RuleSage cited table rulings
← Oceans

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Oceansbg-232414-en-1e

For the Reef Variant, follow these steps to setup the game:
1. Place the Reef and the Ocean board in the center of the play area.[1]
2. Stack the species boards nearby.[1]
3. Place the Cambrian Explosion card with the 'Reef Variant' side face-down in the first Ocean zone, then place the 'Reef Variant' side face-up.[1]
4. Use Abundance and Fertile instead of 2 random Scenario cards.[1]
5. Shuffle the Surface deck and deal 6 cards to each player, then place the deck face-down next to the Reef.[1]
6. Skip the step of shuffling the Deep deck and forming the Gene Pool.[1]
7. Place the 60 reserve population tokens in the 'reserve' zip-lock bag.[1]
8. Create a supply of population tokens according to your player count (60 population + 20 population per player) and return any unused population tokens to the box (100 total for 2 players, 120 total for 3 players, 140 total for 4 players).[2]
9. Roughly divide the supply of population tokens into 4 piles and place each pile into the 4 available locations: the Reef and the 3 Ocean zones.[2]
10. Reveal the top card from the Surface deck, and place it face-up to form the discard pile.[2]
11. Look at the Migrate number on the bottom left of the card and move that number of population from both the Reef and the 1st Ocean zone into the 3rd Ocean zone.[2]
12. Give each player a Player Screen.[2]
13. The start player is the person who can hold their breath the longest.[2]
14. Give each player the correct Bonus Token according to their place in turn order and place the token behind their Player Screen.[2]
[1] RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook · p.4 · Reef Variant
[2] RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook · p.5 · Reef Variant

Settled. Play on.

🔧 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 205 ms · ask 5222 ms · total 5429 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 5429 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 12, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "Creatures must adapt for survival, not only to compete with other species in the ecosystem, but also in response to various environmental opportunities and threats that arise. These influences are represented by Scenario cards. There are 2 types of Scenario cards. Blue Scenario cards have ongoing ef", "headingPath": "SCENARIO CARDS · SCENARIO CARD ICONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Play 1 Surface card during this phase if the Cambrian Explosion has not yet started. Once the Cambrian Explosion has started, you will play 2 cards (Surface and/or Deep). Cards may be played to evolve a species, or to migrate population. In addition, you may remove traits from your species anytime d", "headingPath": "Phase 1: Playing Cards · PLAYING A TRAIT ON A NEW SPECIES: · PLAYING A TRAIT ON AN EXISTING SPECIES:", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "7 . Create a supply of population tokens according to your player count (60 population + 20 population per player) and return any unused population tokens to the box. 2 players: use these tokens (100 total) 3 players: use these tokens (120 total) 4 players: use these tokens (140 total) 8 . Roughly d", "headingPath": "Reef Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The goal of Oceans is to thrive in an ever-changing ecosystem where food is scarce and predators lurk. The population of your species can grow by foraging from the Reef , attacking other species , or passively gaining from the Ocean . So evolve your species to best ensure their survival. At the end ", "headingPath": "OVERVIEW · PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "MIGRATE: Instead of using a card to evolve , you will sometimes use a card to migrate population. The number of population tokens you migrate is equal to the migrate number on the bottom left of the card you play. Choose a board location; either the Reef or an Ocean zone. Discard a card from your ha", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME (CONTINUED) · Phase 2: Feeding · Important Feeding Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Oceans was originally designed to be played without Scenario cards and without the Deep. If anyone at the table has never played Oceans , we recommend playing the Reef Variant. Otherwise, prepare to venture into the Deep! 1 . Place the Reef and the Ocean board in the center of the play area. Stack t", "headingPath": "Reef Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030622, "snippet": "Two random Scenario cards will be placed on the first two Ocean zones each game, encouraging players to explore a variety of playstyles. There are 12 traits in the Surface deck, 10 copies of each. During the game, you will adapt your species with traits to help them thrive in an ever-changing enviro", "headingPath": "25 SCENARIO CARDS · 120 SURFACE CARDS · 89 DEEP CARDS · 1 CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION CARD · 4 PLAYER SCREENS · 4 BONUS TOKENS", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "If the Cambrian Explosion has not yet started, remove 1 population from each of your species and place it behind your player screen in your score pile. If the Cambrian Explosion has started, place 2 population from each of your species into your score pile. Score all of your population if you cannot", "headingPath": "Phase 3: Aging · Phase 4: Drawing Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Reef Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Reef Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 621}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 621 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 621 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 0.89244 of 1283 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until
Nov 23, 2026 21:42 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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) SCENARIO CARDS · SCENARIO CARD ICONS p.12 0.046696 (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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) Phase 1: Playing Cards · PLAYING A TRAIT ON A NEW SPECIES: · PLAYING A TRAIT ON AN EXISTING SPECIES: p.7 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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) Reef Variant p.5 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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) OVERVIEW · PLAYING THE GAME p.6 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
#5 RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) PLAYING THE GAME (CONTINUED) · Phase 2: Feeding · Important Feeding Rules p.8 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
#6 RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) Reef Variant p.4 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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) 25 SCENARIO CARDS · 120 SURFACE CARDS · 89 DEEP CARDS · 1 CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION CARD · 4 PLAYER SCREENS · 4 BONUS TOKENS p.3 0.030622 (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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) Phase 3: Aging · Phase 4: Drawing Cards p.9 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 16 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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) Reef Variant p.4 #6 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
#2 RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) END OF GAME · Players score: p.15 #9 0.029412 (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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) OVERVIEW · PLAYING THE GAME p.6 #4 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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#4 RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) Phase 1: Playing Cards · PLAYING A TRAIT ON A NEW SPECIES: · PLAYING A TRAIT ON AN EXISTING SPECIES: p.7 #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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#5 RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) Phase 3: Aging · Phase 4: Drawing Cards p.9 #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
#6 RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) Reef Variant p.5 #3 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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) SCENARIO CARDS · SCENARIO CARD ICONS p.12 #1 0.046696 (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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) PLAYING THE GAME (CONTINUED) · Phase 2: Feeding · Important Feeding Rules p.8 #5 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

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 Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) Reef Variant p.4 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Oceans — Rulebook (corpus doc 621) Reef Variant p.5 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 205 ms · first delta 2299 ms · total 5429 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 205 ms · ask 5222 ms · gateway work 5429 ms · total 5429 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
2768
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
412
tok/sec
133.9 tok/sec — 412 output tokens in 3.078 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 35s 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 3s 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 553), 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.