Ruling — Brass: Lancashire

← Brass: Lancashire

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Brass: Lancashirebg-28720-en-1e

To play Brass, follow these procedures:

**Setup**

1. Place the board face up displaying the Full Map.[1]

2. Remove all cards and Distant Cotton Market tiles that do not show your player count and return them to the box.[1]

3. Be sure to remove the 2 cards with the icon on them.[1]

4. Shuffle the remaining cards and place them face down in the Card Draw Area (the Draw Deck).[1]

5. Insert the Deck tile, Stephenson's Rocket side face up, near the bottom of the Draw Deck, so that there is 1 card per player beneath it.[1]

6. Shuffle the remaining Distant Cotton Market tiles and place them face down in the Tile Draw Area.[1]

7. Place the Distant Cotton Market Marker on the topmost space of the Distant Cotton Market Track.[1]

8. Place 1 black cube on each space of the Coal Market and 1 orange cube on each space of the Iron Market.[1]

9. Place the remaining cubes beside the board in the General Supply.[1]

10. For player area setup, take a Player Mat, £30 from the Bank, a colored Character tile, and matching colored Link tiles.[2]

11. Stack the matching colored Industry tiles (Cotton Mills, Ports, Shipyards, Iron Works, and Coal Mines) on their appropriate slots on your Player Mat with the black top half face down.[2]

12. Place your Victory Point (VP) Marker on the '0' space of the Progress Track and your Income Marker on the '10' space of the Progress Track.[2]

13. Draw 8 cards from the Draw Deck to form your Hand.[2]

14. Shuffle all players' Character tiles together and place them in a random order on the Turn Order Track.[2]

**Gameplay**

1. The game is played over two eras: the Canal Era and the Rail Era.[3]

2. Each era consists of rounds that continue until both the Draw Deck and players' Hands are exhausted.[3]

3. Players take turns in the order of their Character tiles on the Turn Order Track.[3]

4. On your turn, perform a total of 2 actions (except during the first round of the Canal Era, where each player performs only 1 action).[3]

5. For each action performed, you must discard 1 card from your Hand and place it face up on top of your Discard Pile.[3]

6. You may perform the same action twice in a turn.[4]

7. You may also discard any 2 cards to use both of your actions at the same time, allowing you to build any Industry tile in any location with a space for that industry.[4]

8. Available actions include:

* Build: Place one of your Industry tiles onto the board, paying the appropriate cost and consuming any required coal/iron.[5]

* Network: Expand your canal or rail network by adding Link tiles to the board.[5]

* Develop: Gain access to higher-level industries by removing Industry tiles from your Player Mat.[5]

* Sell: Flip your built Cotton Mill tiles by selling to the Distant Cotton Market or by flipping a Port tile.[5]

* Loan: Take a £10, £20, or £30 loan from the Bank and move your Income Marker 1, 2, or 3 income levels backwards.[5]

* Passing: Choose to pass instead of performing an action (you must still discard a card for each action you pass).[5]

9. Any time money is spent to perform an action, place it on top of your Character tile on the Turn Order Track.[5]

10. After all actions are completed in a turn, refill your Hand back up to 8 cards from the Draw Deck.[3]

11. After all players have taken their turn, determine the turn order for the next round by rearranging Character tiles on the Turn Order Track; the player who spent the least money goes first and the player who spent the most goes last (if tied, relative order remains the same).[5]

12. After determining turn order, take all money from the Character tiles and place it back into the Bank to reset spending for the next round.[5]

**End of Game and Scoring**

1. At the end of each era, score VPs for Link tiles and flipped Industry tiles.[3]

2. At the end of the Rail Era, perform additional scoring:

* Score 1 VP for every £4 in your player area (up to a maximum of 15 VPs).[6]

* Score VPs equal to your income level (losing VPs if the level is negative).[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook · p.3 · BOARD SETUP · LOCATION BANNERS

[2] RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook · p.3 · PLAYER AREA SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook · p.4 · END OF ROUND · ROUNDS · PLAYER TURNS

[4] RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook · p.7 · THINGS TO REMEMBER · INTRODUCTORY GAME

[5] RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook · p.4 · ACTIONS LIST

[6] RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook · p.7 · BEGINNER TIPS · Money · Income level · Industry tiles · CLASSIC RULES · Virtual Link

🔧 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 75 ms · ask 9009 ms · total 18754 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 9667 ms · generation 9087 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 7, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Discard 1 card for every single action you perform, including passing. Only Build actions need a specific card. You can perform the same action twice in a turn. For instance, you may place 1 or 2 rail Links with the Network action, then use the Network action again to place 1 or 2 rail Links. You ma", "headingPath": "THINGS TO REMEMBER · INTRODUCTORY GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 111}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.047123, "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 · Money · Income level · Industry tiles · CLASSIC RULES · Virtual Link", "sharpsignalDocId": 111}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046432, "snippet": "The game is played over 2 eras: the Canal Era (1770-1830) and the Rail Era (1830-1870). The winner is the player who has the most Victory Points (VPs) following the end of the Rail Era. VPs are scored at the end of each era for your Link tiles and flipped Industry tiles. Each era is played in rounds", "headingPath": "END OF ROUND · ROUNDS · PLAYER TURNS", "sharpsignalDocId": 111}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.045037, "snippet": "The original rules did not have a static list of cards that were removed during setup. To play with the classic deck setup, apply the following rules changes: Ignore step 2 in 'Board Setup'. Instead of step 4 in 'Board Setup': Insert the Deck tile near the bottom of the Draw Deck, so that there are ", "headingPath": "Classic 3-4 Player Deck Setup · Community 2-Player Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 111}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Take a Player Mat. Take £ 30 from the Bank N . Choose a coloured Character tile. Place the matching coloured Link tiles in your player area O . Q Stack the matching coloured Industry tiles (which consist of Cotton Mills P , Ports , Shipyards R , Iron Works S , and Coal Mines T ) on their Place your ", "headingPath": "PLAYER AREA SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 111}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "For each action, you may choose to perform one of the following (you may perform the same action twice): Build Place one of your Industry tiles onto the board, paying the appropriate cost and consuming any required coal / iron. Note: Only Build requires a specific card. Network Expand your canal or ", "headingPath": "ACTIONS LIST", "sharpsignalDocId": 111}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": ". If the Distant Cotton Market Marker reaches the 'X' space F , immediately end the Sell action. Do not continue to step 3 . Flip your Cotton Mill tile, and advance your Income Marker along the Progress Track by the number of spaces shown in the bottom right corner of the tile. You may go back to st", "headingPath": "Proceed to step · LOAN ACTION · To perform the Loan action: · DEVELOP ACTION · To perform the Develop action: · NETWORK ACTION", "sharpsignalDocId": 111}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Insert the Deck tile, Nathan Rothschild side face up, near the bottom of the Draw Deck, so that there are 2 cards per player beneath it N (e.g. 6 cards for a 3-player game). Perform the following additional step at the end of the Rail Era: After performing Rail Era scoring: The player with the most ", "headingPath": "Insert Deck Tile · END OF RAIL ERA · WINNING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 111}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "BOARD SETUP · LOCATION BANNERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 111}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER AREA SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 111}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "END OF ROUND · ROUNDS · PLAYER TURNS", "sharpsignalDocId": 111}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THINGS TO REMEMBER · INTRODUCTORY GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 111}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ACTIONS LIST", "sharpsignalDocId": 111}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "BEGINNER TIPS · Money · Income level · Industry tiles · CLASSIC RULES · Virtual Link", "sharpsignalDocId": 111}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 111 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 111 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 0.90282 of 3262 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 13, 2026 13:24

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 Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	THINGS TO REMEMBER · INTRODUCTORY GAME	p.7	0.048652 (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: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	BEGINNER TIPS · Money · Income level · Industry tiles · CLASSIC RULES · Virtual Link	p.7	0.047123 (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: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	END OF ROUND · ROUNDS · PLAYER TURNS	p.4	0.046432 (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: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	Classic 3-4 Player Deck Setup · Community 2-Player Variant	p.7	0.045037 (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: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	PLAYER AREA 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
#6	RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	ACTIONS LIST	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
#7	RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	Proceed to step · LOAN ACTION · To perform the Loan action: · DEVELOP ACTION · To perform the Develop action: · NETWORK ACTION	p.6	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 Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	Insert Deck Tile · END OF RAIL ERA · WINNING THE GAME	p.4	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

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 21 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 Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	THINGS TO REMEMBER · INTRODUCTORY GAME	p.7	#1	0.048652 (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 Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	Classic 3-4 Player Deck Setup · Community 2-Player Variant	p.7	#4	0.045037 (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 Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	ACTIONS LIST	p.4	#6	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
#4	RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	BEGINNER TIPS · Money · Income level · Industry tiles · CLASSIC RULES · Virtual Link	p.7	#2	0.047123 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	Insert Deck Tile · END OF RAIL ERA · WINNING THE GAME	p.4	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	BOARD SETUP · LOCATION BANNERS	p.3	#10	0.014493 (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: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	END OF ROUND · ROUNDS · PLAYER TURNS	p.4	#3	0.046432 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	PLAYER AREA SETUP	p.3	#5	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	BOARD SETUP · LOCATION BANNERS	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	PLAYER AREA SETUP	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	END OF ROUND · ROUNDS · PLAYER TURNS	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	THINGS TO REMEMBER · INTRODUCTORY GAME	p.7	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	ACTIONS LIST	p.4	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Brass: Lancashire — Rulebook (corpus doc 111)	BEGINNER TIPS · Money · Income level · Industry tiles · CLASSIC RULES · Virtual Link	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 75 ms · first delta 1674 ms · total 18754 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 9667 ms · retrieval 75 ms · ask 9009 ms · gateway work 9087 ms · total 18754 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2974
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 138.8 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 7.377 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 7s 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 19), 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.