Ruling — Wir sind das Volk!

← Wir sind das Volk!

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Wir sind das Volk!bg-165401-en-1e

The game is divided into 4 decades, each consisting of 2 half decades and an End of Decade stage.[1]

**First Half Decade**

1. Put the special card of the current decade into the card display.[1]

2. Mix the cards of the current decade to form the draw deck.[1]

3. Players fill their hand up to 2 cards (starting with decade II, players may discard any cards still held from earlier decades before re-filling; if holding 3 cards, you must discard at least 1).[1]

4. Put the top 7 cards from the draw deck face-up into the card display.[1]

5. Actions: The player with the current prestige advantage begins the first half decade.[1] That player chooses 1 card from the card display or 1 card from their hand and performs 1 action.[1] Only East can choose the special card.[1] Then the other player chooses a card and performs 1 action.[1] Players continue in turns.[1] (If East chooses the special card, it must either discard a hand card or let West pick the top card from the draw deck as an additional hand card).[1]

6. The half decade ends as soon as the last normal card of the card display was played.[1]

**Second Half Decade**

1. Skip the first step of the first half decade (putting the special card in the display) and move straight to the second step.[1]

2. If the special card is still in the display, it stays there.[1]

3. The starting player is the one who did not perform the last action of the first half decade.[1]

4. Follow the same action and ending procedures as the first half decade.[1]

**End of Decade**

1. Play the 10 End of Decade phases.[1]

2. Check for victory (only performed during these phases).[2] If there is no winner, discard the current draw deck and the special card (if still in the display) and start the next decade.[2]

**General Rules**

* Played cards are lined up at the bottom edge of the board so that a card's flight icon (if present) is always visible.[2][1]

* For each flight icon, advance the flight marker by 1 space in the End of Decade.[2]

* A normal card may be played in 1 of 4 ways: remove 1 unrest counter, build up your economy, increase your living standard, or trigger the card event.[3]

* Special cards can only be used by East to trigger the event.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook · p.3 · 3 PLAYING THE GAME

[2] RULEBOOK Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook · p.3 · 3 PLAYING THE GAME

[3] RULEBOOK Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook · p.5 · 6 THE ACTIONS · 6.1 Remove 1 unrest counter · 6.2 Build up your economy

So says the rulebook. So plays the table.

🔧 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 83 ms · ask 8660 ms · total 8745 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8745 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "The game is divided into 4 decades. Each decade consists of 2 half decades and the End of Decade stage. Every 1st half decade follows this sequence: Put the special card of the current decade into the card display as depicted on pg. 2. Mix the cards of the current decade to form the draw deck. Playe", "headingPath": "3 PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 733}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "2 in such a way that a card's flight icon (if there is one) is always visible. ( For each flight icon, you will advance the flight marker by 1 space in the End of Decade. ) When the 2nd half decade is finished, you play the 10 End of Decade phases (see section 9 for details). Only here you will chec", "headingPath": "3 PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 733}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "The action cards are the 'engine' of the game. A normal card may be played in 1 out of 4 ways. You may choose to: remove 1 unrest counter, or build up your economy, or increase your living standard, or trigger the card event. In case of a special card, you may only trigger the event (and only East m", "headingPath": "6 THE ACTIONS · 6.1 Remove 1 unrest counter · 6.2 Build up your economy", "sharpsignalDocId": 733}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046175, "snippet": "The action cards are divided into 4 sets (21 cards each), one set for each decade I to IV. Each set consists of 20 normal cards and 1 special card (reserved for East). All cards have the following layout: When the card's graphic art is in pure red tones (together with black) it is a Red Card . When ", "headingPath": "The action cards · 2 SET UP", "sharpsignalDocId": 733}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "East may examine either the West hand of cards or the 2 top cards of the draw deck. East may then exchange 1 of its cards for one of these. Alternatively, if East examines the 2 top cards of the draw deck, it may remove 1 of those cards from the game. Example 4: When these icons are executed, West r", "headingPath": "Icons without arrows", "sharpsignalDocId": 733}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Wir sind das Volk! ( We are the people! ) was the main slogan of East German demonstrators in 1989. In this game about the divided Germany, from 1945-1989, one player takes the role of East Germany, the other of West Germany. Basic idea: With the use of action cards, players build up their economies", "headingPath": "1 INTRODUCTION", "sharpsignalDocId": 733}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "1 build point for the affected player. Dismantle 1 build point from the affected player. 1 unrest counter is put into a province of the affected player. 1 unrest counter is removed from a province of the affected player. Move1unrest counter of the affected player into another of his provinces. In on", "headingPath": "Icons without arrows", "sharpsignalDocId": 733}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "If East has to lose Socialists, first remove them from the holding box; then, if there are not enough, West removes them from the provinces. For each socialist removed from a province, put back 1 unrest counter (and, if necessary, a mass protest marker). Socialism fails. East loses immediately when ", "headingPath": "9.9 Socialists phase · 9.10 Wir sind das Volk? · 10.1 East Berlin", "sharpsignalDocId": 733}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3 PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 733}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3 PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 733}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "6 THE ACTIONS · 6.1 Remove 1 unrest counter · 6.2 Build up your economy", "sharpsignalDocId": 733}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 733 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 733 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 0.89861 of 1805 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 23, 2026 16:58 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 Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	3 PLAYING THE GAME	p.3	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	3 PLAYING THE GAME	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
#3	RULEBOOK Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	6 THE ACTIONS · 6.1 Remove 1 unrest counter · 6.2 Build up your economy	p.5	0.047371 (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 Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	The action cards · 2 SET UP	p.3	0.046175 (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 Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	Icons without arrows	p.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))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	1 INTRODUCTION	p.1	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 Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	Icons without arrows	p.6	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 Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	9.9 Socialists phase · 9.10 Wir sind das Volk? · 10.1 East Berlin	p.9	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 43 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 Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	3 PLAYING THE GAME	p.3	#2	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
#2	RULEBOOK Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	6 THE ACTIONS · 6.1 Remove 1 unrest counter · 6.2 Build up your economy	p.5	#3	0.047371 (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 Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	1 INTRODUCTION	p.1	#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 Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	The action cards · 2 SET UP	p.3	#4	0.046175 (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 Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	Clarifications may be needed for:	p.10	#29	0.011364 (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 Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	Icons without arrows	p.6	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	Icons without arrows	p.6	#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
#8	RULEBOOK Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	3 PLAYING THE GAME	p.3	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	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 Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	3 PLAYING THE GAME	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	3 PLAYING THE GAME	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Wir sind das Volk! — Rulebook (corpus doc 733)	6 THE ACTIONS · 6.1 Remove 1 unrest counter · 6.2 Build up your economy	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 83 ms · first delta 4417 ms · total 8745 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 83 ms · ask 8660 ms · gateway work 8745 ms · total 8745 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3164
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 565
tok/sec: 133.0 tok/sec — 565 output tokens in 4.249 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 34s 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 2s 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 667), 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.