Ruling — The Old King's Crown

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Old King's Crownbg-357873-en-1e

The game is played over a set number of Rounds.[1] Players progress through a Round as a group, completing Phases and Steps.[1] The goal is to accrue the most Influence (represented by $i$ tokens).[2]

**Sequence of Play**

**First Round (Note: certain phases are skipped in the first Round)**

1. Draw Cards: All players simultaneously draw Faction Cards from their Deck up to their full Hand Size.[1]

2. Determine Turn Order: Players adjust the Order Track based on the amount of $i$ each player has in their Supply; the player with the most $i$ places their Order Marker in the first position.[1]

3. Bids: Players simultaneously bid one face-down card from their Hand.[3]

4. Resolve Bids: Players simultaneously reveal Bids and resolve each Bid, one at a time, from highest to lowest Strength.[3]

5. Place Heralds and Cards:

* Place Heralds: In turn order, players place their Herald on a Location.[3]

* Place Cards Next to Regions: All players simultaneously place one face-down Faction Card from their Hand next to each of the three Regions of the Map.[4][3]

6. Spring Action Step: In turn order, players activate any number of available Actions and/or Commands.[5][3]

7. Place Clash Markers: The player last on the Order Track places a Clash Marker on each Region to dictate the sequence of resolution.[3]

8. Resolve Clashes: Players resolve the three Regions in sequence; winners of these Clashes claim rewards.[3]

9. Autumn Action Step: In turn order, players take their Autumn Action Step in any sequence, which may include:

* Govern: Moving one Faction Card with one or more $v$ icons from Hand into a Council.[3]

* Journey: Moving one Faction Card with one or more $p$ icons from Hand to the Lost Pile to gain $p$ tokens equal to the $p$ icons on the card.[3]

* Activate any number of Actions and/or Commands.[3]

10. Resolve Effects: Players simultaneously resolve any Effects.[3]

11. Winter Effects Step:

* Remove Pieces: Move Heralds to Player Boards and Supporters on the Map to the Lost Pile.[3]

* Remove Clash Markers: Return Clash Markers to their slot on the Kingdom Board.[3]

* Remove Active Cards: Active cards without $i$ on them are moved to Discard Piles; if an Active card has $i$ on it, remove 1 $i$.[3]

12. Cleanup: Players perform cleanup and advance the Round Track.[1]

**Ending the Game**

1. At the end of the final Round, the game ends.[3]

2. Tally $i$: Each player tallies the $i$ in their Supply.[3]

3. Determine Winner: The player with the most $i$ is the winner.[3]

4. Resolve Ties: If players are tied, the winner is the player with control of the Kingdom's Favour $B$; if no tied player has $B$, the winner is the player highest on the Order Track.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK The Old King's Crown — Rulebook · p.9 · SEQUENCE OF PLAY · START OF THE YEAR · Draw Cards · Attrition · Determine Turn Order

[2] RULEBOOK The Old King's Crown — Rulebook · p.5 · AIM OF THE GAME · GAMEPLAY STRUCTURE · In Turn Order Steps · ACTIONS · CORE CONCEPTS

[3] RULEBOOK The Old King's Crown — Rulebook · p.27 · R , pg. 41 · SEQUENCE OF PLAY · Resolving Clashes - · Winter Effects Step - · Cleanup -Simultaneously : · Remove Active Cards to Discard Piles - · …

[4] RULEBOOK The Old King's Crown — Rulebook · p.12

[5] RULEBOOK The Old King's Crown — Rulebook · p.12 · Place Cards Next to Regions · Spring Action Step · Placing Supporters

Rule found, game on.

🔧 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 77 ms · ask 6107 ms · total 6186 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6186 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 9, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "The Old King's Crown is played over a set number of Rounds. All players, as a group, will move through a Round, completing Phases and the Steps within them. The Sequence of Play section of this rulebook will cover each of these Phases and Steps in detail. Below is a short summary of a complete Round", "headingPath": "SEQUENCE OF PLAY · START OF THE YEAR · Draw Cards · Attrition · Determine Turn Order", "sharpsignalDocId": 586}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "The player who is first on the track has to resolve in turn order Steps and instructions first and then passes to the player who is next on the Order Track. The player who is last on the Order Track will choose the order in which Regions are resolved in Summer, using Clash Markers. A player's positi", "headingPath": "R , pg. 41", "sharpsignalDocId": 586}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "Each player has their own play area, containing a Player Board which corresponds to their Faction and which houses a number of different components, as well as a space separate from the Player Board that is kept for their Supply. Your Supply is the space around your Player Board. You may acquire car", "headingPath": "Play Area & Player Board · Supply · Hand Size Marker · Kingdom Card Spaces · Kingdom's Favour Action · Deck · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 586}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.045139, "snippet": "In turn order Steps and instructions are resolved by players one at a time, beginning with the player who is first on the Order Track, then the player who is second, and so on. A player resolves the Step or instruction fully before passing to the next player in turn order . In Turn Order Steps, pg. ", "headingPath": "R , pg. 41", "sharpsignalDocId": 586}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045079, "snippet": "Before Setup begins players choose a game length: Standard Game (five Rounds) - This is the recommended game length Short Game (four Rounds) or Extended Game (six Rounds) (See Adjusting Game Length & Advanced Setup, pg. 48) Place the Kingdom Board within reach of all players with the Councils Tile d", "headingPath": "WHAT CROWN WILL YOU WEAR? · Create the Central Play Area · Populate the Great Road · Create the Reserve · Kingdom's Favour · Season Marker · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 586}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.045002, "snippet": "Before beginning Setup, players have a choice of three different game lengths. Standard Game (five Rounds) - This is the recommended game length. The game at this length is balanced to accommodate all play styles. Players will have ample opportunities to expand and to score but must still be wary of", "headingPath": "ADJUSTING GAME LENGTH & ADVANCED SETUP · Advanced Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 586}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.044404, "snippet": "Compete against other players to accrue the most Influence, represented by i tokens, over a number of Rounds. At the end of the final Round of the game, the player with the most i in their Supply will be crowned the winner. Each game of The Old King's Crown is divided into Rounds, with each Round re", "headingPath": "AIM OF THE GAME · GAMEPLAY STRUCTURE · In Turn Order Steps · ACTIONS · CORE CONCEPTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 586}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.042925, "snippet": "These are tracked with the Round Marker, which is advanced at the end of each Round. A Round represents one year in the world of the game. Sites of Power - Each player has a Site of Power Tile that is part of their play area but separate and distinct from the space reserved for a player's Supply. A ", "headingPath": "R , pg. 41", "sharpsignalDocId": 586}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SEQUENCE OF PLAY · START OF THE YEAR · Draw Cards · Attrition · Determine Turn Order", "sharpsignalDocId": 586}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "AIM OF THE GAME · GAMEPLAY STRUCTURE · In Turn Order Steps · ACTIONS · CORE CONCEPTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 586}, {"page": 27, "quote": null, "headingPath": "R , pg. 41 · SEQUENCE OF PLAY · Resolving Clashes - · Winter Effects Step - · Cleanup -Simultaneously : · Remove Active Cards to Discard Piles - · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 586}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 586}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Place Cards Next to Regions · Spring Action Step · Placing Supporters", "sharpsignalDocId": 586}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 586 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 586 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 0.89403 of 2227 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 24, 2026 20:29 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 The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	SEQUENCE OF PLAY · START OF THE YEAR · Draw Cards · Attrition · Determine Turn Order	p.9	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 The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	R , pg. 41	p.26	0.046642 (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 The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	Play Area & Player Board · Supply · Hand Size Marker · Kingdom Card Spaces · Kingdom's Favour Action · Deck · …	p.7	0.045228 (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 The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	R , pg. 41	p.26	0.045139 (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 The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	WHAT CROWN WILL YOU WEAR? · Create the Central Play Area · Populate the Great Road · Create the Reserve · Kingdom's Favour · Season Marker · …	p.4	0.045079 (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 The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	ADJUSTING GAME LENGTH & ADVANCED SETUP · Advanced Setup	p.25	0.045002 (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 The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	AIM OF THE GAME · GAMEPLAY STRUCTURE · In Turn Order Steps · ACTIONS · CORE CONCEPTS	p.5	0.044404 (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 The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	R , pg. 41	p.26	0.042925 (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 61 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 The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	SEQUENCE OF PLAY · START OF THE YEAR · Draw Cards · Attrition · Determine Turn Order	p.9	#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 The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)		p.12	#35	0.011111 (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 The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	Play Area & Player Board · Supply · Hand Size Marker · Kingdom Card Spaces · Kingdom's Favour Action · Deck · …	p.7	#3	0.045228 (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 The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	Place Cards Next to Regions · Spring Action Step · Placing Supporters	p.12	#27	0.013514 (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
#5	RULEBOOK The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	R , pg. 41 · SEQUENCE OF PLAY · Resolving Clashes - · Winter Effects Step - · Cleanup -Simultaneously : · Remove Active Cards to Discard Piles - · …	p.27	#15	0.025974 (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
#6	RULEBOOK The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	AIM OF THE GAME · GAMEPLAY STRUCTURE · In Turn Order Steps · ACTIONS · CORE CONCEPTS	p.5	#7	0.044404 (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
#7	RULEBOOK The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	Resolve Tied Clashes	p.15	#10	0.029052 (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
#8	RULEBOOK The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	WHAT CROWN WILL YOU WEAR? · Create the Central Play Area · Populate the Great Road · Create the Reserve · Kingdom's Favour · Season Marker · …	p.4	#5	0.045079 (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 The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	SEQUENCE OF PLAY · START OF THE YEAR · Draw Cards · Attrition · Determine Turn Order	p.9	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	AIM OF THE GAME · GAMEPLAY STRUCTURE · In Turn Order Steps · ACTIONS · CORE CONCEPTS	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	R , pg. 41 · SEQUENCE OF PLAY · Resolving Clashes - · Winter Effects Step - · Cleanup -Simultaneously : · Remove Active Cards to Discard Piles - · …	p.27	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)		p.12	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK The Old King's Crown — Rulebook (corpus doc 586)	Place Cards Next to Regions · Spring Action Step · Placing Supporters	p.12	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 77 ms · first delta 2661 ms · total 6186 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 77 ms · ask 6107 ms · gateway work 6186 ms · total 6186 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3831
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 697
tok/sec: 201.0 tok/sec — 697 output tokens in 3.468 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 0s 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 6s 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 518), 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.