RuleSage cited table rulings
← Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan

You asked

What does each player take, and what goes in the middle, before we begin?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Sekigahara: The Unification of Japanbg-25021-en-1e

Before the game begins:
1. Set the turn counter to Week 1.[1]
2. Shuffle the two decks separately.[1]
3. Each player draws 5 cards from his deck.[1]
4. Separate the blocks with setup symbols in the lower right corner and put the remaining blocks into two draw bags (one for each color).[1]
5. Place blocks on the map as described in rule 5.1.[1]
6. Place the blocks which have a setup symbol in the lower right corner on the map in the Locations that have the matching symbol.[1]
7. Put all the rest of the blocks into two draw bags, one for each player.[1]
8. Fill the locations indicated for random blocks by drawing the required number of blocks at random from a bag and placing them there.[1]
9. Shuffle both decks and place them face down to form two draw piles.[2]
[1] RULEBOOK Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan — Rulebook · p.5 · 5.1 ProCEdurE · 5.2.1 Blocks with Specific Locations · 5.2.2 Randomly Placed Blocks · 5.2.3 Reinforcement Blocks · 6. Weekly Cycle · 6.1 turn sEquEnCE outlInE
[2] RULEBOOK Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan — Rulebook · p.3 · 3.2 BloCks · 3.3 Cards · 3.4 othEr ComPonEnts
🔧 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 270 ms · ask 11040 ms · total 11321 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 11321 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 5, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Each player receives new cards and blocks, as follows: Each player discards half (round down) of their hand. Example: if you have 7 cards you would discard 3. Each player draws 5 cards. The player who controls the most castles draws a 6th card. Each player draws at random from their bag a number of ", "headingPath": "6.2 rEInForCEmEnt stEP · 6.3 turn ordEr stEP · 6.4 turns a and B · Turn A: · Turn B:", "sharpsignalDocId": 340}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Set the turn counter to Week \u0018. Shuffle the two decks separately. Each player draws 5 cards from his deck. (This small starting hand represents the limited organizational capacity of each army in the early stages.) Separate the blocks with setup symbols in the lower right corner, and put the remaini", "headingPath": "5.1 ProCEdurE · 5.2.1 Blocks with Specific Locations · 5.2.2 Randomly Placed Blocks · 5.2.3 Reinforcement Blocks · 6. Weekly Cycle · 6.1 turn sEquEnCE outlInE", "sharpsignalDocId": 340}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Leadership present at the origin of a move increases the Base Movement Rate of a stack by one location. Leadership can be a leader, a castle, or a capital (or any combination of the three). If a player uses a leader for the increased movement, the leader block must be declared to the opponent. (It i", "headingPath": "7.3.4 Leadership", "sharpsignalDocId": 340}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "During the Movement Phase a player may move none, some, or all of the stacks of blocks they control on the board. A stack is all of the blocks in a single location. The number of stacks that can be moved is determined by the number of cards spent for movement. Mustering and Overruns can also occur i", "headingPath": "7.1 In GEnEral · 7.2 mustErInG", "sharpsignalDocId": 340}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Combat occurs after all movement. Combat must be declared in every location on the board where opposing pieces appear together. These declarations are made one at a time by the phasing player, with combat resolved immediately following each declaration. Combat will be a battle or a siege, the latter", "headingPath": "8.1 GEnEral rulE · 8.2.1 Battle Procedure · 8.2.2 Cards and Deployment · 8.2.3 Deployment Procedure · 8.2.4 Initial Deployment of a Leader Block · 8.3.1 Impact in General", "sharpsignalDocId": 340}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Large forces move more slowly than small ones. For every multiple of four blocks beyond the first four, a stack's movement capacity is reduced by one. Thus, movement capacity is decreased (-\u0018) at the 5th, 9th, \u00183th, and \u00187th block (see chart below). To each block's movement capacity, apply a size pe", "headingPath": "7.3.5 Movement and Force Sizes · 7.3.6 Movement Chart · 7.4.1 Overruns in General · 7.4.2 Overrun Procedure · 7.4.3 Overruns and Castles", "sharpsignalDocId": 340}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Some blocks represent a daimyo (leader). These are marked with a nobori (banner). Most nobori have a single dot, but the protagonists of the campaign, Ishida Mitsunari and Tokugawa Ieyasu, are marked with nobori of three dots. Cards represent the allegiance of each player's armies. The greater the n", "headingPath": "3.2 BloCks · 3.3 Cards · 3.4 othEr ComPonEnts", "sharpsignalDocId": 340}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "The Ishida player (gold blocks) plays two cards during his Movement Phase to allow all his stacks to move. This allows him one Muster action which he does first. He can muster one block of any designation to any friendly recruitment location, or he can muster all blocks that match a mon to the recru", "headingPath": "EXAMPLE OF MOVEMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 340}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5.1 ProCEdurE · 5.2.1 Blocks with Specific Locations · 5.2.2 Randomly Placed Blocks · 5.2.3 Reinforcement Blocks · 6. Weekly Cycle · 6.1 turn sEquEnCE outlInE", "sharpsignalDocId": 340}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3.2 BloCks · 3.3 Cards · 3.4 othEr ComPonEnts", "sharpsignalDocId": 340}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 340 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 340 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 18:17

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 Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 340) 6.2 rEInForCEmEnt stEP · 6.3 turn ordEr stEP · 6.4 turns a and B · Turn A: · Turn B: p.5 0.032787 (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 Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 340) 5.1 ProCEdurE · 5.2.1 Blocks with Specific Locations · 5.2.2 Randomly Placed Blocks · 5.2.3 Reinforcement Blocks · 6. Weekly Cycle · 6.1 turn sEquEnCE outlInE p.5 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
#3 RULEBOOK Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 340) 7.3.4 Leadership 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 Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 340) 7.1 In GEnEral · 7.2 mustErInG p.6 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 Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 340) 8.1 GEnEral rulE · 8.2.1 Battle Procedure · 8.2.2 Cards and Deployment · 8.2.3 Deployment Procedure · 8.2.4 Initial Deployment of a Leader Block · 8.3.1 Impact in General p.8 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 Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 340) 7.3.5 Movement and Force Sizes · 7.3.6 Movement Chart · 7.4.1 Overruns in General · 7.4.2 Overrun Procedure · 7.4.3 Overruns and Castles p.7 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
#7 RULEBOOK Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 340) 3.2 BloCks · 3.3 Cards · 3.4 othEr ComPonEnts p.3 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 Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 340) EXAMPLE OF MOVEMENT p.7 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 Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 340) 5.1 ProCEdurE · 5.2.1 Blocks with Specific Locations · 5.2.2 Randomly Placed Blocks · 5.2.3 Reinforcement Blocks · 6. Weekly Cycle · 6.1 turn sEquEnCE outlInE p.5 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 340) 3.2 BloCks · 3.3 Cards · 3.4 othEr ComPonEnts p.3 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 270 ms · first delta 9813 ms · total 11321 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 270 ms · ask 11040 ms · gateway work 11321 ms · total 11321 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
4178
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
197
tok/sec
136.9 tok/sec — 197 output tokens in 1.439 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
NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched
BEFORE_FIRST_PLAY — "before the first turn" / "before we begin"
matched words (in the normalized question)
before we begin

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 268), 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.