RuleSage cited table rulings
← Finspan

You asked

how do i setup the game for 5 players>?

Answered counted as answered

The game is designed for 1-5 players [1]. To set up the game, follow these steps: 1. **General Setup:** Place all egg, young, and school tokens in the general supply; shuffle and place the starter fish cards face down; shuffle and place the deck of fish cards face down; and place the achievement board near the general supply [2]. 2. **Optional Achievement Board Selection:** If using side B of the achievement board (which includes a 3-point bonus for certain achievements), randomly select tiles for weeks 1, 2, and 3 that match the lines on the board [2]. 3. **Additional Components:** Place coral tokens in the general supply; if using side B, ensure the correct tiles are selected; each player chooses a side of a coral reef overlay to place on their ocean mat; and each player receives a Sharks & Reefs player aid [3]. 4. **Individual Player Setup:** Each player places an ocean mat in front of them, chooses a color/receives 6 divers, places egg tokens on the starting spaces, places a young token on the starting space, and draws their initial hand of starter fish and cards from the deck [4]. 5. **Start of Game:** Randomly select the first player and provide them with the first-player token [4].

[1] RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook · p.1 · A WINGSPAN GAME
[2] RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook · p.2 · SETUP GLOBAL COMPONENTS
[3] RULEBOOK Finspan — Sharks & Reefs Expansion · p.2 · GLOBAL & PLAYER SETUP
[4] RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook · p.2 · PLAYER SETUP

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 303 ms · ask 6808 ms · total 11038 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 3914 ms · generation 7124 ms
retrieval refs (raw)
[{"page": 2, "score": 0.016393, "snippet": "1 Place all egg/young and school tokens within reach of all players to form the general supply. 2 Shuffle the 10 starter fish cards and place them face down near the general supply. These 10 cards have dark gray corners and a different back than other fish cards. 3 Shuffle the deck of 125 fish cards", "headingPath": "SETUP GLOBAL COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.016129, "snippet": "A Place an ocean mat (your 'ocean') in front of you. B Choose a player color and gain the 6 divers of that color. C Place 1 egg token on each of the 2 starting egg spaces (printed on forage fish) in your ocean. Forage fish are the three fish printed on your ocean mat. D Place 1 young token on the st", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.015873, "snippet": "After standard Finspan setup, perform the following: A Place the coral tokens in the general supply. B If using side B of the achievement board, randomly select 1 tile per matching slot. Important: Always ensure that the chosen tiles' week-number lines match the lines on the board. C Each player pla", "headingPath": "GLOBAL & PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 55}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.015625, "snippet": "Designed by David Gordon and Michael O'Connell Art by Ana María Martínez, Catalina Martínez, and Mesa Schumacher with support from Natalia Rojas Developed by Elizabeth Hargrave 1-5 players · 45-60 minutes · ages 10+ · competitive You are a marine researcher seeking to find and observe an array of aq", "headingPath": "A WINGSPAN GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.015385, "snippet": "Each turn, you will either play a fish or dive into your ocean. You will take 6 turns during each of the 4 weeks (a total of 24 turns per player during the entire game). You will typically spend the beginning of the game playing low-cost fish cards and laying eggs, the middle of the game playing hig", "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.015152, "snippet": "A school forms whenever 3 or more young share the same slot in your ocean. When this occurs, immediately return 3 young from that slot to the supply and replace them with 1 school token (shown as this icon in the game: ). At the end of weeks 1 through 3: a. Score points for this week's achievement. ", "headingPath": "IMPORTANT NOTES SCHOOL TOKENS", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.014925, "snippet": "5 coral reef overlays S&R_Re fOverlay_r4.ind 2 7/29/25 10:02 AM 3 achievement tiles S&R Goal Tiles_r3.indd 3 7/29/25 9:42 AM S&R Goal Tiles_r3.indd 5 75 fish cards S&R_fish_cards_r6.indd 1 FS_FishCards_r13.indd 126 7/4/24 4:54 PM The solo mode components are listed in the Nautoma rulebook. Replaceme", "headingPath": "COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 55}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.014706, "snippet": "5 ocean mats FS_PlayerMat_r10.ind 1 7/3 24 5: 0 PM 1 achievement board FS_AchievementBoard_r9.ind 2 7/3 24 10:13 AM FS_FishCards_r13.indd 6 FS_StarterFishCards-1_r7.indd 6 5/11/24 1:57 PM The solo mode components are listed in the Nautoma rulebook. Replacement parts can be requested via the form at ", "headingPath": "COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}]
citations (raw)
[{"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "A WINGSPAN GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP GLOBAL COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GLOBAL & PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 55}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}]
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
Oct 11, 2026 09:17

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) SETUP GLOBAL COMPONENTS p.2 0.016393 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) PLAYER SETUP p.2 0.016129 (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 Finspan — Sharks & Reefs Expansion (corpus doc 55) GLOBAL & PLAYER SETUP p.2 0.015873 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#4 RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) A WINGSPAN GAME p.1 0.015625 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#5 RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW p.4 0.015385 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#6 RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) IMPORTANT NOTES SCHOOL TOKENS p.9 0.015152 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#7 RULEBOOK Finspan — Sharks & Reefs Expansion (corpus doc 55) COMPONENTS p.1 0.014925 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#8 RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) COMPONENTS p.1 0.014706 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) A WINGSPAN GAME p.1 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) SETUP GLOBAL COMPONENTS p.2 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Finspan — Sharks & Reefs Expansion (corpus doc 55) GLOBAL & PLAYER SETUP p.2 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) PLAYER SETUP p.2 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 303 ms · first delta n/a · total 11038 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 3914 ms · retrieval 303 ms · ask 6808 ms · gateway work 7124 ms · total 11038 ms
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 37s 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
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

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 5), 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.