Ruling — Star Wars: Imperial Assault

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Star Wars: Imperial Assaultbg-164153-en-1e

Depending on the type of mission, the setup process differs:

Campaign Setup

1. Choose Player Roles: One player is chosen as the Imperial player, and all others are Rebel players.[1]

2. Choose Heroes: Each Rebel player chooses one Hero sheet and places that hero's Class deck and figure in his play area.[1]

3. Retrieve Items: Each Rebel player retrieves any Item cards without a cost from his Class deck and places them faceup in his play area.[1]

4. Claim Rewards: If playing a 2-hero game, each hero claims a 'Legendary' Reward card; if playing a 3-hero game, each hero claims a 'Heroic' Reward card.[1]

5. Choose Imperial Class: The Imperial player chooses an Imperial Class deck and places the basic card (the card without an experience cost) faceup in his play area.[1]

6. Build Agenda Deck: The Imperial player builds his deck of Agenda cards.[1]

7. Build Side Mission Deck: Rebel players build the Side Mission deck.[1]

Campaign Mission Setup

1. Assemble Map: The Imperial player assembles the mission's map using map tiles and places all tokens on the map as indicated in the diagram.[2]

2. Prepare Threat and Round Dial: The Imperial player sets the threat dial to zero and the round dial to one.[2]

3. Deployment and Setup: The Imperial player sorts all Deployment cards as listed in the mission rules' 'Deployment and Setup' box, which may include:

* Placing listed Initial Groups faceup on the table.[2]

* Placing listed Reserved Groups in a facedown pile.[2]

* Choosing a number of Open Groups to place in his hand.[2]

* Following any Special Setup rules.[2]

4. Deploy Imperial Figures: The Imperial player deplumes figures on the map as indicated in the diagram.[2]

5. Prepare Components: Place all dice, the Condition and Supply decks, damage tokens, strain tokens, and condition tokens within easy reach of all players.[2]

6. Read Mission Briefing: The Imperial player reads the 'Mission Briefing' section of the mission's rules aloud to all players.[2]

7. Deploy Rebel Figures: Rebel players place all Rebel figures in the space containing and as close as possible to the entrance token, choosing their own deployment order.[2]

8. Choose Items: Before placing figures, Rebel players choose the Item cards they will bring to the mission (each hero may bring up to 1 Armor, 2 Weapons, and 3 Equipment).[2]

9. Deploy Allies: After deploying hero figures, Rebel players may choose to deploy an ally they have gained as a reward.[2][3]

10. Prepare Activation Tokens: Each hero receives one activation token and places it ready (green side faceup) on his Hero sheet.[2]

Skirmish Mission Setup

1. Bring Armies and Command Cards: Both players simultaneously place their Deployment cards faceup in their play areas, then each player shuffles his deck of 15 Command cards and places it by his Deployment cards.[4]

2. Determine Initiative: The player with the lowest total cost of Deployment cards chooses which player begins the game with the initiative token (ties are determined randomly).[4]

3. Determine and set up Skirmish Mission: The player with initiative shuffles his deck of Skirmish Mission cards and draws one card.[4]

4. Build Map: Players refer to the mission's diagram to build the map and place tokens on it as shown, placing only the 'A' or 'B' tokens that match the Skirmish Mission card's letter.[4]

5. Deploy Units: The player with initiative chooses either the red or blue deployment zone shown on the diagram and deploys all his figures there; the opponent then deploys all their figures in the other zone.[4]

6. Draw Command Cards: Each player draws three cards from his Command deck.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Star Wars: Imperial Assault — Rulebook · p.7 · campaIGn setup

[2] RULEBOOK Star Wars: Imperial Assault — Rulebook · p.18 · CAmpAign mission seTup

[3] RULEBOOK Star Wars: Imperial Assault — Rulebook · p.5 · VillAins · reBel Allies

[4] RULEBOOK Star Wars: Imperial Assault — Rulebook · p.18 · skirmish mission seTup

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 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 253 ms · ask 15674 ms · total 15935 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 15935 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 7, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "Before starting a new campaign, perform the following steps. Choose Player Roles: Players choose one player to take on the role of the Imperial player. All other players are Rebel players. Players retain these roles for the entirety of the campaign. Choose Heroes: Each Rebel player chooses one Hero ", "headingPath": "campaIGn setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 284}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "To setup a campaign mission, perform the following steps. Assemble Map: The Imperial player assembles the mission's map using map tiles as shown in the Campaign Guide. He places all tokens on the map as indicated in the diagram. Prepare Threat and Round Dial: The Imperial player sets the threat dial", "headingPath": "CAmpAign mission seTup", "sharpsignalDocId": 284}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "To set up a skirmish mission, perform the following steps. Bring Armies and Command Cards: Both players simultaneously place their Deployment cards faceup in their play areas. Then each player shuffles his deck of 15 Command cards and places it by his Deployment cards. Determine Initiative: The play", "headingPath": "skirmish mission seTup", "sharpsignalDocId": 284}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.045956, "snippet": "The Imperial player deploys figures throughout the course of every mission. The 'Deployment and Setup' box in the mission's rules lists which figures the Imperial player can deploy throughout the mission (see 'Mission Setup' on page 18). Deployment location is determined by named tiles or icons, suc", "headingPath": "CAmpAign deploymenT · skirmish deploymenT", "sharpsignalDocId": 284}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "Forced missions are resolved between campaign stages. After resolving a forced mission, players should perform the 'postmission cleanup' step of a Mission Stage. Then they resolve the next available stage of the campaign. -If the mission occurs immediately after another mission is resolved, they res", "headingPath": "forCed missions · skirmish missions · mIssIon setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 284}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "During a campaign, players resolve a series of story and side missions. The rules and maps for each mission are found in the Campaign Guide. During each Mission Stage, the heroes choose one active mission to resolve. -The campaign log lists the type of active mission the heroes can choose during eac", "headingPath": "sTory And side missions · Building the Side MiSSion deck · forCed missions", "sharpsignalDocId": 284}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "During a campaign, most missions provide the Imperial player certain Deployment cards called initial groups. The figures for these groups are placed according to the map in the mission's diagram. These cards are not part of his hand and are placed faceup at the start of the mission. When the last fi", "headingPath": "InItIal Groups · InItIatIve", "sharpsignalDocId": 284}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "A ready figure is any figure that is eligible to be activated. Any card that is not exhausted is ready and may be exhausted to trigger certain abilities. A hero is ready if he has at least one ready (green) activation token on his Hero sheet. When a Deployment card is ready, all figures of that card", "headingPath": "ready · rebel upGrade staGe", "sharpsignalDocId": 284}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "campaIGn setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 284}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CAmpAign mission seTup", "sharpsignalDocId": 284}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "VillAins · reBel Allies", "sharpsignalDocId": 284}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "skirmish mission seTup", "sharpsignalDocId": 284}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 284 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 284 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 0.91821 of 3032 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 27, 2026 16:04 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: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	campaIGn setup	p.7	0.048412 (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: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	CAmpAign mission seTup	p.18	0.047643 (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: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	skirmish mission seTup	p.18	0.046898 (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: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	CAmpAign deploymenT · skirmish deploymenT	p.11	0.045956 (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: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	forCed missions · skirmish missions · mIssIon setup	p.18	0.045724 (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: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	sTory And side missions · Building the Side MiSSion deck · forCed missions	p.17	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
#7	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	InItIal Groups · InItIatIve	p.14	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
#8	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	ready · rebel upGrade staGe	p.21	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 60 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: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	campaIGn setup	p.7	#1	0.048412 (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: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	CAmpAign mission seTup	p.18	#2	0.047643 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	command cards · component lImItatIons	p.8	#10	0.028191 (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: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	InItIal Groups · InItIatIve	p.14	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	VillAins · reBel Allies	p.5	#51	0.009259 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	forCed missions · skirmish missions · mIssIon setup	p.18	#5	0.045724 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	CAmpAign deploymenT · skirmish deploymenT	p.11	#4	0.045956 (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: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	skirmish mission seTup	p.18	#3	0.046898 (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: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	campaIGn setup	p.7	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	CAmpAign mission seTup	p.18	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	VillAins · reBel Allies	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: Imperial Assault — Rulebook (corpus doc 284)	skirmish mission seTup	p.18	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 253 ms · first delta 9329 ms · total 15935 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 253 ms · ask 15674 ms · gateway work 15935 ms · total 15935 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3350
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 854
tok/sec: 130.8 tok/sec — 854 output tokens in 6.527 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 45s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 3s 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 208), 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.