Ruling — Paths of Glory

You asked

What does each player take, and what goes in the middle, before we begin?

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

Asked with: Paths of Glorybg-91-en-1e

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

RULEBOOK Paths of Glory — Rulebook · p.4 · 4.3 Initial Strategy Cards

4.3. The Central Powers player may choose whether or not to start the game with the Guns of August event Strategy Card in his hand. The Central Powers player must inform the Allied player of his decision. In either case, the Central Powers Mobilization Cards are shuffled and the Central Powers play

RULEBOOK Paths of Glory — Rulebook · p.7 · 8. General Rules · 9. General Rules

8.. There are six Action Rounds per Action Phase. In each Action Round, each player is allowed to take only one of six possible actions. 8..2 The Central Powers player conducts the first action in each Action Round. 8..3 Each player must take one of six possible actions: Play a Strategy Card as

RULEBOOK Paths of Glory — Rulebook · p.20 · 6.3 US Entry

6.3. Full US Entry into the war is a three step process which is recorded on the US Entry Track. The US Entry marker initially begins in the US Neutral box. 6.3.2 Move the US Entry marker into the 'Zimmermann Telegram Allowed' box of the US Entry Track when the Combined War Status reaches 30. The

RULEBOOK Paths of Glory — Rulebook · p.4 · 3.0 Symbols and Terminology · 4.0 Game Set-up

Movement Factor (MF): The number of spaces a unit may enter during an Action Round when Activated for movement. Movement Points (MP): The cost to enter a space. All spaces in Paths of Glory cost 1 MP. OPS Value: The number of Activation Points which a player may spend for movement or combat in an Ac

RULEBOOK Paths of Glory — Rulebook · p.13 · 2.2 Combat Resolution

If both players' Loss Numbers are the same, both players are considered to have lost and must discard. Exception: The Allied Player discards the They Shall Not Pass when he loses the Combat. If he ties or wins, the card remains face up in front of him. The card is still discarded normally at the end

🔧 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 275 ms · ask 15698 ms · total 19638 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 3653 ms · generation 15985 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 4, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "4.3.\u0018 The Central Powers player may choose whether or not to start the game with the Guns of August event Strategy Card in his hand. The Central Powers player must inform the Allied player of his decision. In either case, the Central Powers Mobilization Cards are shuffled and the Central Powers play", "headingPath": "4.3 Initial Strategy Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 337}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "8.\u0018.\u0018 There are six Action Rounds per Action Phase. In each Action Round, each player is allowed to take only one of six possible actions. 8.\u0018.2 The Central Powers player conducts the first action in each Action Round. 8.\u0018.3 Each player must take one of six possible actions: Play a Strategy Card as ", "headingPath": "8.\u0018 General Rules · 9.\u0018 General Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 337}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "\u00186.3.\u0018 Full US Entry into the war is a three step process which is recorded on the US Entry Track. The US Entry marker initially begins in the US Neutral box. \u00186.3.2 Move the US Entry marker into the 'Zimmermann Telegram Allowed' box of the US Entry Track when the Combined War Status reaches 30. The", "headingPath": "\u00186.3 US Entry", "sharpsignalDocId": 337}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Movement Factor (MF): The number of spaces a unit may enter during an Action Round when Activated for movement. Movement Points (MP): The cost to enter a space. All spaces in Paths of Glory cost 1 MP. OPS Value: The number of Activation Points which a player may spend for movement or combat in an Ac", "headingPath": "3.0 Symbols and Terminology · 4.0 Game Set-up", "sharpsignalDocId": 337}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "If both players' Loss Numbers are the same, both players are considered to have lost and must discard. Exception: The Allied Player discards the They Shall Not Pass when he loses the Combat. If he ties or wins, the card remains face up in front of him. The card is still discarded normally at the end", "headingPath": "\u00182.2 Combat Resolution", "sharpsignalDocId": 337}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "This extended example of play will demonstrate how many of the game's mechanics work and will give you some initial strategy ideas. The game was conducted by email between Gene Billingsley, as the Allied player, and Andy Lewis, the game's developer, as the Central Powers. Neither player was an exper", "headingPath": "Extended Example · August \u00189\u00184 - Mandated Offensive Phase · August \u00189\u00184 - Action Phase Central Powers Action \u0018", "sharpsignalDocId": 337}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "\u00182.4.\u0018 The result of each player's die roll on the fire table is his opponent's Loss Number. \u00182.4.2 Losses are taken by reducing or eliminating combat units or Forts. Each step removed from a unit provides the unit's LF towards fulfilling the Loss Number. \u00182.4.3 Each player must fulfill as much of t", "headingPath": "\u00182.4 Taking Losses", "sharpsignalDocId": 337}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "There are 13 types of Game Marker pieces included in the game. Each player has his own deck of 55 Strategy Cards, subdivided into three groups: Mobilization Cards, Limited War Cards, and Total War Cards. Each side has 14 Mobilization Cards, 20 Limited War Cards, and 21 Total War Cards. AH: Austro-Hu", "headingPath": "2.2.2 Game Markers · 2.3 The Strategy Cards · 2.4 Unit Abbreviations · 2.5 Questions?", "sharpsignalDocId": 337}]
citations (raw): []
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 337 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 337 boosted
answered-before recall: no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough
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 18:16

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 Paths of Glory — Rulebook (corpus doc 337)	4.3 Initial Strategy Cards	p.4	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
#2	RULEBOOK Paths of Glory — Rulebook (corpus doc 337)	8. General Rules · 9. General Rules	p.7	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
#3	RULEBOOK Paths of Glory — Rulebook (corpus doc 337)	6.3 US Entry	p.20	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
#4	RULEBOOK Paths of Glory — Rulebook (corpus doc 337)	3.0 Symbols and Terminology · 4.0 Game Set-up	p.4	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
#5	RULEBOOK Paths of Glory — Rulebook (corpus doc 337)	2.2 Combat Resolution	p.13	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 Paths of Glory — Rulebook (corpus doc 337)	Extended Example · August 94 - Mandated Offensive Phase · August 94 - Action Phase Central Powers Action	p.25	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 Paths of Glory — Rulebook (corpus doc 337)	2.4 Taking Losses	p.13	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 Paths of Glory — Rulebook (corpus doc 337)	2.2.2 Game Markers · 2.3 The Strategy Cards · 2.4 Unit Abbreviations · 2.5 Questions?	p.3	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

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 275 ms · first delta 15892 ms · total 19638 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 3653 ms · retrieval 275 ms · ask 15698 ms · gateway work 15985 ms · total 19638 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3402
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 9
tok/sec: 150.0 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.060 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 31s 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: BEGIN — "begin" / "beginning"
matched words (in the normalized question): begin

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 265), 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.