Ruling — Elfenland

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Elfenlandbg-10-en-1e

Elfenland is played in rounds, and each round consists of the following six phases:[1]

1. Deal the Travel Cards: In the first round, the Starting Player shuffles the Travel Cards and deals 8 cards to each player, placing the remaining cards face down in a stack.[1] On subsequent rounds, the Starting Player shuffles all Travel Cards from the Travel Card stack and deals new cards until each player holds eight.[1]

2. Draw a Transportation Counter from the face down stack: Beginning with the Starting Player, each player draws one face down Transportation Counter, looks at it, and places it face down in front of him.[1] This counter is kept secret from other players.[1]

3. Draw additional Transportation Counters: Beginning with the Starting Player, each player draws an additional Transportation Counter, choosing either one of the five face up ones or one of the face down ones.[1] If a player chooses a face up counter, they must immediately turn over one of the face down ones so five face up counters are always available.[1] Players continue until each player has drawn three additional counters.[1]

4. Plan the travel routes: Beginning with the Starting Player, players take turns placing one of their Transportation Counters face up on a road.[2] A counter can only be placed if its type is suited for that road.[2] A player may instead place an Obstacle on a road (only once per player during the game) if a Transportation Counter is already on that road.[2] This phase ends when all players have passed consecutively.[3]

5. Move the Elf Boots: Beginning with the Starting Player, each player moves their Elf Boot along roads or rivers from town to town.[3] To move, the player must play a Travel Card that matches the Transportation Counter on the road.[3] If a road has an Obstacle, the player must play an additional identical Travel Card.[3] A player's turn ends when they cannot or do not want to play another Travel Card.[3] A player may move through as many roads as they wish, provided they can play the matching cards.[4] When a player reaches a town, they collect that town's piece and place it in front of them.[4] At the end of a turn, if a player holds more than four cards, they must reduce their hand to four.[4]

6. Finish the round: After all players have moved their Elf Boots, the Starting Player puts the top Round Card beneath the stack and passes the Starting Player Card to the player on their left.[5] Each player must turn in all Transportation Counters except one (which can be secret or face up).[5] Used Obstacle Cards are removed from the game.[5] The Round Cards are changed and the Transportation Counters on the board are shuffled into the face down pile.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook · p.6 · The first time you play Elfenland: · 1. Deal the Travel Cards · 2. Draw a Transportation Counter from the face down stack · 3. Draw additional Transportation Counters

[2] RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook · p.7 · 4. Plan the travel routes · Watch Out: · Obstacle · The chosen

[3] RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook · p.8 · The chosen · Example 1: · 5. Move the Elf Boots · Traveling On Roads

[4] RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook · p.10 · Example 3: · Traveling Back And Forth · Example 4: · Collecting Town Pieces

[5] RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook · p.11 · Special Moves A) Caravan · B) Ferries · 6. Finish the round

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 93 ms · ask 4585 ms · total 4680 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4680 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 11, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "If a player cannot play the Travel Card(s) required by the type of transportation, he can play any three Travel Cards (including Raft Travel Cards) instead. This move is called a 'Caravan'. 'Caravans' only move on roads that provide a type of transportation. Caravans do not travel on rivers and lake", "headingPath": "Special Moves A) Caravan · B) Ferries · 6. Finish the round", "sharpsignalDocId": 1264}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "Instead of placing a transportation counter, you can pass. When all players have passed consecutively, this phase ends. A Troll Wagon and an Obstacle are placed on a desert road. If the player wants to use this road, he must play three Troll Wagon Travel Cards. A player is not required to place a Tr", "headingPath": "The chosen · Example 1: · 5. Move the Elf Boots · Traveling On Roads", "sharpsignalDocId": 1264}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.04741, "snippet": "Beginning with the Starting Player, the players take turns to place one of their Transportation Counters face up on a road. Only one Transportation Counter may be placed per road. A player may only place a Transportation Counter on a road if that particular type of transportation is suited for trave", "headingPath": "4. Plan the travel routes · Watch Out: · Obstacle · The chosen", "sharpsignalDocId": 1264}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "Always play the phase described in the section you just read, before you continue to the next section. Each player receives 8 cards. Each player draws one Transportation Counter and places it in front of him face down. Each player draws three face up Transportation Counters. Tip: Choose types of tra", "headingPath": "The first time you play Elfenland: · 1. Deal the Travel Cards · 2. Draw a Transportation Counter from the face down stack · 3. Draw additional Transportation Counters", "sharpsignalDocId": 1264}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.045285, "snippet": "One road may be used several times on one turn if the matching Travel Cards are played. When a player reaches a town, he collects his Town Piece and places it in front of him. At the end of a player's turn, the number of cards he holds in his hand is reduced to four. On his turn, a player may move f", "headingPath": "Example 3: · Traveling Back And Forth · Example 4: · Collecting Town Pieces", "sharpsignalDocId": 1264}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "Rule book Alan R. Moon Table of Contents Contents: Page: Description and Contents .................... 2 How To Set Up The Game ......................4 Game Board ........................................... 5 Travel Cards ............................................ 5 How To Play ...................", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1264}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The player who collects the most Town Pieces after 4 rounds wins. If two or more players have the same number of Town Pieces, the player with the most Travel Cards wins. Elfenland ends after the fourth round. The player who collected the most Town Pieces wins. If two or more players have the same nu", "headingPath": "6. Finish the round · Variation · Example 5:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1264}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029911, "snippet": "Chris wants to travel fro m Feodor via Lapphálya to Vi r s t . On the road in the woods fro m Feodor to Lapphálya he comes a c ross an Obstacle and a Dragon Transportation Counter. Since the Dragon demands two Dragon Travel Cards for flying over the woods, Chris is re q u i re d to play three Dragon", "headingPath": "Example 2: · Traveling On Rivers · Example 3:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1264}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The first time you play Elfenland: · 1. Deal the Travel Cards · 2. Draw a Transportation Counter from the face down stack · 3. Draw additional Transportation Counters", "sharpsignalDocId": 1264}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4. Plan the travel routes · Watch Out: · Obstacle · The chosen", "sharpsignalDocId": 1264}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The chosen · Example 1: · 5. Move the Elf Boots · Traveling On Roads", "sharpsignalDocId": 1264}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Example 3: · Traveling Back And Forth · Example 4: · Collecting Town Pieces", "sharpsignalDocId": 1264}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Special Moves A) Caravan · B) Ferries · 6. Finish the round", "sharpsignalDocId": 1264}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1264 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1264 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 0.93926 of 2239 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 15:44 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 Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	Special Moves A) Caravan · B) Ferries · 6. Finish the round	p.11	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	The chosen · Example 1: · 5. Move the Elf Boots · Traveling On Roads	p.8	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 Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	4. Plan the travel routes · Watch Out: · Obstacle · The chosen	p.7	0.04741 (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 Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	The first time you play Elfenland: · 1. Deal the Travel Cards · 2. Draw a Transportation Counter from the face down stack · 3. Draw additional Transportation Counters	p.6	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
#5	RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	Example 3: · Traveling Back And Forth · Example 4: · Collecting Town Pieces	p.10	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
#6	RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)		p.1	0.044796 (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 Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	6. Finish the round · Variation · Example 5:	p.12	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 Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	Example 2: · Traveling On Rivers · Example 3:	p.9	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 13 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 Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	The first time you play Elfenland: · 1. Deal the Travel Cards · 2. Draw a Transportation Counter from the face down stack · 3. Draw additional Transportation Counters	p.6	#4	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
#2	RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	Special Moves A) Caravan · B) Ferries · 6. Finish the round	p.11	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	48 Transportation Counters	p.4	#9	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
#4	RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	4. Plan the travel routes · Watch Out: · Obstacle · The chosen	p.7	#3	0.04741 (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 Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	Example 2: · Traveling On Rivers · Example 3:	p.9	#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
#6	RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)		p.1	#6	0.044796 (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 Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	Example 3: · Traveling Back And Forth · Example 4: · Collecting Town Pieces	p.10	#5	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
#8	RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	The chosen · Example 1: · 5. Move the Elf Boots · Traveling On Roads	p.8	#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 Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	The first time you play Elfenland: · 1. Deal the Travel Cards · 2. Draw a Transportation Counter from the face down stack · 3. Draw additional Transportation Counters	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	4. Plan the travel routes · Watch Out: · Obstacle · The chosen	p.7	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	The chosen · Example 1: · 5. Move the Elf Boots · Traveling On Roads	p.8	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	Example 3: · Traveling Back And Forth · Example 4: · Collecting Town Pieces	p.10	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Elfenland — Rulebook (corpus doc 1264)	Special Moves A) Caravan · B) Ferries · 6. Finish the round	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 93 ms · first delta 1714 ms · total 4680 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 93 ms · ask 4585 ms · gateway work 4680 ms · total 4680 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2929
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 587
tok/sec: 202.2 tok/sec — 587 output tokens in 2.903 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 23s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 3s 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 1194), 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.