Ruling — Twilight Inscription

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Twilight Inscriptionbg-361545-en-1e

Depending on the specific version or player count, setup involves the following steps:

**Standard Setup**

1. Prepare Player Sheets: Deal one random Navigation sheet, Expansion sheet, Industry sheet, and Warfare sheet to each player.[1][2] Players place sheets in front of them; using side A provides variety/unique opportunities, while side B provides a symmetrical game.[1][2]

2. Choose Factions: Shuffle faction cards and deal three to each player.[1][2] Each player chooses one, places it next to their sheets, and returns the rest to the box; if the chosen card has "Setup:" text, resolve it immediately.[1][2]

3. Prepare Mecatol Rex Sheet: Place the Mecatol Rex sheet in the middle of the table.[1][2] Shuffle agenda cards with a Stage II back and place one facedown below the Mecatol Rex sheet, then return remaining Stage II agendas to the box; repeat this process for Stage III and IV agenda cards.[1][2]

4. Prepare Event Deck: Separate event cards into ten piles by their backs (stage number and color) and shuffle each pile facedown.[3][4] Stack Stage V cards facedown, starting with a blue card on the bottom and alternating between blue and black cards, and construct other stages in the same way.[3][4] Combine all stages into a single deck with Stage V on the bottom and Stage I on top, then place it next to the Mecatol Rex sheet.[3][4]

5. Reveal Objectives: Separate objective cards by type (Navigation, Expansion, Industry, and Warfare) and shuffle each type separately.[3][4] Place one random card of each type above the Mecatol Rex sheet, ensuring the side with two victory point values is faceup.[3][4] Return remaining objectives to the box.[3][4]

6. Prepare Other Components: Shuffle the relic deck and place it and the dice next to the Mecatol Rex sheet.[3][4] Give one reference card and one dry-erase marker to each player.[3][4]

7. Choose Speaker: Give the Speaker card to the most experienced player.[3][4]

**Two-Player/AI Setup Modifications**

* **Mecatol Rex Sheet:** Place the sheet so the AI side is faceup and shuffle each agenda deck to place the entire decks below the Mecatol Rex sheet instead of just one card.[5]

* **Determine Neighbor (Two-player only):** The Speaker rolls one black die; a <0xEF><0x99><0xB0> result means they are the other player's left neighbor, while a <0xEF><0x99><0xB1> or <0xEF><0x99><0xB2> result means they are the right neighbor.[5]

* **Choose Difficulty:** Choose a difficulty level for the AI faction (Easy, Medium, or Hard).[5]

**"Play as You Learn" Setup**

1. Player Sheets: Give each player a marker and a random Navigation sheet, ensuring "B" sides are faceup.[6]

2. Dice: Put three black dice in the center of the table.[6]

3. Event Cards: Take four specific event cards (Fledgling Empire, Echoes of the Past, First Ventures, and Toward a New Home) and return the rest to the box.[6] Create a facedown deck with these cards in the order listed, with Fledgling Empire on top.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Twilight Inscription — Rulebook · p.4 · SETUP · PLAYER SHEET LAYOUT

[2] RULEBOOK Twilight Inscription — Rulebook · p.4

[3] RULEBOOK Twilight Inscription — Rulebook · p.5 · PLAYER SHEET LAYOUT

[4] RULEBOOK Twilight Inscription — Rulebook · p.5

[5] RULEBOOK Twilight Inscription — Rulebook · p.18 · SETUP

[6] RULEBOOK Twilight Inscription — Rulebook · p.3

🔧 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 299 ms · ask 16024 ms · total 16337 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 16337 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "4 SETUPSETUP Perform the following steps to set up the game. If you want to play the game as you set up and learn the rules, close this rulebook and read the “Play as You Learn” guide instead. 1. Prepare Player Sheets: Deal one random Navigation sheet, Expansion sheet, Industry sheet, and Warfare sh", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 669}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "Perform the following steps to set up the game. If you want to play the game as you set up and learn the rules, close this rulebook and read the 'Play as You Learn' guide instead. Prepare Player Sheets: Deal one random Navigation sheet, Expansion sheet, Industry sheet, and Warfare sheet to each play", "headingPath": "SETUP · PLAYER SHEET LAYOUT", "sharpsignalDocId": 669}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "Set up the game as normal with the following changes: \" Prepare Mecatol Rex Sheet: Place the Mecatol Rex sheet so that the AI side is faceup. Shuffle each agenda deck and place each of those decks below the Mecatol Rex sheet (instead of just one card from each deck). \" Determine Neighbor (Two-player", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 669}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "5 SETUPSETUP 4. Prepare Event Deck: Separate the event cards into ten piles according to their backs (stage number and color). Shuffle each pile facedown. Then, stack the Stage V cards facedown, starting with a blue card on the bottom and alternating between blue and black cards. Construct the other", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 669}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Cast Votes: Each player secretly casts their votes. 3. Announce Votes: Tally the votes for each outcome on the Mecatol Rex sheet. 4. Resolve Outcome: Resolve the outcome that received the most votes. If tied, roll a black die. On  result, resolve “Pass” outcome; on  or  result, resolve “Fail” out", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 669}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Units are deployed on the war grid, which is divided into eight sections -four on the left half of the grid and four on the right half. The player deploys units into the left half's sections to oppose the neighbor to their left, and they deploy units in the right half to oppose the neighbor to the r", "headingPath": "DEPLOYING UNITS", "sharpsignalDocId": 669}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Home The game ends after the players resolve the 'A Throne for the Taking' event card, which is a Stage V event card. Then, the players score their sheets. For each sheet, the player adds up the values of the victory point (  ) assets they claimed on that sheet and writes the total above the 'Sheet", "headingPath": "WINNING THE GAME Home", "sharpsignalDocId": 669}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Prepare Event Deck: Separate the event cards into ten piles according to their backs (stage number and color). Shuffle each pile facedown. Then, stack the Stage V cards facedown, starting with a blue card on the bottom and alternating between blue and black cards. Construct the other stages in the s", "headingPath": "PLAYER SHEET LAYOUT", "sharpsignalDocId": 669}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP · PLAYER SHEET LAYOUT", "sharpsignalDocId": 669}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 669}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER SHEET LAYOUT", "sharpsignalDocId": 669}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 669}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 669}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 669}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 669 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 669 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 09:36

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 Twilight Inscription — Rulebook (corpus doc 669)		p.4	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Twilight Inscription — Rulebook (corpus doc 669)	SETUP · PLAYER SHEET LAYOUT	p.4	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 Twilight Inscription — Rulebook (corpus doc 669)	SETUP	p.18	0.047619 (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 Twilight Inscription — Rulebook (corpus doc 669)		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 Twilight Inscription — Rulebook (corpus doc 669)		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 Twilight Inscription — Rulebook (corpus doc 669)	DEPLOYING UNITS	p.12	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 Twilight Inscription — Rulebook (corpus doc 669)	WINNING THE GAME Home	p.17	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 Twilight Inscription — Rulebook (corpus doc 669)	PLAYER SHEET LAYOUT	p.5	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 Twilight Inscription — Rulebook (corpus doc 669)	SETUP · PLAYER SHEET LAYOUT	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Twilight Inscription — Rulebook (corpus doc 669)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Twilight Inscription — Rulebook (corpus doc 669)	PLAYER SHEET LAYOUT	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Twilight Inscription — Rulebook (corpus doc 669)		p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Twilight Inscription — Rulebook (corpus doc 669)	SETUP	p.18	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Twilight Inscription — Rulebook (corpus doc 669)		p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 299 ms · first delta 10993 ms · total 16337 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 299 ms · ask 16024 ms · gateway work 16337 ms · total 16337 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4417
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 726
tok/sec: 137.3 tok/sec — 726 output tokens in 5.286 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 19s 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: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 602), 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.