Ruling — Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North

← Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Imperial Settlers: Empires of the Northbg-270844-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Unpack and sort cards before the first game, separating Island cards by distance and individual Clan decks into individual stacks.[1]

2. Place stickers on the Clan action pawns, ensuring each pawn has an exhausted sticker on one side.[1]

3. Place the Score board on the table where all players can easily see it, using the side with the point track layout that works best for your group.[1]

4. Place the Expedition board in the middle of the play area within reach of all players.[1]

5. Shuffle the Distant Island cards and place them face down on their space of the Expedition board.[1]

6. Shuffle the Nearby Island cards and place them face down on their space of the Expedition board.[1]

7. Reveal 2 cards from both Island decks and place them in the designated spaces.[1]

8. Shuffle the 5 Action tiles and place them in a random order forming a circle near the Expedition board (if not using Solo mode).[1]

9. Each player chooses the Clan they wish to play and takes all of its components: 3 Clan Basic Fields cards (or Location in rare situations), a deck of 30 Clan cards, 2 Clan Ship tokens, and a Clan score marker.[1]

10. Players place their 3 Basic Fields face up in front of them and shuffle the Clan cards, placing them nearby in a face-down deck.[1]

11. Return any unused Clan pieces to the box.[1]

12. Each player chooses one of four player colors and takes a Clan tile and 2 Clan action pawns of that color.[1]

13. Players place their Clan tile next to their Basic Fields and keep the Clan action pawns in front of them.[1]

14. Each player places a Clan score marker on the 0 space of the scoreboard.[1]

15. Place all Goods and additional tokens within easy reach to create the general supply.[1]

16. Each player takes Goods shown on their Basic Field cards and places them nearby as their supply.[1]

17. Each player also takes 5.[1]

18. Randomly select the First player and give them the First player marker.[1]

19. At the beginning of the game, each player draws 5 cards from their Clan deck, looks through them, and chooses 3 to keep as their starting hand, discarding the other two to their discard pile.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook · p.5 · LOCATION PLACEMENT

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 79 ms · ask 4399 ms · total 4479 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4479 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "NOTE: Before the first game, cards should be unpacked and sorted. Separate the Island cards by their distance, and the individual Clan decks into individual stacks. After the game we recommend keeping each clan and Island deck separate to facilitate faster setup for future games. Additionally, you s", "headingPath": "LOCATION PLACEMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 624}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "This action allows a player to place a Location card from their hand into their playing area. Choose the Location card from their hand that they want to build. Pay the building cost depicted in the card's upper left corner using the indicated Goods from your supply. These Goods return to the general", "headingPath": "BUILD A LOCATION · TO BUILD A LOCATION A PLAYER HAS TO: · BUILDING COSTS · LOCATION ABILITIES · FIELDS · FEATURE · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 624}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "A player places one of their Ship tokens between the Island cards on the Expedition board. First player to do that places their Ship token on the arrow. During following Sail actions the players place their Ship tokens below the first one, forming a queue. The players choosing this action must also ", "headingPath": "SAIL", "sharpsignalDocId": 624}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "One after another, starting from the first Ship token placed on the arrow, players choose a single Island to either Pillage or Conquer for each one of their Ships. A player with just a Ship on the Expedition board (no Raze token or Fish assigned) can choose any face-up Nearby Island , or draw from t", "headingPath": "EXPEDITION PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 624}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "12", "headingPath": "TO ACTIVATE A LOCATION, A PLAYER HAS TO:", "sharpsignalDocId": 624}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "To use the Location's ability a player has to exhaust the card by rotating it 90 degrees to the right. They then must pay any cost described in the ability text. Once the card is exhausted, its ability is no longer available. IMPORTANT: Only Action Location cards are exhausted after use. Both Featur", "headingPath": "ACTION", "sharpsignalDocId": 624}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "> Every time a Location gives you VPs, immediately adjust your score on the scoreboard. > Gold tokens can be used instead of any Resource (Wood, Stone, Sheep, Fish or Food), but not the other way around. Gold tokens cannot be exchanged for Resource markers. > Each time you gain Resources, Workers, o", "headingPath": "GENERAL AND IMPORTANT RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 624}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029644, "snippet": "The following rules refer to a game for 2-4 players. Solo mode uses these rules as well, but with a few differences described in the Solo mode booklet. For the first few games, we recommend a 2-player game using the Glen Clan and the Ulaf Clan, as these are easier to play. Other Clans have more comp", "headingPath": "GAME FLOW · LOOKOUT PHASE · ACTION PHASE · EXPEDITION PHASE · CLEANUP PHASE · Goods are not discarded during the Cleanup phase! · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 624}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "LOCATION PLACEMENT", "sharpsignalDocId": 624}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 624 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 624 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 0.91292 of 1780 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 11, 2026 18:49 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 Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	LOCATION PLACEMENT	p.5	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	BUILD A LOCATION · TO BUILD A LOCATION A PLAYER HAS TO: · BUILDING COSTS · LOCATION ABILITIES · FIELDS · FEATURE · …	p.9	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
#3	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	SAIL	p.10	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
#4	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	EXPEDITION PHASE	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
#5	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	TO ACTIVATE A LOCATION, A PLAYER HAS TO:	p.12	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))	2
#6	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	ACTION	p.9	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
#7	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	GENERAL AND IMPORTANT RULES	p.12	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
#8	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	GAME FLOW · LOOKOUT PHASE · ACTION PHASE · EXPEDITION PHASE · CLEANUP PHASE · Goods are not discarded during the Cleanup phase! · …	p.6	0.029644 (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 24 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 Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	LOCATION PLACEMENT	p.5	#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 Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	BUILD A LOCATION · TO BUILD A LOCATION A PLAYER HAS TO: · BUILDING COSTS · LOCATION ABILITIES · FIELDS · FEATURE · …	p.9	#2	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 Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	KEYWORDS ON CARDS	p.12	#18	0.013333 (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 Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	This action allows a player to Raid an opponent's Action Location card to immediately exhaust it so that the opponent cannot use its ability until unexhausted. · TO RAID AN OPPONENT'S LOCATION: · This action allows you to use the ability of an Action Location in your Empire. · TO ACTIVATE A LOCATION, A PLAYER HAS TO:	p.11	#10	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
#5	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	USE A CLAN ACTION PAWN · POPULATE · CONSTRUCT · HARVEST	p.10	#16	0.014085 (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 Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	TO ACTIVATE A LOCATION, A PLAYER HAS TO:	p.12	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	The Glenn's Clan card - Neighbourhood ice cream shop	p.10	#12	0.02895 (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 Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	ACTION PHASE · AVAILABLE ACTIONS: · Note for Imperial Settlers fans	p.7	#15	0.014286 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North — Rulebook (corpus doc 624)	LOCATION PLACEMENT	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 79 ms · first delta 1783 ms · total 4479 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 79 ms · ask 4399 ms · gateway work 4479 ms · total 4479 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3183
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 532
tok/sec: 201.1 tok/sec — 532 output tokens in 2.645 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 42s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 9s 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 556), 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.