Ruling — Merlin

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Merlinbg-230933-en-1e

A game of Merlin is played over 6 game rounds.[1] The objective is to accumulate the most victory points by completing missions, repelling traitors, and utilizing interim scorings.[2]

Setup

1. Place the game board in the center of the playing area.[3]

2. Put the game round marker on the first space of the game round track.[3]

3. Place Merlin on the Dragon Principality's space of the rondel (black).[3]

4. Assemble the Grail and Excalibur and place them on their assigned spaces.[3]

5. Sort flags, construction material, and shields, and assign them to their corresponding principalities.[3]

6. Place apples on their designated space.[3]

7. Shuffle mission cards, place the deck face down, and reveal the top three cards face up.[3]

8. Each player chooses a color and takes a castle board, 1 knight, 4 henchmen, 6 influence counters, 3 Merlin's staffs, 7 manors, 1 scoring marker, 1 100-point-marker, 3 personal dice, 1 apple, and 1 Merlin die.[3]

9. Players place scoring markers on the '0/100' space and stack manors next to the environs.[3]

10. Mix traitor tiles face-down and place them in three separate stacks on the game board.[4]

11. Construct the environs by mixing terrain tiles face-down and arranging them in rows of six face-up tiles enclosed by two terrain frames.[4]

12. Randomly select a starting player to take the first player marker.[4]

13. Shuffle starting tiles and deal one to each player; players place their knight on the designated principality space of the action rondel and take the flag, shield, and construction material of that principality for their castle board.[4]

14. Players place one influence marker on the depicted principality and return starting tiles to the box.[4]

15. Each player takes 3 traitors from the game board and attaches them to their castle board.[4]

16. Each player draws a hand of 4 mission cards.[4]

17. All players roll their 4 dice and place them on their castle board, re-rolling if any triplets or quadruplets are rolled.[4]

Gameplay

1. The game begins with the First Player's turn, followed by other players clockwise.[1]

2. During a turn, the active player selects one die from their castle board and places it in the center of the game board without changing the number of pips.[1]

3. The player moves their knight, or Merlin, on the action rondel:

* For a player's die: Move the knight a number of spaces equal to the pips on the die.[1] A player may expend an apple to change the die's facing to any side (1-6) and move the corresponding figure by that new number of spaces.[1]

* For the Merlin die: Advance Merlin a number of spaces equal to the pips on the Merlin die, choosing either clockwise or counter-clockwise direction.[1]

4. The player performs the action of the space where the movement ends.[1] Actions include:

* Principality spaces: Place a henchman (Lady-in-waiting, Shield-bearer, Flag-bearer, or Builder) on the space; if occupied by another player's henchman, that henchman returns to its owner's castle board.[5] Henchmen then "do their duty" based on their type: Builders claim construction material, Flag-bearers claim flags, Shield-bearers claim shields, and Lady-in-waitings place influence counters.[6]

* Victory point spaces: Gain victory points based on the specific type (shield, flag, construction material, or influence counter).[6]

* Influence spaces: Claim a resource from a principality where the player has at least one influence counter and move it to their castle board, or send a henchman to a principality with an influence counter to perform their duty.[6]

5. A player may choose to expend a Merlin's staff token to repeat their action immediately.[5]

6. A player may complete up to one mission card per turn.[5]

7. After the active player completes their action (or forfeits it), their turn ends.[5]

8. A player may not skip a turn; they must select a die and move a figure, though they may forfeit the action of the space.[5]

9. A game round ends after each player has taken 4 turns and all dice are in the center of the game board.[1][7]

**Scoring and End of

[1] RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook · p.4 · Playing the Game · Details of a game round: · One of the player's personal dice · The apples · The white Merlin die

[2] RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook · p.3 · Game Concept and Object of the Game

[3] RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook · p.2 · Setting up the Game · Player materials:

[4] RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook · p.3 · Player materials:

[5] RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook · p.4 · The staffs of Merlin

[6] RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook · p.5 · Depending on which henchman the player has chosen, she or he now ' does their duty ' :

[7] RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook · p.8 · End of a game round: · Preparing the next game round: · Scoring:

That settles it — whose turn was it?

🔧 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 94 ms · ask 6514 ms · total 10294 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 3684 ms · generation 6610 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "A game of Merlin is played over 6 game rounds. Each game round begins with the First Player taking a turn, followed by the other players in a clockwise direction. During their turn, the active player selects one of their dice and moves their knight, or Merlin, a number of spaces on the action rondel", "headingPath": "Playing the Game · Details of a game round: · One of the player's personal dice · The apples · The white Merlin die", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "After all players have had four turns, the game round ends. All of the dice should be in the center of the game board at this time. The number of played game rounds determines what happens next. After the… first game round: second game round: & third game round: fourth game round: & fifth game round", "headingPath": "End of a game round: · Preparing the next game round: · Scoring:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "Place the game board in the center of the playing area. Put the game round marker on the first space of the game round track. Merlin starts on the Dragon Principality's space of the rondel (black). Assemble the Grail and Excalibur and put them on their assigned spaces. Sort the flags, pieces of cons", "headingPath": "Setting up the Game · Player materials:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Mix the traitor tiles face-down and place them on the indicated spaces on the game board in three separate face-down stacks. The environs: Next to the game board, construct the environs - a closed surface of terrain tiles bordered by the two terrain frames - in the following fashion: Mix all of the ", "headingPath": "Player materials:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "King Arthur is looking for a worthy successor to his throne. Together with Merlin, he seeks the best candidate from among the Knights of the Round Table. Each player assumes the role of a Knight of the Round Table and attempts to win King Arthur's favor. By using their dice, the players move Merlin ", "headingPath": "Game Concept and Object of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The active player may resolve up to one of their mission cards at any time during their turn. Each mission card depicts the requirements needed on the upper left-hand side of the card. If the player meets all requirements of a card, they gain the victory points as shown in the shield in the upper ri", "headingPath": "Mission Cards:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "After the player has chosen an ability, they place one of their seals on it. This indicates that the ability is activated for the rest of the game. Once a player has activated 4 abilities on their extra board, they can't activate any more. Relocating seals that have already been placed is not allowe", "headingPath": "The player learns an ability, depending on the card: · +1 victory point (x4) · Deployment to any principality (x4) · Builder: Build two manors · Flag-bearer: Victory points for any elements · Shield-bearer: Repel traitor · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "If the player moved Merlin, they may choose to expend one of their Merlin's staff tokens, removing it from their castle board and returning it to the game box. If they do so, they can then repeat their action for the turn immediately. Additionally, a player may complete up to one of their mission ca", "headingPath": "The staffs of Merlin", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing the Game · Details of a game round: · One of the player's personal dice · The apples · The white Merlin die", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Concept and Object of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setting up the Game · Player materials:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player materials:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The staffs of Merlin", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Depending on which henchman the player has chosen, she or he now ' does their duty ' :", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "End of a game round: · Preparing the next game round: · Scoring:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1155}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1155 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1155 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 0.90412 of 3400 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:06 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 Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Playing the Game · Details of a game round: · One of the player's personal dice · The apples · The white Merlin die	p.4	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	End of a game round: · Preparing the next game round: · Scoring:	p.8	0.048387 (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 Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Setting up the Game · Player materials:	p.2	0.046642 (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 Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Player materials:	p.3	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
#5	RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Game Concept and Object of the Game	p.3	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
#6	RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Mission Cards:	p.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))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	The player learns an ability, depending on the card: · +1 victory point (x4) · Deployment to any principality (x4) · Builder: Build two manors · Flag-bearer: Victory points for any elements · Shield-bearer: Repel traitor · …	p.11	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 Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	The staffs of Merlin	p.4	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 17 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 Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Playing the Game · Details of a game round: · One of the player's personal dice · The apples · The white Merlin die	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 Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Player materials:	p.3	#4	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
#3	RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	1 st Category: Traitors	p.8	#9	0.014493 (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 Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	The staffs of Merlin	p.4	#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
#5	RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Depending on which henchman the player has chosen, she or he now ' does their duty ' :	p.5	#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
#6	RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Game Concept and Object of the Game	p.3	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	End of a game round: · Preparing the next game round: · Scoring:	p.8	#2	0.048387 (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 Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Setting up the Game · Player materials:	p.2	#3	0.046642 (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 Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Playing the Game · Details of a game round: · One of the player's personal dice · The apples · The white Merlin die	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Game Concept and Object of the Game	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Setting up the Game · Player materials:	p.2	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Player materials:	p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	The staffs of Merlin	p.4	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	Depending on which henchman the player has chosen, she or he now ' does their duty ' :	p.5	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Merlin — Rulebook (corpus doc 1155)	End of a game round: · Preparing the next game round: · Scoring:	p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 94 ms · first delta 1443 ms · total 10294 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 3684 ms · retrieval 94 ms · ask 6514 ms · gateway work 6610 ms · total 10294 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2870
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 201.9 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 5.073 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 42s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 2s 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 1085), 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.