RuleSage cited table rulings
← Onitama

You asked

How should we prepare everything before the first turn?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Onitamabg-160477-en-1e

1. Shuffle the 16 Move cards [1][2][3]. 2. Give two random cards to each player, face up, which serves as the player's "hand" [1][2][3]. 3. Each player places both of their starting cards in front of them, face up [1][2][3]. 4. Turn over one more Move card and examine the stamp in the lower right hand corner of the card [1][2][3]. 5. The player with the pawns that are the same color as that stamp will go first [1][2][3]. 6. Place this card so that it is on the right side of the game mat (with respect to the player going first) [1][2][3]. 7. Return the rest of the unused Move cards to the box [1][2][3].

[1] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook · p.8 ·
[2] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook · p.5 · GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1
[3] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook · p.5 ·
🔧 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 253 ms · ask 6855 ms · total 47884 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 40765 ms · generation 7119 ms
retrieval refs (raw)
[{"page": 5, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "superior strategy and superior skill that the Master of Masters will be known, and the true Art will be revealed.' - The Book of Heaven, Second Scroll FACE UP Shuffle the 16 Move cards. Give two random cards to each player, face up - this is the player's 'hand'. Each player places both of their star", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032002, "snippet": "You may use that card starting next turn, as one of the two Move cards you can choose from. Now it is time for your opponent to take a turn, following the same two steps. You shall continue to take turns until one of you has won the game, demonstrating mastery of your Martial Art. STEP 2: EXCHANGE C", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.032002, "snippet": "You may use that card starting next turn, as one of the two Move cards you can choose from. Now it is time for your opponent to take a turn, following the same two steps. You shall continue to take turns until one of you has won the game, demonstrating mastery of your Martial Art. STEP 2: EXCHANGE C", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "STARTING CARDS FACE UP STARTING CARDS FACE UP EXTRA MOVE CARD FACEUP MASTER PAWN GOES ON TEMPLE ARCH PLAYER 2 PLAYER 1 OX “Pour your strength into the forms of your Art -- in its punches, its kicks, in the steady advance of your aggression.” DRAGON “Be swift as the thunder that peals before you have", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "STARTING CARDS FACE UP STARTING CARDS FACE UP EXTRA MOVE CARD FACEUP MASTER PAWN GOES ON TEMPLE ARCH PLAYER 2 PLAYER 1 OX “Pour your strength into the forms of your Art -- in its punches, its kicks, in the steady advance of your aggression.” DRAGON “Be swift as the thunder that peals before you have", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Take the Move card you just used, and place it to the left side of the playmat, rotating it 180 degrees to face your opponent. Then take the card that is on the right side of your playmat and add it to your hand. You may use that card starting next turn, as one of the two Move cards you can choose f", "headingPath": "STEP 2: EXCHANGE CARDS · WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO MOVE?", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "'These words are written in the presence of the scribes of Onitama. I have unlocked the mysteries of my Art, which I believe to be the true Art. I have listened to the Spirits, and have studied the manuals of my ancestors, passing Combat at Onitama is simple and elegant, as befits a contest between ", "headingPath": "PLAYER 1 · It is time to prove the power of your Art. · STEP 1: MOVE & ATTACK · PAWN CAN MOVE TO ANY ONE OF THESE", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "'Hear me, if you would prove your Art above all others. When you have mastered its mysteries, then may you seek to challenge others. It is through Onitama is an elegant and simple game which captures the essence of martial arts. Each game is quick, usually 15 minutes in length. Welcome to the Shrine", "headingPath": "CREDITS · COMPONENTS · GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}]
citations (raw)
[{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 448}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 448 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 448 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 7, 2026 05:02

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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1 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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) p.5 0.032002 (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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) p.8 0.032002 (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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) 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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) 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
#6 RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) STEP 2: EXCHANGE CARDS · WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO MOVE? p.8 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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) PLAYER 1 · It is time to prove the power of your Art. · STEP 1: MOVE & ATTACK · PAWN CAN MOVE TO ANY ONE OF THESE 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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) CREDITS · COMPONENTS · GAME SETUP p.4 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 Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) p.8 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) GAME SETUP · PLAYER 1 p.5 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Onitama — Rulebook (corpus doc 448) p.5 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 253 ms · first delta 5646 ms · total 47884 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 40765 ms · retrieval 253 ms · ask 6855 ms · gateway work 7119 ms · total 47884 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3691
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
198
tok/sec
138.2 tok/sec — 198 output tokens in 1.433 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 379), 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.