Ruling — Raiders of Scythia

You asked

Before anyone takes a turn, how is everything laid out on the table?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Raiders of Scythiabg-301880-en-1e

To set up the game before anyone takes a turn, follow these steps: 1. Place the Main Board in the centre of the playing area [1]. 2. Shuffle the Quests and place 1 faceup on each of the 2 spaces in the Scythian Village (top-left area of the Main Board) [1]. 3. Place 1 facedown Quest on each Raid Space in Cimmeria, Assyria and Persia from the remaining Quests, and return any unused Quests to the Box unseen [1]. 4. Shuffle the Hero, Crew and Animal Cards into separate facedown Draw Piles [2]. 5. Place the Animal Draw Pile alongside the Main Board and reveal the top 3 Animal Cards faceup in a line [2]. 6. From the Hero Draw Pile, reveal a number of Hero Cards faceup equal to the number of players, plus 1 [2]. 7. From the Crew Draw Pile, reveal 1 Crew Card faceup alongside each previously revealed Hero Card, creating pairs of 1 Hero Card and 1 Crew Card [2]. 8. Randomly decide on a starting player; then, in reverse turn order (starting with the player to the right of the starting player and continuing counter-clockwise), have each player select 1 pair of Hero and Crew Card [2]. 9. Each player places their chosen Hero Card faceup on the left-most space of their Player Board and their chosen Crew Card faceup on the space to the right of their Hero [2]. 10. Return the unselected Hero Card and the Hero Draw Pile to the Box [2]. 11. Place the Crew Draw Pile alongside the Main Board and place the unselected Crew Card next to this to form the Crew Dislama Card [2]. 12. Deal each player 5 Crew Cards, having them select 3 to keep as a starting hand and 2 to discard [2]. 13. Place all Plunder (Gold, Equipment, Wagons and Livestock) into the Plunder Bag, mix well, and randomly draw and place the required number onto each Raid Space as indicated by the blue Plunder icon above each space; for Cimmeria, Assyria and Persia, place this on top of each facedown Quest, while for Greece, place it directly onto the Main Board [1]. 14. Place any remaining Plunder from the bag into a Main Supply near the Main Board [1]. 15. Add all Silver, Kumis, Provisions, Wounds and Dice to the Main Supply [1]. 16. Place 1 Worker of the indicated colour above each raid space [1]. 17. Place 1 Blue Worker on each of the 3 bottom-right locations in the Scythian Village (Town Centre, Meeting Tent and Market) [1]. 18. Give each player 1 Player Board in their chosen colour and 1 Score Marker, which they should place on the 0 VP space of the VP Track [1]. 19. Give each player 3 Silver and 1 Provision from the Main Supply, along with 1 Blue Worker [1]. 20. Return any remaining, unused Workers to the Box [1].

[1] RULEBOOK Raiders of Scythia — Rulebook · p.3 · setup

[2] RULEBOOK Raiders of Scythia — Rulebook · p.4 · setup

🔧 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 313 ms · ask 10438 ms · total 10761 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 10761 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 4, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Shuffle the Hero, Crew and Animal Cards into separate facedown Draw Piles. Return the AI Scheme and AI Crew Cards to the Box, as they are only for Solo Play (See pages 16-19). Place the Animal Draw Pile alongside the Main Board, and reveal the top 3 Animal Cards from the top of the Pile, placing the", "headingPath": "setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 492}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "After paying any Provisions and Wagons to raid a Settlement, players always need to roll Dice. How many Red and White Dice to roll is indicated along the left-side of the Main Board, for each civilization. The number of Yellow Dice to roll depends on how many Raid Spaces in the chosen Settlement hav", "headingPath": "Rolling dice · Strength", "sharpsignalDocId": 492}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Proceeding clockwise from the starting player, each player takes their turn in full. On their turn, players may choose to Work or Raid . Players continue to take turns until 1 of the 2 end-game conditions have been met (See page 10). Regardless of their choice, each turn will always follow the same ", "headingPath": "gamepla y overview · Working", "sharpsignalDocId": 492}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "When using the Meeting Tent, players may either draw 2 Cards from the Crew Draw Pile, or Draw 1 Card and gain 2 Kumis. Players can never have more than 8 Cards in hand, or 8 Kumis in their Personal Supply at the end of their turn. There is a reminder of this on each Player Board. When using the Mark", "headingPath": "Meeting Tent · Market", "sharpsignalDocId": 492}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The game end is triggered when there is either only 2 Raid Spaces, or 2 Quests (faceup or facedown) left on the Main Board. Once 1 of these conditions has been met, the current player finishes their turn, resolving any unfinished actions. Each player (including the current player) then has 1 final t", "headingPath": "end of the game · Scoring · gaining 50+ victory points", "sharpsignalDocId": 492}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "In this Solo Play variant, you will be competing against a rival Chieftain, aiming to score higher than them. Your turns will function entirely the same, except that the AI Chieftain will block 1 Village Building each turn. On their turn, your opponent will simply turn over the top AI Scheme Card an", "headingPath": "solo pla y - overview · solo pla y - setup · solo pla y - opponent turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 492}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Any time your opponent gains a Quest, they will do so based on the arrows above the Quest Icon. If there are no Quests available on the Main Board to claim, they will instead gain a Horse in the same manner as if they didn't have enough Strength to raid. For example, if all Cimmerian Settlements had", "headingPath": "solo pla y - quests · solo pla y - Provisions · solo pla y - horses", "sharpsignalDocId": 492}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "During Setup you would have chosen an AI Crew Card for your opponent. These are all unique and have some different functions: The Trader has no Strength and therefore relies solely on using Horses during raids. He starts the game with just 1 Provision. The Lookout has 1 Strength and starts the game ", "headingPath": "solo pla y - AI crew cards · solo pla y - blocked buildings", "sharpsignalDocId": 492}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 492}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 492}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 492 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 492 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 05:56

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 Raiders of Scythia — Rulebook (corpus doc 492)	setup	p.4	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 Raiders of Scythia — Rulebook (corpus doc 492)	Rolling dice · Strength	p.7	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 Raiders of Scythia — Rulebook (corpus doc 492)	gamepla y overview · Working	p.5	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 Raiders of Scythia — Rulebook (corpus doc 492)	Meeting Tent · Market	p.14	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 Raiders of Scythia — Rulebook (corpus doc 492)	end of the game · Scoring · gaining 50+ victory points	p.10	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 Raiders of Scythia — Rulebook (corpus doc 492)	solo pla y - overview · solo pla y - setup · solo pla y - opponent turns	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 Raiders of Scythia — Rulebook (corpus doc 492)	solo pla y - quests · solo pla y - Provisions · solo pla y - horses	p.17	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 Raiders of Scythia — Rulebook (corpus doc 492)	solo pla y - AI crew cards · solo pla y - blocked buildings	p.19	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 Raiders of Scythia — Rulebook (corpus doc 492)	setup	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Raiders of Scythia — Rulebook (corpus doc 492)	setup	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 313 ms · first delta 5732 ms · total 10761 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 313 ms · ask 10438 ms · gateway work 10761 ms · total 10761 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3458
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 676
tok/sec: 136.8 tok/sec — 676 output tokens in 4.943 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 46s 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 423), 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.