Ruling — Condottiere

← Condottiere

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Condottierebg-112-en-1e

Setup

1. Place the game board in the center of the table.[1]

2. Each player chooses a color and places their control markers in front of them.[1]

3. The youngest player takes the Condottiere token and places it in front of them.[1]

4. The youngest player shuffles the deck and deals 10 cards facedown to each player.[1]

5. The youngest player places the Condottiere token in a region of their choice to start the first battle.[1]

A Battle

1. The player who placed the Condottiere token takes the first turn, and other players follow in clockwise order.[2]

2. On a turn, a player must either play a card or pass.[2]

3. If playing a card, place it faceup in front of you to form your battle line.[2] (Note: Mercenary, Drum and Drummer, Heroine, and Courtesan cards may be placed facedown [3]).

4. After playing a card, announce the total strength of your battle line.[2]

5. Players continue taking turns choosing to play a card or pass until all players have passed or one player plays a 'Surrender' card.[4]

6. If a player plays a 'Surrender' card, the battle ends immediately, and the region is captured by the player with the strongest battle line at that moment.[5]

Concluding a Battle

1. All players announce the total strength of their battle lines.[4]

2. The player with the strongest battle line conquers the region.[4]

3. The winner places one of their control markers on the conquered region and places the Condottiere token in front of them.[4]

4. Exception: If a player's battle line contains the most Courtesan cards, that player receives the Condottiere token instead of the winner.[4]

5. If there is a tie for the most total strength, no control marker is placed, and the Condottiere token passes to the player to the left of the person who last controlled it.[4]

6. (In the 'Capturing Regions' variant, if a battle ends in a tie, the region's defender keeps control and receives the Condottiere token [3]).

Ending the Game

1. Players can play multiple games to determine an overall winner by reaching a designated score.[6]

2. Points are assigned at the end of each game: one point for each region controlled, with potential bonuses for controlling adjacent regions.[6]

3. The player with the most points at the end of the series wins.[6]

4. If players are tied for points, a final battle is fought as per the normal rules.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook · p.5 · The Game Round · Battle Overview · Starting the Game

[2] RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook · p.6 · Starting a Battle · Play a Card · Pass

[3] RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook · p.19 · Capturing Regions · Hidden Cards

[4] RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook · p.7 · Concluding a Battle · 1. Compare Strength

[5] RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook · p.15 · Scarecrow (16) · Surrender (3) · Deals Between Players

[6] RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook · p.18 · Playing for Points · Bigger Kingdoms

Rule found, game 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 135 ms · ask 4145 ms · total 4282 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4282 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "The player who placed the Condottiere token always takes the first turn in the battle, then the other players follow in clockwise order. On a player's turn, he must either play a card or pass . If you choose to play a card, place one card faceup in front of you, next to any of the other cards you ha", "headingPath": "Starting a Battle · Play a Card · Pass", "sharpsignalDocId": 967}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045635, "snippet": "A game of CONDOTTIERE is played over many game rounds . During each game round, one or more battles will be fought. When all but one player has played all their last card, new cards will be drawn and a new game round will begin. At the beginning of each battle, the player with the Condottiere token ", "headingPath": "The Game Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 967}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.045285, "snippet": "This variant allows you to capture regions that are already controlled by another player. The Condottiere token may now be placed on a region already controlled by another player, but that player (the region's 'defender') will benefit from an important advantage in the course of the battle: The regi", "headingPath": "Capturing Regions · Hidden Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 967}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.045002, "snippet": "This variant adds more strategy and negotiation, since several games are played to determine the overall winner. The players can decide to assign a score (20 or 30 points, for example) that must be attained over a series of games of CONDOTTIERE. Points are assigned at the end of each game in the fol", "headingPath": "Playing for Points · Bigger Kingdoms", "sharpsignalDocId": 967}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.044764, "snippet": "During a battle, when a player has no cards in his hand, his only option is to pass. He will not be able to participate in battles until next round. The other players continue resolving battles without him. If a player wins a battle in which he plays his last card, he still receives the Condottiere ", "headingPath": "If a Player Has No Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 967}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Important: The Condottiere token may not be placed on a region that has the favor of the Pope or on a region that has already been conquered by another player. During each battle, players take turns placing cards faceup on the table in front of them, forming their battle lines . A player's battle li", "headingPath": "The Game Round · Battle Overview · Starting the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 967}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "In a game with 4, 5, or 6 players, the game ends as soon as, at the end of the 'Compare Strength' step of a battle's resolution, a player controls 5 total regions or 3 adjacent regions. In a game with 2 or 3 players, the victory condition is 6 total regions or 4 adjacent regions. If, after a battle ", "headingPath": "Winning the Game · Breaking Ties", "sharpsignalDocId": 967}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "In a game with 4, 5, or 6 players, the first player to control 5 total regions or 3 adjacent regions wins the game. In a game with 2 or 3 players, the first player to control 6 total regions or 4 adjacent regions wins the game. For more details on the game's victory conditions, see 'Winning the Game", "headingPath": "Object of the Game · Components", "sharpsignalDocId": 967}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The Game Round · Battle Overview · Starting the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 967}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Starting a Battle · Play a Card · Pass", "sharpsignalDocId": 967}, {"page": 19, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Capturing Regions · Hidden Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 967}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Concluding a Battle · 1. Compare Strength", "sharpsignalDocId": 967}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Scarecrow (16) · Surrender (3) · Deals Between Players", "sharpsignalDocId": 967}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing for Points · Bigger Kingdoms", "sharpsignalDocId": 967}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 967 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 967 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 0.90825 of 1951 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 14:27 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 Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Starting a Battle · Play a Card · Pass	p.6	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 Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	The Game Round	p.4	0.045635 (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 Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Capturing Regions · Hidden Cards	p.19	0.045285 (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 Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Playing for Points · Bigger Kingdoms	p.18	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
#5	RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	If a Player Has No Cards	p.9	0.044764 (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 Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	The Game Round · Battle Overview · Starting the Game	p.5	0.032258 (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 Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Winning the Game · Breaking Ties	p.16	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
#8	RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Object of the Game · Components	p.3	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

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 Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Starting a Battle · Play a Card · Pass	p.6	#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 Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Concluding a Battle · 1. Compare Strength	p.7	#12	0.02837 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Capturing Regions · Hidden Cards	p.19	#3	0.045285 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Optional Rules · Draw After Battle · 2. Draw Cards	p.17	#15	0.027588 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	The Game Round · Battle Overview · Starting the Game	p.5	#6	0.032258 (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 Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	If a Player Has No Cards	p.9	#5	0.044764 (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 Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Scarecrow (16) · Surrender (3) · Deals Between Players	p.15	#10	0.029469 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Playing for Points · Bigger Kingdoms	p.18	#4	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	The Game Round · Battle Overview · Starting the Game	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Starting a Battle · Play a Card · Pass	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Capturing Regions · Hidden Cards	p.19	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Concluding a Battle · 1. Compare Strength	p.7	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Scarecrow (16) · Surrender (3) · Deals Between Players	p.15	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Condottiere — Rulebook (corpus doc 967)	Playing for Points · Bigger Kingdoms	p.18	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 135 ms · first delta 1358 ms · total 4282 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 135 ms · ask 4145 ms · gateway work 4282 ms · total 4282 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2407
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 586
tok/sec: 202.6 tok/sec — 586 output tokens in 2.892 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 28s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, checked 9s 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 897), 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.