Ruling — Junk Art

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Junk Artbg-193042-en-1e

The setup process depends on the specific city being played:

The First City (General Setup)

1. Give each player one base, and each player chooses which side to place it.[1][2]

2. Shuffle the Junk Art deck and place it facedown within easy reach of all players, ensuring the Cactus and Special Star cards are not shuffled into the deck.[1]

3. Spread out the Junk pieces as a supply in the middle of the play area.[1]

4. Place the fan tokens and tape measure to the side near the supply.[1]

5. Determine the start player: for the first city, it is the last person who visited an art exhibition.[1][2]

6. Give the start player the Start player card, placing it on the same side as the current City card (unless play is simultaneous).[1]

7. Prepare your World Tour by removing Nashville and any City cards that do not support your number of players, then shuffle the remaining City cards and deal 3 faceup in a line (the leftmost is the first city).[1]

8. Finish setting up by reading the city-specific rules.[1]

City-Specific Setup Variations

* New York (Shorter or Longer Game): During setup, for a shorter game, split the deck into two (A and B) and place the Star card facedown on top of deck B, then stack deck A on top of deck B.[3] For a longer game, split the deck into four (A, B, C, D) and place the Star card facedown on top of deck D, then stack the decks in order from top to bottom: A, B, C, D.[3]

* Home Town: Deal 4 Junk Art cards to each player and place the rest in a facedown deck, then set aside any fan tokens earned in other cities.[4]

* Pisa: Players do not have individual bases; instead, 2 bases are placed next to each other in the middle of the table within easy reach of all players.[5] Deal to the table one fewer faceup card than there are players and place the rest in a facedown deck.[5]

* Tokyo: Deal 10 Junk Art cards to each player; the remaining cards are not used in this city.[5]

* Nashville:

1. Each player takes a cowboy from a copy of Flick 'em Up.[6]

2. Place bullets nearby and add the 3 cactus pieces to the supply.[6]

3. Ensure the middle of the table is free of all pieces.[6]

4. Players must place their bases 50 cm away from one another using the tape measure (for 4 players, create a square with 50-cm sides).[6]

5. Deal 4 Junk Art cards to each player and place the rest in a facedown deck.[6]

6. Each player prepares their initial structure by playing 3 of their cards in their chosen order and placing the matching pieces onto their structures.[6]

7. Cut the Junk Art deck into two roughly equal decks (A and B), shuffle 2 Cactus cards into deck A, place the third Cactus card faceup on top of deck B, and stack deck A on top of deck B.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook · p.2 · Setup - The first city

[2] RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook · p.12 · Setup · Placing pieces · Fallen Pieces · Exhibition end

[3] RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook · p.7 · Player turn in New York · fallen pieces in New York · Exhibition end and fans awarded · Shorter or longer game in new york

[4] RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook · p.4 · Ties · City card Overview · PLAYERS: 26 · Setting up in your hometown · Player turn in your home town · fallen pieces in Your home town · …

[5] RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook · p.9 · Exhibition end and fans awarded · Setting up in Pisa · Player Turn in Pisa · Fallen pieces in Pisa · Setting up in tokyo · Player Turn in Tokyo · …

[6] RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook · p.10 · Exhibition end and fans awarded · Setting up in Nashville

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 227 ms · ask 4618 ms · total 4849 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4849 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Give each player one base. Each player chooses on which side to place it. Shuffle the Junk Art deck and place it facedown within easy reach of all players. The Cactus and Special Star cards should not be shuffled into the deck as they are only used in certain cities. Spread out the Junk pieces as a ", "headingPath": "Setup - The first city", "sharpsignalDocId": 599}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "1 On your turn, choose one of the faceup cards, find the matching piece, and place it onto your structure. If the piece you just placed touches another piece of the same color or shape, you must place another piece by choosing one of the faceup cards. You turn ends when there are no faceup cards lef", "headingPath": "Player turn in New York · fallen pieces in New York · Exhibition end and fans awarded · Shorter or longer game in new york", "sharpsignalDocId": 599}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "If any city specific rule is in conflict with the above rules, follow the City card rules for that city only. When you must choose a piece, it becomes your active piece as soon as you pick it up. Active piece: The piece you are placing. You may use one or two hands to place your active piece. The ac", "headingPath": "The Golden rule · Placing pieces · Your structure: All the pieces on your base, including the base. · Fallen Pieces & etiquette · Exception: See 'Dropping the active piece' above. · Exhibition End · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 599}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.046154, "snippet": "While Nashville is aptly called \"Music City\" by many worldwide, fans of the visual arts are striving to establish a scene in the South. What better place than this booming hub of commerce and culture? They've already built a replica of the Parthenon there. What will your contribution be? Special Not", "headingPath": "Exhibition end and fans awarded · Setting up in Nashville", "sharpsignalDocId": 599}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "Junk Art mixes a steady hand, balancing pieces, and a bit of luck. You will go on a World Tour composed of city exhibitions. In each city, you will play turns where you place one or more pieces onto your structure. Depending on the city, you may also need to play or choose cards. No matter the city,", "headingPath": "GAME OVERVIEW AND GOAL · Contents · PLAYING JUNK ART AND THE UNIVERSAL RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 599}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Give each player one base. Each player chooses on which side to place it. Shuffle the Junk Art deck and place it within easy reach of all players. Spread out the Junk pieces as a supply, with the fan tokens and tape measure nearby. Start player is: first city - last to have visited an art exhibition", "headingPath": "Setup · Placing pieces · Fallen Pieces · Exhibition end", "sharpsignalDocId": 599}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030159, "snippet": "Paris is known for its street artists. They have requested some artists to help tell the Street Artist story. Street Artists often have to create stories based on their surroundings and whatever the audience throws at them. Use your skills and adapt to the challenges you're given to create amazing a", "headingPath": "Shorter or longer game in new york · PLAYERS: 2-6 · Setting up in Paris · Player Turn in Paris · Fallen pieces in Paris · Exhibition end and fans awarded · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 599}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "1 Draw until you have 2 cards in hand. Play one of those cards on your discard pile and place the matching piece onto your structure. Playing a Cactus card: When placing a cactus, you must take it from the supply and place it on your structurestanding up as illustrated. 2 If the card you played matc", "headingPath": "Player Turn in Nashville · Fallen pieces in Nashville", "sharpsignalDocId": 599}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup - The first city", "sharpsignalDocId": 599}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup · Placing pieces · Fallen Pieces · Exhibition end", "sharpsignalDocId": 599}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player turn in New York · fallen pieces in New York · Exhibition end and fans awarded · Shorter or longer game in new york", "sharpsignalDocId": 599}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Ties · City card Overview · PLAYERS: 26 · Setting up in your hometown · Player turn in your home town · fallen pieces in Your home town · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 599}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Exhibition end and fans awarded · Setting up in Pisa · Player Turn in Pisa · Fallen pieces in Pisa · Setting up in tokyo · Player Turn in Tokyo · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 599}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Exhibition end and fans awarded · Setting up in Nashville", "sharpsignalDocId": 599}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 599 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 599 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 0.90086 of 2209 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 10, 2026 16:39 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 Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Setup - The first city	p.2	0.048916 (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 Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Player turn in New York · fallen pieces in New York · Exhibition end and fans awarded · Shorter or longer game in new york	p.7	0.047643 (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 Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	The Golden rule · Placing pieces · Your structure: All the pieces on your base, including the base. · Fallen Pieces & etiquette · Exception: See 'Dropping the active piece' above. · Exhibition End · …	p.3	0.047371 (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 Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Exhibition end and fans awarded · Setting up in Nashville	p.10	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 Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	GAME OVERVIEW AND GOAL · Contents · PLAYING JUNK ART AND THE UNIVERSAL RULES	p.2	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 Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Setup · Placing pieces · Fallen Pieces · Exhibition end	p.12	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
#7	RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Shorter or longer game in new york · PLAYERS: 2-6 · Setting up in Paris · Player Turn in Paris · Fallen pieces in Paris · Exhibition end and fans awarded · …	p.8	0.030159 (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 Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Player Turn in Nashville · Fallen pieces in Nashville	p.10	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

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 18 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 Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Setup - The first city	p.2	#1	0.048916 (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 Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Player turn in New York · fallen pieces in New York · Exhibition end and fans awarded · Shorter or longer game in new york	p.7	#2	0.047643 (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 Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Ties · City card Overview · PLAYERS: 26 · Setting up in your hometown · Player turn in your home town · fallen pieces in Your home town · …	p.4	#9	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Exhibition end and fans awarded · Setting up in Pisa · Player Turn in Pisa · Fallen pieces in Pisa · Setting up in tokyo · Player Turn in Tokyo · …	p.9	#10	0.029236 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Exhibition end and fans awarded · Setting up in Nashville	p.10	#4	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	The Golden rule · Placing pieces · Your structure: All the pieces on your base, including the base. · Fallen Pieces & etiquette · Exception: See 'Dropping the active piece' above. · Exhibition End · …	p.3	#3	0.047371 (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 Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	GAME OVERVIEW AND GOAL · Contents · PLAYING JUNK ART AND THE UNIVERSAL RULES	p.2	#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
#8	RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Setup · Placing pieces · Fallen Pieces · Exhibition end	p.12	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Setup - The first city	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Setup · Placing pieces · Fallen Pieces · Exhibition end	p.12	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Player turn in New York · fallen pieces in New York · Exhibition end and fans awarded · Shorter or longer game in new york	p.7	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Ties · City card Overview · PLAYERS: 26 · Setting up in your hometown · Player turn in your home town · fallen pieces in Your home town · …	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Exhibition end and fans awarded · Setting up in Pisa · Player Turn in Pisa · Fallen pieces in Pisa · Setting up in tokyo · Player Turn in Tokyo · …	p.9	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Junk Art — Rulebook (corpus doc 599)	Exhibition end and fans awarded · Setting up in Nashville	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 227 ms · first delta 1235 ms · total 4849 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 227 ms · ask 4618 ms · gateway work 4849 ms · total 4849 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3624
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 715
tok/sec: 202.0 tok/sec — 715 output tokens in 3.540 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 38s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 3h, 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 531), 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.