Ruling — Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition

← Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Editionbg-251678-en-1e

To play a game of Railroad Ink™, follow these steps:

**Setup**

1. Each player takes a Board and places it in front of them.[1]

2. Each player takes a marker.[1]

3. Place the Route dice in the middle of the table.[1]

**A Turn**

1. At the beginning of each round, the Route dice are rolled once.[2] (If playing with an Expansion, you must also roll the respective Expansion dice at the beginning of each round [3]).

2. All players play simultaneously, drawing the Routes rolled on their own boards.[2]

3. When drawing Routes, you can freely rotate and/or reverse the pattern seen on the die.[4]

4. Each Route drawn must be connected by at least one side to either one of the Exits or a preexisting Route; if you cannot connect a Route, you cannot draw it.[4]

5. You must draw all 4 Routes shown on the dice each round, if possible, and each Route showing can only be drawn once.[4]

6. You cannot draw Routes in a way that directly connects Railways to Highways or vice versa, unless you use a Station to do so.[4]

7. You may draw a Special Route once per round (up to 3 per game).[5]

8. Once all players have drawn all available Routes, the round ends.[5]

9. Each player must mark the spaces where they drew Routes this round by writing the current round number in the white boxes of each space.[5]

10. Roll the Route Dice to start the next round.[5]

**Scoring and Ending the Game**

1. The game is played over 7 rounds [6] (though the Meteor and Lava Expansions change the game to 6 rounds [3][7]).

2. At the end of the game, the main way to score points is by connecting Exits.[8]

3. Each set of Exits connected to each other via the same Network of Routes is worth a number of points determined by the number of Exits connected, as shown on the Network Values on your Board.[8]

4. Bonus points can be earned for your Longest Railway, your Longest Highway, and by drawing on the Central Spaces of your board.[6]

5. If using the Expansion, remember to count points earned from the Expansion and mark them in the designated space of your scoring table.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook · p.3

[2] RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook · p.4 · GAME RoundS · ROLLING DICE

[3] RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook · p.10 · EXPANSIONS · 6 rounds

[4] RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook · p.5

[5] RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook · p.6 · using special routes · end of the round

[6] RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook · p.2 · components · Game Overview

[7] RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook · p.12 · 6 rounds

[8] RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook · p.8

So says the rulebook. So plays the table.

🔧 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 192 ms · ask 4280 ms · total 4474 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4474 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Once you feel confident enough with the ins and outs of Railroad Ink™ , you can spice things up by using 1 of the 2 optional Expansions included in this box. If you play with an Expansion , you must roll the respective Expansion dice along with the 4 Route dice at the beginning of each round. In add", "headingPath": "EXPANSIONS · 6 rounds", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "At the beginning of each round, the Route dice are rolled once . The results of the roll will determine which Routes all players must draw that round. After the roll, all players play simultaneously , drawing the Routes rolled on their own boards. Take the Route dice and roll them in the middle of t", "headingPath": "GAME RoundS · ROLLING DICE", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046432, "snippet": "4 2 8 3 12 4 16 5 20 6 24 7 28 8 32 9 36 10 40 11 45 12 32 7 8 5 -7 / networkS errorslongest railway totallongest highway expansion pointscentral spaces 4 2 8 3 12 4 16 5 20 6 24 7 28 8 32 9 36 10 40 11 45 12 7 End of the Game Scan the QR code to download a print-and-play game board! 45 The game end", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045285, "snippet": "5 16 4 12 6 20 8 28 10 36 12 45 6 20 7 24 9 32 11 40 7 24 8 28 8 28 9 32 10 36 12 45 9 32 10 10 36 11 36 11 40 12 45 11 40 12 40 45 2 4 3 8 2 4 4 12 A game of Railroad Ink™ is played over 7 rounds . The goal is to connect as many Exits to each other as possible by drawing Routes that can create Netw", "headingPath": "components · Game Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "3 4 2 8 3 12 4 16 5 20 6 24 7 28 8 32 9 36 10 40 11 45 12 1. Each player takes a Board and places it in front of them. 2. Each player also takes a marker. 3. Place the Route dice in the middle of the table. 4. The Meteor and Lava dice are only used in the Expansions (see page 10). setup Special Rout", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "4 2 Each player can also use 6 Special Routes , displayed in the top part of the boards , that do not appear on the Route dice. These Routes may allow you to connect different Networks together and/or make bigger Networks. You may draw a Special Route once per round , in addition to the Routes shown", "headingPath": "using special routes · end of the round", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "5 Important: When drawing Routes, you can freely rotate and/or reverse the pattern you see on the die. Drawing routes 4 2 8 3 12 4 16 5 20 6 24 7 28 8 32 9 36 10 40 11 45 12 After the dice roll, all players must draw the Routes on their boards at the same time. There are a few drawing rules you need", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.029877, "snippet": ": Volcanoes start erupting, but the Route building must go on! Work your way around lakes of Lava and prevent them from destroying your Routes. Confine the Lava streams to gain extra points. You also score additional points for the Largest Lava lake on your Board. When playing with the Lava Expansio", "headingPath": "6 rounds", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME RoundS · ROLLING DICE", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "EXPANSIONS · 6 rounds", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "using special routes · end of the round", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "components · Game Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "6 rounds", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 825}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 825 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 825 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 0.90453 of 1676 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 26, 2026 03:21 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 Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	EXPANSIONS · 6 rounds	p.10	0.048652 (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 Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	GAME RoundS · ROLLING DICE	p.4	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
#3	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)		p.7	0.046432 (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 Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	components · Game Overview	p.2	0.045285 (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 Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)		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
#6	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	using special routes · end of the round	p.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))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)		p.5	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
#8	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	6 rounds	p.12	0.029877 (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 16 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 Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	EXPANSIONS · 6 rounds	p.10	#1	0.048652 (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 Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	GAME RoundS · ROLLING DICE	p.4	#2	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
#3	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	components · Game Overview	p.2	#4	0.045285 (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 Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)		p.5	#7	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 Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)		p.8	#10	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
#6	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)		p.3	#5	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
#7	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	using special routes · end of the round	p.6	#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
#8	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	6 rounds	p.12	#8	0.029877 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	GAME RoundS · ROLLING DICE	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	EXPANSIONS · 6 rounds	p.10	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)		p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	using special routes · end of the round	p.6	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	components · Game Overview	p.2	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)	6 rounds	p.12	no quote on the wire
[8]	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 825)		p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 192 ms · first delta 1832 ms · total 4474 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 192 ms · ask 4280 ms · gateway work 4474 ms · total 4474 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3653
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 520
tok/sec: 201.2 tok/sec — 520 output tokens in 2.584 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 760), 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.