Ruling — Windmill Valley

← Windmill Valley

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Windmill Valleybg-403441-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Before your first game, carefully punch out all cardboard components, and separate all other elements.[1]

2. Assemble the Windmill boards using the included plastic pins.[1]

3. Use a plastic pin to anchor the large wheel to the left side of the Windmill board.[1]

4. Anchor the small wheel on the right side in a way that any bolt between the gear-tooths matches the red gear-tooth on the large wheel.[1]

5. Rotate the wheel so the red arrow on the board and the red spoke of the wheel meet.[1]

6. Place the Main board on the table.[2][3]

7. Place the “X” tiles, the Wheel Enhancements, Farm Enhancements cards, Tulip Bulbs and Tool tokens near the board and within easy reach of all players.[2][3]

8. Shuffle each type of Wheel Enhancement tiles separately forming stacks, and place them next to the Main board.[4]

9. Draw two Common Enhancements, one Uncommon Enhancement, and one Unique Enhancement and place them in their respective spaces on the Main board (3A).[4]

10. Shuffle the Farm Enhancement cards to form a face-down deck and place it next to the Main board.[4]

11. Draw three Farm Enhancement cards, and place them face up in any order on the respective spaces on the Main board (4A).[4]

12. Place the Floodgate marker and the Water Level marker on the lowest-numbered positions on their respective tracks on the Main board.[4]

13. Shuffle the Foreign Trade cards, and place them in a face-up stack on the Main board.[4]

14. Give each player one Farm board, one Windmill board (randomly chosen), one player aid, one Tool token, and (in their chosen player color) nine Windmill tokens and five player markers.[4]

15. Each player should place their big player markers on the '5' space of the Victory Point track (7A), the starting position of the Calendar track (7B), and a small marker on the Guilder track on their Farm boards on the 4th/5th/6th/7th position if they are the 1st/2nd/3rd/4th player (7C).[4]

16. Leave the remaining small marker in your player area.[4]

17. Display on the table a number of Starting Farm Enhancement cards equal to the number of players plus 1, with the Ability side facing up.[4]

18. In reverse turn order, each player must choose one card and tuck it under the top leftmost slot of their Farm board so that the top half, showing the ability, is visible (8A).[4]

19. Place the remaining card on the Main board next to the Calendar, flipping it to the Queen's Wish side (8B).[4]

20. In reverse turn order, each player must place one of their Player markers on an area of the market which does not contain another player marker, if possible.[4]

21. In a 2-player game, place one neutral marker in each of the three areas of the Market.[4]

22. In a 3-player game, place one neutral marker in each of the two areas without the first player's marker.[4]

23. In a 4-player game, place one neutral marker in the next area anti-clockwise from the first player's marker.[4]

24. Return any remaining neutral markers to the box.[5]

25. Players should set aside their fifth Player marker for now, close to their player area.[5]

26. The first player receives 1 white Tulip Bulb to be placed in their storage, the second player a yellow Tulip Bulb, the third player a red Tulip Bulb, and the fourth player a violet Tulip Bulb.[5]

27. Each player should place their Windmills into groups, in the slots on the left side of their Farm board (top to bottom: 1/1/2/2/3).[5]

28. When playing with less than 4 players, cover the respective part of the Calendar with the Limit tile, leaving the last column of the Calendar uncovered.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook · p.3 · LIVING RULES PLEDGE · Missing or damaged components :

[2] RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook · p.4

[3] RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook · p.4 · Missing or damaged components :

[4] RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook · p.5 · Missing or damaged components :

[5] RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook · p.5 · Missing or damaged components :

Settled. Play on.

🔧 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 213 ms · ask 5741 ms · total 5958 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5958 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "GAME COMPONENTS | SETUP 4 Game SetupGame Setup 22 33 44 11 7B7B 7A7A 8B8B 3A3A 4A4A 99 1212 66 55 55 77 1111 1010 8A8A Place the Main board on the table. Place the “X” tiles, the Wheel Enhancements, Farm Enhancements cards, Tulip Bulbs and Tool tokens near the board and within easy reach of all play", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 705}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Shuffle each type of Wheel Enhancement tiles separately forming stacks, and place them next to the Main board. Then, draw two Common Enhancements, one Uncommon Enhancement, and one Unique Enhancement and place them in their respective spaces on the Main board (3A). 3 A setup example for 3 players Sh", "headingPath": "Missing or damaged components :", "sharpsignalDocId": 705}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "8 In reverse turn order , each player must place one of their Player markers on an area of the market which does not contain another player marker, if possible. Then: 9 In a 2-player game, place one neutral marker in each of the three areas of the Market. In a 3-player game, place one neutral marker", "headingPath": "Missing or damaged components :", "sharpsignalDocId": 705}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "In Windmill Valley , players continuously take turns until one player reaches the end of the Calendar track, triggering the end of the game. When this happens, finish the current round, so all players get the same number of turns. Then, everyone plays one more turn and moves on to the final scoring.", "headingPath": "Missing or damaged components :", "sharpsignalDocId": 705}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "This action allows you to take one of the Windmills from your Farm board and place it on the Main board to gain Victory Points and various rewards. You start the game with five groups of Windmills, and you may take a Windmill from any of these groups when performing this action. For each group that ", "headingPath": "Action: Build a Windmill", "sharpsignalDocId": 705}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030415, "snippet": "Tools and Tulip Bulbs are not meant to be limited. If at any point you run out of any of these components, use any suitable replacements to represent them. Before your first game, carefully punch out all cardboard components, and separate all other elements, as it will make setting up the game much ", "headingPath": "LIVING RULES PLEDGE · Missing or damaged components :", "sharpsignalDocId": 705}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "2 Place the Main board on the table. 1 Place the 'X' tiles, the Wheel Enhancements, Farm Enhancements cards, Tulip Bulbs and Tool tokens near the board and within easy reach of all players. 2 3", "headingPath": "Missing or damaged components :", "sharpsignalDocId": 705}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Add it to the leftmost available Contract slot along the bottom of your Farm board, tucking the card under the board so that only its bottom part is visible. The card is now a Contract. Once gained, Helpers immediately offer you a special ability that you can resolve once per turn for the rest of th", "headingPath": "Action: Gain a Farm Enhancement", "sharpsignalDocId": 705}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "LIVING RULES PLEDGE · Missing or damaged components :", "sharpsignalDocId": 705}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 705}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Missing or damaged components :", "sharpsignalDocId": 705}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Missing or damaged components :", "sharpsignalDocId": 705}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Missing or damaged components :", "sharpsignalDocId": 705}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 705 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 705 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 0.89859 of 2978 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 20, 2026 23:50 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 Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)		p.4	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Missing or damaged components :	p.5	0.047643 (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 Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Missing or damaged components :	p.5	0.047371 (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 Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Missing or damaged components :	p.6	0.046642 (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 Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Action: Build a Windmill	p.10	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
#6	RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	LIVING RULES PLEDGE · Missing or damaged components :	p.3	0.030415 (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 Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Missing or damaged components :	p.4	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))	193
#8	RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Action: Gain a Farm Enhancement	p.10	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 33 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 Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)		p.4	#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 Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	LIVING RULES PLEDGE · Missing or damaged components :	p.3	#6	0.030415 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Missing or damaged components :	p.4	#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 Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Missing or damaged components :	p.6	#4	0.046642 (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 Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Action: Build a Windmill	p.10	#5	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
#6	RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Action: Enhance the Wheels · Action: Gain a Farm Enhancement	p.9	#9	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
#7	RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Missing or damaged components :	p.5	#3	0.047371 (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 Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Missing or damaged components :	p.5	#2	0.047643 (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 Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	LIVING RULES PLEDGE · Missing or damaged components :	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Missing or damaged components :	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Missing or damaged components :	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Windmill Valley — Rulebook (corpus doc 705)	Missing or damaged components :	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 213 ms · first delta 1100 ms · total 5958 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 213 ms · ask 5741 ms · gateway work 5958 ms · total 5958 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3464
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 929
tok/sec: 194.5 tok/sec — 929 output tokens in 4.777 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 15s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 5s 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 638), 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.