Ruling — Seasons

You asked

How should we prepare everything before the first turn?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Seasonsbg-108745-en-1e

To prepare everything before the first turn, follow these steps:

1. Place the game board in the middle of the table.[1][2]

2. Place the Year token on space 1 of the year track and the Season token on space 1 of the season wheel.[1][2]

3. Place as many dice of each color as there are players plus 1.[1] (Specifically: three dice of each color for two players; four dice of each color for three players; or five dice of each color for four players).[2]

4. Place the crystal track next to the game board.[1][2]

5. Place the energy stockpile next to the crystal track.[1][2]

6. Give each player an individual board, two Library tokens (Library II and III), and four matching Sorcerer tokens.[1][3]

7. Each player places their Sorcerer tokens: one on the zero space at the bottom of the crystal track, one on the second zero space at the top of the crystal track, one on the zero space of their individual board's Bonus track, and one on the zero space of their Summoning gauge.[1][3]

8. Shuffle all Power cards and deal nine face-down to each player.[3]

9. Set aside the remaining cards next to the game board to form the draw pile, leaving a space for the discard pile.[1][3]

10. Each player checks their nine dealt cards, picks one to place face-down in front of them, and places the remaining eight cards between themselves and the player to their left.[1][3]

11. Players repeat the selection process by picking one card from the eight cards set aside for them by the player to their right, until no cards are left to be chosen.[1][3]

12. From the nine selected cards, each player assembles three sets of three cards each: the first set goes into their hand; the second and third sets are placed under the Library II and III tokens, respectively, to enter the hand at the beginning of the second and third years.[1][4]

13. The youngest player is chosen as the first player.[1][3][4]

14. The first player takes the Season dice corresponding to the season indicated by the Season token and rolls them.[1][4]

[1] RULEBOOK Seasons — Rulebook · p.15 · Setup · Choose your 9 Power cards · Building your deck · Beginning of the round · Players' Turns

[2] RULEBOOK Seasons — Rulebook · p.4 · energy Tokens · Neutral elements · ChooSe the gAme'S diFFiCulty level

[3] RULEBOOK Seasons — Rulebook · p.5 · Player Material · I - Choose your nine Power cards

[4] RULEBOOK Seasons — Rulebook · p.5 · II - Constructing your deck · Second game phase - The Tournament · Roll the Season dice

🔧 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 248 ms · ask 9819 ms · total 25597 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 15518 ms · generation 10079 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "First, select nine Power cards at the same time as your opponents. Choose them carefully, as they will heavily impact the rest of the game. Then get used to the passing seasons in order to make the most of the actions offered by the dice during each round! Gather energy, summon familiars and magic i", "headingPath": "energy Tokens · Neutral elements · ChooSe the gAme'S diFFiCulty level", "sharpsignalDocId": 449}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "From the nine Power cards chosen, each player should assemble three sets of three cards each. The first set immediately forms the player's hand, as it corresponds to the cards with which the players will begin their Tournament. The second set is placed under the Library II token and will be added to", "headingPath": "II - Constructing your deck · Second game phase - The Tournament · Roll the Season dice", "sharpsignalDocId": 449}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Place the game board in the middle of the table. Place the Year token on space 1 of the year track and the Season token on space 1 of the season wheel. Place as many dice of each color as there are players plus 1. Place the crystal track next to the game board. Place the energy stockpile next to the", "headingPath": "Setup · Choose your 9 Power cards · Building your deck · Beginning of the round · Players' Turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 449}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Each player then chooses an individual board. They place that board in front of them and take the four Sorcerer tokens of the same color as their individual boards. They place: one token on the zero space at the bottom of the crystal track. one token on the second zero space at the top of the crysta", "headingPath": "Player Material · I - Choose your nine Power cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 449}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "At the end of a round, when the Season token crosses the 3, 6, 9, and 12 spaces, a change of season occurs. The change of season may trigger the effects of some Power cards. Example: this die wasn't chosen by any player . At the end of the round, the Season token will move three spaces, since three ", "headingPath": "Moving forward on the season wheel and changing seasons · Change of year · Choosing a new first player · IV - End of the game · List of cards and clarifications", "sharpsignalDocId": 449}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Planche cartes seasons US_Mise en page 1 27/09/2012 Planche cartes seasons US_Mise en page 1 27/09/2012 Planche cartes seasons US_Mise en page 1 27/09/2012 When you activate the Idol of the Familiar, move your Sorcerer token on the crystal track as many spaces as you have familiar cards in play. Whe", "headingPath": "Cursed Treatise of Arus · Idol of the Familiar · Necrotic Kriss · Lantern of Xidit · Sealed Chest of Urm · Mirror of the Seasons", "sharpsignalDocId": 449}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Each face of the dice is made up of one or more symbols. Each symbol corresponds to an action that a player will be able to take during their turn. From among the dice rolled, the first player chooses one and places it in front of them. Then, the player to their left does the same while taking one o", "headingPath": "Choosing your Season die · II - Players' turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 449}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "On their turn, a player must take the action(s) offered by the Season die they've previously chosen: Gain Energy tokens: when one of these symbols is present on a die chosen by a player, that player gains the type of energy shown. The player takes from the stockpile the number and type of energy sho", "headingPath": "The actions linked to the Season dice", "sharpsignalDocId": 449}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup · Choose your 9 Power cards · Building your deck · Beginning of the round · Players' Turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 449}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "energy Tokens · Neutral elements · ChooSe the gAme'S diFFiCulty level", "sharpsignalDocId": 449}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player Material · I - Choose your nine Power cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 449}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "II - Constructing your deck · Second game phase - The Tournament · Roll the Season dice", "sharpsignalDocId": 449}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 449 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 449 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 7, 2026 05:01

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 Seasons — Rulebook (corpus doc 449)	energy Tokens · Neutral elements · ChooSe the gAme'S diFFiCulty level	p.4	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 Seasons — Rulebook (corpus doc 449)	II - Constructing your deck · Second game phase - The Tournament · Roll the Season dice	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 Seasons — Rulebook (corpus doc 449)	Setup · Choose your 9 Power cards · Building your deck · Beginning of the round · Players' Turns	p.15	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 Seasons — Rulebook (corpus doc 449)	Player Material · I - Choose your nine Power cards	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 Seasons — Rulebook (corpus doc 449)	Moving forward on the season wheel and changing seasons · Change of year · Choosing a new first player · IV - End of the game · List of cards and clarifications	p.9	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 Seasons — Rulebook (corpus doc 449)	Cursed Treatise of Arus · Idol of the Familiar · Necrotic Kriss · Lantern of Xidit · Sealed Chest of Urm · Mirror of the Seasons	p.14	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 Seasons — Rulebook (corpus doc 449)	Choosing your Season die · II - Players' turns	p.6	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 Seasons — Rulebook (corpus doc 449)	The actions linked to the Season dice	p.6	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 Seasons — Rulebook (corpus doc 449)	Setup · Choose your 9 Power cards · Building your deck · Beginning of the round · Players' Turns	p.15	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Seasons — Rulebook (corpus doc 449)	energy Tokens · Neutral elements · ChooSe the gAme'S diFFiCulty level	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Seasons — Rulebook (corpus doc 449)	Player Material · I - Choose your nine Power cards	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Seasons — Rulebook (corpus doc 449)	II - Constructing your deck · Second game phase - The Tournament · Roll the Season dice	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 248 ms · first delta 6341 ms · total 25597 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 15518 ms · retrieval 248 ms · ask 9819 ms · gateway work 10079 ms · total 25597 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3691
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 508
tok/sec: 137.5 tok/sec — 508 output tokens in 3.694 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 16s 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: BEFORE_FIRST_PLAY — "before the first turn" / "before we begin"
matched words (in the normalized question): before the first turn

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 380), 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.