RuleSage cited table rulings
← Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

To setup the game, follow these steps: 1. Each player must decide which character they are going to play [1]. 2. Players should claim their character's figure and mat, the rectangular initiative order token from their character's zip bag, a hit point dial from the game box, a deck of smaller cards with no warning, and the first seven cards from the larger deck with no warning [2]. 3. Each player should place their character mat, player reference card, six level "A" ability cards, attack modifier deck (the deck of smaller cards), and hit point dial in front of them [3]. 4. Set the red side of the dial to the red number below the white "1" on the bottom of the character mat [3]. 5. Place the character's initiative order token near the center of the table [3]. 6. Open the Scenario Book to the specific scenario and place it in the middle of the table [3]. 7. Each player places their character's figure on any one of the starting hex icons in the Scenario Book, ensuring no two characters occupy the same hex [3]. 8. Retrieve the zip bag of monsters for the scenario and remove the cardboard standees, the large square stat card, and the initiative order token, which can be placed with the other tokens [3]. 9. Insert the monster stat card in one of the six-section envelopes from the box so that the area with the "1" in the upper left corner is showing and place it next to the Scenario Book [3]. 10. Randomize the number on each monster standee, put them into white and gold plastic stands, and populate the map in the Scenario Book following the icons provided for specific hexes [3]. 11. At the start of each scenario, retrieve the deck of battle goals from the game box, shuffle it, and deal two random cards to each character in secret [4]. 12. Each character chooses one of these goals to keep for the scenario and discards the other [4].

[1] RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook · p.3 · Scenario 1 Rules
[2] RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook · p.3 · Playing by Yourself?
[3] RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook · p.4 · Play Area Setup
[4] RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook · p.25 · Battle Goals

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile
live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings
search 263 ms · ask 11737 ms · total 12010 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 12010 ms
retrieval refs (raw)
[{"page": 4, "score": 0.032266, "snippet": "Using these character materials and other components, we will now set up Scenario 1. Each player should place their character mat ①, player reference , six level \"A\" ability cards 3 , attack modifier deck (the deck of smaller cards) , and hit point dial in front of them. The red side of the dial sho", "headingPath": "Play Area Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031778, "snippet": "Now that the game has been set up properly, we can start playing! Gameplay within a scenario is broken up into a series of rounds. In each round, all players will select which ability cards they would like to play. The chosen cards will determine the \"initiative order\", which is the sequence in whic", "headingPath": "Playing the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.031498, "snippet": "The last new aspect of setup is the deck of battle goals. From now on, at the start of each scenario, retrieve the deck of battle goals from the game box, shuffle it, and deal two random cards to each character in secret. Each character will then choose one of these goals to keep for the scenario, d", "headingPath": "Battle Goals", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030536, "snippet": "To start, perhaps you noticed this in the Scenario Book: This means to take that first sticker from the sticker sheet, labeled \"Roadside Ambush\", and place it in the \"B1\" square of the city map board, such that the artwork lines up. These stickers are permanent. If you would prefer not to make perma", "headingPath": "Scenario 1 Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.027972, "snippet": "Starting now, each time you successfully complete a scenario, you must encounter a city event. Before doing this for the first time, however, retrieve the \"events\" deck from the game box and shuffle the cards. Then, draw the top card of the deck and read the introductory text ①on the front. This wil", "headingPath": "New City Interaction: Events", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 30, "score": 0.027912, "snippet": "There are a few other rules we weren't able to introduce yet that you will need as you go deeper into the campaign. These are outlined below, but also note that the Rules Glossary contains a comprehensive detailing of all the rules in the game. If you ever have a question about anything, you will fi", "headingPath": "Final Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.026333, "snippet": "Introduction. Scenario I Rules Play Area Setup. Scenario Book Features Playing the Game Card Selection. Ordering of Initiative. Move. Character Turns.. Attack. Attack Modifier Cards. Range and Melee Advantage and Disadvantage. Line-of-Sight.. Damage and Killing Monsters. Target. Conditions.. Suffer ", "headingPath": "Table of Contents", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.016129, "snippet": "If you are playing the game by yourself, you will need to control two separate characters. Take note that this is a more complex experience. If there are two to four players, it is highly recommended that each player only controls a single character. To choose which character to play, find the large", "headingPath": "Playing by Yourself?", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}]
citations (raw)
[{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Scenario 1 Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing by Yourself?", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Play Area Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}, {"page": 25, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Battle Goals", "sharpsignalDocId": 61}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it); rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it)
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)
debug row retained until
Oct 31, 2026 01:43

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. How many arms fused this ruling was NOT RECORDED (it predates the boost trail, ran on the path that stored none, or stored one that could not be read), and the ceiling depends on that count (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60): 2 arms top out at 0.03279; 3 arms top out at 0.04918. So a score above 0.03279 here is not an anomaly: it is arithmetic proof a boost arm voted, and the measured band 0.016–0.033 (taken on two-arm asks) is what does not apply. 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 Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61) Play Area Setup p.4 0.032266 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61) Playing the Game p.6 0.031778 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#3 RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61) Battle Goals p.25 0.031498 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#4 RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61) Scenario 1 Rules p.3 0.030536 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#5 RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61) New City Interaction: Events p.24 0.027972 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#6 RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61) Final Rules p.30 0.027912 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#7 RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61) Table of Contents p.2 0.026333 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#8 RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61) Playing by Yourself? p.3 0.016129 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300

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 Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61) Scenario 1 Rules p.3 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61) Playing by Yourself? p.3 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61) Play Area Setup p.4 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion — Rulebook (corpus doc 61) Battle Goals p.25 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 263 ms · first delta n/a · total 12010 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 263 ms · ask 11737 ms · gateway work 12010 ms · total 12010 ms
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 50s ago)
stream path
not recorded — this ruling predates the stream-path column (V41)
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
SERVED — setup-shaped and this game's approved setup checklist is offered above
pattern that matched
SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question)
setup

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 9), 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.