You asked
How do I setup the game?
Answered counted as answered1. Choose your Adversary before Setup begins, as some may change how the game is set up [1][2]. 2. If everyone is playing for the first time, do not use a Blight Card (use the pre-printed space), and do not use an Adversary or Scenario [3]. 3. Randomly pick one Island Board per player and arrange them to form the Island [4]. 4. Populate the Island Boards with Invaders, Dahan, and Blight as indicated by icons in each land [4]. 5. Shuffle the Minor and Major Power Decks and place them near the board with room for discard piles; set aside all Minor and Major Powers listed on the card [3][4]. 6. Place the Energy, Cities, Towns, Explorers, and Dahan near the board so all players can reach them [4]. 7. Each player takes all Spirit Presence and Single-Turn Effect Markers of one color [5]. 8. Each player chooses a Spirit by taking a Spirit Panel and its four Unique Power Cards as their starting hand [5]. 9. New players should choose a low-complexity Spirit and take its Power Progression Card [5]. 10. Each player starts on a different Island Board and follows the specific instructions on the back of their Spirit Panel, which includes putting Presence into one or more lands on their starting board [5]. 11. Flip the Spirit Panels and place all remaining Presence onto the dashed circles on the Presence Tracks [5]. 12. (Optional) For a slightly easier game, give all Spirits a bonus Growth at the end of Setup; for a moderately easier game, omit the Invaders' initial Explore at the end of Setup [6]. 13. To finalize the Setup, reveal the top card of the Invader Deck, have the Invaders Explore in that land type, and place the card face-up in the 'Build' Action Space [7].
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)
- gemma4:12b think:false 4eb23ef187e2
- timings
- search 220 ms · ask 12378 ms · total 12607 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 12607 ms
- retrieval refs (raw)
- [{"page": 21, "score": 0.03101, "snippet": "If you're getting crushed and it's no fun: For a slightly easier game, give all Spirits a bonus Growth at the end of Setup. For a moderately easier game, omit the Invaders' initial Explore at the end of Setup. For a much easier game, do both. Note: Two Blight rules can make the game extremely punish", "headingPath": "GAME TOO HARD?", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030118, "snippet": "Set aside all the Minor and Major Powers listed on the card. During the game, when you gain a new Power Card, add the next Power Card on the list to your hand instead of using the standard method. If everyone is playing the game for the first time, also: Don't use a Blight Card. Instead, use the pre", "headingPath": "TABLE OF CONTENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030018, "snippet": "Each player takes all Spirit Presence and Single-Turn Effect Markers of one color, then chooses a Spirit by taking a Spirit Panel and its four Unique Power Cards, which is their starting hand. New players should choose a low-complexity Spirit and take its Power Progression Card, as described on page", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029572, "snippet": "PLAYER'S HAND PLAYER'S HAND 4-PLAYER GAME SETUP (Not including an Adversary or Scenario.) DISCARD PLAYER'S DISCARD PLAYER'S AREA PLAY AREA PLAY FEAR DECK VICTORY WHEN REVEALED EARNED FEAR CARDS FEAR DISCARD SPIRIT PHASE Growth Gain Energy Choose Powers DISCARD DESTROYING A PER PLAYER GENERATES 1 DES", "headingPath": "INVADERS' STARTING ACTION", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.02904, "snippet": "Invaders slowly but inexorably Blight the land. A certain amount of Blight is normal in nature such as damage from a forest fire - but too much will overwhelm the Island. When you add Blight to the Island during play, take it from the Blight Card - which starts Healthy side up - or Blight Space on t", "headingPath": "BLIGHT", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.028778, "snippet": "The Thematic Boards have a fixed layout relative to each other. Y ou can use any of them that you want - but for the definitive geography at each player count: 1 Player: Use Northeast. 2 Players: Use West and East, touching on the side opposite the Ocean. 3 Players: Use West and East as above, plus ", "headingPath": "THEMATIC BOARD SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.028405, "snippet": "As you play Power Cards, put the required Energy on top of them. This will help you remember to pay for them. When you resolve a Power Card, you can push it forward or turn it sideways to note that it has been used. Don't discard it until end of turn, because you may be making use of its Elements fo", "headingPath": "STREAMLINING GAMEPLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.028324, "snippet": "Excellent first Adversary with few new rules; most of the changes occur during game Setup. Speed is the name of the game: the Invaders do everything at a faster tempo. Cards with 2 land types come up much earlier, often before the Spirits have had time to prepare. This Adversary is notably harder fo", "headingPath": "THE KINGDOM OF BRANDENBURG-PRUSSIA", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}]
- citations (raw)
- [{"page": 22, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ADVERSARIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MAKING THE INVADER DECK", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TABLE OF CONTENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE ISLAND AND SUPPLY", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 21, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME TOO HARD?", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "INVADERS' STARTING ACTION", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}]
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it); rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it)
- 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
- Oct 22, 2026 01:16
retrieval — what the search arm returned
score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. How many arms fused this ruling was NOT RECORDED (it predates the boost trail, ran on the path that stored none, or stored one that could not be read), and the ceiling depends on that count (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60): 2 arms top out at 0.03279; 3 arms top out at 0.04918. So a score above 0.03279 here is not an anomaly: it is arithmetic proof a boost arm voted, and the measured band 0.016–0.033 (taken on two-arm asks) is what does not apply. 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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | GAME TOO HARD? | p.21 | 0.03101 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | TABLE OF CONTENTS | p.3 | 0.030118 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #3 | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | PLAYER SETUP | p.6 | 0.030018 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | INVADERS' STARTING ACTION | p.7 | 0.029572 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | BLIGHT | p.15 | 0.02904 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #6 | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | THEMATIC BOARD SETUP | p.23 | 0.028778 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #7 | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | STREAMLINING GAMEPLAY | p.20 | 0.028405 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | THE KINGDOM OF BRANDENBURG-PRUSSIA | p.22 | 0.028324 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | ADVERSARIES | p.22 | no quote on the wire |
| [2] | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | MAKING THE INVADER DECK | p.6 | no quote on the wire |
| [3] | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | TABLE OF CONTENTS | p.3 | no quote on the wire |
| [4] | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | THE ISLAND AND SUPPLY | p.6 | no quote on the wire |
| [5] | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | PLAYER SETUP | p.6 | no quote on the wire |
| [6] | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | GAME TOO HARD? | p.21 | no quote on the wire |
| [7] | RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) | INVADERS' STARTING ACTION | p.6 | no quote on the wire |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 220 ms · first delta n/a · total 12607 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 220 ms · ask 12378 ms · gateway work 12607 ms · total 12607 ms
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 34s ago)
- stream path
- not recorded — this ruling predates the stream-path column (V41)
- 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
- SERVED — setup-shaped and this game's approved setup checklist is offered above
- 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 7), 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.