Ruling — Vikings

← Vikings

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Vikingsbg-27173-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

**Assembly**

1. Remove the wheel and the washer from the die cut sheet.[1]

2. Place the larger plastic connector under the game board so that it protrudes through the small hole in the board.[1]

3. Fit the washer onto the protruding plastic connector, followed by the wheel, and finish by inserting the smaller plastic connector.[1]

**Standard Game Setup**

1. Place the 72 remaining tiles into 6 face-down stacks of 12 tiles each.[2]

2. Place these stacks on the 6 corresponding spaces of the game board.[2]

3. Form a supply using the remaining Gold pieces.[2]

4. Place all 78 Vikings in the cloth sack and shake well.[2]

5. Give the Start Player Ship to the player who has pillaged and razed the most defenseless villages, or the youngest player.[2]

6. Each player receives a supply of gold (30 Gold for 2 players, 25 Gold for 3 players, and 20 Gold for 4 players).[3]

7. Each player receives 2 player markers: one is placed on space 10 of the Fame track, and the other is placed at the top of the player's mainland to mark their chosen color.[3]

**Preparing the Offer (Start of Round)**

1. The start player takes the leftmost remaining stack of tiles (closest to the arrow) and lays them on the spaces surrounding the rotating wheel.[4]

2. Place the first Island tile on the space marked by the number 0, and place each successive Island tile on the lowest remaining numbered space (1, 2, 3, etc.).[4]

3. Place the first Ship tile on the space marked by the number 11, and place each successive Ship tile on the highest remaining numbered space (10, 9, 8, etc.).[4]

4. The start player draws 12 Vikings from the cloth sack and sorts them by color.[4]

5. Place one Viking on each space, starting from space 0.[4]

6. Place all Vikings of a single color before placing Vikings of another color, following this color order: blue Fishermen, yellow Goldsmiths, green Scouts, red Nobles, black Warriors, and gray Boatswains (skipping any color not present).[4]

**Advanced Game Setup**

1. Shuffle the 25 Special tiles, split them into two face-down stacks, and place them on the 2 provided spaces on the game board.[5]

2. At the beginning of the first round, before the first auction, the start player draws 4 tiles from these stacks and places them face up on the 4 provided spaces.[5]

3. During the offer preparation, the player with the Start Player Ship draws 13 Vikings from the cloth bag and sorts them by color.[5]

4. The start player chooses 1 of the 13 Vikings drawn and removes it from the game.[5]

5. The start player places the Island and Ship tiles from the appropriate stack (Islands from 0, Ships from 11).[5]

6. The start player chooses one color of available Vikings and places them around the wheel, starting with number 11 and descending.[5]

7. The next player in clockwise order chooses one color of available Vikings and places them at the highest numbered spots available, continuing until all Vikings are placed.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook · p.6 · Assembly of the rotating wheel

[2] RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook · p.1 · Furthermore:

[3] RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook · p.1 · Game components · Each player receives:

[4] RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook · p.2 · Gameplay Overview · The following rules apply:

[5] RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook · p.7 · Advanced rules · Auction for Viking placement · PROCESS OF AN AUCTION · The winner of the auction is the new start player · Boatswain · LAYING OUT THE SPECIAL TILES

Answer in hand — your move.

🔧 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 179 ms · ask 5174 ms · total 5356 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5356 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 7, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "The rules for the advanced game differ from those of the standard game in the way that Vikings are placed during the setup of the offer and the rules regarding Boatswains. Additionally, the Special tiles are also used. All other rules remain the same. In preparing the offer, the player with the Star", "headingPath": "Advanced rules · Auction for Viking placement · PROCESS OF AN AUCTION · The winner of the auction is the new start player · Boatswain · LAYING OUT THE SPECIAL TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "The game consists of 6 rounds . In each of these rounds, one stack of tiles (see set up on page 1) is used. At the beginning of each round, an offer is prepared (12 tiles and 12 Vikings, see the example of a completed offer to the right). To do this, the start player takes the leftmost remaining sta", "headingPath": "Gameplay Overview · The following rules apply:", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "As the leaders of powerful Vikings tribes, the players set out to discover the islands seen off the coast of the mainland. Craftsmen, nobles and warriors will be stationed at these islands to claim and defend the land, gaining gold and fame for their tribe. After 6 rounds of play, the tribe with the", "headingPath": "Game components · Each player receives:", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Remove the wheel and the washer from the die cut sheet. Place the larger plastic connector under the game board so that it protrudes through the small hole in the board. Fit the washer onto the protruding plastic connector, followed by the wheel, and finish by inserting the smaller plastic connector", "headingPath": "Assembly of the rotating wheel", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "A player's Mainland is the starting point for all the tiles she will play. Six rows are clearly marked (from top to bottom: Ships, Warriors, Nobles, Scouts, Goldsmiths, and Fishermen ). Each row may hold as many tiles as a player wishes. Every turn, a player purchases a Group containing 1 tile and 1", "headingPath": "Placing tiles and Vikings YOUR MAINLAND · PLACING A TILE", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Beginning with the start player and proceeding clockwise, each player must purchase exactly 1 Group (1 tile and 1 Viking). The purchase price of a group is marked on the space of wheel closest to it. Upon purchasing, the player immediately adds the tile and the Viking to her Mainland (see page 3). P", "headingPath": "PURCHASING GROUPS · ROTATING THE WHEEL", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The game board features 6 spaces for stacks of tiles, a rotating wheel surrounded by 12 spaces for tiles, and a scoring track to mark each player's Fame. ·The 72 remaining tiles are shuffled and separated into 6 face-down stacks of 12 tiles each. These stacks are placed on the 6 spaces correspo ndin", "headingPath": "Furthermore:", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "When a player places an Island tile in the row matching the color of the Viking received in the same Group, the Viking may be placed on that Island tile (e.g. yellow Goldsmith on the Goldsmith row). The Viking may not be placed on any other tile in the same row, or any tile in another row. Once a Vi", "headingPath": "PLACING VIKINGS", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Assembly of the rotating wheel", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Furthermore:", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game components · Each player receives:", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Gameplay Overview · The following rules apply:", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Advanced rules · Auction for Viking placement · PROCESS OF AN AUCTION · The winner of the auction is the new start player · Boatswain · LAYING OUT THE SPECIAL TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 606}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 606 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 606 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 0.89658 of 2456 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Dec 2, 2026 18:40 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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Advanced rules · Auction for Viking placement · PROCESS OF AN AUCTION · The winner of the auction is the new start player · Boatswain · LAYING OUT THE SPECIAL TILES	p.7	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
#2	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Gameplay Overview · The following rules apply:	p.2	0.047619 (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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Game components · Each player receives:	p.1	0.04598 (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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Assembly of the rotating wheel	p.6	0.032787 (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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Placing tiles and Vikings YOUR MAINLAND · PLACING A TILE	p.3	0.032258 (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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	PURCHASING GROUPS · ROTATING THE WHEEL	p.2	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
#7	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Furthermore:	p.1	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
#8	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	PLACING VIKINGS	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 18 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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Gameplay Overview · The following rules apply:	p.2	#2	0.047619 (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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Advanced rules · Auction for Viking placement · PROCESS OF AN AUCTION · The winner of the auction is the new start player · Boatswain · LAYING OUT THE SPECIAL TILES	p.7	#1	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
#3	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Placing tiles and Vikings YOUR MAINLAND · PLACING A TILE	p.3	#5	0.032258 (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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Game components · Each player receives:	p.1	#3	0.04598 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Next Round	p.5	#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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	PURCHASING GROUPS · ROTATING THE WHEEL	p.2	#6	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
#7	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Furthermore:	p.1	#7	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 Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Assembly of the rotating wheel	p.6	#4	0.032787 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Assembly of the rotating wheel	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Furthermore:	p.1	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Game components · Each player receives:	p.1	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Gameplay Overview · The following rules apply:	p.2	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Vikings — Rulebook (corpus doc 606)	Advanced rules · Auction for Viking placement · PROCESS OF AN AUCTION · The winner of the auction is the new start player · Boatswain · LAYING OUT THE SPECIAL TILES	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 179 ms · first delta 1511 ms · total 5356 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 179 ms · ask 5174 ms · gateway work 5356 ms · total 5356 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3438
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 751
tok/sec: 200.8 tok/sec — 751 output tokens in 3.740 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 31s 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 9s 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: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 538), 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.