Ruling — Slay the Spire: The Board Game

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Slay the Spire: The Board Gamebg-338960-en-1e

To set up the game, follow these steps: 1. Each player chooses a character and takes the corresponding player board, mini, starter deck, card rewards deck, and rare rewards deck [1]. 2. Shuffle the decks [1]. 3. Take out the token tray [1]. 4. On each player's character board, put a cube on their Energy track at 3, on their Block track at 0, and on their HP track at the highest printed number [1]. 5. Take out the following decks: Encounter Act I, '1st Encounter!' Encounter Act I, Act I Elite, Summon Act I, Don't shuffle! Event Act I, Relic, Potion, and Boss Relic [1]. 6. Shuffle each deck except Summons, Daze, and Status/ [1]. 7. Place the shuffled decks in separate piles [1]. 8. Shuffle and keep the '1st Encounter!' cards separate from the Encounter deck [1]. 9. Take out the Act I board and randomly choose an Act I map [1]. 10. Shuffle the map tokens face down [1]. 11. Randomly place dark map tokens on dark spaces, and light map tokens on light spaces, then flip the tokens face up [1]. 12. Place your character figure on the board in the lowest open space [1]. 13. Randomly choose an Act I Boss (you can roll the die and use the Boss with the matching die result on the back of the card) and place that Boss face down on the map on top of the icon [1]. 14. Place the boot meeple at the bottom of the map next to the bottom encounter [1]. 15. Keep the Player Aid board handy; when encountering a Merchant, flip the board over and set up the Merchant side [1]. 16. Shuffle the Neow's Blessing deck (three-eyed whale) [1]. 17. Each player draws one Neow's Blessing card, gains the reward in red, and chooses one of the 3 rewards in blue [1]. 18. If playing solo, also gain the 'Loaded Die' solo relic [1]. 19. For the 1st Encounter, set up the 1st Encounter (see page 10, Combat Setup) and then start combat [1].

[1] RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.4 · Setup

🔧 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 251 ms · ask 10407 ms · total 1285038 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 1274370 ms · generation 10668 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 9, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "You start at the encounter on the bottom of the map. When you're done with a room, move the meeple up the map along one of the paths to the next room. See rules for each type of room below: 1st Encounter! - If this is the first encounter, place a '1st Encounter!' card in each player's row (see Comba", "headingPath": "The Map · Encounter · Elite · Event · Campfire · Treasure · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "Players heal at the start of Act IV, just like they do at the start of Acts II and III. Act IV must be unlocked (see page 20). To enter Act IV you must obtain all 3 keys by the end of Act III. The Act IV map is on the back of the Act IV Boss card. To obtain a key... Ruby Key - All players must simul", "headingPath": "Act IV · Quick Start Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Pick a Character Each player chooses a character and takes the corresponding player board, mini, starter deck, card rewards deck, and rare rewards deck. Shuffle the decks. Token Tray Take out the token tray. Player Board Put a cube on your character's Energy track at 3, on their Block track at 0, an", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Rows Each player has a row. Enemies are placed in rows, except for Bosses. Summons -Some enemies will summon more enemies. If you see a green bar and this icon , then search for that enemy in the Summons deck and put them into play at the start of combat. Some enemy actions or special abilities can ", "headingPath": "Combat Setup · Encounter Setup · Enemy Cards · Special Abilities", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Below is a suggestion for how to organize your play area. Do whatever works for you! Draw Pile Shuffle your deck before combat begins to create your draw pile. Discard Pile After you play a card, it goes to your discard pile. Exhaust Pile When you Exhaust a card, place it in the exhaust pile. You ca", "headingPath": "Your Play Area · Powers · Hit Points (HP) · Starting Ability", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Combat rounds consist of a Player Turn followed by an Enemy Turn. Rounds repeat until combat ends. Shuffle your deck before combat starts. There's one shared Player Turn that's broken into the phases below: Start of Turn, Play, End of Turn. All players take these steps simultaneously. Reset Set Ener", "headingPath": "Combat Round - Player Turn · Player Turn · · Start of Turn · · Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "HP Board Some enemies use the HP board. Their HP is formatted like this. The top number is their starting HP for 1 player, the next number down is for 2 players, etc. Set their HP using cubes. Elites - Place one Elite in the bottom row. If there are Summons, place them in each player’s row with the ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.029911, "snippet": "Whenever you finish a game, each player checks 1 box per Boss defeated, plus 1 extra box each. You must check boxes for your character until they are all checked, after which you may check Colorless or Act IV boxes. When you check all of the boxes next to a lock, add the locked cards with a matching", "headingPath": "Unlocks · Ascension", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 257}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 257 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 257 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 14:30

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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	The Map · Encounter · Elite · Event · Campfire · Treasure · …	p.9	0.047643 (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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Act IV · Quick Start Rules	p.22	0.045724 (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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Setup	p.4	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
#4	RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Combat Setup · Encounter Setup · Enemy Cards · Special Abilities	p.10	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
#5	RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Your Play Area · Powers · Hit Points (HP) · Starting Ability	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
#6	RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Combat Round - Player Turn · Player Turn · · Start of Turn · · Play	p.12	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
#7	RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)		p.11	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
#8	RULEBOOK Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Unlocks · Ascension	p.20	0.029911 (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 Slay the Spire: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 257)	Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 251 ms · first delta 6955 ms · total 1285038 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 1274370 ms · retrieval 251 ms · ask 10407 ms · gateway work 10668 ms · total 1285038 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3414
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 504
tok/sec: 137.8 tok/sec — 504 output tokens in 3.658 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 30s 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 185), 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.