RuleSage cited table rulings
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You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Magic Mazebg-209778-en-1e · Magic Maze: Hidden Rolesbg-260658-en-1e · Magic Maze: Maximum Securitybg-230359-en-1e

The setup process depends on the specific scenario you choose to play:
Standard Setup
1. Follow the instructions for your chosen scenario, which will instruct you how to set up the Mall tile deck, usually face down.[1]
2. Place the starting tile (Tile 1) in the middle of the table (A-side-up if you are new to the game; otherwise, however you like).[1]
3. Randomly place the 4 Hero pawns on the 4 central spaces.[1]
4. Set aside the Theft tile (A-side-up) and the Out of Order tokens.[1]
5. Take the Action tiles corresponding to the number of players (based on the number in the lower-right corner) and give one to each player.[1]
6. Place your Action card in front of you so everyone can see it, with its North arrow pointing in the same direction as the one on the starting tile.[1]
7. For 1-player games, take the 7 Action tiles (number in the lower-right corner), shuffle them, and place them as a face-down deck, ensuring their North arrow points in the same direction as the arrow on the starting tile.[1]
8. Once everyone is ready, turn over the sand timer to begin the heist.[1][2]
Scenario-Specific Setup Variations
* Scenario 13 (Multidimensional mall): Place the orange and green Hero pawns on tile 1 as usual; place tile 3 on the table a little farther away and place the yellow and purple Hero pawns anywhere on it; place the Mall tile deck face up.[3]
* Tutorial (Dwarven Ventilation Shafts): Shuffle Mall tiles 3, 4, 5, 8, and 10 together to form a face-down deck; use tile 1a as the starting tile; set the Ventilation Shaft tokens near the sand timer.[4]
* Tutorial (The Control Room): Add Mall tile 28 and at least one tile with a Code space (7, 8, 9, 26, or 29); shuffle Mall tiles 2-5, 9, 26, and 28 together to form a face-down deck; use tile 1a as the starting tile; set the Guard pawn on the Theft tile.[5]
* Expansion/Introductory Game: Replace Mall tile 9 from the base game with the expansion version; place a Guard pawn on the Theft tile.[6]
[1] RULEBOOK Magic Maze — Rulebook · p.3 · SETUP
[2] RULEBOOK Magic Maze — Rulebook · p.3 · SETUP
[3] RULEBOOK Magic Maze — Rulebook · p.8 · SCENARIO 13 ◆ Multidimensional mall · SCENARIO 14 ◆ No communication · SCENARIO 15 ◆ You have beautiful eyes · SCENARIO 16 ◆ Vortex out of service · SCENARIO 17 ◆ Groups forbidden
[4] RULEBOOK Magic Maze: Maximum Security — Rulebook · p.4 · NOTE · TUTORIALS · Dwarven Ventilation Shafts
[5] RULEBOOK Magic Maze: Maximum Security — Rulebook · p.13 · FULL GAME · The Control Room
[6] RULEBOOK Magic Maze: Maximum Security — Rulebook · p.2 · INTRODUCTORY GAME · All of the base game's rules still apply. · GUARD · COMPONENTS

So says the rulebook. So plays the table.

🔧 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 221 ms · ask 5537 ms · total 5760 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 5760 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 3, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Follow the instructions for the scenario you choose to play, which will tell you how to set up the Mall tile deck , usually face down; start with Scenarios 1 - 7 (initiation campaign), then continue with Scenarios 8 - 17. After that, feel free to come up with your own scenarios! Place the starting t", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 670}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.044635, "snippet": "➤➤ During the game, you can perform the action(s) depicted on your own Action tile at any time , and as often as you wish ; however, you cannot perform any actions that are not on your Action tile. ➤➤ In this game, there are no 'turns' : You act whenever you notice that one of your actions may be us", "headingPath": "SETUP · MOVE · REMARK · USE A VORTEX · IMPORTANT · TAKE THE ESCALATOR", "sharpsignalDocId": 670}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "You can chat, plot, and scheme as much as you want during the setup. As soon as everyone is ready, turn over the sand timer to begin your heist. Now silence and subtlety are required: You cannot communicate in any way whatsoever! TIP Are there too many of you to fit around your table? Not everyone c", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 670}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030777, "snippet": "We recommend you start out by reading about the guard and the ­ Anti-Stress tokens below, and then play the introductory game detailed at the end of module 2 on this page. Note: In these rules, 'tile 1a' means 'tile 1, A-side-up'. 1 The guards never stop patrolling the mall, in search of miscreants ", "headingPath": "INTRODUCTORY GAME · All of the base game's rules still apply. · GUARD · COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 950}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030366, "snippet": "If the sand timer runs out, you have lost the game! But each time a Hero pawn is moved onto an available Sand Timer space, you must immediately flip the sand timer, regardless of whether that gets you more or less time. Important: Do not use a regular timer instead of a sand timer; the result is not", "headingPath": "TIME RESTRICTION · COMMUNICATION RESTRICTION · REMARKS · TIATION CAMPAIGN INITIATION CAMPAIGN", "sharpsignalDocId": 670}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.029958, "snippet": "At the pinnacle of technology, the sensor is a complex bit of machinery that can pivot 90º at a time, sweeping everything in its path. The heroes will need to take control of this…. When setting up, replace Mall tile 6 with the one from this expansion (6 ), and add tile 29 . Place the Sensor token o", "headingPath": "The Control Room · Sensor", "sharpsignalDocId": 950}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.028612, "snippet": "Shuffle Mall tiles 2-12 to form a face-down deck, then place tile 26 face-down on top of the deck. Tile 1a is the starting tile. GOAL A Hero pawn must use the Map space to explore at least 3 tiles before marking it out of order. Once you have done this, this tutorial is complete. SPECIAL RULES If yo", "headingPath": "Maps", "sharpsignalDocId": 950}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.028219, "snippet": "Each pair of Ventilation Shaft tokens can only be deployed one time, and never moved. The pair of tokens will stay on the board until the end of the game, unless a Guard pawn moves through them, removing them from play. Placing a Ventilation Shaft token on a special space (e.g. Vortex, Sand Timer, I", "headingPath": "NOTE · TUTORIALS · Dwarven Ventilation Shafts", "sharpsignalDocId": 950}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 670}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 670}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SCENARIO 13 ◆ Multidimensional mall · SCENARIO 14 ◆ No communication · SCENARIO 15 ◆ You have beautiful eyes · SCENARIO 16 ◆ Vortex out of service · SCENARIO 17 ◆ Groups forbidden", "sharpsignalDocId": 670}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "NOTE · TUTORIALS · Dwarven Ventilation Shafts", "sharpsignalDocId": 950}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "FULL GAME · The Control Room", "sharpsignalDocId": 950}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "INTRODUCTORY GAME · All of the base game's rules still apply. · GUARD · COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 950}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 670 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 670 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 0.88164 of 1639 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Sep 10, 2026 09:55 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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Magic Maze — Rulebook (corpus doc 670) SETUP p.3 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Magic Maze — Rulebook (corpus doc 670) SETUP · MOVE · REMARK · USE A VORTEX · IMPORTANT · TAKE THE ESCALATOR p.4 0.044635 (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 Magic Maze — Rulebook (corpus doc 670) SETUP p.3 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
#4 RULEBOOK Magic Maze: Maximum Security — Rulebook (corpus doc 950) INTRODUCTORY GAME · All of the base game's rules still apply. · GUARD · COMPONENTS p.2 0.030777 (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 Magic Maze — Rulebook (corpus doc 670) TIME RESTRICTION · COMMUNICATION RESTRICTION · REMARKS · TIATION CAMPAIGN INITIATION CAMPAIGN p.6 0.030366 (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 Magic Maze: Maximum Security — Rulebook (corpus doc 950) The Control Room · Sensor p.14 0.029958 (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 Magic Maze: Maximum Security — Rulebook (corpus doc 950) Maps p.8 0.028612 (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 Magic Maze: Maximum Security — Rulebook (corpus doc 950) NOTE · TUTORIALS · Dwarven Ventilation Shafts p.4 0.028219 (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 52 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Magic Maze — Rulebook (corpus doc 670) SETUP p.3 #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 Magic Maze — Rulebook (corpus doc 670) SCENARIO 13 ◆ Multidimensional mall · SCENARIO 14 ◆ No communication · SCENARIO 15 ◆ You have beautiful eyes · SCENARIO 16 ◆ Vortex out of service · SCENARIO 17 ◆ Groups forbidden p.8 #27 0.022917 (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 Magic Maze: Maximum Security — Rulebook (corpus doc 950) NOTE · TUTORIALS · Dwarven Ventilation Shafts p.4 #8 0.028219 (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 Magic Maze: Maximum Security — Rulebook (corpus doc 950) FULL GAME · The Control Room p.13 #11 0.028043 (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 Magic Maze: Maximum Security — Rulebook (corpus doc 950) INTRODUCTORY GAME · All of the base game's rules still apply. · GUARD · COMPONENTS p.2 #4 0.030777 (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 Magic Maze — Rulebook (corpus doc 670) SETUP · MOVE · REMARK · USE A VORTEX · IMPORTANT · TAKE THE ESCALATOR p.4 #2 0.044635 (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 Magic Maze — Rulebook (corpus doc 670) SETUP p.3 #3 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
#8 RULEBOOK Magic Maze: Hidden Roles — Rulebook (corpus doc 949) CONCEPT OF THIS EXPANSION p.2 #29 0.013514 (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 guaranteed a slot by the one-slot-per-book floor

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Magic Maze — Rulebook (corpus doc 670) SETUP p.3 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Magic Maze — Rulebook (corpus doc 670) SETUP p.3 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Magic Maze — Rulebook (corpus doc 670) SCENARIO 13 ◆ Multidimensional mall · SCENARIO 14 ◆ No communication · SCENARIO 15 ◆ You have beautiful eyes · SCENARIO 16 ◆ Vortex out of service · SCENARIO 17 ◆ Groups forbidden p.8 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Magic Maze: Maximum Security — Rulebook (corpus doc 950) NOTE · TUTORIALS · Dwarven Ventilation Shafts p.4 no quote on the wire
[5] RULEBOOK Magic Maze: Maximum Security — Rulebook (corpus doc 950) FULL GAME · The Control Room p.13 no quote on the wire
[6] RULEBOOK Magic Maze: Maximum Security — Rulebook (corpus doc 950) INTRODUCTORY GAME · All of the base game's rules still apply. · GUARD · COMPONENTS p.2 no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split
retrieval 221 ms · first delta 2957 ms · total 5760 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 221 ms · ask 5537 ms · gateway work 5760 ms · total 5760 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3278
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
544
tok/sec
200.9 tok/sec — 544 output tokens in 2.708 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 24h, checked 7s 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 603), 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.