Ruling — Small World

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Small Worldbg-40692-en-1e

To play Small World, follow these steps:

Setup

1. Punch out all pieces from the game's punchboards, sort them, and place them in their respective wells or the removable storage tray.[1]

2. Pick the Small World map that matches your number of players and place it in the center of the table.[1]

3. Place the Game Turn marker on the first spot of the map's Game Turn track.[1]

4. Place the removable storage tray with all Race tokens next to the board map.[1]

5. Shuffle all Race banners, draw five at random to lay face up in a single column, and place the remaining banners face up in a single stack at the bottom of the column.[1]

6. Shuffle the Special Power badges and place one to the left of each Race banner, fitting the round edge into the banner's opening; stack the rest in a pile to the left of the banners.[1]

7. Place a Lost Tribe token on each Region of the map featuring a Lost Tribe symbol.[1]

8. Put a Mountain token on each Region of the map featuring a Mountain.[1]

9. Give each player five "1" Victory coins and place all remaining coins in a Victory stash next to the board.[1]

The First Turn

1. The player whose ears are the most pointed starts the game.[2]

2. Each player performs the following:

* Picks a Race and Special Power combo.[2] To do this, select one combo from the six visible on the table.[3] The first combo is free; each subsequent combo down the column costs one additional Victory coin, paid by dropping a coin on each combo situated above the chosen one.[3] The player places the selection face up in front of them and picks matching Race tokens from the storage tray equal to the sum of the values on the Race banner and Special Power badge.[3] After selection, the player replenishes the column by sliding existing combos up one position and revealing a new combo from the stack.[3]

* Conquers some Regions.[2] To conquer a Region, a player must have available to deploy 2 Race tokens, plus 1 additional token for each Encampment, Fortress, Mountain, or Troll's Lair marker, and 1 additional token for each Lost Tribe or other player's Race token present in the Region.[4] Upon conquering, the player must deploy the tokens used inside the Region's borders.[4]

* Scores some Victory coins.[2]

Following Turns

1. The first player moves the Game Turn marker up one spot on the track and the game continues clockwise.[5]

2. During their turn, each player must choose one of the following:

* Expand the reach of their race through new conquests.[5] A player may take all Active Race tokens from the map back in hand (leaving one token in each occupied Region) and use them to conquer new Regions.[5] A player may also opt to entirely empty some or all Regions, but these abandoned Regions will no longer be considered theirs or provide Victory coins.[5]

* Put their race In Decline to select a new one.[5] To do this, the player flips their current Race banner upside down (showing the "In Decline" side) and discards the associated Special Power badge (unless otherwise dictated).[6] The player flips a single Race token onto its In Decline side in each Region those tokens occupied and removes all other tokens of this Race from the map, placing them back in the storage tray.[6] The player cannot make conquests during the turn their race goes into decline; their turn ends immediately after scoring.[6] The player gains 1 Victory coin for each Region their newly In Decline tokens occupy.[6] On their next turn, the player selects a new Race and Special Power combo and follows the rules used during the first turn.[6]

3. Players score Victory coins at the end of their turn for each Region they occupy.[2]

Ending the Game

1. The game ends when the Game Turn marker reaches the last position on the track and all players have had a chance to play a final turn.[1][7]

2. Victory coins held by each player are revealed and tallied.[7]

3. The player with the highest score wins; in the case of a tie, the winner is the player with the most Race tokens (Active + In Decline) still on the board.[7]

[1] RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook · p.2 · Setting up the game

[2] RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook · p.2 · Starting the game · I. The first turn

[3] RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook · p.2 · 1. Picking a Race and Special Power Combo

[4] RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook · p.3 · 2. Conquering Regions · > First Conquest · > Conquering a Region

[5] RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook · p.4 · II. Following turns · Expanding through new Conquests · > Conquer · > Abandoning a Region

[6] RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook · p.4 · Entering In Decline

[7] RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook · p.4 · End of the game

Answer in hand — your move.

🔧 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 95 ms · ask 6308 ms · total 6407 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6407 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "If this is the first time you play, punch out all the pieces from the game's punchboards. Sort them and place them in the wells designed for each type of piece. Some types fit in the removable storage tray that came with your game. Other components fit inside their respective wells in the main vacuu", "headingPath": "Setting up the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "Space is getting tight in Small World . There are just too many races living off your land - land your ancestors bequeathed to you in hopes you would build an empire with which you could dominate the world. Picking a fantasy Race and Special Power combination, you must use their unique racial traits", "headingPath": "Starting the game · I. The first turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046394, "snippet": "Once the Game Turn marker has reached its final spot on the Game Turn track and all players have had a chance to play a final turn, the Victory coins held by each player are revealed and tallied. The player with the highest score wins. In the case of a tie, the player with the most Race tokens (Acti", "headingPath": "End of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The player selects one Race and Special Power combo, from among the six that are visible on the table (including the combo made of the Race banner and Special Power badge sitting on top of the stacks at the bottom of the column). The cost of each combo is determined by its position in the column. Th", "headingPath": "1. Picking a Race and Special Power Combo", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "In following turns, the first player moves the Game Turn marker up one spot on the track and the game continues clockwise. During his turn, each player must now either: l Expand the reach of his race through new conquests OR l Put his race In Decline to select a new one. The player then scores Victo", "headingPath": "II. Following turns · Expanding through new Conquests · > Conquer · > Abandoning a Region", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030886, "snippet": "You may conquer any Region with a Cavern with 1 less Race token than normal. A minimum of 1 token is still required. All Regions with a Cavern are also considered adjacent to each other for your conquest purposes. Collect 7 bonus Victory coins, once only, at the end of your first turn. Here is your ", "headingPath": "Underworld · Wealthy · Days of Wonder Online · Credits", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Once a player thinks that his Active race is overextended and no longer has the impetus required to continue expanding successfully or defend itself from increasingly threatening neighbors, he may choose to put it In Decline by selecting a new Race and Special Power combo from those available on the", "headingPath": "Entering In Decline", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The player's Race tokens are used to conquer Regions of the map, whose occupation will yield Victory coins for that player. A player's race deploying on the map for the first time must enter it by conquering one of its border Regions (i.e. a Region adjacent to the edge of the board or one whose shor", "headingPath": "2. Conquering Regions · > First Conquest · > Conquering a Region", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setting up the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Starting the game · I. The first turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. Picking a Race and Special Power Combo", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. Conquering Regions · > First Conquest · > Conquering a Region", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "II. Following turns · Expanding through new Conquests · > Conquer · > Abandoning a Region", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Entering In Decline", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "End of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 191 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 191 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 0.92711 of 3334 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 28, 2026 10:57 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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Setting up the game	p.2	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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Starting the game · I. The first turn	p.2	0.048131 (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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	End of the game	p.4	0.046394 (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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	1. Picking a Race and Special Power Combo	p.2	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
#5	RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	II. Following turns · Expanding through new Conquests · > Conquer · > Abandoning a Region	p.4	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
#6	RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Underworld · Wealthy · Days of Wonder Online · Credits	p.7	0.030886 (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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Entering In Decline	p.4	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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	2. Conquering Regions · > First Conquest · > Conquering a Region	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 19 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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Setting up the game	p.2	#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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	1. Picking a Race and Special Power Combo	p.2	#4	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
#3	RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Entering In Decline	p.4	#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
#4	RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	II. Following turns · Expanding through new Conquests · > Conquer · > Abandoning a Region	p.4	#5	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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Underworld · Wealthy · Days of Wonder Online · Credits	p.7	#6	0.030886 (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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	2. Conquering Regions · > First Conquest · > Conquering a Region	p.3	#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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	End of the game	p.4	#3	0.046394 (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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Starting the game · I. The first turn	p.2	#2	0.048131 (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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Setting up the game	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Starting the game · I. The first turn	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	1. Picking a Race and Special Power Combo	p.2	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	2. Conquering Regions · > First Conquest · > Conquering a Region	p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	II. Following turns · Expanding through new Conquests · > Conquer · > Abandoning a Region	p.4	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Entering In Decline	p.4	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	End of the game	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 95 ms · first delta 1685 ms · total 6407 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 95 ms · ask 6308 ms · gateway work 6407 ms · total 6407 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3360
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 941
tok/sec: 202.0 tok/sec — 941 output tokens in 4.659 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 15s 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: 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 109), 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.