RuleSage cited table rulings
← Catan

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Catanbg-13-en-1e

There are different ways to set up the game depending on the chosen method:
**Starting Set-up for Beginners**
1. Remove die-cut components from cardboard holders, carefully punching out and separating pieces by pushing tiles through from the front "cut" side.[1]
2. Assemble the frame as shown in Illustration R or Illustration A.[2][1]
3. Place terrain hexes exactly as shown in Illustration R or place the 19 terrain hexes on the table as shown in Illustration A.[2][1]
4. Place circular number tokens on top of the designated terrain hexes.[1]
5. Place 2 settlements and 2 roads of each color as shown in Illustration R.[2] (Note: If playing with only 3 players, remove the red pieces;[2] nobody plays the red position indicated on the starting map [3]).
6. Each player receives the 3 resources from the terrain hexes adjacent to their settlement marked by the white star.[2] Take the appropriate resource cards from their stacks.[3]
7. The oldest player is the starting player.[2]
**General/Variable Set-up**
1. Build the game map (see Illustration N and Set-up, Variable Y).[4]
2. Everyone chooses a color and takes the corresponding game pieces: 5 settlements, 4 cities, and 15 roads.[4][5]
3. Place your 2 roads and your 2 settlements on the game board.[3]
4. Place your remaining settlements, roads, and cities down in front of you.[3]
5. Take your color's building costs card.[3]
6. Sort the resource cards into 5 stacks and place them face up beside the board.[5][3]
7. Shuffle the development cards and place them face down beside the resource cards.[5][3]
8. Place the 2 special cards ("Longest Road" and "Largest Army") and the dice beside the board.[5][3]
9. Place the robber in the desert.[5]
[1] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook · p.2 · Starting Set-up for Beginners
[2] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook · p.13 · startinG set-up for BeGinners
[3] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook · p.3 · settinG up the Game
[4] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook · p.12 · set-up phase
[5] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook · p.12 · Illustration N

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile
live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings
search 66 ms · ask 5602 ms · total 5669 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 5669 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 8, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Here is a summary of the the game sequence, plus some more specific entries where you can find details: Lay out the game board: Set-up, Variable Y Initial set-up: Set-up Phase Y Play The starting player begins the game. The other players follow in clockwise order. On your turn, you complete these 3 ", "headingPath": "Game play", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "You can play the game Catan on a variable game board. For your first game, however, we suggest that you use the 'Starting Set-up for Beginners Y .' (See Illus. A on page 3.) This set-up is well-balanced for all players. Before your first game, you must remove the die-cut components from the cardboar", "headingPath": "Starting Set-up for Beginners", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "Select a color and take your 5 settlements, 4 cities, and 15 roads (no more and no less!). Place your 2 roads and your 2 settlements on the game board. Place your remaining settlements, roads, and cities down in front of you. Note: If you are playing a 3-player game, nobody plays the red position in", "headingPath": "settinG up the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "Begin the 'set-up phase' after you build the game map (see Illustration N and Set-up, Variable Y ). Everyone chooses a color and takes the corresponding game pieces: 5 settlements; 4 cities;", "headingPath": "set-up phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.046175, "snippet": "If you want to use the starting set-up, lay out the board as shown in Illustration R (and the Game Overview): Assemble the frame exactly as shown in Illustration R. Place the terrain hexes exactly as shown in Illustration R. Place 2 settlements and 2 roads of each color as shown. If only 3 are playi", "headingPath": "startinG set-up for BeGinners", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "It is more fun to play with a variable game board-with the game board laid out randomly. The board changes each game. If you would like to use the variable set-up, you can find the guidelines in the Almanac under Set-up, Variable Y . Also look for useful tips under Set-up Phase Y and Tactics Y .", "headingPath": "Starting Set-up for Experienced Players", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Suggested Beginners' Map Set-up 15 roads; and 1 building costs card. Sort the resource cards into 5 stacks and place them face up beside the board. Shuffle the development cards Y and place them face down beside the resource cards. Place the 2 special cards and the dice beside the board. Place the r", "headingPath": "Illustration N", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "To make it as easy as possible for you to start playing Catan® , we use an award-winning rules system, which consists of 3 parts. First, if you do not know how to play Catan , please read the Game Overview on page 16 (the back cover). Next, read the Game Rules on pages 2-6 (red borders) and start to", "headingPath": "Dear Settlers,", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Starting Set-up for Beginners", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "startinG set-up for BeGinners", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "settinG up the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "set-up phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Illustration N", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 43 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 43 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 11, 2026 19:49

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Game play p.8 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Starting Set-up for Beginners p.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)) 300
#3 RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) settinG up the Game p.3 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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) set-up phase p.12 0.046898 (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)) 190
#5 RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) startinG set-up for BeGinners p.13 0.046175 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Starting Set-up for Experienced Players p.3 0.045455 (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)) 296
#7 RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Illustration N p.12 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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Dear Settlers, p.2 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 74 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) startinG set-up for BeGinners p.13 #5 0.046175 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) set-up phase p.12 #4 0.046898 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Starting Set-up for Beginners p.2 #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
#4 RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) settinG up the Game p.4 #11 0.028283 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Illustration N p.12 #7 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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#6 RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Starting Set-up for Experienced Players p.3 #6 0.045455 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Game play p.8 #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
#8 RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) settinG up the Game p.3 #3 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)) vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Starting Set-up for Beginners p.2 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) startinG set-up for BeGinners p.13 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) settinG up the Game p.3 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) set-up phase p.12 no quote on the wire
[5] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Illustration N p.12 no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split
retrieval 66 ms · first delta 2491 ms · total 5669 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 66 ms · ask 5602 ms · gateway work 5669 ms · total 5669 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
1383
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
443
tok/sec
141.0 tok/sec — 443 output tokens in 3.141 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 5s 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
SERVED — setup-shaped and this game's approved setup checklist is offered above
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 1), 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.