Ruling — Clans of Caledonia

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Clans of Caledoniabg-216132-en-1e

### Setup

1. Each player chooses a colour and takes one Player board and all game tokens of that colour.[1]

2. Place four of each of the following on corresponding locations on your Player board: Sheep, Cows, Cheese Dairies, Bakeries, Fields, and Distilleries.[1]

3. Place eight Workers on the four forest locations (Woodcutters) and four mountain locations (Miners).[1]

4. Take four Port markers and one Settlement token in your colour.[1]

5. Fill the Merchant track with five cubes (Merchants), placing the remaining two cubes below your Player board as starting stock.[1]

6. Place the Shipping token on the first location on the left of the Shipping track.[1]

7. Place the two Technology tiles flipped to the side with the arrow on the upper left-hand side on the respective locations below the Workers.[1]

8. Place one Export box tile next to your Player board with the side face-up showing the icon matching the number of players.[1]

9. Randomly draw one more Clan tile than the number of players.[1]

10. Randomly draw as many Starting tiles as Clan tiles and randomly allocate one next to each Clan tile.[1]

11. Starting with the last player and going in reverse turn order (counter-clockwise), each player chooses a Clan tile and its corresponding Starting tile and places both in front of themselves.[1]

12. Determine a starting player randomly.[1]

13. Put all players' Turn order tokens on the Turn order track on the Export board.[1]

### Gameplay

**Round Structure**

Each round contains four Phases:

1. Phase 1: Preparation Phase — Flip the Scoring tile of the previous round, refill any empty boxes on the Export board, and retrieve your Merchants (skip this phase in the first round).[2]

2. Phase 2: Action Phase — Players take Actions until all players have passed.[2]

3. Phase 3: Production Phase — Units on the game board produce Goods and Income.[2]

4. Phase 4: Scoring Phase — Players receive Glory according to the current round's Scoring tile.[2]

**Turn Order and Actions**

1. The turn order in the first round is clockwise.[1]

2. In subsequent rounds, the turn order is determined by the order in which players pass.[1]

3. During the Action phase, each player takes exactly one Action per turn, in turn order.[2]

4. Play continues until all players have passed.[2]

5. Possible Actions (which can be taken multiple times during a round, except for Passing) include: Trade, Obtain an Export Contract, Expand, Upgrade Shipping, Upgrade Technology, Hire a Merchant, Fulfil an Export Contract, and Pass.[2]

6. In the first round, beginning with the starting player and continuing in clockwise order, each player places one Worker (Woodcutter or Miner) from the top of their Player board onto an empty hexagonal space on the game map.[1]

7. Woodcutters must be placed on an empty space with a forest and Miners must be placed on any empty space with a mountain.[1]

8. In reverse turn order (starting with the player who placed last and continuing in counter-clockwise order), each player places a second Worker.[3]

9. When a Worker is placed, players must pay for both the Worker itself and the land where they place it.[3]

### Scoring and Ending the Game

1. At the end of the fifth round, final scores are calculated.[2]

2. The player with the most Victory Points (VP) is the winner.[2]

3. Export Scoring: Players gain VP based on the number of fulfilled Export contracts.[4]

4. Settlement Scoring: Players count the number of their Settlements within Shipping reach of each other.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook · p.3 · Player Starting Items · Clans · Turn Order · Placing the first Workers

[2] RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook · p.4 · 3. Expand · Phase 1: Preparation · Phase 2: Action

[3] RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook · p.3 · Money Icons

[4] RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook · p.7 · Export Scoring

[5] RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook · p.8 · Settlement Scoring

🔧 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 74 ms · ask 5823 ms · total 5900 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5900 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Place one unit (Sheep, Cow, Cheese dairy, Bakery, Field, Distillery, Woodcutter or Miner) from the top of the respective column of your Player board onto any empty space of the map that is neighbouring or within Shipping reach of any of your units. Pay for the costs of the unit (coin with red number", "headingPath": "3. Expand · Phase 1: Preparation · Phase 2: Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 276}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045002, "snippet": "(Recommended only for experienced Clan Chiefs!) If the players play very competitively, they may want to auction the clans. If so, they apply the following auction mechanism: Randomly draw as many Clan tiles as the number of players and allocate each Clan tile a random Starting tile. Randomly determ", "headingPath": "Clan Auction · Imprint · Karma Games", "sharpsignalDocId": 276}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Each player chooses a colour and takes one Player board and all of the game tokens of their colour . Then each player performs the following actions: Place all of your tokens on the corresponding locations on your Player board, four of each of the following: Sheep, Cows, Cheese Dairies, Bakeries, Fi", "headingPath": "Player Starting Items · Clans · Turn Order · Placing the first Workers", "sharpsignalDocId": 276}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The game map consists of four double-sided Map modules which are labelled both by module (A-D) and by side (1-2), offering 16 different map configurations. Randomly choose a side for each Map module and construct the game map by making sure the rocks showing the module letter are in alphabetical ord", "headingPath": "Map Modules · Market Board · Export Board · Port Bonus Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 276}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "There are three Direct export bonuses that players can take in any order to gain an immediate advantage: Money, taken immediately from the supply. Free space, which allows the player to immediately take an Expand action without paying the land cost of the space into which they expand. The player mus", "headingPath": "Direct Export Bonuses · 8. Pass · Free Action: Using a Port bonus tile", "sharpsignalDocId": 276}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "In this phase players earn the Glory bonus indicated on the bottom half of the current Scoring tile, if they have fulfilled the requirement in the top half. Glory is tracked by moving the Glory tokens on the track on the Export board (take or flip a Glory marker when you complete a lap). Each Scorin", "headingPath": "Phase 4: Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 276}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030679, "snippet": "Fill all empty slots on the Export board with new Export contracts from the draw pile. Your last Price die roll shows which of the six Export contracts gets removed. Find the intersection of the algebraic symbol and the numeral on the Export board and remove that Export contract from the game. Each ", "headingPath": "Refill Export Contracts · Settlement Scoring: · Simplifications · Static Import Goods · Without Scoring and/or Port Tiles · Tighter Game Map · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 276}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The Merchants that are in your stock, not on your Player board , are ready to be used in a Trade action. You can send these Merchants to the Market to buy or sell Goods. Place as many Merchants on the buy or sell area of a single Good (designated by the up and down arrows respectively) as the quanti", "headingPath": "1. Trade · 2. Obtain an Export Contract", "sharpsignalDocId": 276}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player Starting Items · Clans · Turn Order · Placing the first Workers", "sharpsignalDocId": 276}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. Expand · Phase 1: Preparation · Phase 2: Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 276}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Money Icons", "sharpsignalDocId": 276}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Export Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 276}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Settlement Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 276}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 276 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 276 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 0.90850 of 2918 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 04:53

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 Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	3. Expand · Phase 1: Preparation · Phase 2: Action	p.4	0.047643 (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 Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Clan Auction · Imprint · Karma Games	p.9	0.045002 (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 Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Player Starting Items · Clans · Turn Order · Placing the first Workers	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
#4	RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Map Modules · Market Board · Export Board · Port Bonus Tiles	p.2	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 Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Direct Export Bonuses · 8. Pass · Free Action: Using a Port bonus tile	p.6	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 Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Phase 4: Scoring	p.7	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 Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Refill Export Contracts · Settlement Scoring: · Simplifications · Static Import Goods · Without Scoring and/or Port Tiles · Tighter Game Map · …	p.9	0.030679 (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 Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	1. Trade · 2. Obtain an Export Contract	p.4	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

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 25 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 Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Player Starting Items · Clans · Turn Order · Placing the first Workers	p.3	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	(Clan MacDonald continued) You have three abilities: · Clan MacEwan	p.12	#21	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
#3	RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	How-To-Play Videos:	p.1	#11	0.02886 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Clan Auction · Imprint · Karma Games	p.9	#2	0.045002 (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 Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	3. Expand · Phase 1: Preparation · Phase 2: Action	p.4	#1	0.047643 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Settlement Scoring	p.8	#9	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Export Scoring	p.7	#15	0.014085 (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 Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Money Icons	p.3	#19	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Player Starting Items · Clans · Turn Order · Placing the first Workers	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	3. Expand · Phase 1: Preparation · Phase 2: Action	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Money Icons	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Export Scoring	p.7	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Clans of Caledonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 276)	Settlement Scoring	p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 74 ms · first delta 1843 ms · total 5900 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 74 ms · ask 5823 ms · gateway work 5900 ms · total 5900 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2994
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 825
tok/sec: 205.6 tok/sec — 825 output tokens in 4.013 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 15s 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 204), 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.