Ruling — Battles of Westeros

← Battles of Westeros

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Battles of Westerosbg-67492-en-1e

To setup a battle, follow these steps:

1. Choose a battle to play.[1]

2. Decide which House each player will control for the battle.[1]

3. Lay out the banners required by your House's setup.[2]

4. Place the map board according to the Board Indicator (landscape or portrait) and use the side of the board specified by the Board Indicator.[3]

5. The edge in front of the player is his House's board edge.[3]

6. Sort the tokens for use in the game into piles and place them within easy reach of both players.[4]

7. Each player takes a number of command tokens equal to the number beside the Command icon in the battle plan and places them on his command board.[4]

To setup a skirmish, follow these steps:

1. Choose a skirmish to play.[3]

2. Decide which House each player controls for the skirmish.[3]

3. Place the map board as shown by the Board Indicator to form the battlefield.[3]

4. Each player takes the deck of Skirmish Setup cards with his House's symbol on the back.[3]

5. Separate the Skirmish Setup cards that have a commander's portrait at the top from the rest of the deck.[3]

6. Select commanders by choosing Skirmish Setup cards with their pictures as directed by the Skirmish Summary card.[3]

7. Each player chooses up to two commanders with a maximum total Value Rating of four or less, done secretly and simultaneously, then reveals them at the same time.[5]

8. Place the Commander cards for selected commanders in the play area along with the figures for those commanders' units.[5]

9. Build the commander's unit according to normal setup rules.[5]

10. The player specified by the Skirmish Summary card as possessing the momentum token places that token in his play area.[5]

11. Each player shuffles his remaining Skirmish Setup cards together and draws cards equal to the Skirmish Summary card's Unit Rating.[5]

12. Refer to the unit section in the middle of the drawn cards to see the number and type of units to build and place into the play area.[5]

13. Each player shuffles his remaining Skirmish cards and draws cards equal to the Skirmish Summary's Terrain Rating.[5]

14. Refer to the terrain section at the bottom of the drawn cards to see the number and type of hex overlays to place into the play area.[5]

15. Starting with the player with momentum, each player in turn places all of his terrain overlays according to the Skirmish Summary card's 'terrain placement' section.[5]

16. Starting with the player with momentum, each player in turn places all of his commanders according to the Skirmish Summary card's 'commander placement' section.[6]

17. Starting with the player with momentum, each player in turn places all of his remaining units according to the Skirmish Summary card's 'unit placement' section.[6]

18. Turn the Skirmish Summary card to the side labeled 'Skirmish Details' and leave it faceup between both players.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook · p.6 · Catelyn Token and Edmure Tokens · Tent Tokens, Siege Tower Tokens, Commander Discs, and Catapult Targeting Tokens · MomentumToken · Preparing for Battle · Setting Up · 1. Choose a Battle and a House to Play

[2] RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook · p.10 · Forming Units · Playing the Game · 1. Rally Phase

[3] RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook · p.28 · Skirmish (Optional Rule) · Skirmish Setup · 1. Choose a Skirmish and Houses · 2. Create the Battlefield · 3. Take Commanders

[4] RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook · p.8 · 7. Create Token Stockpiles and Place Command Tokens · 8. Form and Place Units

[5] RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook · p.29 · 3. Take Commanders · 4. Build Leadership Decks · 5. Place Round Track and Round Markers · 6. Place Morale Track and Morale Marker · 7. Create Token Stockpiles and Place Command Tokens · 8. Assign the Momentum Token · …

[6] RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook · p.29 · 12. Place Commander Units · 13. Place Non-commander Units · Skirmish Details

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 151 ms · ask 6257 ms · total 6411 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6411 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "Before executing the following steps, players must lay out the banners required by their House's setup as described on page 9. = = 1) Find the unit symbol on the battlefield map to determine what figures are used to make up the unit. If the symbol on the map is a commander, the player must instead l", "headingPath": "Forming Units · Playing the Game · 1. Rally Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Besides the battles found in the Battle Plans, players can utilize the following rules to play a randomly generated battle called a skirmish . Instead of a battle plan, a skirmish uses cards to generate a House's commanders, unit types, and number of units, as well as terrain to be placed. A skirmis", "headingPath": "Skirmish (Optional Rule) · Skirmish Setup · 1. Choose a Skirmish and Houses · 2. Create the Battlefield · 3. Take Commanders", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 29, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "For example, the 'Raid in the Riverlands' Skirmish Summary card states that each player chooses up to two commanders with a maximum total Value Rating of four or less. The cards specify which version of the selected commanders to use. This selection should be done secretly and simultaneously by both", "headingPath": "3. Take Commanders · 4. Build Leadership Decks · 5. Place Round Track and Round Markers · 6. Place Morale Track and Morale Marker · 7. Create Token Stockpiles and Place Command Tokens · 8. Assign the Momentum Token · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.044557, "snippet": "Many components are marked with the above House symbols to help determine which player a component belongs to. In the core game, House Stark and House Lannister are the two available houses. Lannister (red). If both players wish to control the same House, players determine randomly (such as by flipp", "headingPath": "House Symbols · 2. Create the Battlefield · 3. Take Commanders", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 29, "score": 0.044337, "snippet": "Starting with the player with momentum, each player in turn places all of his commanders according to the Skirmish Summary card's 'commander placement' section. The 'Raid in the Riverlands' card states each commander must be placed on a hex within 3 hexes of the owning player's side of the board and", "headingPath": "12. Place Commander Units · 13. Place Non-commander Units · Skirmish Details", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Every battle features a variety of different unit combinations; therefore it is necessary to assemble a set of banners at the start of each battle. Each banner has two parts: the plastic banner pole and the punchboard banner. Players should execute the following steps to properly assemble their bann", "headingPath": "Assembling Banners", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Each House has 10 Leadership cards with no commander's picture in the lower right hand corner. These 10 cards are the House's basic Leadership cards. Each player sets his House's basic Leadership cards aside. Each commander has five Leadership cards with his picture in the lower right corner. These ", "headingPath": "4. Build Leadership Decks · Assembling Figures · 1. Determine the Figure's Base: · 2. Insert the Figure into the Base:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Players now sort the tokens for use during the game into piles. These tokens should be placed within easy reach of both players to form the stockpiles for the game. The most commonly used tokens include order tokens, command tokens, and engagement tokens. Some battles also require other tokens, such", "headingPath": "7. Create Token Stockpiles and Place Command Tokens · 8. Form and Place Units", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Catelyn Token and Edmure Tokens · Tent Tokens, Siege Tower Tokens, Commander Discs, and Catapult Targeting Tokens · MomentumToken · Preparing for Battle · Setting Up · 1. Choose a Battle and a House to Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Forming Units · Playing the Game · 1. Rally Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 28, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Skirmish (Optional Rule) · Skirmish Setup · 1. Choose a Skirmish and Houses · 2. Create the Battlefield · 3. Take Commanders", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "7. Create Token Stockpiles and Place Command Tokens · 8. Form and Place Units", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 29, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. Take Commanders · 4. Build Leadership Decks · 5. Place Round Track and Round Markers · 6. Place Morale Track and Morale Marker · 7. Create Token Stockpiles and Place Command Tokens · 8. Assign the Momentum Token · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}, {"page": 29, "quote": null, "headingPath": "12. Place Commander Units · 13. Place Non-commander Units · Skirmish Details", "sharpsignalDocId": 1272}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1272 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1272 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 0.92039 of 2374 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 15:36 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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Forming Units · Playing the Game · 1. Rally Phase	p.10	0.047938 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Skirmish (Optional Rule) · Skirmish Setup · 1. Choose a Skirmish and Houses · 2. Create the Battlefield · 3. Take Commanders	p.28	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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	3. Take Commanders · 4. Build Leadership Decks · 5. Place Round Track and Round Markers · 6. Place Morale Track and Morale Marker · 7. Create Token Stockpiles and Place Command Tokens · 8. Assign the Momentum Token · …	p.29	0.046642 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	House Symbols · 2. Create the Battlefield · 3. Take Commanders	p.7	0.044557 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	12. Place Commander Units · 13. Place Non-commander Units · Skirmish Details	p.29	0.044337 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Assembling Banners	p.9	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
#7	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	4. Build Leadership Decks · Assembling Figures · 1. Determine the Figure's Base: · 2. Insert the Figure into the Base:	p.7	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
#8	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	7. Create Token Stockpiles and Place Command Tokens · 8. Form and Place Units	p.8	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

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 59 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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Forming Units · Playing the Game · 1. Rally Phase	p.10	#1	0.047938 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	3. Take Commanders · 4. Build Leadership Decks · 5. Place Round Track and Round Markers · 6. Place Morale Track and Morale Marker · 7. Create Token Stockpiles and Place Command Tokens · 8. Assign the Momentum Token · …	p.29	#3	0.046642 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	12. Place Commander Units · 13. Place Non-commander Units · Skirmish Details	p.29	#5	0.044337 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	4. Build Leadership Decks · Assembling Figures · 1. Determine the Figure's Base: · 2. Insert the Figure into the Base:	p.7	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Assembling Banners	p.9	#6	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
#6	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Catelyn Token and Edmure Tokens · Tent Tokens, Siege Tower Tokens, Commander Discs, and Catapult Targeting Tokens · MomentumToken · Preparing for Battle · Setting Up · 1. Choose a Battle and a House to Play	p.6	#9	0.02971 (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 Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	7. Create Token Stockpiles and Place Command Tokens · 8. Form and Place Units	p.8	#8	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
#8	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Skirmish (Optional Rule) · Skirmish Setup · 1. Choose a Skirmish and Houses · 2. Create the Battlefield · 3. Take Commanders	p.28	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Catelyn Token and Edmure Tokens · Tent Tokens, Siege Tower Tokens, Commander Discs, and Catapult Targeting Tokens · MomentumToken · Preparing for Battle · Setting Up · 1. Choose a Battle and a House to Play	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Forming Units · Playing the Game · 1. Rally Phase	p.10	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	Skirmish (Optional Rule) · Skirmish Setup · 1. Choose a Skirmish and Houses · 2. Create the Battlefield · 3. Take Commanders	p.28	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	7. Create Token Stockpiles and Place Command Tokens · 8. Form and Place Units	p.8	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	3. Take Commanders · 4. Build Leadership Decks · 5. Place Round Track and Round Markers · 6. Place Morale Track and Morale Marker · 7. Create Token Stockpiles and Place Command Tokens · 8. Assign the Momentum Token · …	p.29	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Battles of Westeros — Rulebook (corpus doc 1272)	12. Place Commander Units · 13. Place Non-commander Units · Skirmish Details	p.29	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 151 ms · first delta 2821 ms · total 6411 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 151 ms · ask 6257 ms · gateway work 6411 ms · total 6411 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3108
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 695
tok/sec: 199.7 tok/sec — 695 output tokens in 3.480 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 17s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 6s 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 1202), 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.