Ruling — Fire in the Lake

You asked

What needs to be placed on the table before the first round begins?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: Fire in the Lakebg-144189-en-1e

The answerer couldn't ground a confident answer in the rulebook. The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK Fire in the Lake — Rulebook · p.13 · 8.1 Non-Player Sequence of Play

8.1.3 Selecting Spaces. When executing Operations and Special Activities by the priorities on the Non-Player flowcharts (and per 8.4 to 8.8), select spaces for each listed priority in order until there are no more legal candidate spaces or actions for that priority, or until any space limit within t

RULEBOOK Fire in the Lake — Rulebook · p.6 · 2.3.4 Options for Eligible Factions.

That Faction is Eligible, AND The red pre-condition on the card is met, AND The 1st Eligible Faction has not yet done anything, AND No Coup is showing as the next card (2.3.9). PROCEDURE: The Faction interrupts the usual Sequence of Play by placing its Pivotal Event card on the played Event card and

RULEBOOK Fire in the Lake — Rulebook · p.13 · 8.2 Random Spaces

If several candidate Provinces or Cities have equal priority for a Non-player Operation, Special Activity, or Event, select one using the Random Spaces Map: Roll two dice in succession: the first die thrown indicates the 'tens', the second die the 'ones' (Example: '2' followed by '6' is 26, Quang Tr

RULEBOOK Fire in the Lake — Rulebook · p.5 · 2.3.4 Options for Eligible Factions.

Any Faction that executed an Operation (including a Limited Operation) or Event to the 'Ineligible' box (unless otherwise specified by the Event; see also Free Operations, 3.1.2). PLAY NOTE: Some Events (5.0) will enable the executing Faction to remain Eligible or render other Factions Ineligible th

RULEBOOK Fire in the Lake — Rulebook · p.5 · 1.9 Victory Markers · 2.1 Set Up · 2.2 Start

Similarly track with markers on the edge track the following totals that affect victory (7.0). Total Support (1.6.2) plus the number of US Troops and Bases Available (1.4.1). Total Population Controlled by the NVA plus the number of NVA Bases on the map (1.7). Total Population Controlled by the COIN

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
corpus profile: live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 249 ms · ask 13863 ms · total 127334 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 113211 ms · generation 14123 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 13, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "8.1.3 Selecting Spaces. When executing Operations and Special Activities by the priorities on the Non-Player flowcharts (and per 8.4 to 8.8), select spaces for each listed priority in order until there are no more legal candidate spaces or actions for that priority, or until any space limit within t", "headingPath": "8.1 Non-Player Sequence of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 548}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "That Faction is Eligible, AND The red pre-condition on the card is met, AND The 1st Eligible Faction has not yet done anything, AND No Coup is showing as the next card (2.3.9). PROCEDURE: The Faction interrupts the usual Sequence of Play by placing its Pivotal Event card on the played Event card and", "headingPath": "2.3.4 Options for Eligible Factions.", "sharpsignalDocId": 548}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "If several candidate Provinces or Cities have equal priority for a Non-player Operation, Special Activity, or Event, select one using the Random Spaces Map: Roll two dice in succession: the first die thrown indicates the 'tens', the second die the 'ones' (Example: '2' followed by '6' is 26, Quang Tr", "headingPath": "8.2 Random Spaces", "sharpsignalDocId": 548}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Any Faction that executed an Operation (including a Limited Operation) or Event to the 'Ineligible' box (unless otherwise specified by the Event; see also Free Operations, 3.1.2). PLAY NOTE: Some Events (5.0) will enable the executing Faction to remain Eligible or render other Factions Ineligible th", "headingPath": "2.3.4 Options for Eligible Factions.", "sharpsignalDocId": 548}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Similarly track with markers on the edge track the following totals that affect victory (7.0). Total Support (1.6.2) plus the number of US Troops and Bases Available (1.4.1). Total Population Controlled by the NVA plus the number of NVA Bases on the map (1.7). Total Population Controlled by the COIN", "headingPath": "1.9 Victory Markers · 2.1 Set Up · 2.2 Start", "sharpsignalDocId": 548}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Choose a scenario from the next two pages and any No Non-Player (1.5), Deception/Handicap (7.3), 1-Player difficulty (8.9), or Period Events (right) options desired. Prepare the deck per the instructions below. Give each player a Faction foldout and assign Factions to players (1.5). If Non-players (", "headingPath": "General · Deck Preparation · Period Events Option · Short: 1965-1967 · Medium: 1968-1972 · Full: 1964-1972", "sharpsignalDocId": 548}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "If both LoCs and other spaces are equal candidates, choose LoCs last. If several LoCs are candidates, choose: First that with the highest Econ. Then that adjacent to a Random City (8.2). Then with an equal chance die roll. Sabotage only unSabotaged LoCs.", "headingPath": "8.3 Random LoCs", "sharpsignalDocId": 548}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "If playing a Coup Card, first carry out any immediate instructions on the card. Then place the card in the box marked 'RVN Leader' (see below). Finally, conduct a Coup Round (6.0), marking each phase on the Sequence of Play with the 'Coup Card' marker. 2.4.1 RVN Leader. The top (most recently played", "headingPath": "2.4 Coup Card", "sharpsignalDocId": 548}]
citations (raw): []
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 548 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 548 boosted
answered-before recall: no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough
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 08:04

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 Fire in the Lake — Rulebook (corpus doc 548)	8.1 Non-Player Sequence of Play	p.13	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 Fire in the Lake — Rulebook (corpus doc 548)	2.3.4 Options for Eligible Factions.	p.6	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 Fire in the Lake — Rulebook (corpus doc 548)	8.2 Random Spaces	p.13	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 Fire in the Lake — Rulebook (corpus doc 548)	2.3.4 Options for Eligible Factions.	p.5	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 Fire in the Lake — Rulebook (corpus doc 548)	1.9 Victory Markers · 2.1 Set Up · 2.2 Start	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 Fire in the Lake — Rulebook (corpus doc 548)	General · Deck Preparation · Period Events Option · Short: 1965-1967 · Medium: 1968-1972 · Full: 1964-1972	p.26	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 Fire in the Lake — Rulebook (corpus doc 548)	8.3 Random LoCs	p.14	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))	254
#8	RULEBOOK Fire in the Lake — Rulebook (corpus doc 548)	2.4 Coup Card	p.6	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

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 249 ms · first delta 14010 ms · total 127334 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 113211 ms · retrieval 249 ms · ask 13863 ms · gateway work 14123 ms · total 127334 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4552
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 9
tok/sec: 136.4 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.066 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 58s 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: ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
abstain rationale: I don't have enough information.
the answerer's own words, verbatim — hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped

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 480), 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.