Ruling — Fury of Dracula (Second Edition)

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Fury of Dracula (Second Edition)bg-20963-en-1e

1. Unfold the board and place it in the center of the playing area, ensuring there is ample space around the edges for the Dracula and Hunter sheets.[1]

2. Place the Dracula sheet near the board on the side closest to the Dracula's Trail area.[1]

3. Place the Hunter sheets clockwise around the table, starting to the left of Dracula and proceeding from lowest to highest turn order (Lord Godalming, Dr. Seward, Dr. Van Helsing, and Mina Harker).[1][2]

4. The Dracula player should sit at the top of the board [3] next to the Dracula sheet.[1]

5. Place the Dracula Vampire marker on the '0' space on the Vampire Track on the board.[1][3]

6. Place the Resolve marker on the '0' space on the Resolve Track on the board.[1]

7. Select one player to be the Dracula player.[1]

8. Give the Dracula player the following items: 1 Dracula Reference Map, 1 Dracula Miniature, 1 Black Dracula Die, 1 Dracula Location Deck (70 cards), 1 Dracula Tactics Deck (8 cards), 1 Agent Tactics Deck (5 cards), 1 Dracula Power Deck (5 cards), 45 Encounter Markers, and 15 Blood Tokens.[1][3]

9. The Dracula player places the 15 Blood tokens on the Blood track on his Dracula sheet.[1][3]

10. The Dracula player places the Dracula miniature at the start of the Dracula's Trail area on the board.[1]

11. The Dracula player shuffles the encounter markers facedown or places them in an opaque container to create the encounter pool, then draws five encounter markers at random to form his encounter hand.[1][3]

12. The Dracula player ensures the Location deck is in proper numerical/alphabetical order without shuffling it.[1]

13. Assign Hunters to players: in a two-player game, one player is Dracula and the other controls all four Hunters; in a three-player game, each Hunter player controls two Hunters; in a four-player game, two Hunter players each control one Hunter and the third controls two (or the extra is communal); in a five-player game, each Hunter player controls one Hunter.[1]

14. Each Hunter player takes: 1 Health Marker, 1 Hunter Miniature, and 1 Hunter Tactics Deck (3 Item cards with the word 'Basic' under their title).[4][3]

15. Each Hunter places a Health marker on the maximum Health value on their Hunter sheet (12 for Lord Godalming, 10 for Dr. Seward, and 8 for Van Helsing or Mina Harker).[4][3]

16. The Hunter player places the appropriate Hunter miniature and the Tactics deck near each Hunter sheet they control.[4]

17. Shuffle the Item deck and set it near the Hunter players.[4]

18. Shuffle the Event deck, then take the bottom-most card and place it at the top of the deck, and set it near the Hunter players.[4][3]

19. Beginning with Lord Godalming and continuing clockwise, each Hunter player places their Hunter miniature on any city of their choice on the map, excluding sea zones, Castle Dracula, or the Hospital of St. Joseph and St. Mary.[4][3]

20. Place the white Hunter dice, the red Train die, and the remaining cardboard tokens and markers where all players can reach them.[4][3]

[1] RULEBOOK Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.5 · 1. Prepare the Playing Area · 2. Choose Dracula Player · 3. Assign Hunters

[2] RULEBOOK Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.3 · Component Overview · Game Board · Plastic Miniatures

[3] RULEBOOK Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.6 · 3. Assign Hunters · Game Setup

[4] RULEBOOK Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook · p.7 · Game Setup · 4. Layout Other Items · 5. Choose Hunter Starting Locations

Now you know — make it count.

🔧 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 106 ms · ask 6467 ms · total 6577 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6577 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 7, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Give each Hunter the following items for every Hunter he or she controls: 1 Health Marker 1 Hunter Miniature 1 Hunter Tactics Deck (3 Item cards with the word 'Basic' under their title) The Hunter players should place the Health marker for each of the Hunters they control on the appropriate Health t", "headingPath": "Game Setup · 4. Layout Other Items · 5. Choose Hunter Starting Locations", "sharpsignalDocId": 803}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "It is important that the Dracula player sits at the top of the board, as shown in this diagram. Remember that the 'right' and 'left' of Dracula's Trail are defined as being from the Dracula player's perspective. Each Hunter places a Health marker on his maximum Health value on his Hunter sheet. Afte", "headingPath": "3. Assign Hunters · Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 803}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Unfold the board and place it in the center of the playing area. Make sure there is ample space around the edges of the board to place the Dracula and Hunter sheets. Place the Dracula sheet near the board on the side closest to the Dracula's Trail area. Then, starting to the left of Dracula, place t", "headingPath": "1. Prepare the Playing Area · 2. Choose Dracula Player · 3. Assign Hunters", "sharpsignalDocId": 803}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "At the start of combat, there is an opportunity for all the players - not just the players with characters at the location of the combat - to play cards to affect it. This can include Trap , Advanced Planning , and other Event cards, however, only Hunters in the combat may play the Garlic Item card.", "headingPath": "Start of Combat", "sharpsignalDocId": 803}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Once all the Hunters have chosen their starting locations, Dracula takes his first turn. However, unlike a normal turn, for his first turn Dracula simply chooses his starting location. Looking through his Location deck, Dracula chooses the card that corresponds to the city he'd like to start in and ", "headingPath": "6. Dracula's First Turn · 7. Normal Play Begins · The Game Round · 1. Dracula's Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 803}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Enclosed in your Fury of Dracula box, you will find the following game components: 1 Rule Book (this book) 1 Game Board 5 Plastic Miniatures 1 Dracula Sheet 1 Dracula Reference Map 4 Hunter Sheets 2 White Hunter Dice 1 Black Dracula Die 1 Red Train Die 220 Cards 75 Event Cards (25 Dracula, 50 Hunter", "headingPath": "Game Components and Preparation", "sharpsignalDocId": 803}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Hunters may seal Dracula and his power out of certain locations through the use of the Heavenly Host Item cards or the Consecrated Ground Event card. A Heavenly Host marker must be placed at the current location of the Hunter playing the Heavenly Host card, while the Consecrated Ground marker may be", "headingPath": "Heavenly Hosts and Consecrated Ground · Overview of the Character Sheet · Hunter Groups", "sharpsignalDocId": 803}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029437, "snippet": "The following is an introductory summary of the various components included in Fury of Dracula . This summary should help you identify the components and understand the ways they are used as you read through these rules. The game board depicts Western and Eastern Europe as it was in 1898, complete w", "headingPath": "Component Overview · Game Board · Plastic Miniatures", "sharpsignalDocId": 803}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. Prepare the Playing Area · 2. Choose Dracula Player · 3. Assign Hunters", "sharpsignalDocId": 803}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Component Overview · Game Board · Plastic Miniatures", "sharpsignalDocId": 803}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. Assign Hunters · Game Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 803}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup · 4. Layout Other Items · 5. Choose Hunter Starting Locations", "sharpsignalDocId": 803}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 803 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 803 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 0.89402 of 2491 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 4, 2026 17:49 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 Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	Game Setup · 4. Layout Other Items · 5. Choose Hunter Starting Locations	p.7	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 Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	3. Assign Hunters · Game Setup	p.6	0.047883 (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 Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	1. Prepare the Playing Area · 2. Choose Dracula Player · 3. Assign Hunters	p.5	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
#4	RULEBOOK Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	Start of Combat	p.15	0.03125 (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 Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	6. Dracula's First Turn · 7. Normal Play Begins · The Game Round · 1. Dracula's Turn	p.7	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 Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	Game Components and Preparation	p.2	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 Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	Heavenly Hosts and Consecrated Ground · Overview of the Character Sheet · Hunter Groups	p.23	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 Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	Component Overview · Game Board · Plastic Miniatures	p.3	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 63 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 Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	Game Setup · 4. Layout Other Items · 5. Choose Hunter Starting Locations	p.7	#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 Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	1. Prepare the Playing Area · 2. Choose Dracula Player · 3. Assign Hunters	p.5	#3	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	Other Suggestions · Making the Game Easier for Dracula · Fewer Vampires · Less or No Resolve · Valor Points · Cast of Characters	p.26	#14	0.025385 (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 Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	Component Overview · Game Board · Plastic Miniatures	p.3	#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
#5	RULEBOOK Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	6. Dracula's First Turn · 7. Normal Play Begins · The Game Round · 1. Dracula's Turn	p.7	#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
#6	RULEBOOK Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	Game Overview	p.2	#10	0.027826 (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 Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	Time Markers · Roadblock Marker · Dracula Vampire Marker · Hunter Resolve Marker · Day/Night Marker · Game Setup	p.5	#11	0.027778 (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 Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	3. Assign Hunters · Game Setup	p.6	#2	0.047883 (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 Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	1. Prepare the Playing Area · 2. Choose Dracula Player · 3. Assign Hunters	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	Component Overview · Game Board · Plastic Miniatures	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	3. Assign Hunters · Game Setup	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Fury of Dracula (Second Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 803)	Game Setup · 4. Layout Other Items · 5. Choose Hunter Starting Locations	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 106 ms · first delta 2690 ms · total 6577 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 106 ms · ask 6467 ms · gateway work 6577 ms · total 6577 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3713
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 760
tok/sec: 200.6 tok/sec — 760 output tokens in 3.788 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 27s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, checked 8s 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 738), 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.