Ruling — Magic: The Gathering

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Magic: The Gatheringbg-463-en-1e

To set up the game, follow these steps:

1. Determine which player will choose who takes the first turn; in a first game of a match, players may use any mutually agreeable method like flipping a coin or rolling dice.[1] In a match of several games, the loser of the previous game chooses who takes the first turn (if the previous game was a draw, the player who made the choice in that game makes the choice in this game).[1] Alternatively, players can decide which player will go first by rolling a die or flipping a coin to see who gets to decide.[2] In an Archenemy game, the archenemy takes the first turn.[1]

2. If any players are using sideboards or cards being represented by substitute cards, set those cards aside; after this, each player's deck is considered their starting deck.[1]

3. If any players wish to reveal a card with a companion ability they own from outside the game, they may do so (provided their deck fulfills the condition of that card's companion ability), and the revealed card remains outside the game.[1]

4. In a Commander game, each player puts their commander from their deck face up into the command zone.[1]

5. In a constructed game, each player playing with sticker sheets reveals all of their sticker sheets and chooses three at random.[1]

6. In a Planechase game, the starting player moves the top card of their planar deck off that deck and turns it face up; if it is a phenomenon card, they repeat this process with the next card until a plane card is turned face up.[3]

7. Each player shuffles his or her deck, then draws a hand of seven cards to start.[2]

8. If you do not like your opening hand, you can mulligan by shuffling your hand back into your deck and drawing a new hand of six cards, continuing this process with one fewer card each time until you decide to keep your cards.[2]

9. Once the mulligan process is complete, the starting player may take any actions allowed by cards from their opening hand in any order, followed by each other player in turn order.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Comprehensive Rules (2026-06-19) · p.8 · 103. Starting the Game

[2] RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook · p.16 · Section 3: Playing a Game

[3] RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Comprehensive Rules (2026-06-19) · p.10 · 103. Starting the Game

🔧 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 299 ms · ask 18559 ms · total 994488 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 975621 ms · generation 18867 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 16, "score": 0.032018, "snippet": "Now that you know the elements of the game and how to perform the main actions, it's time to walk through a turn. This section describes what happens in each part of a turn. In a typical game, you'll skip many of these parts (for example, nothing usually happens in the 'beginning of combat' step). A", "headingPath": "Section 3: Playing a Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.031514, "snippet": "Since the Magic game doesn't have a game board, zones are the areas of play that exist on your table. When the game begins, your deck of cards becomes your library (your draw pile). It's kept face down, and the cards stay in the order they were in at the beginning of the game. No one can look at the", "headingPath": "L · L · H · T S · B · G", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.031025, "snippet": "Below are the parts of a turn. Each turn proceeds in the same sequence. Whenever you enter a new step or phase, any triggered abilities that happen during that step or phase trigger and are put on the stack. The active player (the player whose turn it is) gets to cast spells and activate abilities, ", "headingPath": "Section 3: Playing a Game · A. Untap step · B. Upkeep step · C. draw step · 2. M P · A. beGinninG of combat step · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.03055, "snippet": "You know everything you need to play a Magic game. But what kind of game will you play? Appropriately enough for a game with so many options, there are lots of different ways to play. Everyone can start on equal footing with brand-new cards rather than build decks in advance from the cards in their ", "headingPath": "Section 4: Different Ways to Play · L F · S D (   ) · B D (4  8 )", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030282, "snippet": "103.1. At the start of a game, the players determine which one of them will choose who takes the first turn. In the first game of a match (including a single-game match), the players may use any mutually agreeable method (flipping a coin, rolling dice, etc.) to do so. In a match of several games, th", "headingPath": "103. Starting the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 172}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.03009, "snippet": "To cast a spell, take the card you want to cast from your hand, show it to your opponent, and put it on the stack. (The stack is the game zone where spells live. It's usually in the middle of the table.) There are a few choices that you need to make right now. If the spell is an instant or sorcery a", "headingPath": "C  S · T · R   S", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029236, "snippet": "This section describes the actions that you'll take during a game. You'll learn how to make mana, which is the resource you need to cast spells. You'll learn how to cast a spell, as well as how to use abilities. Y ou'll also learn how to attack and block with your creatures. The section finishes wit", "headingPath": "Section 2: The Building Blocks · M M", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.028629, "snippet": "When a Magic card contradicts the rulebook, the card wins. For example, the rules say creatures enter the battlefield untapped. But Imposing Sovereign is a creature that says 'Creatures your opponents control enter the battlefield tapped.' Imposing Sovereign changes the rules as long as it's on the ", "headingPath": "A  B · B Y O D", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "103. Starting the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 172}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Section 3: Playing a Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 163}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "103. Starting the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 172}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 163 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 163 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 6, 2026 14:25

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 Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	Section 3: Playing a Game	p.16	0.032018 (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 Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	L · L · H · T S · B · G	p.8	0.031514 (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 Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	Section 3: Playing a Game · A. Untap step · B. Upkeep step · C. draw step · 2. M P · A. beGinninG of combat step · …	p.17	0.031025 (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 Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	Section 4: Different Ways to Play · L F · S D (   ) · B D (4  8 )	p.19	0.03055 (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 Magic: The Gathering — Comprehensive Rules (2026-06-19) (corpus doc 172)	103. Starting the Game	p.8	0.030282 (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 Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	C  S · T · R   S	p.10	0.03009 (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 Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	Section 2: The Building Blocks · M M	p.9	0.029236 (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 Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	A  B · B Y O D	p.15	0.028629 (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.

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 Magic: The Gathering — Comprehensive Rules (2026-06-19) (corpus doc 172)	103. Starting the Game	p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Magic 2014 Starter Rulebook (corpus doc 163)	Section 3: Playing a Game	p.16	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Magic: The Gathering — Comprehensive Rules (2026-06-19) (corpus doc 172)	103. Starting the Game	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 299 ms · first delta 15411 ms · total 994488 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 975621 ms · retrieval 299 ms · ask 18559 ms · gateway work 18867 ms · total 994488 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4378
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 458
tok/sec: 135.0 tok/sec — 458 output tokens in 3.393 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 28s 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): set up

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 85), 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.