Ruling — Medici

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Medicibg-46-en-1e

Setup

1. Place the board in the middle of the table.[1]

2. Each player chooses a trader and takes the corresponding ship mat, ship token, and five wooden player counters in that colour (in a two-player game, players also take smaller ship mats and place them alongside the longer ones to extend them).[1]

3. All players place one of their coloured counters on the bottom (eighth) level of each of the five commodity tracks, on the gold frame.[1]

4. Place the corresponding commodity counter face-up on each of the five red spaces on the crest at the centre of the board.[1]

5. Stack the two blue day counters on top of the blue symbol in the centre of the crest, with the marker with one time icon on top.[1]

6. All players place their ship token on the appropriate starting space of the money track (40 florins for 2-4 players; 30 florins for 5-6 players).[1]

7. Shuffle the complete deck of commodity cards, then draw the specified number to form a face-down deck H, setting the rest aside unseen.[2][1]

8. Place the player aid cards next to the board within easy reach of all players.[2][1]

9. Players choose a starting player for the first day at random; this player places the first player card in front of them.[2][1]

Gameplay

1. Play proceeds clockwise.[2][1]

2. On their turn, a player selects cards to make up lots of commodities to be auctioned by drawing the top card from the deck and placing it face-up.[3]

3. After the first card, the player may draw a second and third card in the same manner, but cannot draw more than three cards total.[3]

4. Once a player completes a lot (of 1, 2, or 3 cards), it is auctioned.[3]

5. Bidding starts with the player to the left of the player who selected the lot.[3]

6. Each player, in clockwise order, gets one opportunity to bid or pass, and any successive bids must exceed previous bids.[3]

7. The player who selected the lot is always the last to bid or pass.[3]

8. The highest bidder pays for the lot by moving their ship token down the money track the same number of spaces as their bid (bids cannot exceed the player's current florins).[3]

9. The winner takes the lot and places the cards face-up on their ship mat in the provided spaces (players cannot buy more cards than their ship can hold).[3][4]

10. If no one bids on a lot, the cards are discarded and placed with any other cards removed from play at the start of the day.[4]

11. After a lot is auctioned, the next player's turn begins, with the player holding the first player card passing it clockwise.[3]

12. The new first player selects a new lot, and the process continues.[3]

End of Day and Scoring

1. A day ends when all ships are full, or the deck of commodity cards is depleted and no more goods are available.[5]

2. To track the rounds, remove the top counter from the day counter stack at the end of day one; after day two, remove the second counter.[6]

3. At the end of each day, players earn money for the goods purchased.[7]

4. Players total the values of the commodity cards on their ships; the player with the most valuable cargo receives the highest payment, with further payments of decreasing value made to others based on the scoring table.[7]

5. Players advance their ship tokens along the money track by the amount they were paid.[7]

6. Players count the number of purchases made in each of the five commodities and move their coloured counters up on the corresponding commodity tracks by the number of cards of that type on their ship (gold 10 cards are not counted).[8]

7. Commodities are scored one at a time; the player in the highest position on each track is awarded 10 florins, and the player in the second highest position is awarded 5 florins (except in a two-player game where the second position receives 0).[8]

8. Players may receive bonuses of 5, 10, or 20 florins if they reach the top three levels of a commodity track.[8]

9. After all commodities are scored, the next day begins.[8]

10. At the start of days two and three, shuffle all 36 commodity cards and draw the correct number for the number of players to create a new deck.[6]

11. The player with the

[1] RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook · p.5 · Setting up the Game

[2] RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook · p.5 · Setting up the Game

[3] RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook · p.6 · Selecting Lots for Auction · Auctioning a Lot · Loading the Ships

[4] RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook · p.6 · Auction Rules

[5] RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook · p.3 · Inventory · The Aim

[6] RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook · p.10 · Preparing the Next Day · Use the player aid cards as a reminder of how many cards to draw at the start of each day. · End of the Game · Tactics

[7] RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook · p.8 · Scoring the Day · Example 1: Payments

[8] RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook · p.9 · Example 1: Payments · Example 2: Awards · Example 3: Bonuses

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 88 ms · ask 6383 ms · total 6472 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6472 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Shuffle the complete deck of commodity cards, then draw the specified number to form a face-down deck H, setting the rest aside unseen. Place the player aid cards I next to the board, within easy reach of all players. The players choose a starting player for the first day at random. This player plac", "headingPath": "Setting up the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "Place the board A in the middle of the table. On the board are five commodity tracks in the shape of triangles, one for each of the five commodities (cloth, spice, grain, dye and fur). Each player chooses a trader and takes the corresponding ship mat B , ship token and five wooden player counters in", "headingPath": "Setting up the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "Players take turns selecting cards to make up lots of commodities to be auctioned. On their turn, players must draw the top card from the deck and place it face-up so that all players can see it. After examining the first card, the player may draw a second and third in like manner, placing these car", "headingPath": "Selecting Lots for Auction · Auctioning a Lot · Loading the Ships", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045476, "snippet": "The following rules govern all auctions: When a lot is bought, it is loaded in its entirety onto the player's ship mat; it cannot be returned, traded, split or discarded. Players cannot buy more cards than their ships can hold: each player's ship mat has only five spaces that each hold one card (sev", "headingPath": "Auction Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "To track the rounds, remove the top counter from the day counter stack at the end of day one. After day two, the second counter is removed, revealing the three time icons representing the third and final day of the game printed on the board. At the start of days two and three, gather all 36 commodit", "headingPath": "Preparing the Next Day · Use the player aid cards as a reminder of how many cards to draw at the start of each day. · End of the Game · Tactics", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Use the player aid cards as a reminder of how to score florins at the end of each day. | Number of Players: | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | | 1st place | 20 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | | 2nd place | 0 | 15 | 20 | 20 | 20 | | 3rd place | - | 0 | 10 | 10 | 15 | | 4th place | - | - | 0 | 5 | 10 | | 5th place | - | - |", "headingPath": "Scoring the Day · Example 1: Payments", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Game Board (1) Medici is an auction game that takes place over three days (rounds). Players take on the role of seafaring traders, taking turns in presenting goods to be auctioned. Successful bidders will then load these goods onto their ships. Once all ships are full, or the deck of commodity cards", "headingPath": "Inventory · The Aim", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "G 4", "headingPath": "Setting up the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setting up the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setting up the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Selecting Lots for Auction · Auctioning a Lot · Loading the Ships", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Auction Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Inventory · The Aim", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Preparing the Next Day · Use the player aid cards as a reminder of how many cards to draw at the start of each day. · End of the Game · Tactics", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Scoring the Day · Example 1: Payments", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Example 1: Payments · Example 2: Awards · Example 3: Bonuses", "sharpsignalDocId": 688}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 688 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 688 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 0.91055 of 3376 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 26, 2026 07:05 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 Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Setting up the Game	p.5	0.048916 (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 Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Setting up the Game	p.5	0.048139 (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 Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Selecting Lots for Auction · Auctioning a Lot · Loading the Ships	p.6	0.047123 (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 Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Auction Rules	p.6	0.045476 (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 Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Preparing the Next Day · Use the player aid cards as a reminder of how many cards to draw at the start of each day. · End of the Game · Tactics	p.10	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
#6	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Scoring the Day · Example 1: Payments	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
#7	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Inventory · The Aim	p.3	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 Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Setting up the Game	p.4	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))	3

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 13 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 Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Setting up the Game	p.5	#1	0.048916 (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 Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Selecting Lots for Auction · Auctioning a Lot · Loading the Ships	p.6	#3	0.047123 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Inventory · The Aim	p.3	#7	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
#4	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Scoring the Day · Example 1: Payments	p.8	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Example 1: Payments · Example 2: Awards · Example 3: Bonuses	p.9	#9	0.014493 (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 Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Auction Rules	p.6	#4	0.045476 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Preparing the Next Day · Use the player aid cards as a reminder of how many cards to draw at the start of each day. · End of the Game · Tactics	p.10	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Setting up the Game	p.5	#2	0.048139 (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
[1]	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Setting up the Game	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Setting up the Game	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Selecting Lots for Auction · Auctioning a Lot · Loading the Ships	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Auction Rules	p.6	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Inventory · The Aim	p.3	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Preparing the Next Day · Use the player aid cards as a reminder of how many cards to draw at the start of each day. · End of the Game · Tactics	p.10	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Scoring the Day · Example 1: Payments	p.8	no quote on the wire
[8]	RULEBOOK Medici — Rulebook (corpus doc 688)	Example 1: Payments · Example 2: Awards · Example 3: Bonuses	p.9	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 88 ms · first delta 1333 ms · total 6472 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 88 ms · ask 6383 ms · gateway work 6472 ms · total 6472 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3405
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 201.8 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 5.074 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 13s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 3s 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 621), 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.