Ruling — Small World

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Small Worldbg-40692-en-1e

To set up the game, follow these steps: 1. Punch out all pieces from the game's punchboards [1]. 2. Sort the pieces and place them in their designated wells (some in the removable storage tray and others in the main vacuum tray of the game box) [1]. 3. Pick the Small World map that matches your number of players based on the symbol next to the Game Turn track and place it in the center of the table [1]. 4. Place the Game Turn marker on the first spot of the map's Game Turn track [1]. 5. Pull the removable storage tray containing all Race tokens out of the box and place it open next to the board map within easy reach of all players [1]. 6. Shuffle all Race banners, draw five at random, and lay them face up in a single column [1]. 7. Place the remaining banners face up in a single stack at the bottom of that column [1]. 8. Shuffle the Special Power badges and place one to the left of each Race banner, fitting its round edge into the banner's round opening [1]. 9. Stack the remaining badges in a pile to the left of the Race banners stack [1]. 10. Place a Lost Tribe token on each Region of the map that features a Lost Tribe symbol [1]. 11. Put a Mountain token on each Region of the map featuring a Mountain [1]. 12. Give each player five "1" Victory coins [1]. 13. Place all remaining coins (including all "3"s, "5"s, and "10"s) in a Victory stash next to the board within easy reach of all players [1].

[1] RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook · p.2 · Setting up the game

🔧 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 245 ms · ask 6921 ms · total 1633391 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 1626216 ms · generation 7175 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 2, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "If this is the first time you play, punch out all the pieces from the game's punchboards. Sort them and place them in the wells designed for each type of piece. Some types fit in the removable storage tray that came with your game. Other components fit inside their respective wells in the main vacuu", "headingPath": "Setting up the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Space is getting tight in Small World . There are just too many races living off your land - land your ancestors bequeathed to you in hopes you would build an empire with which you could dominate the world. Picking a fantasy Race and Special Power combination, you must use their unique racial traits", "headingPath": "Starting the game · I. The first turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The player selects one Race and Special Power combo, from among the six that are visible on the table (including the combo made of the Race banner and Special Power badge sitting on top of the stacks at the bottom of the column). The cost of each combo is determined by its position in the column. Th", "headingPath": "1. Picking a Race and Special Power Combo", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Because the Small World box contains many punchboards, once you have punched out all the tokens and coins, you will be left with a big gap between the top of the vacuum tray on which your boards sit and the cover of the box. If you like to store your games in an upright position, this void will like", "headingPath": "I. Organize the Storage Tray · II. The Races and Special Powers of Small World", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Once a player thinks that his Active race is overextended and no longer has the impetus required to continue expanding successfully or defend itself from increasingly threatening neighbors, he may choose to put it In Decline by selecting a new Race and Special Power combo from those available on the", "headingPath": "Entering In Decline", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "In following turns, the first player moves the Game Turn marker up one spot on the track and the game continues clockwise. During his turn, each player must now either: l Expand the reach of his race through new conquests OR l Put his race In Decline to select a new one. The player then scores Victo", "headingPath": "II. Following turns · Expanding through new Conquests · > Conquer · > Abandoning a Region", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "During the fi nal conquest attempt of his turn, a player may find himself with not enough Race tokens left to conquer another Region outright. Provided he still has at least one unused Race token, the player may attempt one final conquest for his turn by selecting a Region that he would normally be ", "headingPath": "> Final Conquest Attempt/Reinforcement Die Roll · > Troop Redeployment", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "The player's Race tokens are used to conquer Regions of the map, whose occupation will yield Victory coins for that player. A player's race deploying on the map for the first time must enter it by conquering one of its border Regions (i.e. a Region adjacent to the edge of the board or one whose shor", "headingPath": "2. Conquering Regions · > First Conquest · > Conquering a Region", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setting up the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 191}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 191 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 191 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 14:36

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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Setting up the game	p.2	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Starting the game · I. The first turn	p.2	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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	1. Picking a Race and Special Power Combo	p.2	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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	I. Organize the Storage Tray · II. The Races and Special Powers of Small World	p.5	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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Entering In Decline	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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	II. Following turns · Expanding through new Conquests · > Conquer · > Abandoning a Region	p.4	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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	> Final Conquest Attempt/Reinforcement Die Roll · > Troop Redeployment	p.3	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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	2. Conquering Regions · > First Conquest · > Conquering a Region	p.3	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 Small World — Rulebook (corpus doc 191)	Setting up the game	p.2	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 245 ms · first delta 4479 ms · total 1633391 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 1626216 ms · retrieval 245 ms · ask 6921 ms · gateway work 7175 ms · total 1633391 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3672
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 362
tok/sec: 137.1 tok/sec — 362 output tokens in 2.640 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 51s 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 109), 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.