Ruling — Thebes

← Thebes

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Thebesbg-30869-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Remove the 10 exhibition cards from the card deck.[1][2]

2. Shuffle the remaining cards.[1][2]

3. Draw 4 cards from this deck and place them face up in the space provided for them on the board.[1][2]

4. Divide the remaining cards into three equal face down stacks.[1]

5. Shuffle the 5 small exhibition cards into the second stack and the 5 large exhibition cards into the third stack (Note: with 2 players, shuffle all exhibition cards into the second stack).[1]

6. Place the first stack on top of the second stack to form the card supply.[1][2]

7. Place the third stack aside to be used when the card supply is exhausted.[1]

8. Set one value 1 artifact token from each area aside.[1][2]

9. Place the set-aside value 1 artifact tokens on the appropriate excavation areas on the board.[1]

10. Place all remaining tokens in the bags for their colors.[1][2]

11. Place the year marker on space “1901” with 2 and 3 players and on space “1902” with 4 players.[1]

12. Place the five summary cards next to the board.[1]

13. Place the time markers for all players in a stack on the start space (with 2 or 4 players), or on space 16 (with 3 players).[1]

14. Place all archeologists on Warsaw.[1]

15. Each player takes a set of excavation permissions, 1 archeologist, 1 time marker, and 1 time wheel in the color of his choice.[1][2]

16. Each player places his excavation permissions and time wheel in his play area.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook · p.2

[2] RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook · p.2 · Contents · Preparation

Rule found, game on.

🔧 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 3218 ms · total 3443 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 3443 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "2 Remove the 10 exhibition cards from the card deck, shuf- fle the remaining cards, draw 4 cards from this deck and place them face up in the space provided for them on the board. Divide the remaining cards into three equal face down stacks. Shuffle the 5 small exhibition cards into the second stack", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.046432, "snippet": "• 1 rule book and • 1 summary sheet • 1 game board – with 12 places (7 cities in Europe and 5 excavation sites in the area of the Mediterranean) connected by a transportation network • 4 archeologists – in the 4 player colors • 4 time markers – in the 4 player colors • 1 year marker • 85 researcher ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "1 rule book and · 1 summary sheet 1 game board - with 12 places (7 cities in Europe and 5 excavation sites in the area of the Mediterranean) connected by a transportation network time line with the 52 weeks in a year 4 spaces for researcher cards 3 spaces for exhibition cards 4 archeologists in the ", "headingPath": "Contents", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "The players travel as archaeologists around Europe in order to acquire the necessary knowledge for their excavation expeditions. With the aid of assistants, players get needed equipment and services for their expeditions. Once properly equipped, the players head off to Egypt, Crete, or Mesopotamia t", "headingPath": "Goal · Playing the game · 1. Player order", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "The player chooses one of the face up researcher cards on the board, moves his archeologist to the city indicated on the card, and places the card face up in his play area. If the player's archeologist is already in the city shown on the card, the player has no movement cost. If the player's archeol", "headingPath": "Take a researcher card · When an exhibit card is drawn · A new card is drawn · When the card supply is exhausted", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "The player's excavation is complete. He turns over the excavation permission he used to display the side with an 'X'. The player may dig again in this area only next year (after his time marker has passed week 52 on the time track). The first player to excavate in an area gets the token ( value 1 ) ", "headingPath": "Ending the excavation · Bonus for the first excavation in an area · Execute an exhibition · A year is ended", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "First, the special knowledge for the excavation area is counted (technical books, assistants, and notes). Then the general knowledge points are added (1 point per book). A player may not use more points of general knowledge than he uses of special area knowledge. If the player has more general knowl", "headingPath": "as well as: · Using the time wheel - the number of tokens to draw · The excavation: finding useful items or useless debris · Players may never look into the bags!", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "On his turn, a player executes one of the following actions: take a researcher card exchange the 4 cards displayed execute an excavation execute an exhibition and enhance their reputations in the form of victory points. Players who can arrange exhibitions and visiting congresses will add to their re", "headingPath": "2. Execute an action", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Contents · Preparation", "sharpsignalDocId": 656}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 656 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 656 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 0.85762 of 1194 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 11, 2026 23:49 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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)		p.2	0.048139 (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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)		p.1	0.046432 (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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Contents	p.1	0.045724 (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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Goal · Playing the game · 1. Player order	p.3	0.032787 (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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Take a researcher card · When an exhibit card is drawn · A new card is drawn · When the card supply is exhausted	p.4	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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Ending the excavation · Bonus for the first excavation in an area · Execute an exhibition · A year is ended	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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	as well as: · Using the time wheel - the number of tokens to draw · The excavation: finding useful items or useless debris · Players may never look into the bags!	p.6	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
#8	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	2. Execute an action	p.3	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))	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 12 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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)		p.2	#1	0.048139 (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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Contents · Preparation	p.2	#12	0.013889 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Execute an excavation · The minimum requirement · Determining knowledge points · as well as:	p.5	#10	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
#4	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Contents	p.1	#3	0.045724 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	2. Execute an action	p.3	#8	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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	as well as: · Using the time wheel - the number of tokens to draw · The excavation: finding useful items or useless debris · Players may never look into the bags!	p.6	#7	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 Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Ending the excavation · Bonus for the first excavation in an area · Execute an exhibition · A year is ended	p.7	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Goal · Playing the game · 1. Player order	p.3	#4	0.032787 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Thebes — Rulebook (corpus doc 656)	Contents · Preparation	p.2	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 221 ms · first delta 1310 ms · total 3443 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 3218 ms · gateway work 3443 ms · total 3443 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3417
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 412
tok/sec: 201.4 tok/sec — 412 output tokens in 2.046 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 55s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 2s 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 589), 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.