Ruling — Star Wars: Armada

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Star Wars: Armadabg-163745-en-1e

Star Wars: Armada is a competitive game where players control fleets of ships and squadrons to damage and destroy the opposing fleet.[1] The goal is to destroy as much of the opposing fleet's force as possible by the end of the sixth round.[1] The game ends immediately if all of one player's ships are destroyed.[1]

Complete Setup

1. Define Play Area & Setup Area: Clear a 3' x 6' play area and establish a 3' x 4' setup area by using the length of the range ruler to place setup area markers 1' from the short edges of the play area.[2] (Note: If using only core set components, use a 3' x 3' area for both).[2]

2. Players sit across from each other on the 6' edges of the play area.[2]

3. Gather Components: Each player places ships, squadrons, and cards near their edge and the play area.[2]

4. Set each shield dial and squadron disk to its maximum shield and hull values.[2]

5. Set the activation slider of each squadron to display the blue end of the slider with the icon.[2]

6. Assign appropriate defense tokens to each ship and unique squadron.[2]

7. Gather enough command dials and speed dials for the fleet.[2]

8. Assign ID tokens to ships and squadrons as necessary.[2]

9. Determine Initiative: The player with the lowest total fleet point cost chooses the first player.[2] The first player places the initiative token next to their edge with the icon side faceup.[2] (If tied, flip a coin to decide who chooses).[2]

1. Choose Objective: The first player chooses one of their opponent's three objective cards to be the objective for the game.[2]

10. Place Obstacles: Starting with the second player, players take turns choosing and placing six obstacles into the play area.[2] (Note: If using only components from the box, place only four obstacles).[2] Obstacles must be within the setup area, beyond distance 3 of the play area edges, and beyond distance 1 of each other.[2]

11. Deploy Ships: Starting with the first player, players take turns deploying forces into the setup area.[2]

12. A single deployment turn consists of placing one ship or two squadrons.[2]

13. Ships must be placed within the player's deployment zone (the portion of the setup area at distance 1-3 of their edge).[2]

14. When placing a ship, the player must set its speed dial to a speed available on its speed chart.[2]

15. Squadrons must be placed within distance 1-2 of a friendly ship.[3]

16. If a player has only one squadron remaining when they must place two, they cannot place it until all ships are placed.[3]

17. Prepare Other Components: Shuffle the damage deck and place it next to the play area along with the command tokens, maneuver tool, range ruler, and the round token marked '1'.[3]

18. Clean Up: Remove the setup area markers from the play area.[3]

Gameplay

The game is played over six rounds, and each round consists of the following phases:[1]

1. Command Phase: Players assign command dials to each of their ships.[1]

2. Ship Phase: Players take turns attacking with and moving each of their ships.[1]

3. Squadron Phase: Players take turns attacking with or moving their squadrons.[1]

4. Status Phase: Players ready all defense tokens and flip over the initiative token.[1]

At the end of the Status Phase, the player with the initiative token places the next highest round token next to the play area, and the next round begins.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Star Wars: Armada — Rulebook · p.7 · OBJECT OF THE GAME · PLAYING THE GAME

[2] RULEBOOK Star Wars: Armada — Rulebook · p.23 · COMPLETE SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK Star Wars: Armada — Rulebook · p.23 · COMPLETE SETUP

Rule found, game on.

🔧 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 113 ms · ask 9430 ms · total 16788 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 7242 ms · generation 9546 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 23, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Once players are comfortable with the rules of the game, they should use the complete setup rules. To do so, proceed through the following steps in order (see the 'Complete Setup' diagram on page 24). 1 . Define Play Area & Setup Area: Clear a 3' x 6' play area. Then, establish a 3' x 4' setup area ", "headingPath": "COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 513}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "3 1 USING THIS R ULES REFERENCE This document is a reference for all Star Wars: Armada rules queries. Unlike the Learn to Play booklet, the Rules Reference does not teach players how to play the game. Players should first read the Learn to Play booklet in its entirety and play the learning scenario,", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 513}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "Prepare Squadrons: Rotate each squadron's disk to point to the maximum number on the disk and set each activation slider to display the blue side. © FFG © LFL © FFG © LFL Place Defense Tokens: Place the defense tokens indicated on each ship card next to that ship card. Command Squadron 3 51 55 1 Pla", "headingPath": "LEARNING SCENARIO SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 513}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.044453, "snippet": "To play the learning scenario, set up the game by following the “Learning Scenario Setup” instructions on page 5. After players have a better understanding of the gameplay concepts in Star Wars: Armada, they will be ready to build their own fleets and incorporate the additional game concepts describ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 513}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.043009, "snippet": "A squadron can attack either one enemy squadron or one hull zone of an enemy ship. Squadrons have a 360° firing arc; a squadron can attack any target at distance 1. Squadron attacks are described in 'Attacking' on page 13. During this phase, players ready their exhausted defense tokens by flipping t", "headingPath": "sqUadron attacks · WINNING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 513}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.042534, "snippet": "(see 'Determine Course Example' on the right). Each column on the speed chart corresponds to the speed number at the bottom of the column. A column shows the number of times that each joint can be clicked while going at that speed. Each row corresponds to one of the joints on the maneuver tool; the ", "headingPath": "Determine Course", "sharpsignalDocId": 513}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "During this step, the ship can perform up to two attacks. An attack originates from one hull zone , and the target must be inside that hull zone's firing arc (see 'Firing Arcs and Hull Zones' on page 9). The target of the attack can be either one hull zone of an enemy ship or one or more enemy squad", "headingPath": "attack · execUte maneUver · Determine Course", "sharpsignalDocId": 513}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029437, "snippet": "Star Wars: Armada is a competitive game in which each player controls a fleet of ships and squadrons. By commanding, attacking, and maneuvering with their ships and squadrons, they damage and destroy each other's fleet. The goal is to destroy as much of the opposing fleet's force as possible by the ", "headingPath": "OBJECT OF THE GAME · PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 513}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "OBJECT OF THE GAME · PLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 513}, {"page": 23, "quote": null, "headingPath": "COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 513}, {"page": 23, "quote": null, "headingPath": "COMPLETE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 513}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 513 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 513 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 0.90368 of 2772 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 24, 2026 17:19 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: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)	COMPLETE SETUP	p.23	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)		p.3	0.047379 (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: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)	LEARNING SCENARIO SETUP	p.6	0.045228 (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: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)		p.3	0.044453 (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: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)	sqUadron attacks · WINNING THE GAME	p.11	0.043009 (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: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)	Determine Course	p.9	0.042534 (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: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)	attack · execUte maneUver · Determine Course	p.8	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
#8	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)	OBJECT OF THE GAME · PLAYING THE GAME	p.7	0.029437 (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 49 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: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)	COMPLETE SETUP	p.23	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)	OBJECT OF THE GAME · PLAYING THE GAME	p.7	#8	0.029437 (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: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)		p.3	#2	0.047379 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)	What noW?	p.23	#17	0.025859 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)		p.3	#11	0.028958 (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: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)		p.6	#12	0.027885 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)	COMPLETE SETUP	p.23	#13	0.02748 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)		p.3	#4	0.044453 (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: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)	OBJECT OF THE GAME · PLAYING THE GAME	p.7	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)	COMPLETE SETUP	p.23	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Armada — Rulebook (corpus doc 513)	COMPLETE SETUP	p.23	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 113 ms · first delta 3326 ms · total 16788 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 7242 ms · retrieval 113 ms · ask 9430 ms · gateway work 9546 ms · total 16788 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3230
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 818
tok/sec: 133.4 tok/sec — 818 output tokens in 6.131 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 28s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 7s 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: 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 444), 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.