Ruling — Ethnos

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Ethnosbg-206718-en-1e

**Setup**

1. Place the game board in the middle of the table.[1]

2. Shuffle Glory tokens face down and randomly place one face up in each Glory space on the game board (three tokens per Kingdom) in ascending order.[1] (In 2-3 player games, remove 4+ tokens).[2]

3. Each player chooses a color and takes the matching Control markers, placing one marker on the '0' space of the Glory Track.[1]

4. Shuffle all Setup cards and turn over six to determine which six Tribes will be used.[1]

5. Take the Tribe decks for those six Tribes and shuffle them together to form the Allies Deck (in 2-3 player games, use 5 Tribes).[2][1]

6. Depending on the Tribes in play, set up additional pieces such as the Merfolk board, Troll tokens, Giant token, or Orc Horde boards as required.[1]

7. Each player draws 1 Ally card.[2][3]

8. Place a number of face-up Ally cards next to the board equal to twice the number of players.[2][3]

9. Shuffle the 3 Dragon cards into the bottom half of the Allies Deck.[2][3]

10. Determine the First Player: randomly for the First Age; for the Second and Third Age, the player with the least Glory (with a tiebreaker for the player closest to the 3rd Dragon card drawn in the previous Age).[2][3]

**Playing the Game**

1. The game is played over three Ages (or two Ages in 2-3 player games).[4]

2. During each Age, players take turns in clockwise order, starting with the first player and going to the left.[2][5]

3. On a turn, a player must choose one of these two options: [2][5]

* **Recruit One Ally**: Draw an Ally card from either the face-up cards or the Allies Deck (maximum hand size is 10).[2][5] If a Dragon card is drawn, reveal it immediately, place it face up next to the board, and draw another card.[2][6] The first two Dragon cards have no effect, but the third Dragon card ends the Age immediately.[6] If you draw a face-up card, do not replace it.[5]

* **Play a Band of Allies**:

1. Lay down a group of 1 to 10 Ally cards in front of you that are either the same color or the same Tribe.[2][7]

2. Choose one card to be the Leader and place it on top of the Band.[2][7]

3. If the Kingdom matching the color of the Leader has fewer Control markers of your color than the number of cards in the Band, you may add one of your Control markers to that Kingdom.[2][7]

4. Only the ability described on the Leader card may be used.[2][7]

5. Any cards left in your hand after this action must be discarded face up next to the board for players to recruit on their turns.[2][7]

4. At the end of each Age, players earn Glory for the Kingdoms they control and the Bands of Allies they have gathered.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook · p.4 · Game Components · Initial Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook · p.16 · INITIAL SETUP: · BEGINNING A NEW AGE: · PLAYING THROUGH AN AGE: · · Play a Band of Allies

[3] RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook · p.5 · Beginning a New Age

[4] RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook · p.4 · Playing the Game

[5] RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook · p.6 · Beginning a New Age · Playing Through an Age · RECRUITING ALLIES · -Orildan, Thane of the Tribe of Dwarves

[6] RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook · p.7 · Dragon Cards

[7] RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook · p.7 · PLAYING A BAND OF ALLIES

🔧 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 86 ms · ask 5823 ms · total 5911 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5911 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Ethnos is played over three 'Ages.' In each Age, you will try to col lect Bands of Allies that will help you control the Kingdoms of Ethnos. At the end of each Age, you will earn Glory for the Kingdoms you control and the Bands of Allies you have gathered. 2 or 3-Player Games: If you are playing a ", "headingPath": "Playing the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "4 'In the Age of Creation, the land was formed, much as you know it now. In those days, heroes strode the land like gods, giving first form, and then their own names to the Six Kingdoms…' -The Chronicles of Ethnos 1 . Place the game board in the middle of the table. 2 . Shuffle the Glory tokens face", "headingPath": "Game Components · Initial Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "'Raid! Pillage! Burn! And raid some more!' -Gleck, Hordekeeper of the Tribe of Orcs A Band of Allies is a group of cards that you play together from your hand. A Band can include anywhere from 1 to 10 cards. All of the cards in a Band must belong to the same Tribe (i.e., have the same name and art) ", "headingPath": "PLAYING A BAND OF ALLIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "6 'Let the wind guide you as you pass through the lands of the Six Kingdoms, and all shall know you by your wisdom.' -Leth'lorilai, Great Seer of the Tribe of Wingfolk During each Age, players take turns, starting with the first player and going to the left. When it is your turn , you must choose on", "headingPath": "Beginning a New Age · Playing Through an Age · RECRUITING ALLIES · -Orildan, Thane of the Tribe of Dwarves", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.045262, "snippet": "At the end of the First Age, the player with the most Control mark ers in each Kingdom earns Glory equal to the lowest Glory token in that Kingdom, as normal. At the end of the Second Age, the player with the most Control markers in a Kingdom earns Glory equal to the highest token there. Unlike the", "headingPath": "SPECIAL SCORING FOR 2-PLAYER GAMES · PLAYING A BAND OF ALLIES FOR 2-PLAYER GAMES", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.045037, "snippet": "Example: Roderick has managed to play 3 Bands of Allies during the last Age. He scores 1 Glory for the Band with 2 green cards, 3 Glory for the Band with 3 Dwarves, and 6 Glory for the Band of 4 red cards: a total of 10 Glory. 'What a lovely day. What a lovely way to start a new Age!' -Plodis, Chief", "headingPath": "GLORY FOR THE BAND OF ALLIES · A New Age Dawns · The End of the Game · Playing with 2 or 3 Players · SETTING UP THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.043908, "snippet": "Randomly place Glory tokens in ascending order in each King dom (remove 4+ tokens in 23 player games). Randomly pick 6 Tribes for the game and shuffle the Allies Deck (5 Tribes in 23 players game). Each player draws 1 Ally card. Place a number of faceup Ally cards next to the board equal to twic", "headingPath": "INITIAL SETUP: · BEGINNING A NEW AGE: · PLAYING THROUGH AN AGE: · · Play a Band of Allies", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "'As the mountains are built, stone upon stone, so are the Ages built, day upon day. -Mahaidu, Archivist of the Tribe of Minotaurs Follow these steps to begin each Age: 1 . Each player draws one card from the Allies Deck and adds it to their hand. 2 . Turn over a number of cards from the Allies Deck ", "headingPath": "Beginning a New Age", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Components · Initial Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "INITIAL SETUP: · BEGINNING A NEW AGE: · PLAYING THROUGH AN AGE: · · Play a Band of Allies", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Beginning a New Age", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Beginning a New Age · Playing Through an Age · RECRUITING ALLIES · -Orildan, Thane of the Tribe of Dwarves", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Dragon Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYING A BAND OF ALLIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 432 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 432 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 0.88090 of 2141 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 06:57

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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Playing the Game	p.4	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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Game Components · Initial Setup	p.4	0.047131 (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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	PLAYING A BAND OF ALLIES	p.7	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
#4	RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Beginning a New Age · Playing Through an Age · RECRUITING ALLIES · -Orildan, Thane of the Tribe of Dwarves	p.6	0.045724 (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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	SPECIAL SCORING FOR 2-PLAYER GAMES · PLAYING A BAND OF ALLIES FOR 2-PLAYER GAMES	p.11	0.045262 (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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	GLORY FOR THE BAND OF ALLIES · A New Age Dawns · The End of the Game · Playing with 2 or 3 Players · SETTING UP THE GAME	p.11	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
#7	RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	INITIAL SETUP: · BEGINNING A NEW AGE: · PLAYING THROUGH AN AGE: · · Play a Band of Allies	p.16	0.043908 (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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Beginning a New Age	p.5	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

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 28 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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Playing the Game	p.4	#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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	INITIAL SETUP: · BEGINNING A NEW AGE: · PLAYING THROUGH AN AGE: · · Play a Band of Allies	p.16	#7	0.043908 (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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Beginning a New Age · Playing Through an Age · RECRUITING ALLIES · -Orildan, Thane of the Tribe of Dwarves	p.6	#4	0.045724 (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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Dragon Cards	p.7	#16	0.026688 (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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Beginning a New Age	p.5	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Game Components · Initial Setup	p.4	#2	0.047131 (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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	X = Band of Allies Size	p.7	#9	0.028595 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	PLAYING A BAND OF ALLIES	p.7	#3	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))	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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Game Components · Initial Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	INITIAL SETUP: · BEGINNING A NEW AGE: · PLAYING THROUGH AN AGE: · · Play a Band of Allies	p.16	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Beginning a New Age	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Playing the Game	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Beginning a New Age · Playing Through an Age · RECRUITING ALLIES · -Orildan, Thane of the Tribe of Dwarves	p.6	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Dragon Cards	p.7	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	PLAYING A BAND OF ALLIES	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 86 ms · first delta 2378 ms · total 5911 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 86 ms · ask 5823 ms · gateway work 5911 ms · total 5911 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2687
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 718
tok/sec: 205.2 tok/sec — 718 output tokens in 3.499 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 37s 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 362), 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.