You asked
How do I setup the game?
Answered counted as answeredAsked with: Terraforming Marsbg-167791-en-1e
For a standard game for 2-5 players, follow these steps: 1. Place the game board centrally on the table [1]. 2. Place the 9 ocean tiles on their reserved space [1]. 3. Place the temperature and oxygen markers on their starting positions [1]. 4. Place the generation marker on '1' on the TR track [1]. 5. Place resource cubes and remaining tiles so everyone can reach them [1]. 6. Ensure there are no Corporate Era cards in the project deck or among the corporation cards (these are marked with a red and white icon) [1]. 7. Shuffle the project cards and place the project deck next to the board, leaving space for a discard pile beside it [1]. 8. Give the first player marker to the player who most recently won a game of Terraforming Mars [1]. 9. Players choose their colors and take the corresponding player markers and a player board [1]. 10. In the standard game, players place markers on the tracks to show 1 production of each resource on the player board [1]. 11. Each player places one marker at the starting position (2/20) of the TR track [1]. 12. New players receive a Beginner Corporation card (colorless card back), follow its instructions to get 42 MegaCredits, and draw 10 project cards to form their starting hand; experienced players continue setup without this step [1]. 13. Shuffle the 10 standard corporation cards (excluding the 2 Corporate Era corporations) and deal 2 to each remaining player [1]. 14. Deal 10 project cards to each remaining player [1]. 15. Players choose which corporations they want to play and which of the 10 project cards they want to keep for their starting hand, paying 3 M€ for each card they keep [1]. 16. Discard unused corporation cards (back in the box) and discard unkept project cards face down [1], [2]. 17. In player order, players reveal their chosen corporation and collect their starting resources/production [1], [2].
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 237 ms · ask 9780 ms · total 10026 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 10026 ms
- retrieval refs (raw)
- [{"page": 7, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "This describes the setup for the standard game for 2-5 players. See additional rules for other game variants on page 13. resources and production (if any), and then pay 3 M€ for each project card they keep. Be aware that your resources for the following few generations will be quite limited until yo", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "The cards not kept are discarded (put discarded corporations back in the box) cards are always discarded face down! In player order, players then reveal their chosen corporation, get their starting Start the game: The first generation starts without a player order phase and without a research phase ", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Each player starts the game with a corporation card . During the game, players buy and play many project cards to get benefits of different kinds. The cards are divided into active cards (blue frame, see example), automated cards (green) and event cards (red), read more on page 10. Tag: Places the c", "headingPath": "CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "In order to play a card you must meet its requirements and be able to perform the effects stated on the card, with the following exceptions: You may play a card that... raises global parameters that have already reached their goal (for example when there are no more ocean tiles, or when the temperat", "headingPath": "1) Check the requirements.", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The game board has a map where tiles may be placed. When placing a tile, you must first check to see if there are any placement restrictions. There are areas reserved for ocean and specific cities, where no other tiles may be placed. Furthermore, each tile may have specific restrictions printed on t", "headingPath": "TI L E S", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The first player marker shifts 1 step clockwise and the generation marker is moved up 1 step. This phase is skipped the first generation (see setup).", "headingPath": "1) Player Order phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "All players perform this phase simultaneously. First, all energy is converted into heat (move all resource cubes from the energy box to the heat box). Secondly, all players receive new resources: Players get M€ according to their terraform rating plus any M€ production (which may be negative!), then", "headingPath": "4) Production phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "The player board keeps track of your current resources and production. Resource cubes are placed in their respective boxes, and player markers are used on the production tracks. In the game, resource icons refer to resource cubes, while resource icons inside brown boxes refer to production of that r", "headingPath": "PLAYER BOARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}]
- citations (raw)
- [{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}]
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 59 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 59 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)
- debug row retained until
- Nov 3, 2026 05:23
retrieval — what the search arm returned
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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | SETUP | p.7 | 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) | 300 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | SETUP | p.7 | 0.048387 (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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | CARDS | p.6 | 0.031746 (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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | 1) Check the requirements. | p.9 | 0.03125 (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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | TI L E S | p.5 | 0.030769 (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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | 1) Player Order phase | p.8 | 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)) | 149 |
| #7 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | 4) Production phase | p.8 | 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 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | PLAYER BOARDS | p.6 | 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 |
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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | SETUP | p.7 | no quote on the wire |
| [2] | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | SETUP | p.7 | no quote on the wire |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 237 ms · first delta 6645 ms · total 10026 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 237 ms · ask 9780 ms · gateway work 10026 ms · total 10026 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 3208
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 456
- tok/sec
- 137.3 tok/sec — 456 output tokens in 3.320 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 56s 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
- 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 8), 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.