Ruling — Yamataï

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Yamataïbg-213893-en-1e

**Setup**

1. Place the main board on the table.[1][2]

2. Shuffle the Specialist Tiles to form the Specialist Deck, place it face down next to the board, and reveal the top five tiles on the appropriate spots on the board.[1][2]

3. Shuffle the building tiles to form the Building Deck, place it face down on the right of the board, and reveal the top five tiles in a row next to the board.[1][2]

4. Shuffle the Fleet Tiles, reveal five tiles on the first five light-colored spots of the Fleet Track, and place the remaining five face down on the dark-colored spots.[1][2]

5. Shuffle the Culture Tokens and place them randomly on the board, one per island, face down.[1]

6. Reveal Culture Tokens one by one and place a mountain tile under each mountain Culture Token (including the blank one) before removing empty tokens from the board.[1]

7. Each player receives 1 meeple of their color, 10 coins (3x “2” and 4x “1”), a player mat, and a specific number of Standard Buildings based on player count: 6 each for 4 players, 8 each for 3 players (excluding grey buildings), or 10 each for 2 players (excluding grey or purple buildings).[1]

8. Shuffle the turn order meeples and place them at random on the first numbered spots above the Fleet Track to define the first round's order.[1] (In a 2-player game, take one meeple per player, shuffle them, and place them on spots #1 and #2, then repeat for #3 and #4).[1][3]

9. Sort wooden boats by type and place them near the board.[1][3]

10. Place Prestige Buildings, Sacred Ground Tokens, Coins, and Prestige Tokens next to the board as the reserve.[1][3]

**A Turn**

1. Players follow the meeple order on the Turn Order Track.[4][2] (In a 2-player game, each player plays a complete turn for each meeple of their color).[4][2]

2. The first player performs actions #1 to #5 listed on their player mat.[4][2]

3. Choose a fleet from the visible ones and place the chosen fleet and your turn order mepe on your player mat.[4][2]

4. Take the boat(s) depicted on the Fleet Tile from the reserve, if any are left.[4][2]

5. You may use the fleet's special power at any point during your turn.[4][2]

6. You may buy or sell one boat, paying or receiving the price marked on your player mat (gold cannot be bought or sold; only one transaction per turn).[5]

7. During the phase where boats carry resources to the islands, you may either clear islands to collect Culture Tokens or construct a building on an empty island.[5]

8. When placing boats, the first boat must be placed on an empty entry spot with a special starting symbol or on an empty spot connected to a boat of the same color; subsequent boats must form an uninterrupted chain.[5]

9. You may take one Culture Token for each boat placed on the board, provided each boat allows you to take one adjacent Culture Token (or Mountain Culture Token).[5]

**Preparing the Next Round**

1. Draw new building tiles from the deck (if needed) to maintain 5 visible building tiles; if you cannot draw a new building, the game is over.[6][7][8]

2. Each player places their meeple on the turn order track at the number matching the fleet they played this turn (in a 2-player game, place both meeples on the matching numbers).[6][7][8]

3. Slide the hidden Fleet Tiles to the left side of the Fleet Track and reveal the tiles on light-colored spots so there are five visible tiles.[6][7][8]

4. Each player returns their current Fleet Tile to the board; these are shuffled and placed face down on the rightmost spots of the Fleet Track.[7][8]

**Ending the Game**

The game ends as soon as one of the following occurs:

- A player places their last Standard Building (the current round is finished, then the game ends).[7][8]

- There is no boat of one color remaining when setting up a new round.[7][8]

- You cannot replenish the Specialist Track during the preparation of the next round.[7][8]

- You cannot replenish the Building Row during the preparation of the next round.[7][8]

[1] RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook · p.2

[2] RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook · p.3

[3] RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook · p.2

[4] RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook · p.3 · up the game · Object of the Game · How to Play

[5] RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook · p.4 · How to Play · Collect

[6] RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook · p.7

[7] RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook · p.7 · Preparation of Next Round · Game End · Scoring

[8] RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook · p.7

That settles it — whose turn was it?

🔧 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 10575 ms · total 20560 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 9900 ms · generation 10660 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": ". Place top fi ve rd ➋ . Place eal the . ➌ e them spots), et Tiles olored on the island. e under ore re- The object of the game is to gain the favor of Queen Himiko by scoring Prestige Points. There are three ways to achieve this goal: collecting money, constructing buildings, hiring specialists… bu", "headingPath": "up the game · Object of the Game · How to Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 Object of the Game The object of the game is to gain the favor of Queen Himiko by scoring Prestige Points. There are three ways to achieve this goal: collecting money, constructing buildings, hiring specialists… but in the end, only one of you will be declared winner. How to Play D", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "Trade plays an important role in the Yamataï archipelago. Subjects of Queen Himiko buy and sell all sorts of goods to try and complete their buildings. Gold is so rare, though, that no one sells it. You can buy or sell one boat, paying or receiving the price marked on your player mat. Note: you can ", "headingPath": "How to Play · Collect", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.045921, "snippet": "2/ Draw new building tiles from the deck (if needed) to have 5 building tiles visible. If you can’t draw a new building, the game is over. 3/ On the turn order track, each player places their meeple on the number matching the ﬂ eet they have played this turn. In a 2-player game, each player places t", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.045235, "snippet": "2 / Draw new building tiles from the deck (if needed) to have 5 building tiles visible. If you can't draw a new building, the game is over. 3 / On the turn order track, each player places their meeple on the number matching the fl eet they have played this turn. In a 2-player game, each player place", "headingPath": "Preparation of Next Round · Game End · Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 ❖ 1 Game Board Place the main board ➊ on the table. Shufﬂ e the Specialist Tiles to form the Specialist Deck. Place this deck next to the board, face down, then reveal the top ﬁ ve tiles and place them on the appropriate spots on the board ➋. Shufﬂ e the building tiles ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030366, "snippet": "Fleets Each ﬂ eet's special power is optional. However, if you don't use it, it is lost (it cannot be saved for future turns). ◆ Take a bamboo boat (green) from the reserve. ◆ This ﬂ eet has no special effect, but you are guar- anteed to play ﬁ rst on the next round. ◆ Take a wood boat (brow n) from", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "In a 2-player game, take one meeple per player, shufﬂ e them and place them on spots #1 and #2, then repeat the same order for spots #3 and #4. Sort the wooden boats by type and place them next to the board within easy reach of each player ➑. The remaining components (Prestige Buildings, Sacred Grou", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "up the game · Object of the Game · How to Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "How to Play · Collect", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Preparation of Next Round · Game End · Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 748}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 748 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 748 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 0.89090 of 3263 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 23, 2026 17:00 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 Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)	up the game · Object of the Game · How to Play	p.3	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.3	0.048387 (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 Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)	How to Play · Collect	p.4	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 Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.7	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
#5	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)	Preparation of Next Round · Game End · Scoring	p.7	0.045235 (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 Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.2	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
#7	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.7	0.030366 (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 Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.2	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 14 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 Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)	up the game · Object of the Game · How to Play	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
#2	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.7	#7	0.030366 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)	How to Play · Collect	p.4	#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
#4	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)	Preparation of Next Round · Game End · Scoring	p.7	#5	0.045235 (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 Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.2	#6	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
#6	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.2	#8	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
#7	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.7	#4	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.3	#2	0.048387 (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 Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)	up the game · Object of the Game · How to Play	p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)	How to Play · Collect	p.4	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.7	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)	Preparation of Next Round · Game End · Scoring	p.7	no quote on the wire
[8]	RULEBOOK Yamataï — Rulebook (corpus doc 748)		p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 83 ms · first delta 2730 ms · total 20560 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 9900 ms · retrieval 83 ms · ask 10575 ms · gateway work 10660 ms · total 20560 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3945
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 130.4 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 7.855 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 682), 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.