Ruling — Pax Pamir: Second Edition

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Pax Pamir: Second Editionbg-256960-en-1e

To set up the game, follow these steps: 1. Place the favored suit marker on the space next to the political suit [1]. 2. Separate the court cards and the event cards [1]. 3. Shuffle the court cards [1]. 4. Create six face-down piles of court cards, each consisting of five cards, plus one card per player; any remaining court cards are not used [1]. 5. Remove the four Dominance Check event cards from the other event cards [1]. 6. Place one Dominance Check card in each of the four rightmost piles [1]. 7. Shuffle the remaining event cards [1]. 8. Place two event cards in the second pile from the left and one in each of the remaining four piles to its right; any remaining event cards are not used [1]. 9. Separately shuffle each of the six piles [1]. 10. Stack the piles on top of each other so that the four piles containing the Dominance Check event cards are on the bottom of the deck, and do not shuffle this combined deck [1]. 11. Create the market by drawing cards from the draw deck and filling each market column (top row first), starting with the leftmost column, to create an array of 12 face-up cards in a grid of two rows and six columns [1]. 12. Place the draw deck to the right of the market [1]. 13. Give each player a player board, one loyalty dial, four rupees, and eleven cylinders [1]. 14. Place one cylinder from each player on the zero space of the victory point track and the rest on each player's player board [1]. 15. Place the remaining coins and the tray of coalition blocks near the area of play [1]. 16. Starting with a random player and proceeding clockwise, each player adjusts their loyalty dial to indicate their chosen loyalty [1]. If playing with the automated opponent Wakhan: 17. Include Wakhan as a player when determining the size of the deck [2]. 18. Shuffle the deck of 24 AI cards and place them in a stack face down [2]. 19. Provide Wakhan with a spare set of player cylinders [2]. 20. Place Wakhan's pieces to the right of the player who chooses their loyalty last [2].

[1] RULEBOOK Pax Pamir: Second Edition — Rulebook · p.4 · Starting Favored Suit · Build the Draw Deck · Create the Market · Take Player Pieces · Bank and Coalition Blocks · Starting Loyalty

[2] RULEBOOK Pax Pamir: Second Edition — Rulebook · p.16 · Playing with Wakhan · Setting Up

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 266 ms · ask 13495 ms · total 437669 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 423898 ms · generation 13771 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "To use Wakhan, the automated opponent, with either one or two human players, consult the rules on page 16. Pax Pamir begins in a period of great political upheaval. Ayub Shah, the last of the Durrani emperors, has just been deposed. A region once unified is now on the verge of total collapse, and lo", "headingPath": "Starting Favored Suit · Build the Draw Deck · Create the Market · Take Player Pieces · Bank and Coalition Blocks · Starting Loyalty", "sharpsignalDocId": 266}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "/This section introduces an automated opponent called Wakhan. /Thematically, this opponent represents some radical ideology (theological or philosophical) that has taken hold across the region and that transcends traditional loyalties. Wakhan can be faced by one or two human players. However, this i", "headingPath": "Playing with Wakhan · Setting Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 266}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Play any card from your hand to your court. In order to play a card, first reveal that card to everyone and announce its name and region. If you are the ruler of that card's region or if no one rules the region, you can freely play the card. If someone else is that region's ruler, you must pay a bri", "headingPath": "Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 266}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Play Play any card from your hand to your court. In order to play a card, first reveal that card to everyone and announce its name and region. If you are the ruler of that card’s region or if no one rules the region, you can freely play the card. If someone else is that region’s ruler, you must pay ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 266}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Core Actions The two core actions of Pax Pamir are described in this section. While not difficult, the purchase and play actions are, by far, the most complicated actions of the game. When teaching the game, some groups may prefer to learn just these two actions and then introduce the other actions ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 266}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "/The two core actions of Pax Pamir are described in this section. While not difficult, the purchase and play actions are, by far, the most complicated actions of the game. When teaching the game, some groups may prefer to learn just these two actions and then introduce the other actions gradually ov", "headingPath": "Core Actions · Purchase", "sharpsignalDocId": 266}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Rules of Play In Pax Pamir, each player assumes the role of a nineteenth-century Afghan leader attempting to forge a new state a/fter the collapse of the Durrani Empire. Western histories o/ften call this period '/The Great Game' because of the role played by the Europeans who attempted to use Centr", "headingPath": "Pax Pamir: Second Edition", "sharpsignalDocId": 266}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Each of the six regions in the game is associated with a ruler token. Ruler tokens remain on the board if no player currently rules the region. If a player does rule a region, they should immediately take the associated ruler token and place it in their play area. Likewise, if a player ceases ruling", "headingPath": "Ruling a Region 3", "sharpsignalDocId": 266}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Starting Favored Suit · Build the Draw Deck · Create the Market · Take Player Pieces · Bank and Coalition Blocks · Starting Loyalty", "sharpsignalDocId": 266}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing with Wakhan · Setting Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 266}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 266 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 266 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)
debug row retained until: Nov 6, 2026 14:15

retrieval — what the search arm returned

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 Pax Pamir: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 266)	Starting Favored Suit · Build the Draw Deck · Create the Market · Take Player Pieces · Bank and Coalition Blocks · Starting Loyalty	p.4	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
#2	RULEBOOK Pax Pamir: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 266)	Playing with Wakhan · Setting Up	p.16	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
#3	RULEBOOK Pax Pamir: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 266)	Play	p.11	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
#4	RULEBOOK Pax Pamir: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 266)		p.11	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
#5	RULEBOOK Pax Pamir: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 266)		p.10	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
#6	RULEBOOK Pax Pamir: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 266)	Core Actions · Purchase	p.10	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
#7	RULEBOOK Pax Pamir: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 266)	Pax Pamir: Second Edition	p.1	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))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Pax Pamir: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 266)	Ruling a Region 3	p.7	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Pax Pamir: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 266)	Starting Favored Suit · Build the Draw Deck · Create the Market · Take Player Pieces · Bank and Coalition Blocks · Starting Loyalty	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Pax Pamir: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 266)	Playing with Wakhan · Setting Up	p.16	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 266 ms · first delta 10068 ms · total 437669 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 423898 ms · retrieval 266 ms · ask 13495 ms · gateway work 13771 ms · total 437669 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3493
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 503
tok/sec: 138.1 tok/sec — 503 output tokens in 3.642 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 13s 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: 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): set up

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 194), 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.