Ruling — Star Wars: Rebellion

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Star Wars: Rebellionbg-187645-en-1e

1. Choose Factions and Gather Components: Players choose who will control the Imperials and who will control the Rebels.[1] Players take their faction's plastic miniatures, leaders, loyalty markers, faction sheet, mission cards, and action cards, placing these components in front of them.[1] In a Team Game, players choose who will be the Admiral or the General for their faction and use the 'Team Game' side of their faction sheet.[1] (In a 3-player Team Game, the single Rebel player uses the 'Team Game' side of his faction sheet and controls both the Admiral and General roles).[1]

2. Place Starting Leaders: Each player takes his four leaders that do not have a recruit icon and places them in the 'Leader Pool' space of his faction sheet; leaders with recruit icons are placed near the game board and cannot be added to the leader pool until later in the game.[1] In a Team Game, the Admiral and General take their two starting leaders and place them in their leader pool.[1]

3. Prepare Game Board and Time Track: Place both halves of the game board next to each other in the center of the play area, then place the time marker on the first space of the time track and the reputation marker on space '14' of the time track.[1]

4. Prepare Objective Deck: Sort objective cards into three piles according to the number on each card back (I, II, or III) and shuffle each pile individually.[1] Place pile III on the 'Objectives' space of the game board, followed by pile II, and then pile I on top to create the objective deck.[1] The Rebel player draws one objective card (in a Team Game, the Rebel General draws the objective card).[1][2]

5. Prepare Action Decks: Each player takes all of his action cards that have a recruit icon and shuffles them to create his action deck, placing the deck facedown next to his faction sheet on the side labeled 'Action Deck'.[1][2] Additionally, each player receives two random starting action cards (those without a recruit icon) and places them facedown near his faction sheet; all other starting action cards are returned to the game box.[3][4] (In a Team Game, each team receives two random cards and gives them to the player who controls the leader shown on the card; if no leader is shown, either player may use it).[3][4]

6. Prepare Tactic Decks, Markers, and Dice: Shuffle the space tactic and ground tactic decks individually and place them within easy reach of all players, then take all remaining markers and dice and place them nearby.[2]

7. Prepare Mission Cards: Players take their mission cards and sort them as follows:

* Starting Missions: Each player takes his four starting mission cards (identified by an arrow at the bottom of the card) and sets them aside.[4][2]

* Projects: The Imperial player takes the project cards (identified by a white star in a blue circle), shuffles them together, and places the deck facedown on the 'Projects' space of the game board.[4][2]

* Remaining Missions: Each player takes his remaining mission cards and shuffles them to create his mission deck, placed facedown next to his faction sheet on the side labeled 'Mission Deck'.[4][2]

8. Place Starting Units and Loyalty: Shuffle the probe deck and reveal cards until three Rebel systems and five Imperial systems have been revealed.[2] Place a Rebel loyalty marker in each of the three Rebel systems, and place a subjugation marker in each of the first two Imperial systems drawn and an Imperial loyalty marker in each of the other three Imperial systems drawn.[2] Return the five probe cards showing the starting Imperial system to the game box and shuffle all other probe cards back into the probe deck.[2]

* The Imperial player receives 3 Star Destroyers, 3 Assault Carriers, 12 TIE Fighters, 12 Stormtroopers, 5 AT-STs, 1 AT-AT, and 1 Death Star and places them in any systems that have an Imperial loyalty marker or subjugation marker, ensuring at least one ground unit is in each Imperial system (in a Team Game, the Admiral decides where to place these units).[2]

* The Rebel player receives 1 Corellian Corvette, 1 Rebel Transport, 2 X-wings, 2 Y-wings, 6 Rebel Troopers, and 2 Airspeeders, placing them on the 'Rebel Base' space and/or any one Rebel or neutral system (in a Team Game, the Admiral decides where to place these units).[4][2]

9. Choose Base Location: The Rebel player secretly chooses one card from the probe deck and places it facedown under the Rebel base 'Location'

[1] RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook · p.15 · APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook · p.15 · APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook · p.2 · ACTION CARDS

[4] RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook · p.15 · APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP

So says the rulebook. So plays the table.

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 102 ms · ask 7673 ms · total 7779 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 7779 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 15, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "This section of the Rules Reference contains the complete rules for setting up a game of Star Wars: Rebellion . These rules include the advanced rules found in the back of the Learn to Play booklet. After players have played their first game, they should follow the setup rules on this page for all f", "headingPath": "APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "-Team Game: The Admiral decides where to place starting units. III The Rebel player receives 1 Corellian Corvette, 1 Rebel Transport, 2 X-wings, 2 Y-wings, 6 Rebel T roopers, and 2 Airspeeders. He can place these units on the 'Rebel Base' space and/or any one Rebel or neutral system. -Team Game: The", "headingPath": "APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "Then the Rebel player draws one objective card. Team Game: The Rebel General draws the objective card. 5 . Prepare Action Decks: Each player takes all of his action cards that have a recruit icon and shuffles them to create his action deck. He places the deck facedown next to his faction sheet on th", "headingPath": "APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "He takes these units from the supply and places them on his build queue, in the space matching the number to the left of the resource icon. -Team Game: Only each team's Admiral builds new units during this step. 6 . Deploy Units: Starting with the Rebel player, each player slides all units one space", "headingPath": "REFRESH PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Activating a system using a leader is how players move their units and initiate combat during the Command Phase. T o activate a system, follow these steps: 1 . Place Leader: The player takes a leader from his leader pool and places it in any system. A leader that does not have tactic values cannot a", "headingPath": "ACTIVATING SYSTEMS", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The 'Rapid Mobilization' mission card allows the Rebel player to establish a new base. T o do so, the Rebel player draws the top four cards of the probe deck. He may choose one of those cards to become the new base location. If he chooses a new base location, he reveals the old base's probe card and", "headingPath": "ESTABLISHING A NEW BASE · REBEL SYSTEMS", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "During the Refresh Phase, players perform cleanup steps in preparation for the next game round: 1 . Retrieve Leaders: Players return all their leaders from the game board to their leader pools. If a leader is still on a mission card, it returns to the leader pool, and the card returns to its owner's", "headingPath": "REFRESH PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "When a player moves units to a system that contains his opponent's units, a combat is resolved. Combat is only resolved if both players have units in the same theater. 1 . Add Leader: If a player does not have a leader with tactic values in the system, he may take one leader from his leader pool and", "headingPath": "COMBAT", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ACTION CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 256}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 256 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 256 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)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.93073 of 3681 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 19, 2026 15:12 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

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 Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	0.048916 (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 Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	0.048131 (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 Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	0.046402 (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 Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	REFRESH PHASE	p.12	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
#5	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	ACTIVATING SYSTEMS	p.2	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 Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	ESTABLISHING A NEW BASE · REBEL SYSTEMS	p.11	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 Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	REFRESH PHASE	p.12	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 Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	COMBAT	p.4	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

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 43 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	#1	0.048916 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	USING THIS REFERENCE · GLOSSARY	p.2	#9	0.029214 (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))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	ACTION CARDS	p.2	#11	0.027971 (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))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	ACTIVATING SYSTEMS	p.2	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	POPULOUS SYSTEMS · PROBE CARDS · PROJECTS · REBEL BASE · MOVING TO OR FROM THE REBEL BASE	p.10	#10	0.028372 (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))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	COMBAT	p.4	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	#2	0.048131 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	#3	0.046402 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	ACTION CARDS	p.2	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Rebellion — Rulebook (corpus doc 256)	APPENDIX: COMPLETE SETUP	p.15	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 102 ms · first delta 2741 ms · total 7779 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 102 ms · ask 7673 ms · gateway work 7779 ms · total 7779 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3676
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 205.6 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 4.980 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 11s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 0s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
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 181), 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.