You asked
How is first player determined now that there are 2a and 3a player mats?
Answered counted as answeredAsked with: Scythebg-169786-en-1e · Scythe: Invaders from Afarbg-199727-en-1e
The first player is determined by identifying the player with the lowest-numbered player mat.[1][2] When using the 2a and 3a mats, the numerical order for determining the first player is 1, 2, 2a, 3, 3a, 4, 5.[1]
🔧 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 93 ms · ask 3128 ms · total 3222 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 3222 ms
- retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
- [{"page": 8, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Your Player Mat is where you'll be choosing actions during the game. TECHNOLOGY CUBES: Put 6 technology cubes on your Player Mat on the green boxes that have a black square in the bottom right corner. EXAMPLE The player with the lowest number in the label on their Player Mat will go first. Play proc", "headingPath": "PLAYER MAT · STARTING PLAYER:", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Both the Faction Mat and Player Mat indicate your starting cards and track positions in the boxes on the far right of each mat. POWER TOKEN: Place your power token ( ) on the indicated level of the Power Track (on the game board). Power is the commodity you will spend in combat. COMBAT CARDS: Draw t", "headingPath": "STARTING CARDS AND TRACK POSITIONS: · PLAYER MAT · CHARACTER · WORKERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "20 You can enlist new recruits (cylindrical tokens) to join your forces. The resource used to enlist recruits is food. ONE-TIME BONUS: To enlist a recruit, pay the cost, pick up a recruit token from any section of your Player Mat, place it on any open Recruit One-Time Bonus space on your Faction Mat", "headingPath": "BOTTOM-ROW ACTIONS · ENLIST", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "RESOURCES: All units-characters, mechs, & workers-can carry around resources (any number). TURNS AND PLAYER MATS: On your turn, you must choose a different section of your Player Mat than you did the previous turn. Take either the top-row action, the bottom-row action, or both (starting with the top", "headingPath": "HIGHLIGHTED RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The top-row actions appear in a different order on each Player Mat, though each action is identical. The Player Mat visuals and the default costs and benefits explained in this section are based on the starting position of each Player Mat. Do one of the following ('/' means 'or'): MOVE: Move up to 2", "headingPath": "TOP-ROW ACTIONS · MOVE", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030679, "snippet": "This expansion allows for up to 7 players to play Scythe. There are no changes to the map; as would be the case in the real world, the game board is simply more crowded with more factions trying to conquer it. There are two small changes to the rules for 6-7 player games: CRIMEA: One of the original", "headingPath": "PLAYING WITH 6 OR 7 PLAYERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 864}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "14 The bottom-row actions are in the same order on all Player Mats, but the costs and benefits vary. The Player Mat visuals and the default costs and benefits explained in this section are based on the starting position of each Player Mat. OVERLAPPING TURNS: Usually when a player starts to take the ", "headingPath": "PRODUCE · BOTTOM-ROW ACTIONS · UPGRADE", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "22 Combat may happen at the end of a player's Move action (after all units have moved but before the player takes a bottom-row action). If that player's character and/or mechs share a territory with an opponent's character and/or mechs, combat occurs. It's possible for this to happen on multiple ter", "headingPath": "F A C T I O N A B I L I T I E S · COMBAT", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}]
- citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
- [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYING WITH 6 OR 7 PLAYERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 864}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER MAT · STARTING PLAYER:", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}]
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 114 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 114 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)
- answer fence
- passed — letter density 0.84091 of 176 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
- debug row retained until
- Nov 12, 2026 12:17
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 Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | PLAYER MAT · STARTING PLAYER: | p.8 | 0.032787 (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 Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | STARTING CARDS AND TRACK POSITIONS: · PLAYER MAT · CHARACTER · WORKERS | p.7 | 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 Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | BOTTOM-ROW ACTIONS · ENLIST | p.20 | 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 Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | HIGHLIGHTED RULES | p.31 | 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 Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | TOP-ROW ACTIONS · MOVE | p.11 | 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 Scythe: Invaders from Afar — Rulebook (corpus doc 864) | PLAYING WITH 6 OR 7 PLAYERS | p.3 | 0.030679 (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 Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | PRODUCE · BOTTOM-ROW ACTIONS · UPGRADE | p.14 | 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 Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | F A C T I O N A B I L I T I E S · COMBAT | p.22 | 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 |
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 51 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 — 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 Scythe: Invaders from Afar — Rulebook (corpus doc 864) | PLAYING WITH 6 OR 7 PLAYERS | p.3 | #6 | 0.030679 (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 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | HIGHLIGHTED RULES | p.31 | #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 Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | PRODUCE · BOTTOM-ROW ACTIONS · UPGRADE | p.14 | #7 | 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 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | FACTORY CARDS | p.25 | #10 | 0.014493 (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 Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | FACTION MAT · QUICK-START CARD · RIVERWALK CARD | p.9 | #11 | 0.014085 (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 Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | STARTING CARDS AND TRACK POSITIONS: · PLAYER MAT · CHARACTER · WORKERS | p.7 | #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 |
| #7 | RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | TOP-ROW ACTIONS · MOVE | p.11 | #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 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | PLAYER MAT · STARTING PLAYER: | p.8 | #1 | 0.032787 (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
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.
| # | document | heading | page | quote chars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [1] | RULEBOOK Scythe: Invaders from Afar — Rulebook (corpus doc 864) | PLAYING WITH 6 OR 7 PLAYERS | p.3 | no quote on the wire |
| [2] | RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) | PLAYER MAT · STARTING PLAYER: | p.8 | no quote on the wire |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 93 ms · first delta 2681 ms · total 3222 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 93 ms · ask 3128 ms · gateway work 3222 ms · total 3222 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 3381
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 69
- tok/sec
- 139.4 tok/sec — 69 output tokens in 0.495 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 54s 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
- NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question
errata registry — what the gate above had to match against
this game registers NO errata cards (edition 2), 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.