{
  "schema": "s2s-bench-v1",
  "exhibit": "chair-trials",
  "published_utc": "2026-08-13",
  "status": "PUBLISHED — live at research.strata2signal.com.",
  "licence": "CC BY 4.0",
  "attribution": "strata→signal research, research.strata2signal.com",
  "hardware": "One 96G VRAM workstation, which also answered live requests for three of our apps throughout these trials — two public, one serving playtests for humans and agents alike. Contention is measured in both directions and published with the figures rather than assumed away.",
  "dataset": "chair-trials-c6-asks",
  "what_this_is": "Every ask this leg was allowed to send, frozen before the first one went out. The harness refuses to run if its count differs from the pre-registered integer and refuses to send an ask that is not in this file: twenty-six asks reach production and not one more, and the fence is code rather than discipline.",
  "artifact": "c6-asks.json",
  "sha256": "31817ea02bb5f107ecf0b2d058ae7261bc2cfc43781a3e5450e2ec4ccd2e2979",
  "n_asks": 26,
  "n_distinct_games": 20,
  "question_shape": "How do I set up {title} for {players} players?",
  "title_source": "the shelf's own title string, verbatim",
  "note": [
    "This file is the DENOMINATOR and the BUDGET. harness/c6_drip.py refuses to run",
    "if its ask count differs from the prereg's registered integer, and it refuses to",
    "send an ask that is not in this file. 26 asks reach production and not one more:",
    "the fence is code, not discipline.",
    "Every game here is on the live public shelf, is labelled Heavy by the shelf",
    "itself (never a weight we invented), and was verified by a READ-ONLY GET of its",
    "public page on 2026-08-12 to carry an ask form and an ingested rulebook. The",
    "player count in each question is inside that game's own published range."
  ],
  "asks": [
    {
      "probe": "drip",
      "seq": 1,
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 175,
      "title": "Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition",
      "players": 6,
      "range": "3-6",
      "family": "4X",
      "why": "the hobby's byword for a long setup; the map itself is built per player count"
    },
    {
      "probe": "drip",
      "seq": 2,
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 181,
      "title": "Star Wars: Rebellion",
      "players": 4,
      "range": "2-4",
      "family": "asymmetric ameritrash",
      "why": "setup branches into a Team Game variant at 3 and 4 players"
    },
    {
      "probe": "drip",
      "seq": 3,
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 178,
      "title": "Gaia Project",
      "players": 4,
      "range": "1-4",
      "family": "heavy euro",
      "why": "sector map and scoring tiles are laid out per player count"
    },
    {
      "probe": "drip",
      "seq": 4,
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 168,
      "title": "Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization",
      "players": 3,
      "range": "2-4",
      "family": "civ euro",
      "why": "card row and deck construction change with the count"
    },
    {
      "probe": "drip",
      "seq": 5,
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 342,
      "title": "Arkham Horror (Third Edition)",
      "players": 4,
      "range": "1-6",
      "family": "co-op ameritrash",
      "why": "scenario-driven setup, a long components-first checklist"
    },
    {
      "probe": "drip",
      "seq": 6,
      "regime": "candidate-generating",
      "game_id": 7,
      "title": "Spirit Island",
      "players": 3,
      "range": "1-4",
      "family": "co-op",
      "why": "board count, invader deck and blight pool all scale with players"
    },
    {
      "probe": "drip",
      "seq": 7,
      "regime": "candidate-generating",
      "game_id": 171,
      "title": "Twilight Struggle",
      "players": 2,
      "range": "2-2",
      "family": "card-driven wargame",
      "why": "a fixed-count classic with a long influence-placement setup"
    },
    {
      "probe": "drip",
      "seq": 8,
      "regime": "candidate-generating",
      "game_id": 83,
      "title": "Terra Mystica",
      "players": 5,
      "range": "2-5",
      "family": "heavy euro",
      "why": "bonus-tile count is a function of the player count"
    },
    {
      "probe": "drip",
      "seq": 9,
      "regime": "candidate-generating",
      "game_id": 132,
      "title": "Dominant Species",
      "players": 5,
      "range": "2-6",
      "family": "area-control euro",
      "why": "action pawns and starting tiles are dealt per player count"
    },
    {
      "probe": "drip",
      "seq": 10,
      "regime": "candidate-generating",
      "game_id": 228,
      "title": "Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island",
      "players": 2,
      "range": "1-4",
      "family": "co-op",
      "why": "scenario setup differs by count and the rulebook is famously dense"
    },
    {
      "probe": "drip-baseline",
      "seq": 11,
      "regime": "quiet",
      "game_id": 175,
      "title": "Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition",
      "players": 6,
      "range": "3-6",
      "family": "4X",
      "why": "paired repeat of ask 1 — the first ask of the idle regime"
    },
    {
      "probe": "drip-baseline",
      "seq": 12,
      "regime": "quiet",
      "game_id": 7,
      "title": "Spirit Island",
      "players": 3,
      "range": "1-4",
      "family": "co-op",
      "why": "paired repeat of ask 6 — the first ask of the generating regime"
    },
    {
      "probe": "drip-baseline",
      "seq": 13,
      "regime": "quiet",
      "game_id": 228,
      "title": "Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island",
      "players": 2,
      "range": "1-4",
      "family": "co-op",
      "why": "paired repeat of ask 10 — the last ask of the run"
    },
    {
      "probe": "burst",
      "seq": 1,
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 17,
      "title": "Brass: Birmingham",
      "players": 4,
      "range": "2-4",
      "family": "heavy euro",
      "why": "long two-era setup; the shelf's most-asked heavy box"
    },
    {
      "probe": "burst",
      "seq": 2,
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 173,
      "title": "Ark Nova",
      "players": 4,
      "range": "1-4",
      "family": "heavy euro",
      "why": "many decks and displays to lay out before the first turn"
    },
    {
      "probe": "burst",
      "seq": 3,
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 2,
      "title": "Scythe",
      "players": 5,
      "range": "1-5",
      "family": "heavy euro",
      "why": "faction and player-mat pairing is part of setup"
    },
    {
      "probe": "burst",
      "seq": 4,
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 198,
      "title": "Anachrony",
      "players": 4,
      "range": "1-4",
      "family": "heavy euro",
      "why": "modular boards and a warped-resource track to prepare"
    },
    {
      "probe": "burst",
      "seq": 5,
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 180,
      "title": "A Feast for Odin",
      "players": 4,
      "range": "1-4",
      "family": "heavy euro",
      "why": "a very large component layout for a table of four"
    },
    {
      "probe": "pair",
      "seq": 1,
      "trial": 1,
      "arrival_slot": "a",
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 8,
      "title": "Terraforming Mars",
      "players": 2,
      "range": "1-5",
      "family": "heavy euro",
      "why": "trial 1, low count — same book as its partner so the pair is matched"
    },
    {
      "probe": "pair",
      "seq": 2,
      "trial": 1,
      "arrival_slot": "b",
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 8,
      "title": "Terraforming Mars",
      "players": 5,
      "range": "1-5",
      "family": "heavy euro",
      "why": "trial 1, high count — same book, different question"
    },
    {
      "probe": "pair",
      "seq": 3,
      "trial": 2,
      "arrival_slot": "a",
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 18,
      "title": "Dune: Imperium",
      "players": 2,
      "range": "1-4",
      "family": "heavy euro",
      "why": "trial 2, low count"
    },
    {
      "probe": "pair",
      "seq": 4,
      "trial": 2,
      "arrival_slot": "b",
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 18,
      "title": "Dune: Imperium",
      "players": 4,
      "range": "1-4",
      "family": "heavy euro",
      "why": "trial 2, high count"
    },
    {
      "probe": "pair",
      "seq": 5,
      "trial": 3,
      "arrival_slot": "a",
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 155,
      "title": "Caverna: The Cave Farmers",
      "players": 2,
      "range": "1-7",
      "family": "heavy euro",
      "why": "trial 3, low count"
    },
    {
      "probe": "pair",
      "seq": 6,
      "trial": 3,
      "arrival_slot": "b",
      "regime": "candidate-idle-resident",
      "game_id": 155,
      "title": "Caverna: The Cave Farmers",
      "players": 7,
      "range": "1-7",
      "family": "heavy euro",
      "why": "trial 3, high count — the widest count spread on the shelf"
    },
    {
      "probe": "cold",
      "seq": 1,
      "trial": 1,
      "regime": "quiet-6min",
      "game_id": 176,
      "title": "War of the Ring: Second Edition",
      "players": 2,
      "range": "2-4",
      "family": "wargame",
      "why": "trial 1 — a heavy two-player box a first walker would plausibly open"
    },
    {
      "probe": "cold",
      "seq": 2,
      "trial": 2,
      "regime": "quiet-6min",
      "game_id": 189,
      "title": "Mage Knight Board Game",
      "players": 3,
      "range": "1-4",
      "family": "adventure euro",
      "why": "trial 2 — a different family, so one corpus cannot shape both trials"
    }
  ],
  "contamination_caveat": "Published 2026-08-13. Models with a later training cutoff may have seen these sets. We author fresh sets each cycle; this one is not a standard, it is our kit, yours to reuse.",
  "not_a_standard": "Our own trials, our own hardware, for our own chairs. Not first independent numbers, and not a benchmark."
}