RuleSage cited table rulings
← Wilderness War

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Wilderness Warbg-1822-en-1e

In tournaments, or if players both want to play the same side, each player should write down a bid of at least 0 VPs.[1] The higher bidder plays the favored side, while the other player begins with the number of VPs bid by the opponent added to the scenario-defined start level.[1] If both players bid the same, roll a die to randomly determine sides.[1]
To set up the cards:
1. Deal each player cards as specified in the scenario set up.[2]
2. Both players are dealt cards from a single, facedown draw pile.[3]
[1] RULEBOOK Wilderness War — Rulebook · p.15 · 13.3 Bidding
[2] RULEBOOK Wilderness War — Rulebook · p.3 · A. Early Season
[3] RULEBOOK Wilderness War — Rulebook · p.4 · 5.2 Card Deck

Settled. Play 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 280 ms · ask 5205 ms · total 5492 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 5492 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 3, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "A.1 Deal Cards. Deal each player cards as specified in the sce -nario set up. Events during the game can change the number of cards players receive. A.2 Action Phases. Beginning with the French, players alternate taking Action Phases. Each Action Phase consists of playing a card to activate leaders ", "headingPath": "A. Early Season", "sharpsignalDocId": 1188}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "In tournaments, or if players both want to play the same side, each player should write down a bid of at least 0 VPs. The higher bidder plays the favored side. The other player begins with the number of VPs bid by the opponent added to the scenario-defined start level. If both players bid the same, ", "headingPath": "13.3 Bidding", "sharpsignalDocId": 1188}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Designer: Volko Ruhnke Developer: Rob Winslow Art Director: Rodger B. MacGowan Map, Card and Counter Artist: Mark Simonitch 1st Edition Project Editor: Stuart K. Tucker Layout: Mark Simonitch Box Cover Artist: Rodger B. MacGowan Playtesters: Steven Bucey, Ananda Gupta, Chris Hall, Ric Manns, John Ne", "headingPath": "Credits", "sharpsignalDocId": 1188}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "First, the defending player may play the Blockhouses event. Then the Raiding player rolls a die on the Raid Table. Use either the 'Stockade/Settlement' or 'Cultivated' column, depending on the space being Raided (for a stockade or currently enemyallied settlement in cultivated terrain, use the Stock", "headingPath": "10.3 Resolving a Raid", "sharpsignalDocId": 1188}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "A player may play any card to build EITHER stockades OR forts (not both). Exception: A player may NOT carry out construction with two card plays in a row, even after beginning a new season. 5.41 Stockades. Place stockade markers (one per space) totaling up to the number value of the card. Stockades ", "headingPath": "5.4 Construction", "sharpsignalDocId": 1188}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "The siege level begins at '0' and can be increased to either '1' or '2.' 8.231 To increase the siege level, the besieging stack must begin an Action Phase in the besieged space (there would already be a siege marker) and must include supplied [12.0] Drilled Troops and at least one leader. The besieg", "headingPath": "8.2 Sieges", "sharpsignalDocId": 1188}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "5.31 Either side can use any card (regardless of colored symbol) to activate leaders or units. Only activated leaders or units may move, initiate combat, carry out sieges, or Raid. An individual unit or leader may only be activated once per Action Phase. 5.32 Each card can be used to activate: Indiv", "headingPath": "5.3 Activation", "sharpsignalDocId": 1188}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "5.21 Both players are dealt cards from a single, facedown draw pile. The scenario instructions state how many cards players receive. 5.22 As cards are played, they are placed into a faceup discard pile. Certain Events allow a player to draw a card from the discard pile into his hand. 5.23 If a card ", "headingPath": "5.2 Card Deck", "sharpsignalDocId": 1188}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "13.3 Bidding", "sharpsignalDocId": 1188}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "A. Early Season", "sharpsignalDocId": 1188}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5.2 Card Deck", "sharpsignalDocId": 1188}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1188 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1188 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 0.92363 of 419 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Sep 18, 2026 17:10 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 Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) A. Early Season p.3 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 Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) 13.3 Bidding p.15 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
#3 RULEBOOK Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) Credits p.16 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
#4 RULEBOOK Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) 10.3 Resolving a Raid p.14 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
#5 RULEBOOK Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) 5.4 Construction p.5 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
#6 RULEBOOK Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) 8.2 Sieges p.12 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
#7 RULEBOOK Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) 5.3 Activation 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 Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) 5.2 Card Deck p.4 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 46 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 Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) A. Early Season p.3 #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 Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) 8.2 Sieges p.12 #6 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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#3 RULEBOOK Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) 10.3 Resolving a Raid p.14 #4 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
#4 RULEBOOK Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) 8.2 Sieges p.12 #12 0.014085 (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 Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) 5.5 Events p.6 #24 0.012048 (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 Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) 5.2 Card Deck p.4 #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 Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) 13.3 Bidding p.15 #2 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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#8 RULEBOOK Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) p.1 #23 0.012195 (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

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 Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) 13.3 Bidding p.15 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) A. Early Season p.3 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Wilderness War — Rulebook (corpus doc 1188) 5.2 Card Deck p.4 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 280 ms · first delta 4745 ms · total 5492 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 280 ms · ask 5205 ms · gateway work 5492 ms · total 5492 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3613
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
126
tok/sec
195.0 tok/sec — 126 output tokens in 0.646 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 12s 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 1118), 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.