RuleSage cited table rulings
← Terraforming Mars

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Terraforming Marsbg-167791-en-1e

For a standard game for 2-5 players, follow these steps:
1. Place the game board centrally on the table.[1]
2. Place the 9 ocean tiles on their reserved space.[1]
3. Place the temperature and oxygen markers on their starting positions.[1]
4. Place the generation marker on '1' on the TR track.[1]
5. Place resource cubes and remaining tiles so everyone can reach them.[1]
6. Ensure there are no Corporate Era cards in the project deck or among the corporation cards (these are marked with a red and white icon).[1]
7. Shuffle the project cards and place the project deck next to the board, leaving space for a discard pile beside it.[1]
8. Give the first player marker to the player who most recently won a game of Terraforming Mars.[1]
9. Players choose their colors and take the corresponding player markers and a player board.[1]
10. In the standard game, players place markers on the tracks to show 1 production of each resource on the player board.[1]
11. Each player places one marker at the starting position (2/20) of the TR track.[1]
12. New players receive a Beginner Corporation card (colorless card back), follow its instructions to get 42 MegaCredits, and draw 10 project cards to form their starting hand; experienced players continue setup without this step.[1]
13. Shuffle the 10 standard corporation cards (excluding the 2 Corporate Era corporations) and deal 2 to each remaining player.[1]
14. Deal 10 project cards to each remaining player.[1]
15. Players choose which corporations they want to play and which of the 10 project cards they want to keep for their starting hand, paying 3 M€ for each card they keep.[1]
16. Discard unused corporation cards (back in the box) and discard unkept project cards face down,[1].[2]
17. In player order, players reveal their chosen corporation and collect their starting resources/production,[1].[2]
[1] RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook · p.7 · SETUP
[2] RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook · p.7 · SETUP

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile
live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings
search 228 ms · ask 9719 ms · total 9957 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 9957 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 7, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "This describes the setup for the standard game for 2-5 players. See additional rules for other game variants on page 13. resources and production (if any), and then pay 3 M€ for each project card they keep. Be aware that your resources for the following few generations will be quite limited until yo", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "The cards not kept are discarded (put discarded corporations back in the box) cards are always discarded face down! In player order, players then reveal their chosen corporation, get their starting Start the game: The first generation starts without a player order phase and without a research phase ", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Each player starts the game with a corporation card . During the game, players buy and play many project cards to get benefits of different kinds. The cards are divided into active cards (blue frame, see example), automated cards (green) and event cards (red), read more on page 10. Tag: Places the c", "headingPath": "CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "In order to play a card you must meet its requirements and be able to perform the effects stated on the card, with the following exceptions: You may play a card that... raises global parameters that have already reached their goal (for example when there are no more ocean tiles, or when the temperat", "headingPath": "1) Check the requirements.", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The game board has a map where tiles may be placed. When placing a tile, you must first check to see if there are any placement restrictions. There are areas reserved for ocean and specific cities, where no other tiles may be placed. Furthermore, each tile may have specific restrictions printed on t", "headingPath": "TI L E S", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The first player marker shifts 1 step clockwise and the generation marker is moved up 1 step. This phase is skipped the first generation (see setup).", "headingPath": "1) Player Order phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "All players perform this phase simultaneously. First, all energy is converted into heat (move all resource cubes from the energy box to the heat box). Secondly, all players receive new resources: Players get M€ according to their terraform rating plus any M€ production (which may be negative!), then", "headingPath": "4) Production phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "The player board keeps track of your current resources and production. Resource cubes are placed in their respective boxes, and player markers are used on the production tracks. In the game, resource icons refer to resource cubes, while resource icons inside brown boxes refer to production of that r", "headingPath": "PLAYER BOARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 59 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 59 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)
debug row retained until
Nov 3, 2026 05:24

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. How much wider that pool was is set gateway-side and is NOT REPORTED for this ruling, and neither are the answerer's final rows — so rulesage has nothing of its own to show beside these.

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) SETUP p.7 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) SETUP p.7 0.048387 (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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) CARDS p.6 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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) 1) Check the requirements. p.9 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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) TI L E S 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
#6 RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) 1) Player Order phase 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)) 149
#7 RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) 4) Production phase p.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)) 300
#8 RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) PLAYER BOARDS p.6 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 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.

the passages the answerer read: NOT RECORDED for this ruling. Any of three things leaves this empty, and they are all different from the answerer having had nothing to read: this ask may never have reached a gateway at all; a multi-book ask keeps each book's own context on that book's own page rather than here; or the gateway build that answered may simply not report it. What this NEVER means is that the answerer read nothing — an answer was composed from passages either way, and their absence here is a gap in what we were told, not in what it read.

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) SETUP p.7 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) SETUP p.7 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 228 ms · first delta 6602 ms · total 9957 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 228 ms · ask 9719 ms · gateway work 9957 ms · total 9957 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3208
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
456
tok/sec
137.5 tok/sec — 456 output tokens in 3.316 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 33s ago)
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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
SERVED — setup-shaped and this game's approved setup checklist is offered above
pattern that matched
SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question)
setup

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 8), 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.