You asked
How do I play?
Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstainAsked with: Québecbg-91984-en-1e
I looked through Québec's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.
The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.
Some adjustments are needed to play with 2 players. Although the rules are quite similar, the experience is different from the 3 to 5-player game. You can play with both the Family or the Complete rules. We recommend that you play your first couple of games with 3 to 5 players. Add the following ste
This will often be the first action you take in the game. Buildings completed with your architect give you VPs at the end of the game (see Final scoring , page 7). This action is also the best way to activate workers. At first, your architect is not in play. To put it in play, you must do the follow
On his turn, the active player must choose one of the four available actions. Players cannot pass on their turn. Start a new building Contribute to a building Put a worker in a zone of power Take a Leader card Important: If a player already has a leader and does not have any active workers, he will
Follow these steps and rules when playing with 3 to 5 players. The setup to your right is for 4 players. The adjustments required for 2 players are on pages 10 and 11. Place the board in the middle of the table. For your first game, use the setup illustrated on these pages. Randomly place the 44 Bui
Québec presents very original game mechanics. Each and every action has numerous repercussions, the full extent of which you may only grasp after a few games. If this is one of your firststrategy games, or if you are looking for a simpler experience, use the Family rules ; in this case ignore the bl
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
- outcome
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- warm abstain
-
- this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)
- corpus profile
- live,vps
- answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
- gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
- timings
- search 200 ms · ask 2578 ms · total 2780 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 2780 ms
- retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
- [{"page": 6, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Some adjustments are needed to play with 2 players. Although the rules are quite similar, the experience is different from the 3 to 5-player game. You can play with both the Family or the Complete rules. We recommend that you play your first couple of games with 3 to 5 players. Add the following ste", "headingPath": "The 2-player game · Game setup · Playing the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 208}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "This will often be the first action you take in the game. Buildings completed with your architect give you VPs at the end of the game (see Final scoring , page 7). This action is also the best way to activate workers. At first, your architect is not in play. To put it in play, you must do the follow", "headingPath": "1. Start a new building", "sharpsignalDocId": 208}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046486, "snippet": "On his turn, the active player must choose one of the four available actions. Players cannot pass on their turn. Start a new building Contribute to a building Put a worker in a zone of power Take a Leader card Important: If a player already has a leader and does not have any active workers, he will ", "headingPath": "Playing the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 208}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045635, "snippet": "Follow these steps and rules when playing with 3 to 5 players. The setup to your right is for 4 players. The adjustments required for 2 players are on pages 10 and 11. Place the board in the middle of the table. For your first game, use the setup illustrated on these pages. Randomly place the 44 Bui", "headingPath": "Game setup · Zones of power and VPs · Number of workers per player:", "sharpsignalDocId": 208}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.044854, "snippet": "Québec presents very original game mechanics. Each and every action has numerous repercussions, the full extent of which you may only grasp after a few games. If this is one of your firststrategy games, or if you are looking for a simpler experience, use the Family rules ; in this case ignore the bl", "headingPath": "Family and Complete Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 208}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Remove the blue disc from the tile and place it with the others, next to the board. Activate 3 workers. During step 5, if no more sites are available for your architect this century, proceed immediately with the end of a century . Complete your turn (steps 5 and 6) after the scoring round. a. b. Ali", "headingPath": "1. Start a new building", "sharpsignalDocId": 208}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030118, "snippet": "A century immediately ends when one of these two conditions is met: A player does not have any workers in front of him (active or passive) at the beginning of his turn. When a player does the Start a new building action and there are no more available buildings for the current century . At the end o", "headingPath": "End of a century", "sharpsignalDocId": 208}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Place 1 to 3 active workers on ONE space of the activated building (where there is an architect) of your choice. This is the primary action of the game. You must always place as many workers as the building requires (from 1 to 3, indicated in a gray circle in the district). Y ou may never put more o", "headingPath": "2. Contribute to a building · Additional actions · 3. Put a worker in a zone of power", "sharpsignalDocId": 208}]
- citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
- []
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 208 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 208 boosted
- answered-before recall
-
no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
- debug row recorded
- Aug 27, 2026 17:40 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 Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | The 2-player game · Game setup · Playing the game | p.6 | 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 Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | 1. Start a new building | p.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)) | 300 |
| #3 | RULEBOOK Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | Playing the game | p.3 | 0.046486 (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 Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | Game setup · Zones of power and VPs · Number of workers per player: | p.2 | 0.045635 (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 Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | Family and Complete Rules | p.1 | 0.044854 (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 Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | 1. Start a new building | 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 |
| #7 | RULEBOOK Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | End of a century | p.3 | 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 Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | 2. Contribute to a building · Additional actions · 3. Put a worker in a zone of power | p.3 | 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 24 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 Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | The 2-player game · Game setup · Playing the game | p.6 | #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 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | 1. Start a new building | p.3 | #2 | 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 Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | How does the neutral architect work? · Exception · Alternate leaders for the 2-player game | p.6 | #15 | 0.027273 (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 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | Family and Complete Rules | p.1 | #5 | 0.044854 (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 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | 4. Take a Leader card | p.3 | #17 | 0.014085 (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 Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | Additional actions - Economy (yellow) | p.5 | #13 | 0.028039 (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 Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | Game setup · Zones of power and VPs · Number of workers per player: | p.2 | #4 | 0.045635 (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 Québec — Rulebook (corpus doc 208) | Playing the game | p.3 | #3 | 0.046486 (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
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.
| # | document | heading | page | quote chars |
|---|
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 200 ms · first delta 2658 ms · total 2780 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 2578 ms · gateway work 2780 ms · total 2780 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 3363
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 9
- tok/sec
- 132.4 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.068 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 45s ago)
- answerer host (measured by rulesage)
- reachable (for 23h, checked 6s 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
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- abstain rationale
-
I don't have enough information.
BOILERPLATE, not reasoning: this is the answerer's fixed abstention phrase, the same sentence it emits whenever it declines. It records THAT the answerer declined and never why — no per-ruling reason was captured, because none was sent. Hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped
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 133), 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.