RuleSage cited table rulings
← Radlands

You asked

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

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: Radlandsbg-329082-en-1e

I looked through Radlands's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook · p.10 · PLAY CARD (PERSON) · When playing a person: · PLAY CARD (EVENT) · When playing an event: · DRAW CARD · JUNK CARD
Play a person card from your hand in front of any one of your camps (even a destroyed camp ). Spend water discs A onto the card equal to its cost shown in the top left B . The turn a person is played, it is not ready . If there is already a person in that column, place the new person in front C or b
RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook · p.15 · EVENTS F.A.Q. · USING THE OFFICIAL PLAYMAT
Bombardment: As usual, camps already damaged will be destroyed. High Ground: You can rearrange people back into the same positions. Radiation: ' All people ' is all people currently in play, which includes your own people . Raiders: See 'Raid' , pg 9. You can resolve the raid icon ( ) more than once
RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook · p.4 · GAME TURNS · COMPONENTS · GENERAL SETUP
4 Draw deck containing 46 person cards & 20 event cards Note: Unless otherwise specified, the draw deck is considered the default card type when the rulebook or cards refer to 'cards' , ' deck' , or ' discarding' . 2 Raiders cards 2 Water Silo cards Camp deck containing 34 camp cards +32 Cult of Chr
RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook · p.5 · Each player sets up their own play area with the following steps:
Draw 6 cards from the camp deck . For the best possible first experience with Radlands: skip this step, and instead give the most experienced player Arcade , Victory Totem , and Mercenary Camp . Give the other player Garage , Railgun , and Supply Depot . Place 3 of your drawn camps facedown in your
RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook · p.14 · PEOPLE F.A.Q.
Full Columns: If you have no space in any of your columns, you may play a person but you must first destroy one of your existing people . This option to destroy applies whenever playing a person , whether by performing the Play Card action, resolving an event effect, card trait, junk effect, or card
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
outcome
ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
warm abstain
  • this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)
corpus profile
live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings
search 267 ms · ask 4095 ms · total 4371 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 4371 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 10, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Play a person card from your hand in front of any one of your camps (even a destroyed camp ). Spend water discs A onto the card equal to its cost shown in the top left B . The turn a person is played, it is not ready . If there is already a person in that column, place the new person in front C or b", "headingPath": "PLAY CARD (PERSON) · When playing a person: · PLAY CARD (EVENT) · When playing an event: · DRAW CARD · JUNK CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Bombardment: As usual, camps already damaged will be destroyed. High Ground: You can rearrange people back into the same positions. Radiation: ' All people ' is all people currently in play, which includes your own people . Raiders: See 'Raid' , pg 9. You can resolve the raid icon ( ) more than once", "headingPath": "EVENTS F.A.Q. · USING THE OFFICIAL PLAYMAT", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "4 Draw deck containing 46 person cards & 20 event cards Note: Unless otherwise specified, the draw deck is considered the default card type when the rulebook or cards refer to 'cards' , ' deck' , or ' discarding' . 2 Raiders cards 2 Water Silo cards Camp deck containing 34 camp cards +32 Cult of Chr", "headingPath": "GAME TURNS · COMPONENTS · GENERAL SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Draw 6 cards from the camp deck . For the best possible first experience with Radlands: skip this step, and instead give the most experienced player Arcade , Victory Totem , and Mercenary Camp . Give the other player Garage , Railgun , and Supply Depot . Place 3 of your drawn camps facedown in your ", "headingPath": "Each player sets up their own play area with the following steps:", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Full Columns: If you have no space in any of your columns, you may play a person but you must first destroy one of your existing people . This option to destroy applies whenever playing a person , whether by performing the Play Card action, resolving an event effect, card trait, junk effect, or card", "headingPath": "PEOPLE F.A.Q.", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Guillotine ( Muse ) : Opponent keeps the water , and can use it on their turn. Guillotine ( Cult Leader ) : Cult Leader is destroyed first, so he will have to destroy a different person , to use his ability. Guillotine ( Rescue Team ) : Can't return itself, as it' s destroyed first, and then uses it", "headingPath": "CAMPS F.A.Q.", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Game Design: Daniel Piechnick Development Lead: Matt Tolman Development: Gavan Brown, Adam Wyse Art: Manny Trembley, Damien Mammoliti, Mr. Cuddington Graphic Design Lead: Gavan Brown Graphic Design: Gui Landgraf, Owen Hill, James Van Niekerk Rulebook: Adam Wyse, Gui Landgraf Box Design: Gabriel Mart", "headingPath": "CREDITS · RULES OF PLAY V2.1 · OVERVIEW · GAME TURNS", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Event cards have a yellow and black striped border. Events have a water cost H , a junk effect I , an event effect J , and a numbered bomb icon K that determines where it is placed in your event queue L when played. L EVENT QUEUE: Each player has an event queue L made up of 3 spaces. The space is in", "headingPath": "EVENTS · PLAY AREA", "sharpsignalDocId": 357}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 357 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 357 boosted
answered-before recall
no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough
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 18:23

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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357) PLAY CARD (PERSON) · When playing a person: · PLAY CARD (EVENT) · When playing an event: · DRAW CARD · JUNK CARD p.10 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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357) EVENTS F.A.Q. · USING THE OFFICIAL PLAYMAT p.15 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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357) GAME TURNS · COMPONENTS · GENERAL SETUP 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
#4 RULEBOOK Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357) Each player sets up their own play area with the following steps: p.5 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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357) PEOPLE F.A.Q. p.14 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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357) CAMPS F.A.Q. p.12 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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357) CREDITS · RULES OF PLAY V2.1 · OVERVIEW · GAME TURNS 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 Radlands — Rulebook (corpus doc 357) EVENTS · PLAY AREA 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
timing split
retrieval 267 ms · first delta 4272 ms · total 4371 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 267 ms · ask 4095 ms · gateway work 4371 ms · total 4371 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
2992
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
9
tok/sec
140.6 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.064 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 53s 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
ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
abstain rationale
I don't have enough information.
the answerer's own words, verbatim — hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped
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 286), 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.