Ruling — Wingspan

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

The provided sources contain different instructions for setting up the game depending on the specific mode or expansion being used.

**Base Game / Standard Setup**

1. Shuffle bird cards into a deck.[1]

2. Place the deck next to the bird tray and populate the tray with 3 face-up bird cards.[1]

3. Place all food and egg tokens in the supply, which are accessible to all players.[1]

4. Toss the food dice into the birdfeeder dice tower.[1]

5. Choose a goal board side (Green for direct competition or Blue for less competition) and place it on the table facing up.[1]

6. Shuffle goal tiles without looking at them and place 1 tile (random side up) on each of the four blank spaces on the goal board; return extra tiles to the box.[1]

7. Shuffle bonus cards into a deck and place them on the table.[1]

8. Each player receives: 1 player mat, 8 action cubes of one color, 2 random bonus cards, 5 random bird cards, and 5 food tokens (1 of each type).[1]

9. Players may keep up to 5 bird cards and discard others; for each card kept, the player must discard 1 food token.[1]

10. Each player chooses 1 bonus card to keep and discards the other.[1]

11. Choose a first player and give them the first-player token.[2]

**Flock Mode Setup (for 6-7 players)**

1. Split players into two fixed groups at the same table (3+3 for 6 players or 3+4 for 7 players).[3]

2. Place the turn-order dial in the middle of the table, ensuring both pieces have the correct side facing up (6 or 7 players).[3]

3. Distribute player action cubes to players around the table in the same order as the colors on the dial.[3]

4. Shuffle bird cards from the base game and/or expansions into a deck; split the deck in half, place it next to a bird tray for each group, and populate each tray with 3 face-up bird cards.[3]

5. Place all food tokens and egg miniatures in the supply.[3]

6. Each group receives their own birdfeeder populated with 5 dice (if using Oceania Expansion, use 2 nectar dice and 3 regular food dice).[3]

7. Shuffle all available bonus cards (except the Historian) into a single deck for both groups to share.[3]

8. Use one set of standard goal tiles; shuffle them without looking and place 1 tile (random side up) on each of the 4 blank spaces on the new Flock mode goal board (on the back side of the Duet map); return extra tiles to the box.[3]

**Oceania Expansion Setup**

1. Shuffle together the bird decks you want to use.[4]

2. Mix the bonus cards and end-of-round goals in with the others.[4]

3. Set up as normal, but replace all 5 food dice from the base game with the 5 new dice.[4]

4. Replace all player mats from the base game with the new player mats.[4]

5. Place the reference tile near the goal board.[4]

6. Add nectar tokens to the food supply.[4]

7. Each player selects 5 starting cards/food from 5 dealt cards and 5 standard food (not including nectar) as normal, then all players gain 1 nectar.[4]

**Swift-Start Setup**

1. Distribute 1 guide per player clockwise around the table, starting with the guide labeled 'Player 1'.[5]

2. Proceed with all setup steps in the rulebook as normal, except for selecting birds and food tokens, which are instead instructed by the guides.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook · p.2 · Player Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Wingspan — Appendix · p.2 · PLAYER SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK Wingspan Asia — Rulebook · p.3 · Setup

[4] RULEBOOK Wingspan: Oceania Expansion — Rulebook · p.1 · Setup

[5] RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook · p.3 · Player Setup · 6/9/21 4:20 PM Swift-Start Guides and Cards:

Strategy 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 210 ms · ask 14135 ms · total 14362 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 14362 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Base game: Set up as normal. You can play with or without other expansions. In addition, do the following.", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 51}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Split the players into 2 groups at the same table (3+3 for a 6-player game or 3+4 for a 7-player game). These groups remain fixed for the entire game. Replace all Global Components setup steps with the following: Turn-order dial. Place the turn-order dial in the middle of the table. The dial has two", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 49}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030622, "snippet": "The only change to the setup for a game of Wingspan is to place the reference tile near the goal mat. We recommend using the green side of the goal mat with this expansion, as some of the new goals do not work well with the blue side. As a reminder, all action cubes should stay in the row used until", "headingPath": "Setup Changes", "sharpsignalDocId": 47}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030331, "snippet": "This is a detailed rulebook, but you can learn the entire game by using the Swift-Start cards and guides. We recommend using these guides for your first game. 6/15/21 7:35 AM TIP: When selecting bird cards, think about how they will help you get more cards or food early in the game. Brown powers can", "headingPath": "Player Setup · 6/9/21 4:20 PM Swift-Start Guides and Cards:", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.028898, "snippet": "1 . Bird cards. Shuffle the bird cards into a deck. Place it next to the bird tray, then populate the tray with 3 face-up bird cards. Supply. Place all food and egg tokens in the supply. These are tokens accessible to all players. Birdfeeder. Toss the food dice into the birdfeeder dice tower. Goal b", "headingPath": "Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.028372, "snippet": "This method uses the side of the goal board that has rankings 5-4-3-2-1-0 next to the space for each goal. For example, when using the goal that scores 5, 2, or 1 points, if two players tie for 1st place, each gets 3 points (5 + 2 divided by 2 players, rounded down). Do not award 2nd place to anothe", "headingPath": "Blue: One point per targeted item", "sharpsignalDocId": 49}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.028175, "snippet": "The easiest way to learn Wingspan is by following the Swift-Start guides. Distribute 1 guide to each player, with the first player getting the Player A guide. Proceed with all setup steps in this rulebook as normal, except for selecting birds and food tokens. Instead, the guides will instruct which ", "headingPath": "Duet Mode Swift-Start Guides and Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 49}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.02739, "snippet": "This method uses the side of the goal board that has spaces labeled 5-4-3-2-1-0 next to the space for each goal. For example, when using the goal that scores 5, 2, or 1 points, if two players tie for 1st place, each gets 3 points (5 + 2 divided by 2 players, rounded down). Do not award 2nd place to ", "headingPath": "Blue: One point per targeted item", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 46}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 49}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 48}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player Setup · 6/9/21 4:20 PM Swift-Start Guides and Cards:", "sharpsignalDocId": 198}]
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: Nov 1, 2026 04:39

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 Wingspan: Americas Expansion — Rulebook (corpus doc 51)	Setup	p.2	0.032787 (at the 2-arm ceiling (0.03279) — the top of a 2-arm fuse; whether more arms ran here was never recorded)	106
#2	RULEBOOK Wingspan Asia — Rulebook (corpus doc 49)	Setup	p.3	0.031746 (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 Wingspan: European Expansion — Rulebook (corpus doc 47)	Setup Changes	p.2	0.030622 (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 Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198)	Player Setup · 6/9/21 4:20 PM Swift-Start Guides and Cards:	p.3	0.030331 (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 Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198)	Player Setup	p.2	0.028898 (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 Wingspan Asia — Rulebook (corpus doc 49)	Blue: One point per targeted item	p.15	0.028372 (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 Wingspan Asia — Rulebook (corpus doc 49)	Duet Mode Swift-Start Guides and Cards	p.5	0.028175 (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 Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198)	Blue: One point per targeted item	p.11	0.02739 (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

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198)	Player Setup	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Wingspan — Appendix (corpus doc 46)	PLAYER SETUP	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Wingspan Asia — Rulebook (corpus doc 49)	Setup	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Wingspan: Oceania Expansion — Rulebook (corpus doc 48)	Setup	p.1	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 198)	Player Setup · 6/9/21 4:20 PM Swift-Start Guides and Cards:	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 210 ms · first delta 8673 ms · total 14362 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 210 ms · ask 14135 ms · gateway work 14362 ms · total 14362 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2130
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 837
tok/sec: 148.5 tok/sec — 837 output tokens in 5.638 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 44s ago)
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

6 errata cards registered for edition 3 — these are what the gate above had to match against

anatomist · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.2
belted kingfisher · HAND_PINNED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bird Cards) · corpus doc 65 · p.17
ecologist · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.5
oologist · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.1
photographer · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.3
rodentologist · HEADING_EXTRACTED · Wingspan — Update Pack (Corrected Bonus Cards) · corpus doc 66 · p.4

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.