You asked
how do i start?
Answered counted as answeredThe easiest way to learn Wingspan is by following the Swift-Start guides [1][2]. To do this: * **Distribution:** Distribute one guide per player clockwise around the table (starting with "Player 1" or "Player A") [1][2]. * **Setup:** Proceed with all setup steps in the rulebook as normal, except for selecting birds and food tokens; instead, follow the instructions in the guides regarding which cards and food each player starts with [1][2]. * **Learning Process:** These guides explain the four main actions by walking players through their first few actions (or turns) [1][2]. * **Additional Players:** For larger groups, there is no need for the 5th player to have a guide; they can follow the setup steps normally and follow the examples of other players [1]. * **Post-Learning:** After learning the game, shuffle the Swift-Start cards into their respective decks [1][2]. You may also consult the Quick-Reference Guide on page 2 of the Appendix to help reference basic rules [1].
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)
- gemma4:12b think:false 4eb23ef187e2
- timings
- search 103 ms · ask 8270 ms · total 8382 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 8382 ms
- retrieval refs (raw)
- [{"page": 3, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "The easiest way to learn Wingspan is by following the Swift-Start guides. Distribute 1 guide per player clockwise around the table, starting with the guide labeled 'Player 1.' Proceed with all setup steps in this rulebook as normal, except for selecting birds and food tokens. Instead, the guides wil", "headingPath": "6/9/21 4:20 PM Swift-Start Guides and Cards:", "sharpsignalDocId": 45}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032002, "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": 3, "score": 0.028629, "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", "sharpsignalDocId": 45}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.02773, "snippet": "Starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, choose a habitat on your player mat (all habitats are always available) and places an action cube on the leftmost exposed slot in that row to take 1 of the following 4 actions:", "headingPath": "Round Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 46}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.027242, "snippet": "The game ends at the conclusion of Round 4. After activating yellow 'Game End' powers, use the scorepad to add together the following: Points for each face-up bird card on your player mat (printed on the cards) Points for each bonus card (printed on the cards) Points for end-of-round goals (shown on", "headingPath": "Game End and Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 49}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.026042, "snippet": "| | American Oystercatcher | WHEN PLAYED: Draw equal to the number of players +1. Starting with you and proceeding clockwise, each player selects 1 of those cards and places it in their hand. You keep the extra card. | Draw cards so that you have a set with one more card than there are players. Each", "headingPath": "Card-Drawing Powers", "sharpsignalDocId": 46}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.025808, "snippet": "Note the new construction 'Roll any die.' In general, this means you can take a die from inside or outside the birdfeeder. Roll it outside the birdfeeder, and leave it outside. (Unless the bird's power says to do something else.) Several of the round-end bird powers involve rolling dice. Because the", "headingPath": "Bird powers", "sharpsignalDocId": 50}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.025679, "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}]
- citations (raw)
- [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "6/9/21 4:20 PM Swift-Start Guides and Cards:", "sharpsignalDocId": 45}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Duet Mode Swift-Start Guides and Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 49}]
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
- gate not evaluated for this ruling (boost, supersedence, and wrench all off at ask time), and the base-rulebook arm went unrecorded for the same reason — the wrench that would have stored it was off; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=false, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=false
- 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 9, 2026 03:20
retrieval — what the search arm returned
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 — Rulebook (corpus doc 45) | 6/9/21 4:20 PM Swift-Start Guides and Cards: | p.3 | 0.032787 (at the 2-arm ceiling (0.03279) — the top of a 2-arm fuse; whether more arms ran here was never recorded) | 300 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Wingspan — Asia Rulebook (corpus doc 49) | Duet Mode Swift-Start Guides and Cards | p.5 | 0.032002 (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 — Rulebook (corpus doc 45) | Player Setup | p.3 | 0.028629 (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 — Appendix (corpus doc 46) | Round Overview | p.2 | 0.02773 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 233 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Wingspan — Asia Rulebook (corpus doc 49) | Game End and Scoring | p.5 | 0.027242 (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 — Appendix (corpus doc 46) | Card-Drawing Powers | p.9 | 0.026042 (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 Appendix (corpus doc 50) | Bird powers | p.4 | 0.025808 (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 — Asia Rulebook (corpus doc 49) | Blue: One point per targeted item | p.15 | 0.025679 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
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 Wingspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 45) | 6/9/21 4:20 PM Swift-Start Guides and Cards: | p.3 | no quote on the wire |
| [2] | RULEBOOK Wingspan — Asia Rulebook (corpus doc 49) | Duet Mode Swift-Start Guides and Cards | p.5 | no quote on the wire |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 103 ms · first delta n/a · total 8382 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 103 ms · ask 8270 ms · gateway work 8382 ms · total 8382 ms
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 55s 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
- HOW_DO_I_START — "how do I start"
- matched words (in the normalized question)
-
how do i start
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.