Ruling — Rivals for Catan

← Rivals for Catan

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Rivals for Catanbg-66056-en-1e

To play the game, follow this procedure:

Setup

1. Each player rolls the dice.[1]

2. The high roller draws the 3 top cards from one of the 4 draw stacks.[1]

3. The other player draws the 3 top cards from a different draw stack; these cards form the player's hand.[1]

4. Players should always conceal the cards in their hand from their opponent.[1]

Turn Sequence

Players alternate taking turns as the active player, executing the following sequence:

1. Roll the production die and the event die at the beginning of your turn.[1]

2. Rolling the Dice: Roll both dice and resolve the results.[1]

3. Taking Your Action Phase: In any order and as often as desired, you may play cards and trade resources.[1]

* To play a settlement/city expansion (green text box), place it on an empty building site adjacent to a settlement/city and pay the indicated building costs.[2]

* To play an action card (yellow text box), read the text to your opponent, resolve the action, and place the card face up on a discard pile used by both players.[2]

4. Replenishing Your Hand: Check the number of cards in your hand and, if need be, draw or discard one or more cards.[1]

5. Exchanging a Card from Your Hand: If need be, exchange a card from your hand.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Rivals for Catan — Rulebook · p.6 · THE GAME BEGINS · GAME TURN · 1. Rolling the Dice

[2] RULEBOOK Rivals for Catan — Rulebook · p.7 · 2. Taking Your Action Phase · a) Playing the Cards in Your Hand · Building Costs · Action Cards · Example for Paying the Building Costs

That's the page. Back to 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 86 ms · ask 6938 ms · total 38059 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 31033 ms · generation 7026 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 7, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "An action is playing a card or trading. The number of actions you may take is only limited by your available cards and resources. During your action phase, you may play cards from your hand. At the bottom of each card is either a yellow or a green text box. A card with a green text field is a 'settl", "headingPath": "2. Taking Your Action Phase · a) Playing the Cards in Your Hand · Building Costs · Action Cards · Example for Paying the Building Costs", "sharpsignalDocId": 1044}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.045335, "snippet": "Event T/r.a/a.a/d.a/e.a S/h.a/i.a/p.a/s.a R/a.a/c.a/e.a The player who owns the most trade ships receives any 1 resource of his choice. In case of a tie, each player receives any 1 resource of his choice (each must have at least 1 trade ship). Event PLAYING THE THEME GAMES All the rules you already ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1044}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.045055, "snippet": "All the rules you already learned also apply in the Theme Games. However, the Theme Games add some new rules that are described below. Let's begin with the general additional rules that always apply when playing the Theme Sets. The special rules for the three individual sets will follow afterwards. ", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE THEME GAMES · 1. Event Card Stack · 2. Face-up Expansion Card Stack", "sharpsignalDocId": 1044}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.043898, "snippet": "Each player rolls the dice. The high roller is the starting player and draws the 3 top cards from one of the 4 draw stacks. Then the other player draws the 3 top cards from a different draw stack. These cards form the player's hand . You should always conceal the cards in your hand from your opponen", "headingPath": "THE GAME BEGINS · GAME TURN · 1. Rolling the Dice", "sharpsignalDocId": 1044}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.04311, "snippet": "The Theme Sets introduce cards that have special requirements that must be met before you can play them. The requirements may vary significantly-such as requiring the trade advantage or strength advantage or requiring that another building must already be in your principality. You may use a card onl", "headingPath": "4. Requirements · 5. Placing Cards Under the Right Stack · End of the Game · 1. The Era of Gold · 2. The Era of Turmoil", "sharpsignalDocId": 1044}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.042735, "snippet": "First you are going to be guided through the game setup. Sort the cards using their backs (as shown at the right). The cards used in the Introductory Game are called the ' Basic Set .' These cards are also used in each of the 3 Theme Games. The other cards are used in the Theme Games as indicated by", "headingPath": "Initial Steps . . . · A Little Bit of Sorting · Your Principality", "sharpsignalDocId": 1044}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "That is, you either place them both at the bottom of the same stack or at the bottom of 2 different draw stacks. (The parenthesis “(under matching draw stacks of their own)” refers to the Tournament Game.) All your opponent knows is under which draw stack(s) you placed the cards. Give the remaining ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1044}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "When you don't want to-or can't-take another action, you can end your turn. But first check to see whether you have as many cards in your hand as you are allowed to hold.  At the end of your turn, you may have no more than 3 cards in your hand. In addition, you may hold 1 additional card for each c", "headingPath": "3. Replenishing Your Hand · 4. Exchanging a Card from Your Hand · Select a specific card. Pay", "sharpsignalDocId": 1044}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE GAME BEGINS · GAME TURN · 1. Rolling the Dice", "sharpsignalDocId": 1044}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. Taking Your Action Phase · a) Playing the Cards in Your Hand · Building Costs · Action Cards · Example for Paying the Building Costs", "sharpsignalDocId": 1044}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1044 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1044 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 0.90313 of 1022 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 02:58 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 Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)	2. Taking Your Action Phase · a) Playing the Cards in Your Hand · Building Costs · Action Cards · Example for Paying the Building Costs	p.7	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
#2	RULEBOOK Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)		p.14	0.045335 (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 Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)	PLAYING THE THEME GAMES · 1. Event Card Stack · 2. Face-up Expansion Card Stack	p.14	0.045055 (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 Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)	THE GAME BEGINS · GAME TURN · 1. Rolling the Dice	p.6	0.043898 (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 Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)	4. Requirements · 5. Placing Cards Under the Right Stack · End of the Game · 1. The Era of Gold · 2. The Era of Turmoil	p.16	0.04311 (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 Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)	Initial Steps . . . · A Little Bit of Sorting · Your Principality	p.2	0.042735 (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 Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)		p.20	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 Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)	3. Replenishing Your Hand · 4. Exchanging a Card from Your Hand · Select a specific card. Pay	p.10	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

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 60 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 Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)	THE GAME BEGINS · GAME TURN · 1. Rolling the Dice	p.6	#4	0.043898 (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 Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)		p.23	#9	0.029116 (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 Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)	Gustav the Librarian (1): · Mineral Mining (2): · Three-Field System (2): · Chief Cannoneer (2): · City Expansions · (13 cards) · …	p.26	#17	0.025461 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)		p.23	#34	0.021605 (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 Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)		p.18	#19	0.025238 (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 Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)	(8 cards) · Gudrun, Terror of the Seas (1): · Merchant (2): · Reiner the Herald (1): · Extraordinary Sites	p.21	#12	0.02681 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)		p.25	#15	0.026145 (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 Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)	2. Taking Your Action Phase · a) Playing the Cards in Your Hand · Building Costs · Action Cards · Example for Paying the Building Costs	p.7	#1	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)	THE GAME BEGINS · GAME TURN · 1. Rolling the Dice	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Rivals for Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 1044)	2. Taking Your Action Phase · a) Playing the Cards in Your Hand · Building Costs · Action Cards · Example for Paying the Building Costs	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 86 ms · first delta 5355 ms · total 38059 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 31033 ms · retrieval 86 ms · ask 6938 ms · gateway work 7026 ms · total 38059 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4018
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 314
tok/sec: 200.1 tok/sec — 314 output tokens in 1.569 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 7s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 24h, 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 974), 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.