Ruling — 878 Vikings: Invasions of England

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: 878 Vikings: Invasions of Englandbg-204516-en-1e

To set up the standard game, follow these steps:

1. Each player chooses a Faction and takes the corresponding Units (miniatures), Battle Dice, and Faction Cards of that Faction's color.[1]

2. Prepare each Faction's Draw Deck using cards 01-12.[1]

3. Shuffle each Faction's Draw Deck and draw 3 cards to look at.[1]

4. Ensure each Faction holds at least 1 Movement/Treaty Card in hand; if only Event cards are held, shuffle them back into the deck and redraw until a valid hand is held.[1]

5. Populate English Unit setup locations (Shires marked with colored Unit icons) with the corresponding colored English Units.[1]

6. Each English Faction places 4 additional Units of its color in any Shire(s).[1]

7. Place all remaining Units in front of players to form Reinforcement Stockpiles.[1]

8. Place the 10 Fyrd, the 2 yellow Battle Dice, and the shuffled deck of 16 yellow Fyrd Cards near the English players.[1]

9. Place the Round Pawn on space I of the Round Track.[2]

10. Place the red, blue, and green Turn Cubes (the dice with blank faces) into the bag.[2]

11. In the 1st Round of the standard game, place the black Norsemen Turn Cube on the '1st Turn' space.[3]

12. Place one Viking Control Marker on each Victory Track space.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook · p.2 · 1. Choose a Faction · 2. Cards · 3. English Unit Setup · 4. Place Additional Units · 5. Reinforcement Stockpiles · 6. The Fyrd

[2] RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook · p.3 · 6. The Fyrd · Viking Norsemen · Viking Berserker · 7. Round Pawn · 8. Turn Cubes · 9. Viking Invasion Setup · …

[3] RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook · p.5 · 1.0 Rounds and Turns · 1.1 Game End Check

🔧 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 228 ms · ask 9466 ms · total 9705 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 9705 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "Examples will o/ften accompany the game's rules and appear as red text. Notes appear in blue text to provide designer insights and clarify important rules. Card Clarifications (Page 11-12) Detailed card clarifications are provided. Extra Scenarios (Pages 13-14) In addition to the standard game, two ", "headingPath": "Advanced Setup Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 832}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "The year is 865 . A great heathen host of Norsemen has landed in East Anglia and is poised to thunder across England. For the past 72 years, Viking raiding parties from Norway and Denmark have terrorized the coasts of England with 'hit and run' a/ttacks. The treasures and plunder gained from these a", "headingPath": "Advanced Setup Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 832}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.047183, "snippet": "Each player chooses a Faction to play and takes the corresponding Units (miniatures), Ba/ttle Dice and Faction Cards of that Faction's color. The English side's Factions are the blue Housecarl and the green Thegn . The Viking side's Factions are the black Norsemen and the red Berserker . When playin", "headingPath": "1. Choose a Faction · 2. Cards · 3. English Unit Setup · 4. Place Additional Units · 5. Reinforcement Stockpiles · 6. The Fyrd", "sharpsignalDocId": 832}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "The game is played for up to 7 Rounds . During each Round, all four Factions will take a Turn in random order. At the beginning of a new Round, all four Turn Cubes are placed into the Draw Bag. Next, a Turn Cube is blindly drawn from the bag and placed on the '1st Turn' space of the Turn Track. The ", "headingPath": "1.0 Rounds and Turns · 1.1 Game End Check", "sharpsignalDocId": 832}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, has barely escaped a treacherous surprise a/ttack at Chippenham by the Viking King Guthrum. Alfred has managed to escape into the marshes of Somerset and has set up a fort at Athelney to regroup his forces. Now the Vikings rage across Wessex. Alfred must rally the T", "headingPath": "ADVANCED SCENARIO: ALFRED'S GAMBIT · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 832}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.045476, "snippet": "The game ends at the end of any of these Rounds if Treaty Cards belonging to all Factions of one or both sides have been played. Ex: In Round I, the Viking Berserker played her Treaty Card. In Round IV, the English Thegn played his Treaty Card. In Round V, the Viking Norsemen is the first to take a ", "headingPath": "GAME END & WINNING CONDITIONS · 8.1 Advanced Setup Rules · 8.0 Event Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 832}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "A drawn Turn Cube designates which Faction becomes active and takes its Turn next. The player that commands this Active Faction is the Active Player and performs the following phases in order: Reinforcements Phase (2.0) Leader Phase (5.0) Movement Phase (3.0) Ba/ttle Phase (4.0) Draw Phase (6.0) Not", "headingPath": "1.2 Turn Sequence", "sharpsignalDocId": 832}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.029462, "snippet": "The Vikings raided the British Isles for decades before Halfdan's Great Heathen Host invaded England in 865. It is 794 and the Vikings are raiding and plundering throughout Northumbria, sacking churches and razing villages. The English players must protect their families and their faith. If the Viki", "headingPath": "NORTHUMBRIAN RAIDS SCENARIO · Setup · Special Rules · Scenario End · Victory Conditions", "sharpsignalDocId": 832}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. Choose a Faction · 2. Cards · 3. English Unit Setup · 4. Place Additional Units · 5. Reinforcement Stockpiles · 6. The Fyrd", "sharpsignalDocId": 832}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "6. The Fyrd · Viking Norsemen · Viking Berserker · 7. Round Pawn · 8. Turn Cubes · 9. Viking Invasion Setup · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 832}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1.0 Rounds and Turns · 1.1 Game End Check", "sharpsignalDocId": 832}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 832 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 832 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 20:54

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. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

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 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	Advanced Setup Rules	p.4	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
#2	RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	Advanced Setup Rules	p.4	0.047643 (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 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	1. Choose a Faction · 2. Cards · 3. English Unit Setup · 4. Place Additional Units · 5. Reinforcement Stockpiles · 6. The Fyrd	p.2	0.047183 (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 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	1.0 Rounds and Turns · 1.1 Game End Check	p.5	0.047131 (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 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	ADVANCED SCENARIO: ALFRED'S GAMBIT · Setup	p.15	0.046642 (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 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	GAME END & WINNING CONDITIONS · 8.1 Advanced Setup Rules · 8.0 Event Cards	p.11	0.045476 (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 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	1.2 Turn Sequence	p.5	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
#8	RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	NORTHUMBRIAN RAIDS SCENARIO · Setup · Special Rules · Scenario End · Victory Conditions	p.14	0.029462 (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.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 50 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	Advanced Setup Rules	p.4	#1	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	ADVANCED SCENARIO: ALFRED'S GAMBIT · Setup	p.15	#5	0.046642 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	GAME END & WINNING CONDITIONS · 8.1 Advanced Setup Rules · 8.0 Event Cards	p.11	#6	0.045476 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	6. The Fyrd · Viking Norsemen · Viking Berserker · 7. Round Pawn · 8. Turn Cubes · 9. Viking Invasion Setup · …	p.3	#10	0.028382 (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))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	Advanced Setup Rules	p.4	#2	0.047643 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	1. Choose a Faction · 2. Cards · 3. English Unit Setup · 4. Place Additional Units · 5. Reinforcement Stockpiles · 6. The Fyrd	p.2	#3	0.047183 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	NORTHUMBRIAN RAIDS SCENARIO · Setup · Special Rules · Scenario End · Victory Conditions	p.14	#8	0.029462 (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))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	1.0 Rounds and Turns · 1.1 Game End Check	p.5	#4	0.047131 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	1. Choose a Faction · 2. Cards · 3. English Unit Setup · 4. Place Additional Units · 5. Reinforcement Stockpiles · 6. The Fyrd	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	6. The Fyrd · Viking Norsemen · Viking Berserker · 7. Round Pawn · 8. Turn Cubes · 9. Viking Invasion Setup · …	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK 878 Vikings: Invasions of England — Rulebook (corpus doc 832)	1.0 Rounds and Turns · 1.1 Game End Check	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 228 ms · first delta 7361 ms · total 9705 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 228 ms · ask 9466 ms · gateway work 9705 ms · total 9705 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3889
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 340
tok/sec: 147.9 tok/sec — 340 output tokens in 2.299 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 58s 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 767), 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.