RuleSage cited table rulings
← Shadow Hunters

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Shadow Huntersbg-24068-en-1e

For a 4-player setup, the following preparations are necessary:
1. Place the Game Board in the center of the table.[1]
2. Randomly place the 6 Area Cards in pairs on the board, ensuring each pair is in the same attack range of each other.[1]
3. Shuffle the White Cards, Black Cards, and Hermit Cards separately and place them face down outside the corresponding marked edge of the board.[1]
4. Each player chooses a color and takes two Wooden Pieces of that color: one "HP piece" to be placed in the 'No Damage' circle on the Damage Track, and one "Player Piece" to be placed in front of them.[1]
5. Each player takes a Player Board of their chosen color and places it in front of them.[1]
6. Sort Character Cards into 'Hunter', 'Shadow', and 'Neutral' decks and shuffle them separately with their backs facing up.[1]
7. Draw the appropriate number of cards from each group with their backs facing up based on the 'Character Cards Allocation List' (e.g., for 4 players: 2 Hunter, 2 Shadow).[1]
8. Shuffle the drawn cards together one more time and deal one to each player.[1]
9. Each player secretly checks their character identity and places the card face up on top of their Player Board.[1]
10. Set aside all unused Character Cards so identities remain unknown.[1]
11. Randomly determine the starting player.[1]
Additional Setup Variations:
* 7 or more players: You may prepare a greater number of Character Cards than the actual number of players by 1.[2]
* 6 or more players: You may allow each player to use a 'Hermit Card' at the start of the game.[2]
* First game: You may choose to remove the character Bob from the game to simplify matters.[2]
[1] RULEBOOK Shadow Hunters — Rulebook · p.2 · Number of players: 4 to 8 · Game setup · When played by 4 players · When played by 5 players · When played by 6 players · When played by 7 players · …
[2] RULEBOOK Shadow Hunters — Rulebook · p.5 · For Greater Speculation & Enjoyment · When played by 8 players · Time Saving Rules · For Beginners

That settles it — whose turn was it?

🔧 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 191 ms · ask 3544 ms · total 3737 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 3737 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 2, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "4 players setup example: The following preparations are necessary before you start playing the game. Note: the use of 'players' and 'characters' are interchangeable. Place the Game Board in the center of the table and then randomly place the 6 Area Cards in pairs on the board. Each pair of Area Card", "headingPath": "Number of players: 4 to 8 · Game setup · When played by 4 players · When played by 5 players · When played by 6 players · When played by 7 players · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1156}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "When you play 'Shadow Hunters' using these additional cards, you need to use the following procedures printed below. Then read the 'Game setup' section. Replace character cards There are several ways to replace character cards. Please discuss among participating players and decide your favorite way.", "headingPath": "How To Use These Cards · c. Play by mixing new characters with the basic ones", "sharpsignalDocId": 1156}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "When played by 7 or more players, you may want to consider using more Character Cards than the number of players. Applying this rule should increase the difficulty of speculating the identity of the other players' characters. At the start of the game, prepare a greater number of Character Cards than", "headingPath": "For Greater Speculation & Enjoyment · When played by 8 players · Time Saving Rules · For Beginners", "sharpsignalDocId": 1156}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Each Character Card has the following information. Name Character name. HP (Hit Points) - This shows how much damage you can take before you die. Group Affiliation This shows which group you belong to; 'Shadow', 'Hunter' or 'Neutral' (civilians). Win Condition - This shows what condition your charac", "headingPath": "Character Cards · Playing the game · Move your character (Mandatory) · Action On The Area Card (Optional)", "sharpsignalDocId": 1156}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "When you move to an Area Card, you can choose to attack a player on either that card or the adjacent card it is paired with. If you choose to attack, pick your target and roll both dice at the same time, inflicting damage equal to the difference between the two numbers rolled (subtract the smaller n", "headingPath": "Range · Character's Death · End of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1156}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030366, "snippet": "Once during the game, this can be used at the start of your turn. After you declare the use of your special ability, you choose a character. The chosen character will lose his/her special ability until the end of the game. The character who lost his/her special ability will not be able to declare th", "headingPath": "Ellen - (Chain of Forbidden Curse) · Fu-ka - (Dynamite Nurse) · Gregor - (Ghostly Barrier) · Ultra Soul - (Murder Ray) · Valkyrie - (Horn of War Outbreak) · Wight - (Multiplication)", "sharpsignalDocId": 1156}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Hermit Cards help you to identify the characters belonging to the other players. The player drawing the Hermit Card is the 'current player'. If you draw a Hermit Card, read what's written on the card. Then choose a player and give the card to him/her while keeping the card's back facing up. (Don't l", "headingPath": "Hermit Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1156}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "If you are given a Hermit Card, confirm what's written on the card and follow the instruction only if your character name or character affiliation matches the information on the card. Otherwise you declare 'Nothing happens'. You are given a Hermit Card which says: 'I bet you're a Shadow!, If so, you", "headingPath": "Hermit Cards · Hermit Card Example · White And Black Cards · Attack other player(s) (Optional)", "sharpsignalDocId": 1156}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Number of players: 4 to 8 · Game setup · When played by 4 players · When played by 5 players · When played by 6 players · When played by 7 players · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1156}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "For Greater Speculation & Enjoyment · When played by 8 players · Time Saving Rules · For Beginners", "sharpsignalDocId": 1156}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1156 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1156 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 0.89558 of 1379 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Sep 11, 2026 12:52 UTC

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 Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) Number of players: 4 to 8 · Game setup · When played by 4 players · When played by 5 players · When played by 6 players · When played by 7 players · … p.2 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) How To Use These Cards · c. Play by mixing new characters with the basic ones p.6 0.047379 (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 Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) For Greater Speculation & Enjoyment · When played by 8 players · Time Saving Rules · For Beginners p.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)) 300
#4 RULEBOOK Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) Character Cards · Playing the game · Move your character (Mandatory) · Action On The Area Card (Optional) p.3 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
#5 RULEBOOK Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) Range · Character's Death · End of the game p.4 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
#6 RULEBOOK Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) Ellen - (Chain of Forbidden Curse) · Fu-ka - (Dynamite Nurse) · Gregor - (Ghostly Barrier) · Ultra Soul - (Murder Ray) · Valkyrie - (Horn of War Outbreak) · Wight - (Multiplication) p.7 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
#7 RULEBOOK Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) Hermit Cards p.3 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
#8 RULEBOOK Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) Hermit Cards · Hermit Card Example · White And Black Cards · Attack other player(s) (Optional) p.4 0.029851 (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 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 13 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) Number of players: 4 to 8 · Game setup · When played by 4 players · When played by 5 players · When played by 6 players · When played by 7 players · … p.2 #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 Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) For Greater Speculation & Enjoyment · When played by 8 players · Time Saving Rules · For Beginners p.5 #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
#3 RULEBOOK Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) Ellen - (Chain of Forbidden Curse) · Fu-ka - (Dynamite Nurse) · Gregor - (Ghostly Barrier) · Ultra Soul - (Murder Ray) · Valkyrie - (Horn of War Outbreak) · Wight - (Multiplication) p.7 #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)) vector + full-text the re-ranker chose it
#4 RULEBOOK Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) Q1 : I've obtained several Equipment Cards. Can their effects be combined? · Q4: If I kill multiple characters at one time due to the card effect 'Machine Gun', do I get only 1 Equipment Card'? · Q5: Is it possible not to use the effect of my Equipment Cards? · Identify other players' characters! · Think about the team play! · Additional 10 Characters p.6 #10 0.029324 (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 Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) Special Abilities p.5 #9 0.029412 (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 Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) Character Cards · Playing the game · Move your character (Mandatory) · Action On The Area Card (Optional) p.3 #4 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
#7 RULEBOOK Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) Range · Character's Death · End of the game p.4 #5 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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#8 RULEBOOK Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) How To Use These Cards · c. Play by mixing new characters with the basic ones p.6 #2 0.047379 (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

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 Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) Number of players: 4 to 8 · Game setup · When played by 4 players · When played by 5 players · When played by 6 players · When played by 7 players · … p.2 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Shadow Hunters — Rulebook (corpus doc 1156) For Greater Speculation & Enjoyment · When played by 8 players · Time Saving Rules · For Beginners p.5 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 191 ms · first delta 1568 ms · total 3737 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 191 ms · ask 3544 ms · gateway work 3737 ms · total 3737 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3981
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
411
tok/sec
199.6 tok/sec — 411 output tokens in 2.059 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 18s 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
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

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 1086), 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.