Ruling — At the Gates of Loyang

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: At the Gates of Loyangbg-39683-en-1e

The game is played over 9 rounds.[1] Each round consists of three phases:[1]

**Phase 1: Harvest phase**

1. All players carry out this phase simultaneously.[1]

2. Each player turns over the top field from his Field pile and places it to the right of his other fields (in the last round, no new field is uncovered).[1]

3. Each player harvests exactly 1 vegetable from each of his fields.[1]

4. The player places the harvested vegetables and any vegetables left in his Storehouse from previous turns on or beside his Cart.[1]

5. Once the last vegetable is removed from a Private field, it is removed from the game.[1]

**Phase 2: Card phase**

1. At the start of the phase, a new Draw pile is created by shuffling the Discard pile into the remaining Draw pile.[1]

2. Each player is dealt a hand of 4 Action cards.[1]

3. **Distribution round:**

* The player with the larger Starting player token places one card from his hand face up in the centre of the table to open the "Courtyard".[2]

* Players take turns in clockwise order.[2]

* On a turn, a player must choose one of two options (passing is not allowed):

* Place 1 card from his hand into the Courtyard.[2]

* Take exactly 1 card from the Courtyard and exactly 1 card from his hand, placing both face-up in his own play area.[2]

* If a player uses the Regular customer dealt at the start of the game, he may play it instead of a card from his hand, but he must still choose a card from the Courtyard and cannot play a card from his hand.[2]

* The last player left to choose may no longer place cards into the Courtyard but must choose from the available cards.[2]

* Any remaining cards in a player's hand are placed face-up in the Courtyard, and that player takes no further part in the round.[2]

* At the end of the round, remaining cards in the Courtyard form a new face-up Discard pile.[3]

4. Each player plays 2 Action cards face-up into his own playing area.[1]

5. A new Starting player is chosen: the last player to play two cards receives the large Starting player token, and the second last player receives the smaller Starting player token.[3]

**Phase 3: Action phase**

1. The Starting player begins, followed by the Second player.[3] (In a 3-player game, the player with no token is third).[3]

2. A player may take actions in any order during his turn.[3]

3. A player may take any action (except "Buy a Two-pack") as many times as he wishes during a round, and may take other actions in between.[3]

4. Possible actions include:

* Taking 1 vegetable from a Cart and placing it on an empty field.[4]

* Buying 1 vegetable from one's own Shop and placing it in the Cart.[4]

* Taking 1 vegetable from a Cart and selling it to one's own Shop.[4]

* Trading 1 or 2 vegetables from a Cart for 1 vegetable from a Market stall.[4]

* Using Helper skills or discarding Helpers.[4]

* Using the Squire to take up to 3 cards from the Courtyard instead of 1.[5]

* Using the Subsistence farmer to take 1 vegetable from another player's field (if it has at least 4 vegetables and is not a Home field) by paying 1 Cash.[5]

* Using the Tout to exchange or buy Casual customers.[5]

5. At the end of their turns, players must store their vegetables and may move their Scoring marker.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook · p.3 · Playing the game · Phase 1: Harvest phase · Phase 2: Card phase

[2] RULEBOOK At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook · p.3 · Distribution round · Special rules for the Introductory version

[3] RULEBOOK At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook · p.4

[4] RULEBOOK At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook · p.5 · The player takes 1 vegetable from his Cart and places it on an empty field. · The player buys 1 vegetable from his own Shop and places it in his Cart. · The player takes 1 vegetable from his Cart and sells it to his own Shop. · The player trades 1 or 2 vegetables of his choice from his Cart for 1 vegetable from a Market stall. · Notes and special cases: · A player can use a Helper's skills or discard the Helper without using it.

[5] RULEBOOK At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook · p.11 · Helper Reference

🔧 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 88 ms · ask 6744 ms · total 6833 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6833 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "Du ring the Distribution round, each player plays exactly 1 card from his hand and exactly 1 card from the common 'Courtyard': The pl ayer with the larger Starting player token places one card from his hand face up in the centre of the table, opening the 'Courtyard'. Players then take turns in clock", "headingPath": "Distribution round · Special\trules\tfor\tthe\tIntroductory\tversion", "sharpsignalDocId": 462}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.047493, "snippet": "Shuffle the 4 Regular customers that are marked with a blue dot in the space for the Satisfaction marker. Deal one, face-down, to each player. Players look at the cards and can hold them in their hand until they decide to play them during a Card phase. In a 2- or 3-player game, any remaining Regular", "headingPath": "Special\trules\tfor\tthe\tIntroductory\tversion:", "sharpsignalDocId": 462}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "D uring the Distribution round, at the start of his turn, a player may choose to turn over the top Action card from the Draw pile and place it in the Courtyard. (This is also allowed when only one player is left and he must immediately choose from the available cards. This special rule gives players", "headingPath": "Special\trules\tfor\t2\tplayers: · Important: · Notes\tand\tSpecial\tCases: · Choose\ta\tnew\tstarting\tplayer · Special\trules\tfor\tthe\tFour-player\tgame", "sharpsignalDocId": 462}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "The game is played over 9 Rounds . Each Round consists of 3 Phases : Harvest phase (players receive one new field and harvest vegetables from their fields) Card phase (players each play 2 Action cards, then a new Starting player is chosen) Action phase (players buy and sell vegetables, then progress", "headingPath": "Playing the game · Phase 1: Harvest phase · Phase 2: Card phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 462}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046544, "snippet": "For the first game, we offer an 'Introductory version'. This incorporates two small changes, which are included in the rules in red boxes. These changes make it easier to start playing the game, but otherwise have no real influence on its play. These game rules apply to any number of players, with t", "headingPath": "Introductory\tversion\tfor\tyour\tfirst\tgame · Special\trules\tfor\tdifferent\tnumbers\tof\tplayers: · Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 462}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "A player’s last card may never be placed in the Courtyard; it must be played from his hand. There is no limit to the number of cards that may be placed in any row of a player’s play area. At the end of the Distribution round, the remaining cards in the Courtyard form a new face-up Discard pile. They", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 462}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The Solo game takes around 1 hour. It works exactly the same as the game for 2 to 4 players, with the following additions: Shuffle the Action cards. For an imaginary opponent, turn over cards until there are exactly 2 Market stalls, 2 Regular customers and 2 Casual customers. Fill the Market stalls ", "headingPath": "Solo game · Preparation: · Card phase: · Your\tGoal:", "sharpsignalDocId": 462}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.02971, "snippet": "Squire: [2] During the Card phase, instead of taking 1 card from your hand and 1 from the Courtyard, you can take 1 card from your hand and up to 3 from the Courtyard. (If you take the Foreman card, you can immediately swap it for the Squire.) Solo game: You may acquire up to 4 cards from the Offer.", "headingPath": "Helper Reference", "sharpsignalDocId": 462}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing the game · Phase 1: Harvest phase · Phase 2: Card phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 462}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Distribution round · Special\trules\tfor\tthe\tIntroductory\tversion", "sharpsignalDocId": 462}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 462}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The\tplayer\ttakes\t1\tvegetable\tfrom\this\tCart\tand\tplaces\tit\ton\tan\tempty\tfield. · The\tplayer\tbuys\t1\tvegetable\tfrom\this\town\tShop\tand\tplaces\tit\tin\this\tCart. · The\tplayer\ttakes\t1\tvegetable\tfrom\this\tCart\tand\tsells\tit\tto\this\town\tShop. · The player\ttrades\t1\tor\t2\tvegetables\tof\this\tchoice\tfrom\this\tCart\tfor\t1\tvegetable from\ta\tMarket\tstall. · Notes\tand\tspecial\tcases: · A\tplayer\tcan\tuse\ta\tHelper's\tskills\tor\tdiscard\tthe\tHelper\twithout\tusing\tit.", "sharpsignalDocId": 462}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Helper Reference", "sharpsignalDocId": 462}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 462 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 462 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 0.90205 of 2634 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 10:46

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 At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Distribution round · Special rules for the Introductory version	p.3	0.047619 (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 At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Special rules for the Introductory version:	p.2	0.047493 (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 At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Special rules for 2 players: · Important: · Notes and Special Cases: · Choose a new starting player · Special rules for the Four-player game	p.4	0.047163 (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 At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Playing the game · Phase 1: Harvest phase · Phase 2: Card phase	p.3	0.046635 (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 At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Introductory version for your first game · Special rules for different numbers of players: · Game Setup	p.2	0.046544 (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 At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)		p.4	0.045455 (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 At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Solo game · Preparation: · Card phase: · Your Goal:	p.9	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))	300
#8	RULEBOOK At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Helper Reference	p.11	0.02971 (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 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 At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Distribution round · Special rules for the Introductory version	p.3	#1	0.047619 (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 At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Special rules for the Introductory version:	p.2	#2	0.047493 (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 At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Helper Reference	p.11	#8	0.02971 (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 At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	The player takes 1 vegetable from his Cart and places it on an empty field. · The player buys 1 vegetable from his own Shop and places it in his Cart. · The player takes 1 vegetable from his Cart and sells it to his own Shop. · The player trades 1 or 2 vegetables of his choice from his Cart for 1 vegetable from a Market stall. · Notes and special cases: · A player can use a Helper's skills or discard the Helper without using it.	p.5	#11	0.028814 (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 At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Introductory version for your first game · Special rules for different numbers of players: · Game Setup	p.2	#5	0.046544 (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 At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Playing the game · Phase 1: Harvest phase · Phase 2: Card phase	p.3	#4	0.046635 (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 At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)		p.4	#6	0.045455 (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
#8	RULEBOOK At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	A player can deliver vegetables to his Regular customers in any order.	p.6	#12	0.027588 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Playing the game · Phase 1: Harvest phase · Phase 2: Card phase	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Distribution round · Special rules for the Introductory version	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	The player takes 1 vegetable from his Cart and places it on an empty field. · The player buys 1 vegetable from his own Shop and places it in his Cart. · The player takes 1 vegetable from his Cart and sells it to his own Shop. · The player trades 1 or 2 vegetables of his choice from his Cart for 1 vegetable from a Market stall. · Notes and special cases: · A player can use a Helper's skills or discard the Helper without using it.	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK At the Gates of Loyang — Rulebook (corpus doc 462)	Helper Reference	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 88 ms · first delta 2648 ms · total 6833 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 88 ms · ask 6744 ms · gateway work 6833 ms · total 6833 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3628
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 848
tok/sec: 205.3 tok/sec — 848 output tokens in 4.131 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 28s 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 392), 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.