Ruling — San Juan (Second Edition)

← San Juan (Second Edition)

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: San Juan (Second Edition)bg-166669-en-1e

Setup

1. Choose a starting player and give them the governor card.[1]

2. Lay out the 5 role cards next to each other in the center of the table.[1]

3. Shuffle the 5 trading house tiles and place them face down in a stack next to the role cards.[1]

4. Remove one indigo plant from the deck for each player.[1]

5. Shuffle the remaining cards and place them face down next to the role cards to form a supply pile.[1]

6. Give each player one indigo plant, placed face up in front of them.[1]

7. Give each player four cards, drawn from the top of the deck and kept in hand, hidden from other players.[1]

Gameplay

1. The game is played over several rounds, usually between 11 and 14.[1]

2. The starting player (the governor) begins the round by taking a role card from the center, placing it nearby, and performing the associated action and privilege.[1]

3. In clockwise order, the next player performs the action associated with that role, continuing until each player has performed the action once.[1]

4. The player to the left of the governor then chooses a remaining role, places it nearby, and performs its action and privilege.[1]

5. In clockwise order, all players perform this second role's action.[1]

6. This process repeats until all players have chosen role cards and each player has performed the associated actions.[1]

7. In a 2-player game, after each player has selected a role, the governor selects a second role (and players perform the associated action) before ending the round.[2]

8. During a role's action, players may choose not to perform the action or privilege, in which case their turn is skipped.[2]

9. The player who chooses the role takes the action (and/or privilege) first, and then play continues in clockwise order.[2]

10. Once a player has chosen a role and taken the role card, no other player may choose that role during the same round.[2]

11. During the builder phase, players may build one building by taking a card from their hand, laying it face up in front of them, and paying the construction costs by discarding the appropriate number of cards from their hand.[2]

12. The Builder pays one card less than indicated for construction costs.[2]

13. At the end of a round, all used role cards are placed back in the center of the table.[1]

14. The governor card is passed to the player to the left, who becomes the new governor and begins the next round.[1]

15. At the beginning of a new round, the new governor reminds chapel owners to put a card from their hand under their chapel if they wish.[3]

16. The new governor ensures no player has more than 7 cards in their hand (or 12 if they own a tower), and players must discard down to that limit.[3]

Ending the Game

1. The game ends immediately at the end of the builder phase in which one player has built a 12th building.[4]

2. Players total their victory points:

* The sum of the victory points of all their buildings.[4]

* One victory point for each card placed under a chapel.[4]

* The sum of the victory points for the triumphal arch, guild hall, and city hall.[4]

* The victory points for the palace (calculated last).[4]

3. The winner is the player with the most victory points.[4]

4. If there is a tie, the winner is the player with the most cards in their hand plus the number of cards on their production buildings.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.2 · Game setuP (basic Game) · Game Play

[2] RULEBOOK San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.3 · Game Play · the Roles: · Builder ( Builder Phase: everyone builds a building ) · Roles: · Builder Role

[3] RULEBOOK San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.6 · Councillor Role · Notes: · Prospector ( Prospector phase: no action) · a new Round · Prospector Role · A New Round

[4] RULEBOOK San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.7 · Game enD · the buildings · 5 Production Buildings

Settled. Play on.

🔧 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 175 ms · ask 5511 ms · total 5688 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5688 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Choose a starting player , and give this player the governor card. Lay out the 5 role cards next to each other in the center of the table. Shuffle the 5 trading house tiles and place them face down in a stack next to the role cards. Remove one indigo plant from the deck for each player. Shuffle the ", "headingPath": "Game setuP (basic Game) · Game Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 132}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "Andreas Seyfarth Prospector or trader? Builder or producer? Which roles will you play in the new world? Your goal is to become San Juan's most prosperous citizen. The player with the most victory points is the winner! The game is played over several rounds. Each round, players take turns selecting o", "headingPath": "Object Of the Game · Game cOntents", "sharpsignalDocId": 132}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Note: In a 2-player game, after each player has selected a role, the governor selects a second role (and players perform the associated action), before ending the round. Thus, in each round, 3 of the 5 roles are selected, in the order of governor - second player - governor. Each role has an associat", "headingPath": "Game Play · the Roles: · Builder ( Builder Phase: everyone builds a building ) · Roles: · Builder Role", "sharpsignalDocId": 132}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "The player who selects this role (the Trader) turns over the top trading house tile, which determines the price of the goods to be sold. The Trader can sell one good for the role's action, and a second good for the role's privilege. To sell a good, the T rader takes the 'goods' card from one product", "headingPath": "Trader ( Trader phase: everyone sells goods) · Notes: · Councillor ( Councillor phase: everyone draws cards) · Trader Role", "sharpsignalDocId": 132}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045921, "snippet": "When the Councillor is finished, each of the other players takes 2 cards from the draw pile, chooses one to keep and discards the other. The archive, the prefecture, and the library have rules that are in exception to the instructions described above. In this phase, players can play simultaneously; ", "headingPath": "Councillor Role · Notes: · Prospector ( Prospector phase: no action) · a new Round · Prospector Role · A New Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 132}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.044118, "snippet": "The smithy, the crane, the poor house, the black market, the carpenter, the quarry, and the library have rules that are in exception to the instructions described above. The cost of a building can never fall below 0, no matter how many privileges a player has. Example: Jaden is the Builder (privileg", "headingPath": "Notes: · Producer ( Producer phase: everyone produces goods)", "sharpsignalDocId": 132}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Each player can produce a good on 1 empty production building. The Producer may produce goods on 2 empty production buildings. (This player has produced 1 sugar and 1 tobacco.)", "headingPath": "Producer Role", "sharpsignalDocId": 132}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.029911, "snippet": "- Devin owns a statue, a hero and a triumphal arch, and receives 6 additional victory points at the end of the game. If he also owned a city hall, he would earn an additional 4 victory points for these 4 buildings. At the end of the game, the owner of a palace receives one additional victory point f", "headingPath": "Example: · Palace game end · setuP VaRiatiOn · VarIaTIonS", "sharpsignalDocId": 132}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game setuP (basic Game) · Game Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 132}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Play · the Roles: · Builder ( Builder Phase: everyone builds a building ) · Roles: · Builder Role", "sharpsignalDocId": 132}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Councillor Role · Notes: · Prospector ( Prospector phase: no action) · a new Round · Prospector Role · A New Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 132}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game enD · the buildings · 5 Production Buildings", "sharpsignalDocId": 132}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 132 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 132 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 0.90919 of 2731 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 29, 2026 09:51 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 San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Game setuP (basic Game) · Game Play	p.2	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Object Of the Game · Game cOntents	p.1	0.047875 (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 San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Game Play · the Roles: · Builder ( Builder Phase: everyone builds a building ) · Roles: · Builder Role	p.3	0.047643 (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 San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Trader ( Trader phase: everyone sells goods) · Notes: · Councillor ( Councillor phase: everyone draws cards) · Trader Role	p.5	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
#5	RULEBOOK San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Councillor Role · Notes: · Prospector ( Prospector phase: no action) · a new Round · Prospector Role · A New Round	p.6	0.045921 (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 San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Notes: · Producer ( Producer phase: everyone produces goods)	p.4	0.044118 (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 San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Producer Role	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))	176
#8	RULEBOOK San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Example: · Palace game end · setuP VaRiatiOn · VarIaTIonS	p.13	0.029911 (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 18 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 San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Game setuP (basic Game) · Game Play	p.2	#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 San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Game Play · the Roles: · Builder ( Builder Phase: everyone builds a building ) · Roles: · Builder Role	p.3	#3	0.047643 (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 San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Game enD · the buildings · 5 Production Buildings	p.7	#12	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
#4	RULEBOOK San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Notes: · Examples: · chapel beginning of a round · tower beginning of a round · aqueduct producer phase	p.10	#11	0.014493 (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
#5	RULEBOOK San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Producer Role	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
#6	RULEBOOK San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Example: · Palace game end · setuP VaRiatiOn · VarIaTIonS	p.13	#8	0.029911 (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 San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Councillor Role · Notes: · Prospector ( Prospector phase: no action) · a new Round · Prospector Role · A New Round	p.6	#5	0.045921 (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 San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Object Of the Game · Game cOntents	p.1	#2	0.047875 (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 San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Game setuP (basic Game) · Game Play	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Game Play · the Roles: · Builder ( Builder Phase: everyone builds a building ) · Roles: · Builder Role	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Councillor Role · Notes: · Prospector ( Prospector phase: no action) · a new Round · Prospector Role · A New Round	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK San Juan (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 132)	Game enD · the buildings · 5 Production Buildings	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 175 ms · first delta 1538 ms · total 5688 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 175 ms · ask 5511 ms · gateway work 5688 ms · total 5688 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3365
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 816
tok/sec: 201.6 tok/sec — 816 output tokens in 4.048 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 35s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, 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: 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 54), 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.