Ruling — Duel of Meloch

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Duel of Melochbg-473061-en-1e

For the Scythe player: 1. Select and set up any faction mat and any player mat with their corresponding tokens (including all 6 stars) and miniatures, Power Dial, and all starting components indicated on those mats (except objective cards) [1]. 2. Start with the popularity position and gain the number of coins shown on your mat (ignore the objective card icon) [2]. 3. Place the 6 technology cubes on the green boxes with black squares [2]. 4. Place the 4 structures on their corresponding boxes [2]. 5. Place the 4 recruit tokens on the circle bonus spaces [2]. 6. Place the 6 workers on the red produce action rectangles [2]. 7. Place your action token next to your player mat [2]. 8. Start with 2 workers on the locations adjacent to your home base (1 on each location) [1]. For the Expeditions player: 1. Select and set up any mech with its corresponding mat and card (from Gears of Corruption), any character/companion pair with their corresponding tokens, and a Power Dial [1]. 2. Gain all starting resources as indicated on the matching mech card (if playing with a mech from Gears of Corruption; otherwise, start with 3 guile, 3 power, and 1 hero worker) [1]. 3. Place 1 worker on each of the two land-adjoined territories adjacent to the home base [3]. 4. Place 4 mechs on the mech spaces on your faction mat [3]. 5. Place your 6 star tokens on your faction mat [3]. Shared Components/Board Setup: 1. Place the playmat (either side) on the table so the popularity/power track is facing the Scythe player [4]. 2. Place the resources, coins, and workers in a supply near the board [4]. 3. Randomize the 9 map tokens and place 1 face down on each of the 6 indicated locations (icon overlapping with the location number); set remaining map tokens aside face down [5][4]. 4. Randomize the 12 corruption tokens in Duel of Meloch and stack 2 face up on each of the 6 indicated locations (or 6 locations that have a dotted square box) [3][4]. 5. Place the Triumph Track (either side) near the board, with edge facing the Scythe player [4]. 6. Shuffle the combat cards and set the deck face down near the board (do not use original Scythe combat cards when playing Duel of Meloch) [4]. 7. Shuffle the Factory cards and place 2 face down next to the board; return the rest to the box [4]. 8. Shuffle the encounter cards and place the deck face down near the board [4]. 9. Shuffle the discovery cards into a single face-down deck beside the board; place 1 card from the deck face up on each of the 2 lakes [5][4]. 10. Shuffle the Meloch cards and place the deck face down nearby; reveal a card and place it between the players with a random orientation [4]. 11. Place the coins and workers in the supply [5]. Additional Duel of Meloch specific setup: 1. Select (or randomly gain) a mech mat and its matching mech miniature; also gain 4 stars and a Power Dial [5]. 2. Gain a random character card and its matching companion card in your hand (left of mech mat) [5]. 3. Place your action token (cube) on “Refresh” [5].

[1] RULEBOOK Duel of Meloch — Rulebook · p.5 · SHARED COMPONENTS · SCYTHE PLAYER · PLAYER COMPONENTS

[2] RULEBOOK Duel of Meloch — Rulebook · p.2 ·

[3] RULEBOOK Duel of Meloch — Rulebook · p.2 ·

[4] RULEBOOK Duel of Meloch — Rulebook · p.4 · SHARED COMPONENTS

[5] RULEBOOK Duel of Meloch — Rulebook · p.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 11819 ms · total 908188 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 896050 ms · generation 12138 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 2, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Place 1 worker on each of the two land-adjoined territories adjacent to the home base. 4. Place 4 mechs on the mech spaces on your faction mat. 5. Place your 6 star tokens on your faction mat. PLAYER MATS 1. Start with the popularity position ( ) and gain the number of coins ( ) shown on your mat. I", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 201}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "3 6 9 IF YOU ARE THE SCYTHE PLAYER, sit on the side of the board with the popularity/power track oriented toward you. Select and set up any faction mat and any player mat with their corresponding tokens (including all 6 stars) and miniatures, Power Dial, and all starting components indicated on thos", "headingPath": "SHARED COMPONENTS · SCYTHE PLAYER · PLAYER COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 201}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "To initiate combat, either (a) the Expeditions player gains the Vanquish benefit on a location with a Scythe mech/character and chooses to Vanquish them instead of corruption or (b) the Scythe player ends a movement action with at least 1 mech/character on the Expeditions mech's location (whether or", "headingPath": "COMBAT", "sharpsignalDocId": 201}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "2 SCYTHE PLAYER 1 rule summary guide 20 resource tokens (5 each of food, oil, metal, and wood) 3 Factory cards 60 combat cards (new design) 6 encounter cards 5 miniatures (4 mechs and 1 character) 31 wooden tokens (6 stars, 1 action token, 1 popularity token, 1 power token, 4 structures, 4 recruits,", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 201}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Place the playmat (either side) on the table so the popularity/power track is facing the Scythe player. 1 Place the resources, coins, and workers in a supply near the board. It is fine to include additional coins and resource tokens from Scythe and Expeditions. 2 Randomize the 9 map tokens and place", "headingPath": "SHARED COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 201}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "On your turn, do ONE of the following: If the action token is on “Refresh,” shift it along the red arrow to the blank square and take all 3 actions (MOVE, PLAY, and GATHER) in any order. If the action token is on the blank square next to “Refresh” or within the box GATHERMOVE PLAY REFRESH TATANKATAT", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 201}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "TRIUMPH TRACK The Scythe player places a star on an empty space on the Triumph track immediately when they meet its requirement printed on their side of the track. The Expeditions player must gain a Boast benefit in order to place a star on one completed requirement (except when winning combat, they", "headingPath": "COMBAT CARDS · PLACING STARS, MELOCH CARDS, AND END OF GAME · CONTROL 7+ LOCATIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 201}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "6 Duel of Meloch is a clash of Scythe versus Expeditions, just on a smaller map, with multiple ways to disrupt the other player, and without endof-game scoring. The winner is the first player to place 4 stars on the new Triumph Track, where only 1 star can be placed on each category. EXPERIENCE DISP", "headingPath": "PLAYER COMPONENTS · GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW · HOW TO PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 201}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SHARED COMPONENTS · SCYTHE PLAYER · PLAYER COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 201}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 201}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 201}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SHARED COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 201}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 201}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 201 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 201 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 6, 2026 14:23

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 Duel of Meloch — Rulebook (corpus doc 201)		p.2	0.032787 (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 Duel of Meloch — Rulebook (corpus doc 201)	SHARED COMPONENTS · SCYTHE PLAYER · PLAYER COMPONENTS	p.5	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
#3	RULEBOOK Duel of Meloch — Rulebook (corpus doc 201)	COMBAT	p.8	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 Duel of Meloch — Rulebook (corpus doc 201)		p.2	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 Duel of Meloch — Rulebook (corpus doc 201)	SHARED COMPONENTS	p.4	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 Duel of Meloch — Rulebook (corpus doc 201)		p.2	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 Duel of Meloch — Rulebook (corpus doc 201)	COMBAT CARDS · PLACING STARS, MELOCH CARDS, AND END OF GAME · CONTROL 7+ LOCATIONS	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 Duel of Meloch — Rulebook (corpus doc 201)	PLAYER COMPONENTS · GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW · HOW TO PLAY	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

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Duel of Meloch — Rulebook (corpus doc 201)	SHARED COMPONENTS · SCYTHE PLAYER · PLAYER COMPONENTS	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Duel of Meloch — Rulebook (corpus doc 201)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Duel of Meloch — Rulebook (corpus doc 201)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Duel of Meloch — Rulebook (corpus doc 201)	SHARED COMPONENTS	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Duel of Meloch — Rulebook (corpus doc 201)		p.2	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 306 ms · first delta 6877 ms · total 908188 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 896050 ms · retrieval 306 ms · ask 11819 ms · gateway work 12138 ms · total 908188 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4330
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 766
tok/sec: 147.1 tok/sec — 766 output tokens in 5.206 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 16s 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): set up

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 126), 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.