Ruling — Lowlands

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Lowlandsbg-242804-en-1e

The game is divided into phases grouped into three stages, each consisting of six phases resolved in the following order: Turn of the Tide, I Work, II Upkeep, I Work, II Upkeep, and III High Tide.[1][2] After these three stages, a final storm surge phase is resolved.[1][2]

Phases and Turns:

* Turn of the Tide:

* Check hand size: Players with more than eight resource cards must discard until they have eight.[3][2]

* Place 3 new flood cards: Draw three flood cards from the flood deck and place one facedown on each of the three sea spaces on the main board.[3][2]

* Reveal new flood card: Flip over the leftmost facedown flood card on a sea space.[3][4][2]

* I Work Phase:

* Players take turns, starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, placing one unplaced farmer on an action space on their own farmyard board and resolving the corresponding action.[3]

* When a farmer is placed, the player gains action points equal to the farmer's action value (2, 3, or 4) to spend on resolving actions.[3]

* A player may place a farmer on a space that already contains farmers by paying one coin if there is one farmer present, or two coins if there are already two farmers.[3]

* Specific actions include:

* Draw Resource Cards: Spend action points to draw an equal number of cards from the resource display and/or the resource deck.[5] If drawing from both, draw from the display first, then the deck.[5] After drawing, refill the resource display from the deck.[5]

* Contribute to the Dike: After completing a dike segment, a player may ask an opponent for help.[6] The chosen opponent may contribute resources (up to the amount the player paid) to advance their own dike point marker.[6] In a 2-player game, a player may pay one coin to ask the market for help instead of an opponent.[7]

* II Upkeep Phase:

* Steps include sheep multiplication, receiving income, returning farmers, resetting the sheep market, checking for first player changes, and revealing new flood cards.[2]

* Reset sheep market: Return all sheep on the sheep market to the supply, then place one sheep from the supply on each space showing a sheep icon.[4]

* Change first player: The player furthest along the dike track becomes the first player (if tied, the player whose dike point marker is on top).[4]

* III High Tide Phase:

* Deich prüfen (Check Dike):

* If the dike holds: Players (except the last player) receive a coin, and the value marker is moved.[1][2]

* If the dike breaks: Players (except the first player) receive dike breach tokens, and the value marker is moved.[1][2]

* Deichbruch (Dike Breach): For each dike breach token, a player must give up one sheep.[1]

* Storm Surge Phase: This is the final phase resolved after the three stages.[1]

Ending the Game:

* The game ends at the end of the storm surge phase.[7]

* The player with the most VP wins.[7]

* In the event of a tie, the winner is the tied player furthest on the dike track; if still tied, the player whose dike point marker is on top wins.[7]

[1] RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook · p.4 · Setup (Shared) · Setup (Player) · 1. Hofausbauten mit Gameplay · Turn of the Tide , I Work , II Upkeep , I Work , II Upkeep , III High Tide 3. Siegpunkte auszählen

[2] RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook · p.4

[3] RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook · p.5 · Turn of the Tide , I Work , II Upkeep , I Work , II Upkeep , III High Tide 3. Siegpunkte auszählen · Turn of the Tide · Work Phase

[4] RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook · p.10 · Upkeep

[5] RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook · p.9 · E) DRAW RESOURCE CARDS

[6] RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook · p.8 · B) CONTRIBUTE TO THE DIKE · Asking for Help

[7] RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook · p.11 · Winning the Game · Rule Changes for 2 Players

The table has its answer — dice up.

🔧 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 235 ms · ask 6049 ms · total 6288 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6288 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 11, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "The game ends at the end of the storm surge phase. The player with the most VP wins the game! In the case of a tie, the tied player who is furthest on the dike track wins the game. If there is still a tie, the tied player whose dike point marker is on top wins the game. The game plays the same with ", "headingPath": "Winning the Game · Rule Changes for 2 Players", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "4 Each player gathers the following components: • 1 random farmyard board Place your farmyard board in front of you with the side of your choice faceup (both sides have the same layout). Then place your income board and reference sheet faceup next to your farmyard board, and keep your coins and farm", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046244, "snippet": "1 random farmyard board 2 sheep 16 fences 3 farmers of your chosen color (values 2, 3, and 4) 4 building markers of your chosen color 4 resource cards comprising your hand (hidden from other players) 1 income board · 1 reference sheet 4 coins 2 laborers Place your farmyard board in front of you with", "headingPath": "Setup (Shared) · Setup (Player) · 1. Hofausbauten mit Gameplay · Turn of the Tide , I Work , II Upkeep , I Work , II Upkeep , III High Tide 3. Siegpunkte auszählen", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "& A game for 2-4 players Ages 14 and up 50-100 Minutes On the wave-battered coast of the North Sea, hard-working folk make a living by the sweat of their brow. Under constant threat of storm and flood, communities rally together to build dikes that keep the rising tide at bay. But every citizen cons", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Spend any number of action points to draw an equal number of cards from the resource display and/or the resource deck and add them to your 1 This action allows you to draw resource cards and add them to your hand. 1 hand. If you want to draw cards from both the display and the deck, draw the cards f", "headingPath": "E) DRAW RESOURCE CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "n- el it ng er ieler m- ut \u0007 Check hand size: Each player with more than eight resource cards in hand chooses and discards cards until he has eight cards. \u0007 Place 3 new flood cards: Draw three flood cards from the flood deck and place one facedown on each of the three sea spaces on the main board. \u0007", "headingPath": "Turn of the Tide , I Work , II Upkeep , I Work , II Upkeep , III High Tide 3. Siegpunkte auszählen · Turn of the Tide · Work Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "-- 1 1 1 \u0007 Reset sheep market: Return all sheep on the sheep market to the supply, then place one sheep from the supply on each space of the sheep market showing a sheep icon. -1 -1 + 1 -1 -1 + 1 \u0007 Change first player: The player who is furthest along the dike track becomes the first player and take", "headingPath": "Upkeep", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "1 Place the main board in the middle of the table. 2 Shuffle all the fl ood cards together and place them facedown on the shown space of the main board to create the flood deck. Note: For your first game, return the flood card showing '6' to the box before creating the deck. 3 Each player chooses a ", "headingPath": "Goal of the Game · Setup (Shared)", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup (Shared) · Setup (Player) · 1. Hofausbauten mit Gameplay · Turn of the Tide , I Work , II Upkeep , I Work , II Upkeep , III High Tide 3. Siegpunkte auszählen", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Turn of the Tide , I Work , II Upkeep , I Work , II Upkeep , III High Tide 3. Siegpunkte auszählen · Turn of the Tide · Work Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Upkeep", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "E) DRAW RESOURCE CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "B) CONTRIBUTE TO THE DIKE · Asking for Help", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Winning the Game · Rule Changes for 2 Players", "sharpsignalDocId": 1064}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1064 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1064 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 0.89643 of 2520 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 6, 2026 08:32 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 Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	Winning the Game · Rule Changes for 2 Players	p.11	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 Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)		p.4	0.046898 (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 Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	Setup (Shared) · Setup (Player) · 1. Hofausbauten mit Gameplay · Turn of the Tide , I Work , II Upkeep , I Work , II Upkeep , III High Tide 3. Siegpunkte auszählen	p.4	0.046244 (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 Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)		p.1	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
#5	RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	E) DRAW RESOURCE CARDS	p.9	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 Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	Turn of the Tide , I Work , II Upkeep , I Work , II Upkeep , III High Tide 3. Siegpunkte auszählen · Turn of the Tide · Work Phase	p.5	0.03125 (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 Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	Upkeep	p.10	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
#8	RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	Goal of the Game · Setup (Shared)	p.3	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))	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 29 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 Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	Goal of the Game · Setup (Shared)	p.3	#8	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
#2	RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	Turn of the Tide , I Work , II Upkeep , I Work , II Upkeep , III High Tide 3. Siegpunkte auszählen · Turn of the Tide · Work Phase	p.5	#6	0.03125 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	Setup (Shared) · Setup (Player) · 1. Hofausbauten mit Gameplay · Turn of the Tide , I Work , II Upkeep , I Work , II Upkeep , III High Tide 3. Siegpunkte auszählen	p.4	#3	0.046244 (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 Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	B) CONTRIBUTE TO THE DIKE · Asking for Help	p.8	#11	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
#5	RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	E) DRAW RESOURCE CARDS	p.9	#5	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	Upkeep	p.10	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)		p.4	#2	0.046898 (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 Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	Winning the Game · Rule Changes for 2 Players	p.11	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	Setup (Shared) · Setup (Player) · 1. Hofausbauten mit Gameplay · Turn of the Tide , I Work , II Upkeep , I Work , II Upkeep , III High Tide 3. Siegpunkte auszählen	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	Turn of the Tide , I Work , II Upkeep , I Work , II Upkeep , III High Tide 3. Siegpunkte auszählen · Turn of the Tide · Work Phase	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	Upkeep	p.10	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	E) DRAW RESOURCE CARDS	p.9	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	B) CONTRIBUTE TO THE DIKE · Asking for Help	p.8	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Lowlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 1064)	Winning the Game · Rule Changes for 2 Players	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 235 ms · first delta 2200 ms · total 6288 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 235 ms · ask 6049 ms · gateway work 6288 ms · total 6288 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3541
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 793
tok/sec: 199.3 tok/sec — 793 output tokens in 3.978 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 33s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, 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 994), 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.