Ruling — El Grande

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Answered counted as answered

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

To set up 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 card stack and place the King in the region shown on that 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 drawn 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 remaining Caballeros next to the game board in a general supply called the Province [2]. 19. Whoever visited Spain most recently takes the First Player marker [2].

[1] RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook · p.2 · Assembling the Secret discs: · Setup

[2] RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook · p.3 · Setup

🔧 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 241 ms · ask 7358 ms · total 1247028 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 1239420 ms · generation 7608 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"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": 0.046432, "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": 10, "score": 0.045476, "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}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.044337, "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": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "You try to gain majority in the regions of Spain by cleverly placing your Caballeros. During each scoring, you'll earn points depending on your majorities. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins. The game plays over 9 rounds. First, you play Power cards to determine turn order. ", "headingPath": "Goal of the Game · Gameplay · 1. Reveal Action cards · 2. Play Power cards · 3. Take a turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}]
citations (raw): [{"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)
debug row retained until: Nov 6, 2026 14:29

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 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	0.046432 (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
#6	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	0.045476 (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)	Secret disc	p.11	0.044337 (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)	Goal of the Game · Gameplay · 1. Reveal Action cards · 2. Play Power cards · 3. Take a turn	p.4	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote 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

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 241 ms · first delta 4671 ms · total 1247028 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 1239420 ms · retrieval 241 ms · ask 7358 ms · gateway work 7608 ms · total 1247028 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3937
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 401
tok/sec: 139.4 tok/sec — 401 output tokens in 2.877 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 15s 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 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.