Ruling — Men-Nefer

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Men-Neferbg-404431-en-1e

Setup

1. Place the Main Board on the table with the side corresponding to the number of players: 2, 3, and 4 players on one side ( / / ) and 1 player on the other ( ). [1]

2. Place the Quarry next to the bottom left corner of the Main Board and place the Pyramid Pieces on it: Separate the Great Pyramid Pieces into 3 piles for Levels I, II, and III, shuffle each pile separately, and place them face-up in the Quarry marked with, each pile in its corresponding space, and the Pyramidion in its space (IIII). [1]

3. In 2 or 3 player games, place the top piece of the Level I pile in the Great Pyramid Space on the Main Board marked with [2A]. [1]

4. Separate the Queens' Pyramids Pieces into 3 piles for Levels I, II, and III, and place them in the Quarry marked with, each pile in its corresponding space, and the Pyramidions in their space (IIII). [1]

5. In 3 player games, place the Level I pieces in the 3 Pyramids [2B]. [1]

6. In 2 player games, also place the Level II pieces in the 3 Pyramids. [1]

7. Shuffle the Queens' Pyramids Tiles and randomly place one face-up Tile in each of the 3 spaces marked with next to those Pyramids; remove the remaining tiles from the game. [1]

8. Place the Narrator Token in space I of the Era Track. [1]

9. Shuffle the Mastaba Tiles and randomly place one face-up Tile in each of the 5 spaces marked with around the Necropolis; remove the remaining tiles from the game. [1]

10. Shuffle the Deities and randomly place one face-up on the Temple Altar; remove the remaining Deities from the game. [1]

11. Shuffle the Crafts inside their Bag, draw 4 at random, and place them face-up, from left to right, in the 4 spaces of the Craft Market. [1]

12. Shuffle the Papyri inside their $Bag$, draw 4 at random, and place them face-up, from left to right, in the 4 spaces of the Papyrus Market. [1]

13. Shuffle the 6 City Benefit Tokens and randomly place one face-up Token in each of the 6 spaces marked with in each City along the Nile River. [1]

14. Separate the Trade Contracts into 3 piles based on the value on their back (1, 2, and 3), shuffle each pile face-down separately, and place them next to the Main Board. [1]

15. Take a Personal Board at random. [2]

16. Choose a colour and place: An Apprentice on each of the spaces marked with on your Board;[2] the 4 Sphinxes in the Sphinx Reserve on your Board;[2] the 4 Mummies/Sarcophagi, with the Mummy side showing, in the Mummy Reserve on your Board;[2] the 3 Permissions of Khufu in the Permissions Reserve on your Board;[2] a Basket on each of the 9 spaces that form the Pyramidal Area on your Board;[2] the Hieroglyph Counter on the starting space of the Hieroglyph Track on your Board;[2] and the Ankh on space 2 of the Heka Track on your Board.[2]

17. Place the Heart and Feather on their respective starting spaces on the Duat Meter on the Main Board. [2]

Gameplay

Phases and Turn Order

A game takes place over 3 Eras, each divided into three seasons: Flood (Akhet), Sowing (Peret), and Harvest (Shemu).[3] In Era I, skip the Flood Phase and start directly in the Sowing Phase.[3]

During the Sowing Phase, rearrange each player's Water Lily on the Turn Order Track according to their Prestige Points (PP): the player with the least PP is placed in the first position, the second least PP in the second position, and so on (ties remain as they are).[4]

The Sowing Phase is played in turns, starting with the starting player.[4] A turn consists of choosing one of three options:

1. Visit a House of Life [4]

2. Specialise in a House of Life [4]

3. Obtain an Action Tablet [4]

Players continue taking turns until no player can carry out any of the three options, at which point the Sowing Phase ends.[4] You can only choose each option 3 times, resulting in 9 turns per Era and 27 turns in the total game

[1] RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook · p.5 · VIDEOTUTORIAL

[2] RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook · p.5 · PLAYERS AND ACTION TABLETS

[3] RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook · p.8 · PRESTIGE POINTS · HOW TO PLAY · PHASE 1. FLOOD (AKHET) · Narrator · Resources

[4] RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook · p.9 · Turn Order · PHASE 2. SOWING (PERET)

Question closed. Friendships intact.

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 79 ms · ask 7393 ms · total 10221 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 2747 ms · generation 7474 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 9, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "Rearrange each player's Water Lily on the Turn Order Track according to their PP: the player with the least PP is placed in the first position; the player with the second least PP is placed in the second position; and so on. In case of a tie in PP , the positions remain as they are. This phase is pl", "headingPath": "Turn Order · PHASE 2. SOWING (PERET)", "sharpsignalDocId": 528}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "To carry out this option, you need to have at least one empty space for Tablets on your Board. Follow these steps in order: Choose one of the 5 available Tablets on the Main Board. Note: You cannot choose the top T ablet from the pile placed on , remember that this is the Draw Pile. Spend/obtain the", "headingPath": "Obtain an Action Tablet", "sharpsignalDocId": 528}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "To carry out this option, you need to have at least one Apprentice on your Board. Follow these steps in order: Choose an Apprentice from your Board and their associated Action Tablet. Place that Apprentice in a House of Life on the Main Board, on the Sun side. If there are already other Apprentices ", "headingPath": "Visit a House of Life", "sharpsignalDocId": 528}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "22 A Scarab on the starting space of each of the 5 Specialisation T racks on the Main Board. 23 The Orb on the starting space at the base of the Obelisk on the Main Board. 24 The 4 Priestesses in front of the Temple entrance on the Main Board. 25 The 4 Boats on the starting section of the Nile River", "headingPath": "PLAYERS AND ACTION TABLETS", "sharpsignalDocId": 528}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "This section explains the actions in the game, most of which are found on the Specialisation T racks associated with the Houses of Life. The Action Tablets, Crafts, and the Main Board itself contain these same actions in various combinations and with some variations, which are also explained here. W", "headingPath": "ACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 528}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "1 Place the Main Board on the table with the side corresponding to the number of players: 2, 3, and 4 players on one side ( / / ) and 1 player on the other ( ). 2 Place the Quarry next to the bottom left corner of the Main Board and place the Pyramid Pieces on it: Separate the Great Pyramid Pieces i", "headingPath": "VIDEOTUTORIAL", "sharpsignalDocId": 528}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030118, "snippet": "2A GAME SETUP Example of Setup for 3 players 2B If, despite all the care taken in the manufacture of this game, any component is missing or damaged, please contact our customer service by sending an email to repuestos@ludonova.com where we will be happy to assist you. Scan this code if you prefer to", "headingPath": "Solo Mode · MAIN BOARD · SUPPORT · VIDEOTUTORIAL", "sharpsignalDocId": 528}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "13 Take a Personal Board at random (the only difference between Boards is the sequence of hieroglyphs). Choose a colour and place: 14 An Apprentice on each of the spaces marked with on your Board. 15 The 4 Sphinxes in the Sphinx Reserve on your Board. 16 The 4 Mummies/Sarcophagi, with the Mummy side", "headingPath": "PLAYERS AND ACTION TABLETS", "sharpsignalDocId": 528}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "VIDEOTUTORIAL", "sharpsignalDocId": 528}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYERS AND ACTION TABLETS", "sharpsignalDocId": 528}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PRESTIGE POINTS · HOW TO PLAY · PHASE 1. FLOOD (AKHET) · Narrator · Resources", "sharpsignalDocId": 528}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Turn Order · PHASE 2. SOWING (PERET)", "sharpsignalDocId": 528}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 528 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 528 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)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.90194 of 3100 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 26, 2026 03:58 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 Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	Turn Order · PHASE 2. SOWING (PERET)	p.9	0.047379 (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 Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	Obtain an Action Tablet	p.10	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
#3	RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	Visit a House of Life	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
#4	RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	PLAYERS AND ACTION TABLETS	p.6	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
#5	RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	ACTIONS	p.10	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 Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	VIDEOTUTORIAL	p.5	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 Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	Solo Mode · MAIN BOARD · SUPPORT · VIDEOTUTORIAL	p.4	0.030118 (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 Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	PLAYERS AND ACTION TABLETS	p.5	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

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 37 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 Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	Turn Order · PHASE 2. SOWING (PERET)	p.9	#1	0.047379 (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 Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	VIDEOTUTORIAL	p.5	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	Visit a House of Life	p.9	#3	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	PLAYERS AND ACTION TABLETS	p.5	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	Obtain a Craft · Advance Priestesses	p.14	#20	0.012821 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	THE BOATS · CRAFTS AND OFFERINGS · THE PRIESTESSES	p.7	#13	0.026254 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	Make an Offering · THE NILE RIVER	p.15	#11	0.028373 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	PRESTIGE POINTS · HOW TO PLAY · PHASE 1. FLOOD (AKHET) · Narrator · Resources	p.8	#9	0.029551 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	VIDEOTUTORIAL	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	PLAYERS AND ACTION TABLETS	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	PRESTIGE POINTS · HOW TO PLAY · PHASE 1. FLOOD (AKHET) · Narrator · Resources	p.8	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Men-Nefer — Rulebook (corpus doc 528)	Turn Order · PHASE 2. SOWING (PERET)	p.9	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 79 ms · first delta 2238 ms · total 10221 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 2747 ms · retrieval 79 ms · ask 7393 ms · gateway work 7474 ms · total 10221 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3650
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 198.0 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 5.171 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 0s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 9s 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: 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 459), 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.