Ruling — A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game

← A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Gamebg-35815-en-1e

To set up a game of A Touch of Evil, follow these steps:

1. Unfold the Game Board and place it at the center of a large table.[1]

2. Place the Shadow Track near the board where everyone can see it, starting the circular ring Shadow Track Marker on the space marked 20.[1]

3. Separate and fully shuffle all various card decks, though Town Items cards do not need to be shuffled and should remain in a face-up stack where everyone can reach them.[1]

4. Place the four Location Decks (The Manor, Windmill, Olde Woods, and Abandoned Keep) next to the board near their respective Locations.[1]

5. Place the remaining card decks (Event, Mystery, Lair, and Secrets) near the board.[1]

6. Place the six Town Elder cards in a row along the top of the Game Board with their 'good' side face up.[1]

7. Draw one Secrets Card for each Town Elder and place it face down under the Elder's card without looking at or revealing it.[1]

8. Shuffle the Villain Record Sheets and randomly draw one, or collectively choose a Villain if all players agree.[1]

9. Take the corresponding Minion Chart for the chosen Villain and set aside all remaining Villains and their Minion Charts.[1]

10. Place the selected Villain Record Sheet and matching Minion Chart face up on the table where everyone can see it.[2]

11. Shuffle the stack of Hero Character Sheets; each player randomly draws 2 Heroes from the stack, chooses one to play, and returns the other to the stack.[2]

12. Place the selected Hero Character Sheet face up on the table and take the matching Hero playing piece out of the box.[2]

13. Place all Heroes in the Town Hall space at the center of the Game Board, unless the Hero's Character Sheet notes otherwise.[2]

14. Place all Investigation Markers in an Investigation Pool where everyone can reach them.[2]

15. Place all Wound Markers and other counters near the board within reach.[2]

16. Distribute the dice between players.[2]

17. Give each Hero 2 Investigation taken from the pool.[2]

18. Have all players roll off to determine the First Player; the highest roller takes the First Player marker and places it by their Hero Character Sheet.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook · p.8 · Game Set up · Laying out the Game Board · Shuffle and Place the Card Decks · Place the Town Elders · Draw or Choose the Villain

[2] RULEBOOK A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook · p.9 · Draw or Choose the Villain · Draw and Place Hero Characters · Prepare Counters and Dice · Hand Out Starting Investigation · Roll Off for First Player · Competitive or Cooperative · …

Rule found, game 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 180 ms · ask 5116 ms · total 5297 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5297 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "To set up for a game of A Touch of Evil , complete the following steps and lay everything out as shown in the diagram below. Unfold the Game Board and place it at the center of a large table. Place the Shadow Track near the board where everyone can see it with the circular ring Shadow Track Marker s", "headingPath": "Game Set up · Laying out the Game Board · Shuffle and Place the Card Decks · Place the Town Elders · Draw or Choose the Villain", "sharpsignalDocId": 1270}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "Place the selected Villain Record Sheet face up on the table where everyone can see it as well as the matching Minion Chart. Shuffle up the stack of Hero Character Sheets. Each player then randomly draws 2 Heroes from the stack and chooses one to play, returning the other to the stack. The remaining", "headingPath": "Draw or Choose the Villain · Draw and Place Hero Characters · Prepare Counters and Dice · Hand Out Starting Investigation · Roll Off for First Player · Competitive or Cooperative · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1270}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "A Touch of Evil is played in a series of Game Rounds, until the victory conditions for the game are met, either when the Villain is defeated by the Heroes, or when the Shadow Track moves into Darkness - moving past the 1 space on the Shadow Track (ending the game in a sinister victory for the Villai", "headingPath": "The Game Round · A Hero's Turn · Movement · Collecting Investigation While Moving", "sharpsignalDocId": 1270}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Draw a card from the top of the corresponding Corner Location Deck and read it aloud. If the card drawn is an Item or Ally , you have found something or someone, to help you on your hunt. Place the card face up by your Hero Character Sheet. If it is a Minion , you have been attacked! Work out the Fi", "headingPath": "Corner Locations - · Town Spaces and Dangerous Locations - · Roads -", "sharpsignalDocId": 1270}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "If a Hero ends their move in a space of the board that has Investigation markers in it, they may automatically collect all of those Investigation as an Action. A Hero may Heal (remove) any number of Wounds they have on them at a cost of 3 Investigation each. This is much more expensive than Healing ", "headingPath": "Collect All Investigation in your Space · Heal Wounds (Cost: 3 each) · Look at a Town Elder's Secrets (Cost: 2 ) · (Cost: Listed on the Shadow Track) · Start a Showdown", "sharpsignalDocId": 1270}, {"page": 30, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "As a Cooperative Game in its own right, A Touch of Evil ® is ideal for playing solitaire. This can be a very fast and rewarding game and only requires a small number of changes and clarifications to make Solo Play work well. First you must choose if you want to play as a Team of Heroes or as a Lone ", "headingPath": "Solo Play Rules · Team of Heroes · Lone Hero · You must also choose a level of difficulty below:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1270}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "If during their turn, a Hero moves into a space with an enemy (a Minion Counter already on the board), their movement ends and they must fight before beginning their Actions phase. Fights are covered in greater detail later. Note that it is also possible (and often likely) to Fight in other parts of", "headingPath": "Fight Enemies · Investigation · Take Actions · Encounter the Space (Mandatory)", "sharpsignalDocId": 1270}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Also, roll once on the Villain's Minion Chart (re-rolling any non-Event result) to see what evil the storm has brought. If the Villain attacks during the storm, it does so at a Random Location and is +3 Combat. 10 Ambush in the Night - Every Hero must roll a D6 and add their Cunning . Whoever has th", "headingPath": "2D6 Result", "sharpsignalDocId": 1270}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Set up · Laying out the Game Board · Shuffle and Place the Card Decks · Place the Town Elders · Draw or Choose the Villain", "sharpsignalDocId": 1270}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Draw or Choose the Villain · Draw and Place Hero Characters · Prepare Counters and Dice · Hand Out Starting Investigation · Roll Off for First Player · Competitive or Cooperative · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1270}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1270 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1270 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 0.91723 of 1764 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 28, 2026 21:00 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 A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Game Set up · Laying out the Game Board · Shuffle and Place the Card Decks · Place the Town Elders · Draw or Choose the Villain	p.8	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Draw or Choose the Villain · Draw and Place Hero Characters · Prepare Counters and Dice · Hand Out Starting Investigation · Roll Off for First Player · Competitive or Cooperative · …	p.9	0.048131 (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 A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	The Game Round · A Hero's Turn · Movement · Collecting Investigation While Moving	p.15	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
#4	RULEBOOK A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Corner Locations - · Town Spaces and Dangerous Locations - · Roads -	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
#5	RULEBOOK A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Collect All Investigation in your Space · Heal Wounds (Cost: 3 each) · Look at a Town Elder's Secrets (Cost: 2 ) · (Cost: Listed on the Shadow Track) · Start a Showdown	p.17	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 A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Solo Play Rules · Team of Heroes · Lone Hero · You must also choose a level of difficulty below:	p.30	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 A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Fight Enemies · Investigation · Take Actions · Encounter the Space (Mandatory)	p.16	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
#8	RULEBOOK A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	2D6 Result	p.27	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))	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 62 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 A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Game Set up · Laying out the Game Board · Shuffle and Place the Card Decks · Place the Town Elders · Draw or Choose the Villain	p.8	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Corner Locations - · Town Spaces and Dangerous Locations - · Roads -	p.16	#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
#3	RULEBOOK A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Game Overview · Gameplay Breakdown · Players	p.3	#17	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 A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Fight Enemies · Investigation · Take Actions · Encounter the Space (Mandatory)	p.16	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Making Skill Tests · Abilities · Health Boxes · Items and Allies	p.13	#21	0.013158 (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
#6	RULEBOOK A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	The Team Game · Using Elements From Each Style · First Player · Simultaneous Play · Winning the Game	p.29	#18	0.013699 (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 A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Optional Rules · (Recommended) · Growing Darkness · (Cooperative Game Only) · Endurance of Evil · Hunting for Clues	p.31	#16	0.014286 (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
#8	RULEBOOK A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Draw or Choose the Villain · Draw and Place Hero Characters · Prepare Counters and Dice · Hand Out Starting Investigation · Roll Off for First Player · Competitive or Cooperative · …	p.9	#2	0.048131 (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 A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Game Set up · Laying out the Game Board · Shuffle and Place the Card Decks · Place the Town Elders · Draw or Choose the Villain	p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 1270)	Draw or Choose the Villain · Draw and Place Hero Characters · Prepare Counters and Dice · Hand Out Starting Investigation · Roll Off for First Player · Competitive or Cooperative · …	p.9	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 180 ms · first delta 2647 ms · total 5297 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 180 ms · ask 5116 ms · gateway work 5297 ms · total 5297 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4115
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 514
tok/sec: 200.5 tok/sec — 514 output tokens in 2.564 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 21s 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.

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 1200), 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.