Ruling — Dead Reckoning

You asked

How should we prepare everything before the first turn?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Dead Reckoningbg-276182-en-1e

To prepare everything before the first turn, follow these steps: 1. Put together the Battle ship following the instructions provided on its box [1]. 2. Set up the Ocean boards by turning all boards depicting islands face down [1]. 3. Select a number of island boards based on player count (10 for 4 players, 9 for 3 players, and 8 for 2 players) and leave the rest in the box [1]. 4. Add the two open sea Ocean boards that do not have a player count icon to the selected island boards [1]. 5. If playing a 2-player game, add both other open sea boards; if playing a 3-player game, add only one other open sea board with the icon [1]. 6. Shuffle the selected Ocean boards while they are face down and place them in a 3 x 4 grid [1]. 7. Flip the three Ocean boards that are touching the Harbor board face up [1]. 8. Separate Advancements/Encounters into four decks based on the 'Row' icon in the top right [1]. 9. Shuffle these decks separately and place them in their respective boxes face up, with the top of the Advancements going into the bottom of the box [1]. 10. Place each box next to its corresponding Row of islands (Box #1 next to the row closest to the Harbor, etc.) [1]. 11. For each Ocean board adjacent to the Harbor board, take one card from the Row 1 box and place it face up on the open card space [1]. 12. If using the optional rule, deal 2 Bonus Achievement tokens to each player at the start of the game and have them choose 1, which they keep face down in front of them [2]. 13. All players draw the top 4 cards of their Sailor deck into their hand [3]. 14. Randomly determine a first player; that player gains 1 [3]. 15. The next player in clockwise order gains 2 [3]. 16. The 3rd player, if any, gains 3 [3]. 17. The 4th player, if any, gains 2 and may level up one Sailor card in their opening hand before their first turn [3].

[1] RULEBOOK Dead Reckoning — Rulebook · p.6 · SETUP · Set up the Ocean boards by following these steps: · The Advancement Decks:

[2] RULEBOOK Dead Reckoning — Rulebook · p.22 ·

[3] RULEBOOK Dead Reckoning — Rulebook · p.6 · Determine Start Player, Starting Cargo, and Draw Hands:

🔧 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 230 ms · ask 18046 ms · total 55850 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 37564 ms · generation 18286 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 7, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Players take turns, one after another. Your turn consists of two phases, carried out in the following order: Main phase: This is where all the action of your turn happens. You perform a number of different actions, including moving your Ship, loading and unloading , playing cards and using their abi", "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY · 1 MAIN PHASE · LOADING", "sharpsignalDocId": 454}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "After your turn has finished, at any point before the start of your next turn, you may level up one Sailor card in your hand. Normally, you will do this while the other players are taking their turns. You can even do this in response to being attacked by an opponent before the combat is resolved. If", "headingPath": "LEVELING", "sharpsignalDocId": 454}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "All players then draw the top 4 cards of their Sailor deck into their hand. Then, randomly determine a first player. That player gains 1 . The next player in clockwise order gains 2 , the 3 rd player, if any, gains 3 , and the 4 th player, if any, gains 2 and may level up one of their Sailor cards i", "headingPath": "Determine Start Player, Starting Cargo, and Draw Hands:", "sharpsignalDocId": 454}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Perform the following steps in order: Example: Advancements 1 gained from defeating or trading with Merchant ships have the top portion of the card filled in where the Merchant ship information is. When sleeving these, sleeve them such that they go in-between the Illustration and Ability cards. Refi", "headingPath": "2 CLEANUP PHASE · REFILL ADVANCEMENTS/ ENCOUNTERS 1", "sharpsignalDocId": 454}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "When you play a card, place it from your hand face up on the table in front of you. You may use the abilities on the played card now, later in the turn, or not at all (see page 11 for using abilities). You can only do this once per turn and must do so before moving. Count up the number of Sail ( ) i", "headingPath": "PLAY A CARD FROM YOUR HAND · SET SAILS", "sharpsignalDocId": 454}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Ǫ Terror of the Sea: Sink a Ship. The first time you sink another player’s Ship during the game, place one of your Achievement markers here. Ǫ Builder: Own 5 or more Buildings. If you ever have 5 Buildings at the same time on islands you control, immediately place an Achievement marker here. If, lat", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 454}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Ǫ Optional Rule - Bonus Achievement tokens: If this is your first game of Dead Reckoning™ and you feel that you’d like something to steer you on how to approach the different strategies, or if, as an experienced player, you want a change of pace, we recommend using the Bonus Achievement tokens. Simp", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 454}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Your cards may have noticeably different thicknesses based on how many Advancements have been added to each. When shuffling, you may find it hard to not feel where your thickest and thinnest cards are. If you are worried about this, we suggest that after shuffling your deck, you ask the player to yo", "headingPath": "SUGGESTED RULE FOR SHUFFLING: · CARD ABILITIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 454}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP · Set up the Ocean boards by following these steps: · The Advancement Decks:", "sharpsignalDocId": 454}, {"page": 22, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 454}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Determine Start Player, Starting Cargo, and Draw Hands:", "sharpsignalDocId": 454}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 454 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 454 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 05:05

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 Dead Reckoning — Rulebook (corpus doc 454)	GAMEPLAY · 1 MAIN PHASE · LOADING	p.7	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 Dead Reckoning — Rulebook (corpus doc 454)	LEVELING	p.13	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 Dead Reckoning — Rulebook (corpus doc 454)	Determine Start Player, Starting Cargo, and Draw Hands:	p.6	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 Dead Reckoning — Rulebook (corpus doc 454)	2 CLEANUP PHASE · REFILL ADVANCEMENTS/ ENCOUNTERS 1	p.11	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 Dead Reckoning — Rulebook (corpus doc 454)	PLAY A CARD FROM YOUR HAND · SET SAILS	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 Dead Reckoning — Rulebook (corpus doc 454)		p.22	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 Dead Reckoning — Rulebook (corpus doc 454)		p.22	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 Dead Reckoning — Rulebook (corpus doc 454)	SUGGESTED RULE FOR SHUFFLING: · CARD ABILITIES	p.13	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 Dead Reckoning — Rulebook (corpus doc 454)	SETUP · Set up the Ocean boards by following these steps: · The Advancement Decks:	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Dead Reckoning — Rulebook (corpus doc 454)		p.22	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Dead Reckoning — Rulebook (corpus doc 454)	Determine Start Player, Starting Cargo, and Draw Hands:	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 230 ms · first delta 13789 ms · total 55850 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 37564 ms · retrieval 230 ms · ask 18046 ms · gateway work 18286 ms · total 55850 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3778
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 491
tok/sec: 110.7 tok/sec — 491 output tokens in 4.434 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 2s 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 384), 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.