Ruling — Medieval Academy

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How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Medieval Academybg-154386-en-1e

Depending on the specific variation or number of players, the setup is as follows:

Standard Five-Player Setup

1. Place the game boards at the center of the table, face down with the white border.[1]

2. Place the hourglass on turn I of the parchment.[1]

3. Shuffle the Learning cards.[1]

4. Sort the coats of arms and place them next to the corresponding game board.[1]

5. Each player chooses a color and takes the 10 wooden discs of that color.[1]

6. Each player places one of their discs on the starting location of each game board and keeps the 3 remaining discs in front of them.[1]

7. The first player is the player who strikes the most chivalrous pose; they take the Excalibur pawn and start the game.[1]

Setup for Specific Variations

* Standard Card Dealing: The first player shuffles the 52 Learning cards and deals 5 cards (face down) to each player.[2]

* 3-Player Variation: The first player alternates between the two real players, with the third player acting as a neutral player.[3]

* 4-Player Variation (using two colors): Each player plays two different colors (e.g., one player plays blue and green, another plays yellow and red).[3]

* Lancelot Rules Dealing: The first player shuffles the 52 Learning cards and deals 6 cards to each player.[3]

* Jousts and Tournaments Variation:

1. Use the Jousts and Tournaments game boards white-bordered side up as a single "White Knight vs Black Knight" board.[4]

2. Place the Cup at the bottom of the board, between the smallest black cup and the smallest white cup.[4]

3. Each player places a disc on both the White Knight and Black Knight tracks.[4]

4. Use the Chivalry Points coats of arms in addition to the standard coats of arms.[4]

* Secret Codex Variation:

1. Use the 0 Chivalry Point coat of arms and the Secret Codex card.[5]

2. Take a coat of arms and add as many as needed so there is one for each player.[5]

3. Place them face down on the Secret Codex card and shuffle them.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook · p.3

[2] RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook · p.4 · O bjective of the game · 1. D eal cards · 2. D raft cards

[3] RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook · p.8 · « Karadoc » rules · Phase 2 - Draft the Learning cards : · Phase 3 - Play the Learning cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · « Lancelot » rules · Phase 1 - Dealing the learning cards :

[4] RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook · p.9 · I nitial setup : · Phase 3 - playing Jousts/Tournaments cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 5 - Reset :

[5] RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook · p.10 · Initial setup : · Phase 1 - Deal 5 learning cards to each player : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 3 - Playing Jousts/Tournaments cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring :

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 203 ms · ask 4191 ms · total 4396 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4396 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "3 Initial setup Five players’s game setup exemple A Place the game boards at the center of the table (white-bordered face down) as shown on the picture. B The hourglass is placed on turn I of the parchment. C The Learning cards are shuffled. D Sort the coats of arms and place them next to the corres", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1276}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "Place the Bet card next to the Gallantry game board. Each player puts a disc next to this card. Once every player has seen the 5 cards in his starting hand, but before the draft, every player chooses a game board and places a disc on a square of the Bet card corresponding to that game board. It is p", "headingPath": "Initial setup : · Phase 1 - Deal 5 learning cards to each player : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 3 - Playing Jousts/Tournaments cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring :", "sharpsignalDocId": 1276}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "In this variation, you will use the , , , and , as well as the 2 scrolls , that you have to place on their reserved slots (i.e. squares 6 and 12 of the track). When a disc reaches or goes beyond a square with a Scroll, the player takes the Scroll . If a player has a Scroll, there is a scoring phase ", "headingPath": "Initial setup : · Phase 3 - playing King's Service cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 5 - Reset :", "sharpsignalDocId": 1276}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045541, "snippet": "Both Jousts and Tournaments game board are used whitebordered side up, and they now are considered as a single « White Knight vs Black Knight » game board, with a White Knight track, a Black Knight track, and a Cup track. Place the Cup at the bottom of the board, between the smallest black cup and t", "headingPath": "I nitial setup : · Phase 3 - playing Jousts/Tournaments cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 5 - Reset :", "sharpsignalDocId": 1276}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Starting with the first player, in clockwise order, each player chooses a card in his hand and plays it in front of him, face up. He moves his disc up the track of the corresponding game board, by the number of the card value (2 to 5). Example : If the yellow player plays this card, he moves the yel", "headingPath": "3.\t P lay cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1276}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "This is the first game board that is scored ; it is special in the sense that it's the only one where players will not score any Chivalry Points, they will just use it to move their disc up on any game board (including the Gallantry game board itself ). First, determine which players are ranked 1st,", "headingPath": "Scoring the Gallantry game board :", "sharpsignalDocId": 1276}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Each player looks at his cards, and divides them into 2 stacks of 3 cards each (face down). Once all 4 stacks are done, they are revealed (cards face up). The first player chooses one of the stacks made by the other player, and takes the 3 cards in his hand. The other stack made by the second player", "headingPath": "Phase 2 - Exchanging Learning cards : · Phase 3 - playing the Learning cards : · Phase 4,5,6 :", "sharpsignalDocId": 1276}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "For every game board that scores this turn, the first player gives to every player the coats of arms that they have earned, depending on their rank on the game board track (once you're used to the game, every player can help himself, it is faster). Those coats of arms are kept face down, so that the", "headingPath": "Scoring the other game boards : · 5.\t R eset · hange first player", "sharpsignalDocId": 1276}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1276}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "O bjective of the game · 1.\tD eal cards · 2.\tD raft cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1276}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "« Karadoc » rules · Phase 2 - Draft the Learning cards : · Phase 3 - Play the Learning cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · « Lancelot » rules · Phase 1 - Dealing the learning cards :", "sharpsignalDocId": 1276}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "I nitial setup : · Phase 3 - playing Jousts/Tournaments cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 5 - Reset :", "sharpsignalDocId": 1276}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Initial setup : · Phase 1 - Deal 5 learning cards to each player : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 3 - Playing Jousts/Tournaments cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring :", "sharpsignalDocId": 1276}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1276 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1276 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 0.89120 of 1636 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 17, 2026 02:04 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 Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)		p.3	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	Initial setup : · Phase 1 - Deal 5 learning cards to each player : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 3 - Playing Jousts/Tournaments cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring :	p.10	0.048131 (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 Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	Initial setup : · Phase 3 - playing King's Service cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 5 - Reset :	p.11	0.046875 (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 Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	I nitial setup : · Phase 3 - playing Jousts/Tournaments cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 5 - Reset :	p.9	0.045541 (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 Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	3. P lay cards	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
#6	RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	Scoring the Gallantry game board :	p.5	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 Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	Phase 2 - Exchanging Learning cards : · Phase 3 - playing the Learning cards : · Phase 4,5,6 :	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
#8	RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	Scoring the other game boards : · 5. R eset · hange first player	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

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 16 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 Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)		p.3	#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 Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	Initial setup : · Phase 1 - Deal 5 learning cards to each player : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 3 - Playing Jousts/Tournaments cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring :	p.10	#2	0.048131 (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 Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	3. P lay cards	p.4	#5	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
#4	RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	O bjective of the game · 1. D eal cards · 2. D raft cards	p.4	#10	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
#5	RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	« Karadoc » rules · Phase 2 - Draft the Learning cards : · Phase 3 - Play the Learning cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · « Lancelot » rules · Phase 1 - Dealing the learning cards :	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
#6	RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	Scoring the Gallantry game board :	p.5	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	Initial setup : · Phase 3 - playing King's Service cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 5 - Reset :	p.11	#3	0.046875 (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 Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	I nitial setup : · Phase 3 - playing Jousts/Tournaments cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 5 - Reset :	p.9	#4	0.045541 (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 Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	O bjective of the game · 1. D eal cards · 2. D raft cards	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	« Karadoc » rules · Phase 2 - Draft the Learning cards : · Phase 3 - Play the Learning cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · « Lancelot » rules · Phase 1 - Dealing the learning cards :	p.8	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	I nitial setup : · Phase 3 - playing Jousts/Tournaments cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 5 - Reset :	p.9	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Medieval Academy — Rulebook (corpus doc 1276)	Initial setup : · Phase 1 - Deal 5 learning cards to each player : · Phase 4 - Scoring : · Phase 3 - Playing Jousts/Tournaments cards : · Phase 4 - Scoring :	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 203 ms · first delta 1635 ms · total 4396 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 203 ms · ask 4191 ms · gateway work 4396 ms · total 4396 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3885
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 514
tok/sec: 192.8 tok/sec — 514 output tokens in 2.666 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 11s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 1s 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 1206), 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.