RuleSage cited table rulings
← Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Deathbg-150997-en-1e

To set up for an adventure, complete the following steps in the order listed:
1. Decide on the number of Heroes that will be taking part in the Adventure.[1]
2. Thoroughly shuffle all of the card decks and place them around the table.[1]
3. Shuffle up all 12 Exploration Tokens and create a stack of them face down.[1]
4. Prepare each Hero that will be taking part.[1]
5. Select a Mission to play.[1]
6. Place the Depth Track where all players can see it.[1]
7. Position the Darkness marker on the Darkness Start space.[1]
8. Position the Hero Party marker on the Mine Entrance space.[1]
9. Set the Entrance Map Tile in the center of the table where all players can reach it.[1]
10. Place each Hero model on the Entrance Map Tile in one of the 8 Starting Area spaces.[1]
[1] RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook · p.10 · GAME SET UP · 1) Number of Players/Heroes · 2) Shuffle Card Decks · 3) Prepare Exploration Tokens · 4) Ready Heroes · 5) Select Mission · …

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 189 ms · ask 4096 ms · total 4288 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 4288 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 10, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "To Set Up for an Adventure, complete the following steps in the order listed. This covers everything needed to start the basic Mission ' A Fistful of Dark Stone' , and includes preparing the card decks, shuffling up the Exploration Tokens, placing the Mine Entrance, and getting the Heroes ready to g", "headingPath": "GAME SET UP · 1) Number of Players/Heroes · 2) Shuffle Card Decks · 3) Prepare Exploration Tokens · 4) Ready Heroes · 5) Select Mission · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "Creating a new Hero is fast and easy. It is often just as fun to start a fresh new Hero as it is to keep one Hero from game to game, over a series of Adventures. To create a new Hero, just follow these simple steps: The most important choice for a new Hero is what Hero Class you want to play. Each H", "headingPath": "CREATING A NEW HERO · Choose Hero Class · Get Starting Items · Draw a Personal Item · Choose Your Starting Upgrade · Select Any Class Specific Cards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "This marks the current position of the Heroes on the Depth Track and moves down the track as the Heroes explore the Mine. Several additional counters have been provided. Most of these are not needed for the main game but can be used for house rules or future official content. XP and Gold are only ne", "headingPath": "Hero Party Marker · Additional Counters · XP and Gold · Figures and Bases · Shadows of Brimstone CD Soundtrack", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "There are many things in the game that require you to determine a Random Hero. There are two simple ways to do this - use the Hero Tokens provided to draw one randomly, or simply roll a die. A Hero Token for each Hero in this Core Set has been provided and these can be used to draw from without look", "headingPath": "A RANDOM HERO", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Once you have determined what Types of Enemies are taking part in the Fight, and how many there are of each Type, it is time to place them on the board. Enemies from an Attack Exploration Token are placed on the Map Tile where the Token was revealed. Enemies are placed on the board in reverse order ", "headingPath": "Placing Enemies on the Board · Not Enough Models", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Each Game Turn has four steps that are completed in the following order: Hold Back the Darkness Models Activate in Initiative Order Room Exploration End of the Turn Once all four steps are complete, a new Game Turn begins. As noted above, at the start of each turn, the Hero that has the Old Lantern ", "headingPath": "THE GAME TURN · Hold Back the Darkness · Models Activate in Initiative Order · Room Exploration · End of the Turn · HERO ACTIVATION", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 36, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "When playing a Campaign with your Heroes, at the end of each Adventure, every Hero must do the following, in order: Recover if KO'd (rolling on the Injury/Madness Chart) Fully Heal your Health and Sanity Remove any Status Effect markers Resolve any Reward/Failure results of the Mission Roll for Corr", "headingPath": "At the End of Each Adventure · Rolling for Dark Stone Corruption · Traveling and Town Stay · At the Start of Each Adventure", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "At the start of a Hero's Activation, the first thing they should do is to roll a single die for Movement . The Hero may Move a number of spaces up to the amount rolled on the die. Models have no facing and may move forward, back, side to side, and even diagonally. Models may NOT move through other m", "headingPath": "Hero Movement · Map Tile Puzzle Connections", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SET UP · 1) Number of Players/Heroes · 2) Shuffle Card Decks · 3) Prepare Exploration Tokens · 4) Ready Heroes · 5) Select Mission · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 822}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 822 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 822 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 0.89524 of 630 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Sep 12, 2026 21:32 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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) GAME SET UP · 1) Number of Players/Heroes · 2) Shuffle Card Decks · 3) Prepare Exploration Tokens · 4) Ready Heroes · 5) Select Mission · … p.10 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) CREATING A NEW HERO · Choose Hero Class · Get Starting Items · Draw a Personal Item · Choose Your Starting Upgrade · Select Any Class Specific Cards · … p.7 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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) Hero Party Marker · Additional Counters · XP and Gold · Figures and Bases · Shadows of Brimstone CD Soundtrack p.3 0.047123 (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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) A RANDOM HERO p.18 0.045228 (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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) Placing Enemies on the Board · Not Enough Models p.24 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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) THE GAME TURN · Hold Back the Darkness · Models Activate in Initiative Order · Room Exploration · End of the Turn · HERO ACTIVATION p.13 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
#7 RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) At the End of Each Adventure · Rolling for Dark Stone Corruption · Traveling and Town Stay · At the Start of Each Adventure p.36 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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) Hero Movement · Map Tile Puzzle Connections p.13 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 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 75 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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) GAME SET UP · 1) Number of Players/Heroes · 2) Shuffle Card Decks · 3) Prepare Exploration Tokens · 4) Ready Heroes · 5) Select Mission · … p.10 #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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) MAP TILES p.5 #32 0.011628 (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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) OPTIONAL RULES · Fixed Hero Move · Advanced Encounters · Below the Darkness p.38 #18 0.014493 (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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) CREATING A NEW HERO · Choose Hero Class · Get Starting Items · Draw a Personal Item · Choose Your Starting Upgrade · Select Any Class Specific Cards · … p.7 #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
#5 RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) Targeting Heroes and Movement p.28 #24 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
#6 RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) Hero Movement · Map Tile Puzzle Connections p.13 #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
#7 RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) THE GAME TURN · Hold Back the Darkness · Models Activate in Initiative Order · Room Exploration · End of the Turn · HERO ACTIVATION p.13 #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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#8 RULEBOOK Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) A RANDOM HERO p.18 #4 0.045228 (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 Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death — Rulebook (corpus doc 822) GAME SET UP · 1) Number of Players/Heroes · 2) Shuffle Card Decks · 3) Prepare Exploration Tokens · 4) Ready Heroes · 5) Select Mission · … p.10 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 189 ms · first delta 3220 ms · total 4288 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 189 ms · ask 4096 ms · gateway work 4288 ms · total 4288 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3648
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
199
tok/sec
195.7 tok/sec — 199 output tokens in 1.017 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 32s 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.
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 757), 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.