Ruling — In the Hall of the Mountain King

← In the Hall of the Mountain King

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: In the Hall of the Mountain Kingbg-265402-en-1e

On your turn, you must perform the following steps in this order:

1. You may Cast 1 spell and you may activate 1 of your workshops (you may do both, just one, or neither).[1]

2. You must either recruit 1 troll from the horde, or spend minerals to dig 1 tunnel and score honour.[1]

* To recruit a troll, you choose one from the horde and follow these steps:

* Step ONE: Choose a troll to recruit.[2]

* Step TWO: Take the troll.[2]

* Step THREE: Add it to your trollsmoot, placing it above and between two other existing trolls of your choice.[3]

* Activate the new troll, the two trolls directly beneath it, and the two trolls directly beneath each of those trolls in a downward cascade.[3]

* When a troll is activated, it gains any resource shown on its card that it is not already holding from the supply.[3]

* Note that Level-1 trolls are free; Level-2 trolls require bribing the two Level-1 trolls beneath them with 1 coin each; Level-3 trolls require bribing the two Level-2 trolls and three Level-1 trolls beneath them with 1 coin each.[2]

* To dig a tunnel, choose a tunnel from the supply and spend the appropriate minerals (all minerals spent must be the same type).[4]

* Place the tunnel onto the mountain, extending your network and scoring honour.[4]

* You may flip and rotate the tunnel tile to any orientation before placing it, provided it does not extend off the board, overlap another tile, overlap a workshop site, or overlap the heart of the mountain.[4]

* The new tunnel must be placed so that at least one edge is adjacent to your own network.[4]

* Score your tunnel as soon as you have paid for it.[4]

3. You may dedicate 1 great hall.[1]

4. You may move as many statues in your network as you wish by spending carts.[1]

At any point on your turn, you may spend 4 resources (in any combination) to gain 1 specific resource of your choice from the supply to your storage; this can be done multiple times per turn.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook · p.6 · GAMEPLAY · Your Network · Adjacency · Spending Resources · ON YOUR TURN · 1. SPELLS & WORKSHOPS · …

[2] RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook · p.8 · 2. Recruit or Dig · Recruit a troll · Step ONE: Choose a troll to recruit · Step TWO: Take the troll · Running out of Trolls · Running out of pedestals

[3] RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook · p.9 · Step THREE: Add it to your trollsmoot and trigger a cascade

[4] RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook · p.10 · Dig a tunnel and score honour

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 157 ms · ask 4599 ms · total 4758 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4758 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 16, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "Th is is a special variant mode of play for exactly 4 players . Follow all regular rules with the following changes: Form into two 2-player teams. Pick one scoring token to represent your team, and return the other to the box. Sit adjacent to your teammate, and ensure that your gates are beside each", "headingPath": "TEAM Play RULES · Setup Changes · Gameplay Changes", "sharpsignalDocId": 703}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.048172, "snippet": "Gameplay begins with the Start player and plays in turns, proceeding clockwise until the game ends. Final scoring is then added to in-game scoring to determine the winner. Here are a few general rules to know before you begin: Each player will be building a network on the board, beginning with their", "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY · Your Network · Adjacency · Spending Resources · ON YOUR TURN · 1. SPELLS & WORKSHOPS · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 703}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "Place the game board in the center of the table, with the side up depending on player count. Th e winter side is for 4 or 5 players. Th e autumn side is for 3 players. 2 players may play on either side of the board. Create supply piles of all of the resources ( stone, iron, heartstone, coins, carts,", "headingPath": "General SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 703}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Choose a starting player, and give them the crown as a reminder. Each player chooses a player colour, and takes the player mat, 6 starting troll cards, gate tile , and score marker of their colour. All components from unused player colours are returned to the box. All players place their score marke", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 703}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "To dig a tunnel, choose a tunnel from the supply, spend the appropriate minerals, then place the tunnel onto the mountain, extending your own tunnel network and scoring honour . Th e cost of the tunnel is equal to the number of squares in the tunnel tile. For example, a tunnel with 4 squares costs 4", "headingPath": "Dig a tunnel and score honour", "sharpsignalDocId": 703}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Be aware that the two inside trolls in your starting row will generate their resources more times during the game than the two outside trolls will . Take from the supply all of the starting resources shown on your chosen starting trolls; place these resources in your storage . Th en slide your playe", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 703}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "You may Cast one spell and you may activate one workshop that your network touches. You may do both ( in either order ), or just one, or neither. To cast a spell you must spend 1 rune onto the spell ( currently face up in the spellboo k) that you wish to use. Th en carry out the spell's eff ects as ", "headingPath": "1. SPELLS & WORKSHOPS · Cast oNE spell · Activate ONE workshop · Cartwright · Charmcrafter · COINPRESS · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 703}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "1 Double-sided Game board Statue score chart Tunnel score chart Pedestal track Score trackBuried Resources Statue spot Rubblespace Score plank Altar Workshopsite Heart of the Mountain 5-Player Start Point 3-Player Start Point (On Autumn side) 4-Player Start Point Anchor 10x 12x Storage area Troll Sl", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 703}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY · Your Network · Adjacency · Spending Resources · ON YOUR TURN · 1. SPELLS & WORKSHOPS · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 703}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. Recruit or Dig · Recruit a troll · Step ONE: Choose a troll to recruit · Step TWO: Take the troll · Running out of Trolls · Running out of pedestals", "sharpsignalDocId": 703}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Step THREE: Add it to your trollsmoot and trigger a cascade", "sharpsignalDocId": 703}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Dig a tunnel and score honour", "sharpsignalDocId": 703}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 703 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 703 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 0.91472 of 1583 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 24, 2026 18:59 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 In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	TEAM Play RULES · Setup Changes · Gameplay Changes	p.16	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
#2	RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	GAMEPLAY · Your Network · Adjacency · Spending Resources · ON YOUR TURN · 1. SPELLS & WORKSHOPS · …	p.6	0.048172 (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 In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	General SETUP	p.4	0.047163 (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 In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	PLAYER SETUP	p.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))	300
#5	RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	Dig a tunnel and score honour	p.10	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
#6	RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	PLAYER SETUP	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 In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	1. SPELLS & WORKSHOPS · Cast oNE spell · Activate ONE workshop · Cartwright · Charmcrafter · COINPRESS · …	p.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))	300
#8	RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)		p.2	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 30 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 In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	TEAM Play RULES · Setup Changes · Gameplay Changes	p.16	#1	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
#2	RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	General SETUP	p.4	#3	0.047163 (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 In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	Step THREE: Add it to your trollsmoot and trigger a cascade	p.9	#15	0.013699 (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
#4	RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	Dig a tunnel and score honour	p.10	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	2. Recruit or Dig · Recruit a troll · Step ONE: Choose a troll to recruit · Step TWO: Take the troll · Running out of Trolls · Running out of pedestals	p.8	#19	0.012658 (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 In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	PLAYER SETUP	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
#7	RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	PLAYER SETUP	p.4	#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
#8	RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	GAMEPLAY · Your Network · Adjacency · Spending Resources · ON YOUR TURN · 1. SPELLS & WORKSHOPS · …	p.6	#2	0.048172 (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 In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	GAMEPLAY · Your Network · Adjacency · Spending Resources · ON YOUR TURN · 1. SPELLS & WORKSHOPS · …	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	2. Recruit or Dig · Recruit a troll · Step ONE: Choose a troll to recruit · Step TWO: Take the troll · Running out of Trolls · Running out of pedestals	p.8	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	Step THREE: Add it to your trollsmoot and trigger a cascade	p.9	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK In the Hall of the Mountain King — Rulebook (corpus doc 703)	Dig a tunnel and score honour	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 157 ms · first delta 2260 ms · total 4758 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 157 ms · ask 4599 ms · gateway work 4758 ms · total 4758 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3502
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 491
tok/sec: 201.5 tok/sec — 491 output tokens in 2.437 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 636), 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.