You asked
How do I setup the game?
Answered counted as answeredAsked with: Finspanbg-436126-en-1e
1. Place all egg/young and school tokens within reach of all players to form the general supply [1]. 2. Shuffle the 10 starter fish cards and place them face down near the general supply [1]. 3. Shuffle the deck of 125 fish cards and place it face down next to the starter fish cards [1]. 4. Place the achievement board near the general supply; use side A for first-time players, otherwise use either side [1]. 5. If using side B of the achievement board, randomly select a Week 1 tile, a Week 2 tile, and a Week 3 tile and place them on the achievement board, ensuring that the tiles' week-number lines match the lines on the board [1]. 6. Place the coral tokens in the general supply [2]. 7. If using side B of the achievement board, randomly select 1 tile per matching slot, ensuring the chosen tiles' week-number lines match the lines on the board [2]. 8. Each player places either side of any coral reef overlay on their ocean mat, covering the existing twilight zone [2]. 9. Each player places an ocean mat (their 'ocean') in front of them [3]. 10. Choose a player color and gain the 6 divers of that color [3]. 11. Place 1 egg token on each of the 2 starting egg spaces (printed on forage fish) in your ocean [3]. 12. Place 1 young token on the starting young space [3]. 13. Gain 2 random starter fish cards and place them face up in a vertical line beside your ocean mat to form your hand, returning any unused starter fish cards to the box [3]. 14. Draw 3 fish cards from the deck and add them face up to your hand [3]. 15. Randomly select the first player and give them the first-player token [3]. 16. Each player gains a Sharks & Reefs player aid [2].
Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings
🔧 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 276 ms · ask 9988 ms · total 10273 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 10273 ms
- retrieval refs (raw)
- [{"page": 2, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "1 Place all egg/young and school tokens within reach of all players to form the general supply. 2 Shuffle the 10 starter fish cards and place them face down near the general supply. These 10 cards have dark gray corners and a different back than other fish cards. 3 Shuffle the deck of 125 fish cards", "headingPath": "SETUP GLOBAL COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032002, "snippet": "E F 3", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.031498, "snippet": "A Place an ocean mat (your 'ocean') in front of you. B Choose a player color and gain the 6 divers of that color. C Place 1 egg token on each of the 2 starting egg spaces (printed on forage fish) in your ocean. Forage fish are the three fish printed on your ocean mat. D Place 1 young token on the st", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030777, "snippet": "Go to stonemaiergames.com/games/finspan/rules-faq", "headingPath": "WANT TO WATCH A HOW-TO-PLAY VIDEO OR READ THE FAQ?", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03009, "snippet": "Each turn, you will either play a fish or dive into your ocean. You will take 6 turns during each of the 4 weeks (a total of 24 turns per player during the entire game). You will typically spend the beginning of the game playing low-cost fish cards and laying eggs, the middle of the game playing hig", "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029644, "snippet": "Playing a fish involves choosing a fish card from your hand, paying its cost, and placing it on your ocean mat. Thematically, this represents you discovering this fish in an area of your ocean. Follow these steps to play a fish card: PLACE A DIVER. Place an available diver in the gray box at the upp", "headingPath": "PLAY A FISH CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.028814, "snippet": "Designed by David Gordon and Michael O'Connell Art by Ana María Martínez, Catalina Martínez, and Mesa Schumacher with support from Natalia Rojas Developed by Elizabeth Hargrave 1-5 players · 45-60 minutes · ages 10+ · competitive You are a marine researcher seeking to find and observe an array of aq", "headingPath": "A WINGSPAN GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.028405, "snippet": "Post it on the Finspan Facebook group, on BoardGameGeek, or in the Finspan channel of the Stonemaier Games Discord server: stonemaiergames.com/discord", "headingPath": "HAVE A QUESTION WHILE PLAYING OR A STORY TO SHARE?", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}]
- citations (raw)
- [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP GLOBAL COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GLOBAL & PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 55}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 54}]
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 54 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 54 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 11:45
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 Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) | SETUP GLOBAL COMPONENTS | p.2 | 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) | 300 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) | PLAYER SETUP | p.3 | 0.032002 (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)) | 5 |
| #3 | RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) | PLAYER SETUP | p.2 | 0.031498 (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 Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) | WANT TO WATCH A HOW-TO-PLAY VIDEO OR READ THE FAQ? | p.12 | 0.030777 (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)) | 49 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) | GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW | p.4 | 0.03009 (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 Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) | PLAY A FISH CARD | p.4 | 0.029644 (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 Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) | A WINGSPAN GAME | p.1 | 0.028814 (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 Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) | HAVE A QUESTION WHILE PLAYING OR A STORY TO SHARE? | p.12 | 0.028405 (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)) | 150 |
chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited
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.
| # | document | heading | page | quote chars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [1] | RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) | SETUP GLOBAL COMPONENTS | p.2 | no quote on the wire |
| [2] | RULEBOOK Finspan — Sharks & Reefs Expansion (corpus doc 55) | GLOBAL & PLAYER SETUP | p.2 | no quote on the wire |
| [3] | RULEBOOK Finspan — Rulebook (corpus doc 54) | PLAYER SETUP | p.2 | no quote on the wire |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 276 ms · first delta 7115 ms · total 10273 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 276 ms · ask 9988 ms · gateway work 10273 ms · total 10273 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 1910
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 429
- tok/sec
- 138.6 tok/sec — 429 output tokens in 3.096 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
- 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
- SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
- matched words (in the normalized question)
-
setup
errata registry — what the gate above had to match against
this game registers NO errata cards (edition 5), 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.