Ruling — Ezra and Nehemiah

You asked

How do I play?

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

Asked with: Ezra and Nehemiahbg-386368-en-1e

I looked through Ezra and Nehemiah's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook · p.11 · Playing Character Cards · Banners · Gate Name & Trade · Sabbath Scoring and Name

Players must play 1 Character Card from their hand to 1 of the 3 piles on their Player Board each turn. The following rules must be followed when playing Character Cards: Players must play a Character Card before taking their Main Action. Character Cards can be played to any 1 of the 3 piles. Each p

RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook · p.6 · Main Board Setup

To set up the main area of the game, follow these steps: Place the Main Board in the centre of the table. Place all 6 Gate Cards alongside the Main Board, with the sides showing an outline of a Worker, faceup. If playing with fewer than 4 players, carry out these additional steps: 1-2 Players: Turn

RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook · p.7 · Main Board Setup

If playing with fewer than 4 players, place the Temple Mount over the Temple area of the Main Board, with the correct side faceup for the player count. Use either side of 1 of the 2 Altar Cards (random or selected). Place the chosen side faceup on the space below the Altar. Return the other Altar Ca

RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook · p.32 · Solo Mode: Opponent Turns

In the Solo game, you will be competing against an opponent, aiming to score higher than them. Just as with the multiplayer game, you will alternate turns between you and your opponent throughout each Round. Your turns will function entirely the same. Your opponent will take their turns using their

RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook · p.28 · After Sabbath

In Rounds 1 and 2, the steps below must be carried out before beginning the next Round. In Round 3, move straight into end game scoring. Move the Prophets along the Altar Track to their positions for the next Round. In the example below, Zechariah would move to space 5, and Haggai to space 10. The p

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome

ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below

warm abstain

this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)

corpus profile

live,vps

answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)

gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70

timings

search 139 ms · ask 3055 ms · total 11055 ms

single-flight (PR-5)

queued 7860 ms · generation 3195 ms

retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read

[{"page": 11, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Players must play 1 Character Card from their hand to 1 of the 3 piles on their Player Board each turn. The following rules must be followed when playing Character Cards: Players must play a Character Card before taking their Main Action. Character Cards can be played to any 1 of the 3 piles. Each p", "headingPath": "Playing Character Cards · Banners · Gate Name & Trade · Sabbath Scoring and Name", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046394, "snippet": "To set up the main area of the game, follow these steps: Place the Main Board in the centre of the table. Place all 6 Gate Cards alongside the Main Board, with the sides showing an outline of a Worker, faceup. If playing with fewer than 4 players, carry out these additional steps: 1-2 Players: Turn ", "headingPath": "Main Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.044343, "snippet": "If playing with fewer than 4 players, place the Temple Mount over the Temple area of the Main Board, with the correct side faceup for the player count. Use either side of 1 of the 2 Altar Cards (random or selected). Place the chosen side faceup on the space below the Altar. Return the other Altar Ca", "headingPath": "Main Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 32, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "In the Solo game, you will be competing against an opponent, aiming to score higher than them. Just as with the multiplayer game, you will alternate turns between you and your opponent throughout each Round. Your turns will function entirely the same. Your opponent will take their turns using their ", "headingPath": "Solo Mode: Opponent Turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "In Rounds 1 and 2, the steps below must be carried out before beginning the next Round. In Round 3, move straight into end game scoring. Move the Prophets along the Altar Track to their positions for the next Round. In the example below, Zechariah would move to space 5, and Haggai to space 10. The p", "headingPath": "After Sabbath", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "To set up each player area, follow these steps: Give each player 1 Player Board, 1 Player Aid, and 1 random Development Tile of each type. Development Tiles are slotted into their designated spaces of Player Boards (undeveloped side faceup), as shown below. Give each player the following components ", "headingPath": "Player Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "When taking this Main Action, players may teach the Torah by placing 1 Scribe on a chosen Scroll Tile, move their Tent around the Map of the City, or do both (in either order). Teaching the Torah grants players new abilities for the rest of the game or bonus scoring for the end game. To teach the To", "headingPath": "Main Action: Torah and Tenting Around the City · Teaching the Torah", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029572, "snippet": "Ezra and Nehemiah is played over 3 Rounds. Each Round is structured around a week of 7 days: The first 6 days of each week are for work. On each of these days, all players will take a single turn, proceeding clockwise from the player holding the Shofar. The seventh day is a day of rest, known as the", "headingPath": "Gameplay Overview · Work Days", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}]

citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show

[]

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

no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 482 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true

base rulebook doc 482 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 recorded

Aug 25, 2026 16:12 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Playing Character Cards · Banners · Gate Name & Trade · Sabbath Scoring and Name	p.11	0.048652 (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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Main Board Setup	p.6	0.046394 (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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Main Board Setup	p.7	0.044343 (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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Solo Mode: Opponent Turns	p.32	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
#5	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	After Sabbath	p.28	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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Player Board Setup	p.8	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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Main Action: Torah and Tenting Around the City · Teaching the Torah	p.20	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
#8	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Gameplay Overview · Work Days	p.10	0.029572 (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

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 42 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Main Board Setup	p.6	#2	0.046394 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Solo Mode: Opponent Turns	p.32	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Playing Character Cards · Banners · Gate Name & Trade · Sabbath Scoring and Name	p.11	#1	0.048652 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Main Action: Rubble, Walls, and Gates · Clearing Rubble · Neutral Walls and Gates	p.17	#13	0.027497 (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))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Auxiliary Actions · Trade · Turn Over a Development Tile	p.22	#10	0.029274 (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))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Solo Mode: Setup	p.30	#9	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	After Sabbath	p.28	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Main Board Setup	p.7	#3	0.044343 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 139 ms · first delta 3058 ms · total 11055 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 7860 ms · retrieval 139 ms · ask 3055 ms · gateway work 3195 ms · total 11055 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3296
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 9
tok/sec: 136.4 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.066 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 28s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, checked 10s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
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.
BOILERPLATE, not reasoning: this is the answerer's fixed abstention phrase, the same sentence it emits whenever it declines. It records THAT the answerer declined and never why — no per-ruling reason was captured, because none was sent. Hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped

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 413), 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.