Ruling — Thebes

← Thebes

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Thebesbg-30869-en-1e

To play the game, follow these procedures:

**Setup**

1. Set one value 1 artifact token from each area aside.[1]

2. Place all remaining tokens in the bags for their colors.[2][1]

3. Each player takes an archeologist, a time marker, a time wheel, and a set of excavation permissions in their chosen color.[2][1]

4. Remove 10 exhibition cards from the card deck, shuffle the remaining cards, draw 4 cards, and place them face up in the provided space on the board.[2][1]

5. Divide the remaining cards into three equal face down stacks.[2][1]

6. Shuffle 5 small exhibition cards into the second stack and 5 large exhibition cards into the third stack (with 2 players, shuffle all exhibition cards into the second stack).[2][1]

7. Place the first stack on top of the second stack to form the card supply, and set the third stack aside.[2][1]

8. Place the year marker on space “1901” for 2 and 3 players, or “1902” for 4 players.[1]

9. Place all archeologists on Warsaw.[1]

10. Place the time markers for all players in a stack on the start space (for 2 or 4 players) or on space 16 (for 3 players).[1]

**Player Order and Turns**

1. Choose a starting player and place their time marker on top of the stack of time markers on the game board.[3]

2. The player whose time marker is last (lowest number) on the time track takes their turn.[3]

3. If several markers are stacked on the last space, the player whose marker is on top of the stack takes their turn.[3]

4. On a turn, a player must execute one of the following actions: take a researcher card, exchange the 4 cards displayed, execute an excavation, or execute an exhibition.[4]

5. To take a turn, a player moves their archeologist along the broken lines from place to place and executes an action after moving.[3]

6. Moving an archeologist from one place to a neighboring place costs 1 week.[3]

7. The movement and execution of actions use weeks of time, which are marked on the time track by moving the player's time marker.[3]

8. A player must always execute an action on their turn; moving and stopping without an action is not permitted.[4]

**Actions**

* **Take a researcher card:** The player chooses one face up researcher card, moves their archeologist to the indicated city (paying movement costs if necessary), and places the card in their play area.[5] After the move, the player draws the top-most card from the supply to replace it.[5]

* **Exchange the 4 cards displayed:** The player moves their archeologist to Warsaw (or stays there), takes the 4 displayed cards to the discard stack, and draws 4 new cards from the supply to the display.[6] The player moves their time marker to pay for the action (1 week) and the movement of the archeologist.[6]

* **Execute an excavation:** To execute an excavation, a player must have a valid excavation permission and at least 1 point of specialized knowledge for the area.[7]

1. The player moves their archeologist to the area, paying the appropriate movement cost.[7]

2. The player counts special knowledge (technical books, assistants, and notes) and adds general knowledge points (up to the amount of special knowledge available).[8]

3. The player moves the time wheel to display the current total knowledge.[8]

4. The player chooses how many weeks to dig (represented by black numbers 1-12) such that the corresponding red number of tokens to draw is greater than 0.[8]

5. The player moves their time marker the number of spaces equal to the chosen weeks.[8]

6. The player draws the required number of tokens from the area's bag.[8]

7. The player returns any debris tokens to the bag and places useful items face up in their play area.[8]

[1] RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook · p.2

[2] RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook · p.2 · Contents · Preparation

[3] RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook · p.3 · Goal · Playing the game · 1. Player order

[4] RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook · p.3 · 2. Execute an action

[5] RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook · p.4 · Take a researcher card · When an exhibit card is drawn · A new card is drawn · When the card supply is exhausted

[6] RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook · p.4 · Exchange the 4 cards displayed

[7] RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook · p.5 · Execute an excavation · The minimum requirement · Determining knowledge points · as well as:

[8] RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook · p.6 · as well as: · Using the time wheel - the number of tokens to draw · The excavation: finding useful items or useless debris · Players may never look into the bags!

Answer in hand — your move.

🔧 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 198 ms · ask 8835 ms · total 9036 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 9036 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "The players travel as archaeologists around Europe in order to acquire the necessary knowledge for their excavation expeditions. With the aid of assistants, players get needed equipment and services for their expeditions. Once properly equipped, the players head off to Egypt, Crete, or Mesopotamia t", "headingPath": "Goal · Playing the game · 1. Player order", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "The player chooses one of the face up researcher cards on the board, moves his archeologist to the city indicated on the card, and places the card face up in his play area. If the player's archeologist is already in the city shown on the card, the player has no movement cost. If the player's archeol", "headingPath": "Take a researcher card · When an exhibit card is drawn · A new card is drawn · When the card supply is exhausted", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "First, the special knowledge for the excavation area is counted (technical books, assistants, and notes). Then the general knowledge points are added (1 point per book). A player may not use more points of general knowledge than he uses of special area knowledge. If the player has more general knowl", "headingPath": "as well as: · Using the time wheel - the number of tokens to draw · The excavation: finding useful items or useless debris · Players may never look into the bags!", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046244, "snippet": "2 Remove the 10 exhibition cards from the card deck, shuf- fle the remaining cards, draw 4 cards from this deck and place them face up in the space provided for them on the board. Divide the remaining cards into three equal face down stacks. Shuffle the 5 small exhibition cards into the second stack", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045921, "snippet": "When playing in 1903 and a player moves his time marker across week 52, he stops it on space 1. He can execute no more actions, as he can use no more weeks. When all players' time markers have reached space 1 after year 1903, the game ends and the final scores are calculated. Each player now sums hi", "headingPath": "Game end and scoring · Final scoring · Example of scoring:", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.045688, "snippet": "The player's excavation is complete. He turns over the excavation permission he used to display the side with an 'X'. The player may dig again in this area only next year (after his time marker has passed week 52 on the time track). The first player to excavate in an area gets the token ( value 1 ) ", "headingPath": "Ending the excavation · Bonus for the first excavation in an area · Execute an exhibition · A year is ended", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "On his turn, a player executes one of the following actions: take a researcher card exchange the 4 cards displayed execute an excavation execute an exhibition and enhance their reputations in the form of victory points. Players who can arrange exhibitions and visiting congresses will add to their re", "headingPath": "2. Execute an action", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "If the player does not like the 4 researcher cards displayed on the board, he moves his archeologist to Warsaw (or leaves him there if he is already in Warsaw), takes the 4 cards from the display, and places them on the discard stack. Then, he draws the top-most 4 cards from the supply and places th", "headingPath": "Exchange the 4 cards displayed", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Contents · Preparation", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Goal · Playing the game · 1. Player order", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. Execute an action", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Take a researcher card · When an exhibit card is drawn · A new card is drawn · When the card supply is exhausted", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Exchange the 4 cards displayed", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Execute an excavation · The minimum requirement · Determining knowledge points · as well as:", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "as well as: · Using the time wheel - the number of tokens to draw · The excavation: finding useful items or useless debris · Players may never look into the bags!", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 656 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 656 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 0.89728 of 3018 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 22, 2026 17:08 UTC

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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Goal · Playing the game · 1. Player order	p.3	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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Take a researcher card · When an exhibit card is drawn · A new card is drawn · When the card supply is exhausted	p.4	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
#3	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	as well as: · Using the time wheel - the number of tokens to draw · The excavation: finding useful items or useless debris · Players may never look into the bags!	p.6	0.046875 (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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)		p.2	0.046244 (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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Game end and scoring · Final scoring · Example of scoring:	p.8	0.045921 (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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Ending the excavation · Bonus for the first excavation in an area · Execute an exhibition · A year is ended	p.7	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
#7	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	2. Execute an action	p.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))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Exchange the 4 cards displayed	p.4	0.029412 (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 12 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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Goal · Playing the game · 1. Player order	p.3	#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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Execute an excavation · The minimum requirement · Determining knowledge points · as well as:	p.5	#11	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
#3	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Take a researcher card · When an exhibit card is drawn · A new card is drawn · When the card supply is exhausted	p.4	#2	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
#4	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	as well as: · Using the time wheel - the number of tokens to draw · The excavation: finding useful items or useless debris · Players may never look into the bags!	p.6	#3	0.046875 (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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Contents · Preparation	p.2	#12	0.013889 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	2. Execute an action	p.3	#7	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
#7	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Exchange the 4 cards displayed	p.4	#8	0.029412 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)		p.2	#4	0.046244 (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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Contents · Preparation	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Goal · Playing the game · 1. Player order	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	2. Execute an action	p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Take a researcher card · When an exhibit card is drawn · A new card is drawn · When the card supply is exhausted	p.4	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Exchange the 4 cards displayed	p.4	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Execute an excavation · The minimum requirement · Determining knowledge points · as well as:	p.5	no quote on the wire
[8]	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	as well as: · Using the time wheel - the number of tokens to draw · The excavation: finding useful items or useless debris · Players may never look into the bags!	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 198 ms · first delta 2048 ms · total 9036 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 198 ms · ask 8835 ms · gateway work 9036 ms · total 9036 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3389
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 915
tok/sec: 132.7 tok/sec — 915 output tokens in 6.894 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 1s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child): schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 60h, checked 7s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
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 589), 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.