RuleSage cited table rulings
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You asked

How do I setup the game?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Answered before

This question didn't get an answer just now — but Scythe has been asked something like it before. The corpus may have changed since, so check the date and the answerer on each one before you rule from it.

How do I setup the game?

Answered Aug 8, 2026 gemma4:26b read Scythe

How do I setup the game?

Answered Aug 2, 2026 gemma4:26b

How do I setup the game?

Answered Aug 2, 2026 gemma4:26b

I looked through Scythe's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook · p.18 · BUILD
You can build structures (structure tokens) to enhance your actions, control territories, and get end-game bonuses. The resource used to build structures is wood. To build a structure, pay the cost, pick up any structure from your Player Mat, and place it on a territory you control with at least one
RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook · p.1 · BACKSTORY · OBJECT OF THE GAME · GOAL
The ashes from the first Great W ar still darken the snow in 1920s Europa. The capitalistic city-state known simply as 'The Factory, ' which fueled the war with heavily armored mechs, has closed its doors, drawing the attention of several nearby countries. With characters from five factions convergi
RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook · p.2 · GOAL · 80 resource tokens · 42 combat cards (yellow) · 28 encounter cards (green) · 5 quick-start cards
2 | TABLE OF CONTENTS COMPONENTS IMPORTANT CONCEPTS | 2 -3 4 5 6 - 9 | | TYPES OF UNITS | | | SETUP | | | GAMEPLAY | 10 | | TOP-ROW ACTIONS | 11 - 13 | | BOTTOM-ROW ACTIONS | 14 - 20 | | FACTION ABILITIES | 21 | | COMBAT | 22 - 23 | | ENCOUNTERS | 24 | | THE FACTORY | 25 | | OBJECTIVES | 26 | | ALLI
RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook · p.7 · STARTING CARDS AND TRACK POSITIONS: · PLAYER MAT · CHARACTER · WORKERS
Both the Faction Mat and Player Mat indicate your starting cards and track positions in the boxes on the far right of each mat. POWER TOKEN: Place your power token ( ) on the indicated level of the Power Track (on the game board). Power is the commodity you will spend in combat. COMBAT CARDS: Draw t
RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook · p.8 · PLAYER MAT · STARTING PLAYER:
Your Player Mat is where you'll be choosing actions during the game. TECHNOLOGY CUBES: Put 6 technology cubes on your Player Mat on the green boxes that have a black square in the bottom right corner. EXAMPLE The player with the lowest number in the label on their Player Mat will go first. Play proc
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
outcome
ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
warm abstain
  • this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)
corpus profile
live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings
search 315 ms · ask 6631 ms · total 6967 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 6967 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 18, "score": 0.030835, "snippet": "You can build structures (structure tokens) to enhance your actions, control territories, and get end-game bonuses. The resource used to build structures is wood. To build a structure, pay the cost, pick up any structure from your Player Mat, and place it on a territory you control with at least one", "headingPath": "BUILD", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.028298, "snippet": "The ashes from the first Great W ar still darken the snow in 1920s Europa. The capitalistic city-state known simply as 'The Factory, ' which fueled the war with heavily armored mechs, has closed its doors, drawing the attention of several nearby countries. With characters from five factions convergi", "headingPath": "BACKSTORY · OBJECT OF THE GAME · GOAL", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.027109, "snippet": "2 | TABLE OF CONTENTS COMPONENTS IMPORTANT CONCEPTS | 2 -3 4 5 6 - 9 | | TYPES OF UNITS | | | SETUP | | | GAMEPLAY | 10 | | TOP-ROW ACTIONS | 11 - 13 | | BOTTOM-ROW ACTIONS | 14 - 20 | | FACTION ABILITIES | 21 | | COMBAT | 22 - 23 | | ENCOUNTERS | 24 | | THE FACTORY | 25 | | OBJECTIVES | 26 | | ALLI", "headingPath": "GOAL · 80 resource tokens · 42 combat cards (yellow) · 28 encounter cards (green) · 5 quick-start cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.016393, "snippet": "Both the Faction Mat and Player Mat indicate your starting cards and track positions in the boxes on the far right of each mat. POWER TOKEN: Place your power token ( ) on the indicated level of the Power Track (on the game board). Power is the commodity you will spend in combat. COMBAT CARDS: Draw t", "headingPath": "STARTING CARDS AND TRACK POSITIONS: · PLAYER MAT · CHARACTER · WORKERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.016129, "snippet": "Your Player Mat is where you'll be choosing actions during the game. TECHNOLOGY CUBES: Put 6 technology cubes on your Player Mat on the green boxes that have a black square in the bottom right corner. EXAMPLE The player with the lowest number in the label on their Player Mat will go first. Play proc", "headingPath": "PLAYER MAT · STARTING PLAYER:", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.015873, "snippet": "6 ENCOUNTER TOKENS (GREEN COMPASS): Place 1 encounter token on each territory marked with an encounter symbol on the board (11 total tokens). RESOURCES AND COINS: Place the resource tokens (wood, oil, food, and metal), coins, and multiplier tokens in a supply area next to the board. Shuffle the enco", "headingPath": "TYPES OF UNITS · BOARD SETUP · SETUP · ENCOUNTER CARDS (GREEN) : · FACTION SELECTION:", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.015625, "snippet": "RESOURCES: All units-characters, mechs, & workers-can carry around resources (any number). TURNS AND PLAYER MATS: On your turn, you must choose a different section of your Player Mat than you did the previous turn. Take either the top-row action, the bottom-row action, or both (starting with the top", "headingPath": "HIGHLIGHTED RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.015385, "snippet": "Simultaneously and secretly select a number on your Power Dial (align the number with the icon at the top right). That is the amount of power you will spend, so you cannot choose a number higher than the amount of power you currently have on the Power Track. The track goes up to 16 but you can only ", "headingPath": "SELECT POWER", "sharpsignalDocId": 114}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it); rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it)
answered-before recall
past answered rulings were found and offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
  • ruling 1815 — matched by the same question (normalized, punctuation folded) — measured similarity 1.0
  • ruling 741 — matched by the same question (normalized, punctuation folded) — measured similarity 1.0
  • ruling 688 — matched by the same question (normalized, punctuation folded) — measured similarity 1.0
debug row retained until
Oct 30, 2026 14:02

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. How much wider that pool was is set gateway-side and is NOT REPORTED for this ruling, and neither are the answerer's final rows — so rulesage has nothing of its own to show beside these.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. How many arms fused this ruling was NOT RECORDED (it predates the boost trail, ran on the path that stored none, or stored one that could not be read), and the ceiling depends on that count (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60): 2 arms top out at 0.03279; 3 arms top out at 0.04918. So a score above 0.03279 here is not an anomaly: it is arithmetic proof a boost arm voted, and the measured band 0.016–0.033 (taken on two-arm asks) is what does not apply. 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 Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) BUILD p.18 0.030835 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) BACKSTORY · OBJECT OF THE GAME · GOAL p.1 0.028298 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#3 RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) GOAL · 80 resource tokens · 42 combat cards (yellow) · 28 encounter cards (green) · 5 quick-start cards p.2 0.027109 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#4 RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) STARTING CARDS AND TRACK POSITIONS: · PLAYER MAT · CHARACTER · WORKERS p.7 0.016393 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#5 RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) PLAYER MAT · STARTING PLAYER: p.8 0.016129 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#6 RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) TYPES OF UNITS · BOARD SETUP · SETUP · ENCOUNTER CARDS (GREEN) : · FACTION SELECTION: p.6 0.015873 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#7 RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) HIGHLIGHTED RULES p.31 0.015625 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#8 RULEBOOK Scythe — Rulebook (corpus doc 114) SELECT POWER p.22 0.015385 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 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.

the passages the answerer read: NOT RECORDED for this ruling. Any of three things leaves this empty, and they are all different from the answerer having had nothing to read: this ask may never have reached a gateway at all; a multi-book ask keeps each book's own context on that book's own page rather than here; or the gateway build that answered may simply not report it. What this NEVER means is that the answerer read nothing — an answer was composed from passages either way, and their absence here is a gap in what we were told, not in what it read.

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
timing split
retrieval 315 ms · first delta n/a · total 6967 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 315 ms · ask 6631 ms · gateway work 6967 ms · total 6967 ms
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 33s ago)
stream path
not recorded — this ruling predates the stream-path column (V41)
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
ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
abstain rationale
the answerer offered no rationale text with this refusal (or the ruling predates the abstain_rationale column, V41)
decision
SERVED — setup-shaped and this game's approved setup checklist is offered above
pattern that matched
SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question)
setup

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 2), 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.