Ruling — Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition

← Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Editionbg-306881-en-1e

Regular Setup

1. Each player takes a Board and places it in front of them.[1]

2. Each player also takes a marker.[1]

3. Place the white Route dice in the middle of the table.[1]

4. Shuffle the Basic Goal cards and randomly draw 3, then place them in the middle of the table.[1]

5. Mark the code of each Goal in one of the Goal spaces of your board.[1]

6. If you play with an Expansion, place the Expansion dice in the middle of the table with the Route dice, and replace 1 of the Goal cards with 1 random Expansion Goal card from the Expansion you’re playing with.[1] (Note: If playing with an Expansion, you must draw 2 random Goal cards and 1 random Expansion Goal card instead of 3 random Basic Goal cards [2]).

7. If you want a simpler experience, you can skip step 4 (drawing Goal cards) and ignore Goal points during final scoring.[1]

Draft Mode Setup

1. Follow the regular setup procedure, with the exception of step 3.[3]

2. Instead of step 3, take 1 set of 4 basic (white) dice for each player, put them all inside one of the game boxes and mix them to create the Dice Pool.[3]

3. Randomly select a first player; this player must draw a little star on their board.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook · p.3

[2] RULEBOOK Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook · p.23 · Setup changes

[3] RULEBOOK Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook · p.16 · draft Mode · SETUP · Game Round

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 204 ms · ask 2580 ms · total 2793 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 2793 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 16, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "Note: To play with this game mode, you will need 1 'Railroad Ink' box for each player joining the game (either 'Railroad Ink' and/or 'Railroad Ink Challenge'). The draft mode of Railroad Ink follows the same rules as a regular game, with a very important exception: instead of using a single set of b", "headingPath": "draft Mode · SETUP · Game Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 695}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "2 4 6 8 x2 4 2 8 3 12 4 16 5 20 6 24 7 28 8 32 9 36 10 40 11 45 12 As described on page 3, when you play with an Expansion, instead of drawing 3 random Goal cards to use during the game, you must draw 2 random Goal cards and 1 random Expansion Goal card from the Expansion that you are playing with. ", "headingPath": "Setup changes", "sharpsignalDocId": 695}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "3 2 4 6 8 4 2 8 3 12 4 16 5 20 6 24 7 28 8 32 9 36 10 40 11 45 12 x2 1 4 2 TA 1 4 2 A 1 4 2 B Playing without goals If you want a simpler experience, you can also play without any Goal cards. Simply skip step 4 of the setup procedure and ignore Goal points during the final scoring. 3 forest and 3 Tr", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 695}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Take 2 random dice from the Dice Pool and roll them. Then, take the newly formed pair of dice and put them in the middle of the table (without changing their result). Repeat this process until all of the dice from the Dice Pool have been rolled and placed in the middle of the table in separate pairs", "headingPath": "Rolling Phase · Drafting Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 695}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Once you feel confident enough with the ins and outs of Railroad Ink Challenge™ , you can spice things up by using 1 of the 2 optional Expansions included in this box. If you play with an Expansion , you must roll the respective Expansion dice along with the 4 Route dice at the beginning of each rou", "headingPath": "EXPANSIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 695}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Once all the players have drawn all of the available Routes , it's time to check and declare if you achieved any Goals . This is the only way to score points during the game (the rest of the points are calculated only at the end of the game). For more details, see page 9). Note : Wait until the end ", "headingPath": "Checking Goals · end of the round", "sharpsignalDocId": 695}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029877, "snippet": "2 4 B C 6 As described on page 8, Goal cards are the only way to score points during the game: the rest of your score is calculated at the end of the game (see page 10). For a detailed description of the procedure to follow when scoring Goals, see page 14. Each Goal card shows a code and a task . Th", "headingPath": "end of the round · Introduction · Scoring Goals", "sharpsignalDocId": 695}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "At the beginning of each round, the Route dice are rolled once . The results of the roll will determine which Routes all players must draw that round. After the roll, all players play simultaneously , drawing the Routes rolled on their own boards. Take the Route dice and roll them in the middle of t", "headingPath": "GAME RoundS · ROLLING DICE", "sharpsignalDocId": 695}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 695}, {"page": 23, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup changes", "sharpsignalDocId": 695}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "draft Mode · SETUP · Game Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 695}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 695 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 695 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 0.89616 of 963 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 24, 2026 14:44 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 Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	draft Mode · SETUP · Game Round	p.16	0.048139 (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 Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	Setup changes	p.23	0.047938 (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 Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)		p.3	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
#4	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	Rolling Phase · Drafting Phase	p.17	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 Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	EXPANSIONS	p.20	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 Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	Checking Goals · end of the round	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 Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	end of the round · Introduction · Scoring Goals	p.9	0.029877 (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 Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	GAME RoundS · ROLLING DICE	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

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 27 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 Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	draft Mode · SETUP · Game Round	p.16	#1	0.048139 (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 Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)		p.3	#3	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 Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	GAME RoundS · ROLLING DICE	p.4	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	Rolling Phase · Drafting Phase	p.17	#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
#5	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	Checking Goals · end of the round	p.8	#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
#6	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	EXPANSIONS	p.20	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	end of the round · Introduction · Scoring Goals	p.9	#7	0.029877 (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 Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	Setup changes	p.23	#2	0.047938 (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 Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	Setup changes	p.23	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 695)	draft Mode · SETUP · Game Round	p.16	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 204 ms · first delta 1198 ms · total 2793 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 204 ms · ask 2580 ms · gateway work 2793 ms · total 2793 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2881
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 309
tok/sec: 202.1 tok/sec — 309 output tokens in 1.529 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 29s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child): schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 5h, 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: 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 628), 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.