Ruling — Lancaster

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: Lancasterbg-96913-en-1e

Answered 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.

How do I setup the game? →

Answered Aug 8, 2026 gemma4:26b read Lancaster

The answerer couldn't ground a confident answer in the rulebook. The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK Lancaster — Rulebook · p.13 · New components and set-up modifications

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

RULEBOOK Lancaster — Rulebook · p.11 · · 18 new law cards · PARLIAMENT · 1st option 'The game with the new laws' · 2nd option 'The game with variable combinations' · Nobleman tiles

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

RULEBOOK Lancaster — Rulebook · p.20 · New components and set-up · Sequence of play · Counties · Summary of reward tiles · Special features in the 2-player game · QUEENIE 1: REWARD TILES

· 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

RULEBOOK Lancaster — Rulebook · p.1 · Object of the game · Common components: · Individual components of the players (in 5 colors): · Give each player...

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

RULEBOOK Lancaster — Rulebook · p.14 · Sequence of play modifications · Phase 1: Place knights or the lord · The lord applies for an office · The lord enters the treasury

'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

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome

ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below

corpus profile

live

answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)

gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70

timings

search 243 ms · ask 6171 ms · total 1191375 ms

single-flight (PR-5)

queued 1184952 ms · generation 6423 ms

retrieval refs (raw)

[{"page": 13, "score": 0.04866, "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": 0.047163, "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": 0.046432, "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": 1, "score": 0.032258, "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": 0.031746, "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": 0.03125, "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}, {"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": 12, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Players have to flip each extension for which they do not want to pay this charge or cannot do so. Players decide in player order, beginning with the start player. These extensions are flipped back after scoring all castles. Players gain 3 power points for every 2 squires supporting their own knight", "headingPath": "Players must return 1 squire to the general supply for each existing extension of their castle.", "sharpsignalDocId": 139}]

citations (raw)

[]

boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)

no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 139 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true

base rulebook doc 139 boosted

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

Nov 6, 2026 14:28

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 Lancaster — Rulebook (corpus doc 139)	New components and set-up modifications	p.13	0.04866 (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 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	0.047163 (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 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	0.046432 (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 Lancaster — Rulebook (corpus doc 139)	Object of the game · Common components: · Individual components of the players (in 5 colors): · Give each player...	p.1	0.032258 (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
#5	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	0.031746 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Lancaster — Rulebook (corpus doc 139)	Sequence of play · Phase 1: Place knights · County	p.2	0.03125 (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 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 (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 Lancaster — Rulebook (corpus doc 139)	Players must return 1 squire to the general supply for each existing extension of their castle.	p.12	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 243 ms · first delta 6319 ms · total 1191375 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 1184952 ms · retrieval 243 ms · ask 6171 ms · gateway work 6423 ms · total 1191375 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3787
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 9
tok/sec: 142.9 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.063 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 38s 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.