Ruling — The Guild of Merchant Explorers

You asked

How should we prepare everything before the first turn?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Guild of Merchant Explorersbg-350933-en-1e

1. Give each player a matching map [1]. 2. Give each player a set of 36 explorer cubes in one color and 13 village tokens [1]. 3. Place the Exploration Board in the middle of the table [1]. 4. Place the "II," "III," and "I/II/III" era cards on their matching spots on the Exploration Board [1]. 5. Shuffle the "I" era card and the 5 basic explore cards to form the Exploration Deck, then place this deck face down beside the Exploration Board [1]. 6. Shuffle the 28 investigate cards to form the Investigate Deck and place it face down beside the Exploration Board [1]. 7. Shuffle the 40 treasure cards to form the Treasure Deck and place it face down beside the Exploration Board [1]. 8. Place the 16 discovery towers, 32 trading posts, 40 treasure tokens, and all coins in a supply reachable by all players [1]. 9. Find the 6 goal cards that match the map being used, shuffle them together, and deal 3 faceup below the Exploration Board [1].

[1] RULEBOOK The Guild of Merchant Explorers — 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 224 ms · ask 6630 ms · total 53839 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 46976 ms · generation 6863 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 3, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Give each player a matching map. For your first game, we recommend Avenia. Then, give each player a set of 13 village tokens and 36 explorer cubes in one color. Return any unused maps and player token sets to the box. Place the Exploration Board in the middle of the table and place the \"II,\" \"III,\" ", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 395}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Each turn, one player reveals the top card of the Exploration Deck and places it on its matching space on the Exploration Board. All players now place explorers from their supply onto their own map according to the action on the card. Once everyone has completed the explore action and resolved any e", "headingPath": "Revealing Cards from /the Exploration Deck · End of an Era · Exploring Your Map", "sharpsignalDocId": 395}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "None of the following rules can be broken with any explore actions. Y ou must place each explorer adjacent to one of your villages or one of your explorers. These spaces must be without explorers, villages, or discovery towers. Always place explorers one at a time. Explore and resolve map features a", "headingPath": "Golden Rules of Exploration", "sharpsignalDocId": 395}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Ruin spaces are usually on sea terrain, but some ruin spaces are on grassland, desert, and mountain spaces and are considered be a part of these regions. When you explore a ruin space for the first time, place a treasure token under your explorer on that space. Immediately draw a treasure card from ", "headingPath": "Ruin spaces · Cities and trading posts", "sharpsignalDocId": 395}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "As soon as you take an explore action and meet the requirements of a goal, place an explorer from your supply on the card. If you are the first player to complete this goal, earn equal to the larger amount on the card. If 2 or more players complete the same goal for the first time during the same tu", "headingPath": "Completing Goals · End of /the Game · Solo Mode · Set Your Difficulty", "sharpsignalDocId": 395}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Each player aims to earn coins ( ) by exploring their map to discover villages, complete trade routes, uncover ruins, and visit discovery towers over the course of 4 eras. Any time you earn , take them from the supply and keep them value side down beside your board until the end of the game. Players", "headingPath": "Goal · About /the Maps · Blank spaces. · Coin spaces. · Ruin spaces. · City spaces with values (2, 3, 4, or 5). · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 395}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Each of the basic explore cards has a different explore action. Place up to 2 explorers one at a time on grassland spaces. The 2 grassland spaces do not have to be adjacent to each other or within the same grassland region. Place up to 2 explorers one at a time on desert spaces. The 2 desert spaces ", "headingPath": "Explore Cards · EXPLORE 2 GRASSLAND SPACES · EXPLORE 2 DESERT SPACES · EXPLORE 1 MOUNTAIN SPACE · EXPLORE 3 SEA SPACES (IN A STRAIGHT LINE) · EXPLORE ANY 2 ADJACENT SPACES · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 395}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Designed by Matthew Dunstan & Brett J. Gilbert 1-4 players 45 minutes 14+ ages The Queen has sent out a call to the Guild of Merchant Explorers, asking brave adventurers to voyage to all corners of the kingdom of Tigomé. While the kingdom is flourishing, its maps have not been updated in some time a", "headingPath": "The Guild of Merchant Explorers ™ · Components", "sharpsignalDocId": 395}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 395}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 395 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 395 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 7, 2026 05:08

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 The Guild of Merchant Explorers — Rulebook (corpus doc 395)	Setup	p.3	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 The Guild of Merchant Explorers — Rulebook (corpus doc 395)	Revealing Cards from /the Exploration Deck · End of an Era · Exploring Your Map	p.5	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 The Guild of Merchant Explorers — Rulebook (corpus doc 395)	Golden Rules of Exploration	p.5	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 The Guild of Merchant Explorers — Rulebook (corpus doc 395)	Ruin spaces · Cities and trading posts	p.7	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 The Guild of Merchant Explorers — Rulebook (corpus doc 395)	Completing Goals · End of /the Game · Solo Mode · Set Your Difficulty	p.8	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 The Guild of Merchant Explorers — Rulebook (corpus doc 395)	Goal · About /the Maps · Blank spaces. · Coin spaces. · Ruin spaces. · City spaces with values (2, 3, 4, or 5). · …	p.4	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 The Guild of Merchant Explorers — Rulebook (corpus doc 395)	Explore Cards · EXPLORE 2 GRASSLAND SPACES · EXPLORE 2 DESERT SPACES · EXPLORE 1 MOUNTAIN SPACE · EXPLORE 3 SEA SPACES (IN A STRAIGHT LINE) · EXPLORE ANY 2 ADJACENT SPACES · …	p.6	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 The Guild of Merchant Explorers — Rulebook (corpus doc 395)	The Guild of Merchant Explorers ™ · Components	p.2	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 The Guild of Merchant Explorers — Rulebook (corpus doc 395)	Setup	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 224 ms · first delta 3677 ms · total 53839 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 46976 ms · retrieval 224 ms · ask 6630 ms · gateway work 6863 ms · total 53839 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3128
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 246
tok/sec: 78.2 tok/sec — 246 output tokens in 3.144 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 37s 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: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 324), 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.