Ruling — The Castles of Burgundy

You asked

How do I play?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: The Castles of Burgundybg-84876-en-1e

I looked through The Castles of Burgundy's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook · p.4 · THE FIVE GAME ROUNDS · A PLAYER'S TURN · the fIve rounds · THE GAME ACTIONS

After setting up the new phase, you play 5 rounds. Each round plays the same: First, each player rolls their two dice. The starting player also rolls the white die. All dice must be visible for all players. Note: Rolling all dice simultaneously allows players to plan their turn. The starting player

RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook · p.14 · GAME SETUP

All rules of the base game apply, except for the following exceptions and additions: You start the game with 1 silver coin, 2 workers and 3 random goods tiles (place them next to your player board). Take a castle tile and place it on any dark green castle space in your duchy (side 13A is for beginni

RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook · p.3 · Each player receives: · A Duchy · playInG the Game · Before each phase · PlayIng the game

Roll a die to determine the starting player (highest result wins). That player receives 1 worker and places it on the corresponding space in the top right of their player board. The next player in clockwise turn order receives 2 workers, the third player gets 3, the fourth player gets 4. The startin

RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook · p.13 · the team Game · GAME SETUP · Each team receives: · PLAYING THE GAME · Notes: · FINAL SCORING

Form teams of 2 players, seated next to each other (if possible). All rules of the base game apply, except for the following changes: The section that starts with "each player receives" in the base game rules is changed to: -a team board consisting of 2 board halves (12a1 + 12a2) (After you have gai

RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook · p.2 · Game setup · Place the 24 silver coins and 26 worker chips as well as the white die next to the game board. · Each player chooses a color and takes:

(Before playing for the first time, carefully remove all tiles from the punch-out boards.) The back side shows the game board for the 2- and 3-player game. The only difference is the number of hex tiles per depot, including the black depot. See page 11 for more details. Divide the 164 hex tiles by t

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome

ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below

warm abstain

this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)

corpus profile

live,vps

answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)

gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70

timings

search 88 ms · ask 2074 ms · total 17350 ms

single-flight (PR-5)

queued 15187 ms · generation 2163 ms

retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read

[{"page": 4, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "After setting up the new phase, you play 5 rounds. Each round plays the same: First, each player rolls their two dice. The starting player also rolls the white die. All dice must be visible for all players. Note: Rolling all dice simultaneously allows players to plan their turn. The starting player ", "headingPath": "THE FIVE GAME ROUNDS · A PLAYER'S TURN · the fIve rounds · THE GAME ACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "All rules of the base game apply, except for the following exceptions and additions: You start the game with 1 silver coin, 2 workers and 3 random goods tiles (place them next to your player board). Take a castle tile and place it on any dark green castle space in your duchy (side 13A is for beginni", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "Roll a die to determine the starting player (highest result wins). That player receives 1 worker and places it on the corresponding space in the top right of their player board. The next player in clockwise turn order receives 2 workers, the third player gets 3, the fourth player gets 4. The startin", "headingPath": "Each player receives: · A Duchy · playInG the Game · Before each phase · PlayIng the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "Form teams of 2 players, seated next to each other (if possible). All rules of the base game apply, except for the following changes: The section that starts with \"each player receives\" in the base game rules is changed to: -a team board consisting of 2 board halves (12a1 + 12a2) (After you have gai", "headingPath": "the team Game · GAME SETUP · Each team receives: · PLAYING THE GAME · Notes: · FINAL SCORING", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046452, "snippet": "(Before playing for the first time, carefully remove all tiles from the punch-out boards.) The back side shows the game board for the 2- and 3-player game. The only difference is the number of hex tiles per depot, including the black depot. See page 11 for more details. Divide the 164 hex tiles by t", "headingPath": "Game setup · Place the 24 silver coins and 26 worker chips as well as the white die next to the game board. · Each player chooses a color and takes:", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.046154, "snippet": "You are playing 25 rounds. At the beginning of each round, throw all 3 dice: First, take the topmost goods tile and place it on the depot indicated by the white die . Then remove a hex tile from that depot from the game, starting from top to bottom (depots 2, 3, 5, and 6) or left to right (depots 1 ", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.04374, "snippet": "Instead, choose a hex tile from the black depot and place it directly on your duchy, following the base game placement rules, and apply its effects. If placing that hex tile completes another color, you may take an additional hex tile from the black depot (if available) and place it in your duchy, e", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "The result of your die tells you from which depot you may take one hex tile of your choice. The chosen hex tile is placed on an empty storage space (the \"key spaces\") in the bottom left of your player board (never directly in your duchy). If you don't have an empty slot, you must first create space ", "headingPath": " Action \"Take hex tile from game board\" ·  Take hex tile from game board", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}]

citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show

[]

boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)

no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 154 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true

base rulebook doc 154 boosted

answered-before recall

no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough

similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)

debug row retained until

Nov 14, 2026 14:32

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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	THE FIVE GAME ROUNDS · A PLAYER'S TURN · the fIve rounds · THE GAME ACTIONS	p.4	0.04866 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	GAME SETUP	p.14	0.047883 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	Each player receives: · A Duchy · playInG the Game · Before each phase · PlayIng the game	p.3	0.047379 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	the team Game · GAME SETUP · Each team receives: · PLAYING THE GAME · Notes: · FINAL SCORING	p.13	0.046696 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	Game setup · Place the 24 silver coins and 26 worker chips as well as the white die next to the game board. · Each player chooses a color and takes:	p.2	0.046452 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	PLAYING THE GAME	p.14	0.046154 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	PLAYING THE GAME	p.14	0.04374 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	 Action "Take hex tile from game board" ·  Take hex tile from game board	p.4	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 29 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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	PLAYING THE GAME	p.14	#6	0.046154 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	THE FIVE GAME ROUNDS · A PLAYER'S TURN · the fIve rounds · THE GAME ACTIONS	p.4	#1	0.04866 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	Game setup · Place the 24 silver coins and 26 worker chips as well as the white die next to the game board. · Each player chooses a color and takes:	p.2	#5	0.046452 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	The shields · GAME SETUP · 2 players: · PLAYING THE GAME	p.15	#12	0.027984 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	IF YOU ARE ALREADY VERY FAMILIAR WITH THE GAME	p.16	#11	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
#6	RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	Each player receives: · A Duchy · playInG the Game · Before each phase · PlayIng the game	p.3	#3	0.047379 (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
#7	RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	PLAYING THE GAME	p.14	#7	0.04374 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	GAME SETUP	p.14	#2	0.047883 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 88 ms · first delta 2068 ms · total 17350 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 15187 ms · retrieval 88 ms · ask 2074 ms · gateway work 2163 ms · total 17350 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3354
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 9
tok/sec: 209.3 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.043 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 27s 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: ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
abstain rationale: I don't have enough information.
the answerer's own words, verbatim — hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped

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 76), 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.