Ruling — The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation

← The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation

You asked

What needs to be placed on the table before the first round begins?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontationbg-18833-en-1e

Before the first round begins (the beginning of the game), the following must be placed on the table:

1. The board is placed between the two players so that the corner with the Shire points at the Fellowship player and the corner with Mordor points towards the Sauron player.[1]

2. Each player's character tiles are placed into plastic stands, each with the face out side of his choosing (in a draft game).[2]

3. The Fellowship player chooses four characters and places them in the Shire.[1]

4. The Fellowship player places his remaining five characters in the five regions in front of the Shire (Arthedain, Cardolan, Enedwaith, Eregion, and Rhudaur), with one character in each region.[1]

5. The Sauron player chooses and places four characters in Mordor.[1]

6. The Sauron player places his remaining five characters in the five regions in front of Mordor (Gondor, Dagorlad, Fangorn, Mirkwood, and Rohan), with one character in each region.[1]

7. Characters must be placed so that their hidden side is facing the opponent.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation — Rulebook · p.3 · WHAT IS NEW IN THE DELUXE EDITION? · PLAYING THE GAME

[2] RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation — Rulebook · p.6 · THE DRAFT GAME

🔧 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 238 ms · ask 7156 ms · total 97459 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 90053 ms · generation 7406 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "If you have played both the classic and variant versions of THE CONFRONTATION, you may be ready for an entirely different game experience. This edition of the game allows you to play a 'draft' game, in which each player may decide whether he wishes to play with the classic characters, the variant ch", "headingPath": "THE DRAFT GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 543}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "OTHER VARIANT: If both players agree, do not reveal the character choices before the game begins, letting their identities become apparent as they are revealed throughout the game. When you are asked to choose a character, such as with the 'Crebain of Dunland' or 'A King Revealed' Special Cards, you", "headingPath": "THE DRAFT GAME · CHOOSING A CHARACTER · REVEALED CHARACTERS · THE COMBAT CARDS · THE FELLOWSHIP CARDS · MAGIC · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 543}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "If a player is unable to move a character forward during his turn, he loses immediately . We recommend that you play two games. Each player should play the Fellowship player once and the Sauron player once. The winner of each of these games receives one point for each of his characters that remain o", "headingPath": "Battle Example", "sharpsignalDocId": 543}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "The rules for playing THE CONFRONTATION will be explained assuming that you are playing the classic game . Rules for playing either the variant game or the draft game are found towards the end of this rules booklet. When playing the classic game, make sure that you are using the side of the characte", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE CLASSIC GAME · SETUP · WHAT IS NEW IN THE DELUXE EDITION?", "sharpsignalDocId": 543}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "nine Sauron Character tiles (with the red scroll graphic) into the dark plastic wall pieces. Now both players each have nine game pieces which we call characters . (Note: Your opponent should not see which of your characters goes into which wall piece.) Remember, in the classic game, the faceout sid", "headingPath": "WHAT IS NEW IN THE DELUXE EDITION? · PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 543}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "PIPPIN (1): When Pippin attacks, he can retreat backwards to an adjacent region after both characters have been revealed for battle. Pippin can only use his ability to retreat at the beginning of battle, and not after cards have already been played. The retreat does not count as a normal move. MERRY", "headingPath": "SAM (2):", "sharpsignalDocId": 543}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Eight Special Cards are included in the game, four for the Fellowship player and four for the Sauron player. These represent special powers and abilities that may be introduced as a variant game experience. Each Special Card may only be used once per game and should be returned to the game box after", "headingPath": "THE SPECIAL CARDS · SHADOWFAX (CLASSIC GAME): · GANDALF THE WHITE (CLASSIC GAME):", "sharpsignalDocId": 543}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "This card can be played after the Sauron player has finished his turn. The Fellowship player must skip his entire turn to use this card. When played, the Fellowship player must reveal Aragorn to choose a Sauron character piece. The Sauron player must move that character piece during his next turn (t", "headingPath": "A KING REVEALED · GWAIHIR THE WINDLORD · SAURON SPECIAL CARDS · RECALL TO MORDOR (CLASSIC GAME) · THE DARK OF MORDOR · CREBAIN OF DUNLAND", "sharpsignalDocId": 543}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "WHAT IS NEW IN THE DELUXE EDITION? · PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 543}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE DRAFT GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 543}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 543 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 543 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 08:04

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 The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation — Rulebook (corpus doc 543)	THE DRAFT GAME	p.6	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 The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation — Rulebook (corpus doc 543)	THE DRAFT GAME · CHOOSING A CHARACTER · REVEALED CHARACTERS · THE COMBAT CARDS · THE FELLOWSHIP CARDS · MAGIC · …	p.7	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 The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation — Rulebook (corpus doc 543)	Battle Example	p.6	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 The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation — Rulebook (corpus doc 543)	PLAYING THE CLASSIC GAME · SETUP · WHAT IS NEW IN THE DELUXE EDITION?	p.2	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 The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation — Rulebook (corpus doc 543)	WHAT IS NEW IN THE DELUXE EDITION? · PLAYING THE GAME	p.3	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 The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation — Rulebook (corpus doc 543)	SAM (2):	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 The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation — Rulebook (corpus doc 543)	THE SPECIAL CARDS · SHADOWFAX (CLASSIC GAME): · GANDALF THE WHITE (CLASSIC GAME):	p.10	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 The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation — Rulebook (corpus doc 543)	A KING REVEALED · GWAIHIR THE WINDLORD · SAURON SPECIAL CARDS · RECALL TO MORDOR (CLASSIC GAME) · THE DARK OF MORDOR · CREBAIN OF DUNLAND	p.11	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 The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation — Rulebook (corpus doc 543)	WHAT IS NEW IN THE DELUXE EDITION? · PLAYING THE GAME	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation — Rulebook (corpus doc 543)	THE DRAFT GAME	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 238 ms · first delta 5628 ms · total 97459 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 90053 ms · retrieval 238 ms · ask 7156 ms · gateway work 7406 ms · total 97459 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3861
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 247
tok/sec: 146.2 tok/sec — 247 output tokens in 1.690 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 37s 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 round

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 475), 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.