Ruling — Star Wars: Rebellion

You asked

How do I set up Star Wars: Rebellion for 4 players?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Star Wars: Rebellionbg-187645-en-1e

To set up a 4-player Team Game of Star Wars: Rebellion, follow these steps:

1. Choose Factions and Gather Components: Players must choose who will control the Imperials and who will control the Rebels.[1] For a Team Game, players must choose who will be the Admiral or the General for their faction, and they use the 'Team Game' side of their faction sheet.[1] Players take their faction's plastic miniatures, leaders, loyalty markers, faction sheet, mission cards, and action cards, placing these components in front of them.[1]

2. Place Starting Leaders: Each player takes his four leaders that do not have a recruit icon and places them in the 'Leader Pool' space of his faction sheet; all leaders with recruit icons are placed near the game board and cannot be added to the leader pool until later in the game.[1] In a Team Game, the Admiral and General take their two starting leaders and place them in their leader pool.[1]

3. Prepare Game Board and Time Track: Place both halves of the game board next to each other in the center of the play area, then place the time marker on the first space of the time track and the reputation marker on space '14' of the time track.[1]

4. Prepare Objective Deck: Sort objective cards into three piles according to the number shown on each card back (I, II, or III) and shuffle each pile individually.[1] Place pile III on the 'Objectives' space of the game board, followed by pile II, and then pile I on top to create the deck.[1] The Rebel General draws one objective card.[2]

5. Prepare Action Decks: Each player takes all of his action cards that have a recruit icon and shuffles them to create his action deck, placing it facedown next to his faction sheet on the side labeled 'Action Deck'.[1][2]

6. Prepare Tactic Decks, Markers, and Dice: Shuffle the space tactic and ground tactic decks individually and place them within easy reach of all players, then take all remaining markers and dice and place them nearby.[2]

7. Prepare Mission Cards: Players take their mission cards and sort them as follows:

* Starting Missions: Each player takes his four starting mission cards (identified by an arrow at the bottom) and sets them aside.[2]

* Projects: The Imperial player takes all project cards (identified by a white star in a blue circle), shuffles them together, and places the deck facedown on the 'Projects' space of the game board.[2]

* Remaining Missions: Each player takes his remaining mission cards and shuffles them to create his mission deck, placed facedown next to his faction sheet on the side labeled 'Mission Deck'.[2]

8. Place Starting Units and Loyalty:

* Shuffle the probe deck and reveal cards until three Rebel systems and five Imperial systems are revealed.[2] Place a Rebel loyalty marker in each of the three Rebel systems, and place a subjugation marker in each of the first two Imperial systems drawn and an Imperial loyalty marker in each of the other three Imperial systems drawn.[2] Return the five probe cards showing the starting Imperial system to the game box and shuffle all other probe cards back into the probe deck.[2]

* The Imperial player receives 3 Star Destroyers, 3 Assault Carriers, 12 TIE Fighters, 12 Stormtroopers, 5 AT-STs, 1 AT-AT, and 1 Death Star, placing them in any systems with an Imperial loyalty marker or subjugation marker (at least one ground unit must be placed in each Imperial system); in a Team Game, the Admiral decides where to place these units.[2]

* The Rebel player receives 1 Corellian Corvette, 1 Rebel Transport, 2 X-wings, 2 Y-wings, 6 Rebel Troopers, and 2 Airspeeders, placing them on the 'Rebel Base' space and/or any one Rebel or neutral system.[2][3]

9. Draw Starting Action Cards: Each player draws two random starting action cards (those without a recruit icon) and places them facedown near his faction sheet; all other starting action cards are returned to the game box without being revealed.[3] In a Team Game, each team draws two random cards and gives them to the player who controls the leader shown on the card (if no leader is shown, either player may use it).[3]

10. Choose Base Location: The Rebel player secretly chooses one card from the probe deck and places it facedown under the Rebel base 'Location' space of the game board; then shuffle the probe deck and place it on the 'Probe Deck' space.[3] In a Team Game, if the Rebel team cannot agree on a location, the General decides.[3]

11. Draw Starting

[1] RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook · p.15 · APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook · p.15 · APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook · p.15 · APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP

🔧 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 222 ms · ask 13347 ms · total 21354 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 7775 ms · generation 13579 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 15, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "This section of the Rules Reference contains the complete rules for setting up a game of Star Wars: Rebellion . These rules include the advanced rules found in the back of the Learn to Play booklet. After players have played their first game, they should follow the setup rules on this page for all f", "headingPath": "APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Star Wars: Rebellion contains two theaters of war: space and ground. Each unit attacks in one of the two theaters, and most leaders have tactic values that correspond to each theater. b When assigning and dealing damage during a battle, players can only deal damage to units in the same theater. For ", "headingPath": "THEATER · TIME MARKER AND TIME TRACK · TRANSPORT CAPACITY · UNITS · WINNING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "-Team Game: The Admiral decides where to place starting units. III The Rebel player receives 1 Corellian Corvette, 1 Rebel Transport, 2 X-wings, 2 Y-wings, 6 Rebel T roopers, and 2 Airspeeders. He can place these units on the 'Rebel Base' space and/or any one Rebel or neutral system. -Team Game: The", "headingPath": "APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Then the Rebel player draws one objective card. Team Game: The Rebel General draws the objective card. 5 . Prepare Action Decks: Each player takes all of his action cards that have a recruit icon and shuffles them to create his action deck. He places the deck facedown next to his faction sheet on th", "headingPath": "APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "This document is intended as a reference for all rules queries. It is recommended that players begin playing Star Wars: Rebellion by reading the Learn to Play booklet in its entirety fi rst . Then, as questions arise during gameplay, players refer to this reference. The majority of this reference is", "headingPath": "USING THIS REFERENCE · GLOSSARY", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The 'Rapid Mobilization' mission card allows the Rebel player to establish a new base. T o do so, the Rebel player draws the top four cards of the probe deck. He may choose one of those cards to become the new base location. If he chooses a new base location, he reveals the old base's probe card and", "headingPath": "ESTABLISHING A NEW BASE · REBEL SYSTEMS", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "During the Command Phase, players take turns activating systems or revealing missions. b The Rebel player takes the first turn during the Command Phase, followed by the Imperial player. b When placing a leader in a system, it does not matter where the leader is placed within the system. The leader w", "headingPath": "COMMAND PHASE · COMPONENT LIMITATIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "2 . Choose System: The player chooses where he is resolving the mission, following the instructions on the card. He places all leaders that were assigned to the mission in this system. If the mission specifies to 'attempt against a leader,' the player must choose a system that contains the leader as", "headingPath": "REVEALING A MISSION", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 256 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 256 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 10, 2026 18:22

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 Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	THEATER · TIME MARKER AND TIME TRACK · TRANSPORT CAPACITY · UNITS · WINNING THE GAME	p.14	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
#3	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	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
#4	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	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 Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	USING THIS REFERENCE · GLOSSARY	p.2	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 Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	ESTABLISHING A NEW BASE · REBEL SYSTEMS	p.11	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 Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	COMMAND PHASE · COMPONENT LIMITATIONS	p.6	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 Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	REVEALING A MISSION	p.9	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.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 43 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 Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	#4	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	#3	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	MOVING UNITS	p.9	#18	0.012821 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	ACTIVATING SYSTEMS	p.2	#10	0.014286 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	ESTABLISHING A NEW BASE · REBEL SYSTEMS	p.11	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	THEATER · TIME MARKER AND TIME TRACK · TRANSPORT CAPACITY · UNITS · WINNING THE GAME	p.14	#2	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	USING THIS REFERENCE · GLOSSARY	p.2	#5	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 222 ms · first delta 5976 ms · total 21354 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 7775 ms · retrieval 222 ms · ask 13347 ms · gateway work 13579 ms · total 21354 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3782
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 136.4 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 7.509 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 22s 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

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 181), 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.