RuleSage cited table rulings
← Churchill

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Churchillbg-132018-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:
1. Arrange the five conference cards in their historical order.[1]
2. Each player begins with his Leader card (Churchill, Roosevelt, or Stalin) and his twenty-one card staff decks.[1]
3. Place all Global issue markers in the neutral position.[1]
4. Ensure all conference issues are available.[1]
5. Each player begins with zero VPs.[1]
6. Place Front markers and naval support markers in the following locations:
* Western Front (US): Bolero, 5 naval support.[1]
* Mediterranean Front (UK): Southern Italy, 3 naval support.[1]
* Arctic Theater Box: 0 naval support.[1]
* Eastern Front (USSR): Belorussia, 0 naval support.[1]
* CBI Front (UK): CBI Theater Box, 0 naval support.[1]
* Far East Front (USSR): Nomohon, 0 naval support.[1]
* Central Pacific Front (US): Caroline Islands, 3 naval support.[1]
* Southwest Pacific Front (US): Papua New Guinea, 3 naval support.[1]
7. Place Clandestine Networks and Political Alignment markers as follows:
* US: France (1 Clan, 1 Pol), Czech (1 Clan), Siam (1 Clan), Dutch East Indies (1 Clan), Vietnam (1 Clan), and Laos/Cambodia (1 Clan).[1]
* UK: Netherlands (1 Clan, 1 Pol), Belgium (1 Clan), Poland (1 Clan), Greece (1 Clan), Middle East (1 Clan), and Persia (1 Clan).[1]
* USSR: Baltic States (1 Clan, 1 Pol), Yugoslavia (1 Clan, 1 Pol), Rumania (1 Clan), and Bulgaria (1 Clan).[1]
8. Place other markers as follows:
* UK marker in the European Leadership space.[1]
* US marker in the Pacific Leadership space.[1]
* US A-Bomb marker in the Oak Ridge space.[1]
* USSR Manhattan Spy Ring marker in the Letter to Roosevelt space.[1]
* Second Front Issue in the center of the conference table.[1]
9. Note that the Italian army reserve and German navy are out of play.[1]
[1] RULEBOOK Churchill — Rulebook · p.20 · 9.54 Set Up · 9.64 Set Up
🔧 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 102 ms · ask 6693 ms · total 6797 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 6797 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 18, "score": 0.046671, "snippet": "Churchill has three scenarios, the training (three conferences) with an estimated playing time 60-90 minutes, tournament (five conferences) with an estimated playing time of 2-3 hours, and campaign (ten conferences) with an estimated playing time of 4-5 hours. The first step for all scenarios is con", "headingPath": "9.1 The Scenarios · 9.2 Conference Deck Construction Procedure · 9.3 Scenario Victory · General · Colonies · Axis Surrender", "sharpsignalDocId": 727}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "The map is divided into two separate displays: the conference display and the military display. 3.21 The conference display is where most of the player interactions occur and represents a circular conference table. The middle of this display is the 'center of the table' or the 'zero space'. Radiatin", "headingPath": "3.2 Map", "sharpsignalDocId": 727}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "9.71 This scenario begins with Conference 1: Symbol and ends with Conference 10: Terminal or with Axis Surrender . 9.72 Arrange the 10 conference cards in their historical order. All conference issues are available. Each player begins with his Leader Card (Churchill, Roosevelt, or Stalin) and his tw", "headingPath": "9.7 Campaign Scenario · 9.74 Set Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 727}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "9.62 Arrange the five conference cards in their historical order. Each player begins with his Leader card (Churchill, Roosevelt, or Stalin) and his twenty-one card staff decks. Place all Global issue markers in the neutral position. All conference issue are available. 9.63 Victory Points: Each playe", "headingPath": "9.54 Set Up · 9.64 Set Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 727}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Churchill can be played by zero to three players. When you are playing with fewer than three humans use the artificial decision aids to play the non-human opponents, hereafter called, 'Bots. 2-Player: Decide either randomly or by choice which side is the 'Bot (short for robot à la Heinlein). Solitai", "headingPath": "11.0 Solitaire Rules · 11.1 General Procedure: · 11.2 Common Sense", "sharpsignalDocId": 727}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Each player in turn, starting with the player to the left of the player who won the Agenda Segment and proceeding clockwise, plays a staff card to advance an issue toward their side of the table. The other two players then have the option to debate that issue in order to move the issue back toward t", "headingPath": "5.21 Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 727}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029877, "snippet": "1 Mounted map (22 \" x 34 \" ) 1 'Rules of Play' manual (i.e., this booklet) 3 Player aid cards (11 \" x 17 \" ) 1 Countersheet (heavy stock, no sprue) 90 Translucent plastic tokens (30 each of green, blue, red; for Clandestine Network) 3 Large wooden blocks* (one each of green, blue, red; for Leaders) ", "headingPath": "2.0 Components · 3.1 Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 727}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "If the score of the player in first place exceeds , not equals, the combined score of the other two players, the player with the highest score wins. If the first place score does not exceed this combined score the player with the second highest score wins. In case of a tie for fewest points, the fin", "headingPath": "4.4 Winning the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 727}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 20, "quote": null, "headingPath": "9.54 Set Up · 9.64 Set Up", "sharpsignalDocId": 727}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 727 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 727 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 0.83379 of 1462 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until
Nov 14, 2026 11:18

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 Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) 9.1 The Scenarios · 9.2 Conference Deck Construction Procedure · 9.3 Scenario Victory · General · Colonies · Axis Surrender p.18 0.046671 (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 Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) 3.2 Map p.2 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
#3 RULEBOOK Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) 9.7 Campaign Scenario · 9.74 Set Up p.21 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
#4 RULEBOOK Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) 9.54 Set Up · 9.64 Set Up p.20 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 Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) 11.0 Solitaire Rules · 11.1 General Procedure: · 11.2 Common Sense p.23 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 Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) 5.21 Overview 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
#7 RULEBOOK Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) 2.0 Components · 3.1 Overview p.2 0.029877 (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 Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) 4.4 Winning the Game p.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)) 300

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 80 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 Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) 1.0 Introduction p.2 #11 0.027888 (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 Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) 5.21 Overview p.9 #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
#3 RULEBOOK Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) 5.14 Agenda Selection p.8 #20 0.013889 (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
#4 RULEBOOK Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) 4.4 Winning the Game p.7 #8 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
#5 RULEBOOK Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) 9.54 Set Up · 9.64 Set Up p.20 #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
#6 RULEBOOK Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) Channeling the history p.34 #13 0.024497 (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
#7 RULEBOOK Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) Capturing the Big Three Dynamic p.33 #15 0.02381 (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
#8 RULEBOOK Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) Illustrated Example of Play p.26 #10 0.02886 (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

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 Churchill — Rulebook (corpus doc 727) 9.54 Set Up · 9.64 Set Up p.20 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 102 ms · first delta 4243 ms · total 6797 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 102 ms · ask 6693 ms · gateway work 6797 ms · total 6797 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3504
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
505
tok/sec
201.6 tok/sec — 505 output tokens in 2.505 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 29s 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
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

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 661), 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.