Ruling — Through the Desert

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Through the Desertbg-503-en-1e

1. Players start the game by placing their caravan leaders.[1]

2. Starting with the first player and going clockwise, players take turns placing 1 leader at a time, until each player has placed all of their leaders.[1]

3. On your first turn placing a leader, you must choose a different camel color than each player who placed before you.[1]

4. You can only place a leader in a hex that doesn't have an oasis marker, watering hole token, or other leader.[1]

5. You cannot place a leader next to an oasis or other leader, but placing next to watering holes is allowed.[1][2]

6. Once all leaders have been placed, players begin placing camels to extend their caravans.[1]

7. Players continue taking turns clockwise.[1]

8. Each turn, the active player must place 2 camels of any color(s), which may be the same or different colors.[1]

9. The first 2 players in turn order (or 1 player in a 2-player game) each only place 1 camel on their first turn; afterwards, they place 2 camels per turn as normal.[1]

10. In a 2-player game, the first player places 1 camel on their first turn.[2]

11. In a 3-5 player game, the first 2 players place 1 camel on their first turn.[2]

12. You can only place a camel in a hex that doesn't have an oasis marker, leader, or other camel, though placing on watering holes is allowed.[1]

13. Each camel you place must extend your caravan of the matching color.[1]

14. A caravan can fork in multiple directions.[1]

15. A caravan can touch another caravan of a different color (either yours or another player's).[1]

16. A caravan can never touch another player's caravan of the same color.[1]

17. A camel may not touch a camel/leader of the same color that is in another player's caravan.[3]

18. The game ends when a player places the last camel of any 1 color, provided they finish their turn and, if that was their 1st camel, they still place a 2nd camel before ending the game.[2]

19. The game also ends in the rare case that a player cannot legally place a camel on their turn.[2]

20. To win, players add up their final scores, and the player with the most points wins.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Through the Desert — Rulebook · p.2 · OBJECTIVE · PLACE LEADERS · GAME TURNS

[2] RULEBOOK Through the Desert — Rulebook · p.4 · GAME END · FINAL SCORING · TIPS & REMINDERS

[3] RULEBOOK Through the Desert — Rulebook · p.4 · SCORING EXAMPLE

🔧 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 92 ms · ask 3910 ms · total 4004 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4004 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 1, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Bleed: 3mm Bleed: 3mm | Setup | Map | Camels* | Leaders | | Don't use the shaded area | Use 22 of each color (remove 8) | Use all leaders | 2 Players | | Don't use the shaded area | Use 26 of each color (remove 4) | Use all leaders | 3 Players | | Use the entire map | Use all camels (30 of each | co", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 552}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "You can score points during the game by connecting your caravans to watering holes, oases, and the river. When you place a camel on a watering hole token, take it and place it face down in front of you. You can connect a single caravan to multiple oases to score each of them. When you connect a cara", "headingPath": "REACHING WATER · ENCLOSING AREAS", "sharpsignalDocId": 552}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Lead your caravans through the Sahara desert to find water and claim territory. Cleverly place camels to extend each of your 5 caravans and block opponents. Score points for visiting watering holes and oases, enclosing areas, and having the largest caravans. Players start the game by placing their c", "headingPath": "OBJECTIVE · PLACE LEADERS · GAME TURNS", "sharpsignalDocId": 552}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "When a player places the last camel of any 1 color, they finish their turn, and then the game ends. Players add up their final scores, and the player with the most points wins. The game also ends in the rare case that a player can't legally place a camel on their turn. Award each 10 pt largest carav", "headingPath": "GAME END · FINAL SCORING · TIPS & REMINDERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 552}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "| 2 X Longest Caravan (Teal, Red) | 20 pts | | 13x Waterholes (4x 3 pts, 6x 2 pts, 3x 1 pt) | 27 pts | | 5x Oases | 25 pts | | 11x Enclosed Hexes | 11 pts | | Total | 83pts | A camel may touch any camel/leader of a different color. It may not touch a camel/leader of the same color that is in another", "headingPath": "SCORING EXAMPLE", "sharpsignalDocId": 552}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "OBJECTIVE · PLACE LEADERS · GAME TURNS", "sharpsignalDocId": 552}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME END · FINAL SCORING · TIPS & REMINDERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 552}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SCORING EXAMPLE", "sharpsignalDocId": 552}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 552 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 552 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 0.89199 of 1722 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 08:03

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 Through the Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 552)	SETUP	p.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))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Through the Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 552)	REACHING WATER · ENCLOSING AREAS	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
#3	RULEBOOK Through the Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 552)	OBJECTIVE · PLACE LEADERS · GAME TURNS	p.2	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 Through the Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 552)	GAME END · FINAL SCORING · TIPS & REMINDERS	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 Through the Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 552)	SCORING EXAMPLE	p.4	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 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 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 at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Through the Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 552)	OBJECTIVE · PLACE LEADERS · GAME TURNS	p.2	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Through the Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 552)	GAME END · FINAL SCORING · TIPS & REMINDERS	p.4	#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 Through the Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 552)	SCORING EXAMPLE	p.4	#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 Through the Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 552)	SETUP	p.1	#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
#5	RULEBOOK Through the Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 552)	REACHING WATER · ENCLOSING AREAS	p.3	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Through the Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 552)	OBJECTIVE · PLACE LEADERS · GAME TURNS	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Through the Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 552)	GAME END · FINAL SCORING · TIPS & REMINDERS	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Through the Desert — Rulebook (corpus doc 552)	SCORING EXAMPLE	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 92 ms · first delta 1292 ms · total 4004 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 92 ms · ask 3910 ms · gateway work 4004 ms · total 4004 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2088
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 554
tok/sec: 207.6 tok/sec — 554 output tokens in 2.669 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 18s 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 484), 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.