Ruling — Anachrony

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Anachronybg-185343-en-1e

**Standard Setup**

1. Place the Main board in the middle of the table.[1]

2. If playing with 2 or 3 players, use the side with only two Hexagonal slots for the Research, Recruit and Construct spots.[1]

3. Place the two Research dice on the indicated spots on the Main board.[1]

4. Place the Evacuation Action tile on its respective space on the Main board, with its A (intact) side up.[1]

5. Shuffle the 11 Recruit pool cards and 11 Mine pool cards into two face-down decks and place them next to the Main board.[1]

6. Separate buildings into four primary stacks by type (Power Plants, Factories, Life Supports, and Labs), shuffle each stack separately, and place them face up next to the Main board.[1]

7. Place the Anomalies in a face-up stack.[1]

8. Place the Paradox die and Paradox tokens next to the Anomalies.[1]

9. Place all Resources on the top-right side of the board and all Water on the top left.[1]

10. Place all Workers, Energy Cores and Breakthroughs next to the Main board, across the board from the buildings.[1]

11. Place the Victory Point tokens within reach.[1]

12. Arrange the Timeline tiles in a straight line left to right below the Main board.[1]

13. Place the Impact tile between the fourth and the fifth Timeline tiles.[1]

14. Shuffle all Superprojects and randomly place one above each of the seven Timeline tiles, placing the first (leftmost) face up and the rest face down; do not place a Superproject above the Impact tile.[1]

15. Return remaining Superprojects to the box.[1]

16. Place one of each player's Path markers below the leftmost Timeline tile to serve as Focus markers.[1]

17. Return the 'Most Completed Experiments' Endgame Condition card to the box (if using the Doomsday module).[1]

18. Randomly choose 5 Endgame Condition cards and place them face up above the Main board.[1]

19. Each player picks a Path, receives its respective Player board, and chooses whether all players will use the A or B side.[2]

20. Give players the colored components matching their Path color (6 Exosuits, 9 Warp tiles, 8 Path markers, and the Morale and Time Travel markers).[2]

21. Place the chosen Path board in front of each player with a randomly chosen side up.[2]

22. Give all players their starting Resources, Water, Energy Cores, and anything else indicated on their chosen Path board.[2]

23. The Path of Progress receives its starting Breakthrough at random.[2]

24. Place the starting Workers in the Active column (unless otherwise indicated) and set the Morale and Time Travel markers to their indicated starting positions.[2]

25. Each player picks one of the two available Leader cards for their Path and places it on the designated spot on the Path board.[2]

26. Give each player their Player banners (in plastic standees) and place them in front of them.[2]

27. The player who most recently had a 'déjà vu' becomes First Player; place their Banner on the designated space next to the World Council Action spaces.[2]

28. Players, in clockwise order starting from the First Player, receive 0/1/1/2 Water.[2]

**Chronobot Solo Variant Setup**

1. Set up a 2-player game with the Chronobot as one of the players.[3]

2. The Chronobot receives its 6 Exosuits and 8 Warp tiles, but no Starting Assets or Workers.[3]

3. Leave all Endgame Condition cards in the box.[3]

4. Place the Chronobot board next to the Main board and place the 6 Chronobot tokens on the 6 marked positions.[3]

5. The Chronobot is the First Player in the first Era; place its Banner on the First Player spot.[3]

6. The player receives 1 additional Water (as normal for the second player).[3]

**Doomsday Module Setup**

1. Place the Impact tile between the fifth and sixth Timeline Tile (instead of the fourth and fifth).[4]

2. Once the Timeline is laid out, place a random face-up Level 1 Experiment card below the first Timeline tile and a face-down Level 1 Experiment card below each other Timeline tile.[4]

3. Return leftover Level 1 Experiment cards to the box.[4]

4. At the start of the game, ensure the first Timeline tile has a face-up Superproject above it

[1] RULEBOOK Anachrony — Rulebook · p.3 · GENERAL SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK Anachrony — Rulebook · p.4 · PLAYER SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK Anachrony — Rulebook · p.12 · CHANGES IN SETUP · PARADOX PHASE 2 · POWER UP PHASE 3 · WARP PHASE 4 · ACTION ROUNDS PHASE 5

[4] RULEBOOK Anachrony — Rulebook · p.11 · FREQUENTLY OVERLOOKED RULES · EXPERIMENTS AND THE DOOMSDAY TRACK · CHANGES IN SETUP · DOOMSDAY BOARD

🔧 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 67 ms · ask 10183 ms · total 10251 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 10251 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 14, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "By using the Starting Asset Draft, players can add more variety to the starting assets of their Path each game. During the Setup, instead of giving each player the Starting Assets depicted on their Path board, give each player: 2 Scientists (Active) 1 Engineer (Active) 2 Energy Cores 2 Water Then, d", "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY VARIANT - STARTING ASSET DRAFT · GAMEPLAY VARIANT - ENDGAME CONDITION DRAFT · BUILDING DETAILS · Abbreviations:", "sharpsignalDocId": 270}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "Each Era is comprised of the following phases, in this order: Preparation phase - Reveal the Superproject above the next Timeline tile, shift the building stacks, fill up the supply of Workers and Resources available for this Era. 1 Paradox phase -Players who excessively strained the Timeline with W", "headingPath": "GAME TURN - ONE ERA OF PLAY · PREPARATION PHASE 1", "sharpsignalDocId": 270}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046544, "snippet": "Place the Main board in the middle of the table. If playing with 2 or 3 players, use the side with only two Hexagonal slots for the Research, Recruit and Construct spots. Place the two Research dice on the indicated spots on the Main board. Place the Evacuation Action tile on its respective space on", "headingPath": "GENERAL SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 270}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.045805, "snippet": "The Chronobot is a solo play variant for Anachrony, playable with the base game only. Set up a 2-player game, with the Chronobot as one of the players. The following modifications apply to the setup: The Chronobot receives its 6 Exosuits and 8 Warp tiles. It doesn't receive any Starting Assets (nor ", "headingPath": "CHANGES IN SETUP · PARADOX PHASE 2 · POWER UP PHASE 3 · WARP PHASE 4 · ACTION ROUNDS PHASE 5", "sharpsignalDocId": 270}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Each player picks a Path to play, and receives its respective Player board . Players may choose whether they use the A side or B side - all players must use the same side. Give players the coloured components matching their Path color ( 6 Exosuits, 9 Warp tiles, 8 Path markers and the Morale and Tim", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 270}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Exosuit Hex Slots: You have to pay 1 T/U/G to power up an Exosuit on the two left slots. You have to pay 1 Energy Core to power up an Exosuit on the two right slots. Powering up Exosuits on the two middle slots is free. Morale & Supply: You start 1 step higher on the Morale track. Your Morale track ", "headingPath": "PATH OF SALVATION", "sharpsignalDocId": 270}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "All spaces on the Player boards are either Worker spaces or Free Actions - Exosuits are not needed to activate them. The Supply Action is printed on every Player board between the Active and Tired columns. Spend Water equal to the number printed on the Water symbol below your current position on the", "headingPath": "PLAYER BOARD ACTIONS · Worker specifics · FORCE WORKERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 270}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "With the Alternate Timeline gameplay variant, players can add another strategic twist to the Warp phase. After setting up the Timeline, turn each Timeline tile to its alternate (crimson-colored) side. Certain Warp slots on this side have bonuses or penalties associated with them. When playing with t", "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY VARIANT - ALTERNATE TIMELINE", "sharpsignalDocId": 270}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GENERAL SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 270}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 270}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CHANGES IN SETUP · PARADOX PHASE 2 · POWER UP PHASE 3 · WARP PHASE 4 · ACTION ROUNDS PHASE 5", "sharpsignalDocId": 270}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "FREQUENTLY OVERLOOKED RULES · EXPERIMENTS AND THE DOOMSDAY TRACK · CHANGES IN SETUP · DOOMSDAY BOARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 270}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 270 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 270 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 0.89979 of 3373 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 12, 2026 20:46

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 Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	GAMEPLAY VARIANT - STARTING ASSET DRAFT · GAMEPLAY VARIANT - ENDGAME CONDITION DRAFT · BUILDING DETAILS · Abbreviations:	p.14	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
#2	RULEBOOK Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	GAME TURN - ONE ERA OF PLAY · PREPARATION PHASE 1	p.4	0.046875 (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 Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	GENERAL SETUP	p.3	0.046544 (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 Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	CHANGES IN SETUP · PARADOX PHASE 2 · POWER UP PHASE 3 · WARP PHASE 4 · ACTION ROUNDS PHASE 5	p.12	0.045805 (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 Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	PLAYER SETUP	p.4	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
#6	RULEBOOK Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	PATH OF SALVATION	p.17	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
#7	RULEBOOK Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	PLAYER BOARD ACTIONS · Worker specifics · FORCE WORKERS	p.9	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 Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	GAMEPLAY VARIANT - ALTERNATE TIMELINE	p.14	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 49 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 Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	PLAYER SETUP	p.4	#5	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
#2	RULEBOOK Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	CHANGES IN SETUP · PARADOX PHASE 2 · POWER UP PHASE 3 · WARP PHASE 4 · ACTION ROUNDS PHASE 5	p.12	#4	0.045805 (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 Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	FREQUENTLY OVERLOOKED RULES · EXPERIMENTS AND THE DOOMSDAY TRACK · CHANGES IN SETUP · DOOMSDAY BOARD	p.11	#10	0.026993 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	POWER PLANT BUILDINGS: TIME TRAVEL AND FOCUS	p.9	#9	0.028595 (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 Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	B) CHECK FOR IMPACT · OPTIONAL RULE - PLANNED EXPERIMENTS	p.12	#19	0.013514 (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 Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	GAME TURN - ONE ERA OF PLAY · PREPARATION PHASE 1	p.4	#2	0.046875 (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 Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	GAMEPLAY VARIANT - STARTING ASSET DRAFT · GAMEPLAY VARIANT - ENDGAME CONDITION DRAFT · BUILDING DETAILS · Abbreviations:	p.14	#1	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
#8	RULEBOOK Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	GENERAL SETUP	p.3	#3	0.046544 (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 Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	GENERAL SETUP	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	PLAYER SETUP	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	CHANGES IN SETUP · PARADOX PHASE 2 · POWER UP PHASE 3 · WARP PHASE 4 · ACTION ROUNDS PHASE 5	p.12	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Anachrony — Rulebook (corpus doc 270)	FREQUENTLY OVERLOOKED RULES · EXPERIMENTS AND THE DOOMSDAY TRACK · CHANGES IN SETUP · DOOMSDAY BOARD	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 67 ms · first delta 2800 ms · total 10251 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 67 ms · ask 10183 ms · gateway work 10251 ms · total 10251 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4073
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 139.0 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 7.367 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 27s 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 198), 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.