Ruling — Root — RuleSage

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Rootbg-237182-en-1e · Root: The Homeland Expansionbg-428335-en-1e · Root: The Marauder Expansionbg-330149-en-1e

Depending on the players and desired variety, you can use Standard Setup [1] or Advanced Setup.[1]

Standard Setup

1. Assign one faction to each player in any way, determine the starting player and seating order randomly, and each player takes their chosen faction board and the pieces listed on its back.[2]

2. Each player places their score marker on '0' on the score track.[2]

3. If playing with two players, remove all four dominance cards from the deck, shuffle the deck, and each player draws three cards.[2]

4. Place a ruin in each slot on the map marked with an 'R' (four in total).[2]

5. Place 2 M, 2 B, 1 C, 1 H, 2 S, 2 T, and 2 X on the corresponding spaces of the item supply near the top of the map.[2]

6. Hand out the 16 faction overview cards as desired, and place the two battle dice near the map.[2]

7. In setup order (A, B, C, etc.), each player follows their faction's setup instructions, listed in their rules section and on the back of their faction board.[2]

Advanced Setup

1. Determine the seating order and the first player at random, and as a group, decide which map and deck to use.[3]

2. Place the ruins on the map, set up the item supply on the map, and collect the two dice nearby.[3]

3. Each player draws five cards.[3]

4. If playing with hirelings, set them up between the card drawing step and the next step.[3]

5. Players choose factions from a limited pool of setup cards.[3] (Note: For the specific process of creating the draft pool and dealing setup cards, see the instructions in Section A.8 [4]).

6. At the end of setup, everyone keeps three cards and shuffles the other two back into the deck.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Root — Law of Root · p.4 · 5. Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Root — Law of Root · p.5 · 5.1 Standard Setup

[3] RULEBOOK Root: The Marauder Expansion — Rulebook · p.17 · Advanced Setup · Advanced Setup in Detail

[4] RULEBOOK Root — Law of Root · p.23 · A.8 Step 8: Set Up Factions

Answer in hand — your move.

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 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 209 ms · ask 5704 ms · total 5915 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5915 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.047907, "snippet": "Follow the modified setup rules on the first two pages of the Walking /Through Root booklet. Once you have set up the game, give the players an overview of Root's theme and the victory conditions for each faction. Now you're ready to play.", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 75}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.046247, "snippet": "Before playing on the winter map, take out the 12 suit markers, flip them face down, and shuffle them. /Then, place one suit marker near each clearing on the map. A/fter a suit marker has been added to each clearing, flip them all over, and set up the game as normal. Note the different placement of ", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 75}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.032266, "snippet": "If any players are new to the game, use the Standard Setup (5.1) If everyone has played and you want more variety, use the Advanced Setup (Appendix A). If you want to play with five or more factions that would start in corner clearings, you must use the Advanced Setup.", "headingPath": "5. Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 56}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.031545, "snippet": "Advanced Setup is a fast, flexible way to set up that is designed for experienced players. This expansion includes setup cards for all the factions in the core game of Root as well as the Riverfolk, Underworld, and Marauder expansions, along with a summary aid card. Here are the main differences in ", "headingPath": "Advanced Setup · Advanced Setup in Detail", "sharpsignalDocId": 900}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029762, "snippet": "If playing with three players, remove the Vagabond. If playing with two, also remove the Alliance. For more faction mixes, see page 22. Choose Factions. Each player chooses a faction board and takes all of their faction's pieces. 1 st /The back of each faction board lists all of its pieces and gives", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 75}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.027418, "snippet": "As a group, you may choose and set up factions as described in the Standard Setup (5.1) or you may use the faction setup cards included in the Marauder and Homeland Expansions, as described below. A.8.1 Step 1: Create Dra/ft Pool. Agree whether you will omit any factions from the game. You can- not ", "headingPath": "A.8 Step 8: Set Up Factions", "sharpsignalDocId": 56}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.026882, "snippet": "We have included some updated cards and new components to make this expansion compatible with the rest of Root and to make playing Root easier. We have included advanced setup cards for the factions in this expansion. To get advanced setup cards for the remaining factions, you will need the Marauder", "headingPath": "Game Improvements · Advanced Setup Cards · Updated Cards · Reminder Markers · Extra Items, Ruins, and Dice", "sharpsignalDocId": 899}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.026495, "snippet": "Give the booklet to the Marquise player and ask them to read the text aloud as they take the actions described. When their turn is over, pass the booklet to the Eyrie player so they can do the same. Continue this until you reach the end. /The booklet also answers some common questions and gives stra", "headingPath": "Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 75}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5. Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 56}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5.1 Standard Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 56}, {"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Advanced Setup · Advanced Setup in Detail", "sharpsignalDocId": 900}, {"page": 23, "quote": null, "headingPath": "A.8 Step 8: Set Up Factions", "sharpsignalDocId": 56}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 75 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 75 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 0.89054 of 1343 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 19:43 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 Root — Learning to Play (corpus doc 75)	Setup	p.3	0.047907 (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))	239
#2	RULEBOOK Root — Learning to Play (corpus doc 75)	Setup	p.23	0.046247 (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 Root — Law of Root (corpus doc 56)	5. Setup	p.4	0.032266 (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))	269
#4	RULEBOOK Root: The Marauder Expansion — Rulebook (corpus doc 900)	Advanced Setup · Advanced Setup in Detail	p.17	0.031545 (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 Root — Learning to Play (corpus doc 75)	Setup	p.4	0.029762 (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 Root — Law of Root (corpus doc 56)	A.8 Step 8: Set Up Factions	p.23	0.027418 (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 Root: The Homeland Expansion — Rulebook (corpus doc 899)	Game Improvements · Advanced Setup Cards · Updated Cards · Reminder Markers · Extra Items, Ruins, and Dice	p.19	0.026882 (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 Root — Learning to Play (corpus doc 75)	Play	p.3	0.026495 (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 80 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 — 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.

one thing that looks wrong and is not: a row a floor seated can carry a fused rank LARGER than the pool size above it. The floors draw from the whole fused list, not only from the passages the re-ranker scored — so a rank past the pool is a floor reaching down for something the re-ranker would never have seen, which is exactly what the floors are for.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Root — Law of Root (corpus doc 56)	5. Setup	p.4	#3	0.032266 (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
#2	RULEBOOK Root: The Marauder Expansion — Rulebook (corpus doc 900)	Advanced Setup · Advanced Setup in Detail	p.17	#4	0.031545 (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 Root — Law of Root (corpus doc 56)	Setup (5.1)	p.32	#16	0.015625 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Root — Law of Root (corpus doc 56)	A.8 Step 8: Set Up Factions	p.23	#6	0.027418 (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 Root — Law of Root (corpus doc 56)	5.1 Standard Setup	p.5	#15	0.015873 (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 Root — Learning to Play (corpus doc 75)	Setup	p.23	#2	0.046247 (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 Root — Learning to Play (corpus doc 75)	Setup	p.3	#1	0.047907 (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 Root: The Homeland Expansion — Rulebook (corpus doc 899)	Game Improvements · Advanced Setup Cards · Updated Cards · Reminder Markers · Extra Items, Ruins, and Dice	p.19	#7	0.026882 (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	guaranteed a slot by the one-slot-per-book floor

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Root — Law of Root (corpus doc 56)	5. Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Root — Law of Root (corpus doc 56)	5.1 Standard Setup	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Root: The Marauder Expansion — Rulebook (corpus doc 900)	Advanced Setup · Advanced Setup in Detail	p.17	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Root — Law of Root (corpus doc 56)	A.8 Step 8: Set Up Factions	p.23	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 209 ms · first delta 3734 ms · total 5915 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 209 ms · ask 5704 ms · gateway work 5915 ms · total 5915 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2494
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 429
tok/sec: 201.4 tok/sec — 429 output tokens in 2.130 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 44s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, checked 5s 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 6), 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.