RuleSage cited table rulings
← Onitama

You asked

How should we prepare everything before the first turn?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Onitamabg-160477-en-1e

1. Shuffle the 16 Move cards.[1][2][3]
2. Give two random cards to each player, face up, which serves as the player's "hand".[1][2][3]
3. Each player places both of their starting cards in front of them, face up.[1][2][3]
4. Turn over one more Move card and examine the stamp in the lower right hand corner of the card.[1][2][3]
5. The player with the pawns that are the same color as that stamp will go first.[1][2][3]
6. Place this card so that it is on the right side of the game mat (with respect to the player going first).[1][2][3]
7. Return the rest of the unused Move cards to the box.[1][2][3]
[1] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook · p.8
[2] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook · p.5 · GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1
[3] RULEBOOK Onitama — 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 253 ms · ask 6855 ms · total 47884 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 40765 ms · generation 7119 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 5, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "superior strategy and superior skill that the Master of Masters will be known, and the true Art will be revealed.' - The Book of Heaven, Second Scroll FACE UP Shuffle the 16 Move cards. Give two random cards to each player, face up - this is the player's 'hand'. Each player places both of their star", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032002, "snippet": "You may use that card starting next turn, as one of the two Move cards you can choose from. Now it is time for your opponent to take a turn, following the same two steps. You shall continue to take turns until one of you has won the game, demonstrating mastery of your Martial Art. STEP 2: EXCHANGE C", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.032002, "snippet": "You may use that card starting next turn, as one of the two Move cards you can choose from. Now it is time for your opponent to take a turn, following the same two steps. You shall continue to take turns until one of you has won the game, demonstrating mastery of your Martial Art. STEP 2: EXCHANGE C", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "STARTING CARDS FACE UP STARTING CARDS FACE UP EXTRA MOVE CARD FACEUP MASTER PAWN GOES ON TEMPLE ARCH PLAYER 2 PLAYER 1 OX “Pour your strength into the forms of your Art -- in its punches, its kicks, in the steady advance of your aggression.” DRAGON “Be swift as the thunder that peals before you have", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "STARTING CARDS FACE UP STARTING CARDS FACE UP EXTRA MOVE CARD FACEUP MASTER PAWN GOES ON TEMPLE ARCH PLAYER 2 PLAYER 1 OX “Pour your strength into the forms of your Art -- in its punches, its kicks, in the steady advance of your aggression.” DRAGON “Be swift as the thunder that peals before you have", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Take the Move card you just used, and place it to the left side of the playmat, rotating it 180 degrees to face your opponent. Then take the card that is on the right side of your playmat and add it to your hand. You may use that card starting next turn, as one of the two Move cards you can choose f", "headingPath": "STEP 2: EXCHANGE CARDS · WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO MOVE?", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "'These words are written in the presence of the scribes of Onitama. I have unlocked the mysteries of my Art, which I believe to be the true Art. I have listened to the Spirits, and have studied the manuals of my ancestors, passing Combat at Onitama is simple and elegant, as befits a contest between ", "headingPath": "PLAYER 1 · It is time to prove the power of your Art. · STEP 1: MOVE & ATTACK · PAWN CAN MOVE TO ANY ONE OF THESE", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "'Hear me, if you would prove your Art above all others. When you have mastered its mysteries, then may you seek to challenge others. It is through Onitama is an elegant and simple game which captures the essence of martial arts. Each game is quick, usually 15 minutes in length. Welcome to the Shrine", "headingPath": "CREDITS · COMPONENTS · GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 448 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 448 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 05:02

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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1 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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) p.5 0.032002 (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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) p.8 0.032002 (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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) 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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) 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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) STEP 2: EXCHANGE CARDS · WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO MOVE? 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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) PLAYER 1 · It is time to prove the power of your Art. · STEP 1: MOVE & ATTACK · PAWN CAN MOVE TO ANY ONE OF THESE 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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) CREDITS · COMPONENTS · GAME SETUP p.4 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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) p.8 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1 p.5 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) p.5 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 253 ms · first delta 5646 ms · total 47884 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 40765 ms · retrieval 253 ms · ask 6855 ms · gateway work 7119 ms · total 47884 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3691
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
198
tok/sec
138.2 tok/sec — 198 output tokens in 1.433 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 15s 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 the first turn

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 379), 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.