Ruling — Dragon Castle

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Dragon Castlebg-232219-en-1e

### Setup

1. Place the Central board corresponding to the number of players in the middle of the table.[1][2]

2. Use all 116 tiles to build the Dragon Castle by randomly shuffling them and following the instructions for the chosen layout.[1][2]

3. Place all Shrines and all Victory Point tokens (VP) next to the Central board to create the general pool.[1]

4. Place all Countdown tokens in a stack on the leftmost space of the Countdown track, then move 1 token from the top of the stack to each space on the right until you cover the space corresponding to the number of players.[1][3]

5. Shuffle the Spirit cards, randomly draw 1, and place it next to the Central board as the Spirit Power for the game; the remaining cards can be put back in the box.[1][3]

6. Shuffle the Dragon cards, randomly draw 1, and place it next to the Central board as the Bonus Objective for the game; the remaining cards can be put to the box.[1][3]

7. Each player takes a Realm board and places it in front of themselves.[1][3]

8. Each player takes 1 Shrine from the general pool and places it on their Realm board to create their Shrine Pool.[1][3]

9. The player who saw a Dragon most recently (excluding those in the current game) is the First Player and takes the First Player token.[1][3]

### A Turn

1. Players take turns in clockwise order.[4]

2. During your turn, you MUST perform 1 of the following 4 actions:[5][4]

* **Pair of Tiles**: Pick any Available tile from the top floor of the Dragon Castle, then take a second Available tile from any floor of the Dragon Castle that has the exact same symbol as the first.[4]

* **Tile and Shrine**: Pick any Available tile from the top floor of the Dragon Castle, then take 1 Shrine from the general pool and add it to your Shrine Pool.[4]

* **Discard Tile**: Pick any Available tile from the top floor of the Dragon Castle, then discard this tile, take 1 VP from the general pool, and add it to your Realm board (this becomes your VP Pool).[4]

* **Summon the Dragon**: This action is only available when 1 floor is left.[5][4]

3. After performing an action, you must place any tiles you collected in your Realm.[5][4]

4. If you created a set of at least 4 tiles, you MUST Consolidate those tiles, and you MAY Build Shrines (depending on the type of tiles).[5]

5. At any point during your turn, you MAY activate the power of a Spirit card by discarding 1 faceup tile from your Realm board or 1 Shrine from your Shrine Pool.[5][6][4] A Spirit can only be activated once per player turn.[6]

### End of the Game

1. The end of the game is near if, at the beginning of any player's turn, the Dragon Castle only has tiles on the ground floor left.[7]

2. When 1 floor is left, any player may use the "Summon the Dragon" action: take 1 token from the rightmost space of the Countdown track (each token is worth 2 VPs at the end of the game).[7]

3. If there are no more tiles in the Dragon Castle, you MUST Summon the Dragon.[7]

4. The game ends when the exclamation mark symbol is revealed on the Countdown track.[7]

5. The game continues until the player to the right of the First Player completes their next turn, ensuring all players have played the same number of turns.[7]

6. After the final turn, players add up points from:

* Collected VP tokens.[7]

* Built Shrines.[7]

* Collected Countdown tokens (if any).[7]

* The Dragon card objective.[7]

7. The player with the most points wins.[7]

8. In the event of a tie, the winner is the tied player with the most stacks of tiles with a facedown tile on top; if still tied, the winner is the player with the most Shrines in their Realm; if still tied, the victory is shared.[7]

[1] RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook · p.3

[2] RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook · p.4 · How to Build a Dragon Castle · Feel Free to Make Your own!

[3] RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook · p.3 · Setup

[4] RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook · p.5 · A Game Turn · Taking an Action

[5] RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook · p.20

[6] RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook · p.8 · Spirits and Dragons · Favor of the Spirits · Pleasing the Dragons

[7] RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook · p.9 · The End of the Game

Now you know — make it count.

🔧 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 89 ms · ask 6502 ms · total 9963 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 3370 ms · generation 6593 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "A game of Dragon Castle™ is played in turns. The players take their turns in clockwise order . During your turn, you MUST perform 1 of the available Actions . Then, you will place any tiles you have collected on your Realm board (see Placing Tiles , page 6). In addition, at any point during your tur", "headingPath": "A Game Turn · Taking an Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "After your first few games, when you feel comfortable with the basic rules of the game, you can start playing with the Spirit and Dragon cards. However, we still recommend that you start with the beginner cards. They are marked with a . The Spirit card offers all players a special ability to use dur", "headingPath": "Spirits and Dragons · Favor of the Spirits · Pleasing the Dragons", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "The omniscient Dragon of Ingenuity has challenged you to a duel of wits! You'll have to try building the most magnificent Realm you can, while they will do their best to hamper your efforts and steal the tiles you need from the Dragon Castle. The Dragon will abide to very strict rules though: if you", "headingPath": "Single Player Mode · Placing Tiles · Setup · VARIANTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "3 4 Realm Boards Setup 2. Place all of the Shrines and all of the Victory Point tokens (VP) next to the Central board. This will be the general pool . For your first few games, to get comfortable with the basic rules, we recommend that you play without Spirit and Dragon cards (steps 4 and 5 of the S", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.044563, "snippet": "If, at the beginning of any player's turn , the Dragon Castle only has tiles on the ground floor left, the end of the game is near. A new option is now available to all players: as an Action , any player may perform a Summon the Dragon Action. Summon the Dragon : Take 1 token from the rightmost spac", "headingPath": "The End of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "3. Take all of the Countdown tokens and place them in a stack on the leftmost space of the Countdown track. Then, move 1 token from the top of the stack to each space on the right until you cover the one corresponding to the number of players . 6. Each player takes a Realm board and places it in fro", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "During your turn you MUST : -Take 1 action Pair of Tiles Tile and Shrine Discard Tile Summon the Dragon (only available when 1 floor left) -Place the Tiles you collected in your Realm If you created a set of at least 4 tiles: -You MUST Consolidate those tiles, then -You MAY Build Shrines -Activate t", "headingPath": "Turn Reference · Whenever you want, during your turn, you MAY: · Action Reference", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "20 Game Reference Turn Reference 1. During y our turn you MUST : - Take 1 action • P air of Tiles • T ile and Shrine • Discard Tile • Summon the Dragon (only available when 1 floor left) - Pla ce the Tiles you collected in your Realm 2. If you created a set of at least 4 tiles: - You MUST Consolidat", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "How to Build a Dragon Castle · Feel Free to Make Your own!", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "A Game Turn · Taking an Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}, {"page": 20, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Spirits and Dragons · Favor of the Spirits · Pleasing the Dragons", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The End of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 848}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 848 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 848 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 0.89846 of 2984 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 25, 2026 20:49 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 Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	A Game Turn · Taking an Action	p.5	0.048412 (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 Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	Spirits and Dragons · Favor of the Spirits · Pleasing the Dragons	p.8	0.047643 (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 Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	Single Player Mode · Placing Tiles · Setup · VARIANTS	p.16	0.046696 (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 Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)		p.3	0.045724 (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 Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	The End of the Game	p.9	0.044563 (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 Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	Setup	p.3	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
#7	RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	Turn Reference · Whenever you want, during your turn, you MAY: · Action Reference	p.20	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
#8	RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)		p.20	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

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 26 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 Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)		p.3	#4	0.045724 (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 Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	How to Build a Dragon Castle · Feel Free to Make Your own!	p.4	#9	0.030622 (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 Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	Setup	p.3	#6	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
#4	RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)		p.20	#8	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
#5	RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	The End of the Game	p.9	#5	0.044563 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	Spirits and Dragons · Favor of the Spirits · Pleasing the Dragons	p.8	#2	0.047643 (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 Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	Single Player Mode · Placing Tiles · Setup · VARIANTS	p.16	#3	0.046696 (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 Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	A Game Turn · Taking an Action	p.5	#1	0.048412 (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 Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	How to Build a Dragon Castle · Feel Free to Make Your own!	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	Setup	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	A Game Turn · Taking an Action	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)		p.20	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	Spirits and Dragons · Favor of the Spirits · Pleasing the Dragons	p.8	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Dragon Castle — Rulebook (corpus doc 848)	The End of the Game	p.9	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 89 ms · first delta 1818 ms · total 9963 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 3370 ms · retrieval 89 ms · ask 6502 ms · gateway work 6593 ms · total 9963 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3115
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 946
tok/sec: 200.7 tok/sec — 946 output tokens in 4.714 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 783), 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.