Ruling — Architects of the West Kingdom

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Architects of the West Kingdombg-236457-en-1e · Architects of the West Kingdom: Age of Artisansbg-285235-en-1e · Architects of the West Kingdom: Works of Wonderbg-327245-en-1e

To set up the game, follow these steps:

1. Place the Main Board in the centre of the playing area.[1]

2. Place the Guildhall Board over the top of the original Guildhall area of the Main Board.[2]

3. Place the Black Market Overlay Card in the middle space of the Black Market, covering the original iconography.[2]

4. Shuffle all Black Market Cards and place them in a pile on the left Black Market space, 'Small Market' side faceup.[1]

5. Shuffle all Reward Cards and place a number of cards in a facedown pile to the right of the Cathedral, equal to 2 per player, plus 1.[1]

6. Place all Debt Cards in a pile near the Guardhouse, 'unpaid' side faceup.[1]

7. Place all Multiplier Cards in a pile near the board.[1]

8. Shuffle all Apprentice Cards and place them in a facedown pile to the right of the board.[1]

9. From the top of the Apprentice pile, reveal and place 1 Apprentice Card faceup in each of the 8 spaces to the right of the Workshop.[1]

10. Shuffle all Building Cards and place them in a facedown pile to the left of the Workshop.[1]

11. Place all Clay, Wood, Stone, Gold, Marble and Silver in a Supply near the board (specifically 20 Silver and 10 Clay).[1]

12. Shuffle all Craft Cards and place them in a facedown pile above the Guildhall.[2]

13. From the top of the Craft Card pile, reveal and place 4 Craft Cards faceup in a row along the top of the Main Board.[2]

14. From the Supply, place 4 Silver in the space above the Tax Stand.[3]

15. Each player takes 1 Player Board (side 1 faceup, unless using Variable Setup rules) and 20 Workers in their chosen colour.[3]

16. Each player places 1 of their coloured Player Markers underneath the Cathedral and the other on number 7 of the Virtue Track.[3]

17. From the pile of Building Cards, deal 4 to each player.[3]

18. Each player chooses 1 card from their hand to keep, placing it facedown in front of them, then passes remaining cards to the player on their left.[3]

19. Players then choose 1 card from the received cards to keep and pass the remaining cards again.[3]

20. From the last 2 cards received, players must choose 1 to keep and place the remaining card facedown under the Building Card pile.[3]

21. Players pick up their chosen 3 cards to form their starting hand of Building Cards.[3]

22. Randomly choose a starting player.[3]

23. The starting player receives 3 Silver from the Supply; the 2nd player receives 4 Silver; the 3rd player receives 5 Silver; the 4th player receives 6 Silver, and so on.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook · p.4 · aim of the game

[2] RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom: Age of Artisans — Rulebook · p.3 · components

[3] RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook · p.5 · aim of the game · Variable Setup

That settles it — whose turn was it?

🔧 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 243 ms · ask 7140 ms · total 7389 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 7389 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "From the Supply, place 4 Silver in the space above the Tax Stand. Each player takes 1 Player Board (side 1 faceup, unless using the V ariable Setup rules) and 20 Workers in their chosen colour. Each player places 1 of their coloured Player Markers underneath the Cathedral and the other on number 7 o", "headingPath": "aim of the game · Variable Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046679, "snippet": "When playing for the first time or teaching others, there are 3 key concepts to understand: Worker Investment - Each player has 20 Workers. Each turn they will place just 1 of these onto the Main Board. As a general rule, the more times a player visits the same location, the more they benefit from i", "headingPath": "first time players · playing the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.04531, "snippet": "For a more variable game, all players should use side 2 of their Player Boards (randomly dealt or chosen). This gives each player a unique ability throughout the game. It also determines how much Silver, Virtue and other items they begin with. The player with the most Virtue starts the game, followe", "headingPath": "End-game Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.045242, "snippet": "Despite your noble efforts to finish the cathedral, the king's patience has begun to wear. In his frustration, he has turned to renowned Byzantine architects, Constantine and Helena to complete the work. Your reputation is on the line. This is your last chance to prove your worth to the king. The ai", "headingPath": "Introduction · Components · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.044394, "snippet": "Follow these steps to set up Architects of the West Kingdom: Place the Main Board in the centre of the playing area. Shuffle all Black Market Cards and place them in a pile on the left Black Market space, 'Small Market' side faceup. Shuffle all Reward Cards and place a number of cards in a facedown ", "headingPath": "aim of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.03055, "snippet": "You will always take your turn first, followed by your opponent. Your turns function just as they would in the standard game. Your opponent's turns operate differently. On their turn, reveal the top card from the Schemes Draw Pile. Each Scheme Card instructs you to place 1 opposing Worker in a speci", "headingPath": "Playing the Game · There are a few additional rules to observe during the game. Your opponent: · End of the Game · End-game Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030214, "snippet": "Separate Starting Scheme Cards (brown headers) from their Future Scheme Cards (black headers). If you are not using the Age of Artisans expansion, be sure to remove the 2 associated Scheme Cards marked by a in their bottom-right corner. Shuffle the Starting Scheme Cards and place them in a facedown ", "headingPath": "solo variant: setup · solo variant: scheme cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 880}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029877, "snippet": "Place the Guildhall Board over the top of the original Guildhall area of the Main Board. Also place the Black Market Overlay Card in the middle space of the Black Market, covering the original iconography. When preparing the Apprentice and Building Card draw piles, shuffle the new expansion cards in", "headingPath": "components", "sharpsignalDocId": 879}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "aim of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "components", "sharpsignalDocId": 879}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "aim of the game · Variable Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 303 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 303 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 0.89567 of 2032 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 28, 2026 08:14 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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	aim of the game · Variable Setup	p.5	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	first time players · playing the game	p.6	0.046679 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	End-game Scoring	p.28	0.04531 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	Introduction · Components · Setup	p.26	0.045242 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	aim of the game	p.4	0.044394 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	Playing the Game · There are a few additional rules to observe during the game. Your opponent: · End of the Game · End-game Scoring	p.27	0.03055 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom: Works of Wonder — Rulebook (corpus doc 880)	solo variant: setup · solo variant: scheme cards	p.9	0.030214 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom: Age of Artisans — Rulebook (corpus doc 879)	components	p.3	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 58 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 — 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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	aim of the game · Variable Setup	p.5	#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 Architects of the West Kingdom: Works of Wonder — Rulebook (corpus doc 880)	visiting wonders · end-game scoring · solo variant: setup	p.8	#11	0.028324 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	aim of the game	p.4	#5	0.044394 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom: Works of Wonder — Rulebook (corpus doc 880)	solo variant: setup · solo variant: scheme cards	p.9	#7	0.030214 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	End-game Scoring	p.28	#3	0.04531 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom: Age of Artisans — Rulebook (corpus doc 879)	components	p.3	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom: Age of Artisans — Rulebook (corpus doc 879)	end-game scoring · solo variant	p.10	#13	0.026471 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	Introduction · Components · Setup	p.26	#4	0.045242 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	aim of the game	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom: Age of Artisans — Rulebook (corpus doc 879)	components	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	aim of the game · Variable Setup	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 243 ms · first delta 1505 ms · total 7389 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 243 ms · ask 7140 ms · gateway work 7389 ms · total 7389 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3309
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 662
tok/sec: 114.5 tok/sec — 662 output tokens in 5.781 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 50s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 48h, 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: 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 231), 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.