RuleSage cited table rulings
← Thunderstone Quest

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Thunderstone Questbg-215341-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:
1. Place the Village Board in the middle of the table with the side containing labels for The Marketplace and The Guilds' Quarter face up.[1]
2. Choose the cards with which you will play; if playing your first game, use the cards listed in the brown Sidebox on page 6 of the A Mirror in the Dark Quest bundle.[1]
3. Set out 4 Hero stacks face up in their respective Class spots in The Guilds' Quarter: 1 Cleric, 1 Fighter, 1 Rogue, and 1 Wizard.[1]
4. Arrange the Heroes so Level 1 versions are on top, followed by Level 2, with Level 3 at the bottom.[1]
5. In their respective spots in The Marketplace, set out two stacks of each: Items, Spells, and Weapons.[1]
6. Add an additional stack from two of these three categories to the "Any" spots.[1]
7. Set out 7 Dungeon Rooms: 2 rooms, 2 rooms, 2 rooms, and The Wilderness.[1]
8. Choose three groups of Monsters (one of each type).[1]
9. Take two random Monsters from each group and place them face up into their matching Dungeon Rooms so each room has 1 Monster.[1]
10. Take the 6 Guardian Keys and shuffle 1 Key into the first Monster group, 2 Keys into the second, and 3 Keys into the third.[1]
11. Form these into three Monster decks and place them into their respective spots on the Village Board.[1]
12. Choose a Thunderstone Guardian and place it into The Wilderness, face down, with the Monster side showing.[1]
13. Give each player a starting deck of 6 Adventurers, 2 Lanterns, 2 Thunderstone Shards, and 2 Daggers.[1]
14. Players must shuffle their decks and place them on their Player Board.[1]
[1] RULEBOOK Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook · p.4 · Setting Up Your Player Area · Setting Up the Village and dungeon · DUNGEON ROOMS AND MONSTERS · STARTER CARDS

Now you know — make it count.

🔧 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 112 ms · ask 7735 ms · total 7849 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 7849 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 4, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "4 Place the Village Board in the middle of the table so the side with labels in The Marketplace and The Guilds' Quarter are face up. After your first game, players may wish to try the unlabeled side. For now, we will now set up as show to the right. Choose the cards with which you will play. If this", "headingPath": "Setting Up Your Player Area · Setting Up the Village and dungeon · DUNGEON ROOMS AND MONSTERS · STARTER CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 581}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "1 6 Thunderstone Quest™ is designed to be played beyond the scenarios in the Questbook. If you wish to create your own setup, Randomizers have been included in this product to help you with setup. Monster Randomizers.indd 3 6/21/17 4:14 AM Randomizers are special cards that look like Heroes, Items, ", "headingPath": "GUILD SPONSORSHIP · RANDOM SETUP · BUILD AND POPULATE THE DUNGEON", "sharpsignalDocId": 581}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.046244, "snippet": "This radical variant is a favorite of experienced players of classic Thunderstone and Thunderstone Advance. Rather than playing with only 12 different cards in the Village each game, you can play with every card you own! Epic Thunderstone Quest has a slightly different setup from a standard game. Ge", "headingPath": "EPIC THUNDERSTONE QUEST · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 581}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045262, "snippet": "9 5 Some players may also wish to adjust the length of their game based on time allowed or number of players. An easy way to do this is to adjust the number of Guardian Keys that are needed to be found before the Guardian is revealed. For example, in a four-player game, the number of Guardian Keys n", "headingPath": "SIDE QUESTS, GUILD SPONSORSHIPS & LEGENDARY CARDS · it's Your Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 581}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "The first choice a player makes on their turn is to decide whether they will be going to the Village (taking a Village Phase) or exploring the Dungeon (taking a Dungeon Phase). If you choose to enter the Dungeon, you will move your Champion (figurine) through the Dungeon this turn to battle Monsters", "headingPath": "PREP PHASE · · THE TEMPLE · · THE BAZAAR · · THE GUILDS' QUARTER · aBilities anD traits", "sharpsignalDocId": 581}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Shuffle the Hero Randomizers. Reveal the first Randomizer, placing the corresponding Hero stack into The Guilds' Quarter on the Village Board, in a spot which matches the Hero's Class keyword (Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, or Wizard). If the Hero has more than one Class, you decide which spot to use. Hero", "headingPath": "POPULATE THE VILLAGE", "sharpsignalDocId": 581}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "To buy a card or Gear token, first total the Gold Production value of your cards and any Iron Ration Gear tokens you used. This gives you the total gold amount you can spend this turn. Gold Production on your cards in front of you is always available, even if it is from a Weapon which is not being w", "headingPath": "BuYinG stuff", "sharpsignalDocId": 581}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.02967, "snippet": "wilderness.indd 1 6/21/17 4:28 AM it’s Your Game W e have found that there are a lot of different types of Thunderstone players out there, each with their own preferences. Later in this book, we provide alternate styles of play and setups that some Thunderstone Quest™ players may enjoy even more (se", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 581}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setting Up Your Player Area · Setting Up the Village and dungeon · DUNGEON ROOMS AND MONSTERS · STARTER CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 581}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 581 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 581 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 0.89127 of 1306 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until
Nov 22, 2026 18:05 UTC

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 Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) Setting Up Your Player Area · Setting Up the Village and dungeon · DUNGEON ROOMS AND MONSTERS · STARTER CARDS p.4 0.048916 (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 Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) GUILD SPONSORSHIP · RANDOM SETUP · BUILD AND POPULATE THE DUNGEON p.16 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
#3 RULEBOOK Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) EPIC THUNDERSTONE QUEST · SETUP p.17 0.046244 (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 Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) SIDE QUESTS, GUILD SPONSORSHIPS & LEGENDARY CARDS · it's Your Game p.5 0.045262 (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 Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) PREP PHASE · · THE TEMPLE · · THE BAZAAR · · THE GUILDS' QUARTER · aBilities anD traits p.9 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
#6 RULEBOOK Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) POPULATE THE VILLAGE p.16 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
#7 RULEBOOK Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) BuYinG stuff p.10 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 Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) p.5 0.02967 (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 60 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 Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) Setting Up Your Player Area · Setting Up the Village and dungeon · DUNGEON ROOMS AND MONSTERS · STARTER CARDS p.4 #1 0.048916 (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 Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) GUILD SPONSORSHIP · RANDOM SETUP · BUILD AND POPULATE THE DUNGEON p.16 #2 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
#3 RULEBOOK Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) p.5 #8 0.02967 (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 Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) Objective · UNPACKING THE BOX p.3 #10 0.028783 (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 Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) p.2 #12 0.027056 (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
#6 RULEBOOK Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) p.21 #35 0.010638 (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
#7 RULEBOOK Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) SIDE QUESTS, GUILD SPONSORSHIPS & LEGENDARY CARDS · it's Your Game p.5 #4 0.045262 (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 Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) EPIC THUNDERSTONE QUEST · SETUP p.17 #3 0.046244 (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

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 Thunderstone Quest — Rulebook (corpus doc 581) Setting Up Your Player Area · Setting Up the Village and dungeon · DUNGEON ROOMS AND MONSTERS · STARTER CARDS p.4 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 112 ms · first delta 4548 ms · total 7849 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 112 ms · ask 7735 ms · gateway work 7849 ms · total 7849 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3587
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
428
tok/sec
134.0 tok/sec — 428 output tokens in 3.194 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 42s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child)
schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage)
reachable (for 60h, checked 9s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask)
node1
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 513), 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.