Ruling — Grand Austria Hotel

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Grand Austria Hotelbg-182874-en-1e

1. Place the game board in the middle of the play area.[1]

2. Place the Round marker on the first space of the Round track.[1]

3. Sort the Emperor tiles by letter (A, B, and C), shuffle them separately, then randomly place 1 tile from each letter face up on their corresponding spaces below the Round track, and return the remaining Emperor tiles to the game box.[1]

4. Sort the objective cards by letter (A, B, and C), shuffle them separately, then randomly place 1 card from each letter face up on their corresponding spaces to the left of the Round track, and return the remaining objective cards to the game box.[1]

5. Shuffle the guest cards and place them in a face-down deck to the left of the game board.[1]

6. Draw five guest cards from the deck and place them face up on the designated spaces at the bottom, from right to left, to create the queue.[1]

7. Place the victory point tiles near the game board to indicate when reaching or passing 75 and 150 victory points on the score track.[1]

8. Place the action board next to the game board.[1]

9. Place a number of dice near the action board based on the number of players: 10 dice for 2 players, 12 dice for 3 players, or 14 dice for 4 players, and return any remaining dice to the game box.[1]

10. Place the dustbin nearby.[1]

11. Sort the dishes and drinks and place them in separate piles near the action spaces.[1]

12. Sort the room tiles by color and place them in separate stacks near the action space.[1]

13. Shuffle all the staff cards and place them nearby, face down (on your first play, you should remove all staff cards marked A-D on the front before shuffling).[1]

14. Place the overview cards nearby, within reach of all players.[1]

15. Select the turn order tiles for the appropriate number of players and return the rest to the game box.[2]

16. Randomly select a start player, who receives the tile showing '1', and assign the next players clockwise tiles '2', and so on.[2]

17. Take a hotel board and six markers in a color of your choice, deciding together whether to play the night side or the day side, and place the board in front of you.[2]

18. Place one marker on '10' on the money track of your hotel board.[2]

19. Place two markers on the game board: one on '0/75' on the score track and another on '0' on the Emperor track.[2]

20. Place the remaining three markers beside your hotel board.[2]

21. Take a strudel, cake, wine, and coffee from the supply and place these four items in the kitchen of your hotel board.[2]

22. Draw 6 staff cards from the deck into your hand, keeping them hidden (in the Introductory Variant, deal each player a starting set of staff cards: the start player gets the 'A' set, the next player clockwise gets the 'B' set, etc., and shuffle any remaining sets into the deck).[3]

23. Starting with the player to the right of the start player and in counter-clockwise order, take one guest card from the queue, ignoring the cost, and place it at a table in your café (below your hotel board), sliding remaining guests to the right and adding a new guest from the deck to the left until all players have one guest in their café.[3]

24. Prepare 3 rooms in your hotel by taking room tiles from the supply and placing them, with the vacant side up, on same-colored spaces of your hotel board, starting with the bottom left space and placing subsequent rooms orthogonally adjacent to already placed ones, paying the cost indicated at the start of the floor by moving the marker on your money track down accordingly (or, if playing as Scrooge, you can prepare three rooms in the bottom floor for free).[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook · p.4 · 4 hotel boards (double-sided)

[2] RULEBOOK Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook · p.4 · Personal Play Area

[3] RULEBOOK Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook · p.5 · Personal Play Area

Question closed. Friendships intact.

🔧 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 212 ms · ask 6564 ms · total 6778 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6778 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Select the turn order tiles for the appropriate number of players and return the rest to the game box. Randomly select a start player , who gets the tile showing '1'. The next player clockwise gets the tile showing '2', and so on. Take a hotel board and the six markers in a color of your choice. Dec", "headingPath": "Personal Play Area", "sharpsignalDocId": 288}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Draw 6 staff cards from the deck into your hand, keeping them hidden from the other players. Introductory Variant: On your first play, instead of drawing from the shuffled deck, deal each player a starting set of staff cards: the start player gets the 'A' set, the next player clockwise gets the 'B' ", "headingPath": "Personal Play Area", "sharpsignalDocId": 288}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Place the game board in the middle of the play area. The game board features spaces for objective cards, guest cards, and Emperor tiles; also, the Round, Emperor, and score tracks. Place the Round marker on the first space of the Round track. Sort the Emperor tiles by letter (A, B, and C) ; shuffle ", "headingPath": "4 hotel boards (double-sided)", "sharpsignalDocId": 288}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "You start the game with one guest in your café, chosen from the queue on the game board, which always features five guests. During each turn, you can take one new guest from the queue, unless all three tables in your café are occupied. So, normally, you can get up to 15 guests total over the course ", "headingPath": "Guest Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 288}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Then, play will go around the table as indicated by the turn order tiles , in increasing numerical order. When play comes around to you, you can either take a turn or pass . The following sections explain what either of these options mean. If you decide to take a turn, immediately carry out the foll", "headingPath": "Personal Play Area · Taking a Turn · 1. Taking a Guest", "sharpsignalDocId": 288}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Instead of taking a turn, you can simply pass . By doing so, you do not forfeit your turn, you just postpone it until later, when the dice have been re-rolled. When you pass, you must wait until all other players have also passed or taken both of their turns. When that happens, take the remaining di", "headingPath": "Passing", "sharpsignalDocId": 288}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "After taking a new guest (or not) , you must select an action space on the action board containing at least one die. The number of dice on that action space determines the strength of the associated main action . You can pay exactly 1 krone to boost the strength by 1 (for this turn only) , i.e., ass", "headingPath": "2. Using an Action Space", "sharpsignalDocId": 288}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "| | You can prepare one room of a color of your choice, paying the indicated amount of krones less. Place the room tile according to the normal place- ment rules. | You can prepare one room of a color of your choice at no cost. Place the room tile according to the normal placement rules. | | You mus", "headingPath": "Guest Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 288}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4 hotel boards (double-sided)", "sharpsignalDocId": 288}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Personal Play Area", "sharpsignalDocId": 288}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Personal Play Area", "sharpsignalDocId": 288}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 288 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 288 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 0.91162 of 2953 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 16, 2026 08:52 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 Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	Personal Play Area	p.4	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 Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	Personal Play Area	p.5	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 Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	4 hotel boards (double-sided)	p.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))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	Guest Cards	p.16	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 Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	Personal Play Area · Taking a Turn · 1. Taking a Guest	p.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))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	Passing	p.10	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 Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	2. Using an Action Space	p.6	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 Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	Guest Cards	p.16	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 38 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 Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	4 hotel boards (double-sided)	p.4	#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 Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	Guest Cards	p.16	#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 Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	· Completing an Objective · · Using a Staff Card	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 Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)		p.1	#38	0.010204 (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 Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	Guest Cards	p.16	#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
#6	RULEBOOK Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	Passing	p.10	#6	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
#7	RULEBOOK Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	Personal Play Area	p.5	#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
#8	RULEBOOK Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	Personal Play Area	p.4	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	4 hotel boards (double-sided)	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	Personal Play Area	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Grand Austria Hotel — Rulebook (corpus doc 288)	Personal Play Area	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 212 ms · first delta 2133 ms · total 6778 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 212 ms · ask 6564 ms · gateway work 6778 ms · total 6778 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2827
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 891
tok/sec: 194.5 tok/sec — 891 output tokens in 4.581 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 41s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 10s 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 217), 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.