RuleSage cited table rulings
← Bomb Busters

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Bomb Bustersbg-413246-en-1e

To set up the game, follow these steps: 1. Select one of the Mission cards [1]. 2. Designate a Captain (at random for the first mission, then pass responsibility to the left before each subsequent mission) and place the “Captain” character card in front of them; all other players place a character card of their choice faceup in front of them [1]. 3. The Captain reads the Mission card aloud and places it, flipped over, to the bottom left of the board so everyone can see the special rules [1]. 4. Distribute tile stands based on the number of bomb disposal experts: 2 players receive 2 stands each; 3 players receive 2 stands for the Captain and 1 for others; 4 or 5 players receive 1 stand each [1]. 5. Prepare the mission's Wire tiles by collecting all 48 blue wire tiles (except for training missions 1, 2 & 3) [2]. 6. Draw a number of red and yellow wires at random as indicated by the Mission card [2]. 7. Indicate the red and yellow values by placing the appropriate red and/or yellow markers in the spaces on the board with their blank side faceup (ensuring the '?' symbol is facedown) [2]. 8. Shuffle all Wire tiles (blue, red, and yellow) together facedown [3][2]. 9. Deal all wires facedown and as equally as possible among all tile stands [3][2]. 10. Bomb disposal experts take their dealt wires and place them in their tile stand, sorted from left-to-right in ascending order with the information facing the expert (if an expert has 2 stands, deal, place, and sort tiles separately for each) [2]. 11. Each bomb disposal expert places 1 Info token of their choice in front of their stand (but not a yellow one during setup), pointing to one of the blue wires in their hand with the matching value [3][4]. 12. Take as many Equipment cards as there are bomb disposal experts and place them faceup over the checkmark [4]. 13. Set the detonator dial to the section matching the number of bomb disposal experts [4]. 14. Place all the Info tokens and the 12 Validation tokens on the board [4].

[1] RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook · p.2 ·
[2] RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook · p.3 · 7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red
[3] RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook · p.8 · Setup · On Your Turn · End of the Game
[4] RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook · p.4 ·
🔧 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 262 ms · ask 6798 ms · total 1899147 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 1892078 ms · generation 7069 ms
retrieval refs (raw)
[{"page": 8, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "Everyone takes 1 character card. Shuffle the 48 blue wires with the red / yellow wires as indicated by mission setup instructions. Then distribute all wires facedown among tile stands as equally as possible. With 2 bomb disposal experts, each bomb disposal expert will use 2 tile stands. With 3 bomb ", "headingPath": "Setup · On Your Turn · End of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "4 8 On the board: 9 Starting with the Captain and going clockwise, each bomb disposal expert places an Info token of their choice on the table in front of their stand, pointing to one of the blue wires in their hand with the matching value. T ake as many Equipment cards as there are bomb disposal ex", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "A game by Hisashi Hayashi, illustrated by Dom2D Install the dial on the board before the first game 12 Equipment cards 26 Info tokens (including 2 yellow ones) 12 Validation tokens 8 large Mission cards 5 Character cards 1 token \" = \" token 48 blue wires '1' to '12', 4 of each 11 red wires '1.5' to ", "headingPath": "1 board (with a dial) · 17 cards · 40 tokens · 70 Wire tiles · 7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "5 Prepare the mission's Wire tiles: Collect all 48 blue wire tiles (except for training missions 1, 2 & 3). There are 4 copies of each number 1-12. T ake the number of red and yellow wires shown on the Mission card by drawing them at random. Look at the red and yellow tiles drawn and indicate the re", "headingPath": "7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "If the last of identical wires still in the game appear only in the active bomb disposal expert's hand, then they can cut those identical wires in pairs (either 2 or 4). This can be done on their own, without involving another bomb disposal expert. If they are lucky enough to have a full set of 4, t", "headingPath": "Dual Cut Action · Reveal Your Red Wires Action · VALIDATION TOKENS · THE YELLOW WIRES", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "2 Aim of the Game Bomb Busters is a cooperative game. Each player is a bomb disposal expert and all players together form one team. The objective is to defuse the assigned mission’s bomb together. Beware! The bomb will explode if you cut a red wire or if the detonator dial reaches the end! Setup 1 S", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Equipment becomes useable the first time 2 wires of the value shown on the card have been cut. space!) Each character has 1 personal equipment that can be used once per game . All the yellow wires are considered to have the same value: ' yellow '. There are 4 copies of each blue wire from 1 to 12. A", "headingPath": "REMEMBER: · Audio credits:", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Starting with the Captain and going clockwise, each bomb disposal expert takes a turn. On their turn, a bomb disposal expert (called the 'active bomb disposal expert') must do 1 of the following 3 actions: Dual Cut action, Solo Cut action, or Reveal Your Red Wires action. The active bomb disposal ex", "headingPath": "The Game · Dual Cut Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}]
citations (raw)
[{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup · On Your Turn · End of the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 280}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 280 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 280 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 14:42

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280) Setup · On Your Turn · End of the Game p.8 0.04866 (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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280) p.4 0.048139 (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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280) 1 board (with a dial) · 17 cards · 40 tokens · 70 Wire tiles · 7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red p.1 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
#4 RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280) 7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red p.3 0.046402 (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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280) Dual Cut Action · Reveal Your Red Wires Action · VALIDATION TOKENS · THE YELLOW WIRES p.6 0.04598 (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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280) p.2 0.045928 (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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280) REMEMBER: · Audio credits: p.8 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
#8 RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280) The Game · Dual Cut Action p.5 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

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 Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280) p.2 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280) 7 markers: 4 yellow and 3 red p.3 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280) Setup · On Your Turn · End of the Game p.8 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Bomb Busters — Rulebook (corpus doc 280) p.4 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 262 ms · first delta 3614 ms · total 1899147 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 1892078 ms · retrieval 262 ms · ask 6798 ms · gateway work 7069 ms · total 1899147 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3332
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
499
tok/sec
147.3 tok/sec — 499 output tokens in 3.387 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 45s 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
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

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 209), 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.