Ruling — Cooper Island

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Cooper Islandbg-269511-en-1e

The game is played over 5 rounds, with each round comprising three phases:[1]

**Income Phase**

* Each player receives an income that allows them to place 1 islet tile and 1 double landscape tile onto their peninsula.[1]

* Players may also perform the income actions of any income boats they have.[1]

* The income phase can be carried out simultaneously by all players.[2]

* To carry out the income phase, perform the income action of each income hand; the order in which they are performed is up to the player.[2]

* Income actions that a player cannot or does not want to perform are forfeited.[2]

* In the first round, players can only carry out the actions of the 2 income hands in the upper left corner of their player board.[2]

* When placing an islet tile:

* Choose 1 islet tile from your personal reserve and place it onto your peninsula.[2]

* The landscape space of the tile must be placed onto an uncharted space that is adjacent to at least 1 existing landscape space (of any type or height) not occupied by a ruin token.[2]

* The islet space must be placed onto a water space, covering half of that water space's sand bank and leaving its other half visible.[2]

* If the placement would make the sand bank entirely disappear, the placement is not allowed.[2]

* If there are sail ships on the half where the islet is placed, simply slide them over to the other half of that sand bank.[2]

* In the first income phase, the islet tile must be placed onto the water space to the right of your harbor.[2]

* In later income phases, the tile can be placed onto any water space that meets all placement rules.[2]

* If an islet tile cannot be placed according to the rules, the action is forfeited.[2]

* After placing an islet tile, you must put 1 cube of the corresponding resource from the general supply onto its landscape space (wood on forest, food on meadow, stone on mountain).[2]

**Worker Phase**

* In player order, each player places 1 worker from their available workers area onto 1 of the worker spaces in the center of the island and performs the associated action(s).[1]

* The player with the Cooper token is the starting player and takes the first turn of the worker phase; turns proceed to the player on the left.[3]

* On a turn, a player must place 1 available worker onto the worker space of an action section and carry out its action(s).[3]

* A turn is skipped when a player has no available workers left.[3]

* The phase ends when nobody has any workers left.[3]

**Clean Up Phase**

The clean up phase comprises 7 steps:[1]

1. Feed workers

2. Reactivate assets

3. Gain statue bonus

4. Gain passage bonus

5. Return workers

6. Clear marketplace

7. Move harbormaster to the next cargo ship

**Ending the Game**

* After the 5th round, the game ends with a final scoring.[1]

* In addition to helm points scored during the game, players may gain points for specific buildings, royal orders, and leftover items.[1]

* The player with the most points wins.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook · p.9 · Playing the game

[2] RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook · p.10 · Playing the game · ACTION: Place 1 islet tile AND perform its islet action · Examples of legal and illegal placements of islet tiles: · Right after you place the islet tile, you: · AND

[3] RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook · p.13 · Example of the income phase in the first round: · In detail, when it is your turn, do the following:

🔧 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 93 ms · ask 6292 ms · total 6388 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6388 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 9, "score": 0.046432, "snippet": "Cooper Island is played over 5 rounds. Each round comprises the following 3 phases: Each player receives an income that lets her place 1 islet tile and 1 double landscape tile onto her peninsula. In addition, she may perform the income actions of any income boats she has. In player order, each playe", "headingPath": "Playing the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 678}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Depending on the player count, start by assembling the island board: Take: the central island board puzzle pieces A, B, C Then carefully assemble the island board. Depending on how you are seated, choose either layout A or B.", "headingPath": "Components · In a 3-player game:", "sharpsignalDocId": 678}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Then each player draws 2 random double landscape tiles from the bag and places them in her personal reserve. Afterwards, place the bag close by. In easy reach of all players, form a general supply that includes: the single landscape tiles (with any side up) the coins the wooden cubes of the 5 resour", "headingPath": "In a 2-player game ,", "sharpsignalDocId": 678}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Take: • the central island board • all 4 peninsula boards • puzzle pieces A, B • all 4 bay tiles Return puzzle pieces C, D and E to the box. Depending on the player count, start by assembling the island board: 1 Setup Take: • the central island board • 3 peninsula boards • puzzle pieces A, B, C • 3 ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 678}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "i Take 5 ruin/statue tokens and place 1 - with its ruin side up - onto each of the 5 ruin spaces of the peninsula which is pointing towards you. (From now on, this peninsula is referred to as 'your peninsula'). j Place the 2 ships of your color onto the harbor space of your peninsula: the ship with ", "headingPath": "In a 2-player game: · In a 2-player game ,", "sharpsignalDocId": 678}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Take: • the central island board • 3 peninsula boards • puzzle pieces A, B, C • 3 bay tiles Return 1 peninsula board, puzzle pieces D and E, and 1 bay tile to the box. Place the island board in the center of the table so that each peninsula is pointing towards 1 player. Step 2 Step 2 Take: • the cen", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 678}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030118, "snippet": "The income phase can be carried out simultaneously by all players. To carry out the income phase, perform the income action of each of your income hands In which order you perform them is up to you. Income actions that you cannot or do not want to perform are forfeited. In the fi rst round , you can", "headingPath": "Playing the game · ACTION: Place 1 islet tile AND perform its islet action · Examples of legal and illegal placements of islet tiles: · Right after you place the islet tile, you: · AND", "sharpsignalDocId": 678}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "2 Take the 5 cargo ship cards . Place them beside the island board face up in an ascending row (according to the number of dashes in their bottom right corners: | to |||||). Then place the harbormaster upright onto the first card (with 1 dash). Each player chooses a player color and does the followi", "headingPath": "In a 2-player game:", "sharpsignalDocId": 678}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 678}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing the game · ACTION: Place 1 islet tile AND perform its islet action · Examples of legal and illegal placements of islet tiles: · Right after you place the islet tile, you: · AND", "sharpsignalDocId": 678}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Example of the income phase in the first round: · In detail, when it is your turn, do the following:", "sharpsignalDocId": 678}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 678 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 678 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 0.91944 of 2433 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 04:33

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 Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	Playing the game	p.9	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
#2	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	Components · In a 3-player game:	p.4	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))	225
#3	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	In a 2-player game ,	p.8	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
#4	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)		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
#5	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	In a 2-player game: · In a 2-player 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
#6	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)		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
#7	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	Playing the game · ACTION: Place 1 islet tile AND perform its islet action · Examples of legal and illegal placements of islet tiles: · Right after you place the islet tile, you: · AND	p.10	0.030118 (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 Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	In a 2-player game:	p.6	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 52 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 Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	Playing the game · ACTION: Place 1 islet tile AND perform its islet action · Examples of legal and illegal placements of islet tiles: · Right after you place the islet tile, you: · AND	p.10	#7	0.030118 (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
#2	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	In a 2-player game:	p.6	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	Components · In a 3-player game:	p.4	#2	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
#4	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)		p.5	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	In a 2-player game: · In a 2-player game ,	p.7	#5	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
#6	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	In a 2-player game ,	p.8	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	Example of the income phase in the first round: · In detail, when it is your turn, do the following:	p.13	#19	0.013158 (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 Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	Playing the game	p.9	#1	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	Playing the game	p.9	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	Playing the game · ACTION: Place 1 islet tile AND perform its islet action · Examples of legal and illegal placements of islet tiles: · Right after you place the islet tile, you: · AND	p.10	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Cooper Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 678)	Example of the income phase in the first round: · In detail, when it is your turn, do the following:	p.13	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 93 ms · first delta 2740 ms · total 6388 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 93 ms · ask 6292 ms · gateway work 6388 ms · total 6388 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2517
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 743
tok/sec: 206.4 tok/sec — 743 output tokens in 3.599 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 12s 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 611), 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.