RuleSage cited table rulings
← Shallow Sea

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

1. Shuffle all the Coral Tiles and place them into the Coral Pouch [1]. 2. Add the specified amount of Fish to the Fish Pouch based on player count and mix well (9 of each color x 4 colors for 1 player; 14 of each color x 4 colors for 2 players; 19 of each color x 4 colors for 3 players; 24 of each color x 4 colors for 4 players) [1]. 3. Place the Fish Pouch below the Coral Pouch and return any unused Fish to the box [1]. 4. Set up the Sealife Pouch by selecting 10 types of Sealife Tiles (referencing the "Sealife Tiles Setup Guide" on page 20) and adding the specified amount based on player count (2 of each type x 10 types for 1-2 players; 3 of each type x 10 types for 3 players; 4 of each for 4 players), then mix well [1]. 5. Place the Sealife Pouch below the Fish Pouch and return any unused Tiles to the box [1]. 6. Set up the Coral Pool by drawing 5 Coral Tiles from the Coral Pouch and laying them face up next to the Coral Pouch [1]. 7. Set up the Fish Pool by drawing 5 Fish from the Fish Pouch and placing one below each Coral Tile in the Coral Pool (for the first game, draw Fish that match the colors of the Coral Tiles in the Coral Pool) [1]. 8. Set up the Sealife Pool by drawing 5 Sealife Tiles from the Sealife Pouch and laying them face up next to the Sealife Pouch [1]. 9. Select 1 card from each of the Orange and Blue Ecosystem Cards and place them face up next to the Pools, returning unused cards to the box [2][1]. 10. Each player places an Ocean Board in front of them [2][1]. 11. Place the Lionfish Card next to your Ocean Board [3]. 12. Each player takes 5 Seashells, placing 2 on their Ocean Board and keeping the other 3 nearby, outside the Ocean Board, returning any unused Seashells to the box [2][1].

[1] RULEBOOK Shallow Sea — Rulebook · p.3 · GAME SETUP
[2] RULEBOOK Shallow Sea — Rulebook · p.3 · GAME SETUP
[3] RULEBOOK Shallow Sea — Rulebook · p.12 · GAME SETUP
🔧 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 190 ms · ask 10548 ms · total 10748 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 10748 ms
retrieval refs (raw)
[{"page": 12, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Prepare a standard game (see page 3) EXCLUDING Ecosystem Cards. NOTE For your first game, use the provided Sealife Tile setup below.", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 64}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.032002, "snippet": "Prepare as you would for a standard game (see page 3). Then, place the Lionfish Card next to your Ocean Board.", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 64}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031754, "snippet": "· Shuffle all the Coral Tiles and place them into the Coral Pouch. Ensure the Coral Pouch is within easy reach of all players. Refer to the table below for the required number of Fish based on player count. Add the specified amount to the Fish Pouch and mix well. Place the Fish Pouch below the Coral", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 64}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031498, "snippet": "Select 1 card from each of the Orange and Blue Ecosystem Cards and place them face up next to the Pools. Return unused cards to the box. For your first game, we recommend using Cryptic Coloration (Orange #1) and Bountiful Caves (Blue #2) . NOTE Each player places an Ocean Board in front of them. Eac", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 64}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03009, "snippet": "There are 4 of each type of Sealife Tile. Use the included plastic trays to store each set of 4 identical Sealife Tiles in its individual slot. 4 Tiles stacked NOTE When all Sealife Tiles are stored, 4 slots across the 2 trays will remain empty. 7", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 64}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.030077, "snippet": "The base game includes a total of 22 types of Sealife Tiles, from which players select 10 to use in the game. Players can freely choose their desired combination of Sealife Tiles, but for a more balanced gameplay experience, we recommend following the guide below. Use this guide to create a unique p", "headingPath": "SEALIFE TILES SETUP GUIDE", "sharpsignalDocId": 64}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.02712, "snippet": "Each scenario offers players unique missions and goals. To successfully complete a scenario, you must achieve both the minimum score and any specific objectives set for that scenario. If you do not meet both the minimum score and the objective, the scenario is considered failed. You may choose to pl", "headingPath": "ACHIEVEMENT MODE - SCENARIO", "sharpsignalDocId": 64}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.015385, "snippet": "Whenever you need to spend a Seashell, you may instead draw a random Fish from the Fish Pouch and place it on the Lionfish Card. This can be done at any time during the game, as many times as you like. When placing Fish on the Lionfish Card, place the first 2 Fish in the two empty spaces at the top ", "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY CHANGES", "sharpsignalDocId": 64}]
citations (raw)
[{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 64}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 64}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 64}]
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 01:44

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 Shallow Sea — Rulebook (corpus doc 64) GAME SETUP p.12 0.032787 (at the 2-arm ceiling (0.03279) — the top of a 2-arm fuse; whether more arms ran here was never recorded) 132
#2 RULEBOOK Shallow Sea — Rulebook (corpus doc 64) GAME SETUP p.12 0.032002 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 110
#3 RULEBOOK Shallow Sea — Rulebook (corpus doc 64) GAME SETUP p.3 0.031754 (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 Shallow Sea — Rulebook (corpus doc 64) GAME SETUP p.3 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
#5 RULEBOOK Shallow Sea — Rulebook (corpus doc 64) GAME SETUP p.2 0.03009 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 247
#6 RULEBOOK Shallow Sea — Rulebook (corpus doc 64) SEALIFE TILES SETUP GUIDE p.20 0.030077 (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 Shallow Sea — Rulebook (corpus doc 64) ACHIEVEMENT MODE - SCENARIO p.14 0.02712 (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 Shallow Sea — Rulebook (corpus doc 64) GAMEPLAY CHANGES p.12 0.015385 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and 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 Shallow Sea — Rulebook (corpus doc 64) GAME SETUP p.3 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Shallow Sea — Rulebook (corpus doc 64) GAME SETUP p.3 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Shallow Sea — Rulebook (corpus doc 64) GAME SETUP p.12 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 190 ms · first delta n/a · total 10748 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 190 ms · ask 10548 ms · gateway work 10748 ms · total 10748 ms
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 44s 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 11), 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.