Ruling — Frostpunk: The Board Game

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Frostpunk: The Board Gamebg-311988-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Place the Generator tile in the middle of the play area, oriented as shown.[1]

2. Create the Rim board by connecting the 6 Rim board pieces together to form a hexagon, using the side depicting a cliff face.[1]

3. Place the Generator (with the drawer) on the Generator tile.[1]

4. Place the Cookhouse Building on the Generator tile as shown.[1]

5. Place 5 Wood and 5 Coal on the Generator tile as shown.[1]

6. Shuffle the Starting Wall tiles face down.[1]

7. Choose any corner of the Rim board and draw one Starting Wall tile at random, placing it face up on the chosen corner.[1]

8. Repeat this procedure for each of the corners of the Rim board, going clockwise until you have placed a total of 3 tiles depicting Deposits (Coal or Wood).[1]

9. Return the blank tiles, along with any tiles not chosen, to the box.[1]

10. Separate the Map tiles into 2 stacks based on their backs, shuffle each stack separately, and place them face down nearby.[1]

11. Place a Far tile face down in each corner of the map where there is no Wood or Coal tile.[1]

12. Place a Near tile face down between each Far tile and the Generator tile.[1]

13. Flip the Map tiles placed in steps 8 and 9 face up.[1]

14. Place Resources and Trees from the bank onto the spaces of the tiles as depicted on those spaces.[1]

15. If any revealed tiles depict Food, add it to the Population board during setup.[1]

16. Place the Stockpile markers near the Scenario display.[2]

17. Give each player the Responsibility sheet corresponding to their Advisor card (in a solo game, take all Responsibility sheets).[2]

18. Place the Phase tracker card nearby with the Phase marker on the Action Phase space.[3]

19. Take the Scenario cards for the chosen scenario and place them in the Scenario display along the top-right edge of the map as indicated in the Scenario Book.[3]

20. For the ‘A New Home: Crater’ scenario, place Scenario card I/01 face up in the Scenario display and the rest face down nearby.[3]

21. Place any Scenario Trigger tokens on the appropriate spaces on the Round track, as shown on the Scenario cards (for ‘A New Home: Crater’, place them on spaces 4 and 11).[3]

22. Place the Storm card for your chosen scenario face down to the left of the Weather deck (for ‘A New Home: Crater’, use Scenario card I/08).[3]

23. Place a number of Automatons from the bank on the Supply board as shown on the Society card.[4]

24. Place the Hunger marker on space 0 of the Food track.[4]

25. Place the Spent Citizen tokens beside the Supply board.[4]

26. Any components not required for the chosen scenario should be returned to the box.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.9 · 19 Large Building tiles

[2] RULEBOOK Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.15 · 14 Other setup you may upgrade a Building by paying its upgrade cost and using 2 sub-actions. · Responsibility sheets

[3] RULEBOOK Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.15

[4] RULEBOOK Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.11 · For Society I - Normal, place the Food marker on space 8. · For Society I - Normal, you begin the game with 0 Automatons. SUPPLIES

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 246 ms · ask 9355 ms · total 9604 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 9604 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "8 8 Choose a scenario to play The following instructions are for setting up the game using the ‘A New Home: Crater’ scenario which is recommended for your first game Refer to the Scenario Book for instructions on how to set up the other scenarios Game Setup Round & Morning board Morning deck The set", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 439}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "4 Increase your starting Food for any Map tile bonuses on Map tiles revealed during setup (see Map tile icons on page 10) 5 Place the Hunger marker on space 0 of the Food track gave us a sense of unity. There is hope for us. We even managed to preserve For Society I - Normal, you begin the game with", "headingPath": "For Society I - Normal, place the Food marker on space 8. · For Society I - Normal, you begin the game with 0 Automatons. SUPPLIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 439}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.045635, "snippet": "15 14 Other setup Each player must choose and dis- card one of their Citizen cards (plac- ing it face up in a discard pile to the right of the Citizen deck) A player must pay the starting cost of the card (shown in the upper-right cor- ner) to discard a card in this way A card cannot be discarded if", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 439}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045475, "snippet": "1 Place the Generator tile in the middle of the play area, oriented as shown 2 Create the Rim board by connecting together the 6 Rim board pieces to form a hexagon as shown in the image Use the side depicting a cliff face 3 Place the Generator (with the drawer) on the Generator tile Keep the Generat", "headingPath": "19 Large Building tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 439}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Motivation: Take 1 Resource from the Map and place it in the supply. Then, for each active Motivation, take another 1 Resource from the Map and place it in the supply. For each Resource you cannot take, gain 1 Coal. Care: For each active Care, Cure 2. Justice: For each active Justice, exhaust 1 Disc", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 439}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "During the game, you may reveal Scenario cards and Event cards that contain Special Actions that can be used in the Action Phase You may use the Special Action on any Scenario cards in your Scenario display Event cards may be placed into your Event display, depending on the card text and choice you ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 439}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "During the game, you may reveal Scenario cards and Event cards that contain Special Actions that can be used in the Action Phase (the cards will have ‘ACTION PHASE:’ on them to show this) To perform a Special Action, place your Meeple in the Special Action area on the card Some cards require you to ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 439}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Place the Dusk board above the Population board 2 Place the 'Inevitable' Dusk card (D000) face down on the middle space 3 Shuffle the Social Dispute cards and place them face up on the rightmost space of the board 4 Read through the top Social Dispute card so that you know what to expect and then fl", "headingPath": "10 Future Law display · 12 Generator board · For the 'A New Home: Crater' scenario, use all Weather cards. · 13 Advisors & Citizens · For the 'A New Home: Crater' scenario, use all Citizen cards.", "sharpsignalDocId": 439}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "19 Large Building tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 439}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "14 Other setup you may upgrade a Building by paying its upgrade cost and using 2 sub-actions. · Responsibility sheets", "sharpsignalDocId": 439}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 439}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "For Society I - Normal, place the Food marker on space 8. · For Society I - Normal, you begin the game with 0 Automatons. SUPPLIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 439}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 439 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 439 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 0.89585 of 2170 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 18, 2026 01:40 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 Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)		p.8	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)	For Society I - Normal, place the Food marker on space 8. · For Society I - Normal, you begin the game with 0 Automatons. SUPPLIES	p.11	0.045928 (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 Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)		p.15	0.045635 (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 Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)	19 Large Building tiles	p.9	0.045475 (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 Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)		p.14	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 Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)		p.27	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 Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)		p.5	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 Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)	10 Future Law display · 12 Generator board · For the 'A New Home: Crater' scenario, use all Weather cards. · 13 Advisors & Citizens · For the 'A New Home: Crater' scenario, use all Citizen cards.	p.14	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 Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)		p.8	#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 Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)		p.2	#9	0.029116 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)		p.38	#24	0.012821 (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 Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)	INCREASING AND DECREASING HOPE / DISCONTENT	p.17	#35	0.01087 (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 Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)	19 Large Building tiles	p.9	#4	0.045475 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)		p.15	#3	0.045635 (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 Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)	14 Other setup you may upgrade a Building by paying its upgrade cost and using 2 sub-actions. · Responsibility sheets	p.15	#10	0.027783 (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 Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)	For Society I - Normal, place the Food marker on space 8. · For Society I - Normal, you begin the game with 0 Automatons. SUPPLIES	p.11	#2	0.045928 (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 Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)	19 Large Building tiles	p.9	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)	14 Other setup you may upgrade a Building by paying its upgrade cost and using 2 sub-actions. · Responsibility sheets	p.15	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)		p.15	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Frostpunk: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 439)	For Society I - Normal, place the Food marker on space 8. · For Society I - Normal, you begin the game with 0 Automatons. SUPPLIES	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 246 ms · first delta 5957 ms · total 9604 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 246 ms · ask 9355 ms · gateway work 9604 ms · total 9604 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3996
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 677
tok/sec: 193.3 tok/sec — 677 output tokens in 3.503 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 25s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 4s 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 370), 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.