Ruling — The Quacks of Quedlinburg

← The Quacks of Quedlinburg

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Quacks of Quedlinburgbg-244521-en-1e

1. Setup the game by placing the Scoring Track in the middle of the table.[1]

2. Place the Flame on the 1-space of the Turn Indicator.[1]

3. Place the 4 seal tiles on the 4 seal spaces with the '0' facing up.[1]

4. Lay out the orange and black books.[1]

5. Lay out only the green, blue, and red books from one set, keeping yellow and purple books aside.[1]

6. Separate ingredient chips by color and place them next to their corresponding books.[1]

7. Each player receives one pot, one bag, and a scoring marker in their chosen color, placed on the same-colored seal tile.[2]

8. Place the pot in front of the player with the side without test tubes facing up, and place a droplet on the '0' space in the middle.[2]

9. Place a flask of the player's color on the large trivet next to the pot with the full side facing up.[2]

10. Place the rat stone on the small trivet to the left of the flask.[2]

11. Each player puts 4 white 1-chips, 2 white 2-chips, 1 white 3-chip, 1 orange 1-chip, and 1 green 1-chip into their bag.[2]

12. Each player puts 1 ruby onto the bag on their player board.[2]

13. At the beginning of each turn, the player with the Fortune Teller cards reads the first card aloud and lays it face up next to the Scoring Track.[3]

14. If it is a purple card, the action is carried out directly before the turn starts.[3]

15. Starting from the 2nd round, players (except the leader) move their rat stones forward based on the number of rat-tails between them and the leader on the Scoring Track.[3]

16. During the Potions Phase, everyone simultaneously prepares their potions by drawing chips from their bags and placing them in their pots.[4]

17. Place the first drawn chip on the space directly after the droplet or rat according to its value (e.g., a 1-chip on the 1st space).[4]

18. Place subsequent chips after the previously laid chip according to their value, leaving empty spaces if necessary.[4]

19. After each chip is placed, players decide whether to stop or draw another chip.[4]

20. In the last turn, the start player can command "Stir!" during the Potion Phase, where everyone simultaneously draws a chip until they stop or their pots explode.[5]

21. During the Buy Chips phase, players may buy colored chips if the corresponding ingredient book is uncovered.[6]

22. After shopping, players put purchased chips into their bags with all other drawn chips.[7]

23. At the end of the turn, players can spend 2 rubies to move their droplet forward or to fill up their flasks.[7]

24. Each player takes their rat stone out of the pot and puts it back on the small trivet.[7]

25. Pass the Fortune Teller cards clockwise to the next player, who becomes the start player for the next turn.[7]

26. Move the Flame ahead to the next space on the Turn Indicator to start the next turn.[7]

[1] RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook · p.2 · Setup

[2] RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook · p.3 · Setup · How to Play

[3] RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook · p.3 · Fortune Teller Cards

[4] RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook · p.4 · Potions Phase

[5] RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook · p.8 · Turn Indicator · Game Variation

[6] RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook · p.7 · Turn Indicator

[7] RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook · p.7 · E) Buy Chips · F) End of Turn ·  Move their droplet forward ·  Fill up the flask

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 99 ms · ask 4829 ms · total 9027 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 4096 ms · generation 4931 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "Each player receives one pot (player board), one bag, and the scoring marker in the color of their choice, which they place on the seal tile of the same color. Each player places their pot in front of them with the side without the test tubes facing up, and places their droplet on the '0' space in t", "headingPath": "Setup · How to Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "During the Potion Phase of the last turn, the start player gives the command 'Stir!', and everyone reaches into their bags and simultaneously takes out a chip. If a player wishes to stop putting ingredients into their pot, they pull their hand out of their bag with no chip. This simultaneous action ", "headingPath": "Turn Indicator · Game Variation", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "If there is only 1 number shown, that means there are only 1-chips for this ingredient. Higher-valued chips have the advantage of letting you move forward more spaces in your pot. But they also play a role with the green and blue books, the action of which depends on the value of the chip. Any left-", "headingPath": "E) Buy Chips · F) End of Turn ·  Move their droplet forward ·  Fill up the flask", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "At the beginning of each turn, the player who has the Fortune Teller cards in front of them reads the first card aloud, then lays it face up next to the Scoring Track, which starts the discard pile. The action that was read out applies for all players. If the action states that the players can take ", "headingPath": "Fortune Teller Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "First, everyone whose potion did not explode checks to see who has reached the highest scoring space. Some spaces have the same scoring value, in which case the furthest one from space-0 is the higher scoring space. This player gets to roll the Bonus Die for a bonus. If there is a tie, they all get ", "headingPath": "A) Bonus Die · B) Chip Actions · D) Victory Points · E) Buy Chips", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The last person to cook something goes first. The start player then shuffles the Fortune Teller cards and puts them face down into a draw pile in front of them. Now put the Scoring Track in the middle of the table. The Flame goes on the 1-space of the Turn Indicator. The 4 seal tiles go on the 4 sea", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030214, "snippet": "Once every year, the city of Quedlinburg holds a 9-day bazaar within its city walls. The country's best miracle doctors and quack surgeons gather in one place to showcase their healing remedies. Smelly feet, homesickness, hiccups and love problems-these charlatans have a unique cure for whatever ail", "headingPath": "The Story", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The Turn Indicator shows what turn it is and whether or not an action must be carried out to start the turn. On turn 9 it shows the additional actions that can be taken at the end of the turn. Before beginning turn 2, lay out the yellow ingredient book. Before turn 3, lay out the purple ingredient b", "headingPath": "Turn Indicator", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup · How to Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Fortune Teller Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Potions Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Turn Indicator · Game Variation", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Turn Indicator", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "E) Buy Chips · F) End of Turn ·  Move their droplet forward ·  Fill up the flask", "sharpsignalDocId": 189}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 189 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 189 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 0.89538 of 2294 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 29, 2026 18:48 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 Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Setup · How to Play	p.3	0.04866 (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 The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Turn Indicator · Game Variation	p.8	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
#3	RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	E) Buy Chips · F) End of Turn ·  Move their droplet forward ·  Fill up the flask	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
#4	RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Fortune Teller Cards	p.3	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 Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	A) Bonus Die · B) Chip Actions · D) Victory Points · E) Buy Chips	p.6	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
#6	RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Setup	p.2	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
#7	RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	The Story	p.2	0.030214 (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 Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Turn Indicator	p.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))	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 14 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 Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Setup · How to Play	p.3	#1	0.04866 (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 The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Turn Indicator · Game Variation	p.8	#2	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
#3	RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	The Story	p.2	#7	0.030214 (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 The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Turn Indicator	p.7	#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
#5	RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Potions Phase	p.4	#9	0.029412 (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 The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	E) Buy Chips · F) End of Turn ·  Move their droplet forward ·  Fill up the flask	p.7	#3	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 The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Fortune Teller Cards	p.3	#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
#8	RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Setup	p.2	#6	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Setup	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Setup · How to Play	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Fortune Teller Cards	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Potions Phase	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Turn Indicator · Game Variation	p.8	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	Turn Indicator	p.7	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK The Quacks of Quedlinburg — Rulebook (corpus doc 189)	E) Buy Chips · F) End of Turn ·  Move their droplet forward ·  Fill up the flask	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 99 ms · first delta 1256 ms · total 9027 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 4096 ms · retrieval 99 ms · ask 4829 ms · gateway work 4931 ms · total 9027 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2938
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 734
tok/sec: 202.5 tok/sec — 734 output tokens in 3.624 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 21s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 0s 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 107), 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.