RuleSage cited table rulings
← Pirates of Maracaibo

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Pirates of Maracaibobg-397385-en-1e

**Standard Setup**
1. Optionally select one or more modules that will modify the setup and rules.[1]
2. Place the Exploration board between the players.[1]
3. Sort the Tier I cards by type (Locations, Residences by type, & Improvements).[1]
4. Create the Tier I deck by gathering 15 random Improvement cards, 4 random Residence cards, and all Location cards.[1]
5. Shuffle these gathered cards together into a face-down deck to form the Tier I draw deck.[1]
6. Return unused Residence and Improvement cards to the box without looking at them.[1]
7. Draw cards from the Tier I draw deck and place them face up next to the Exploration board, in columns, from left to right, to create a layout.[1]
8. Place the three Treasure Island boards face up with the cards in their indicated locations.[1]
9. Shuffle all Tier II cards and place them face down near the Caribbean.[1]
10. Place 4 Marker cubes onto each Treasure Island board (starting from the bottom space, matching the island's Treasure).[1]
11. Place all remaining Marker cubes within reach of all players.[1]
12. Randomly place all 6 Treasure Value tiles face up onto the top left corner of each Location card that has a Symbol.[1]
13. For first games: If there is a cluster of 4 or more adjacent Location cards, swap one or more of these cards with Improvement cards to break up the cluster.[1]
14. Each player takes a Ship board, a Hideout board, and color-matched components (Ship token, Explorer token, Scoring token, Black Market tiles, and Player tokens).[1]
15. Each player places their Ship token in the starting zone, to the left of the Caribbean.[2]
16. Each player places their Explorer on the starting space of the Exploration track at the bottom of the Exploration board.[2]
17. Each player places their Score token on the 0 space of the score track at the top of the Exploration board.[2]
18. Each player places their Ship board in front of them with the multiplayer side up.[2]
19. Each player places their Hideout board with the multiplayer side up near their Ship board.[2]
20. All other components should be placed near the Ship board.[2]
21. One player flips all of their Black Market tiles to random sides and places them near their Ship board; all other players must flip their Black Market tiles so that everyone has the same sides facing up.[2]
22. Shuffle the Quest cards and place them face down near the Exploration board.[2]
23. Each player draws 2 Quest cards, keeps 1 (hidden), and discards the other face down; then shuffle all discarded Quest cards back into the Quest deck.[2]
24. Reveal the top 2 cards from the Quest deck and place them face up near the deck to create the Quest Market.[2]
25. Randomize Figurehead tiles and place a number of them face up near the Exploration track equal to the number of players plus 2 (the remaining tiles are returned to the box).[2]
26. Place Doubloon tokens and Raiding dice within reach of all players.[2]
27. Randomly determine a first player.[2]
28. In clockwise order, each player gains doubloons based on turn order (1st: 10, 2nd: 11, 3rd: 12, 4th: 13).[2]
29. The last player in turn order places one of their Player tokens with the 50 VP side down onto the Maracaibo space on the Exploration board.[2]
**Solo Gameplay Setup (Additional Steps)**
1. Follow the two-player setup instructions, except the Figurehead Market consists of only 3 tiles and Jordan never gains or pays Doubloons.[3]
2. Flip Jordan's Ship board and Hideout board over to their solo sides.[3]
3. Place one Marker cube on the leftmost position of the Raiding & Explore track on Jordan's Hideout board.[3]
4. Separate Solo cards into two decks (A and B) based on the corner markings; randomly replace 0–6 Solo A cards with Solo B cards to adjust difficulty.[3]
5. Shuffle the assembled 6-card Solo deck and place it face down next to Jordan's Ship board.[3]
6. Jordan draws a random Quest card as part of setup and places it face down next to their ship.[3]
[1] RULEBOOK Pirates of Maracaibo — Rulebook · p.4 · SETUP
[2] RULEBOOK Pirates of Maracaibo — Rulebook · p.5 · SETUP
[3] RULEBOOK Pirates of Maracaibo — Rulebook · p.12 · INTRODUCTION · SETUP · GAMEPLAY
🔧 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 296 ms · ask 14199 ms · total 14509 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 14509 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 4, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "Optionally select one or more modules that will modify the setup and rules for the game. It is recommended that no module be used until all players are familiar with the game. A list of modules can be found on page 14. Place the Exploration board between the players. Sort the Tier I cards by type (a", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 427}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "You compete against Jordan, who is an automated opponent controlled by a deck of Solo cards. Follow the setup instructions for a two-player game; you are in control of one of the selected colors, and Jordan is in control of the other selected color. The only exceptions are: The Figurehead Market onl", "headingPath": "INTRODUCTION · SETUP · GAMEPLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 427}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "Each player places their components in the following locations: Ship token in the starting zone, to the left of the Caribbean. Explorer on the starting space of the Exploration track at the bottom of the Exploration board. Score token on the 0 space of the score track at the top of the Exploration b", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 427}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "Select one or more of the following Modules and modify the setup and gameplay rules accordingly: When creating the Tier I deck, place the Location cards face down, and all other cards face up. Shuffle the deck and then place the cards into the Caribbean so that the Location cards stay face down. Pla", "headingPath": "MODULES · Setup · Gameplay · Solo Gameplay", "sharpsignalDocId": 427}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.046394, "snippet": "When players move their Explorer to the Residence Discount tile (it counts as a space), they must immediately construct a Residence at half price, moving the Residence token from the tile to the Residence of their choice. Then move your Explorer back to the starting location of the Explorer track. T", "headingPath": "Gameplay", "sharpsignalDocId": 427}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.045009, "snippet": "Ignore the 'Pay 1 doubloon rule when landing on a Card with opponent ships'; instead, do the following: When you end ship movement on a card with any opponent ships, immediately enter combat. All players with ships on this card roll 1 die. There is no reroll and ignore the color of die. Apply perman", "headingPath": "Gameplay · Solo Gameplay · Setup · Endgame Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 427}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "If your Ship is on any card in the right-most column of cards, you can move onto the Gulf using 1 movement. This is the first space a ship reaches on the Exploration board. You must stop at this space once your Ship moves onto it. You may Upgrade your ship as described on page 9. Then, you may choos", "headingPath": "The Gulf · Maracaibo · END OF ROUND", "sharpsignalDocId": 427}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "After paying, place 1 of your Player tokens, with the symbol-side face up, in the le/f_t-most empty spot of the card. /T_his is now considered to be a Residence token. /T_he /f_irst player to Construct each Residence scores 2 VP immediately (from covering the 2VP bonus spot). Each player with their ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 427}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 427}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 427}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "INTRODUCTION · SETUP · GAMEPLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 427}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 427 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 427 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 8, 2026 01:49

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 Pirates of Maracaibo — Rulebook (corpus doc 427) SETUP p.4 0.04866 (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 Pirates of Maracaibo — Rulebook (corpus doc 427) INTRODUCTION · SETUP · GAMEPLAY p.12 0.048387 (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 Pirates of Maracaibo — Rulebook (corpus doc 427) SETUP p.5 0.046898 (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 Pirates of Maracaibo — Rulebook (corpus doc 427) MODULES · Setup · Gameplay · Solo Gameplay p.14 0.046635 (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 Pirates of Maracaibo — Rulebook (corpus doc 427) Gameplay p.14 0.046394 (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 Pirates of Maracaibo — Rulebook (corpus doc 427) Gameplay · Solo Gameplay · Setup · Endgame Scoring p.14 0.045009 (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 Pirates of Maracaibo — Rulebook (corpus doc 427) The Gulf · Maracaibo · END OF ROUND 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 Pirates of Maracaibo — Rulebook (corpus doc 427) p.7 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 Pirates of Maracaibo — Rulebook (corpus doc 427) SETUP p.4 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Pirates of Maracaibo — Rulebook (corpus doc 427) SETUP p.5 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Pirates of Maracaibo — Rulebook (corpus doc 427) INTRODUCTION · SETUP · GAMEPLAY p.12 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 296 ms · first delta 7664 ms · total 14509 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 296 ms · ask 14199 ms · gateway work 14509 ms · total 14509 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3710
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
998
tok/sec
147.2 tok/sec — 998 output tokens in 6.779 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 6s 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
SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question)
setup

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 356), 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.