Ruling — Scholars of the South Tigris

You asked

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

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Scholars of the South Tigrisbg-367041-en-1e

To set up the game before anyone takes a turn, follow these steps: 1. Decide as a group whether to play the Casual or Epic version [1]. 2. Shuffle all 4 Caliph Cards and place them facedown [1]. 3. Use the Caliph Setup Card to prepare the Scroll Card Draw Pile for your chosen player count, keeping both Scroll and Caliph Cards facedown [1]. 4. Create 6 separate stacks: for a Casual game, the top stack must have 3 Scroll Cards and the bottom stack must have 1 Scroll Card; all other stacks consist of 2-4 Scroll Cards (based on player count) and 1 random Caliph Card shuffled together [1]. 5. Place these stacks on top of one another to form the Scroll Card Draw Pile, keeping the specified order, and place this pile to the left of the Main Board alongside the Map [1]. 6. Place all unused Scroll Cards in a reserve somewhere out of reach from players [1]. 7. Shuffle the 6 Goal Cards, deal 1 to each player, and return the rest to the box [1]. 8. Players must place their Goal Card on the right-most space of their Player Board, then place a White Worker on the top space, the indicated coloured Worker below that, and the indicated secondary Die on the bottom space [1]. 9. Give each player their Starting Scroll Card (which has the same character illustration on its reverse as their Goal Card) and place them faceup above their Player Boards; return any other Starting Scroll Cards to the box [1]. 10. In reverse turn order (counter-clockwise, starting with the player to the right of the First Player Marker), each player selects a pair of Starting Translator and Resource Card, placing 1 Influence on the top-left corner of their chosen Starting Translator, collecting the Resource Card below it, and resolving its icons from top to bottom; as they resolve the card, they flip it over and place it on their Player Board as a Player Aid [1]. 11. If any Translators remain unselected (in games with fewer than 4 players), they are considered Neutral Translators, and all Resource Cards below them should be returned to the box [2].

[1] RULEBOOK Scholars of the South Tigris — Rulebook · p.5 · aim of the game

[2] RULEBOOK Scholars of the South Tigris — Rulebook · p.5 · aim of the game

🔧 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 274 ms · ask 11213 ms · total 11500 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 11500 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 24, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "While they do not move the Neutral Marker, they act as if they would have, just like you moving your Player Marker. As such, they won't target the Scroll Card adjacent to the Neutral Marker, unless they do a full loop around the Map. When Delivering their chosen Scroll Card, they will aim to place i", "headingPath": "solo play", "sharpsignalDocId": 505}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "The game end is triggered when all 4 Caliph Cards have been revealed. At this point the current Round is continued, and then 1 final Round is played (the player seated to the right of the player holding the First Player Marker will have the last turn). If in these final Rounds, the Scroll Card Draw ", "headingPath": "end of game · Dice Sum", "sharpsignalDocId": 505}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "When taking the Travel action, players will be moving their Player Markers in a clockwise direction around the Map. How far they move is determined by their action's value. The colour of their action is not vital. However, it can provide players with a small benefit if they cross over the path match", "headingPath": "Employ", "sharpsignalDocId": 505}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Rather than Working on their turn, players may instead choose to Rest. The only requirement for Resting is that players must have at least 1 Action Card on their Player Board. When choosing to Rest, players must follow these steps, as shown on their Player Aid: Draw and reveal 1 Card from the bottom", "headingPath": "Retiring Neutral Translators · 1. Reveal Bottom Scroll Card · 2. Gain Income", "sharpsignalDocId": 505}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Scholars of the South Tigris deals a lot with colour mixing, and often requires players to 'colour' their actions. The game uses all 3 primary colours and all 3 secondary colours. Because of this, we have taken some additional steps to help aid players with various forms of colour blindness. Here ar", "headingPath": "colour reference · drawing dice", "sharpsignalDocId": 505}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "When it is their turn to chose, players must place 1 of their Influence on the top-left corner of their chosen Starting Translator. After doing so, they must collect the Resource Card below it, and step through its listed icons from top to bottom. As each player resolves their Resource Card, they sh", "headingPath": "aim of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 505}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The final position of the Influence on the Solo Board provides them with a Dice Sum for you to compete against. In this example they have a Dice Sum of 3. Your opponent scores Victory Points for the following: VP from their Dice Sum. 1 VP printed on all Retired Neutral Translators. 2 VP from any Gui", "headingPath": "Dice Sum · Final Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 505}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Follow these steps to complete setup: Decide as a group whether you will play the Casual or Epic version of the game. For first time players, especially at higher player counts, we recommend the Casual version. This does not change any rules. It just removes a few Scroll Cards from the Draw Pile to ", "headingPath": "aim of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 505}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "aim of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 505}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "aim of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 505}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 505 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 505 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 05:59

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 Scholars of the South Tigris — Rulebook (corpus doc 505)	solo play	p.24	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 Scholars of the South Tigris — Rulebook (corpus doc 505)	end of game · Dice Sum	p.20	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 Scholars of the South Tigris — Rulebook (corpus doc 505)	Employ	p.11	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 Scholars of the South Tigris — Rulebook (corpus doc 505)	Retiring Neutral Translators · 1. Reveal Bottom Scroll Card · 2. Gain Income	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 Scholars of the South Tigris — Rulebook (corpus doc 505)	colour reference · drawing dice	p.7	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 Scholars of the South Tigris — Rulebook (corpus doc 505)	aim of the game	p.5	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 Scholars of the South Tigris — Rulebook (corpus doc 505)	Dice Sum · Final Scoring	p.25	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 Scholars of the South Tigris — Rulebook (corpus doc 505)	aim of the game	p.5	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 Scholars of the South Tigris — Rulebook (corpus doc 505)	aim of the game	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Scholars of the South Tigris — Rulebook (corpus doc 505)	aim of the game	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 274 ms · first delta 7961 ms · total 11500 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 274 ms · ask 11213 ms · gateway work 11500 ms · total 11500 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4336
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 470
tok/sec: 135.0 tok/sec — 470 output tokens in 3.481 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 53s 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 436), 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.