RuleSage cited table rulings
← Zombicide: Black Plague

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Zombicide: Black Plaguebg-176189-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps: 1. Choose a Quest [1]. 2. Place the tiles [1]. 3. Place the doors, Objectives, and all tokens as indicated by the Quest [1]. 4. Each player gathers 1 to 6 Survivors for him to play; players sit around the table in any order they choose, forming a single team [1]. 5. Players take one Dashboard for each of their Survivors, placing the Survivor’s ID Card on it, attaching a colored plastic base to the Survivor’s miniature, and taking 5 plastic trackers in the same color [1]. 6. Put aside all Equipment cards with the “Starting Equipment” keyword (a Hammer, a Mana Blast, a Short Bow, and three Short Swords) [1]. 7. Set aside the Equipment cards with the “Vault” keyword (Inferno and Orcish Crossbow) [1]. 8. Deal the Starting Equipment as you see fit amongst Survivors, ensuring each Survivor starts with at least one card; if a Survivor’s starting Skill lists any starting weapons, he receives those cards now [1]. **Quest-Specific Setup Instructions:** * **For Quest 1 (Big Game Hunting):** Put the blue Objective randomly among the red Objectives, face down, and put a Vault artifact randomly in each Vault [2]. * **For Quest 2 (The Black Book):** Put the blue and green Objectives randomly among the red Objectives, face down, and put a Vault artifact randomly in each Vault [3]. * **For Quest 3 (The Shepherds):** Put the blue and green Objectives randomly among the red Objectives, face down, and put a Vault artifact randomly in each Vault [4]. * **For the unnamed Quest (Source 8):** Put aside the Necromancer Zombie cards, put the green Objective randomly among the red Objectives, face down, and put a Walker, a Fatty, and a Runner in the marked Zones [5]. **Playing with 7+ Survivors:** * For each Survivor above the sixth, add 1 additional Starting Equipment card from an expansion to the pool of cards distributed during Setup [6]. * Add 1 additional Zombie Spawn token per 2 Survivors above the sixth (rounded up) and stack these in the same Zones as existing ones [6].

[1] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook · p.6 ·
[2] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook · p.40 ·
[3] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook · p.41 ·
[4] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook · p.42 ·
[5] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook · p.39 ·
[6] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook · p.37 ·
🔧 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 238 ms · ask 15806 ms · total 16057 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 16057 ms
retrieval refs (raw)
[{"page": 6, "score": 0.04741, "snippet": "SETUP 1 . Choose a Quest . 2 . Place the tiles . 3 . Place the doors, Objectives, and all tokens as indicated by the Quest . 4 . Each player gathers 1 to 6 Survivors for him to play . Play- ers sit around the table in any order they choose . As they cooperate against the game, all players form a sin", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "8 . Shuffle the Zombie cards into one deck and the Equip - ment cards into another . Place both decks face down close to the board . 9 . Place the miniatures representing the chosen Survivors on the starting Zone(s) indicated by the Quest . 10 . Each player places his Survivors’ Dashboard(s) in fron", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 56, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "1 FIRST STEP Choose the first player at the beginning of the game . He receives the “first player” token . 2– PLAYERS’ PHASE The first player activates all of his or her Survivors, one after the other, in any order . When he or she’s done, the next player’s Turn begins . Play clockwise . Each Surviv", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Indicate a Spawn Zone and draw a Zombie card . Read the line on the card that corresponds to the color of the Danger Level of the most experienced Survivor still in the game (Blue, Yellow, Orange, or Red) . Place the number and type of Zombies shown . Repeat this for each Spawn Zone . Always begin w", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Many Quests feature colored doors . Usually, these cannot be opened until some conditions are met, like finding an Objective of the matching color . Read the Quest description to know more . spaWning in buildings Opening a closed building for the first time reveals all the Zombies inside all rooms o", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "• If another Double Spawn card is then drawn, apply it to the following Spawn Zone or building Zone . • If you draw two Double Spawn cards on the same Zone, the next Zone receives four cards’ worth of Zombies! • If the Double Spawn card is drawn for the last Spawn Zone or building Zone, use it for a", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030018, "snippet": "CHAPTERS GAME COMPONENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 GET MEDIEVAL! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 SETUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 GAME OVERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 THE BASICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 39, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "speCial rules • Setup: - Put aside the Necromancer Zombie cards . - Put the green Objective randomly among the red Objectives, face down . - Put a Walker, a Fatty and a Runner in the marked Zones . • I don’t think so. Abominations are considered as Fatties when reading Zombie cards . • What’s this? ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}]
citations (raw)
[{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 40, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 41, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 42, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 39, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}, {"page": 37, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 371}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 371 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 371 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 09:20

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371) p.6 0.04741 (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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371) 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
#3 RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371) p.56 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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371) p.25 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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371) p.20 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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371) p.27 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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371) p.2 0.030018 (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 Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371) p.39 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

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371) p.6 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371) p.40 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371) p.41 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371) p.42 no quote on the wire
[5] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371) p.39 no quote on the wire
[6] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Black Plague — Rulebook (corpus doc 371) p.37 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 238 ms · first delta 12527 ms · total 16057 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 238 ms · ask 15806 ms · gateway work 16057 ms · total 16057 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3851
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
487
tok/sec
140.7 tok/sec — 487 output tokens in 3.461 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 15s 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched
SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question)
setup

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 300), 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.