Ruling — First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express!

← First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express!

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express!bg-206941-en-1e

**Setup**

1. Separate base cards and chosen module cards into three piles by color: green (1), blue (2), and red (3).[1]

2. Shuffle the Game End cards face down.[1]

3. The player to the right of the start player draws a number of cards equal to the number of players + 1, chooses one to keep, and passes the rest counter-clockwise until all players have one Game End card; the remaining card is shuffled back into the pile.[1]

4. Keep your chosen Game End card face down in a pile in the bottom left of your player board.[1]

5. Draw 4 more Game End cards and place them face up on the table, and place the remaining Game End cards in a face-down pile.[1]

6. Place 3 rows of 6 cards from the first pile (green) face up in the middle of the table.[1]

7. Place the Start player tile to the left of the first card in the first row.[1]

**A Turn**

1. Players play in clockwise order, starting with the start player.[2]

2. On your turn, you must choose 1 Action card from those available or the Start Player tile.[3]

3. You can use an Action card in one of two ways: carry out the action indicated (even if only partially) or choose not to carry out the action at all to instead increase the value of one of your railroad cars.[3]

4. If you choose the Start Player tile, you cannot choose to forego becoming the start player.[3]

5. Once finished, place the Action card face down onto the space reserved for them near the bottom left-hand corner of your player board.[3]

6. After choosing an Action card, if a number of cards equal to the number of players has been chosen or removed from a row, the entire row is removed from the game (the Start Player tile is not counted as part of this removal).[3]

7. The turn passes to the next player.[2]

8. A round is over once each player has had 3 turns and taken 3 Action cards.[2]

**Scoring and Ending the Game**

1. A scoring phase takes place after every two rounds (after rounds 2, 4, and 6).[2]

2. The game ends after six rounds, at which point Game End cards are scored.[2]

3. To score, take all cards in your pile of completed Action cards, fulfilled contracts, and Game End cards and sort them by type.[4]

4. Unfulfilled contracts are worth 0 points and are removed.[4]

5. Each coin left on your player board is worth 1 point.[4]

6. For Game End card points, match the type of Action card indicated on the Game End card (railroad car, locomotive, conductors) with the number of those cards you chose during the game, then multiply the total by the number of points indicated on the Game End card.[4]

7. All other cards (except the base Action cards marked with an X) are worth nothing and are removed.[4]

8. The player with the most points wins; in the event of a tie, all tied players are winners.[2][4]

[1] RULEBOOK First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook · p.2 · Setup and gameplay is the same regardless of the number of players.

[2] RULEBOOK First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook · p.4 · Game Overview · Gameplay · Playing a round

[3] RULEBOOK First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook · p.5 · During Your Turn · Clearing a Row · Example (3-player game):

[4] RULEBOOK First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook · p.15 · Game End and Final Scoring · how are game end cards scored? · Example: · who wins? · Tie game

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 196 ms · ask 5159 ms · total 5357 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5357 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "First, we will give you an overview of the game and what kind of actions you will take on your turns. Then we'll explain the various symbols you'll encounter during the game. Once you understand them, you will have all the necessary knowledge to start playing the game. From there, understanding the ", "headingPath": "Game Overview · Gameplay · Playing a round", "sharpsignalDocId": 609}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "10. Take the first pile (green) of Action cards and place 3 rows of 6 cards, face up, in the middle of the table. You will have a total of 18 Action cards to choose from in the first round. Place the Start player tile to the left of the first card in the first row. Once you have finished setting up ", "headingPath": "Setup and gameplay is the same regardless of the number of players.", "sharpsignalDocId": 609}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "Whenever it's your turn, you must choose 1 Action card from those available or the Start Player tile . You can read more about the latter on page 9. You can choose any one of the available face-up Action cards on the table. There are two ways to use an Action card: carry out the action indicated by ", "headingPath": "During Your Turn · Clearing a Row · Example (3-player game):", "sharpsignalDocId": 609}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "Keep your chosen card face down in a pile in the bottom left of your player board. It will come into play only at game end. (Game End cards are explained on page 10.) Finally, draw 4 more Game End cards and place them face up on the table. Place the remaining Game End cards as a face-down pile. Cons", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 609}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.046154, "snippet": "If nobody took the Start Player tile, then the start player remains unchanged. That player keeps the Start Player figure. Important: If noboby took the Start Player tile, then no compensations are distributed (page 9). When you finish the first round with pile 1, 2, or 3, lay out another 18 Action c", "headingPath": "new sTarT Player · afTer The firsT round wiTh one of The Piles · afTer The second round wiTh one of The Piles", "sharpsignalDocId": 609}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "In this case, you would end up with 2 scoring markers on the Constantinople tile. On their player board, each player has an area composed of 12 spaces for coins. Players start the game with 1 coin. There are many cards that will give you coins, such as several of the Action cards in the various modu", "headingPath": "Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 609}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Every module includes contracts. Here are the basic rules on how to use them. Fulfilling a contract is extremely useful as it can provide you with a bonus. Contracts are recognizable by their vertical or horizontal clipboard. If you choose a Contract card as your action, place it face up next to you", "headingPath": "THE CONTRACTS - Claim additional bonuses · THE START PLAYER TILE", "sharpsignalDocId": 609}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "2. For each color, shuffle well the base and Module cards together, forming a separate face-down pile for each color. Place these piles on the table, somewhat off to the side. From now on, these cards will be referred to as Action cards . 3. Take the Railroad Car cards and place them on the table ac", "headingPath": "Setup and gameplay is the same regardless of the number of players.", "sharpsignalDocId": 609}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup and gameplay is the same regardless of the number of players.", "sharpsignalDocId": 609}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Overview · Gameplay · Playing a round", "sharpsignalDocId": 609}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "During Your Turn · Clearing a Row · Example (3-player game):", "sharpsignalDocId": 609}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game End and Final Scoring · how are game end cards scored? · Example: · who wins? · Tie game", "sharpsignalDocId": 609}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 609 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 609 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 0.90336 of 2235 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 25, 2026 18:49 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 First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	Game Overview · Gameplay · Playing a round	p.4	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	Setup and gameplay is the same regardless of the number of players.	p.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))	300
#3	RULEBOOK First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	During Your Turn · Clearing a Row · Example (3-player game):	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 First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)		p.3	0.047123 (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 First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	new sTarT Player · afTer The firsT round wiTh one of The Piles · afTer The second round wiTh one of The Piles	p.13	0.046154 (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 First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	Example:	p.11	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 First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	THE CONTRACTS - Claim additional bonuses · THE START PLAYER TILE	p.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))	300
#8	RULEBOOK First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	Setup and gameplay is the same regardless of the number of players.	p.3	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 27 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 First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	Game Overview · Gameplay · Playing a round	p.4	#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 First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)		p.3	#4	0.047123 (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 First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	During Your Turn · Clearing a Row · Example (3-player game):	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
#4	RULEBOOK First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	Example:	p.9	#13	0.014286 (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 First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	Game End and Final Scoring · how are game end cards scored? · Example: · who wins? · Tie game	p.15	#11	0.027584 (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 First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	Example:	p.14	#23	0.012048 (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
#7	RULEBOOK First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	Example:	p.11	#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
#8	RULEBOOK First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	Setup and gameplay is the same regardless of the number of players.	p.2	#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 First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	Setup and gameplay is the same regardless of the number of players.	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	Game Overview · Gameplay · Playing a round	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	During Your Turn · Clearing a Row · Example (3-player game):	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express! — Rulebook (corpus doc 609)	Game End and Final Scoring · how are game end cards scored? · Example: · who wins? · Tie game	p.15	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 196 ms · first delta 1799 ms · total 5357 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 196 ms · ask 5159 ms · gateway work 5357 ms · total 5357 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3061
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 703
tok/sec: 201.1 tok/sec — 703 output tokens in 3.495 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 23s 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 1s 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 541), 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.