Ruling — Viscounts of the West Kingdom

You asked

How do I play?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: Viscounts of the West Kingdombg-296151-en-1e

I looked through Viscounts of the West Kingdom's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook · p.30 · solo play rules: ai turns

At the start of the AI's turn, shift all cards on their Player Board 1 space to the right (just like the standard game). Next, turn over the top card from their Scheme Card Draw Pile, placing it into the left space of their Player Board. After doing so, simply carry out all the effects listed on the

RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook · p.29 · solo play rules: primary actions

When resolving an effect to transcribe a Manuscript for free (such as from a Manuscript), they will first attempt to transcribe the Manuscript from the Main Board Segment where their Viscount currently stands. If that Manuscript cannot be taken, due to the restrictions of the effect, they will conti

RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook · p.27 · scoring example · solo play rules: general rules

Give the AI all their starting items, as listed on the left card space of their Player Board. For example, the Cleric AI starts with 1 Ink Well, 1 Stone, 1 Deed, 1 Debt and 1 Guildhall at the same location as their Viscount (also gaining the immediate effect from placing it). For the most part, the

RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook · p.31 · solo play rules: end game and ai scoring · manuscript scoring

The game ends the same way as the standard game, keeping in mind that the AI will always take the final turn. The AI scores Victory Points in the exact same way as human players. However, it also gains 1 VP per leftover resource. Players are reminded of this on the AI's Player Board. To win against

RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook · p.8 · 4 Player Boards

Shuffle the Player Cards and lay out a number of cards in a line, equal to the number of players in the game, plus 1. Then shuffle the Hero Townsfolk Cards and place 1 below each of the Player Cards, forming pairs of cards (1 Hero Townsfolk Card for each Player Card). This image shows how it might l

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome

ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below

warm abstain

this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)

corpus profile

live,vps

answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)

gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70

timings

search 110 ms · ask 2046 ms · total 2158 ms

single-flight (PR-5)

queued 0 ms · generation 2158 ms

retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read

[{"page": 30, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "At the start of the AI's turn, shift all cards on their Player Board 1 space to the right (just like the standard game). Next, turn over the top card from their Scheme Card Draw Pile, placing it into the left space of their Player Board. After doing so, simply carry out all the effects listed on the", "headingPath": "solo play rules: ai turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}, {"page": 29, "score": 0.046032, "snippet": "When resolving an effect to transcribe a Manuscript for free (such as from a Manuscript), they will first attempt to transcribe the Manuscript from the Main Board Segment where their Viscount currently stands. If that Manuscript cannot be taken, due to the restrictions of the effect, they will conti", "headingPath": "solo play rules: primary actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.045688, "snippet": "Give the AI all their starting items, as listed on the left card space of their Player Board. For example, the Cleric AI starts with 1 Ink Well, 1 Stone, 1 Deed, 1 Debt and 1 Guildhall at the same location as their Viscount (also gaining the immediate effect from placing it). For the most part, the ", "headingPath": "scoring example · solo play rules: general rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.044563, "snippet": "The game ends the same way as the standard game, keeping in mind that the AI will always take the final turn. The AI scores Victory Points in the exact same way as human players. However, it also gains 1 VP per leftover resource. Players are reminded of this on the AI's Player Board. To win against ", "headingPath": "solo play rules: end game and ai scoring · manuscript scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Shuffle the Player Cards and lay out a number of cards in a line, equal to the number of players in the game, plus 1. Then shuffle the Hero Townsfolk Cards and place 1 below each of the Player Cards, forming pairs of cards (1 Hero Townsfolk Card for each Player Card). This image shows how it might l", "headingPath": "4 Player Boards", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Setup for you remains mostly the same. To set up the AI player, follow these steps: Choose 1 of the Player Boards and flip it over to the AI Player Board side. The top-left of AI Player Boards give you an idea on what they will focus on strategically (placing Workers, constructing Buildings, etc). W", "headingPath": "scoring example", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "35 Manuscripts For the first game, punch out the cardboard pieces and place them in the positions pictured here. 1 Start Player Marker 5 Main Board Segments", "headingPath": "72 Resources in 3 types: · 1 Castle · 4 Player Boards", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "components 3 24 Gold 35 Manuscripts 1 Start Player Marker 5 Main Board Segments 4 Player Boards 24 Ink Wells 24 Stone 1 Castle For the first game, punch out the cardboard pieces and place them in the positions pictured here. 72 Resources in 3 types:", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 333}]

citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show

[]

boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)

no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 333 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true

base rulebook doc 333 boosted

answered-before recall

no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough

similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)

debug row retained until

Nov 15, 2026 09:03

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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	solo play rules: ai turns	p.30	0.048387 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	solo play rules: primary actions	p.29	0.046032 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	scoring example · solo play rules: general rules	p.27	0.045688 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	solo play rules: end game and ai scoring · manuscript scoring	p.31	0.044563 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	4 Player Boards	p.8	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
#6	RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	scoring example	p.26	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
#7	RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	72 Resources in 3 types: · 1 Castle · 4 Player Boards	p.3	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))	156
#8	RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)		p.3	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))	249

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 35 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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	solo play rules: ai turns	p.30	#1	0.048387 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	4 Player Boards	p.8	#5	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
#3	RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	scoring example · solo play rules: general rules	p.27	#3	0.045688 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	scoring example	p.26	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	Phase 2: Movement	p.13	#9	0.029324 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	4 Player Boards	p.6	#16	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
#7	RULEBOOK Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	solo play rules: primary actions	p.29	#10	0.028986 (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 Viscounts of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 333)	solo play rules: primary actions	p.29	#2	0.046032 (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

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 110 ms · first delta 2061 ms · total 2158 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 110 ms · ask 2046 ms · gateway work 2158 ms · total 2158 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3033
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 9
tok/sec: 195.7 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.046 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 52s 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: ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
abstain rationale: I don't have enough information.
the answerer's own words, verbatim — hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped

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 261), 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.