You asked
How do I set up the game?
Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstainAnswered before
This question didn't get an answer just now — but Lancaster has been asked something like it before. The corpus may have changed since, so check the date and the answerer on each one before you rule from it.
I looked through Lancaster's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.
The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.
Before your first game, you must affix the stickers of the archers and the Tudor knights to 3 each of the 6 brown wooden discs. In addition, you must affix one bishop sticker to each of the 9 black wooden discs, and one lord sticker of the player colors to each of the remaining 5 discs. Regal board
Please see the detailed description of the new laws on the back of this rules sheet. The new laws may enter the game in 2 different ways : Replace all law cards of the basic game with the new law cards. Leave the old laws in the box, they are not used for this game. You may combine the old and new l
· reward tiles in total - 9 tiles for use with the basic game and 3 exchange tiles for use in combination with the expansion 'Henry V - The Power of the King'. On the backsides of the tiles the letters A-I are imprinted, in accordance with the counties of the game board. Put the 9 tiles for the basi
Both players have an ally. The allies have a small castle of their own, which cannot be extended. Each player takes the decisions for their ally and places their knights. They do not receive power points, voting markers, gold, or squires. Special rules concerning other rewards are explained below. T
The players feel the king's wrath after each lost conflict. Lack of support results in dishonor, which can be extinguished only with the help of the tower. Regal board - place this board below the Parliament board. 38 dishonor markers - place these markers on the dishonor track of the regal board, d
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
- outcome
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- warm abstain
-
- this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)
- corpus profile
- live
- answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
- gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
- timings
- search 256 ms · ask 5399 ms · total 5666 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 5666 ms
- retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
- [{"page": 13, "score": 0.032266, "snippet": "Before your first game, you must affix the stickers of the archers and the Tudor knights to 3 each of the 6 brown wooden discs. In addition, you must affix one bishop sticker to each of the 9 black wooden discs, and one lord sticker of the player colors to each of the remaining 5 discs. Regal board ", "headingPath": "New components and set-up modifications", "sharpsignalDocId": 139}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.031778, "snippet": "Please see the detailed description of the new laws on the back of this rules sheet. The new laws may enter the game in 2 different ways : Replace all law cards of the basic game with the new law cards. Leave the old laws in the box, they are not used for this game. You may combine the old and new l", "headingPath": "· 18 new law cards · PARLIAMENT · 1st option 'The game with the new laws' · 2nd option 'The game with variable combinations' · Nobleman tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 139}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.031281, "snippet": "· reward tiles in total - 9 tiles for use with the basic game and 3 exchange tiles for use in combination with the expansion 'Henry V - The Power of the King'. On the backsides of the tiles the letters A-I are imprinted, in accordance with the counties of the game board. Put the 9 tiles for the basi", "headingPath": "New components and set-up · Sequence of play · Counties · Summary of reward tiles · Special features in the 2-player game · QUEENIE 1: REWARD TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 139}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029877, "snippet": "Both players have an ally. The allies have a small castle of their own, which cannot be extended. Each player takes the decisions for their ally and places their knights. They do not receive power points, voting markers, gold, or squires. Special rules concerning other rewards are explained below. T", "headingPath": "Use the rules for 4 players, with following amendments: · Set-up · Each player selects the color of their ally and receives additionally: · Phase 1: Place knights · Phase 2: Parliament", "sharpsignalDocId": 139}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.028446, "snippet": "The players feel the king's wrath after each lost conflict. Lack of support results in dishonor, which can be extinguished only with the help of the tower. Regal board - place this board below the Parliament board. 38 dishonor markers - place these markers on the dishonor track of the regal board, d", "headingPath": "The King's Resentment · New components and set-up modifications · Sequence of play modifications", "sharpsignalDocId": 139}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.016129, "snippet": "The players want to proceed from simply being a Lord to the most powerful ally of the king. They may achieve this by developing their own knighthood as well as by clever deployment of individual knights in the counties of England, at their own castle and to conflicts with 1 Game board 2 Supply board", "headingPath": "Object of the game · Common components: · Individual components of the players (in 5 colors): · Give each player...", "sharpsignalDocId": 139}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.015873, "snippet": "'At the King's Court' affects the game play of phases 1 and 3. During phase 1, the players apply for the new offices of the country. During phase 3, the offices and privileges are distributed, which the players can use during the next game round. The active player places one of his own knights or hi", "headingPath": "Sequence of play modifications · Phase 1: Place knights or the lord · The lord applies for an office · The lord enters the treasury", "sharpsignalDocId": 139}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.015625, "snippet": "Randomly determine a start player, give them the start player marker. The players take their turns in clockwise direction. The game is played over five game rounds. Each round consists of 3 Phases: 1: Place knights 2: Parliament 3: Rewards The active player takes one of their own knights from their ", "headingPath": "Sequence of play · Phase 1: Place knights · County", "sharpsignalDocId": 139}]
- citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
- []
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it); rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it)
- answered-before recall
-
past answered rulings were found and offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
- ruling 2036 — matched by trigram similarity — measured similarity 0.8148
- debug row retained until
- Oct 31, 2026 14:12
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. How much wider that pool was is set gateway-side and is NOT REPORTED for this ruling, and neither are the answerer's final rows — so rulesage has nothing of its own to show beside these.
score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. How many arms fused this ruling was NOT RECORDED (it predates the boost trail, ran on the path that stored none, or stored one that could not be read), and the ceiling depends on that count (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60): 2 arms top out at 0.03279; 3 arms top out at 0.04918. So a score above 0.03279 here is not an anomaly: it is arithmetic proof a boost arm voted, and the measured band 0.016–0.033 (taken on two-arm asks) is what does not apply. 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 Lancaster — Rulebook (corpus doc 139) | New components and set-up modifications | p.13 | 0.032266 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Lancaster — Rulebook (corpus doc 139) | · 18 new law cards · PARLIAMENT · 1st option 'The game with the new laws' · 2nd option 'The game with variable combinations' · Nobleman tiles | p.11 | 0.031778 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #3 | RULEBOOK Lancaster — Rulebook (corpus doc 139) | New components and set-up · Sequence of play · Counties · Summary of reward tiles · Special features in the 2-player game · QUEENIE 1: REWARD TILES | p.20 | 0.031281 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Lancaster — Rulebook (corpus doc 139) | Use the rules for 4 players, with following amendments: · Set-up · Each player selects the color of their ally and receives additionally: · Phase 1: Place knights · Phase 2: Parliament | p.7 | 0.029877 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Lancaster — Rulebook (corpus doc 139) | The King's Resentment · New components and set-up modifications · Sequence of play modifications | p.17 | 0.028446 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #6 | RULEBOOK Lancaster — Rulebook (corpus doc 139) | Object of the game · Common components: · Individual components of the players (in 5 colors): · Give each player... | p.1 | 0.016129 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #7 | RULEBOOK Lancaster — Rulebook (corpus doc 139) | Sequence of play modifications · Phase 1: Place knights or the lord · The lord applies for an office · The lord enters the treasury | p.14 | 0.015873 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) | 300 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Lancaster — Rulebook (corpus doc 139) | Sequence of play · Phase 1: Place knights · County | p.2 | 0.015625 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) | 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.
the passages the answerer read: NOT RECORDED for this ruling. Any of three things leaves this empty, and they are all different from the answerer having had nothing to read: this ask may never have reached a gateway at all; a multi-book ask keeps each book's own context on that book's own page rather than here; or the gateway build that answered may simply not report it. What this NEVER means is that the answerer read nothing — an answer was composed from passages either way, and their absence here is a gap in what we were told, not in what it read.
chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited
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.
| # | document | heading | page | quote chars |
|---|
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 256 ms · first delta 5558 ms · total 5666 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 256 ms · ask 5399 ms · gateway work 5666 ms · total 5666 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 3566
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 9
- tok/sec
- 138.5 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.065 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 19s ago)
- 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
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- abstain rationale
-
I don't have enough information.
the answerer's own words, verbatim — hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped
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)
-
set up
errata registry — what the gate above had to match against
this game registers NO errata cards (edition 61), 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.