Ruling — Nemo's War (Second Edition)

← Nemo's War (Second Edition)

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Nemo's War (Second Edition)bg-187617-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Place the game board on the table in front of you, leaving room for your Tableau.[1]

2. Select a Nemo Motive tile and place it face up in the Motives area of the board.[1]

3. Find and remove the Special Adventure (Act and Rising Action) and Finalé cards.[1]

4. Shuffle the Event cards and set them aside, face down.[1]

5. Shuffle the Finalé cards face down.[1]

6. Spread out the Prologue, Intermission, and Rising Action cards face up.[1]

7. Randomly select one Finalé card without revealing it, return the others to the box without examining them, and deal four Event cards on top of the chosen Finalé card.[1]

8. Shuffle these five cards together and place them face down in the Draw Pile box at the top-left side of the game board.[1]

9. Shuffle the Rising Action card (A Hollow Explosion) together with X number of face-down Event cards (based on Nemo's Motive) and place them face down on top of the cards already in the Draw Pile.[1]

10. Place the Second Intermission card (Act Three) face down on top of the Draw Pile.[1]

11. Add X more Event cards face down directly to the top of the Draw Pile (based on Nemo's Motive) and place the First Intermission card (Act Two) face down on top of the Draw Pile.[1]

12. Add six more Event cards face down to the top of the Draw Pile and place the Prologue card (Act One) on top of the Draw Pile.[1]

13. Place the remaining Event cards face down on the Adventure Deck space on the right side of the Notoriety track to form the Adventure Deck and place one Treasure Available gemstone on top of this card stack.[1]

14. Sort the Ship tokens, face up, by background color, ensuring Gray and Purple ships are face up.[2]

15. Place the 30 White and 14 Pale Yellow Ship tokens in an opaque container to form the initial Ship Draw Pool.[2]

16. Place the 2 Black, 4 Dark Yellow, 4 Orange, and 7 Red Ship tokens, face up, on their respective spaces above the Tonnage track.[2]

17. Place the 4 Blue and 4 Green Ship tokens on their boxes on the Notoriety track (adjusting position based on difficulty level: SAILOR moves them three boxes higher; CAPTAIN moves them three boxes lower).[2]

18. Set aside the Nautilus miniature.[2]

19. Place one Hidden Ship token in each designated outlined starting space on the map and place the remaining Hidden Ship tokens aside (adjusting the number of tokens in specific oceans based on difficulty level).[2]

20. Place the Treasure tokens in a second opaque container to form the Treasure Draw Pool.[2]

21. Place the Notoriety marker on the starting (0) box of the Notoriety track.[2]

22. Place the Action Points marker on the track (1 for SAILOR, 0 for OFFICER, or 0 for CAPTAIN).[3]

23. Place the Nemo, Crew, and Hull Ship Resource markers on the leftmost space of their tracks (reducing the total by 3 if you purchased the starting Nautilus Upgrade card).[3]

24. Place your Character Resource tiles with their character side face up in your Tableau.[3]

25. Place one Treasure Available gemstone in each Major Ocean only (numbered 1 through 6) and set the rest aside.[3]

26. Place the 10 wooden Uprising cubes in their available box.[3]

27. Place one black die on space 44 of the Notoriety track and keep two white dice within easy reach.[3]

28. If using the difficulty level setting, place the Action Points marker on the 2 space of its track for SAILOR or the 0 space for CAPTAIN.[3]

29. If playing the Co-op variant, assign each of the Co-op Officer cards available for that number of players.[4]

30. If playing the Co-op variant, decide who begins the game as the Captain randomly or by a mutually agreeable method.[4]

31. Commence play by revealing the first card on top of the Draw Pile and following the Prologue's instructions.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.5 · 3. GAME SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.6 · GAME SETUP · DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING

[3] RULEBOOK Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.7 · DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING

[4] RULEBOOK Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.30 · Example · NOTE: · Relentless Pursuit · Imperialist Naval Coordination · FULLY COOPERATIVE GAMEPLAY VARIANT · Setup Changes

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 203 ms · ask 5956 ms · total 6163 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6163 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Place the game board on the table in front of you and leave some room between you and it for your Tableau (see following page for illustration) . 1 Select a Nemo Motive tile and place it face up in the Motives area of the board. If it is your first game, try Explore ! 2 Prepare the Draw Pile and Adv", "headingPath": "3. GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 495}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "Sort the Ship tokens, face up, by background color. Note that the Gray and Purple ships are on the back sides, so turn those over to be sure you are looking at their front sides (i.e., face up)! 4 Place the 30 White and 14 Pale Yellow Ship tokens in an opaque container to form the initial Ship Draw ", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP · DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING", "sharpsignalDocId": 495}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "Note that the OFFICER setting is the default difficulty level for the game! SAILOR: Place the Action Points marker on the 2 space of its track. OFFICER: No change. CAPTAIN: Place the Action Points marker on the 0 space of its track. 15 The unused Hidden Ship tokens, Cannonball , Arabian Tunnel , Tor", "headingPath": "DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING", "sharpsignalDocId": 495}, {"page": 29, "score": 0.046154, "snippet": "Revealing this Ship token interrupts the game; you must immediately resolve a free Adventure Action (see Rule 11) . Afterward, continue play normally . SAILOR: Start with two of the remaining five Deadly Seas tokens in the Ship Draw Pool . OFFICER: No change. CAPTAIN: Start with four of the remainin", "headingPath": "Uncharted Island · DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING", "sharpsignalDocId": 495}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 2 2. GAME EQUIPMENT 2 3. GAME SETUP 5 4. DEFINITIONS AND CONVENTIONS 8 5. TURN SEQUENCE 10 6. EVENT PHASE AND TESTS 10 7. RESOLVING TESTS 12 8. GAINING AND LOSING SHIP RESOURCES 14 9. GAINING NOTORIETY 14 10. PLACEMENT PHASE 15 11. ACTION PHASE 17 12. COMBAT 21 13. ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 495}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045536, "snippet": "SAILOR: Place two Treasure Available gemstones on top of the Adventure Deck. OFFICER: No change. CAPTAIN: Do not place any Treasure Available gemstones on top of the Adventure Deck. Take the 10 Nautilus Upgrade cards and look through them to find the one that corresponds to Nemo's Motive (see 1 ): S", "headingPath": "DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING · TOP OF DRAW PILE", "sharpsignalDocId": 495}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Immediately follow the instructions on a PLAY Event card. Afterward, place it face up in the appropriate PASS or FAIL Pile (on the left side of the board) as instructed and continue with the Placement Phase (see Rule 10) . IMPORTANT: Note that Events 4 (A Frigate's Demise) , 38 (A Capital Encounter)", "headingPath": "PLAY Event Cards · KEEP Event Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 495}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Successfully placing Uprising cubes lowers your Notoriety (see Rule 11, Incite ) . In addition, there are three Nautilus upgrades that you might acquire which can help keep your Notoriety manageable (see Rule 11, Refit ) . Adventure cards might also occasionally help you. Begin the Placement Phase b", "headingPath": "Limiting Notoriety Gains · Placement Dice Roll · Placing Ship T okens", "sharpsignalDocId": 495}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 495}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP · DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING", "sharpsignalDocId": 495}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING", "sharpsignalDocId": 495}, {"page": 30, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Example · NOTE: · Relentless Pursuit · Imperialist Naval Coordination · FULLY COOPERATIVE GAMEPLAY VARIANT · Setup Changes", "sharpsignalDocId": 495}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 495 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 495 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 0.90618 of 3091 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 27, 2026 18:14 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 Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	3. GAME SETUP	p.5	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	GAME SETUP · DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING	p.6	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 Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING	p.7	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 Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	Uncharted Island · DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING	p.29	0.046154 (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 Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)		p.1	0.04598 (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 Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING · TOP OF DRAW PILE	p.5	0.045536 (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 Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	PLAY Event Cards · KEEP Event Cards	p.11	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
#8	RULEBOOK Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	Limiting Notoriety Gains · Placement Dice Roll · Placing Ship T okens	p.15	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 57 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 Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	3. GAME SETUP	p.5	#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 Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)		p.1	#5	0.04598 (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 Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	Nemo's Motive · Determining Your Score · Adjusting VPs for Nemo's Motive · Sinking Ships · Adventure Cards · Collected T reasure Tokens	p.27	#14	0.024807 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	Deadly Seas · Coastal Village · Cyclone! · Fire Aboard! · Group Tokens · Nautilus Breakdown! · …	p.29	#35	0.010989 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING · TOP OF DRAW PILE	p.5	#6	0.045536 (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 Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING	p.7	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	Example · NOTE: · Relentless Pursuit · Imperialist Naval Coordination · FULLY COOPERATIVE GAMEPLAY VARIANT · Setup Changes	p.30	#13	0.024925 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	GAME SETUP · DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING	p.6	#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 Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	3. GAME SETUP	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	GAME SETUP · DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	DIFFICULTY LEVEL SETTING	p.7	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Nemo's War (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 495)	Example · NOTE: · Relentless Pursuit · Imperialist Naval Coordination · FULLY COOPERATIVE GAMEPLAY VARIANT · Setup Changes	p.30	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 203 ms · first delta 1263 ms · total 6163 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 203 ms · ask 5956 ms · gateway work 6163 ms · total 6163 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3749
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 967
tok/sec: 201.1 tok/sec — 967 output tokens in 4.809 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 29s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 48h, checked 4s 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 426), 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.