Ruling — Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game

You asked

What does each player take, and what goes in the middle, before we begin?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Battlestar Galactica: The Board Gamebg-37111-en-1e

Before the game begins: 1. Place the game board at the center of the table [1]. 2. Set the food and fuel dials to '8,' the morale dial to '10,' and the population dial to '12' [1]. 3. Place the eight vipers and four raptors in the 'Viper and Raptor Reserves' space of the game board [1]. 4. Place the fleet token on the start space of the Jump Preparation track [1]. 5. Place all other tokens (facedown) and plastic ships adjacent to the game board [1]. 6. Randomly choose a player to be the first player, and give him the current player token [1]. 7. Each player chooses a character, after which the player receives the corresponding character sheet and stand-up character token, as well as a piloting token if applicable [1]. 8. The President title is given to the first available player in a specific list (Laura Roslin, Tom Zarek, or Gaius Baltar) [1]. 9. The Admiral title is given to the first available player in a specific list (William Adama, Saul Tigh, or Helo Agathon) [1]. 10. The Admiral is given two nuke tokens [1]. 11. The President shuffles the Quorum deck and draws one Quorum Card [1]. 12. Set up the Loyalty deck [1]. 13. Shuffle the Quorum deck, Crisis deck, Super Crisis deck, and Destination deck and place them next to the game board [1]. 14. Separate the Skill Cards into five decks by type [1]. 15. Each player starts the game with one Loyalty Card [2].

[1] RULEBOOK Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.5 · Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.18 · Loyalty Cards

🔧 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 355 ms · ask 13020 ms · total 13386 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 13386 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 28, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Some play groups may find that it is too easy for the human or Cylon players to win the game. A group may decide before the start of the game to make the game easier for the humans or Cylons. To make the game easier for the human players, start the game with 2 more of each resource (10 food, 10 fuel", "headingPath": "Adjusting Diffi culty", "sharpsignalDocId": 354}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "The object of the game for a given player depends on which team he belongs to. A player's team is determined by the Loyalty Cards he receives throughout the game (see 'Loyalty Cards' on page 18). All human players win the game if they travel at least eight units of distance (as specified by the Kobo", "headingPath": "Object of the Game · Choosing Optimal Characters", "sharpsignalDocId": 354}, {"page": 29, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The ultimate goal for the human players is to conserve enough resources to travel eight units of distance and then jump to Kobol. This makes their immediate goal to preserve resources, and their long-term goal to travel enough distance. Two things need to be taken into account during a human player'", "headingPath": "Human Player Strategy · On the Humans' Turns · Dealing with Cylon Players · Preparing for the Sleeper Agent Phase · Cylon Player Strategy", "sharpsignalDocId": 354}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Each player starts the game with one Loyalty Card. Later in the game, players receive additional Loyalty Cards (see 'Sleeper Agent Phase' on page 19), which increase their chances of being Cylon players. Loyalty Cards are kept facedown, but their owners may look at them at any time. A player may not", "headingPath": "Loyalty Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 354}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game is played over a number of game turns. Starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, players take complete game turns in order until either the human or Cylon players have won the game. Each game turn consists of the following steps, carried out in ord", "headingPath": "Game Turn · Game Turn Detail", "sharpsignalDocId": 354}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "For the human players to win the game, they must successfully jump the fleet enough times to reach Kobol. Once the fleet has reached Kobol, the humans immediately win the game. For information on the Cylon players' objective, see 'Cylon Objective' on page 18. The fleet jumps to a new location in one", "headingPath": "Human Objective", "sharpsignalDocId": 354}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Although it is technically the current player's responsibility to make sure that Skill Cards are discarded properly, many play groups prefer to assign one player the role of SKILL SUPERVISOR at the start of the game. This player is in charge of sorting discarded Skill Cards into the appropriate disc", "headingPath": "Skill Supervisor · Partial Passes", "sharpsignalDocId": 354}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Loyalty Deck Destination Deck and Kobol Objective President Title Card and Starting Quorum Card Centurion, Damage, Civilian Ship, and Basestar Tokens Quorum Deck Destiny Deck Plastic Human Ships in the 'Reserves' 7. Resource Dials (set to starting positions) Plastic Cylon Ships Character Tokens (on ", "headingPath": "Setup Diagram", "sharpsignalDocId": 354}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 354}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Loyalty Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 354}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 354 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 354 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 18:18

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 Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 354)	Adjusting Diffi culty	p.28	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 Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 354)	Object of the Game · Choosing Optimal Characters	p.6	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 Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 354)	Human Player Strategy · On the Humans' Turns · Dealing with Cylon Players · Preparing for the Sleeper Agent Phase · Cylon Player Strategy	p.29	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 Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 354)	Loyalty Cards	p.18	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 Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 354)	Game Turn · Game Turn Detail	p.9	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 Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 354)	Human Objective	p.12	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 Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 354)	Skill Supervisor · Partial Passes	p.16	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 Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 354)	Setup Diagram	p.7	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 Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 354)	Setup	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 354)	Loyalty Cards	p.18	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 355 ms · first delta 10656 ms · total 13386 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 355 ms · ask 13020 ms · gateway work 13386 ms · total 13386 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3130
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 366
tok/sec: 137.5 tok/sec — 366 output tokens in 2.662 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 5s 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: BEGIN — "begin" / "beginning"
matched words (in the normalized question): begin

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 283), 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.