Ruling — Skymines

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You asked

Describe the initial preparation the board and each player require to start.

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Skyminesbg-359438-en-1e

To start the game, follow these steps for the board and each player:

**Board and General Setup**

1. Set the game up as in the basic game.[1]

2. In step 3, allot the company tracks at random via the track cards (option B).[2][1]

3. If playing the "Belt side of the board" module, set up the module according to the rules described on pages 26 to 29.[2]

4. Set up the "Mission cards" module.[2][1]

5. Set up the "Threat cards" module.[2]

6. Once everything is set up, take from each station the top outpost of each column and place them on the game board as follows: Place the 3 outposts of Skymine Resources in sectors 6, 19 and 20; Place the 3 outposts of Minerva Corp. in sectors 16, 21 and 23; Place the 3 outposts of Astrogo Enterprises in sectors 1, 7 and 11; and Place the 3 outposts of Tawac Industries in sectors 2, 3 and 4.[1]

7. Determine a first player and give them the first player marker.[3]

**Each Player's Setup**

1. Choose a player color and take the corresponding player token.[3]

2. Take a player board and place it in front of you with the standard side up, leaving room above and below for cards.[3]

3. Place your player token onto the computer screen in the top left corner.[3]

4. Take 1 helium-3 marker and place it onto the first space of your tank track in the bottom left of your player board.[3]

5. Take 2 ON/OFF markers and place them, OFF-side up, onto the additional action slots in the bottom corners (one on the left and one on the right).[3]

6. Take 1 upload marker and place it below your player board.[3]

7. Take 1 CrypCoin from the bank and place it as your starting capital next to your player board in your reserve.[3]

8. Take bonus markers of your color and place them in your reserve (take 3 for a 2-player/solo game, or 2 for a 3- or 4-player game).[3]

9. Take the 4 track markers of your color and place one onto space 0 of each of the 4 company tracks.[3]

10. Take the 9 starting action cards marked with the icon of your color in the upper right corner and put them in your hand.[3]

11. In clockwise seating order, give each player a specific single-energy card: the first player receives the card showing 01, the second receives 02, the third receives 03, and the fourth receives 04.[4]

12. Each player adds their single-energy card to their hand, bringing it to a total of 10 starting action cards.[4]

13. Each player receives a starting research token; in the first game, use specific tokens for each player in clockwise order.[4] (Alternatively, shuffle 10 starting research tokens and deal two face down to each player, from which they secretly choose one).[4]

14. After receiving your starting research token:

a. Place the token face up onto the starting screen of your research track.[4]

b. Gain the starting bonus in the bottom left of the token.[4]

c. Search your hand for the 3 cards whose icons match the 3 icons shown on your starting research token and place them in any order in the 3 central resting slots at the top of your player board.[4]

d. Place your upload marker onto the left half of your starting research token.[4]

15. In step 13, deal each player 2 starting research tokens, of which they choose one (option B).[2][1]

[1] RULEBOOK Skymines — Rulebook · p.29 · Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Skymines — Rulebook · p.30 · Playing the game · End of the game · Chapter 4: Lurking in the Belt · Setup · Module: Threat cards

[3] RULEBOOK Skymines — Rulebook · p.7

[4] RULEBOOK Skymines — Rulebook · p.8 · Folding boxes

🔧 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 216 ms · ask 14547 ms · total 46426 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 31653 ms · generation 14773 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "The Planning phase is carried out by all players simultaneously and comprises 2 steps: Each player plans their Action phase by placing cards face down in their action area All players turn their placed cards face up Each player: Choose cards from your hand and place them face down in the available a", "headingPath": "1) Planning phase · a) Place cards face down in your action area · b) Flip cards face up · 2) Action phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 564}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "12 13 Give each player in clockwise seating order a specific single-energy card : The first player receives the single-energy card showing a 01 in the top right corner. The second player (if any) receives the single-energy card with the 02 . The third player (if any) receives the single-energy card ", "headingPath": "Folding boxes", "sharpsignalDocId": 564}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The game is played according to the usual Belt side rules with one addition: The card in the game board's center poses a threat. This threat entails a specific consequence that affects all players at the end of the game. However, in order to negate that consequence for all players, the threat can be", "headingPath": "Playing the game · End of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 564}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "10 Each player: Choose a player color and take the corresponding player token. Then take the following items: Take a player board and place it in front of you with the standard side up. (Make sure that you leave room above and below your player board for cards.) Then place your player token onto the", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 564}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "31 The game is played according to the usual Belt side rules with one addition: The card in the game board’s center poses a threat. This threat entails a specific consequence that affects all players at the end of the game. However, in order to negate that consequence for all players, the threat can", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 564}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Perform this action only if you cannot or do not want to perform any of the other actions. To perform this action, carry out the following steps: Turn the face-down cards of your action area face up. Pick up exactly 1 of your resting decks . In the first round, each resting deck comprises only one c", "headingPath": "6) Drop out of Action phase · 3) Preparation phase for the next round · a) Flip the next special research plan face up", "sharpsignalDocId": 564}, {"page": 30, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "After setting the game up as described in the module 'Belt side of the board', shuffle the 6 threat cards . Draw one and place it face up between shuttle spaces 11 and 16 on the game board. Make sure that the flight paths in the corners of the card align with these two shuttle spaces. a Return the s", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 564}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "3 1 double-sided game board Front: Moon side Back: Belt side 4 double-sided player boards Front: Standard side Back: Luna side 5 double-sided company tracks Each side shows a different track and has an ID made up of a letter and a number (A1 to E2). 44 action cards 36 starting action cards (9 per pl", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 564}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 29, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 564}, {"page": 30, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing the game · End of the game · Chapter 4: Lurking in the Belt · Setup · Module: Threat cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 564}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 564}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Folding boxes", "sharpsignalDocId": 564}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 564 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 564 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 08:11

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 Skymines — Rulebook (corpus doc 564)	1) Planning phase · a) Place cards face down in your action area · b) Flip cards face up · 2) Action phase	p.10	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 Skymines — Rulebook (corpus doc 564)	Folding boxes	p.8	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 Skymines — Rulebook (corpus doc 564)	Playing the game · End of the game	p.31	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 Skymines — Rulebook (corpus doc 564)		p.7	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 Skymines — Rulebook (corpus doc 564)		p.31	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 Skymines — Rulebook (corpus doc 564)	6) Drop out of Action phase · 3) Preparation phase for the next round · a) Flip the next special research plan face up	p.18	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 Skymines — Rulebook (corpus doc 564)	Setup	p.30	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 Skymines — Rulebook (corpus doc 564)		p.3	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 Skymines — Rulebook (corpus doc 564)	Setup	p.29	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Skymines — Rulebook (corpus doc 564)	Playing the game · End of the game · Chapter 4: Lurking in the Belt · Setup · Module: Threat cards	p.30	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Skymines — Rulebook (corpus doc 564)		p.7	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Skymines — Rulebook (corpus doc 564)	Folding boxes	p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 216 ms · first delta 8836 ms · total 46426 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 31653 ms · retrieval 216 ms · ask 14547 ms · gateway work 14773 ms · total 46426 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3847
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 871
tok/sec: 148.3 tok/sec — 871 output tokens in 5.875 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 1s 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: PREPARE — "prepare" / "preparation"
matched words (in the normalized question): preparation

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 496), 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.