Ruling — 7 Wonders (2nd Edition)

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armadabg-316382-en-1e

1. Sort the base game cards by Age according to the number of players and put any remaining cards back in the box.[1]

2. Sort the Armada cards by Age and shuffle each deck formed.[1]

3. For each Age, randomly take as many Armada cards as there are players and shuffle them together with the corresponding Age cards from the base game (Note: For a 3-player game, return the 5 Armada cards bearing the or icon to the box before proceeding).[1]

4. Sort the Island cards by level (1, 2, and 3), shuffle each deck, and place them face-down near the middle of the table.[1]

5. Place the Naval Conflict tokens, the Incursion tokens, and the extra Ground Conflict tokens next to the Ground Conflict tokens from the base game.[1]

6. Add the extra Coins to the Coins from the base game to form the bank.[1]

7. Each player begins the game with 3 Coins of value 1, which they place on their board.[1]

8. Place the game aids in the middle of the table so everyone has access to them.[1]

9. Give each player a Dockyard board, which they should place vertically to the right of their Wonder board, and one Ship figure of each color, placing these figures on the Start space of their color.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook · p.5 · Setup

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 90 ms · ask 3379 ms · total 3471 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 3471 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.032522, "snippet": "Note: underlined steps refer to the 7 Wonders base game. \u0007 Sort the cards from the base game by Age according to the number of players. Put the remaining cards back in the box; they won't be used for this game. \u0007 Sort the Armada cards by Age and shuffle each deck thus formed. For each Age, randomly ", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 888}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.032522, "snippet": "Turn resolution always takes place in this order: \u0007 Pay all construction costs (card, Wonder, and possibly Naval Construction). \u0007 Move the Ship corresponding to your Naval Construction, if any. \u0007 Apply all effects , with the exception of Coin losses. \u0007Resolve Island Exploration . \u0007 Resolve the const", "headingPath": "Turn Resolution · Rules for 8 Players · Setup · Game Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 888}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.015873, "snippet": "On each Dockyard board, a Wonder icon appears on the Start space of ONE of the 4 fleets ( Red , Yellow , Blue , or Green ). When a player constructs a stage of their Wonder, they may pay, in addition to the cost of that stage, the cost of the Naval Construction of the color associated with the Wonde", "headingPath": "b. Wonder Stage", "sharpsignalDocId": 888}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.015625, "snippet": "The player freely moves their Blue Ship one space upward on their Dock -yard board. The player freely moves their Yellow Ship one space upward on their Dock -yard board. The player freely moves one of their Ships, of their choice, one space upward on their Dockyard board. The player freely moves 2 o", "headingPath": "Description of the Symbols", "sharpsignalDocId": 888}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.015385, "snippet": "During your games with 4, 6, or 8 players, you can play 7 Wonders with the 2-player team variant. Teammates must sit side by side. During the game, teammates can communicate freely and show each other their hands of cards. It is mandatory to use your own resources before buying some from one of your", "headingPath": "Rules for Playing in Teams · Overview of an Age · Resolution of Ground Conflicts · Resolution of Naval Conflicts · Taxes and Pirates · End of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 888}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.015152, "snippet": "Once this Island card enters play, the player pays 1 less resource for each Naval Construction they perform. Clarification: This discount ONLY applies to resources. All Coin costs must be paid in full. Once this Island card enters play, the player no longer suffers monetary losses due to Taxes or Pi", "headingPath": "FROTHY HARBOR · WONDROUS HARBOR · EMERALD ARCHIPELAGO · LOST ISLAND · LUXURIOUS ARCHIPELAGO · SHELTERED ARCHIPELAGO", "sharpsignalDocId": 888}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.014925, "snippet": "At the beginning of each Age, players are each dealt a hand of 8 cards (instead of 7 as in the base game). Each player will thus play an additional card each Age. The game plays out according to the usual 7 Wonders rules, with the exception of four new rules: Naval Construction Naval Conflicts Disca", "headingPath": "Game Overview · 1. Naval Construction · a. Building Card · Total cost =", "sharpsignalDocId": 888}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.014706, "snippet": "These cards immediately grant Coins or Victory Points (3 / 6 Coins or 4 Victory Points respectively). Moreover, all other players lose 1 Coin per Commercial Level reached by their Yellow fleet. Example: Gabriel's Yellow fleet is on the third upgrade space of his Dockyard; he thus loses 2 Coins. Paul", "headingPath": "PIRATE CACHE - PIRATE LAIR - PIRATE BROTHERHOOD · EASTERN EMPORIUM · WESTERN EMPORIUM · STEERSMEN'S ACADEMY - MAP ROOM - NAVAL ARCHIVES · EXPLORER'S OFFICE - SOCIETY OF NAVIGATORS - CAPTAIN'S CIRCLE", "sharpsignalDocId": 888}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 888}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; no base-rulebook boost — this ask EXCLUDED the base book, so its rulebook was never resolved and no id for it went on the wire (boosting it would have put that book back into a scope the reader took it out of); rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
no base-rulebook boost — this ask EXCLUDED the base book, so its rulebook was never resolved and no id for it went on the wire (boosting it would have put that book back into a scope the reader took it out of)
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 0.91675 of 961 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 13, 2026 20:45

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 TWO-ARM fuse (full-text + vector), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.03279 — both arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). Measured healthy band on this fuse: 0.016–0.033. 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 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	Setup	p.5	0.032522 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033)	300
#2	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	Turn Resolution · Rules for 8 Players · Setup · Game Overview	p.16	0.032522 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033)	300
#3	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	b. Wonder Stage	p.7	0.015873 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse)	300
#4	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	Description of the Symbols	p.20	0.015625 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse)	300
#5	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	Rules for Playing in Teams · Overview of an Age · Resolution of Ground Conflicts · Resolution of Naval Conflicts · Taxes and Pirates · End of the Game	p.17	0.015385 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse)	300
#6	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	FROTHY HARBOR · WONDROUS HARBOR · EMERALD ARCHIPELAGO · LOST ISLAND · LUXURIOUS ARCHIPELAGO · SHELTERED ARCHIPELAGO	p.15	0.015152 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse)	300
#7	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	Game Overview · 1. Naval Construction · a. Building Card · Total cost =	p.6	0.014925 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse)	300
#8	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	PIRATE CACHE - PIRATE LAIR - PIRATE BROTHERHOOD · EASTERN EMPORIUM · WESTERN EMPORIUM · STEERSMEN'S ACADEMY - MAP ROOM - NAVAL ARCHIVES · EXPLORER'S OFFICE - SOCIETY OF NAVIGATORS - CAPTAIN'S CIRCLE	p.13	0.014706 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse)	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 22 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 — not 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. 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 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	Setup	p.5	#1	0.032522 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033)	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	Rules for Playing in Teams · Overview of an Age · Resolution of Ground Conflicts · Resolution of Naval Conflicts · Taxes and Pirates · End of the Game	p.17	#5	0.015385 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse)	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	Game Overview · 1. Naval Construction · a. Building Card · Total cost =	p.6	#7	0.014925 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse)	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	2. Naval Conflicts	p.8	#9	0.014493 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse)	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	Blue Fleet	p.10	#13	0.013699 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse)	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	Green Fleet · Solitary Exploration: · Group Exploration:	p.11	#12	0.013889 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse)	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	Armada and the Other Expansions · Armada + Great Projects · Babylon Wonder (side B) · Global tie during Naval Conflicts · Incursion Tokens · Q: Can a player be the target of two Incursions during a single Age? · …	p.18	#19	0.012658 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse)	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	Turn Resolution · Rules for 8 Players · Setup · Game Overview	p.16	#2	0.032522 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033)	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (Second Edition): Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 888)	Setup	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 90 ms · first delta 2021 ms · total 3471 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 90 ms · ask 3379 ms · gateway work 3471 ms · total 3471 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3168
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 290
tok/sec: 205.5 tok/sec — 290 output tokens in 1.411 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 13s 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 12), 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.