Ruling — Ezra and Nehemiah

← Ezra and Nehemiah

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Ezra and Nehemiahbg-386368-en-1e

To set up the game, follow these steps:

**Main Board Setup**

1. Place the Main Board in the centre of the table.[1]

2. Place all 6 Gate Cards alongside the Main Board, with the sides showing an outline of a Worker, faceup.[1]

3. If playing with fewer than 4 players:

* **1-2 Players:** Turn over the Muster Gate and East Gate, and place them onto the corresponding spaces of the Main Board; place 2 Silver on each Gate Card still alongside the Main Board; cover the 6 centre-most Wall spaces along the top of the Main Board with Neutral Wall Cards (the spaces adjacent to and between the Muster Gate and East Gate, and the 1 Wall space to the left of these).[1]

* **3 Players:** Place 1 Silver on each Gate Card alongside the Main Board; cover the 3 Wall spaces between the Muster Gate and East Gate with Neutral Wall Cards; place 10 of each Resource (Gold, Stone, Wood, and Cinders) alongside the Main Board to form the Main Supply; place all Silver and Food Tokens there as well.[1]

4. If playing with fewer than 4 players:

* Place the Temple Mount over the Temple area of the Main Board, with the correct side faceup for the player count.[2]

* Use either side of 1 of the 2 Altar Cards (random or selected) and place the chosen side faceup on the space below the Altar; return the other Altar Card to the box.[2]

* Place the Prophets on the numbered spaces of the Altar Track, as specified by the numbers in the highest positions of the red flags extending over the chosen Altar Card.[2]

5. Place the 3 Hero Cards alongside the Main Board.[2]

6. If playing with 3 players:

* Place 10 of each Resource (Gold, Stone, Wood, and Cinders) alongside the Main Supply; place all Silver and Food Tokens there as well.[1]

* Place the remaining 64 Resources into the Rubble Bag; draw out Resources randomly, placing a number of them onto each Wall and Gate space of the Main Board equal to the number of icons shown; any leftover Resources in the Rubble Bag should be placed in the Main Supply.[1]

7. Separate the Scroll Tiles by their backs:

* Randomly place 1 Gold Scroll Tile faceup on each space of the highest row of the Main Board.[1]

* Randomly place 1 Wood Scroll Tile faceup on each space of both middle rows (9 Scroll Tiles in total).[1]

* Randomly place 1 Stone Scroll Tile on each space of the lowest row.[1]

* Return all other Scroll Tiles to the box.[1]

8. Place a number of Food in stacks to the far right of the Scroll rows: 4VP row = 3 Food, 3VP row = 2 Food, 2VP row = 1 Food, and 1VP row = 0 Food.[1]

**Player Area Setup**

1. Give each player 1 Player Board, 1 Player Aid, and 1 random Development Tile of each type, slotting the tiles into their designated spaces on the Player Boards (undeveloped side faceup).[3]

2. For each player, provide components in their chosen colour: 16 Workers (6 in their Supply, the rest in the Main Supply), 1 Tent (placed on the top-centre space of the May, near the bottom-right of the Main Board), 1 Altar Marker (placed on the 0 space of the Altar Track on the Main Board, stacked in descending player order where the player holding the Shofar is on top), 1 VP Marker (placed on the 10VP space of the Score Track on the Main Board), 10 Character Cards (shuffled and placed facedown by their Player Board, with 4 drawn to hand), and 12 Wall Cards (shuffled and placed facedown by their Player Board).[3]

3. Place the Resources specified on the bottom-left of each player's Guards Tile onto 2 of its available spaces using resources from the Main Supply.[3]

4. Each player gains 5 Silver and 3 Food from the Main Supply.[3]

5. Give each player 1 of each Blessing Marker, placed on the 0 spaces of their corresponding Tracks.[3]

**Worker Setup**

1. From the Main Supply, place 1 Worker of each player's colour in the designated space at the bottom of the Levite Track (near the bottom-left of the Main Board).[4]

2. Each player may have up to 6 Levites, placed from bottom to top in

[1] RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook · p.6 · Main Board Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook · p.7 · Main Board Setup

[3] RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook · p.8 · Player Board Setup

[4] RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook · p.9 · Levite Setup · Gatekeeper Setup · White Worker Setup (1-2 players) · Component Limits · Hand Limit

🔧 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 274 ms · ask 14923 ms · total 15208 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 15208 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "To set up the main area of the game, follow these steps: Place the Main Board in the centre of the table. Place all 6 Gate Cards alongside the Main Board, with the sides showing an outline of a Worker, faceup. If playing with fewer than 4 players, carry out these additional steps: 1-2 Players: Turn ", "headingPath": "Main Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 30, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "Follow the steps outlined on Pages 6-7, giving the Shofar to your opponent. Set up your player area as outlined on Page 8. For your opponent, follow these steps: Give them the Solo Board, placing the Solo Player Aid alongside it. The Solo Board is double-sided. Use the side showing 1 star on the bro", "headingPath": "Solo Mode: Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.046394, "snippet": "From the Main Supply, place 1 Worker of each players' colour in the designated space at the bottom of the Levite Track. This is near the bottom-left of the Main Board. During the game these Workers are referred to as 'Levites'. Each player may have up to 6 Levites, placing them from bottom to top in", "headingPath": "Levite Setup · Gatekeeper Setup · White Worker Setup (1-2 players) · Component Limits · Hand Limit", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "To set up each player area, follow these steps: Give each player 1 Player Board, 1 Player Aid, and 1 random Development Tile of each type. Development Tiles are slotted into their designated spaces of Player Boards (undeveloped side faceup), as shown below. Give each player the following components ", "headingPath": "Player Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "If playing with fewer than 4 players, place the Temple Mount over the Temple area of the Main Board, with the correct side faceup for the player count. Use either side of 1 of the 2 Altar Cards (random or selected). Place the chosen side faceup on the space below the Altar. Return the other Altar Ca", "headingPath": "Main Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 32, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "In the Solo game, you will be competing against an opponent, aiming to score higher than them. Just as with the multiplayer game, you will alternate turns between you and your opponent throughout each Round. Your turns will function entirely the same. Your opponent will take their turns using their ", "headingPath": "Solo Mode: Opponent Turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "When placing Resources on the Altar, players can only use Wood or Cinders. Players may place multiple Resources of the same, or different type, granted they have the available Red Banners and Levites in order to do so. Immediately after placing each Resource, they will move 1-2 spaces on the Altar T", "headingPath": "Placing Resources on the Altar · Golden Tie-Break Rule:", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 38, "score": 0.029551, "snippet": "Rather than scoring 1VP per 5 Silver at the game's end, score 1VP per 3 Silver. Gain 1VP per complete set of 3 different Blessings at the game's end. Gain 1VP Immediately. Gain 1VP per every 3 Workers you have on the Main Board at the game's end. Gain 1VP Immediately. Gain 1VP per every 3 Gates and/", "headingPath": "Gold Scroll Tiles · Wood Scroll Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Main Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Main Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Levite Setup · Gatekeeper Setup · White Worker Setup (1-2 players) · Component Limits · Hand Limit", "sharpsignalDocId": 482}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 482 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 482 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 9, 2026 07:37

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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Main Board Setup	p.6	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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Solo Mode: Setup	p.30	0.046402 (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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Levite Setup · Gatekeeper Setup · White Worker Setup (1-2 players) · Component Limits · Hand Limit	p.9	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
#4	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Player Board Setup	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
#5	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Main Board Setup	p.7	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
#6	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Solo Mode: Opponent Turns	p.32	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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Placing Resources on the Altar · Golden Tie-Break Rule:	p.16	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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Gold Scroll Tiles · Wood Scroll Tiles	p.38	0.029551 (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 Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Main Board Setup	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Main Board Setup	p.7	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Player Board Setup	p.8	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Ezra and Nehemiah — Rulebook (corpus doc 482)	Levite Setup · Gatekeeper Setup · White Worker Setup (1-2 players) · Component Limits · Hand Limit	p.9	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 274 ms · first delta 7681 ms · total 15208 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 274 ms · ask 14923 ms · gateway work 15208 ms · total 15208 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3456
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 137.3 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 7.458 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 34s 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 413), 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.