Ruling — Alhambra

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Alhambrabg-6249-en-1e

Play proceeds in a clockwise direction, beginning with the player with the fewest cards (if tied, the player with the lowest amount of money; if still tied, the younger player).[1][2] On their turn, a player must perform one of the following three actions:[2]

1. **Take money**: A player can take any one money card from the display, or several cards if they do not add up to more than 5 (the currency does not matter).[2]

2. **Buy a building tile**: A player can buy a tile from the building market by playing currency cards of the correct type that total at least the price of the tile; no change is given.[2] If a player pays the exact amount, they may decide which of the three actions they would like to perform next, and their turn continues.[3][2]

3. **Redesign the Alhambra**: A player may use one of three methods:[2]

* Take a building tile from their reserve board and add it to their Alhambra.

* Remove a building tile from their Alhambra and put it on their reserve board.

* Exchange a building tile on their reserve board for one in their Alhambra (the new tile must go in the exact same place as the one removed).[2]

* Note: When redesigning, all building rules must be followed, and the starting tile cannot be removed or exchanged.[2]

**End of Turn and Building Rules**

* At the end of a turn, all purchased building tiles must be placed either in the player's Alhambra or on their reserve board.[4]

* When building in the Alhambra, all tiles must have the same orientation as the starting tile (roofs pointing upwards), adjoining sides must match (both have a wall or both do not), each tile must be joined by at least one side, and no "spaces" (empty areas surrounded by tiles) may be left.[4]

* When a turn ends, empty spaces in the money card display are refilled by drawing from the pile, and empty squares in the building market are refilled with new tiles from the tower.[4]

**Scoring and Game End**

* There are three scoring rounds: the first two occur when scoring cards are drawn from the money card pile, and the third occurs at the end of the game.[5]

* Points are awarded for the length of the longest continuous wall around the Alhambra and for having the most of each kind of building.[5]

* The game ends when, at the end of a player's turn, there are not enough building tiles left in the tower to refill the building market.[6]

* At the end of the game, remaining tiles in the market are given to players with the most money of the respective currency in their hand.[6]

* The player who leads on the scoring board after the third scoring round wins; a tie results in a draw.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook · p.2 · Getting ready to play

[2] RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook · p.3 · How to play · Position a building tile · Take money · Buy a building tile · Redesign the Alhambra · Example:

[3] RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook · p.3 · Example:

[4] RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook · p.4 · Position a building tile · The following combinations are NOT allowed:

[5] RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook · p.5 · Scoring · Points for the wall around your Alhambra · Points for having the most of each kind of building · First scoring · Second scoring · Example:

[6] RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook · p.6 · Example: · End of the game · Rules for playing with two players

🔧 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 95 ms · ask 8972 ms · total 9069 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 9069 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Put the game board , consisting of the building market and card display, in the middle of the table and the scoring board at the end of the table. Each player is given a starting tile , which they place on the table in front of them, and 1 counter in their player color, which is placed on the 0/100 ", "headingPath": "Getting ready to play", "sharpsignalDocId": 138}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Play proceeds in a clockwise direction, beginning with the starting player. The player whose turn it is must perform one of the three following actions: Take money Buy a building tile Redesign the Alhambra If a player buys a building tile, they must build it in their Alhambra at the end of the turn.", "headingPath": "How to play · Position a building tile · Take money · Buy a building tile · Redesign the Alhambra · Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 138}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "The third scoring takes place at the end of the game, when the building market can not be refilled any more. Here players who have the most, second most, and third most buildings of a kind can earn points. The points for each place are shown on the reserve board. The game ends when - at the end of a", "headingPath": "Example: · End of the game · Rules for playing with two players", "sharpsignalDocId": 138}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "There are 3 scoring rounds during the game. The first two take place when the scoring cards are drawn from the pile of money cards. The third and final scoring round takes place at the end of the game . When a scoring card is drawn, it is put in front of the next player in turn order and the next ca", "headingPath": "Scoring · Points for the wall around your Alhambra · Points for having the most of each kind of building · First scoring · Second scoring · Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 138}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The best master builders from Europe and Arabia want to demonstrate their skills. However, whether they are stonemaisons from the north or horticulturalists from the south, they all want a proper wage and insist in being paid in their native currency. Employ the best teams of builders and ensure you", "headingPath": "Components · Object of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 138}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "All purchased building tiles may only be placed at the end of a player's turn , either in their Alhambra , or on the player's reserve board . There is no limit to the number of buildings that may be on the reserve board. If a player has bought multiple buildings in a turn, they may choose in which o", "headingPath": "Position a building tile · The following combinations are NOT allowed:", "sharpsignalDocId": 138}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "You buy a building tile and pay the exact amount, thus having another turn. The tile is placed next to your Alhambra (not in the reserve). You decide to buy another building tile and you manage to pay the exact amount again. It is therefore still your turn and you decide to now redesign your Alhambr", "headingPath": "Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 138}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Getting ready to play", "sharpsignalDocId": 138}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "How to play · Position a building tile · Take money · Buy a building tile · Redesign the Alhambra · Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 138}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 138}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Position a building tile · The following combinations are NOT allowed:", "sharpsignalDocId": 138}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Scoring · Points for the wall around your Alhambra · Points for having the most of each kind of building · First scoring · Second scoring · Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 138}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Example: · End of the game · Rules for playing with two players", "sharpsignalDocId": 138}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 138 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 138 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 0.92740 of 2135 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 16, 2026 20:40

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 Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Getting ready to play	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 Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	How to play · Position a building tile · Take money · Buy a building tile · Redesign the Alhambra · Example:	p.3	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 Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Example: · End of the game · Rules for playing with two players	p.6	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
#4	RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Scoring · Points for the wall around your Alhambra · Points for having the most of each kind of building · First scoring · Second scoring · Example:	p.5	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
#5	RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Components · Object of the game	p.1	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
#6	RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Position a building tile · The following combinations are NOT allowed:	p.4	0.030303 (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 Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Example:	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))	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 7 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 Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Getting ready to play	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 Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Example: · End of the game · Rules for playing with two players	p.6	#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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Position a building tile · The following combinations are NOT allowed:	p.4	#6	0.030303 (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 Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Example:	p.3	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Components · Object of the game	p.1	#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
#6	RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Scoring · Points for the wall around your Alhambra · Points for having the most of each kind of building · First scoring · Second scoring · Example:	p.5	#4	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
#7	RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	How to play · Position a building tile · Take money · Buy a building tile · Redesign the Alhambra · Example:	p.3	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Getting ready to play	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	How to play · Position a building tile · Take money · Buy a building tile · Redesign the Alhambra · Example:	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Example:	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Position a building tile · The following combinations are NOT allowed:	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Scoring · Points for the wall around your Alhambra · Points for having the most of each kind of building · First scoring · Second scoring · Example:	p.5	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Alhambra — Rulebook (corpus doc 138)	Example: · End of the game · Rules for playing with two players	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 95 ms · first delta 5990 ms · total 9069 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 95 ms · ask 8972 ms · gateway work 9069 ms · total 9069 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3365
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 622
tok/sec: 204.7 tok/sec — 622 output tokens in 3.038 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 0s 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 60), 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.