruption and Virtue Makers collide, they remain stuck together, and will continue to move together.	p.10	#26	0.011628 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	Phase 3: Primary Action	p.21	#5	0.03031 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom: Gates of Gold — Rulebook (corpus doc 889)	king's orders and outsiders · Welcoming Outsiders 1 · Refusing Outsiders 2	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom: Gates of Gold — Rulebook (corpus doc 889)	building bonus cards	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 66 ms · first delta 2072 ms · total 4494 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 66 ms · ask 4427 ms · gateway work 4494 ms · total 4494 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3274
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 351
tok/sec: 147.9 tok/sec — 351 output tokens in 2.373 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 35s 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: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 261), 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.