RuleSage cited table rulings
← Kingdomino

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Kingdominobg-204583-en-1e

To play the game, follow these steps:
1. **Setup**: Assemble 4 3D castles, and have each player take a single-square starting tile, a castle, and one king meeple matching their castle color.[1]
2. **Starting the Draw Pile**: Shuffle the dominoes and place them in a box with the gap facing away from players to create a drawing pile.[1]
3. **Initial Domino Lineup**: Take the first 4 dominoes from the box and line them up numerically, terrain side down, with the lowest number at the top and the highest at the bottom, then flip them over so the terrain side is exposed.[1]
4. **Determining First Turn Order**: One player pulls the 4 king meeples from their hand one at a time; the order in which kings are pulled determines the order in which players select their first domino.[1]
5. **First Round Selection**: Players select their first domino by placing their king meeple on it.[1]
6. **Replenishing the Line**: When all 4 dominoes are claimed, select 4 new dominoes from the drawing pile, line them up numerically, terrain side down, next to the existing ones, and flip them over.[1]
7. **Taking Turns**: In each following round, players take two actions one after the other:
* Add their previously selected domino to their kingdom.[1]
* Choose a new domino from the next line by placing their king on top of it to claim it.[1][2]
8. **Connection Rules**: When adding dominoes to a kingdom, at least 2 connecting squares must have the same terrain type (one on each domino).[3] The 4 sides of the starting tile are wild and can connect to any terrain.[3] A kingdom may not exceed 5x5 squares in dimension.[3] Once a domino is placed, it cannot be moved.[3]
9. **Handling Invalid Dominoes**: If a selected domino violates the 5x5 dimension rule or does not match any available terrain, it must be discarded from the game and earns no points.[2] Dominoes cannot be discarded if they can be placed using the connection rules.[2]
10. **Continuing the Game**: After all players have added to their kingdom and selected a new domino, pick 4 more dominoes from the box, line them up numerically (terrain side down), and flip them over to start a new round.[2] The playing order for a round is determined by the position of kings in the line of already selected dominoes.[1]
11. **Ending the Game**: Play continues until the dominoes run out (12 rounds for a 4 player game) or there are no more dominoes in the draw pile.[2] When the game ends, players add the last domino to their kingdom following the connection rules.[2]
12. **Scoring**:
* A territory is a group of matching terrain squares connected horizontally or vertically.[4][2]
* For every territory, count the number of connecting terrain squares and multiply that number by the total number of crowns found in that territory; territories without crowns score 0 points.[2]
* Add the points from all territories to create a final score.[2]
13. **Winning**: The player with the highest score wins.[2] In the event of a tie, the player with the largest territory wins; if a tie persists, players share the victory.[2]
[1] RULEBOOK Kingdomino — Rulebook · p.2 · Set-up · The Starting Round · Playing a Round
[2] RULEBOOK Kingdomino — Rulebook · p.3 · 1 - Kingdom building · 2 - Domino Selection · End of Game
[3] RULEBOOK Kingdomino — Rulebook · p.2 · 1 - Kingdom building
[4] RULEBOOK Kingdomino — Rulebook · p.1 · Contents: · Introduction · Object of the Game
🔧 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 90 ms · ask 4719 ms · total 4811 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 4811 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 2, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Z Before your first game, assemble the 4 3D castles. Z Have each player take a singlesquare starting tile, a castle, and one king meeple that matches their castle color. The other 4 kings will not be used, return them to the box. Z Have each player put the starting tile, with the castle directly on ", "headingPath": "Set-up · The Starting Round · Playing a Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 141}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "4 Z Have each player take 2 king meeples, 1 starting tile, and 1 castle, and leave the remaining components in the box. Z Play with 24 randomly selected dominoes (remove half). Z During a round, players select 2 dominoes; 1 with each of their king meeples. The order of selection is still determined ", "headingPath": "End of Game · 2 player games · 3 player games · Additional Variations:", "sharpsignalDocId": 141}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "♦ If a player selects a domino (or is forced to select a domino) that does not fit into their kingdom because it violates the 5x5 dimension rule, or it does not match any available terrain type, it must be discarded from the game. Points are not earned for discarded dominoes. ♦ Dominoes cannot be di", "headingPath": "1 - Kingdom building · 2 - Domino Selection · End of Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 141}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Rules Règles Reglas 8 + 4 starting tiles (single squares) 4 3D castles (1 pink, 1 yellow, 1 green, 1 blue) You are a royal, seeking new lands to expand your ever-growing kingdom. Explore and conquer the different terrains, and develop the best and richest territories for your people. Scour lands ful", "headingPath": "Contents: · Introduction · Object of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 141}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Z Dominoes must be added to a kingdom using the following Connection Rules: ♦ A kingdom may not be more than 5x5 squares in dimension. ♦ When connecting a domino to another domino, horizontally or vertically, at least 2 connecting squares must have the same terrain type (one on each domino). ♦ The ", "headingPath": "1 - Kingdom building", "sharpsignalDocId": 141}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Set-up · The Starting Round · Playing a Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 141}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1 - Kingdom building · 2 - Domino Selection · End of Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 141}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1 - Kingdom building", "sharpsignalDocId": 141}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Contents: · Introduction · Object of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 141}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 141 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 141 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 0.90192 of 2549 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until
Nov 15, 2026 05:04

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Kingdomino — Rulebook (corpus doc 141) Set-up · The Starting Round · Playing a Round p.2 0.048916 (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 Kingdomino — Rulebook (corpus doc 141) End of Game · 2 player games · 3 player games · Additional Variations: p.4 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
#3 RULEBOOK Kingdomino — Rulebook (corpus doc 141) 1 - Kingdom building · 2 - Domino Selection · End of Game p.3 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
#4 RULEBOOK Kingdomino — Rulebook (corpus doc 141) Contents: · Introduction · Object of the Game p.1 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 Kingdomino — Rulebook (corpus doc 141) 1 - Kingdom building p.2 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

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 5 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Kingdomino — Rulebook (corpus doc 141) Set-up · The Starting Round · Playing a Round p.2 #1 0.048916 (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 Kingdomino — Rulebook (corpus doc 141) Contents: · Introduction · Object of the Game p.1 #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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#3 RULEBOOK Kingdomino — Rulebook (corpus doc 141) 1 - Kingdom building p.2 #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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#4 RULEBOOK Kingdomino — Rulebook (corpus doc 141) 1 - Kingdom building · 2 - Domino Selection · End of Game p.3 #3 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 Kingdomino — Rulebook (corpus doc 141) End of Game · 2 player games · 3 player games · Additional Variations: p.4 #2 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

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Kingdomino — Rulebook (corpus doc 141) Set-up · The Starting Round · Playing a Round p.2 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Kingdomino — Rulebook (corpus doc 141) 1 - Kingdom building · 2 - Domino Selection · End of Game p.3 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Kingdomino — Rulebook (corpus doc 141) 1 - Kingdom building p.2 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Kingdomino — Rulebook (corpus doc 141) Contents: · Introduction · Object of the Game p.1 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 90 ms · first delta 1196 ms · total 4811 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 90 ms · ask 4719 ms · gateway work 4811 ms · total 4811 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
2003
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
740
tok/sec
206.2 tok/sec — 740 output tokens in 3.588 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 8s 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 63), 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.