Ruling — Die Macher

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Die Macherbg-1-en-1e

A game of Die Macher is played over four game rounds.[1] In each of these game rounds, players run through three segments consisting of a total of nine phases.[1] The sequence of phases is:

1. Determine the Start Player [1]

2. Changes to the Party Programs [1]

3. Secure Media Influence [1]

4. Organize Party Rallies [1]

5. Send Shadow Cabinet [1]

The specific details for the phases are as follows:

1. Determine the Start Player

* After players mark their bids, they reveal them simultaneously.[2]

* The player with the highest bid pays the amount to the bank and becomes the start player.[2]

* In the event of a tie, players determine the start player by bidding once again openly.[2]

2. Changes to the Party Programs

* Beginning with the start player and continuing clockwise, each player may either:

* Take one party program card from the draw stack and one face-up card from the display into their hand.[2]

* Discard all cards from the display to the discard stack, draw new cards from the draw stack, and place them face up in the display, then take one face-up card from those into their hand.[2]

* Afterwards, players may swap up to two party programs in front of them with their hand.[2]

* Players must then discard cards from their hand until they have only one card left.[2]

* After each player's turn, any empty spot on the display is refilled with one party program from the top of the draw stack.[2]

3. Secure Media Influence

* Beginning with the start player and continuing clockwise, each player may buy one media marker at a time by paying 5,000 Euro to the bank and placing it on an empty media spot of a federal state.[3]

* A player may choose to pass instead of buying a marker.[3]

* If a player's turn comes again because others bought markers, they may choose to buy another or pass.[3]

* This phase ends once each player has passed subsequently.[3]

4. Organize Party Rallies

(Note: The provided sources do not contain the specific steps for the "Organize Party Rallies" phase.)

5. Send Shadow Cabinet

* Beginning with the start player and continuing clockwise, each player may place up to one politician card face down next to each federal state, aligned in a row.[4]

* There are no initial costs for placing politicians, though there are costs for carrying out their actions in the next phase.[4]

* Each player has five single-use politicians available over the course of a game.[4]

* In the next phase, starting with the federal state holding an election and continuing clockwise:

* Players reveal all politicians placed next to that federal state.[4]

* Players pay the costs of their politician to the bank; if a player cannot or chooses not to pay, the politician is removed from the game without its action being carried out.[4]

* Players carry out the actions of their politicians in the order they were placed.[4]

* A player may carry out the main action shown on the top of the politician and any one of the secondary actions listed below, provided that certain marked actions are only carried out once among all players in a given federal state.[4]

* All politicians placed next to a federal state are removed from the game at the end of this phase.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Die Macher — Rulebook · p.7 · EXAMPLE FOR 4 PLAYERS · 05 SEQUENCE OF PLAY AND GAME PLAY · PREPARATIONS: · DEPLOYMENT:

[2] RULEBOOK Die Macher — Rulebook · p.8 · PREPARATIONS · 2 CHANGES TO THE PARTY PROGRAMS

[3] RULEBOOK Die Macher — Rulebook · p.9 · 3 SECURE MEDIA INFLUENCE

[4] RULEBOOK Die Macher — Rulebook · p.10 · 5 SEND SHADOW CABINET · 6 ACTIONS OF THE SHADOW CABINET

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 204 ms · ask 5884 ms · total 6090 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6090 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 7, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "I One player places the four double markers at their designated spots on the marker board . Afterwards, they shuffle the party markers and place the stack, face up, on the start player spot of the board . The top marker is the preliminary start player . J Each player takes a sheet of the scoring pad", "headingPath": "EXAMPLE FOR 4 PLAYERS · 05 SEQUENCE OF PLAY AND GAME PLAY · PREPARATIONS: · DEPLOYMENT:", "sharpsignalDocId": 584}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "The poll board holds the draw and discard stacks of the poll cards The marker board A holds the double markers B that are used to mark key popular opinions and the stack of party markers C that are used to show the start player of a round (the start player spot) . The ballot box markers D mark the f", "headingPath": "The Poll Board and the Poll Cards · The Marker Board, the Double Markers, the Party Markers, and the Ballot Box Markers · The Shadow Cabinet Politician Cards and the Donation Cards · The Playing Money and the Scoring Pad · The Wooden Components · The Player Aids", "sharpsignalDocId": 584}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045285, "snippet": "5 EXAMPLE FOR 4 PLAYERS H H J J G G D D E F I B B B H J G B D D B B C C D J H G 04 SETUP A The players sort the components and, if not playing a seven election game return these items back into the game box: • 1 ballot box marker 1 ; • per player the three shadow cabinet politician cards without ico", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 584}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "B The players put together the four federal state boards to form one game board . In addition, they place the five other boards and the money (sorted by denomination) next to the game board . C One player sorts the federal state cards into 'large' and 'small' (marked with a states and shuffles both ", "headingPath": "EXAMPLE FOR 4 PLAYERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 584}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Note: Das The fifth box is only used in a game of seven elections . After each player has marked their bid, they reveal it simultaneously . The player with the highest bid pays the amount to the bank and becomes start player . As a reminder they place their party marker on top of the party marker st", "headingPath": "PREPARATIONS · 2 CHANGES TO THE PARTY PROGRAMS", "sharpsignalDocId": 584}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "6 Actions of the Shadow Cabinet 7 Media Influence 8 Auctioning off of Polls 9 Evaluation of Votes & Federal State Election Phase 9 Evaluation of Votes & Federal State Election lasts longest . Here the players implement the following steps together: a Relocate Votes b Determine Effects of the Federal", "headingPath": "CHANGES: · PREPARATIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 584}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The players send politicians of their shadow cabinet to the federal states to influence the outcome of the election in favor of their party. Beginning with the start player and continuing in a clockwise direction, each player may place shadow cabinet politician cards (in short: politicians ) next to", "headingPath": "5 SEND SHADOW CABINET · 6 ACTIONS OF THE SHADOW CABINET", "sharpsignalDocId": 584}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The players receive more state money and donations to further finance their political work. Beginning with the start player and continuing in a clockwise direction, each player takes the following amount of money from the bank: Federal state election: The player takes 1,000 Euro for each victory poi", "headingPath": "c Pay money ( not in the 4 th Game Round!) · d Prepare for the next Game Round (not in the 4th Game Round!)", "sharpsignalDocId": 584}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "EXAMPLE FOR 4 PLAYERS · 05 SEQUENCE OF PLAY AND GAME PLAY · PREPARATIONS: · DEPLOYMENT:", "sharpsignalDocId": 584}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PREPARATIONS · 2 CHANGES TO THE PARTY PROGRAMS", "sharpsignalDocId": 584}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3 SECURE MEDIA INFLUENCE", "sharpsignalDocId": 584}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5 SEND SHADOW CABINET · 6 ACTIONS OF THE SHADOW CABINET", "sharpsignalDocId": 584}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 584 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 584 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 0.92316 of 2642 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 26, 2026 15:39 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 Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	EXAMPLE FOR 4 PLAYERS · 05 SEQUENCE OF PLAY AND GAME PLAY · PREPARATIONS: · DEPLOYMENT:	p.7	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 Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	The Poll Board and the Poll Cards · The Marker Board, the Double Markers, the Party Markers, and the Ballot Box Markers · The Shadow Cabinet Politician Cards and the Donation Cards · The Playing Money and the Scoring Pad · The Wooden Components · The Player Aids	p.4	0.047643 (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 Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)		p.5	0.045285 (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 Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	EXAMPLE FOR 4 PLAYERS	p.6	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
#5	RULEBOOK Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	PREPARATIONS · 2 CHANGES TO THE PARTY PROGRAMS	p.8	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 Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	CHANGES: · PREPARATIONS	p.7	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 Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	5 SEND SHADOW CABINET · 6 ACTIONS OF THE SHADOW CABINET	p.10	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 Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	c Pay money ( not in the 4 th Game Round!) · d Prepare for the next Game Round (not in the 4th Game Round!)	p.14	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 34 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 Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	EXAMPLE FOR 4 PLAYERS · 05 SEQUENCE OF PLAY AND GAME PLAY · PREPARATIONS: · DEPLOYMENT:	p.7	#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 Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	5 SEND SHADOW CABINET · 6 ACTIONS OF THE SHADOW CABINET	p.10	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)		p.5	#3	0.045285 (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 Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	Five Game Rounds yet Seven Elections · Modifications to the 'Pay Money' phase	p.15	#9	0.029437 (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 Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	PREPARATIONS · 2 CHANGES TO THE PARTY PROGRAMS	p.8	#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
#6	RULEBOOK Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	c Pay money ( not in the 4 th Game Round!) · d Prepare for the next Game Round (not in the 4th Game Round!)	p.14	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	3 SECURE MEDIA INFLUENCE	p.9	#17	0.013158 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	EXAMPLE FOR 4 PLAYERS	p.6	#4	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	EXAMPLE FOR 4 PLAYERS · 05 SEQUENCE OF PLAY AND GAME PLAY · PREPARATIONS: · DEPLOYMENT:	p.7	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	PREPARATIONS · 2 CHANGES TO THE PARTY PROGRAMS	p.8	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	3 SECURE MEDIA INFLUENCE	p.9	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Die Macher — Rulebook (corpus doc 584)	5 SEND SHADOW CABINET · 6 ACTIONS OF THE SHADOW CABINET	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 204 ms · first delta 2183 ms · total 6090 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 204 ms · ask 5884 ms · gateway work 6090 ms · total 6090 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4017
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 752
tok/sec: 198.3 tok/sec — 752 output tokens in 3.793 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 48s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 24h, checked 0s 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 517), 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.