You asked
How do I setup the game?
Answered counted as answeredAsked with: Dominant Speciesbg-62219-en-1e
1. Place the board face up in the center of the table [1]. 2. Have each player choose the animal he would like to play, or alternately assign one animal display to each player at random [1]. 3. Give each player the animal display matching their choice [1]. 4. In reverse Initiative order (insects first, then arachnids, then amphibians, etc.), players place their animal's square initiative marker into the boxes underneath the 'Initiative' tag [1]. 5. Place any unassigned animal displays and their initiative markers back in the game box [1]. 6. Place one large tile belonging to each of the seven non-tundra terrain types into their assigned positions in the center of the hex grid [1]. 7. Place a tundra tile atop the sea tile [1]. 8. Place the eleven remaining tundra tiles in a face up stack on the 'Glaciation Tiles' section of the board [1]. 9. Flip the remaining 24 large tiles face down and shuffle them in any manner desired [1]. 10. Create three face down stacks of 8 large tiles each and place these stacks on the three 'Wanderlust Tiles' sections of the board [1]. 11. Turn the top-most tile of each of these stacks face up [1]. 12. Set the Survival Card to the side [1]. 13. Remove the Ice Age card from the deck of Dominance Cards [1]. 14. Shuffle the remaining 25 Dominance Cards together [1]. 15. Place the Ice Age card face down next to the board and place the shuffled Dominance Cards face down atop this card to form a draw pile [1]. 16. Draw the top five cards of this draw pile and place them face up in the 'Available Dominance Cards' section of the game board [1]. 17. Take two of each of the six element types and place them on the tiles of earth as indicated on the board, overlapping the tiles that meet at that intersection [2]. 18. Gather the remaining elements into a draw pool by placing them in the cloth bag [2]. 19. Randomly draw 4 elements from the bag and place them on the board into the four squares with the 'leaf' symbol next to the 'Adaptation' tag [2]. 20. Draw 4 more elements at random to fill the leaf squares next to the 'Abundance' tag, and another 4 random elements for the leaf squares next to the 'Wanderlust' tag [2]. 21. Each player chooses a color from the wooden pieces to represent his animal [2]. 22. From their colored pieces, each player gathers ten cones (dominance markers) and a specific number of cylinders (action pawns) and cubes (species gene pool) based on player count: 6-player (3 cylinders/35 cubes), 5-player (4 cylinders/40 cubes), 4-player (5 cylinders/45 cubes), 3-player (6 cylinders/50 cubes), or 2-player (7 cylinders/55 cubes) [2]. 23. Put any remaining cylinders and cubes back in the box [2]. 24. Each player takes one cube from their gathered cubes to use as a VP marker, placing it on the '0' space of the Victory Point Track [2]. 25. Each player places species from their gene pool on starting tiles: Insects (2 savannah, 1 wetland, 1 desert); Arachnids (2 jungle, 1 forest, 1 wetland); Amphibians (2 wetland, 1 jungle, 1 savannah); Birds (2 forest, 1 mountain, 1 jungle); Reptiles (2 desert, 1 savannah, 1 mountain); Mammals (2 mountain, 1 desert, 1 forest) [2]. 26. If playing with fewer than six players, ignore placement instructions for any animal not being played [2].
🔧 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 306 ms · ask 13651 ms · total 13968 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 13968 ms
- retrieval refs (raw)
- [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04728, "snippet": "Place the board - face up! - in the center of the table. Have each player choose the animal he would like to play. Give each player the animal display matching their choice. Alternately, you can assign one animal display to each player at random. See page 17 for a suggested alternate method of assig", "headingPath": "The Board · The Animals · The Tiles · The Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "When playing Dominant Species with only 2 or 3 players, the following rules may be used which allow for each player to control multiple animals. These rules conflict with some of those found elsewhere in this rulebook: where there is conflict, the rules in this column take precedence. When assigning", "headingPath": "Optional 2- and 3-player Rules · Multiple animals · Actions · Final scoring · Optional (random) Earth Setup · Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Take two of each of the six element types and place them on the tiles of earth as indicated on the board. Place these element disks so that they slightly overlap each of the tiles that meet at that intersection. Gather up the rest of the elements and form a draw pool by placing them into the cloth b", "headingPath": "The elements · The species · Begin play", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "After all Speciation actions have been performed, APs are removed from this section one at a time in left-to-right order. When an animal's AP is removed, that player selects one of the available face up large tiles (those atop the Wanderlust Tiles stacks). He then performs the following activities i", "headingPath": "Wanderlust", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Dominant Species is played in a series of turns in which all players take part more or less simultaneously. Each turn is divided into three Phases: During the Planning Phase, players will take turns placing their available action pawns (APs) into the 'eyeball' spaces of the action display that domin", "headingPath": "Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "One at a time, randomly draw a total of twelve elements from the bag, placing them onto the twelve tile corners normally allotted for starting elements. (The action display is seeded with elements normally.) Place 1 mammal species onto each non-tundra tile containing a single meat element; 2 mammals", "headingPath": "Elements · Species", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "At the start of the Execution Phase, remove any AP that was placed here. That player performs the following activities: On the Initiative track, swap his animal's initiative marker with that of the animal directly to the left of it-thus effectively moving one space forward on the Initiative track. I", "headingPath": "Initiative · Adaptation", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Note: You do not need to perform this step if this is the last turn of the game (via play of the Ice Age card). Finally, in preparation for the next turn perform the following activities: board. Any cards already occupying this section remain where they are. If there are not enough cards remaining i", "headingPath": "Reseed · Endgame", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}]
- citations (raw)
- [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The Board · The Animals · The Tiles · The Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The elements · The species · Begin play", "sharpsignalDocId": 207}]
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 207 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 207 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 5, 2026 17:23
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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | The Board · The Animals · The Tiles · The Cards | p.4 | 0.04728 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Optional 2- and 3-player Rules · Multiple animals · Actions · Final scoring · Optional (random) Earth Setup · Tiles | p.17 | 0.047123 (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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | The elements · The species · Begin play | p.4 | 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 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Wanderlust | p.14 | 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 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Sequence of play · Planning Phase Execution Phase Reset Phase · Planning Phase · Execution Phase | p.9 | 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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Elements · Species | p.17 | 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)) | 300 |
| #7 | RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Initiative · Adaptation | 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 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | Reseed · Endgame | p.20 | 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 Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | The Board · The Animals · The Tiles · The Cards | p.4 | no quote on the wire |
| [2] | RULEBOOK Dominant Species — Rulebook (corpus doc 207) | The elements · The species · Begin play | p.4 | no quote on the wire |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 306 ms · first delta 8135 ms · total 13968 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 306 ms · ask 13651 ms · gateway work 13968 ms · total 13968 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 4668
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 852
- tok/sec
- 147.2 tok/sec — 852 output tokens in 5.787 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 49s 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 132), 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.