Ruling — Pandemic Legacy: Season 1

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1bg-161936-en-1e

To set up the game, follow these steps:

1. Before your very first game, place the Open Package 8 sticker on door 8 of the package box, in the frame designed for it.[1]

2. Draw the first Legacy Deck card (LD 01 B) and read the other side just before you set up your first game.[1][2]

3. When playing a month for the first time, draw cards off the top of the Legacy Deck until you reach one that says STOP; read the mission briefing and integrate any new cards into the game.[3][4]

4. Set out the board and pieces.[4]

5. Place the outbreaks marker on the '0' space of the Outbreaks Track.[4]

6. Place the 4 cure markers, “vial” side up, at the bottom of the disease tracking area.[3][4]

7. Place all current objectives in the objectives area.[3][4]

8. Put all structures (initially only research stations) nearby.[3][4]

9. Separate the cubes by color into 4 supply piles.[3][4]

10. Place a research station in each city with a starting research station sticker (the first game begins with one in Atlanta).[3][4]

11. As a group, decide which Funded Event cards are going into the Player Deck; the deck can have as many cards as your current funding level (which is 4 for the first game).[4]

12. Shuffle these Event cards and City cards together and deal cards to players to form initial hands based on player count: 4 cards for a 2-player game, 3 cards for a 3-player game, and 2 cards for a 4-player game.[4]

13. Divide the remaining player cards into 5 facedown piles of as equal size as possible.[4]

14. Shuffle 1 Epidemic card into each pile, facedown.[4]

15. Stack these piles to form the Player Deck, placing smaller piles at the bottom.[4]

16. Have each player select a character and player color, then give them the corresponding Reference card and pawn.[3][4]

17. Place all player pawns at any one research station (all characters must start together; in the first game, players start in Atlanta).[3][4]

18. Place any remaining character cards and pawns back in the box.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook · p.2

[2] RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook · p.2 · THE LEGACY DECK · THE DOSSIERS U · THE PACKAGES

[3] RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook · p.4

[4] RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook · p.4 · SETUP · Read the Mission Briefing · Set out the board and pieces · Place outbreaks, cure markers, and objectives · Select Funded Events, add them to the deck, and deal out Player cards · Prepare the Player Deck · …

🔧 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 258 ms · ask 11212 ms · total 1342614 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 1331136 ms · generation 11478 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "You win as soon as you meet the necessary number of objectives. The game ends immediately, even if it is the middle of a player's turn or a series of outbreaks. There are many ways for the game to end and the players to lose: Immediately when the outbreaks marker reaches the last space of the Outbre", "headingPath": "GAME END · IF YOU WIN THE GAME · IF YOU LOSE THE GAME · IN EITHER CASE (WIN OR LOSE) · GAME END UPGRADES · UNFUNDED EVENTS · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.04728, "snippet": "You may notice that some steps are missing. They will be added later. 1 When playing a month for the first time, draw cards off the top of the Legacy Deck until you reach one that says STOP . Read the mission briefing and integrate new cards (if any) to the game. 2 Put all structures (initially you'", "headingPath": "SETUP · Read the Mission Briefing · Set out the board and pieces · Place outbreaks, cure markers, and objectives · Select Funded Events, add them to the deck, and deal out Player cards · Prepare the Player Deck · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "If a character gains a scar but does not have room for it, that character is lost. Destroyed Research Stations As a game end upgrade, select a city with a research station from your just-played game and mark it with a starting research station sticker. Players place research station anywhere there i", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "Supresssed When you Treat, remove all the cubes of this color from your city . Fallen Cities Add a fallen sticker to a city when its panic level becomes 5. (Cover the 4.) UNFUNDED EVENT EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAM Remove 1 Disease cube anywhere on the board. Play any time. Not an action. UNFUNDED EVENT TRE", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045541, "snippet": "As you go through the Legacy Deck, you will come across cards that have dossier numbers or letters on them. When you do, open up – and tear off using the precut corner – the dossier doors matching the numbers (or letters) on the card, one at a time, resolving each one before opening the next. Some o", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Place the 4 cure markers, “vial” side up, at the bottom of the disease tracking area. Place all current objectives in the objectives area. When playing a month for the first time, draw cards off the top of the Legacy Deck until you reach one that says STOP. Read the mission briefing and integrate ne", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Place the infection rate marker on the left-most '2' space of the Infection Rate Track. Shuffle the Infection cards and flip over 3 of them. Put 3 disease cubes of the matching color on each of these cities. Flip over 3 more cards: put 2 disease cubes on each of these cities. Flip over 3 more cards:", "headingPath": "Place infection rate marker and infect 9 cities · PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "If you win, advance to the next month and decrease your funding by 2. If you lose the first half of the month, play the second half of the month and increase your funding by 2. If you lose in the second half of the month, increase your funding by 2, then proceed to the next month. Funding cannot go ", "headingPath": "GAME CALENDAR", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE LEGACY DECK · THE DOSSIERS U · THE PACKAGES", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP · Read the Mission Briefing · Set out the board and pieces · Place outbreaks, cure markers, and objectives · Select Funded Events, add them to the deck, and deal out Player cards · Prepare the Player Deck · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 255}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 255 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 255 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 14:31

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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	GAME END · IF YOU WIN THE GAME · IF YOU LOSE THE GAME · IN EITHER CASE (WIN OR LOSE) · GAME END UPGRADES · UNFUNDED EVENTS · …	p.8	0.048652 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	SETUP · Read the Mission Briefing · Set out the board and pieces · Place outbreaks, cure markers, and objectives · Select Funded Events, add them to the deck, and deal out Player cards · Prepare the Player Deck · …	p.4	0.04728 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)		p.2	0.046875 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)		p.2	0.046642 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)		p.2	0.045541 (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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)		p.4	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
#7	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	Place infection rate marker and infect 9 cities · PLAY	p.4	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
#8	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	GAME CALENDAR	p.9	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.

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 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	THE LEGACY DECK · THE DOSSIERS U · THE PACKAGES	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 — Rulebook (corpus doc 255)	SETUP · Read the Mission Briefing · Set out the board and pieces · Place outbreaks, cure markers, and objectives · Select Funded Events, add them to the deck, and deal out Player cards · Prepare the Player Deck · …	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 258 ms · first delta 7460 ms · total 1342614 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 1331136 ms · retrieval 258 ms · ask 11212 ms · gateway work 11478 ms · total 1342614 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4900
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 537
tok/sec: 135.5 tok/sec — 537 output tokens in 3.962 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 42s 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 182), 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.