Ruling — El Grande

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: El Grandebg-93-en-1e

The game plays over 9 rounds.[1] Each round consists of the following phases in this order:

1. Reveal Action cards: Reveal the top card of each of the 5 Action card stacks.[1] One of these 5 actions will be taken by each player in Phase 3.[1] The fifth stack only has 1 card.[1]

2. Play Power cards: The player with the First Player marker begins and plays any Power card from their hand face up.[1] Then, in clockwise order, the other players also play one of their Power cards face up in front of them.[1] A Power card must have a different value from all the Power cards that have already been played this round.[1] The Power cards determine turn order and the number of Caballeros taken to your Court.[1]

3. Take a turn: Players take turns in order from the highest Power card played to the lowest.[1] On your turn, perform the following steps:

* Take Caballeros to the Court: Take as many Caballeros from the general supply (the Province) as are shown on your played Power card and put them in your personal supply (your Court).[2] You may take fewer than indicated, but if you play a 12 or 13, you cannot take new Caballeros.[2] If there are not enough Caballeros in the Province, you may take them from regions on the map.[2]

* Use an Action card: Choose one of the revealed Action cards from one of the 5 stacks.[2] Take the card and perform both actions on it in either order (you must fully complete one action before performing the other).[2] This includes:

* Place Caballeros: You may place as many of your own Caballeros from your Court on the game board as are shown on the bottom of your Action card.[2] You may only place them in neighbor regions of the King's region, and you may never place them directly in the King's region.[2] You may distribute them as you wish or throw some or all of them into the Castillo.[2]

* Special action: Perform the special action indicated on the card.[2]

4. End of the Round:

* The player who played the lowest Power card in the round takes the First Player marker.[3]

* Put the played Power card face down on the discard pile.[3]

* Move the Round marker 1 space down.[3]

* If the marker lands on a spot with the next digit, a new round begins.[3]

* If the marker lands on a space with a lily, general scoring takes place.[3]

* Turn over a card from each Action card stack (including the King's card).[3]

5. General scoring (occurs after the 3rd, 6th, and 9th rounds):

* Set your Secret disc: Simultaneously, everyone decides where they want to move Caballeros from the Castillo by moving the arrow on the Secret disc to a region and placing it face down.[3] You cannot split these Caballeros across multiple regions, and you cannot choose the King's region.[3]

* Score the Castillo and move Caballeros to a region: Open the gate so Caballeros tumble out and separate them by player color.[3] The player with the most Caballeros in the Castillo gets 5 points, 2nd place gets 3 points, and 3rd place gets 1 point.[3]

* Score each region: Everyone simultaneously reveals their Secret disc and moves their Caballeros to their chosen region.[3] Regions are scored in the order indicated on the scoring overview, from top to bottom.[4]

The game ends after the 3rd general scoring.[4] The player with the most points wins.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook · p.4 · Goal of the Game · Gameplay · 1. Reveal Action cards · 2. Play Power cards · 3. Take a turn

[2] RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook · p.5 · 3. Take a turn · Take Cabaeros to the Court · Use an Action card · Place Cabaeros

[3] RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook · p.7 · 4. End of the round · 5. General scoring · a) Set your Secret disc · b) Score the Castio and move Cabaeros to a region

[4] RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook · p.8 · End of the game

That settles it — whose turn was it?

🔧 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 87 ms · ask 5819 ms · total 5909 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5909 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "You try to gain majority in the regions of Spain by cleverly placing your Caballeros. During each scoring, you'll earn points depending on your majorities. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins. The game plays over 9 rounds. First, you play Power cards to determine turn order. ", "headingPath": "Goal of the Game · Gameplay · 1. Reveal Action cards · 2. Play Power cards · 3. Take a turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.047493, "snippet": "You can also play a shorter game that lasts only 6 rounds. During setup, start the Round marker on space 2. When advancing the Round marker, skip spaces 4 and 7. Set up the game as described on p. 2 and 3 with the following changes: Flip the game board. The 2- and 3-player side should now be visible", "headingPath": "Short game · 2-player game", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "We recommend playing with the 4 Action cards only if you have already played a few games of El Grande. You can choose which cards to add, or even play with them all. Shuffle the Action cards as usual. Then, for each card you are adding, return 1 random card from the corresponding stack back to the b", "headingPath": "Alternative Action cards for 'Old Hands' · Setup: · Mini expansion 'Power Shift' · Gameplay changes: · Action card explanations", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "Whoever played the lowest Power card in this round takes the First Player marker . Put your played Power card face down on your discard pile. Move the Round marker 1 space down . If the marker lands on a spot with the next digit, a new round begins as just described. If the Round marker lands on a s", "headingPath": "4. End of the round · 5. General scoring · a) Set your Secret disc · b) Score the Castio and move Cabaeros to a region", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046239, "snippet": "1 Game board 1 Castillo 9 Region cards 55 Action cards 5 Secret discs 81 Power cards in 6 colors 1 King 5 Score markers in 5 colors 1 Round marker 5 Grandes in 5 colors 1 First Player marker Assemble the marker before your first game 6 Tuck boxes 150 Caballeros in 5 colors (30 per color) 2 Scoring t", "headingPath": "Assembling the Secret discs: · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "At the beginning of each round, draw 2 Region cards. Place 2 Caballeros of the dummy in each of the drawn regions. If all 30 are on the game board, do not draw any more Region cards. If a card shows the King's region, do not place any Caballeros there. Then place the cards on a discard pile. After e", "headingPath": "Gameplay changes: · 3-player game · Mini expansion: 'New Regency'", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Shuffle the 9 Region cards and make a face down stack. 8 Reveal a card and place the King in the region shown on the card. The region occupied by the King is referred to as the King ' s region . Starting with you, each player draws 1 Region card. Place your Grande and 2 Caballeros in the region show", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.029762, "snippet": "You may split your Caballeros or put them both in one region. You do not have to place them in neighbor regions of the King's region. However, you cannot place them in the Castillo or directly in the King's region. All other players must choose a region in which they have at least 1 Caballero . If a", "headingPath": "Militia · Civil War · Revelation · Empowerment · Enactment · Adopted Home · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Goal of the Game · Gameplay · 1. Reveal Action cards · 2. Play Power cards · 3. Take a turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. Take a turn · Take Cabaeros to the Court · Use an Action card · Place Cabaeros", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4. End of the round · 5. General scoring · a) Set your Secret disc · b) Score the Castio and move Cabaeros to a region", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "End of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 162}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 162 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 162 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 0.90337 of 2732 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 28, 2026 06:18 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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	Goal of the Game · Gameplay · 1. Reveal Action cards · 2. Play Power cards · 3. Take a turn	p.4	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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	Short game · 2-player game	p.9	0.047493 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	Alternative Action cards for 'Old Hands' · Setup: · Mini expansion 'Power Shift' · Gameplay changes: · Action card explanations	p.10	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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	4. End of the round · 5. General scoring · a) Set your Secret disc · b) Score the Castio and move Cabaeros to a region	p.7	0.046635 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	Assembling the Secret discs: · Setup	p.2	0.046239 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	Gameplay changes: · 3-player game · Mini expansion: 'New Regency'	p.9	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
#7	RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	Setup	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
#8	RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	Militia · Civil War · Revelation · Empowerment · Enactment · Adopted Home · …	p.12	0.029762 (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 17 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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	Short game · 2-player game	p.9	#2	0.047493 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	Alternative Action cards for 'Old Hands' · Setup: · Mini expansion 'Power Shift' · Gameplay changes: · Action card explanations	p.10	#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
#3	RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	3. Take a turn · Take Cabaeros to the Court · Use an Action card · Place Cabaeros	p.5	#9	0.029644 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	Setup	p.3	#7	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
#5	RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	End of the game	p.8	#14	0.013699 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	4. End of the round · 5. General scoring · a) Set your Secret disc · b) Score the Castio and move Cabaeros to a region	p.7	#4	0.046635 (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 El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	Gameplay changes: · 3-player game · Mini expansion: 'New Regency'	p.9	#6	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
#8	RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	Goal of the Game · Gameplay · 1. Reveal Action cards · 2. Play Power cards · 3. Take a turn	p.4	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	Goal of the Game · Gameplay · 1. Reveal Action cards · 2. Play Power cards · 3. Take a turn	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	3. Take a turn · Take Cabaeros to the Court · Use an Action card · Place Cabaeros	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	4. End of the round · 5. General scoring · a) Set your Secret disc · b) Score the Castio and move Cabaeros to a region	p.7	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK El Grande — Rulebook (corpus doc 162)	End of the game	p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 87 ms · first delta 1704 ms · total 5909 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 87 ms · ask 5819 ms · gateway work 5909 ms · total 5909 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3559
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 822
tok/sec: 198.7 tok/sec — 822 output tokens in 4.137 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 43s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 2s 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 84), 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.