Ruling — Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game

← Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game

You asked

What is the correct arrangement of components at the very beginning of a game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Gamebg-90137-en-1e

Before playing, set up the game as follows: 1. Prepare the Highlight Deck: Shuffle all Highlight cards and place the deck facedown at one end of the common play area [1]. 2. Choose Teams: One manager gathers one team token from each team and holds them in his cupped hand; without looking, each manager draws one team token to determine which team he manages this season (alternatively, managers may agree to simply choose the teams they want) [1]. 3. Distribute components: Each manager receives one scoreboard (set to '00'), the 12 Starting Player cards for his team, the five Team Upgrade cards for his team, and the three team tokens for his team [1]. 4. Return unused components: Return all Starting Player cards, Team Upgrade cards, and team tokens belonging to unmanaged teams to the game box [1]. 5. Shuffle Team Decks and Team Upgrade Decks: Each manager shuffles his Starting Player cards (the 12 players of his team, not including Star Players) and places them facedown in his play area, leaving room beside this deck for a discard pile; each manager also shuffles his Team Upgrade cards and places them facedown in his play area [1]. 6. Prepare the Star Player Decks: Take all Star Player cards (identified by the ✪ symbol on both sides of the player's name) and separate them into two decks based on their card back—OWA and CWC; shuffle each deck separately and place them facedown near the Highlight deck [1].

[1] RULEBOOK Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game — Rulebook · p.4 · Staff Upgrade Cards · Team Tokens · Cheating Tokens · Ball Tokens · Golden Coin Marker · Scoreboards · …

🔧 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 299 ms · ask 9784 ms · total 10093 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 10093 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 8, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "The Matchup phase is the heart of the game experience. During this phase, teams compete against other teams in head-to-head matchups. Generally speaking, the more matchups a team wins, the more it improves and the more fans it accumulates. Each manager typically has six turns over the course of the ", "headingPath": "Matchup Phase · Types of Matchups", "sharpsignalDocId": 487}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "168 Bridge-sized Cards, consisting of: 72 Starting Player Cards (12 per team) 25 OWA Star Player Cards 25 CWC Star Player Cards 32 Highlight Cards 14 Spike! Magazine Cards 58 Small Cards, consisting of: 30 Team Upgrade Cards 28 Staff Upgrade Cards 55 Cardboard Tokens, consisting of: 18 Team Tokens (", "headingPath": "Component List · The Team Managers' Union · Component Overview · Player Cards · Star Player Cards · Highlight Cards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 487}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "A player can be in three possible states: standing , downed , and injured . Standing: When a manager commits a player to a highlight, he places the Player card perpendicular to the Highlight card in an upright position in his team zone. This position indicates that he is standing. While a player is ", "headingPath": "Player States · Resolving Matchup actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 487}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Refresh Cards Replenish Hand Restock the Cheating Token Pool Reveal the Spike! Magazine Card Roll the Highlights Prepare for Kickoff Commit One Player to a Matchup or Pass (mandatory) Resolve When Played Abilities Use Skills Resolve One Matchup Action (optional) Resolve Matchups Reveal Cheating Toke", "headingPath": "The Maintenance Phase · The Matchup phase · The Scoreboard Phase · Cheating Token Quantities · Cheating (mandatory) · Passing (optional) · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 487}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "sPike! magazine Deck revealeD sPike! magazine carD tHe HigHligHt reel HigHligHt Deck Prepare the Staff Upgrade Deck: Shuffle all Staff Upgrade cards and place them facedown near the Highlight deck. Prepare the Spike! Magazine Deck: Follow these four steps: cHeating token Pool cWc star Player Deck st", "headingPath": "Setup Diagram (4-manager game)", "sharpsignalDocId": 487}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "sure hands: If this player is the ball carrier and becomes downed, he does not drop the ball. throw teaM-Mate: When played, you may move one of your players from this matchup to a different matchup. If the moved player was the ball carrier, give the ball to any of your players at this matchup. Blood", "headingPath": "List of Named Abilities", "sharpsignalDocId": 487}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "This section further explains certain steps of the Scoreboard phase, such as revealing cheating tokens, determining the winner, and collecting payouts. At the beginning of each Scoreboard phase, the first manager flips all assigned cheating tokens at the matchup faceup. Apply revealed cheating token", "headingPath": "Scoreboard Phase in Detail · Reveal Cheating Tokens · Determine Winner · Collect Payouts · Highlight Payouts", "sharpsignalDocId": 487}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "+ + + = = The first manager flips each token, which reveals a Star Power '3' on the 'Chaos Warrior' and one Fan Frenzy and one Ejection on the 'Beastman'. The first manager immediately ejects the 'Beastman' from the matchup (and the Fan Frenzy is discarded without resolving its effect). 'Human Catch", "headingPath": "Resolving the Scoreboard Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 487}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Staff Upgrade Cards · Team Tokens · Cheating Tokens · Ball Tokens · Golden Coin Marker · Scoreboards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 487}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 487 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 487 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 06:09

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 Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 487)	Matchup Phase · Types of Matchups	p.8	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 Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 487)	Component List · The Team Managers' Union · Component Overview · Player Cards · Star Player Cards · Highlight Cards · …	p.3	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 Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 487)	Player States · Resolving Matchup actions	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 Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 487)	The Maintenance Phase · The Matchup phase · The Scoreboard Phase · Cheating Token Quantities · Cheating (mandatory) · Passing (optional) · …	p.20	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 Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 487)	Setup Diagram (4-manager game)	p.5	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 Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 487)	List of Named Abilities	p.17	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 Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 487)	Scoreboard Phase in Detail · Reveal Cheating Tokens · Determine Winner · Collect Payouts · Highlight Payouts	p.13	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 Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 487)	Resolving the Scoreboard Phase	p.14	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 Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 487)	Staff Upgrade Cards · Team Tokens · Cheating Tokens · Ball Tokens · Golden Coin Marker · Scoreboards · …	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 299 ms · first delta 7625 ms · total 10093 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 299 ms · ask 9784 ms · gateway work 10093 ms · total 10093 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3785
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 323
tok/sec: 134.1 tok/sec — 323 output tokens in 2.409 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 59s 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: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: BEGIN — "begin" / "beginning"
matched words (in the normalized question): beginning

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 418), 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.