RuleSage cited table rulings
← El Grande

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: El Grandebg-93-en-1e

To setup the game for 4 players:
1. Place the Game board in the center of the table with the side for 4 and 5 players visible.[1]
2. Return the 10 Actions cards with and the 4 with symbols next to the title to the box.[1]
3. Sort the remaining Action cards into stacks according to their backs (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5).[1]
4. Shuffle each stack and place them face down in a row.[1]
5. Place both Scoring tiles next to the game board.[1]
6. Place the Round marker on the first spot of the round track.[1]
7. Place the Castillo on the designated space on the game board.[1]
8. Each player chooses a color.[1]
9. Place the corresponding Score markers on the 0 spot of the scoring track.[1]
10. Each player takes the 13 Power cards in their color to form their hand.[1]
11. Each player takes a Secret disc.[1]
12. Shuffle the 9 Region cards and make a face down stack.[2]
13. Reveal a card from the Region stack and place the King in the region shown on the card.[2]
14. Starting with you, each player draws 1 Region card.[2]
15. Place your Grande and 2 Caballeros in the region shown on your card.[2]
16. Return all Region cards to the box.[2]
17. Each player takes 7 Caballeros in their color and places them in their personal supply (their Court).[2]
18. Place all the remaining Caballeros (21 per 9 color) next to the game board in the general supply (the Province).[2]
19. Whoever visited Spain most recently takes the First Player marker.[2]
20. Return all unused material to the box.[2]
[1] RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook · p.2 · Assembling the Secret discs: · Setup
[2] RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook · p.3 · Setup

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 253 ms · ask 3156 ms · total 3416 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 3416 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 2, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "1 Game board 1 Castillo 9 Region cards 55 Action cards 5 Secret discs 81 Power cards in 6 colors 1 King 5 Score markers in 5 colors 1 Round marker 5 Grandes in 5 colors 1 First Player marker Assemble the marker before your first game 6 Tuck boxes 150 Caballeros in 5 colors (30 per color) 2 Scoring t", "headingPath": "Assembling the Secret discs: · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "You can also play a shorter game that lasts only 6 rounds. During setup, start the Round marker on space 2. When advancing the Round marker, skip spaces 4 and 7. Set up the game as described on p. 2 and 3 with the following changes: Flip the game board. The 2- and 3-player side should now be visible", "headingPath": "Short game · 2-player game", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "Shuffle the 9 Region cards and make a face down stack. 8 Reveal a card and place the King in the region shown on the card. The region occupied by the King is referred to as the King ' s region . Starting with you, each player draws 1 Region card. Place your Grande and 2 Caballeros in the region show", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "Whoever played the lowest Power card in this round takes the First Player marker . Put your played Power card face down on your discard pile. Move the Round marker 1 space down . If the marker lands on a spot with the next digit, a new round begins as just described. If the Round marker lands on a s", "headingPath": "4. End of the round · 5. General scoring · a) Set your Secret disc · b) Score the Castio and move Cabaeros to a region", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045541, "snippet": "At the beginning of each round, draw 2 Region cards. Place 2 Caballeros of the dummy in each of the drawn regions. If all 30 are on the game board, do not draw any more Region cards. If a card shows the King's region, do not place any Caballeros there. Then place the cards on a discard pile. After e", "headingPath": "Gameplay changes: · 3-player game · Mini expansion: 'New Regency'", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "All specified players must secretly set the arrow on their Secret disc to the region of their choice. Example ' Withdrawal': Each opponent must return 3 of their from the regions or their Court to the Province. Your left neighbor starts. ? Orange is to your left and returns 3 Caballeros from their C", "headingPath": "Secret disc", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "On your turn, perform the following steps: At the beginning of your turn, take as many Caballeros from the general supply (the Province ) as are shown on your played Power card. You put them in your personal supply, which we call Court . Later, you will place your Caballeros in Spain (on the game bo", "headingPath": "3. Take a turn · Take Cabaeros to the Court · Use an Action card · Place Cabaeros", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030118, "snippet": "We recommend playing with the 4 Action cards only if you have already played a few games of El Grande. You can choose which cards to add, or even play with them all. Shuffle the Action cards as usual. Then, for each card you are adding, return 1 random card from the corresponding stack back to the b", "headingPath": "Alternative Action cards for 'Old Hands' · Setup: · Mini expansion 'Power Shift' · Gameplay changes: · Action card explanations", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Assembling the Secret discs: · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 162 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 162 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 0.86304 of 1212 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Oct 7, 2026 11:13 UTC

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) Assembling the Secret discs: · Setup p.2 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) 300
#2 RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) Short game · 2-player game p.9 0.048131 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) Setup p.3 0.046898 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) 4. End of the round · 5. General scoring · a) Set your Secret disc · b) Score the Castio and move Cabaeros to a region p.7 0.046635 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) Gameplay changes: · 3-player game · Mini expansion: 'New Regency' p.9 0.045541 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) Secret disc p.11 0.045228 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) 3. Take a turn · Take Cabaeros to the Court · Use an Action card · Place Cabaeros 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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) Alternative Action cards for 'Old Hands' · Setup: · Mini expansion 'Power Shift' · Gameplay changes: · Action card explanations p.10 0.030118 (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 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 17 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) Short game · 2-player game p.9 #2 0.048131 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) Setup p.3 #3 0.046898 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) Gameplay changes: · 3-player game · Mini expansion: 'New Regency' p.9 #5 0.045541 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) End of the game p.8 #13 0.013699 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) 3. Take a turn · Take Cabaeros to the Court · Use an Action card · Place Cabaeros 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
#6 RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) Goal of the Game · Gameplay · 1. Reveal Action cards · 2. Play Power cards · 3. Take a turn p.4 #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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#7 RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) Alternative Action cards for 'Old Hands' · Setup: · Mini expansion 'Power Shift' · Gameplay changes: · Action card explanations p.10 #8 0.030118 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) Assembling the Secret discs: · Setup p.2 #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

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) Assembling the Secret discs: · Setup p.2 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162) Setup p.3 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 253 ms · first delta 1233 ms · total 3416 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 253 ms · ask 3156 ms · gateway work 3416 ms · total 3416 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3543
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
422
tok/sec
201.7 tok/sec — 422 output tokens in 2.092 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 45s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage)
reachable (for 2h, 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
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

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 84), 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.