Ruling — Catan — RuleSage

You asked

What must be prepared before the first player takes a turn?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Catanbg-13-en-1e

Before your first game, you must remove the die-cut components from the cardboard holders and carefully punch out and separate the pieces [1]. When punching tiles out of the die-cut sheets, always push the tiles through from the front, 'cut' side [1]. To set up the board: 1. Assemble the frame [1]. 2. Create Catan by placing the 19 terrain hexes on the table [1]. 3. Place the circular number tokens on top of the designated terrain hexes [1]. 4. Place your settlements and roads [1]. If using the 'Starting Set-up for Beginners', you must: 1. Assemble the frame exactly as shown in Illustration R [2]. 2. Place the terrain hexes exactly as shown in Illustration R [2]. 3. Place 2 settlements and 2 roads of each color as shown (if only 3 are playing, remove the red pieces) [2]. 4. Each player receives the 3 resources from the terrain hexes adjacent to their settlement marked by the white star [2].

[1] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook · p.2 · Starting Set-up for Beginners

[2] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook · p.13 · startinG set-up for BeGinners

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 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 291 ms · ask 10407 ms · total 2030161 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 2019453 ms · generation 10708 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 4, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Unless you're using the Starting Set-Up for Experienced Players, the oldest player goes first. On your turn, you can do the following in the order listed: Illustration C Illustration D You must roll for resource production Y (the result applies to all players). You may trade Y resource cards with ot", "headingPath": "turn overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Here is a summary of the the game sequence, plus some more specific entries where you can find details: Lay out the game board: Set-up, Variable Y Initial set-up: Set-up Phase Y Play The starting player begins the game. The other players follow in clockwise order. On your turn, you complete these 3 ", "headingPath": "Game play", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "If you want to use the starting set-up, lay out the board as shown in Illustration R (and the Game Overview): Assemble the frame exactly as shown in Illustration R. Place the terrain hexes exactly as shown in Illustration R. Place 2 settlements and 2 roads of each color as shown. If only 3 are playi", "headingPath": "startinG set-up for BeGinners", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Once all players have built their first settlement, the player who went last in the first round begins round two. That player builds their second settlement and its adjacent road. Important: After the starting player builds, the other players follow counterclockwise , so the starting player in round", "headingPath": "Round Two", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Each player rolls both dice. The player who rolls highest is the starting player and begins. The starting player places a settlement on an unoccupied intersection Y of their choice, then places a road adjacent to this settlement. The other players then follow clockwise. Everyone places 1 settlement ", "headingPath": "Round One", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "You can play the game Catan on a variable game board. For your first game, however, we suggest that you use the 'Starting Set-up for Beginners Y .' (See Illus. A on page 3.) This set-up is well-balanced for all players. Before your first game, you must remove the die-cut components from the cardboar", "headingPath": "Starting Set-up for Beginners", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "You may build on your turn after you have rolled for resource production and finished trading. To build, you must turn in the specified combinations of resource cards (see the Building Costs Cards Y ). Return the resource cards to the supply stacks. You can build as many items and buy as many cards ", "headingPath": "Build (BuildinG)", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "When you play a 'Knight' development card during your turn, you must immediately move the robber Y . Place the knight card face up in front of you. You must move the robber away from its current spot and onto the number token of any other terrain hex or on the desert. You then steal 1 resource card ", "headingPath": "KniGht Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Starting Set-up for Beginners", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "startinG set-up for BeGinners", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 43 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 43 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 14:47

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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	turn overview	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
#2	RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	Game play	p.8	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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	startinG set-up for BeGinners	p.13	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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	Round Two	p.12	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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	Round One	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
#6	RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	Starting Set-up for Beginners	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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	Build (BuildinG)	p.6	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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	KniGht Cards	p.8	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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	Starting Set-up for Beginners	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	startinG set-up for BeGinners	p.13	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 291 ms · first delta 9109 ms · total 2030161 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 2019453 ms · retrieval 291 ms · ask 10407 ms · gateway work 10708 ms · total 2030161 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 1793
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 229
tok/sec: 149.7 tok/sec — 229 output tokens in 1.530 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 21s 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: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 1), 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.