Ruling — Meadow

You asked

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

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Meadowbg-314491-en-1e

Each player chooses a color and takes the following components: * 5 path tokens matching their color (in a 4-player game, the token with the? symbol is returned to the box) [1] * 3 bonus tokens of the matching color [1] * A road token with the visible road symbol [1] * A two-sided starting ground card [1] Before the game begins: * Shuffle goal tokens and randomly place 1 token at a time on the square spots on the campfire board [1] * For a 2-player game, block 2 notches of the campfire board with block tokens; for a 3-player game, block 1 notch [1] * Place the round marker on the 1st rock of the round tracker [1] * The player that was last stung by a bee receives the first player token and starts the game [1] * Place road tokens within easy access of all players [2] * Place 3 of the 4 deck holders in the cut-out spots on the main board, and place the remaining deck holder next to the board [2] * Divide cards according to their backs into 4 decks, shuffle each separately, and place them in the deck holders [2] * Fill all spots on the board with face-up cards of the corresponding decks (the left column has 4 W cards, the next two columns have 4 S cards each, and the final column has 4 E cards) [2] * Place the game board in the middle of the table [2] * Place the correct campfire board for your player count next to the main board with the side showing the symbol for the number of players [2]

[1] RULEBOOK Meadow — Rulebook · p.5 · Game Setup (for 2, 3 or 4 players) · Component and round number depending on the player count

[2] RULEBOOK Meadow — Rulebook · p.4 · Game Setup (for 2, 3 or 4 players)

🔧 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 368 ms · ask 7851 ms · total 8229 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8229 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 5, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Shuffle the goal tokens and randomly place 1 token at a time on the square spots on the campfire board. Unused goal tokens are returned to the box (a 4-player game will use all the basic goal tokens). 8 When playing a 2-player game, block 2 notches of the campfire board with the block tokens. In a 3", "headingPath": "Game Setup (for 2, 3 or 4 players) · Component and round number depending on the player count", "sharpsignalDocId": 368}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Each player starts the game with 5 cards in hand. The cards are taken in the following way: Beginning with the player to the right of the starting player and going counter-clockwise, each player chooses a row on the main board and adds all 4 of the cards in that row to their hand. They then draw 1 c", "headingPath": "Player Preparation · Meadow area · Two-sided starting ground card · Surroundings area · Bonus and path tokens", "sharpsignalDocId": 368}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The game consists of 6 rounds in a 2- and 3-player game, or 8 rounds in a 4-player game (the number of stones on the campfire board corresponds to the number of rounds). Players take their turns in clockwise order, starting with the first player. During your turn, you must perform an action, placing", "headingPath": "The Course of the Game · Player Turn · End of the Round · End of the Game · Drawing and Playing Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 368}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "For the solo play rules, see page 14. Place the road tokens within easy access of all players. Place 3 of the 4 deck holders in the cut-out spots on the main board. Place the remaining deck holder next to the board. 3 Divide the cards according to their backs and create 4 decks. Shuffle each of the ", "headingPath": "Game Setup (for 2, 3 or 4 players)", "sharpsignalDocId": 368}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "On the campfire board, the neighboring goal tokens create pairs. If you have both symbols of the pair visible in your meadow area, you may claim the space between the pair with one of your bonus tokens. You may only claim it after placing a path token in the notch of the campfire board. You decide i", "headingPath": "Goals · End of Round · Halfway Point · End of Game and Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 368}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Take 1 of your path tokens and place it: either on the campfire board Take 1 card from the board. Take 2 road tokens. Look at the top 3 cards of any deck and keep 1 of them. Play 2 cards. then you may play a card play a card If you have the required symbols. Place an observation card on top of a car", "headingPath": "Actions in Player Turn · and take a special action: · or on the main board", "sharpsignalDocId": 368}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The game ends at the end of the 6 th round - it is time to count the points. Count all of the points in Rover's card deck. Then count your points according to the standard rules. If your score is lower, it means you did not observe enough interesting things during this trek. If your score is higher ", "headingPath": "End of Game and Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 368}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "There are 5 envelopes in the game box with thematic cards. Because of the advanced rules of those cards, we recommend you not use them in the first few games. It is assumed you will open the envelopes after fulfilling the requirements described below, but do not take that too seriously. It is all ab", "headingPath": "Envelopes", "sharpsignalDocId": 368}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup (for 2, 3 or 4 players) · Component and round number depending on the player count", "sharpsignalDocId": 368}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup (for 2, 3 or 4 players)", "sharpsignalDocId": 368}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 368 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 368 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 18:23

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 Meadow — Rulebook (corpus doc 368)	Game Setup (for 2, 3 or 4 players) · Component and round number depending on the player count	p.5	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 Meadow — Rulebook (corpus doc 368)	Player Preparation · Meadow area · Two-sided starting ground card · Surroundings area · Bonus and path tokens	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 Meadow — Rulebook (corpus doc 368)	The Course of the Game · Player Turn · End of the Round · End of the Game · Drawing and Playing Cards	p.7	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 Meadow — Rulebook (corpus doc 368)	Game Setup (for 2, 3 or 4 players)	p.4	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 Meadow — Rulebook (corpus doc 368)	Goals · End of Round · Halfway Point · End of Game and Scoring	p.13	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 Meadow — Rulebook (corpus doc 368)	Actions in Player Turn · and take a special action: · or on the main board	p.16	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 Meadow — Rulebook (corpus doc 368)	End of Game and Scoring	p.15	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 Meadow — Rulebook (corpus doc 368)	Envelopes	p.14	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 Meadow — Rulebook (corpus doc 368)	Game Setup (for 2, 3 or 4 players) · Component and round number depending on the player count	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Meadow — Rulebook (corpus doc 368)	Game Setup (for 2, 3 or 4 players)	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 368 ms · first delta 5539 ms · total 8229 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 368 ms · ask 7851 ms · gateway work 8229 ms · total 8229 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3073
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 365
tok/sec: 138.2 tok/sec — 365 output tokens in 2.641 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 28s 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 297), 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.