Ruling — Wingspan

← Wingspan

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Wingspanbg-266192-en-1e · Wingspan: European Expansionbg-290448-en-1e

To set up the game, follow these steps:

1. Shuffle the bird cards into a deck.[1]

2. Place the bird deck next to the bird tray and populate the tray with 3 face-up bird cards.[1]

3. Place all food and egg tokens in the supply.[1]

4. Toss the food dice into the birdfeeder dice tower.[1]

5. Choose which type of goals you will play with (Green for more direct competition or Blue for less direct competition) and place the goal board on the table with that side facing up.[1]

6. Shuffle the goal tiles without looking at them and place 1 goal tile (random side up) on each of the four blank spaces on the goal board, then return extra goal tiles to the box.[1]

7. Shuffle the bonus cards into a deck and place it on the table.[1]

8. If using the expansion: shuffle the expansion bird cards in with all other bird cards, shuffle the bonus cards (they are designed so percentages still apply), and mix in additional eggs, food, and end-of-round goals with their respective tokens.[2]

9. If using the expansion: place the reference tile near the goal mat.[2]

10. Each player receives 1 player mat, 8 action cubes of one color, 2 random bonus cards, 5 random bird cards, and 5 food tokens (1 of each type).[1]

11. For the birds you keep, discard the others; for each bird card kept, you must discard 1 food token.[1]

12. Choose 1 bonus card to keep and discard the other.[1]

13. If using Swift-Start guides: distribute 1 guide per player clockwise starting with 'Player 1' (the 5th player does not need a guide).[3]

14. If using Swift-Start guides: follow the steps in the rulebook as normal, except for selecting birds and food tokens, as the guides will instruct which cards and food each player starts with.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook · p.2 · Player Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Wingspan: European Expansion — Rulebook · p.2 · Initial Setup · Setup Changes · Bird Powers

[3] RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook · p.3 · Player Setup · 6/9/21 4:20 PM Swift-Start Guides and Cards:

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 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 241 ms · ask 14548 ms · total 39332 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 24532 ms · generation 14800 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "This is a detailed rulebook, but you can learn the entire game by using the Swift-Start cards and guides. We recommend using these guides for your first game. 6/15/21 7:35 AM TIP: When selecting bird cards, think about how they will help you get more cards or food early in the game. Brown powers can", "headingPath": "Player Setup · 6/9/21 4:20 PM Swift-Start Guides and Cards:", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "1 . Bird cards. Shuffle the bird cards into a deck. Place it next to the bird tray, then populate the tray with 3 face-up bird cards. Supply. Place all food and egg tokens in the supply. These are tokens accessible to all players. Birdfeeder. Toss the food dice into the birdfeeder dice tower. Goal b", "headingPath": "Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.047387, "snippet": "This method uses the side of the goal board that has spaces labeled 5-4-3-2-1-0 next to the space for each goal. For example, when using the goal that scores 5, 2, or 1 points, if two players tie for 1st place, each gets 3 points (5 + 2 divided by 2 players, rounded down). Do not award 2nd place to ", "headingPath": "Blue: One point per targeted item", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.044861, "snippet": "82cm + WS_EE_BirdSwiftStart_r4.indd 3WS_EE_BirdSwiftStart_r4.indd 3 6/9/21 4:20 PM6/9/21 4:20 PM Vaux’s Swift Chaetura vauxi William Sansom Vaux was a wealthy mineralogist and naturalist. 2 WHEN ACTIVATED: Tuck 1 from your hand behind this bird. If you do, gain 1 from the supply. 31cm WS_EE_BirdSwif", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030331, "snippet": "Each turn, you will take 1 action. This section describes each action in more detail. Before choosing to play a bird from your hand, consider its habitat, food requirements, and egg cost. Each bird has habitat and food requirements, shown in the upper left-hand corner of the card. Additionally, ther", "headingPath": "THE FOUR ACTIONS · OPTION 1. Play a Bird From Your Hand · When you choose to play a bird, do the following:", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029877, "snippet": "Food is primarily used to play bird cards. Your options for which food to gain are shown on the dice in the birdfeeder, which will repeatedly get depleted and refilled throughout the game. Place an action cube in the leftmost exposed slot in the 'gain food' row on your player mat and gain the amount", "headingPath": "OPTION 2. Gain Food and Activate Forest Bird Powers · When you choose to gain food, do the following: · Managing the birdfeeder", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029727, "snippet": "Shuffle the expansion bird cards in with all other bird cards. Do the same for the bonus cards (they're designed so the percentages still apply). Mix in the additional eggs, food, and end-of-round goals with their respective tokens. The only change to the setup for a game of Wingspan is to place the", "headingPath": "Initial Setup · Setup Changes · Bird Powers", "sharpsignalDocId": 857}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.028814, "snippet": "Wingspan is played over 4 rounds. During each round, players take turns-proceeding clockwise-until each player has used all of their available action cubes. On your turn, you will take 1 of 4 actions, as shown on the left side of your player mat: Play a bird from your hand Gain food and activate for", "headingPath": "OVERVIEW · Turn Structure", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Initial Setup · Setup Changes · Bird Powers", "sharpsignalDocId": 857}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player Setup · 6/9/21 4:20 PM Swift-Start Guides and Cards:", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 198 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 198 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 15:35

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 Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198)	Player Setup · 6/9/21 4:20 PM Swift-Start Guides and Cards:	p.3	0.048131 (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 Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198)	Player Setup	p.2	0.047938 (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 Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198)	Blue: One point per targeted item	p.11	0.047387 (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 Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198)		p.3	0.044861 (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 Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198)	THE FOUR ACTIONS · OPTION 1. Play a Bird From Your Hand · When you choose to play a bird, do the following:	p.6	0.030331 (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 Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198)	OPTION 2. Gain Food and Activate Forest Bird Powers · When you choose to gain food, do the following: · Managing the birdfeeder	p.7	0.029877 (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 Wingspan: European Expansion — Rulebook (corpus doc 857)	Initial Setup · Setup Changes · Bird Powers	p.2	0.029727 (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 Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198)	OVERVIEW · Turn Structure	p.4	0.028814 (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 Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198)	Player Setup	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Wingspan: European Expansion — Rulebook (corpus doc 857)	Initial Setup · Setup Changes · Bird Powers	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198)	Player Setup · 6/9/21 4:20 PM Swift-Start Guides and Cards:	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 241 ms · first delta 11753 ms · total 39332 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 24532 ms · retrieval 241 ms · ask 14548 ms · gateway work 14800 ms · total 39332 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2876
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 441
tok/sec: 148.1 tok/sec — 441 output tokens in 2.978 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 9s 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): set up

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

6 errata cards registered for edition 3 — these are what the gate above had to match against

anatomist · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.2
belted kingfisher · HAND_PINNED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bird Cards) · corpus doc 65 · p.17
ecologist · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.5
oologist · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.1
photographer · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.3
rodentologist · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.4

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.