Ruling — Ethnos

You asked

How should we prepare everything before the first turn?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Ethnosbg-206718-en-1e

To prepare everything before the first turn, follow these steps: 1. Place the game board in the middle of the table [1]. 2. Shuffle the Glory tokens face down and randomly place one face up in each Glory space on the game board (three tokens per Kingdom) [1]. 3. Within each Kingdom, arrange the three tokens in ascending order, with the lowest token in the 'I' space and the highest in the 'III' space [1]. (Note: In 2-3 player games, remove tokens marked '4+' before mixing, shuffle the rest, and place two in each Kingdom) [2]. 4. Each player chooses a color and takes the matching Control markers [1]. 5. Place one of your markers on the '0' space of the Glory Track on the outer edge of the game board to serve as your Scoring marker [1]. 6. Shuffle all the Setup cards and turn over six of them to determine which six Tribes will be used (in 2-3 player games, turn over only five) [1][2]. 7. Take the Tribe decks for those selected Tribes and shuffle them together to form the Allies Deck [1]. 8. Set up additional pieces if necessary: * If Merfolk are in play, place the Merfolk board next to the main game board with the side matching the number of players face up, and each player places one Control marker on the '0' space of that board [1]. * If Trolls are in play, place all six Troll tokens next to the main game board [1]. * If Giants are in play, place the Giant token next to the main game board with the side matching the number of players face up [1]. * If Orcs are in play, give each player one Orc Horde board [1]. 9. Each player draws one card from the Allies Deck and adds it to their hand [3][4]. 10. Turn over a number of cards from the Allies Deck equal to twice the number of players and place them in a row face up next to the main game board [3][4]. 11. Split the rest of the Allies Deck into two roughly equal halves, shuffle the three Dragon cards into one half, then place it underneath the other half so the Dragon cards are all in the bottom half of the deck [3]. 12. Randomly choose one player to be the first player for the First Age [3][4].

[1] RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook · p.4 · Game Components · Initial Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook · p.11 · GLORY FOR THE BAND OF ALLIES · A New Age Dawns · The End of the Game · Playing with 2 or 3 Players · SETTING UP THE GAME

[3] RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook · p.5 · Beginning a New Age

[4] RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook · p.16 · INITIAL SETUP: · BEGINNING A NEW AGE: · PLAYING THROUGH AN AGE: · · Play a Band of Allies

🔧 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 248 ms · ask 10965 ms · total 36677 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 25454 ms · generation 11223 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 5, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "'As the mountains are built, stone upon stone, so are the Ages built, day upon day. -Mahaidu, Archivist of the Tribe of Minotaurs Follow these steps to begin each Age: 1 . Each player draws one card from the Allies Deck and adds it to their hand. 2 . Turn over a number of cards from the Allies Deck ", "headingPath": "Beginning a New Age", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "4 'In the Age of Creation, the land was formed, much as you know it now. In those days, heroes strode the land like gods, giving first form, and then their own names to the Six Kingdoms…' -The Chronicles of Ethnos 1 . Place the game board in the middle of the table. 2 . Shuffle the Glory tokens face", "headingPath": "Game Components · Initial Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "'Flee! The Dragon has come! Fire! Fear! Death!' -Hemdien, Watchkeeper of the Tribe of Giants If you draw a Dragon card from the Allies Deck, you must reveal it immediately. Set the Dragon card beside the main game board where all players can see it. Then, draw another card from the deck . The first ", "headingPath": "Dragon Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Randomly place Glory tokens in ascending order in each King dom (remove 4+ tokens in 23 player games). Randomly pick 6 Tribes for the game and shuffle the Allies Deck (5 Tribes in 23 players game). Each player draws 1 Ally card. Place a number of faceup Ally cards next to the board equal to twic", "headingPath": "INITIAL SETUP: · BEGINNING A NEW AGE: · PLAYING THROUGH AN AGE: · · Play a Band of Allies", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "6 'Let the wind guide you as you pass through the lands of the Six Kingdoms, and all shall know you by your wisdom.' -Leth'lorilai, Great Seer of the Tribe of Wingfolk During each Age, players take turns, starting with the first player and going to the left. When it is your turn , you must choose on", "headingPath": "Beginning a New Age · Playing Through an Age · RECRUITING ALLIES · -Orildan, Thane of the Tribe of Dwarves", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The Elves of the Six Kingdoms have always lived in harmony with the land, learning to ride the rhythms of nature, and never wasting anything of value when it can be conserved for use in the future. If you choose an Elf to lead a Band of Allies, you may keep a num ber of cards in your hand equal to ", "headingPath": "TRIBE OF ELVES", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Example: Roderick has managed to play 3 Bands of Allies during the last Age. He scores 1 Glory for the Band with 2 green cards, 3 Glory for the Band with 3 Dwarves, and 6 Glory for the Band of 4 red cards: a total of 10 Glory. 'What a lovely day. What a lovely way to start a new Age!' -Plodis, Chief", "headingPath": "GLORY FOR THE BAND OF ALLIES · A New Age Dawns · The End of the Game · Playing with 2 or 3 Players · SETTING UP THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "8 Example 1: Roderick is ready to make his move. He plays all 3 of his Dwarf cards, making sure that the purple one is on top-that's the Leader of his new Band. Since the Leader of the Band is purple, Roderick can place a Control marker in Duris if the Band is big enough. Since he currently has 2 Co", "headingPath": "X = Band of Allies Size", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Components · Initial Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GLORY FOR THE BAND OF ALLIES · A New Age Dawns · The End of the Game · Playing with 2 or 3 Players · SETTING UP THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Beginning a New Age", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "INITIAL SETUP: · BEGINNING A NEW AGE: · PLAYING THROUGH AN AGE: · · Play a Band of Allies", "sharpsignalDocId": 432}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 432 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 432 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 05:03

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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Beginning a New Age	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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Game Components · Initial Setup	p.4	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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Dragon 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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	INITIAL SETUP: · BEGINNING A NEW AGE: · PLAYING THROUGH AN AGE: · · Play a Band of Allies	p.16	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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Beginning a New Age · Playing Through an Age · RECRUITING ALLIES · -Orildan, Thane of the Tribe of Dwarves	p.6	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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	TRIBE OF ELVES	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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	GLORY FOR THE BAND OF ALLIES · A New Age Dawns · The End of the Game · Playing with 2 or 3 Players · SETTING UP THE GAME	p.11	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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	X = Band of Allies Size	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 Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Game Components · Initial Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	GLORY FOR THE BAND OF ALLIES · A New Age Dawns · The End of the Game · Playing with 2 or 3 Players · SETTING UP THE GAME	p.11	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	Beginning a New Age	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Ethnos — Rulebook (corpus doc 432)	INITIAL SETUP: · BEGINNING A NEW AGE: · PLAYING THROUGH AN AGE: · · Play a Band of Allies	p.16	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 248 ms · first delta 6173 ms · total 36677 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 25454 ms · retrieval 248 ms · ask 10965 ms · gateway work 11223 ms · total 36677 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3461
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 524
tok/sec: 105.0 tok/sec — 524 output tokens in 4.992 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 51s 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 362), 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.