Ruling — Dead of Winter: The Long Night

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Dead of Winter: The Long Nightbg-193037-en-1e

Standard Game Setup

1. Place the colony board in the center of the play area and place the 6 location cards and the Graveyard around it as shown or as best accommodates your table.[1]

2. Deal 4 survivor cards to each player.[1]

3. Each player chooses 2 survivor cards to keep and returns the others to the deck.[1]

4. Re-shuffle the survivor deck.[1]

5. Each player collects a player reference sheet.[1]

6. Players decide which standard main objective to play or pick 1 randomly.[1]

7. Place the main objective card in its space on the colony board and set up the game board according to the main objective's setup instructions.[1]

8. Shuffle the non-betrayal secret objective cards and set aside 2 (facedown) per player.[1]

9. Return the remaining non-betrayal cards to the game box.[1]

10. Shuffle the betrayal secret objective cards and add 1 of them (facedown) to the non-betrayal cards that were set aside.[1]

11. Return the remaining betrayal secret objective cards to the game box.[1]

12. Shuffle all the set aside cards together and deal 1 to each player.[1]

13. Return the remaining secret objective cards to the game box without looking at them.[1]

14. Shuffle the crisis cards and place the deck on its space on the colony board.[1]

15. Shuffle and make decks of the survivor, exiled objective, and crossroad cards and place the decks off to the side of the play area.[1]

16. Shuffle all of the starter item cards and deal 5 to each player.[1]

17. Return any remaining item cards to the game box.[1]

18. Separate the remaining item cards into separate decks according to their location, shuffle each deck, and place it on its corresponding location card.[1]

19. Each player chooses 1 of their 2 survivors to be her group leader, placing that survivor card in the respective space on her reference card.[1]

20. Place the other survivor card in the player's following, below their player reference sheet.[1][2]

21. Add the corresponding survivor standees for each player's survivors to the colony.[1][2]

22. Separate the remaining standees and tokens, placing them within easy reach of all players.[1][2]

23. The player whose group leader has the highest influence value receives the first player token and will take the first turn of the game.[1][2]

Raxxon Module Setup

1. Add the crisis, survivor, crossroads, and objective cards marked with the skull and crossbone icon to their respective decks.[3]

2. Add the Raxxon location card to the play area and set up its search deck normally.[3]

3. Shuffle the Raxxon experiments deck and place it on the Raxxon location with the Raxxon Audio Logs side face up.[3]

4. Place the Raxxon side effect deck near the Raxxon location card.[3]

5. (For the Raxxon introductory scenario): Place barricades on every entrance and survivor space on the Raxxon location.[4]

6. (For the Raxxon introductory scenario): Remove Blue and Emma Han from the survivor deck and set them aside.[4]

7. (For the Raxxon introductory scenario): Use Special Objective card R1 instead of a normal main objective card.[4]

8. (For the Raxxon introductory scenario): Add Emma Han's standee to the colony and add her survivor card to the following of the first player.[4]

9. (For the Raxxon introductory scenario): Find the Raxxon Blueprints in the Raxxon search deck and equip them to Emma.[4]

Bandit Module Setup

1. (For the Bandit introductory scenario): Use Special Main Objective card B1 instead of a normal main objective card.[5]

2. (For the Bandit introductory scenario): When constructing the stack of facedown secret objectives, add the BANDIT BETRAYAL secret objective instead of adding 1 random betrayal secret objective card.[5]

3. (For the Bandit introductory scenario): Each player may draw 1 card from the hospital search deck and add it to their hand.[5]

Co-Op Variant Setup

1. Remove from the game every card showing the non co-op symbol on the bottom right corner of the card.[6]

2. Use the hardcore side of the main objective card and do not assign secret objectives.[6]

3. During setup, each player receives 7 starting item cards instead of 5.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook · p.6 · GAME SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook · p.6 · GAME SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook · p.18 · THE RAXXON MODULE · SEARCHING AT RAXXON · PILL ITEM EFFECTS · THE CONTAINMENT CODE

[4] RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook · p.20 · THE CHIMP AND THE CODE

[5] RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook · p.22 · BANDIT BLITZ

[6] RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook · p.15 · CO-OP VARIANT · 2 PLAYER VARIANT · BETRAYER VARIANT · HARDCORE VARIANT · PLAYER ELIMINATION VARIANT

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 170 ms · ask 8902 ms · total 9075 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 9075 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Place the colony board in the center of the play area and place the 6 location cards and the Graveyard around it as shown or as best accommodates your table. Deal 4 survivor cards to each player. Each player then chooses 2 to keep and returns the others to the deck. Re-shuffle the survivor deck. Eac", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 497}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.048172, "snippet": "7", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 497}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "The other survivor card is placed in the player's following, below their player reference sheet. The corresponding survivor standees for each player's survivors are added to the colony. Separate the remaining standees and tokens, placing them within easy reach of all players. The player whose group ", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 497}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.044343, "snippet": "To set up the Raxxon introductory scenario, set up the game as if you are playing with the Raxxon module as instructed on page 18 of this rulebook, with the following adjustments: Place barricades on every entrance and survivor space on the Raxxon location. Survivors may not move to Raxxon at the be", "headingPath": "THE CHIMP AND THE CODE", "sharpsignalDocId": 497}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Apply them starting with the next round and for the rest of the game. If there are 2-3 non-exiled players, immediately draw 2 Raxxon experiment cards and place their special zombies. If there are 4 or more non-exiled players, immediately draw 3 Raxxon experiment cards and place their special zombies", "headingPath": "This Section should be read once Special Main Objective R2 has been completed.", "sharpsignalDocId": 497}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Move Round Tracker: Move the round tracker down 1 space on the round track. If it is moved onto 0 the game immediately ends. Pass First Player Token: At the end of each round, any player may initiate a vote to prevent the first player token from being passed to the next player. If the vote passes, t", "headingPath": "COLONY PHASE · ADDING ZOMBIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 497}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030415, "snippet": "If you revealed any outsider cards you may place 1 into your hand. Shuffle the remaining cards back into the search deck. 2 3 ALEXIS GREY Librarian 46 LIBRARY: Once per round, when performing a search at the library you may look at and keep 1 additional card. 5 4 ROUND SUMMARY GROUP LEADER SECRET OB", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 497}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Each bandit counts as a survivor for the purpose of adding zombies during the Add Zombies step of the Colony Phase. When a location is overrun, if there are no survivors at that location, remove all bandits from that location. After resolving the Add Zombies step of the Colony Phase, each bandit sca", "headingPath": "ADDING ZOMBIES · BANDITS SCAVENGE · BANDITS' HIDEOUT · BECOMING LEADER OF THE BANDITS", "sharpsignalDocId": 497}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 497}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 497}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE RAXXON MODULE · SEARCHING AT RAXXON · PILL ITEM EFFECTS · THE CONTAINMENT CODE", "sharpsignalDocId": 497}, {"page": 20, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE CHIMP AND THE CODE", "sharpsignalDocId": 497}, {"page": 22, "quote": null, "headingPath": "BANDIT BLITZ", "sharpsignalDocId": 497}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CO-OP VARIANT · 2 PLAYER VARIANT · BETRAYER VARIANT · HARDCORE VARIANT · PLAYER ELIMINATION VARIANT", "sharpsignalDocId": 497}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 497 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 497 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 0.90196 of 3427 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 22:04 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 Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	GAME SETUP	p.6	0.048652 (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 Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	GAME SETUP	p.7	0.048172 (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))	1
#3	RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	GAME SETUP	p.6	0.047123 (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 Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	THE CHIMP AND THE CODE	p.20	0.044343 (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 Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	This Section should be read once Special Main Objective R2 has been completed.	p.21	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
#6	RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	COLONY PHASE · ADDING ZOMBIES	p.13	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 Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)		p.7	0.030415 (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 Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	ADDING ZOMBIES · BANDITS SCAVENGE · BANDITS' HIDEOUT · BECOMING LEADER OF THE BANDITS	p.17	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 Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	GAME SETUP	p.6	#1	0.048652 (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 Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	GAME SETUP	p.7	#2	0.048172 (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 Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	THE CHIMP AND THE CODE	p.20	#4	0.044343 (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 Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	THE LONG NIGHT RULES · PREPARING FOR THE LONG NIGHT · NEW RULES FOR EVERY GAME · FIRST PLAYER VOTE · RANDOM LOCATIONS · THE GRAVEYARD	p.16	#10	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
#5	RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	THE RAXXON MODULE · SEARCHING AT RAXXON · PILL ITEM EFFECTS · THE CONTAINMENT CODE	p.18	#14	0.027584 (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 Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	BANDIT BLITZ	p.22	#12	0.028405 (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 Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	CO-OP VARIANT · 2 PLAYER VARIANT · BETRAYER VARIANT · HARDCORE VARIANT · PLAYER ELIMINATION VARIANT	p.15	#11	0.028778 (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 Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	GAME SETUP	p.6	#3	0.047123 (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 Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	GAME SETUP	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	GAME SETUP	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	THE RAXXON MODULE · SEARCHING AT RAXXON · PILL ITEM EFFECTS · THE CONTAINMENT CODE	p.18	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	THE CHIMP AND THE CODE	p.20	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	BANDIT BLITZ	p.22	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Dead of Winter: The Long Night — Rulebook (corpus doc 497)	CO-OP VARIANT · 2 PLAYER VARIANT · BETRAYER VARIANT · HARDCORE VARIANT · PLAYER ELIMINATION VARIANT	p.15	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 170 ms · first delta 3845 ms · total 9075 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 170 ms · ask 8902 ms · gateway work 9075 ms · total 9075 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3197
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 198.2 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 5.167 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 9s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, 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 428), 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.