Ruling — Dale of Merchants

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Dale of Merchantsbg-176165-en-1e

Setup

1. Choose as many animalfolk decks as there are players, plus one deck.[1]

2. Form each player's starting deck by giving everyone one card valued 1 from each of the chosen animalfolk decks and a number of junk cards until each player has a total of 10 cards.[1]

3. Shuffle the decks.[1]

4. The remaining junk cards form a separate junk pile.[1]

5. Return unused animalfolk cards valued 1 to the game box.[1]

6. Shuffle the remaining animalfolk cards valued 2-5 together to form the market deck.[1]

7. Place the market board next to the market deck.[1]

8. Draw 5 cards from the market deck one by one and place them faceup on the slots on the board (starting from the right) to form the market.[1]

9. Each player draws cards from their own deck equal to their hand size (5 by default) to form their starting hand.[1]

10. The player who woke up the earliest starts the game.[1]

Turn Overview

Players take turns in a clockwise order.[2] A player's turn consists of an action phase followed by a new clean-up phase.[2]

1. Action Phase

Perform one of the following four actions:[2]

* Market action: Purchase a card from the market by paying its price in a combination of any cards from your hand.[2] A card's price is its value plus the added cost printed on the market board above the slot.[2] You may overpay, but you must not use redundant cards that could be withheld while still meeting the price.[2] Place used cards in your discard pile and the new animalfolk card into your hand.[2]

* Technique action: Play 1 technique card from your hand.[3] Show the card and resolve its effects in the order they are written.[3] If the card has a bonus action icon, perform another action after resolving all effects.[4]

* Stall action: Build a stack in your stall.[2] Choose any number of cards belonging to a single animalfolk set from your hand whose values add up to the required amount and place them faceup in your stall.[4] Stacks must be built in ascending order from 1 to 8.[4] You cannot build a partial stack to add to later.[4]

* Inventory action: Discard cards from your hand.[2]

2. Clean-up Phase

Clean-up happens immediately after the active player has performed their chosen action and possible bonus actions.[5]

1. Fill your hand back to 5 cards by drawing from your deck one by one.[5] If your deck and discard pile run out, shuffle the discard pile to form a new deck; if both run out, draw junk cards from the junk pile.[5]

2. Slide cards and fill empty slots in the market.[2] Move market cards to the rightmost empty slot one by one starting from the right, then draw new cards from the market deck to fill the remaining empty slots, also starting from the right.[6]

Ending the Game

The game ends immediately once a player builds their 8th stack in their merchant stall, and that player is the winner.[6] (In 4-player team rules, the game ends when a team builds their 10th stack [7]).

[1] RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook · p.4 · Game setup

[2] RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook · p.5 · Turn overview · 2 . Clean-up phase · 1. Action phase - Perform one action · a) Market action - Purchase a card from the market

[3] RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook · p.5 · b) Technique action - Play a technique card

[4] RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook · p.6 · b) Technique action - Play a technique card · c) Stall action - Build a stack in your stall

[5] RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook · p.7 · 2. Clean-up phase · 1 ) Fill your hand back to 5 cards

[6] RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook · p.7 · 2 ) Slide cards and fill empty slots in the market · Winning the game

[7] RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook · p.8 · 4 player team rules · Setup · Changes to the normal rules

So says the rulebook. So plays the table.

🔧 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 222 ms · ask 4824 ms · total 5049 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5049 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "Play 1 technique card from your hand. Show the card and resolve the effects described in its effect text. The effects always happen in the order they are written on the card. After a technique card's effects have been fully resolved, place it on your discard pile unless told otherwise. NOTE: If you ", "headingPath": "b) Technique action - Play a technique card", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "If the card has a bonus action icon , perform another action after resolving all of that card's effects. The bonus action is awarded on the same turn the card is played. Your bonus action can be any of the four usual actions. If you use your bonus action to play another technique card that also has ", "headingPath": "b) Technique action - Play a technique card · c) Stall action - Build a stack in your stall", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Choose as many animalfolk decks as there are players, plus one deck. Return the other animalfolk decks into the game box. You can change the feel of the game by choosing animalfolks whose playstyles match your group's. For example, Thieving Northern Raccoons push towards more player interaction whil", "headingPath": "Game setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "During the game the players take turns in a clockwise order. A player's turn consists of an action phase followed by a clean-up phase. 1 . Action phase - Perform one of the following actions Market action - Purchase a card from the market Technique action - Play a technique card Stall action - Build", "headingPath": "Turn overview · 2 . Clean-up phase · 1. Action phase - Perform one action · a) Market action - Purchase a card from the market", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "In 4 player games the players can join forces to create teams. This reduces downtime and also introduces additional depth to the gameplay. We recommend trying out the team rules after playing a couple of games using the normal rules. Form 2 teams of 2 players. T eammates should sit opposite each oth", "headingPath": "4 player team rules · Setup · Changes to the normal rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.045002, "snippet": "Clean-up happens immediately after the active player has performed their chosen action and possible bonus actions. Clean-up is still considered a part of the active player's turn and they may use passive effects of certain cards. Draw cards from your deck into your hand one by one until you reach yo", "headingPath": "2. Clean-up phase · 1 ) Fill your hand back to 5 cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.044118, "snippet": "In Dale of Merchants, players take the roles of animalfolk merchants learning new techniques, trading goods, and managing their stocks. The first player to finish their astounding merchant stall is the winner of the game and gets access to the guild! The Guild of Extraordinary Traders operates from ", "headingPath": "Game overview · Card overview · Technique · Passive · Rubbish", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Move the cards in the market to the rightmost empty slot one by one starting from the right. Then draw new cards from the market deck one by one to fill the empty slots, again starting from the right. The fresh stuff is guaranteed to be overpriced. Hope you have some extra currency to spare. Once th", "headingPath": "2 ) Slide cards and fill empty slots in the market · Winning the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Turn overview · 2 . Clean-up phase · 1. Action phase - Perform one action · a) Market action - Purchase a card from the market", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "b) Technique action - Play a technique card", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "b) Technique action - Play a technique card · c) Stall action - Build a stack in your stall", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. Clean-up phase · 1 ) Fill your hand back to 5 cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2 ) Slide cards and fill empty slots in the market · Winning the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4 player team rules · Setup · Changes to the normal rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 979}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 979 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 979 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 0.90161 of 2419 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 09:48 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 Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	b) Technique action - Play a technique card	p.5	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 Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	b) Technique action - Play a technique card · c) Stall action - Build a stack in your stall	p.6	0.048139 (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 Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	Game setup	p.4	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 Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	Turn overview · 2 . Clean-up phase · 1. Action phase - Perform one action · a) Market action - Purchase a card from the market	p.5	0.046875 (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 Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	4 player team rules · Setup · Changes to the normal rules	p.8	0.045228 (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 Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	2. Clean-up phase · 1 ) Fill your hand back to 5 cards	p.7	0.045002 (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 Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	Game overview · Card overview · Technique · Passive · Rubbish	p.3	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
#8	RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	2 ) Slide cards and fill empty slots in the market · Winning the game	p.7	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

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 12 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 Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	b) Technique action - Play a technique card	p.5	#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 Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	Turn overview · 2 . Clean-up phase · 1. Action phase - Perform one action · a) Market action - Purchase a card from the market	p.5	#4	0.046875 (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 Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	2 ) Slide cards and fill empty slots in the market · Winning the game	p.7	#8	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
#4	RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	2. Clean-up phase · 1 ) Fill your hand back to 5 cards	p.7	#6	0.045002 (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 Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	Game overview · Card overview · Technique · Passive · Rubbish	p.3	#7	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	Game setup	p.4	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	4 player team rules · Setup · Changes to the normal rules	p.8	#5	0.045228 (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 Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	b) Technique action - Play a technique card · c) Stall action - Build a stack in your stall	p.6	#2	0.048139 (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 Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	Game setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	Turn overview · 2 . Clean-up phase · 1. Action phase - Perform one action · a) Market action - Purchase a card from the market	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	b) Technique action - Play a technique card	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	b) Technique action - Play a technique card · c) Stall action - Build a stack in your stall	p.6	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	2. Clean-up phase · 1 ) Fill your hand back to 5 cards	p.7	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	2 ) Slide cards and fill empty slots in the market · Winning the game	p.7	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Dale of Merchants — Rulebook (corpus doc 979)	4 player team rules · Setup · Changes to the normal rules	p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 222 ms · first delta 1351 ms · total 5049 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 222 ms · ask 4824 ms · gateway work 5049 ms · total 5049 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3299
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 733
tok/sec: 201.3 tok/sec — 733 output tokens in 3.641 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 16s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 7s 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 909), 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.