Ruling — Schotten Totten

You asked

What is the correct arrangement of components at the very beginning of a game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Schotten Tottenbg-372-en-1e

1. Place the 9 Stone tiles in a line between you and your opponent [1]. 2. Shuffle all of the Clan cards and put them in a pile facedown to make the deck [1].

[1] RULEBOOK Schotten Totten — Rulebook · p.3 · Tactic cards (see variant p. 12) · Stone tiles · Set 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 308 ms · ask 2836 ms · total 8288 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 5130 ms · generation 3158 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 6, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "The game ends immediately if one of the following two things happen : A player controls three adjacent Stones. A player controls fi ve Stones scattered along the Border. If you want to play over several rounds, the winner gains 5 victory points and his opponent gains as many victory points as Stones", "headingPath": "End of the Game · The player who controls these Stones is declared the winner. · Note · Set Up · Gameplay", "sharpsignalDocId": 478}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "If you're familiar with the rules described above, you might want to spice up the game a little bit. This variant plays according to the base rules but with this change: you can only claim a Stone at the beginning of your turn, before playing a card. Designer: Reiner Knizia • Illustrations: Djib Pro", "headingPath": "Expert variant · credits", "sharpsignalDocId": 478}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Three cards of the same color and of three successive strengths Three cards of the same strength Three cards of the same color Three cards of successive strength and of any color Any three cards The order in which you play cards doesn't matter for runs of successive strengths. If the combinations ar", "headingPath": "Color-Run · Three of a Kind · Run · Sum · Example", "sharpsignalDocId": 478}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Beginning with the First Player and taking turns, choose a card from your hand and place it face-up next to a Stone, on your side of the border. Once you have placed a card next to a Stone, it cannot be moved. Then draw a card and play moves to your opponent. If the deck is empty, you continue playi", "headingPath": "Game Play · Note · Conditions for claiming a Stone · Claiming a Stone", "sharpsignalDocId": 478}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "3 A warm spring breeze flows through the Scottish valley as the birds begin to sing and the snow slowly melts away. Your precious village is slowly uncovered and the stones that define your territory begin poking through. The earth is soft and the stones could easily roll just a bit into your neighb", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 478}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Blind-Man's Bluff: to claim the Stone that has Blind-Man's Bluff on it, add only the strength of the cards played on it, without taking into account any possible combinations. Mud Fight: to claim the Stone that has Mud Fight on it, you must make combinations with four cards on either side of the Sto", "headingPath": "2 Combat Modes (played on a Stone tile) · 3 Ruses (played face-up next to the deck)", "sharpsignalDocId": 478}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Tactic cards represent the allies of your clan that lend you a hand and reinforce your strategy while claiming a Stone. Each Tactic card has a special ability represented by a black symbol. They are placed instead of a Clan card. Stone tiles represent the border over which you fight during the whole", "headingPath": "Tactic cards (see variant p. 12) · Stone tiles · Set Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 478}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "You can have as many Tactic cards as you want in your hand, as long as you respect the maximum hand size of seven cards. You cannot play more than one card more than your opponent has played. Your opponent has already played one Tactic card while you have already played two. You have therefore playe", "headingPath": "Tactic cards · Example · 1 Elite Troops (played like a Clan card)", "sharpsignalDocId": 478}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Tactic cards (see variant p. 12) · Stone tiles · Set Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 478}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 478 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 478 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 06:08

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 Schotten Totten — Rulebook (corpus doc 478)	End of the Game · The player who controls these Stones is declared the winner. · Note · Set Up · Gameplay	p.6	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 Schotten Totten — Rulebook (corpus doc 478)	Expert variant · credits	p.9	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 Schotten Totten — Rulebook (corpus doc 478)	Color-Run · Three of a Kind · Run · Sum · Example	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 Schotten Totten — Rulebook (corpus doc 478)	Game Play · Note · Conditions for claiming a Stone · Claiming a Stone	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 Schotten Totten — Rulebook (corpus doc 478)		p.2	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 Schotten Totten — Rulebook (corpus doc 478)	2 Combat Modes (played on a Stone tile) · 3 Ruses (played face-up next to the deck)	p.8	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 Schotten Totten — Rulebook (corpus doc 478)	Tactic cards (see variant p. 12) · Stone tiles · Set Up	p.3	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 Schotten Totten — Rulebook (corpus doc 478)	Tactic cards · Example · 1 Elite Troops (played like a Clan card)	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 Schotten Totten — Rulebook (corpus doc 478)	Tactic cards (see variant p. 12) · Stone tiles · Set Up	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 308 ms · first delta 2788 ms · total 8288 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 5130 ms · retrieval 308 ms · ask 2836 ms · gateway work 3158 ms · total 8288 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2768
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 44
tok/sec: 137.1 tok/sec — 44 output tokens in 0.321 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 2s 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: BEGIN — "begin" / "beginning"
matched words (in the normalized question): beginning

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 409), 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.