Ruling — Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game

You asked

Walk me through the full setup procedure step by step.

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Gamebg-374173-en-1e

To set up the game, you and your opponent perform the following steps:

1. Choose your faction: Rebel or Empire.[1]

2. Find the five Rebel base cards and the five Empire base cards listed below (Dantooine, Hoth, Mon Cala, Sullust, Yavin IV for Rebels; Lothal, Corellia, Coruscant, Death Star, Endor for Empire).[1]

3. Place your starting base faceup in front of you, and place your remaining base cards facedown underneath it (the order does not matter).[1]

4. Separate the 10 Empire starter cards and 10 Rebel starter cards from the other cards.[1]

5. Take the cards that match your chosen faction and shuffle them together to form your player deck.[1]

6. Place your player deck facedown near your base deck.[1]

7. Shuffle the 90 galaxy cards together to form the galaxy deck.[2]

8. Deal the top six cards in a line to create the galaxy row, orienting Empire cards to face the Empire player and Rebel cards to face the Rebel player, and turning neutral cards sideways so both players can read them.[2]

9. Place the galaxy deck facedown at one end of the galaxy row.[2]

10. Place the 10 Outer Rim Pilot cards in a stack faceup at the opposite end of the galaxy row to create the Outer Rim Pilot deck.[2]

11. Place the damage counters and the resource counters near the galaxy deck where both players can reach them.[2]

12. Unfold the Balance of the Force track and place it next to the Outer Rim Pilot stack with the Rebel symbol facing the Rebel player.[2]

13. Place the Force marker on the space all the way to the Rebel side of the Balance of the Force track.[2]

14. Draw the top five cards of your deck.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game — Rulebook · p.4 · REBEL STARTER CARDS · SETUP · REBEL BASE DECK · EMPIRE BASE DECK · EMPIRE STARTER CARDS

[2] RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game — Rulebook · p.5

🔧 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 277 ms · ask 10457 ms · total 10743 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 10743 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 14, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": " On your turn, you can do any or all of the following in the order of your choice as many times as you are able and would like to: Play a card. Purchase a card. Use a card ability. Commit to an attack. Resolve an attack. End your turn. Each of these is explained in detail in the followi", "headingPath": "BEGINNING OF TURN · TAKING YOUR TURN · PLAY A CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 348}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Some abilities allow you to repair damage from your base. To repair damage, remove a number of damage counters equal to the number indicated by the repair ability. Some abilities instruct you to reveal the top card of the galaxy deck. When you reveal a card, flip it over so everyone can read it. If ", "headingPath": "REPAIR · REVEAL · WHEN · WHILE · EMPTY DECK", "sharpsignalDocId": 348}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "'You would prefer another target, a military target? Then name the system!' Grand Moff Tarkin STAR WARS: THE DECKBUILDING GAME comes with 10 Empire bases and 10 Rebel bases. However, the setup instructions on page 4 have each player put five of their bases back in the box for the beginner game. Once", "headingPath": "ADVANCED GAME MODES · FULL GALAXY · SECRET BASES · 2V2 MULTIPLAYER", "sharpsignalDocId": 348}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "'This is where the fun begins!' - Anakin Skywalker The game is played over a series of turns. The Empire takes the first turn, followed by the Rebels, and turns alternate between the two sides until one player wins by destroying three of their opponent's bases. The following process occurs at the be", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME · BEGINNING OF TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 348}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Alliance Shuttle x 7 Rebel Trooper x 2 Temple Guardian x 1 To set up the game, you and your opponent perform the following steps. (When you are instructed to perform a step with your bases or your starter deck, your opponent does the same with theirs.) Choose your faction: Rebel or Empire. Find the ", "headingPath": "REBEL STARTER CARDS · SETUP · REBEL BASE DECK · EMPIRE BASE DECK · EMPIRE STARTER CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 348}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The following section introduces the core concepts you need to know to play STAR WARS: THE DECKBUILDING GAME . 'I want to learn the ways of the Force.' - Luke Skywalker In STAR WARS: THE DECKBUILDING GAME , you and your opponent each begin the game with your own deck of 10 cards. These starter decks", "headingPath": "CORE CONCEPTS · DECKBUILDING 101", "sharpsignalDocId": 348}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Attacks may resolve against an opponent's base, and bounty hunting or sabotage attacks can resolve against cards in the galaxy row. The rules for each of these attack types are described below. To resolve an attack against an opponent's base, total the attack value of all of the units and capital sh", "headingPath": "RESOLVE AN ATTACK · Attacking an Opponent's Base", "sharpsignalDocId": 348}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "'You'll find I'm full of surprises!' - Luke Skywalker To use a card ability on a card in play, indicate to your opponent which card's ability you would like to use, and then resolve the effects of the ability. Resolving the abilities on your cards is optional. While resolving an ability, perform", "headingPath": "USE A CARD ABILITY", "sharpsignalDocId": 348}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "REBEL STARTER CARDS · SETUP · REBEL BASE DECK · EMPIRE BASE DECK · EMPIRE STARTER CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 348}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 348}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 348 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 348 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 18:27

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 Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 348)	BEGINNING OF TURN · TAKING YOUR TURN · PLAY A CARD	p.14	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 Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 348)	REPAIR · REVEAL · WHEN · WHILE · EMPTY DECK	p.27	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 Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 348)	ADVANCED GAME MODES · FULL GALAXY · SECRET BASES · 2V2 MULTIPLAYER	p.28	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 Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 348)	PLAYING THE GAME · BEGINNING OF TURN	p.13	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 Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 348)	REBEL STARTER CARDS · SETUP · REBEL BASE DECK · EMPIRE BASE DECK · EMPIRE STARTER CARDS	p.4	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 Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 348)	CORE CONCEPTS · DECKBUILDING 101	p.8	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 Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 348)	RESOLVE AN ATTACK · Attacking an Opponent's Base	p.18	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 Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 348)	USE A CARD ABILITY	p.16	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 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 Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 348)	REBEL STARTER CARDS · SETUP · REBEL BASE DECK · EMPIRE BASE DECK · EMPIRE STARTER CARDS	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 348)		p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 277 ms · first delta 7923 ms · total 10743 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 277 ms · ask 10457 ms · gateway work 10743 ms · total 10743 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3417
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 412
tok/sec: 148.0 tok/sec — 412 output tokens in 2.783 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 21s 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 276), 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.