Ruling — Verdant

← Verdant

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Verdantbg-334065-en-1e

Standard game setup involves the following steps:

1. Place all 45 Item Tokens and 45 Nurture Tokens in the Cloth Bag and shuffle/shake them well.[1]

2. Place the bag in the center of the play area within easy reach of all players.[1]

3. Reveal 4 tokens from the bag and place them in a row adjacent to the bag to begin to form the Market.[1]

4. Shuffle all Plant Cards into a single deck and place the deck facedown in the center of the play area, just above the Cloth Bag.[1]

5. Reveal 4 cards from the facedown deck and place them faceup in a row adjacent to the deck, above the item tokens.[1]

6. Shuffle all Room Cards into a single deck and place the deck facedown in the center of the play area, just below the Cloth Bag.[1]

7. Reveal 4 cards from the facedown deck and place them faceup in a row adjacent to the deck, below the item tokens.[1]

8. Place all Verdancy and Green Thumb Tokens in piles adjacent to the Market within easy reach of all players.[1]

9. Determine how many Pot Tokens are needed based on the number of players (1P: 4 of each bonus type + all terra cotta pots; 2P: 3 of each bonus type + all terra cotta pots; 3P: 4 of each bonus type + all terra cotta pots; 4P: 5 of each bonus type + all terra cotta pots; 5P: 6 of each bonus type + all terra cotta pots) and place these tokens in stacks or rows adjacent to the Market.[1]

10. Place any excluded Pot Tokens back into the box.[1]

11. Place 2 Player Aid Cards and 1 Storage Card faceup in front of each player.[1]

12. Randomly draw 1 Plant Card and 1 Room Card from the facedown decks, and place them in front of each player.[1]

13. Deal Green Thumb Tokens to players based on player turn order: the starting player receives none, the player to the right of the starting player receives 2, and all other players receive 1.[1]

Additional setup instructions:

* For the standard setup, you may also place 1 of the 4 Concrete (3-point) Pot Tokens in each of the columns, above the market, and place the remaining Bonus Pot Tokens in a stack (highest value on top, Terra Cotta at the bottom) above the Plant Card deck.[2]

* For the Advanced Setup, shuffle each of the 3 Goal Card decks (Plants, Items, and Rooms) and draw 1 card from each deck, then place these three cards adjacent to the Market.[3]

* In the Family Variant, set aside the Verdancy Tokens and Green Thumb Tokens as they will not be used.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Verdant — Rulebook · p.4 · Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Verdant — Rulebook · p.12 · Setup

[3] RULEBOOK Verdant — Rulebook · p.4 · Advanced Setup *

[4] RULEBOOK Verdant — Rulebook · p.13 · Family Variant · Setup · Turn Summary · Scoring

The table has its answer — dice up.

🔧 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 238 ms · ask 5191 ms · total 5431 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5431 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 12, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Follow the standard game setup rules, except give yourself 2 Green Thumb Tokens (note: you may choose whether or not to use the Advanced Setup in the Solo Mode). Place 1 of the 4 Concrete (3-point) Pot Tokens in each of the columns, above the market. Place the remaining Bonus Pot Tokens in a stack, ", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 677}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "Once you have played Verdant with the standard setup, you can add more scoring variety to the game by adding end game scoring Goal Cards! Shuffle each of the 3 Goal Card decks (Plants, Items, and Rooms) and draw 1 card from each deck. Return all other Goal Cards to the box - they will not be used th", "headingPath": "Advanced Setup *", "sharpsignalDocId": 677}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045695, "snippet": "Place all 45 Item Tokens and 45 Nurture Tokens in the Cloth Bag and shuffle/shake them well. Place the bag in the center of the play area within easy reach of all players. Reveal 4 tokens from the bag and place them in a row adjacent to the bag to begin to form the Market. 1 Shuffle all Plant Cards ", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 677}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.045476, "snippet": "Set up and play a multiplayer game of Verdant following the standard rules with one rules modification from the list below. Any player who plays the game will fill in their Achievement shape under the rule modification that was used. Whenever you fill in a shape, fill in a leaf on your plant on the ", "headingPath": "Achievements (rules modifications)", "sharpsignalDocId": 677}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Beginning with the starting player and proceeding clockwise around the table, players will take turns drafting Plant Cards, Room Cards, and Item Tokens and adding them into their expanding home. Players will make spatial matches and use Nurture Tokens to care for their plant collection as the game p", "headingPath": "Gameplay Overview · Game Start · 1. Select a card and a token.", "sharpsignalDocId": 677}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "You will be creating a 5 X 3 grid of cards in your personal play area. This growing tableau of cards is referred to as your home. You must place cards according to the following placement rules: Cards must be placed orthogonally adjacent to other cards. Plant Cards must be placed next to Room Cards,", "headingPath": "2. Place the card into your home. · 3. Check lighting conditions and collect verdancy. · Lighting Conditions", "sharpsignalDocId": 677}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.030622, "snippet": "Set up and play a multiplayer game of Verdant using the standard rules. Any player who plays the game will fill in a maximum of one Achievement shape in their column if they earned an Achievement. Whenever you fill in a shape, fill in a leaf on your plant on the Achievement Plant Track (page 14). Sc", "headingPath": "Achievements (standard game)", "sharpsignalDocId": 677}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Grow your own plant by gaining Achievements as you play Verdant! Achievements can be earned and tracked as you play multiplayer and solo games. Below is the Achievement Plant Track where up to 4 players can keep track of their overall progress. You may begin gaining Achievements at any time. To do s", "headingPath": "Verdant Achievements · Scenarios", "sharpsignalDocId": 677}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 677}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 677}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Advanced Setup *", "sharpsignalDocId": 677}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Family Variant · Setup · Turn Summary · Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 677}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 677 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 677 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 0.91300 of 1931 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 9, 2026 00:20 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 Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Setup	p.12	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Advanced Setup *	p.4	0.047131 (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 Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Setup	p.4	0.045695 (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 Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Achievements (rules modifications)	p.16	0.045476 (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 Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Gameplay Overview · Game Start · 1. Select a card and a token.	p.6	0.032258 (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 Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	2. Place the card into your home. · 3. Check lighting conditions and collect verdancy. · Lighting Conditions	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
#7	RULEBOOK Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Achievements (standard game)	p.16	0.030622 (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 Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Verdant Achievements · Scenarios	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

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 27 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 Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Setup	p.12	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Family Variant · Setup · Turn Summary · Scoring	p.13	#10	0.028694 (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 Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Gameplay Overview · Game Start · 1. Select a card and a token.	p.6	#5	0.032258 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Goal Card Rules Clarifications	p.17	#11	0.028665 (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 Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Turn Summary · End Game and Scoring	p.12	#15	0.013699 (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 Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Achievements (rules modifications)	p.16	#4	0.045476 (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 Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Setup	p.4	#3	0.045695 (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 Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Advanced Setup *	p.4	#2	0.047131 (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 Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Setup	p.12	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Advanced Setup *	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Verdant — Rulebook (corpus doc 677)	Family Variant · Setup · Turn Summary · Scoring	p.13	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 238 ms · first delta 2288 ms · total 5431 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 238 ms · ask 5191 ms · gateway work 5431 ms · total 5431 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2932
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 624
tok/sec: 202.5 tok/sec — 624 output tokens in 3.081 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 10s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 0s 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 610), 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.