Ruling — Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan

← Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan

You asked

How do I play?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khanbg-283948-en-1e

I looked through Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook · p.5 · Player Setup · About The Rules · Introduction · A Game Turn

for ted cts If you are already familiar with The Voyages of Marco Polo , then you can skip some sections of this rulebook, which are the same as the corresponding rules in the original game. Be sure to read any rules marked with the gold seal ; the rules and actions described in these sections are e

RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook · p.6 · Actions · How is an action carried out? · 1. Books · Sequence: · 2. Choose 1 of the available offers.

Keep the following in mind when resolving actions: You use only your own dice, not other players' dice. You must use as many dice as are shown on the action space you want to use. You can place your dice on either unoccupied spaces or occupied blue spaces, not occupied brown spaces. In order to use

RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook · p.14 · The First Player · Example:

Whenever a player uses the Travel action, the first player for the next round can change. If you use a Travel action space that is higher than or equal to any previously-used Travel action spaces, you become the first player for the next round. If you are the new first player, take the hourglass to

RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook · p.4 · Player Setup

1 Choose a color. Take the player board of that color and place it in front of you. 3 Take the 11 trading posts in your color and place 1 on each space with a trading post in the top-left corner of your board. 4 Draw 1 starting contract and place it faceup on one of the two active contract spaces on

RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook · p.16 · 1. Retrieve all dice · 2. Place new offer tiles · 3. Award city and character bonuses · 4. Add new city cards to the action area · 5. Roll all dice, resolving compensation if necessary · Game Round · …

Retrieve all your dice from the board and place them in front of you. Do not roll them yet. Return all black dice to the game board. Return the 3 offer tiles currently on the game board to the box. Take the topmost tiles from the offer tile piles and place them on the empty spaces. Since the offer t

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome

ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below

warm abstain

this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)

corpus profile

live,vps

answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)

gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70

timings

search 201 ms · ask 1633 ms · total 1836 ms

single-flight (PR-5)

queued 0 ms · generation 1836 ms

retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read

[{"page": 5, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "for ted cts If you are already familiar with The Voyages of Marco Polo , then you can skip some sections of this rulebook, which are the same as the corresponding rules in the original game. Be sure to read any rules marked with the gold seal ; the rules and actions described in these sections are e", "headingPath": "Player Setup · About The Rules · Introduction · A Game Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Keep the following in mind when resolving actions: You use only your own dice, not other players' dice. You must use as many dice as are shown on the action space you want to use. You can place your dice on either unoccupied spaces or occupied blue spaces, not occupied brown spaces. In order to use ", "headingPath": "Actions · How is an action carried out? · 1. Books · Sequence: · 2. Choose 1 of the available offers.", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Whenever a player uses the Travel action, the first player for the next round can change. If you use a Travel action space that is higher than or equal to any previously-used Travel action spaces, you become the first player for the next round. If you are the new first player, take the hourglass to ", "headingPath": "The First Player · Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "1 Choose a color. Take the player board of that color and place it in front of you. 3 Take the 11 trading posts in your color and place 1 on each space with a trading post in the top-left corner of your board. 4 Draw 1 starting contract and place it faceup on one of the two active contract spaces on", "headingPath": "Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Retrieve all your dice from the board and place them in front of you. Do not roll them yet. Return all black dice to the game board. Return the 3 offer tiles currently on the game board to the box. Take the topmost tiles from the offer tile piles and place them on the empty spaces. Since the offer t", "headingPath": "1. Retrieve all dice · 2. Place new offer tiles · 3. Award city and character bonuses · 4. Add new city cards to the action area · 5. Roll all dice, resolving compensation if necessary · Game Round · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The Travel action lets you move your figure on the board. The Travel action has 3 separate action spaces. Because these actions are separate, even if you have already used 1 of them this round, you can still use the other two with dice of your color later in the same round. Based on the space used, ", "headingPath": "+4. Travel · Resolving the Travel action · 1. Place your dice. · even if the action space would allow for more . · 2. Pay the action space costs. · 3. Pay the travel costs. · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The game ends after 5 rounds have been completed. The number of offer tiles remaining shows how many rounds are left. The final round of the game will have the last offer tiles on the board. During final scoring, you score points for the following: For each improved guild seal shown on your goal car", "headingPath": "End of Game · Final Scoring · Tiebreakers · 3 Players · 2 Players · Start of a New Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Blue action spaces can be occupied by multiple players and multiple dice. Brown action spaces can be occupied only by 1 player and 1 die each round. If you want to use an occupied blue action space, you must pay to do so . You must pay a number of coins equal to the die value of the lowest-value die", "headingPath": "Using an occupied action space · Black Dice · Compensation for Low Die Rolls · Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 372}]

citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show

[]

boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)

no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 372 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true

base rulebook doc 372 boosted

answered-before recall

no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough

similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)

debug row recorded

Sep 8, 2026 17:57 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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	Player Setup · About The Rules · Introduction · A Game Turn	p.5	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	Actions · How is an action carried out? · 1. Books · Sequence: · 2. Choose 1 of the available offers.	p.6	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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	The First Player · Example:	p.14	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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	Player Setup	p.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))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	1. Retrieve all dice · 2. Place new offer tiles · 3. Award city and character bonuses · 4. Add new city cards to the action area · 5. Roll all dice, resolving compensation if necessary · Game Round · …	p.16	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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	+4. Travel · Resolving the Travel action · 1. Place your dice. · even if the action space would allow for more . · 2. Pay the action space costs. · 3. Pay the travel costs. · …	p.8	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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	End of Game · Final Scoring · Tiebreakers · 3 Players · 2 Players · Start of a New Round	p.15	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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	Using an occupied action space · Black Dice · Compensation for Low Die Rolls · Example:	p.14	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 20 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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	The First Player · Example:	p.14	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	Actions · How is an action carried out? · 1. Books · Sequence: · 2. Choose 1 of the available offers.	p.6	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	Outpost Bonus · Special Rules	p.9	#17	0.012987 (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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	Example:	p.11	#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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	Travel action example: · 5. Contracts · Additional Rules · Example: · Special Rules	p.10	#13	0.013699 (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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	2. Choose 1 of the available offers. · +2. Khan ′ s Favor · Special Rules · +3. Guild Seals	p.7	#12	0.013889 (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 Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	4. Move your figure and place 1 trading post. · Additional Rules	p.9	#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
#8	RULEBOOK Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan — Rulebook (corpus doc 372)	Player Setup	p.4	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 201 ms · first delta 1731 ms · total 1836 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 201 ms · ask 1633 ms · gateway work 1836 ms · total 1836 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3104
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 9
tok/sec: 176.5 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.051 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 25s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 4s 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: ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
abstain rationale: I don't have enough information.
BOILERPLATE, not reasoning: this is the answerer's fixed abstention phrase, the same sentence it emits whenever it declines. It records THAT the answerer declined and never why — no per-ruling reason was captured, because none was sent. Hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped

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 302), 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.