RuleSage cited table rulings
← Ezra and Nehemiah

You asked

Before anyone takes a turn, how is everything laid out on the table?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Ezra and Nehemiahbg-386368-en-1e

To set up the main area of the game:
1. Place the Main Board in the centre of the table.[1]
2. Place all 6 Gate Cards alongside the Main Board, with the sides showing an outline of a Worker, faceup.[1]
3. If playing with 1-2 players, turn over the Muster Gate and East Gate, and place them onto the corresponding spaces of the Main Board.[1]
4. Place 2 Silver on each Gate Card still alongside the Main Board.[1]
5. Cover the 6 centre-most Wall spaces along the top of the Main Board with Neutral Wall Cards (the spaces adjacent to and between the Muster Gate and East Gate, and the 1 Wall space to the left of these).[1]
6. If playing with 3 players:
a. Place 1 Silver on each Gate Card alongside the Main Board.[1]
b. Cover the 3 Wall spaces between the Muster Gate and East Gate with Neutral Wall Cards.[1]
c. Place 10 of each Resource (Gold, Stone, Wood, and Cinders) alongside the Main Board to form the Main Supply.[1]
d. Place all Silver and Food Tokens in the Main Supply.[1]
e. Place the remaining 64 Resources into the Rubble Bag.[1]
f. Draw out Resources randomly, placing a number of them onto each Wall and Gate space of the Main Board equal to the number of icons shown; any leftover Resources from the bag should be placed in the Main Supply.[1]
7. Separate the Scroll Tiles by their backs.[1]
8. Randomly place 1 Gold Scroll Tile faceup on each space of the highest row of the Main Board.[1]
9. Randomly place 1 Wood Scroll Tile faceup on each space of both middle rows (9 Scroll Tiles in total).[1]
10. Randomly place 1 Stone Scroll Tile on each space of the lowest row.[1]
11. Return all other Scroll Tiles to the box.[1]
12. Place a number of Food in stacks to the far right of the Scroll rows:
a. 4VP row = 3 Food
b. 3VP row = 2 Food
c. 2VP row = 1 Food
d. 1VP row = 0 Food.[1]
[1] RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook · p.6 · Main Board Setup
🔧 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 263 ms · ask 11184 ms · total 11456 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 11456 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 25, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "After they have completed their turn, players must draw 1 Character Card from their Draw Pile, if possible. Only in the last Round will they potentially not have any Character Cards left to draw. In this case, they simply do not draw. Until this point, players will generally always have 4 Character ", "headingPath": "End of Turn · Prepare for Sabbath · Farmers and Labourers", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "In Rounds 1 and 2, the steps below must be carried out before beginning the next Round. In Round 3, move straight into end game scoring. Move the Prophets along the Altar Track to their positions for the next Round. In the example below, Zechariah would move to space 5, and Haggai to space 10. The p", "headingPath": "After Sabbath", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 32, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "In the Solo game, you will be competing against an opponent, aiming to score higher than them. Just as with the multiplayer game, you will alternate turns between you and your opponent throughout each Round. Your turns will function entirely the same. Your opponent will take their turns using their ", "headingPath": "Solo Mode: Opponent Turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "To set up the main area of the game, follow these steps: Place the Main Board in the centre of the table. Place all 6 Gate Cards alongside the Main Board, with the sides showing an outline of a Worker, faceup. If playing with fewer than 4 players, carry out these additional steps: 1-2 Players: Turn ", "headingPath": "Main Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Players must play 1 Character Card from their hand to 1 of the 3 piles on their Player Board each turn. The following rules must be followed when playing Character Cards: Players must play a Character Card before taking their Main Action. Character Cards can be played to any 1 of the 3 piles. Each p", "headingPath": "Playing Character Cards · Banners · Gate Name & Trade · Sabbath Scoring and Name", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "To set up each player area, follow these steps: Give each player 1 Player Board, 1 Player Aid, and 1 random Development Tile of each type. Development Tiles are slotted into their designated spaces of Player Boards (undeveloped side faceup), as shown below. Give each player the following components ", "headingPath": "Player Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "During each Sabbath, players will act simultaneously. They must feed all their Workers (excluding Levites), tuck 1-2 played Character Cards, then score all their tucked Character Cards. Any Character Cards players have in hand are carried over into the next Round. Players must pay 1 Food for each of", "headingPath": "Sabbath · Feeding Workers · For each Worker they cannot afford to feed, players must lose 2VP immediately. · Tucking Character Cards · Scoring Tucked Character Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "When placing Resources on the Altar, players can only use Wood or Cinders. Players may place multiple Resources of the same, or different type, granted they have the available Red Banners and Levites in order to do so. Immediately after placing each Resource, they will move 1-2 spaces on the Altar T", "headingPath": "Placing Resources on the Altar · Golden Tie-Break Rule:", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Main Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 482 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 482 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 05:53

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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482) End of Turn · Prepare for Sabbath · Farmers and Labourers p.25 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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482) After Sabbath p.28 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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482) Solo Mode: Opponent Turns p.32 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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482) Main Board Setup 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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482) Playing Character Cards · Banners · Gate Name & Trade · Sabbath Scoring and Name p.11 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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482) Player Board Setup 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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482) Sabbath · Feeding Workers · For each Worker they cannot afford to feed, players must lose 2VP immediately. · Tucking Character Cards · Scoring Tucked Character Cards p.27 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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482) Placing Resources on the Altar · Golden Tie-Break Rule: 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 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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482) Main Board Setup p.6 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 263 ms · first delta 7658 ms · total 11456 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 263 ms · ask 11184 ms · gateway work 11456 ms · total 11456 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3712
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
511
tok/sec
137.2 tok/sec — 511 output tokens in 3.724 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 27s 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 anyone

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 413), 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.