Ruling — Formaggio

← Formaggio

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Formaggiobg-430533-en-1e

Standard Setup:

1. Find the 4 Inserts that match your player count, using side I for your first game.[1][2]

2. Slot the Inserts into the matching Board quadrants and return unused Inserts to the box.[1][2]

3. Fit the 4 Board quadrants together in any configuration.[1][2]

4. Place the Resource Tile in the center of the Board in a random orientation.[1][2]

5. Orient the Board so 1 quadrant faces each player (sit facing opposite quadrants for 2-player games, or in a square formation for 4-player games).[1][2]

6. Randomly place Wine Tiles on the tables of matching color in the Vignode Board quadrant, ignoring specific spaces in 1-3 player games and returning unused tiles to the box.[1][2]

7. Place the Gondolas in the Venezia Board quadrant's tray and put Gondolas on the spaces in the canals.[1][2]

8. Shuffle the Order Cards.[1][2]

9. Place roughly half the cards and Resource Tokens in each Resource Tray, positioning them on opposite ends of the table so everyone can reach a tray.[1][2]

10. Each player takes 15 wood Cheese Tokens and 3 Workers of their chosen player color.[1][2]

11. Take a Soft, Hard, and Blu Worker Base and attach your Workers to them.[1][2]

12. Each player takes a random Player Board.[1][2]

13. Determine starting Resources by looking at the Resource Tile: take 2 Resources matching the Resource in the quadrant to your left, and 1 Resource matching the quadrant opposite you.[1][2]

14. Place Structures in the space to the left of your Structure abilities, Livestock in the pasture, and Fruit in your basket.[1][2]

15. Place Orders face-up to the left of your Player Board.[1]

Solo Mode Setup:

1. Set your Difficulty Level by selecting a Corporation Board and Board quadrants.[3]

2. Place the Corporation Board beside your Player Board.[3]

3. Place the Corporation's Cheese Tokens on the Corporation Board's cheese spaces.[3]

4. Form a single deck of all the Order cards.[3]

5. For experienced players, instead of the Structure Tile draft, draw 4 tiles and keep 1, then draw 3 and keep 1, then draw 2 and keep 1, and finally draw 1.[3]

Advanced Mode Setup:

1. Draft Structure Tiles by having each player take 4 random tiles, keeping 1 and passing the rest to the left until everyone has chosen 4 tiles.[4]

2. Place any number of chosen tiles over the ones printed on your Player Board and return unwanted tiles to the box.[4]

Limited Edition Setup:

1. Place the Axle Base center of the play area.[5]

2. Place the Neoprene Mat on the Axle Base so that the Axle Base pokes through the hole in the mat.[5]

3. Orient the corners of the mat to point at the players.[5]

4. Assemble the Board on the Neoprene Mat.[5]

5. Fit the Twist-Lock Axle into the Axle Base, then press down and twist clockwise to secure the Board in place.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Formaggio — Rulebook · p.3 · Upgrade Your Game

[2] RULEBOOK Formaggio — Rulebook · p.3

[3] RULEBOOK Formaggio — Rulebook · p.9 · Solo Mode · Setup · Gameplay

[4] RULEBOOK Formaggio — Rulebook · p.3 · Advanced Mode

[5] RULEBOOK Formaggio — Rulebook · p.2 · Seasons · Assembling the Lazy Susan · Upgrade Your Game

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 200 ms · ask 5722 ms · total 5924 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5924 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Each Insert I shows a player count and a numeral (I/II). Find the 4 Inserts that match your player count. Use side I for your first game. Experienced players may use any combination of I and II sides, or the additional 4-player setup printed on the Boards. Slot the Inserts into the matching Board qu", "headingPath": "Upgrade Your Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1236}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "54 Each Insert I shows a player count and a numeral (I/II). Find the 4 Inserts that match your player count. Use side I for your first game. Experienced players may use any combination of I and II sides, or the additional 4-player setup printed on the Boards. Slot the Inserts into the matching Board", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1236}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045921, "snippet": "As factories rise, your small creamery must now compete against mass production. Can you preserve tradition, and avoid disappearing in the shadow of the corporate cheese manufacturers to secure your place in cheesemaking history? In this mode, you play against the Corporation. Follow all the standar", "headingPath": "Solo Mode · Setup · Gameplay", "sharpsignalDocId": 1236}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "When a player places their final Cheese Token, they must declare that game-end is triggered. When all players finish the current turn, the game ends. Remove Workers from the Board. Total the scores for each Venue and Resource. Score 1 Prestige Point for every 2 unused Resources. The player with the ", "headingPath": "Game-End · Clarification: · Plan Ahead! · Focus on a Few Things · Complete Orders Strategically", "sharpsignalDocId": 1236}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "FairgroundsFairgrounds Dairy BarnDairy Barn Wedding VenueWedding VenueRefining RoomRefining Room . To determine your starting Resources, look at the Resource Tile . Take 2 Resources matching the Resource in the quadrant to your left, and 1 Resource matching the quadrant opposite you. • Structures go", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1236}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Starting Resources 1 Use Fruit to make Jam and Fruited Cheeses to add a twist to traditional cheese flavors. Fruit gives you access to some cheese spaces that are otherwise blocked. 2 When gaining Fruit Tokens, place them in your Player Board's basket. To make cheese in a space with a Fruited Cheese", "headingPath": "Regioni · Livestock · Clarifications:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1236}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "At the start of each turn, all players Retrieve Workers . Then, all players simultaneously take actions in the quadrant that is currently facing them. Using your available Workers , you may perform ONE Gather Resources action, and ONE Make Cheese action in any order. When everyone is ready, rotate t", "headingPath": "Turn Structure · Retrieve Workers · Clarifications:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1236}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "20 When this Season is facing you, gain 1 of the Resource shown. Structure Abilities Starting Resources 22 33 44 55 12 HARD CHEESE BR O N Z E BLU CHEESE SI LV E R SOFT CHEESE G O L D /gid00002/gid00015/gid00026/gid00001/gid00021/gid00026/gid00017/gid00006 /gid00002/gid00015/gid00026/gid00001/gid0000", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1236}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Upgrade Your Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1236}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1236}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Solo Mode · Setup · Gameplay", "sharpsignalDocId": 1236}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Advanced Mode", "sharpsignalDocId": 1236}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Seasons · Assembling the Lazy Susan · Upgrade Your Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1236}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1236 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1236 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 0.88495 of 2286 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 12, 2026 21:19 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 Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Upgrade Your Game	p.3	0.048916 (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 Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)		p.3	0.048652 (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 Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Solo Mode · Setup · Gameplay	p.9	0.045921 (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 Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Game-End · Clarification: · Plan Ahead! · Focus on a Few Things · Complete Orders Strategically	p.8	0.045228 (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 Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)		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
#6	RULEBOOK Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Regioni · Livestock · Clarifications:	p.7	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
#7	RULEBOOK Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Turn Structure · Retrieve Workers · Clarifications:	p.4	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 Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)		p.11	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 26 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 Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Upgrade Your Game	p.3	#1	0.048916 (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 Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Solo Mode · Setup · Gameplay	p.9	#3	0.045921 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Advanced Mode	p.3	#13	0.014286 (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 Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Game-End · Clarification: · Plan Ahead! · Focus on a Few Things · Complete Orders Strategically	p.8	#4	0.045228 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Vigneto · Regioni	p.6	#16	0.013514 (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 Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Regioni · Livestock · Clarifications:	p.7	#6	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 Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Seasons · Assembling the Lazy Susan · Upgrade Your Game	p.2	#9	0.029083 (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 Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)		p.3	#2	0.048652 (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 Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Upgrade Your Game	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Solo Mode · Setup · Gameplay	p.9	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Advanced Mode	p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Formaggio — Rulebook (corpus doc 1236)	Seasons · Assembling the Lazy Susan · Upgrade Your Game	p.2	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 200 ms · first delta 2137 ms · total 5924 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 200 ms · ask 5722 ms · gateway work 5924 ms · total 5924 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3714
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 736
tok/sec: 199.4 tok/sec — 736 output tokens in 3.691 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 22h, checked 7s 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 1166), 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.