Ruling — Pulsar 2849

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Pulsar 2849bg-228341-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Place the Star Cluster Board in the center of the table.[1] For your first game, use the side without dead ends, marked with the icon on the 0 points space.[1]

2. Place 3 of 6 Goal Tiles against the star cluster board with the marked side up for your first game (or choose 3 at random with a random side up for a standard game).[2] Return unused tiles to the box.[2]

3. Place the Gyrodyne Board anywhere against the star cluster board.[1]

4. Separate Gyrodyne Tiles by type and stack each group in its place on the gyrodyne board.[1]

5. Create three stacks of Construction Award Tiles, placing a 7-point award tile atop a 4-point award tile, and place these stacks on the indicated spaces of the gyrodyne board.[1]

6. Place the Die Modifiers Board anywhere against the star cluster board.[1]

7. Give one Plus-Minus Die Modifier Token to each player and stack the rest on the corresponding space of the die modifiers board.[1]

8. Stack the Plus-Two Die Modifier Tokens on their corresponding space on the die modifiers board.[1]

9. Turn Planetary System Tiles face down, mix them, and deal 16 to the planetary system locations on the star cluster board; return the remaining tile to the box.[1]

10. Shuffle Exploration Bonus Tiles and keep them in a facedown stack where everyone can reach them.[1]

11. Place the Dice Board by flipping it to the correct side (use the 4-player side for 4 players; use the 2- or 3-player side for 2 or 3 players) and placing it anywhere against the star cluster board.[1]

12. Place the required number of dice in the black hole in the center of the board: use 9 silver dice and the red die for a four-player game, or 7 silver dice and the red die for a two- or three-player game.[1]

13. Place the Median Marker near the dice board.[1]

14. Place 3 of 6 Technology Boards against the star cluster board in order, with board I on the inside and board III on the outside (use AI, AII, and AIII for your first game).[2]

15. Set the Time Marker to point at the innermost row of technologies.[2]

16. Keep Engineering Cubes where everyone can reach them.[2]

17. Keep Four-Cube Tokens where everyone can reach them.[2]

18. Group Transmitter Tiles by letters (A, B, and C), stack each group with the lettered side up and shuffle, then create a big stack with Cs on the bottom, Bs in the middle, and As on top; deal the top 3 transmitters beside the stack with the silver dice printed on them visible to all players.[2]

19. Each player chooses a color.[3]

20. Each player takes a quick reference sheet.[3]

21. Each player receives a randomly selected HQ board (for a standard game) and decides which side to use before the first dice roll; for your first game, leave HQ boards in the box.[4][5]

22. Each player places their hundred-point tile near space 0.[4]

23. Each player places one rocket figure of their color on the dice board's play-order spaces in a randomly determined order.[3]

24. Each player places two tokens on the dice board as counters on the initiative and engineering tracks, stacking them in reverse order with the first player's counter on the bottom and the last player's counter on top.[3]

25. Beginning with the last player and proceeding in reverse play order, each player chooses one unoccupied entry gate and places one of their rocket figures there (in 3 or 4-player games, players have one rocket on a play-order space and one on an entry gate; leave the third in the box).[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook · p.4 · OVERVIEW · SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook · p.5 · SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook · p.6 · PLAYER COMPONENTS · INITIAL POSITIONS

[4] RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook · p.6

[5] RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook · p.14 · HEADQUARTERS · Two Sides · The Project Pyramid · Completing a Project · Types of Projects

Answer in hand — your move.

🔧 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 196 ms · ask 6469 ms · total 6667 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6667 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "3 of 6 Goal Tiles: For your first game, we recommend the three goal tiles marked with this symbol: . Place them against the star cluster board with the marked side up. For a standard game, choose 3 at random and play with a random side up. Return the 3 unused tiles to the box. Time Marker: This mark", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 442}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "Dice Board: Flip this to the correct side and place it anywhere against the star cluster board. This is the only board that depends on the number of players. Use this side for a 4-player game. Use this side for a 2- or 3-player game. Setup of the rocket figures and counters is described on page 6. M", "headingPath": "OVERVIEW · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 442}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "6 Each player should also take a quick reference sheet. Your rocket figures, your score tile, and some tokens go to the game boards, as explained below. Keep all your other components on the table in front of you. Tokens are also used as score counters around the edge of the star cluster board. The ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 442}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047073, "snippet": "Each player chooses a color. Each color has the following components: Each player should also take a quick reference sheet. Your rocket figures, your score tile, and some tokens go to the game boards, as explained below. Keep all your other components on the table in front of you. Place one rocket f", "headingPath": "PLAYER COMPONENTS · INITIAL POSITIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 442}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.045262, "snippet": "Use the two- and three-player side of the dice board. All other boards are the same for any number of players. In a two-player game, two rocket figures are used as play-order markers. Randomly decide which player will go first. Place that player's rocket figures on play-order spaces 1 and 3. The sec", "headingPath": "Setup · Example: · Dice Phase · Action Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 442}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.043301, "snippet": "2 At the end of the game, you may choose one goal tile and evaluate it as though you have met the goal. (You can also buy the bonuses.) At the end of the game, score 4 points if you have a spinning gyrodyne, 8 if you have two different types spinning, or 16 if you have all three types spinning. At t", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 442}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030679, "snippet": "After each player has taken one die in order, each player takes a second die in reverse order. In the examples on this page, players choose in this order: Green, Yellow, Red, Red, Yellow, Green. The first player will choose his or her second die last. Exception: In a two-player game, each player has", "headingPath": "Second Die · EVEN START VARIANT", "sharpsignalDocId": 442}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Your ship explores planetary systems. After moving your ship, flip over any facedown systems you visited. This will reveal new planets. When playing with fewer than four players, some of those planets may be blocked by nonplayer colors. In a two-player game, place a token in a nonplayer color on any", "headingPath": "Planets", "sharpsignalDocId": 442}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "OVERVIEW · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 442}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 442}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER COMPONENTS · INITIAL POSITIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 442}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 442}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "HEADQUARTERS · Two Sides · The Project Pyramid · Completing a Project · Types of Projects", "sharpsignalDocId": 442}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 442 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 442 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 0.90986 of 2851 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 16, 2026 17:50 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 Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	SETUP	p.5	0.048131 (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 Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	OVERVIEW · SETUP	p.4	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 Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)		p.6	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
#4	RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	PLAYER COMPONENTS · INITIAL POSITIONS	p.6	0.047073 (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 Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	Setup · Example: · Dice Phase · Action Phase	p.19	0.045262 (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 Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)		p.2	0.043301 (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 Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	Second Die · EVEN START VARIANT	p.8	0.030679 (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 Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	Planets	p.11	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

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 35 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 Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	SETUP	p.5	#1	0.048131 (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 Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	PLAYER COMPONENTS · INITIAL POSITIONS	p.6	#4	0.047073 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)		p.6	#3	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
#4	RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)		p.6	#17	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
#5	RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	HEADQUARTERS · Two Sides · The Project Pyramid · Completing a Project · Types of Projects	p.14	#15	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
#6	RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	Production Phase · Final Scoring · TH R EE PL AYER GAME	p.19	#10	0.028665 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	Setup · Example: · Dice Phase · Action Phase	p.19	#5	0.045262 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	OVERVIEW · SETUP	p.4	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	OVERVIEW · SETUP	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	SETUP	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	PLAYER COMPONENTS · INITIAL POSITIONS	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)		p.6	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Pulsar 2849 — Rulebook (corpus doc 442)	HEADQUARTERS · Two Sides · The Project Pyramid · Completing a Project · Types of Projects	p.14	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 196 ms · first delta 2112 ms · total 6667 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 196 ms · ask 6469 ms · gateway work 6667 ms · total 6667 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3293
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 876
tok/sec: 195.1 tok/sec — 876 output tokens in 4.491 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 1s 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 373), 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.