You asked
How do I setup the game?
Answered counted as answeredStrategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
- outcome
- ANSWERED — Answered
- corpus profile
- live
- answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
- gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
- timings
- search 231 ms · ask 9967 ms · total 10208 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 10208 ms
- retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
- [{"page": 21, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "If you're getting crushed and it's no fun: For a slightly easier game, give all Spirits a bonus Growth at the end of Setup. For a moderately easier game, omit the Invaders' initial Explore at the end of Setup. For a much easier game, do both. Note: Two Blight rules can make the game extremely punish", "headingPath": "GAME TOO HARD?", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030159, "snippet": "Set aside all the Minor and Major Powers listed on the card. During the game, when you gain a new Power Card, add the next Power Card on the list to your hand instead of using the standard method. If everyone is playing the game for the first time, also: Don't use a Blight Card. Instead, use the pre", "headingPath": "TABLE OF CONTENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029551, "snippet": "Each player takes all Spirit Presence and Single-Turn Effect Markers of one color, then chooses a Spirit by taking a Spirit Panel and its four Unique Power Cards, which is their starting hand. New players should choose a low-complexity Spirit and take its Power Progression Card, as described on page", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029139, "snippet": "PLAYER'S HAND PLAYER'S HAND 4-PLAYER GAME SETUP (Not including an Adversary or Scenario.) DISCARD PLAYER'S DISCARD PLAYER'S AREA PLAY AREA PLAY FEAR DECK VICTORY WHEN REVEALED EARNED FEAR CARDS FEAR DISCARD SPIRIT PHASE Growth Gain Energy Choose Powers DISCARD DESTROYING A PER PLAYER GENERATES 1 DES", "headingPath": "INVADERS' STARTING ACTION", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.029083, "snippet": "The Thematic Boards have a fixed layout relative to each other. Y ou can use any of them that you want - but for the definitive geography at each player count: 1 Player: Use Northeast. 2 Players: Use West and East, touching on the side opposite the Ocean. 3 Players: Use West and East as above, plus ", "headingPath": "THEMATIC BOARD SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029031, "snippet": "The Invader Deck is 12 cards: 3 Stage I cards on top, then 4 Stage II cards, then 5 Stage III cards on the bottom. Mix up the cards from each Stage and choose without looking at them, putting unused cards back in the box. (The game comes with 4 Stage I cards, 5 Stage II cards, and 6 Stage III cards,", "headingPath": "MAKING THE INVADER DECK", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.028589, "snippet": "You are powerful Spirits of the natural world, existing on an isolated Island. Invaders from beyond the known sea have recently begun their colonization of your Island, killing the native Islanders - a people called the Dahan - and upsetting the natural balance. The Spirits of the Island must grow i", "headingPath": "TABLE OF CONTENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.028446, "snippet": "As you play Power Cards, put the required Energy on top of them. This will help you remember to pay for them. When you resolve a Power Card, you can push it forward or turn it sideways to note that it has been used. Don't discard it until end of turn, because you may be making use of its Elements fo", "headingPath": "STREAMLINING GAMEPLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}]
- citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
- [{"page": 22, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ADVERSARIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MAKING THE INVADER DECK", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE ISLAND AND SUPPLY", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "INVADERS' STARTING ACTION", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}]
- 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
-
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)
- debug row retained until
- Oct 31, 2026 01:41
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. 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 rank | document | heading | page | fused RRF score | snippet chars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | GAME TOO HARD? | p.21 | 0.030303 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | TABLE OF CONTENTS | p.3 | 0.030159 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | PLAYER SETUP | p.6 | 0.029551 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | INVADERS' STARTING ACTION | p.7 | 0.029139 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | THEMATIC BOARD SETUP | p.23 | 0.029083 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | MAKING THE INVADER DECK | p.6 | 0.029031 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #7 | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | TABLE OF CONTENTS | p.3 | 0.028589 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | STREAMLINING GAMEPLAY | p.20 | 0.028446 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 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.
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.
chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited
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.
| # | document | heading | page | quote chars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [1] | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | ADVERSARIES | p.22 | no quote on the wire |
| [2] | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | MAKING THE INVADER DECK | p.6 | no quote on the wire |
| [3] | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | THE ISLAND AND SUPPLY | p.6 | no quote on the wire |
| [4] | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | PLAYER SETUP | p.6 | no quote on the wire |
| [5] | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | INVADERS' STARTING ACTION | p.6 | no quote on the wire |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 231 ms · first delta n/a · total 10208 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 231 ms · ask 9967 ms · gateway work 10208 ms · total 10208 ms
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 39s 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.
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
- 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
errata registry — what the gate above had to match against
this game registers NO errata cards (edition 7), 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.