Ruling — Lords of Waterdeep

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Lords of Waterdeepbg-110327-en-1e

Setup

1. Lay out the game board.[1]

2. Each player chooses a color and takes a number of that color's Agents based on the number of players: 4 Agents for 2 players; 3 Agents for 3 players; 2 Agents for 4 or 5 players.[1][2]

3. Each player places 1 additional Agent of their color near the Round 5 space on the rounds track.[1][2]

4. Each player places their score marker on the '0' position of the scoring track.[1][2]

5. Place Adventurer cubes, Gold, the Building stack, Quest deck, and Intrigue deck in their appropriate spaces on the gameboard.[1]

6. Draw 3 Building tiles and place them face up in the 3 spaces in Builder's Hall.[1]

7. Each player takes a player mat.[1]

8. Deal 1 Lord card face down to each player.[1]

9. Deal 2 Quest cards face up to each player, then place 1 face-up Quest card in each of the 4 spaces of Cliffwatch Inn.[1]

10. Deal 2 Intrigue cards face down to each player; the remaining cards form the Intrigue deck, which is placed in the labeled space near Waterdeep Harbor.[3][1]

11. Place 3 VP tokens on each space of the rounds track.[1]

12. Determine the starting player (the player who most recently visited another city) and give them the First Player marker.[3][1]

13. Distribute starting Gold: the starting player gets 4 Gold, and each subsequent player to the left receives 1 more Gold than the player to their right until all players have received starting Gold.[3][1]

Sequence of Play

1. At the start of each round, remove the VP tokens from that round's space on the rounds track and add 1 VP token to each face-up Building in Builders' Hall.[1][4]

2. Resolve any start-of-round effects on Buildings in play.[1][4]

3. If it is the fifth round, each player adds their extra Agent from the Round 5 space to their pool.[1][4]

4. Players take turns, one at a time, starting with the player who has the First Player marker and proceeding to the left.[1][4]

5. During a turn, if a player has Agents available to assign, they may take one or both of the following actions:

* Assign Agent: Place 1 Agent from your pool on an unoccupied action space of a Building.[5][6] You cannot skip your turn if you have Agents available, and you cannot place an Agent on a space already containing an Agent.[5][6] When assigning to Builder's Hall, you may purchase a face-up Building by paying its Gold cost, immediately scoring any VP for it, and placing it on the board.[6]

* Complete Quest: After assigning or reassigning an Agent, you may complete one Quest by removing the required Adventurers and Gold from your Tavern and returning them to the supply.[5][7] You cannot complete more than one Quest per turn.[7]

6. After all Agents have been assigned in the round, players with an Agent in Waterdeep Harbor reassign that Agent to another action space (excluding Waterdeep Harbor) in order, starting with the space numbered '1'.[5][7]

7. When all Agents have been assigned, the round ends and all players' Agents return to their pools.[1]

8. The game ends after 8 rounds of play.[1][4][2]

Scoring and Winning

1. At the end of the eighth round, perform final scoring.[1]

2. Players count up VP and advance their scoring marker.[5]

3. The player with the most VP is the winner; in the event of a tie, the player with the most Gold wins.[5][2]

[1] RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook · p.13 · seTup · seQuenCe of play · Rules RefeRenCe · aCTions in a TuRn

[2] RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook · p.3 · Game ComponenTs · How To win · seTup · Game boaRd · aGenTs · sCoRe maRkeRs

[3] RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook · p.4 · inTRiGue CaRds · sTaRT play

[4] RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook · p.5 · sTaRT play · seQuenCe of play · sTaRT of Round · aCTions in a TuRn

[5] RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook · p.13 · 2. Complete Quest · final sCoRinG

[6] RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook · p.5 · assiGn aGenT · buildeR's Hall

[7] RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook · p.6 · waTeRdeep HaRboR · CompleTe QuesT

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 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 200 ms · ask 6310 ms · total 6516 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6516 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 13, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Lay out the game board. Each player chooses a color and takes a number of that color's Agents that depends on the number of players. | Number of Players | Agents per Player | | 2 | 4 | | 3 | 3 | | 4 | 2 | | 5 | 2 | Each player also places 1 more Agent of his or her color near the Round 5 space of th", "headingPath": "seTup · seQuenCe of play · Rules RefeRenCe · aCTions in a TuRn", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "8 The Lords of Waterdeep game is played in rounds . During each round, players take turns in which they assign their Agents to various tasks. The game ends after 8 rounds have passed. The player with the most VP at the end of the eighth round is the winner. The rounds track on the game board starts ", "headingPath": "sTaRT play · seQuenCe of play · sTaRT of Round · aCTions in a TuRn", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "4 The Lords of Waterdeep ™ game is played in eight rounds . The player with the most Victory Points at the end of the final round is the winner. Before you can start playing, you'll need to spend a bit of time setting up the game. The game board represents the various Wards of the city of Waterdeep.", "headingPath": "Game ComponenTs · How To win · seTup · Game boaRd · aGenTs · sCoRe maRkeRs", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.046176, "snippet": "If you have any Agents in your pool, you assign 1 of them. To assign an Agent, place it on any unoccupied action space of a Building, whether a basic Building or one that has been put into play. You cannot place an Agent on an action space that contains another Agent (yours or another player's) or o", "headingPath": "assiGn aGenT · buildeR's Hall", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046032, "snippet": "Intrigue cards let you secretly manipulate others to advance your ends. But be careful-your fellow Lords of Waterdeep are also skilled in intrigue! Shuffle the Intrigue cards and deal 2 cards face down to each player. Keep these cards hidden from your opponents. See 'Play Intrigue Card' on page 9 fo", "headingPath": "inTRiGue CaRds · sTaRT play", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.044337, "snippet": "Gold: You spend Gold to purchase Buildings, complete certain Quests, and pay for other game effects. Lieutenant: A special Agent that you add to your pool by completing the Recruit Lieutenant Quest. occupied/unoccupied: A space that has an Agent assigned to it is occupied. You cannot normally assign", "headingPath": "GlossaRy", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.043935, "snippet": "Assign Agent: Place 1 Agent from your pool on an unoccupied action space of a Building. You cannot skip your turn if you have Agents available to assign. If you have no Agents left to assign, you cannot take a turn. Play proceeds to the next player until all Agents have been assigned. Reassign Agent", "headingPath": "2. Complete Quest · final sCoRinG", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Each player takes a player mat that matches his or her Agents' color. This helps keep track of various game resources. Agent Pool: Here is where you keep Agents that you have not yet assigned (see 'Assign Agent' on page 8). At the end of the round, all of your assigned Agents return to your pool. Ta", "headingPath": "playeR maTs", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "seTup · seQuenCe of play · Rules RefeRenCe · aCTions in a TuRn", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game ComponenTs · How To win · seTup · Game boaRd · aGenTs · sCoRe maRkeRs", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "inTRiGue CaRds · sTaRT play", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "sTaRT play · seQuenCe of play · sTaRT of Round · aCTions in a TuRn", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. Complete Quest · final sCoRinG", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "assiGn aGenT · buildeR's Hall", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "waTeRdeep HaRboR · CompleTe QuesT", "sharpsignalDocId": 127}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 127 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 127 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 0.88459 of 2712 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 27, 2026 12:06 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 Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	seTup · seQuenCe of play · Rules RefeRenCe · aCTions in a TuRn	p.13	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 Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	sTaRT play · seQuenCe of play · sTaRT of Round · aCTions in a TuRn	p.5	0.048412 (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 Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	Game ComponenTs · How To win · seTup · Game boaRd · aGenTs · sCoRe maRkeRs	p.3	0.046898 (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 Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	assiGn aGenT · buildeR's Hall	p.5	0.046176 (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 Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	inTRiGue CaRds · sTaRT play	p.4	0.046032 (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 Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	GlossaRy	p.12	0.044337 (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 Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	2. Complete Quest · final sCoRinG	p.13	0.043935 (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 Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	playeR maTs	p.3	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

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 28 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 Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	inTRiGue CaRds · sTaRT play	p.4	#5	0.046032 (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 Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	seTup · seQuenCe of play · Rules RefeRenCe · aCTions in a TuRn	p.13	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	2. Complete Quest · final sCoRinG	p.13	#7	0.043935 (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 Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	playeR maTs	p.3	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	waTeRdeep HaRboR · CompleTe QuesT	p.6	#14	0.027212 (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 Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	sTaRT play · seQuenCe of play · sTaRT of Round · aCTions in a TuRn	p.5	#2	0.048412 (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 Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	assiGn aGenT · buildeR's Hall	p.5	#4	0.046176 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	Game ComponenTs · How To win · seTup · Game boaRd · aGenTs · sCoRe maRkeRs	p.3	#3	0.046898 (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 Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	seTup · seQuenCe of play · Rules RefeRenCe · aCTions in a TuRn	p.13	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	Game ComponenTs · How To win · seTup · Game boaRd · aGenTs · sCoRe maRkeRs	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	inTRiGue CaRds · sTaRT play	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	sTaRT play · seQuenCe of play · sTaRT of Round · aCTions in a TuRn	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	2. Complete Quest · final sCoRinG	p.13	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	assiGn aGenT · buildeR's Hall	p.5	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Lords of Waterdeep — Rulebook (corpus doc 127)	waTeRdeep HaRboR · CompleTe QuesT	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 200 ms · first delta 2144 ms · total 6516 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 200 ms · ask 6310 ms · gateway work 6516 ms · total 6516 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3004
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 875
tok/sec: 202.4 tok/sec — 875 output tokens in 4.323 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 40s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, 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: 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 49), 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.