Ruling — The Castles of Burgundy

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Castles of Burgundybg-84876-en-1e

Depending on the game mode, the setup is as follows:

Standard Setup

1. Place the 24 silver coins, 26 worker chips, 164 face-down hex tiles (sorted by color), and the white die next to the game board.[1]

2. Divide the 164 hex tiles by the color of their backs and place them in face-down piles next to the game board.[1]

3. Shuffle the 42 goods tiles face down and divide them into 5 face-down stacks of 5 tiles each.[1]

4. Place one stack each on the 5 phase spaces lettered A through E on the game board.[1]

5. Set aside the remaining 17 goods tiles in a face-down pile.[1]

6. Place the 12 bonus tiles on their corresponding spaces on the game board.[1]

7. Each player chooses a color and takes a Number 1 or Number 2 player board.[1]

8. Place 1 castle (dark green hex tile) on the dark green number 6 center hex space of your player board.[1]

9. Take 3 random goods tiles from the 17 remaining tiles and place them face up on the goods storage spaces in the bottom right of your player board, stacking same-color tiles.[1]

10. Place 1 overview board adjacent to the bottom edge of your player board.[1]

11. Take 2 dice in your chosen color.[1]

12. Take 2 playing pieces and place one on the start space (0/100) of the victory point track on the game board.[1]

13. Place 1 silver coin on the corresponding space in the top right of your player board.[1]

14. Place 1 victory point tile (double-sided, 100/200) next to your player board.[1]

Solo Game Setup

1. Follow the standard setup, but there is no restriction for the number of different types (colors) of goods you can collect.[2]

2. In addition to the dice and playing pieces in your color, you get the white die.[2]

3. Place one playing piece on the start space (0/100) of the victory point track as a "victory point counter" and the other as a "target victory point marker" on space 50 of the victory point track.[2]

2-Player Game Setup

1. Follow the standard setup, but use the backside of the board (with 12 + 4 hex tiles each phase).[2]

Team Game Setup

1. Form teams of 2 players, seated next to each other.[3]

2. Each team receives a team board consisting of 2 board halves (12a1 + 12a2).[3]

3. Each team receives a castle, placed on the central dark green 1 hex space.[3]

4. Each team receives 3 random goods tiles, placed on the corresponding team storage spaces (stacking same colors).[3]

5. Place 3 worker chips (for team A) and 5 worker chips (for team B), plus 2 silver coins per team, next to the team board.[3]

6. Each player receives 2 dice, 2 playing pieces (victory points and turn order track), and the victory point tile in their color.[3]

7. For round 1, place the turn order track playing pieces in the order: A1, B1, A2, B2.[3]

2, 3, or 4 Player Setup (with Shields)

1. Shuffle 18 shields face down.[4]

2. Randomly place shields on the goods spaces of the six depots based on player count:

* 2 players: 1 shield per depot.[4]

* 3 players: 1 shield each in depots 1, 3, and 5; 2 shields each in depots 2, 4, and 6.[4]

* 4 players: 2 shields per depot.[4]

3. Turn the shields face up once placed.[4]

4. Any remaining shields should be put back into the game box.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook · p.2 · Game setup · Place the 24 silver coins and 26 worker chips as well as the white die next to the game board. · Each player chooses a color and takes:

[2] RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook · p.14 · GAME SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook · p.13 · the team Game · GAME SETUP · Each team receives: · PLAYING THE GAME · Notes: · FINAL SCORING

[4] RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook · p.15 · The shields · GAME SETUP · 2 players: · PLAYING THE GAME

Now you know — make it count.

🔧 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 84 ms · ask 6862 ms · total 6949 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6949 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 14, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "All rules of the base game apply, except for the following exceptions and additions: You start the game with 1 silver coin, 2 workers and 3 random goods tiles (place them next to your player board). Take a castle tile and place it on any dark green castle space in your duchy (side 13A is for beginni", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "(Before playing for the first time, carefully remove all tiles from the punch-out boards.) The back side shows the game board for the 2- and 3-player game. The only difference is the number of hex tiles per depot, including the black depot. See page 11 for more details. Divide the 164 hex tiles by t", "headingPath": "Game setup · Place the 24 silver coins and 26 worker chips as well as the white die next to the game board. · Each player chooses a color and takes:", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "All rules of the base game apply, except for the following exceptions and additions: Shuffle the 18 shields face down. Randomly place them on the goods spaces of the six depots on the game board based on the number of players (below). Once placed turn them face up. 1 shield per depot 3 players: 1 sh", "headingPath": "The shields · GAME SETUP · 2 players: · PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "Form teams of 2 players, seated next to each other (if possible). All rules of the base game apply, except for the following changes: The section that starts with \"each player receives\" in the base game rules is changed to: -a team board consisting of 2 board halves (12a1 + 12a2) (After you have gai", "headingPath": "the team Game · GAME SETUP · Each team receives: · PLAYING THE GAME · Notes: · FINAL SCORING", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "... we suggest the following change to the game setup: After all other preparations have been made and the player order has been determined, each player receives a random duchy. Each player chooses a side (front or back) and on which dark green hex space they place their starting castle. Players sho", "headingPath": "IF YOU ARE ALREADY VERY FAMILIAR WITH THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Instead, choose a hex tile from the black depot and place it directly on your duchy, following the base game placement rules, and apply its effects. If placing that hex tile completes another color, you may take an additional hex tile from the black depot (if available) and place it in your duchy, e", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "You are playing 25 rounds. At the beginning of each round, throw all 3 dice: First, take the topmost goods tile and place it on the depot indicated by the white die . Then remove a hex tile from that depot from the game, starting from top to bottom (depots 2, 3, 5, and 6) or left to right (depots 1 ", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "1. Player grabs all goods tiles from a depot of their choice and places them in their goods storage Important: You can choose any depot! You don't have to choose the one that matches the result of the die you used to place the ship. Players may store up to three different types (colors) of goods on ", "headingPath": "Ships (blue):", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game setup · Place the 24 silver coins and 26 worker chips as well as the white die next to the game board. · Each player chooses a color and takes:", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "the team Game · GAME SETUP · Each team receives: · PLAYING THE GAME · Notes: · FINAL SCORING", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The shields · GAME SETUP · 2 players: · PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 154}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 154 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 154 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 0.85504 of 2580 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 27, 2026 14:32 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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	GAME SETUP	p.14	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	Game setup · Place the 24 silver coins and 26 worker chips as well as the white die next to the game board. · Each player chooses a color and takes:	p.2	0.048387 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	The shields · GAME SETUP · 2 players: · PLAYING THE GAME	p.15	0.047619 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	the team Game · GAME SETUP · Each team receives: · PLAYING THE GAME · Notes: · FINAL SCORING	p.13	0.045928 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	IF YOU ARE ALREADY VERY FAMILIAR WITH THE GAME	p.16	0.044796 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	PLAYING THE GAME	p.14	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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	PLAYING THE GAME	p.14	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
#8	RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	Ships (blue):	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 29 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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	GAME SETUP	p.14	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	IF YOU ARE ALREADY VERY FAMILIAR WITH THE GAME	p.16	#5	0.044796 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	the team Game · GAME SETUP · Each team receives: · PLAYING THE GAME · Notes: · FINAL SCORING	p.13	#4	0.045928 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	PLAYING THE GAME	p.14	#6	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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	THE FIVE GAME ROUNDS · A PLAYER'S TURN · the fIve rounds · THE GAME ACTIONS	p.4	#9	0.029236 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	PLAYING THE GAME	p.14	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	The shields · GAME SETUP · 2 players: · PLAYING THE GAME	p.15	#3	0.047619 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	Game setup · Place the 24 silver coins and 26 worker chips as well as the white die next to the game board. · Each player chooses a color and takes:	p.2	#2	0.048387 (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 The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	Game setup · Place the 24 silver coins and 26 worker chips as well as the white die next to the game board. · Each player chooses a color and takes:	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	GAME SETUP	p.14	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	the team Game · GAME SETUP · Each team receives: · PLAYING THE GAME · Notes: · FINAL SCORING	p.13	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Castles of Burgundy — Rulebook (corpus doc 154)	The shields · GAME SETUP · 2 players: · PLAYING THE GAME	p.15	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 84 ms · first delta 2318 ms · total 6949 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 84 ms · ask 6862 ms · gateway work 6949 ms · total 6949 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3466
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 925
tok/sec: 201.9 tok/sec — 925 output tokens in 4.581 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 53s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, checked 4s 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: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 76), 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.