Ruling — Septima

← Septima

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Septimabg-360692-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

**Main Board Setup**

1. Place the Main board in the middle of the table and decide on the game mode (Full Game or Basic Game).[1]

2. Place the Season marker on the Autumn (1st) space on the Season track.[1]

3. Place the Moon Phase marker on the first space of the Moon Phase track.[1]

4. Randomly place one Lunar Ingredient marker on each Ingredient space found between the Moon Phase spaces.[1]

5. Place one Hunter pawn on each of the Huts on the Main board showing numbers 1, 3, and 5.[1]

6. Place a Hunter on the Winter (2nd) and Summer (4th) spaces of the Season track.[1]

7. Place the Turn Step marker on the A space on the Turn Step track.[1]

8. Place the Potion board near the Main board, creating a separate stack for each Potion type on the corresponding spaces.[1]

9. Create a common supply of Ingredient tokens, Crystals, and Good Luck Charm tokens, and place the Angry Citizen meeples close to the Main board.[1]

10. Shuffle the 6 Patient tokens and create a facedown stack next to the Main board.[1]

11. Draw 4/5/6 facedown Patient tokens in a 2-/3-/4-player game.[1]

12. Place the first Patient token on a Town area that shows the same banner color and the lowest number.[1]

13. Place subsequent Patient tokens in the next empty Town area that shows a corresponding banner color clockwise from the previous token.[1]

14. Shuffle the Witch tiles and create a face-down draw stack next to the right side of the Main board, close to the First Trial Chamber.[1]

15. Reveal the top Witch tile and place it into the First Trial Chamber.[1]

16. Place the empty Trial bag close to the Crowd area of the Main board.[1]

17. Place the Trial & Scoring Aid sheet next to the Main board with the 'Trial Resolution' side up.[1]

18. Set up the Septima Action markers at the Septima area of the Main board.[1]

19. If playing a 2-player game, place the Septima 2-player Overlay tile on the Septima area.[2]

20. Shuffle the Septima Action markers and create a face-down stack nearby.[2]

21. Reveal the top two markers and place them on the two Septima Action spaces of the Septima area.[2]

22. Shuffle the Prologue cards to form a face-down draw deck.[2]

23. For the Full Game, separate the 6 Building tiles into two stacks based on their backs (bronze and golden).[3]

24. Randomly select 1 Building tile from each stack and place them on the two Town areas of the Main board that show a Building golden and bronze symbol of the matching color.[3]

25. Place the Ritual board on the left side of the Main board.[3]

26. Set up the Spell cards at the bottom of the Ritual board by separating them by element (Earth/green, Air/blue, and Fire/red).[3]

27. From each deck, separate the 2 Scoring Spell cards, shuffle them separately, and place them face down on the spaces of the corresponding elements on the Ritual board.[3]

28. Reveal the top card of each deck.[3]

29. Shuffle the remaining Regular Spell cards separately and place them in three face-down decks below the Scoring Spell cards of the corresponding elements.[3]

30. Draw the top card of each deck and place it face up below its respective deck.[3]

31. Reveal the top card of each deck so that 9 Spell cards are visible (3 of each element).[3]

**Player Setup**

1. Each player chooses an available player color and takes the following:

* All 9 Action cards of their color.[4]

* A Player board (use the side with the Full Game symbol for a Full Game, otherwise use the other side).[4]

* 6 Loyal Citizens of their color, placing them in a personal supply near the Player board, and place 1 Loyal Citizen into the Crowd area of the Main board.[4]

* A Patient Track marker of their color, placed on the bottom space of its respective track on the top right of the Player board.[4]

* A Suspicion marker, placed on the space showing the Suspision icon (and value "2") on the Suspicion track on the left side of the Player board.[4]

* 1

[1] RULEBOOK Septima — Rulebook · p.4 · MAIN BOARD SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK Septima — Rulebook · p.4 · MAIN BOARD SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK Septima — Rulebook · p.5 · MAIN BOARD SETUP · FULL GAME · FULL GAMEADDITIONAL SETUP

[4] RULEBOOK Septima — Rulebook · p.5 · PLAYER SETUP

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 261 ms · ask 8318 ms · total 8581 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8581 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "PROLOGUE CARD EXAMPLE: You choose to place the top card over the bottom so that the lower half of the top card covers the higher half of the bottom. You then choose three times whether to gain a Berry or an Herb, and gain 2 Crystals and 1 Flying Ointment. 10 The player who last made a mixed drink wi", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP · FULL GAME · 6 SEASON SEQUENCE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1120}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047073, "snippet": "2 4 1x 2x 3x 4x 3 4 5 6 x = 3 1 Place the Main board in the middle of the table, and decide on the game mode you will be playing. If you select the Full Game, use the side that shows the Full Game symbol in the top right corner. If you select the Basic Game, use the other side. The Main board shows ", "headingPath": "MAIN BOARD SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1120}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "1x 1 B 6 12 Set up the Building tiles. a Separate the 6 Building tiles into 2 stacks based on their backs (bronze and golden). 1 b Randomly select 1 Building tile from each stack, and place them on the two Town areas of the Main board that show a Building golden and bronze symbol of the matching col", "headingPath": "MAIN BOARD SETUP · FULL GAME · FULL GAMEADDITIONAL SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1120}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045445, "snippet": "I V Each player should choose an available player color and take the following steps. 1 Take into your hand all 9 Action cards of your color. II III IV 2x 2 Take a Player board. If you'll be playing a Full Game, use he side of the Player board that shows the Full Game symbol in the top right corner.", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1120}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "b Reveal the top Witch tile, and place it into the First Trial Chamber. c Place the empty Trial bag close to the Crowd area of the Main board. d Place the Trial & Scoring Aid sheet next to the Main board with the 'Trial Resolution' side up. 10 Set up the Septima Action markers at the Septima area of", "headingPath": "MAIN BOARD SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1120}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.045002, "snippet": "Complete steps 1 -14 of the Player setup, performing step 7 b (Full Game ) and 10 differently: Draw four Witch tiles to draft from: I Select one for yourself, and place them in your Coven. II Randomly select one of the remaining three for the Black Widow and place them in her Coven. III Select one o", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP FOR SOLO · PREPARATION · MOON PHASES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1120}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.044118, "snippet": "3 2x 1x 3x 4x 4 x = 1x 4 1x Skip this in the 1 st (Autumn) Season of the game, as the steps were already performed during setup. 4 5 6 2 3 3 A 1 1 Reveal the top Witch of the Witch tile stack, and place them face up in the First Trial Chamber. 3 3 A 4 4 x B 2 Remove all Angry Citizens from the Crowd", "headingPath": "PREPARATION", "sharpsignalDocId": 1120}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "VI Shuffle the remaining Witch tiles together, and place them face down on top of the Witch tile stack. 8 Take a Player Aid. It shows Potion recipes on one side (keep that side up for now) and a summary of the gameplay steps on the other side. 9 Draw 2 Prologue cards to determine your starting asset", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1120}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MAIN BOARD SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1120}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MAIN BOARD SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1120}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MAIN BOARD SETUP · FULL GAME · FULL GAMEADDITIONAL SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1120}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1120}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1120 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1120 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 0.89755 of 3221 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 26, 2026 08:42 UTC

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 Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	PLAYER SETUP · FULL GAME · 6 SEASON SEQUENCE	p.6	0.047123 (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 Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	MAIN BOARD SETUP	p.4	0.047073 (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 Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	MAIN BOARD SETUP · FULL GAME · FULL GAMEADDITIONAL SETUP	p.5	0.046898 (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 Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	PLAYER SETUP	p.5	0.045445 (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 Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	MAIN BOARD SETUP	p.4	0.045228 (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 Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	PLAYER SETUP FOR SOLO · PREPARATION · MOON PHASES	p.14	0.045002 (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 Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	PREPARATION	p.6	0.044118 (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 Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	PLAYER SETUP	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

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 67 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 Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	PLAYER SETUP	p.5	#4	0.045445 (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 Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	PLAYER SETUP FOR SOLO · PREPARATION · MOON PHASES	p.14	#6	0.045002 (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 Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	PLAYER SETUP · FULL GAME · 6 SEASON SEQUENCE	p.6	#1	0.047123 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	MAIN BOARD SETUP	p.4	#5	0.045228 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	PREPARATION	p.6	#7	0.044118 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)		p.3	#9	0.030886 (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 Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	MAIN BOARD SETUP · FULL GAME · FULL GAMEADDITIONAL SETUP	p.5	#3	0.046898 (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 Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	MAIN BOARD SETUP	p.4	#2	0.047073 (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 Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	MAIN BOARD SETUP	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	MAIN BOARD SETUP	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	MAIN BOARD SETUP · FULL GAME · FULL GAMEADDITIONAL SETUP	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Septima — Rulebook (corpus doc 1120)	PLAYER SETUP	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 261 ms · first delta 3373 ms · total 8581 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 261 ms · ask 8318 ms · gateway work 8581 ms · total 8581 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4275
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 200.3 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 5.113 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 6s 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.

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 1050), 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.