Ruling — Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lionbg-291457-en-1e

To setup Scenario 1, follow these steps:

1. Each player decides which character they are going to play.[1]

2. Players claim their chosen character's figure and mat, a rectangular initiative order token from the character's zip bag, a hit point dial from the game box, a deck of smaller cards with no warning, and the first seven cards from the larger deck with no warning (one player reference card and six ability cards with an "A" in the crown).[2]

3. Each player places their character mat, player reference card, six level "A" ability cards, attack modifier deck, and hit point dial in front of them.[3]

4. Set the red side of the hit point dial to the red number located below the white "1" on the bottom of the character mat.[3]

5. Place the character's initiative order token near the center of the table.[3]

6. Open the Scenario Book to Scenario 1 and place it in the middle of the table.[3]

7. Each player places their character's figure on any one of the starting hex icons in the Scenario Book, ensuring no two characters occupy the same hex.[3]

8. Retrieve the "Vermling Raider" monster zip bag and remove the cardboard standees, the large square stat card, and the initiative order token, placing the token with the others.[3]

9. Insert the monster stat card into one of the six-section envelopes from the box so that the area with the "1" in the upper left corner is showing and place it next to the Scenario Book.[3]

10. Randomize the number on each standee, put the monster standees into white and gold plastic stands, and populate the map in the Scenario Book following the icons for set and rank based on the player count (referencing the first row for two characters, middle row for three, and bottom row for four).[3]

11. Take the sticker labeled "Roadside Ambush" from the sticker sheet and place it in the "B1" square of the city map board so that the artwork lines up.[1]

12. Retrieve the deck of battle goals from the game box, shuffle it, and deal two random cards to each character in secret.[4]

13. Each character chooses one goal to keep for the scenario and discards the other.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook · p.3 · Scenario 1 Rules

[2] RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook · p.3 · Playing by Yourself?

[3] RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook · p.4 · Play Area Setup

[4] RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook · p.25 · Battle Goals

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 227 ms · ask 12301 ms · total 12539 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 12539 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "Using these character materials and other components, we will now set up Scenario 1. Each player should place their character mat ①, player reference , six level \"A\" ability cards 3 , attack modifier deck (the deck of smaller cards) , and hit point dial in front of them. The red side of the dial sho", "headingPath": "Play Area Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "The last new aspect of setup is the deck of battle goals. From now on, at the start of each scenario, retrieve the deck of battle goals from the game box, shuffle it, and deal two random cards to each character in secret. Each character will then choose one of these goals to keep for the scenario, d", "headingPath": "Battle Goals", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "Now that the game has been set up properly, we can start playing! Gameplay within a scenario is broken up into a series of rounds. In each round, all players will select which ability cards they would like to play. The chosen cards will determine the \"initiative order\", which is the sequence in whic", "headingPath": "Playing the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045688, "snippet": "To start, perhaps you noticed this in the Scenario Book: This means to take that first sticker from the sticker sheet, labeled \"Roadside Ambush\", and place it in the \"B1\" square of the city map board, such that the artwork lines up. These stickers are permanent. If you would prefer not to make perma", "headingPath": "Scenario 1 Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "If you are playing the game by yourself, you will need to control two separate characters. Take note that this is a more complex experience. If there are two to four players, it is highly recommended that each player only controls a single character. To choose which character to play, find the large", "headingPath": "Playing by Yourself?", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "W eleome to Gloomhaven! This game is fully cooperative, with players working together to navigate their way through a campaign of scenarios. You will not play it all in one sitting, but it can easily be saved at the end of any single scenario. This book is meant to walk you step-by-step through the ", "headingPath": "Learn to Play Guide", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Now that you have recorded everything important pertaining to the outcome of Scenario 1, you can continue reading the next page to start playing Scenario 2, or you can put everything back in the box to continue the campaign another time. The most important thing is to put all the materials currently", "headingPath": "Saving", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "And so, we move on to Scenario 2! First, start by turning to Scenario 2 in the Scenario Book. Then, the setup will be largely the same as the setup in Scenario 1 (see p. 4), with the following changes:", "headingPath": "Scenario 2 Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Scenario 1 Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing by Yourself?", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Play Area Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 25, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Battle Goals", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 61 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 61 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 4, 2026 18:02

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. 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 rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61)	Play Area Setup	p.4	0.04866 (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 Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61)	Battle Goals	p.25	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
#3	RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61)	Playing the Game	p.6	0.047163 (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 Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61)	Scenario 1 Rules	p.3	0.045688 (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 Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61)	Playing by Yourself?	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
#6	RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61)	Learn to Play Guide	p.1	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
#7	RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61)	Saving	p.13	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 Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61)	Scenario 2 Rules	p.14	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))	201

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.

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.

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61)	Scenario 1 Rules	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61)	Playing by Yourself?	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61)	Play Area Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61)	Battle Goals	p.25	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 227 ms · first delta 8811 ms · total 12539 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 227 ms · ask 12301 ms · gateway work 12539 ms · total 12539 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2283
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 504
tok/sec: 136.9 tok/sec — 504 output tokens in 3.681 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 50s 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.

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 9), 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.