Ruling — Vikings

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Vikingsbg-27173-en-1e

The game consists of 6 rounds.[1]

**Round Setup**

1. The start player takes the leftmost remaining stack of tiles and lays them on the spaces surrounding the rotating wheel.[1]

2. The first Island tile is placed on the space marked by the number 0, and each successive Island tile is placed on the lowest remaining numbered space (1, 2, 3, etc.).[1]

3. The first Ship tile is placed on the space marked by the number 11, and each successive Ship tile is placed on the highest remaining numbered space (10, 9, 8, etc.).[1]

4. The start player draws 12 Vikings from the cloth sack and sorts them by color.[1]

5. The start player places one Viking on each space, starting from space 0.[1]

6. Vikings are placed such that all Vikings of a single color are placed before another color, following this order: blue Fishermen, yellow Goldsmiths, green Scouts, red Nobles, black Warriors, and gray Boatswains (skipping any color not present).[1]

**Gameplay Turn**

1. Beginning with the start player and proceeding clockwise, each player must purchase exactly 1 Group (1 tile and 1 Viking).[2]

2. A player may purchase any Group she can afford, though she may only purchase the Group next to the 0 when it is the only available Group containing a Viking of that color.[2]

3. If a player cannot afford the least expensive Group allowed, she is forced to take the 0-cost Group.[2]

4. A player may exchange Fame for Gold at a rate of 1 Fame for 1 Gold, provided her Fame does not drop below 0.[2]

5. Upon purchasing, the player immediately adds the tile and the Viking to her Mainland.[2]

6. When a Ship tile is purchased, it must be placed in the Ship row; the first 3 must be placed in the first 3 spaces of that row, and further Ship tiles must be placed adjacent to a previously placed Ship tile.[3]

7. When an Island tile is purchased, it must be placed in one of the five Viking rows so that land connects to land and sea connects to sea, and it must be adjacent to the Mainland or a previously placed Island tile.[3]

8. If an Island tile cannot be legally placed, it is removed from the game and the Viking is placed at the top left of the Mainland with the Head Boatswain.[3]

9. After a player purchases the 0-cost Group, the wheel is rotated clockwise until a Group occupies the 0-cost spot, reducing the cost of all remaining Groups.[2]

10. Players continue in clockwise order until all 12 Groups have been purchased, at which point the round ends.[1][2]

**Scoring and End of Game**

1. After the 1st, 3rd, and 5th rounds, a small scoring occurs (only Goldsmiths).[1]

2. After the 2nd, 4th, and 6th rounds, a large scoring occurs (all Vikings except the Fishermen).[1]

3. After the large scoring of the 6th round, players proceed to end game scoring.[1]

4. End game scoring involves calculating penalties for Ships not repelled by Warriors, awarding Fame for remaining Gold, Boatswains, completed Islands, and the longest Island, and calculating Fame from overfeeding or underfeeding Vikings.[4]

5. After end game scoring is complete, the game ends.[5]

6. The player with the most Fame is the winner; ties are broken by the most remaining Gold, and if still tied, players share the victory.[5]

7. After a scoring round is completed, the Start Player Ship is passed clockwise to the next player.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook · p.2 · Gameplay Overview · The following rules apply:

[2] RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook · p.2 · PURCHASING GROUPS · ROTATING THE WHEEL

[3] RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook · p.3 · Placing tiles and Vikings YOUR MAINLAND · PLACING A TILE

[4] RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook · p.5 · Next Round

[5] RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook · p.6 · Game End · Tactics & Tips

Question closed. Friendships intact.

🔧 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 101 ms · ask 8301 ms · total 8406 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8406 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "A player's Mainland is the starting point for all the tiles she will play. Six rows are clearly marked (from top to bottom: Ships, Warriors, Nobles, Scouts, Goldsmiths, and Fishermen ). Each row may hold as many tiles as a player wishes. Every turn, a player purchases a Group containing 1 tile and 1", "headingPath": "Placing tiles and Vikings YOUR MAINLAND · PLACING A TILE", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "After the end game scoring is complete, the game ends. The player with the most Fame is declared the winner. In case of a tie, the player with the most Gold remaining wins. If there is still a tie, the tied players share the victory. Gold is both important and scarce, but offers you a greater variet", "headingPath": "Game End · Tactics & Tips", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Remove the wheel and the washer from the die cut sheet. Place the larger plastic connector under the game board so that it protrudes through the small hole in the board. Fit the washer onto the protruding plastic connector, followed by the wheel, and finish by inserting the smaller plastic connector", "headingPath": "Assembly of the rotating wheel", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The game consists of 6 rounds . In each of these rounds, one stack of tiles (see set up on page 1) is used. At the beginning of each round, an offer is prepared (12 tiles and 12 Vikings, see the example of a completed offer to the right). To do this, the start player takes the leftmost remaining sta", "headingPath": "Gameplay Overview · The following rules apply:", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030886, "snippet": "The rules for the advanced game differ from those of the standard game in the way that Vikings are placed during the setup of the offer and the rules regarding Boatswains. Additionally, the Special tiles are also used. All other rules remain the same. In preparing the offer, the player with the Star", "headingPath": "Advanced rules · Auction for Viking placement · PROCESS OF AN AUCTION · The winner of the auction is the new start player · Boatswain · LAYING OUT THE SPECIAL TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Beginning with the start player and proceeding clockwise, each player must purchase exactly 1 Group (1 tile and 1 Viking). The purchase price of a group is marked on the space of wheel closest to it. Upon purchasing, the player immediately adds the tile and the Viking to her Mainland (see page 3). P", "headingPath": "PURCHASING GROUPS · ROTATING THE WHEEL", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030415, "snippet": "As the leaders of powerful Vikings tribes, the players set out to discover the islands seen off the coast of the mainland. Craftsmen, nobles and warriors will be stationed at these islands to claim and defend the land, gaining gold and fame for their tribe. After 6 rounds of play, the tribe with the", "headingPath": "Game components · Each player receives:", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "A small scoring occurs at the end of rounds 1, 3, and 5. Players receive 3 Gold for each Goldsmith placed on their Island tiles. However, no gold is awarded for any Goldsmith threatened by a ship (see large scoring). LARGE SCORING (see scoring card for summary) A large scoring occurs at the end of r", "headingPath": "SMALL SCORING", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Gameplay Overview · The following rules apply:", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PURCHASING GROUPS · ROTATING THE WHEEL", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Placing tiles and Vikings YOUR MAINLAND · PLACING A TILE", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Next Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game End · Tactics & Tips", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 606 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 606 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 0.90538 of 2716 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 22, 2026 18:05 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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Placing tiles and Vikings YOUR MAINLAND · PLACING A TILE	p.3	0.048131 (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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Game End · Tactics & Tips	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
#3	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Assembly of the rotating wheel	p.6	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
#4	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Gameplay Overview · The following rules apply:	p.2	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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Advanced rules · Auction for Viking placement · PROCESS OF AN AUCTION · The winner of the auction is the new start player · Boatswain · LAYING OUT THE SPECIAL TILES	p.7	0.030886 (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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	PURCHASING GROUPS · ROTATING THE WHEEL	p.2	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
#7	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Game components · Each player receives:	p.1	0.030415 (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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	SMALL SCORING	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

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 18 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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Gameplay Overview · The following rules apply:	p.2	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	PURCHASING GROUPS · ROTATING THE WHEEL	p.2	#6	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
#3	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Furthermore:	p.1	#10	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
#4	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Assembly of the rotating wheel	p.6	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Game End · Tactics & Tips	p.6	#2	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
#6	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Game components · Each player receives:	p.1	#7	0.030415 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Next Round	p.5	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Placing tiles and Vikings YOUR MAINLAND · PLACING A TILE	p.3	#1	0.048131 (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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Gameplay Overview · The following rules apply:	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	PURCHASING GROUPS · ROTATING THE WHEEL	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Placing tiles and Vikings YOUR MAINLAND · PLACING A TILE	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Next Round	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Game End · Tactics & Tips	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 101 ms · first delta 2093 ms · total 8406 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 101 ms · ask 8301 ms · gateway work 8406 ms · total 8406 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3329
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 829
tok/sec: 133.5 tok/sec — 829 output tokens in 6.208 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 16s 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 4s 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 538), 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.