Ruling — Britannia

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Britanniabg-240-en-1e

The setup for a four-player game is as follows:

1. Place the round marker in the Round 1 space on the Timeline on the board.[1]

2. Randomly determine which player will control the red, green, blue, or yellow nations.[1]

3. Each player takes the pieces for the nations they control: Player 1 takes the yellow pieces (Dubliners, Norwegians, Romans, Romano-British, and Scots); Player 2 takes the green pieces (Caledonians, Danes, Jutes, and Welsh); Player 3 takes the red pieces (Brigantes, Irish, Norsemen, and Saxons); and Player 4 takes the blue pieces (Belgae, Picts, Angles, and Normans).[1]

4. Each player takes the Nation Card that corresponds to each nation they control.[1]

5. Place sixteen Roman infantry in the English Channel.[1]

6. Place one infantry in each of the starting areas as listed in the 'Game Setup' diagram.[1]

If players choose to allocate nations via bidding:

1. Randomly determine which player bids first, with bidding passing around the table to the $\text{left}$.[2]

2. Use one Nation Card from each group of nations being bid on.[2]

3. The first bidder selects a Nation Card representing the group they want to play, places it in front of them, and announces their bid (which may be zero, one, or more points).[2]

4. Place victory point tokens on the card to indicate the bid.[2]

5. The next player may select an unselected Nation Card (placing a bid of zero or more) or raise the bidding on the already-selected Nation Card by at least one.[2]

6. This continues until all players have passed.[2]

7. Write down the final bid numbers and place the victory point tokens used for bidding in the main pile with the rest of the victory point tokens.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook · p.4 · Population Markers · Round Marker · Game Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook · p.20 · Bidding for Sides

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 115 ms · ask 5466 ms · total 5582 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5582 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Each nation except the Romans has a Population Increase Marker. This marker is used to track the nation's progress on the Population Track. Designer's Note: Markers have been included for the Norwegians and Normans, even though they are not used in standard game because the game ends after Round 16.", "headingPath": "Population Markers · Round Marker · Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1073}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Some gaming groups or individual players believe that one combination of nations has a better chance of winning than others. To accommodate that point of view, players may wish to allocate nations by the bidding method described below. Note that players are still restricted to using the combination ", "headingPath": "Bidding for Sides", "sharpsignalDocId": 1073}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "In this phase, new armies may be placed on the board, depending on the number of areas that the nation controls. See pages 7-8 for more information on this phase. In this phase, the controlling player moves the current nation's armies, possibly initiating battles. See pages 8-10 for the rules govern", "headingPath": "Phase 1: Population Increase · Phase 2: Movement · Phase 3: Battles/Retreats · Phase 4: Raider Withdrawal · Phase 5: Overpopulation · End of the Game Round · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1073}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Britannia is a board game for three to five players that broadly depicts the wars in, and migrations to, Britain in the centuries from the Roman invasions to the Norman Conquest. Each player controls several nations. Seventeen nations are included in the game, each representing a people that lived i", "headingPath": "Game Over view · Game Objective · Number of Players", "sharpsignalDocId": 1073}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Finally place any invaders or raiders, including leaders (see 'Leaders', page 13), as listed for the nation in the timeline. If there are not enough armies available because all armies are already on board, the player may select which invader or raider units do not appear. In that case, move populat", "headingPath": "Placing inv aders and raiders · Phase II : Movement", "sharpsignalDocId": 1073}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "In this copy of Britannia you will find the following components: This Rulebook The Game Board 251 Unit Markers in four colors: red, blue, yellow, and green, representing Infantry, Cavalry, Leaders, Roman Forts, and Saxon Burhs. See page 20 for a detailed list of these markers. 17 Nation Cards 175 V", "headingPath": "Game Components · The Game Board · Islands and Coastal Areas", "sharpsignalDocId": 1073}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "At various points in the game, as indicated on the Timeline and the Nation Cards, some nations will receive leaders. A leader represents a single individual of extraordinary ability and authority. Some leaders start in a sea zone with invading armies, and these leaders may be placed in the sea areas", "headingPath": "Leaders", "sharpsignalDocId": 1073}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "A major way that nations gain more armies is by increasing their population, which is done by occupying areas. Exception: The Romans receive reinforcements instead of increasing their population. See 'Roman Reinforce ments' on page 14. During a nation's Population Increase Phase, the controlling pl", "headingPath": "Phase I : Population Increase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1073}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Population Markers · Round Marker · Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1073}, {"page": 20, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Bidding for Sides", "sharpsignalDocId": 1073}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1073 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1073 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 0.90524 of 1393 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 6, 2026 21:59 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 Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Population Markers · Round Marker · Game Setup	p.4	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Bidding for Sides	p.20	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
#3	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Phase 1: Population Increase · Phase 2: Movement · Phase 3: Battles/Retreats · Phase 4: Raider Withdrawal · Phase 5: Overpopulation · End of the Game Round · …	p.7	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
#4	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Game Over view · Game Objective · Number of Players	p.2	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
#5	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Placing inv aders and raiders · Phase II : Movement	p.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))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Game Components · The Game Board · Islands and Coastal Areas	p.2	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
#7	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Leaders	p.13	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
#8	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Phase I : Population Increase	p.7	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 73 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 Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Population Markers · Round Marker · Game Setup	p.4	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	The Romans · Straits	p.9	#12	0.025388 (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 Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Bidding for Sides	p.20	#26	0.012048 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Bidding for Sides	p.20	#2	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
#5	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Welcome to Britannia	p.2	#28	0.011628 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Roman Withdrawal in Round vi and Placement of Romano -British Armies · The Romans · Tips for Your First Game	p.16	#19	0.013333 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Leaders	p.13	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Two -Player Scenarios · Early Invaders vs. Inhabitants of Britain · Germanic Invaders vs. Inhabitants of Britain	p.19	#10	0.027778 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Population Markers · Round Marker · Game Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Britannia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1073)	Bidding for Sides	p.20	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 115 ms · first delta 3422 ms · total 5582 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 115 ms · ask 5466 ms · gateway work 5582 ms · total 5582 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3587
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 420
tok/sec: 201.4 tok/sec — 420 output tokens in 2.085 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 15s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, checked 6s 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: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 1003), 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.