Ruling — Caylus Magna Carta

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Caylus Magna Cartabg-27364-en-1e

The goal of the game is to earn the most prestige points by building the King's castle and developing the city at its foot.[1] The game is divided into turns, and each turn consists of 6 phases.[2]

Setup

1. A player takes the neutral cards (pink background) and places the Peddler card on the table.[3]

2. The player shuffles the remaining pink cards and places 1 card (2 player games), 2 cards (3 player games) or 3 cards (4 player games) to the left of the Peddler to start the road.[3]

3. The remaining pink cards are set aside.[3]

4. The Provost pawn is placed on the Peddler card.[3]

5. Prestige cards (blue background) are set aside, face up.[3]

6. The cards featuring the bridge and the castle are placed next to the road.[3]

7. Prestige point tokens are sorted by value and placed next to the castle (removing 1 token of each value in 3-player games, or 2 tokens of each value in 2-player games).[3]

8. Each player chooses a color and takes the corresponding cards and pawns.[3]

9. Players shuffle their cards, pile them face down (green side showing), and take 3 cards from their pile (players may discard their hand once to take 3 new cards).[3]

10. Each player takes 2 food cubes, 2 wood cubes, and 4 deniers.[3]

11. The first player is chosen randomly and takes the first player card.[3]

Turn Phases

Phase 1: Collecting income

1. Each player receives 2 deniers from the stock.[2]

2. Each player receives 1 denier per residential building (green background) they own along the road.[2]

3. If a player has built the Hotel, they receive 1 additional denier from the stock.[2]

Phase 2: Actions

Players, starting with the first player and moving clockwise, choose one of the following actions:

1. Pay 1 denier to the stock to take the first card from their pile and add it to their hand (if the pile is empty, the discard pile is shuffled to create a new pile).[2]

2. Pay 1 denier to the stock to discard all cards in their hand and take the same number of new cards from their pile.[2]

3. Pay 1 denier to the stock and place 1 worker on a card along the road (there can only be 1 worker per card; workers cannot be placed on residential or prestige buildings).[2]

4. Take a card from their hand, pay its cost to the stock, and add the building to the end of the road.[2]

5. Pass: A player places their passing marker on the space of the bridge with the lowest number.[4] The first player to pass receives 1 denier from the stock.[4] Once a player passes, they cannot take further actions for the remainder of the phase.[4] This phase lasts until all players have passed.[4]

Phase 3: The Provost's move

1. Following the passing order of phase 2 (increasing numbers on the bridge), players may move the Provost along the road by paying deniers.[4]

2. The price is 1 denier per card, and each player may pay up to 3 deniers.[4]

3. The Provost may not move beyond the limits of the road.[4]

4. This phase ends once everyone has had an opportunity to move the Provost.[4]

Phase 4: Effects of the buildings

1. Buildings are activated in order, starting from the beginning of the road up to the card the Provost is occupying.[5]

2. A building without a worker is not activated.[5]

3. A building with a worker has a primary effect (benefiting the worker's owner) and a secondary effect (benefiting the building owner).[5]

4. If a player places a worker on their own building, they only receive the primary effect.[5]

5. Buildings beyond the Provost's current location have no effect.[5]

6. Players receive their workers back.[5]

Phase 5: The Castle

1. Following the passing order, players may optionally offer batches to the castle.[6]

2. A batch consists of 3 resources: 1 food, 1 wood, and 1 stone.[6]

3. Players give the cubes to the stock and take as many point tokens as they have given batches.[6]

4. Tokens are taken in this order: Dungeon (red), Walls (orange), and then Towers (

[1] RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook · p.1 · Caylus : Magna Carta - Standard rules · Thanks · Once upon a time... · Goal of the game

[2] RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook · p.3 · Game principles · Progress of the game · Phase 1: Collecting income · Phase 2 : Actions · A) Pick a card · B) Replace all the cards in your hand · …

[3] RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook · p.1 · Setup

[4] RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook · p.4 · E) Construct a prestige building ► · F) Passing · Phase 3: The Provost's move ►

[5] RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook · p.4 · Phase 4: Effects of the buildings

[6] RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook · p.5 · Phase 5 : The Castle · Phase 6 : End of the turn

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 111 ms · ask 17027 ms · total 28420 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 11280 ms · generation 17140 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 1, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "A player takes the neutral cards (pink background) and places the Peddler card on the table (see the following page). Then, the player shuffles the remaining pink cards and places 1 card (2 player games), 2 cards (3 player games) or 3 cards (4 player games) to the left of the Peddler. Thus, the play", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1249}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Set up: To start the road (here, in a 4 player game), the peddler ( D ) is placed on the table. Then, 3 ran -dom neutral cards are placed on the peddler's left ( A, B, C ). Thus, the road will start from A to D, and will lengthen with each building built by the players. The bridge ( E ) and the cast", "headingPath": "Game principles", "sharpsignalDocId": 1249}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "► Be careful: In this game, gold is a wild resource . A cube of gold equals a cube of any type, no mat -ter if it is used to build a building or a part of the Castle (see below). White cubes stand for cubes of any kind (including gold) . The game is divided into turns. Each turn is divided into 6 ph", "headingPath": "Game principles · Progress of the game · Phase 1: Collecting income · Phase 2 : Actions · A) Pick a card · B) Replace all the cards in your hand · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1249}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "The player chooses a prestige building among those that are still available, pays its cost (indi -cated in the top left-hand corner of the card) to the stock, and places the prestige building on top of Example: Green has built a market building on the road. On their turn, Red decides to place a work", "headingPath": "E) Construct a prestige building ►", "sharpsignalDocId": 1249}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030886, "snippet": "► A game by William Attia - Illustrations by Arnaud Demaegd - Graphic design by Cyril Demaegd FAQ & forum : http://www.ystari.com Welcome to the standard rules for Caylus: Magna Carta. In comparison with the beginner rules, this ver -sion introduces new subtleties to make your games even more exciti", "headingPath": "Caylus : Magna Carta - Standard rules · Thanks · Once upon a time... · Goal of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1249}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "one of their own residential buildings . From now on, this residential building does not yield any income during phase 1. NB: It is impossible to build a prestige building if you do not own any residential buildings. The player puts their passing marker on the space of the bridge with the lowest num", "headingPath": "E) Construct a prestige building ► · F) Passing · Phase 3: The Provost's move ►", "sharpsignalDocId": 1249}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Following the passing order , the players may of -fer batches to the castle (if they want to). A batch is composed of 3 resources: 1 food, 1 wood and 1 stone . Each player gives the stock their cubes accordingly and takes as many point tokens as they have given batches. Prestige point tokens are tak", "headingPath": "Phase 5 : The Castle · Phase 6 : End of the turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 1249}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "3 deniers.. Secondary: Buy 1 gold from the stock with 2 deniers. Primary: T ake 2 cubes of the type produced by the building (food for the Farm, wood for the Sawmill, stone for the Quarry) from the stock. Secondary: Take 1 cube of the type produced by the building (food for the Farm, wood for the Sa", "headingPath": "Detail of the Buildings · Standard rules buildings", "sharpsignalDocId": 1249}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Caylus : Magna Carta - Standard rules · Thanks · Once upon a time... · Goal of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1249}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game principles · Progress of the game · Phase 1: Collecting income · Phase 2 : Actions · A) Pick a card · B) Replace all the cards in your hand · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1249}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1249}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "E) Construct a prestige building ► · F) Passing · Phase 3: The Provost's move ►", "sharpsignalDocId": 1249}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase 4: Effects of the buildings", "sharpsignalDocId": 1249}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase 5 : The Castle · Phase 6 : End of the turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 1249}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1249 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1249 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 0.88999 of 3218 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:12 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 Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Setup	p.1	0.032787 (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 Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Game principles	p.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))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Game principles · Progress of the game · Phase 1: Collecting income · Phase 2 : Actions · A) Pick a card · B) Replace all the cards in your hand · …	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
#4	RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	E) Construct a prestige building ►	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
#5	RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Caylus : Magna Carta - Standard rules · Thanks · Once upon a time... · Goal of the game	p.1	0.030886 (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 Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	E) Construct a prestige building ► · F) Passing · Phase 3: The Provost's move ►	p.4	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
#7	RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Phase 5 : The Castle · Phase 6 : End of the turn	p.5	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 Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Detail of the Buildings · Standard rules buildings	p.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))	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 11 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 Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Setup	p.1	#1	0.032787 (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 Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	E) Construct a prestige building ►	p.3	#4	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 Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Phase 5 : The Castle · Phase 6 : End of the turn	p.5	#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
#4	RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	E) Construct a prestige building ► · F) Passing · Phase 3: The Provost's move ►	p.4	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Caylus : Magna Carta - Standard rules · Thanks · Once upon a time... · Goal of the game	p.1	#5	0.030886 (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 Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Phase 4: Effects of the buildings	p.4	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Game principles · Progress of the game · Phase 1: Collecting income · Phase 2 : Actions · A) Pick a card · B) Replace all the cards in your hand · …	p.3	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Game principles	p.2	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Caylus : Magna Carta - Standard rules · Thanks · Once upon a time... · Goal of the game	p.1	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Game principles · Progress of the game · Phase 1: Collecting income · Phase 2 : Actions · A) Pick a card · B) Replace all the cards in your hand · …	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Setup	p.1	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	E) Construct a prestige building ► · F) Passing · Phase 3: The Provost's move ►	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Phase 4: Effects of the buildings	p.4	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Caylus Magna Carta — Rulebook (corpus doc 1249)	Phase 5 : The Castle · Phase 6 : End of the turn	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 111 ms · first delta 1694 ms · total 28420 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 11280 ms · retrieval 111 ms · ask 17027 ms · gateway work 17140 ms · total 28420 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3460
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 66.7 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 15.341 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 50s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 24h, 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 1179), 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.