Ruling — Hoplomachus: Victorum

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Hoplomachus: Victorumbg-313889-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Place the game mat in front of you and the stadium seating directly above it.[1]

2. Place Opportunity Chips face down in the center chip slot of the stadium seating.[1]

3. Separate Faction Unit Chips by color (not including heroes), randomize them, and stack each group face up in the remaining stadium seating chip slots in this order from left to right: Lamosians, Atlantean, Pluto's Refugees, New Argonauts, Vesuvians, Amazons, Parthians, and Kunlun.[1]

4. Separate Event Cards into three separate decks—Sport, Opportunity, and Bloodshed—shuffle each separately, and place the decks face up in the three deck slots in the stadium seating (Sport on the left, Opportunity in the middle, and Bloodshed on the right).[1]

5. Place two Chip Trays on the game mat, one in the top left corner and one in the top right corner.[1]

6. Place Tactic Chips face up in one row of the left chip tray.[1]

7. Place Arena Chips face up in another row of the left chip tray.[2]

8. Randomize and place Bane Chips face down in the final row of the left chip tray.[2]

9. Place all red and blue health chips in the right chip tray, sorted by color.[2]

10. Place the Hero Tracking Pad at the top of the game mat, to the left of the health chips.[2]

11. Place Special Prowess cards face down above the game mat, to the right of stadium seating.[2]

12. Place a pen or pencil, the Unit Skills reference sheet, and all dice off the game mat but within reach.[2]

13. Select your troop's hero and place the hero's chip in your camp (the empty area below the hero tracking pad) with the full art side face up.[3]

14. Choose a difficulty level (Chosen, Valiant, or Fearless) and adjust your hero's stats and blessings accordingly.[4][3]

15. Fill in the hero's Name, Movement, Range, Class, Health, Leadership, and Attack on your tracking pad.[4][3]

16. Select a number of Hero Prowess cards based on your difficulty level and place them face up in the earned Prowess card area of the game mat, placing the rest face down beside the Special Prowess cards.[3]

17. Place a number of red health chips under your hero chip equal to your hero's Health stat.[5]

18. Find one of each neutral unit listed in your hero's details and place them in your camp.[5]

19. For Chosen and Valiant difficulty, find one of each of the three tactics listed in your hero's details and place them in your camp (for Fearless, start with no tactics).[5]

20. Find the arena reference card that matches your hero's home region and place it on the marked spot on the left side of the game mat, then place the corresponding arena mat in the center of the game mat.[5]

21. Place the brass encampment token on the capital space of your hero's home region on the game mat's map.[5]

22. Review all Scion reference cards and choose one to face in your campaign; place its chip in the rightmost individual chip slot in the stadium seating and its card with your reference sheets.[6]

23. Place the identified scion bane chip(s) face down at the front of the bane stack.[6]

24. Put all unselected hero chips into a draw bag and randomly pull three to serve as primuses; place them in the remaining three individual slots in the stadium seating with their stat sides face up.[6]

25. Place all remaining neutral units into the draw bag.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook · p.8 · Preparing to Play · Component Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook · p.9 · Component Setup

[3] RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook · p.9 · Hero Setup

[4] RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook · p.9 · Hero Setup

[5] RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook · p.10 · Hero Setup · Krakenlance starts with the Adrenaline, Hamstring, and Stun tactics.

[6] RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook · p.10 · Rival Setup

Now you know — make it count.

🔧 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 23595 ms · total 23792 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 23792 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Below are the setup instructions for Victorum . It's important to note that, unlike most games, a majority of the components in this game are set face up. This is intentional, allowing the player to see the next card or chip on the stack and use that information to their advantage when making decisi", "headingPath": "Preparing to Play · Component Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "Hero Health. Place a number of red health chips under your hero chip equal to your hero's Health stat. Krakenlance has Health 6, so place six red health chips under him. Neutral Units. From the supply of neutral units, find one of each of the neutral units listed in your hero's details and place the", "headingPath": "Hero Setup · Krakenlance starts with the Adrenaline, Hamstring, and Stun tactics.", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045055, "snippet": "Arena Chips. Place face up in another row of the left chip tray. No randomization is needed. Bane Chips. Ensure you have only the standard banes, not the scion banes with red backs. Randomize and place face down in the final row of the left chip tray. Health Chips. Place all of the red and blue heal", "headingPath": "Component Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "Special Setup Instructions. Note any setup instructions on the current event card, and carry them out at the applicable time during setup. Rival Lineup. Prepare the rival's lineup as dictated by the current event card. Apply act modifiers based on the act. Remember to place tactics for the indicated", "headingPath": "Preparing for Combat · THE RIVAL'S LINEUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.044764, "snippet": "Refer to 'Hero Details' on page 38-39 for information and stats for each of the heroes. You'll need information from that section to complete the steps below. Hero. Select your troop's hero from among the eight options. Place your hero's chip in your camp-the empty area below the hero tracking pad-w", "headingPath": "Hero Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.043935, "snippet": "Fill in the following information for your hero on your tracking pad: Name, Movement, Range, Class, Health, Leadership, and Attack. Then make the following adjustments according to your difficulty level: Chosen: Start with eight blessings. Increase Health and Leadership by +1 each. Add or upgrade a ", "headingPath": "Hero Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Draw the Event. Take the top card of the Sport or Bloodshed deck, as appropriate, and place it on the designated spot to the left of the map of the ancient world. Place the Arena. Find the reference card that matches the region of the ancient world where your encampment is currently located on the g", "headingPath": "Preparing for Combat", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Scion. Review all of the Scion reference cards and choose which one you will face in your campaign. Place the chip for the chosen scion in the rightmost individual chip slot in the stadium seating, and its card with your reference sheets. Return the other scion chips and cards to the box. For your f", "headingPath": "Rival Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Preparing to Play · Component Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Component Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Hero Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Hero Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Hero Setup · Krakenlance starts with the Adrenaline, Hamstring, and Stun tactics.", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Rival Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 854}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 854 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 854 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 0.91416 of 2726 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 17, 2026 04:18 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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Preparing to Play · Component Setup	p.8	0.048916 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Hero Setup · Krakenlance starts with the Adrenaline, Hamstring, and Stun tactics.	p.10	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
#3	RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Component Setup	p.9	0.045055 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Preparing for Combat · THE RIVAL'S LINEUP	p.19	0.044796 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Hero Setup	p.9	0.044764 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Hero Setup	p.9	0.043935 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Preparing for Combat	p.18	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
#8	RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Rival Setup	p.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))	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 80 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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Preparing to Play · Component Setup	p.8	#1	0.048916 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Hero Setup	p.9	#6	0.043935 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Hero Setup · Krakenlance starts with the Adrenaline, Hamstring, and Stun tactics.	p.10	#2	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
#4	RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Preparing for Combat	p.18	#7	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
#5	RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Rival Setup	p.10	#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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Preparing for Combat · THE RIVAL'S LINEUP	p.19	#4	0.044796 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Hero Setup	p.9	#5	0.044764 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Component Setup	p.9	#3	0.045055 (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 Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Preparing to Play · Component Setup	p.8	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Component Setup	p.9	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Hero Setup	p.9	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Hero Setup	p.9	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Hero Setup · Krakenlance starts with the Adrenaline, Hamstring, and Stun tactics.	p.10	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Hoplomachus: Victorum — Rulebook (corpus doc 854)	Rival Setup	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 189 ms · first delta 19315 ms · total 23792 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 23595 ms · gateway work 23792 ms · total 23792 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2846
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 844
tok/sec: 193.1 tok/sec — 844 output tokens in 4.371 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 26s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 6s 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 789), 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.