RuleSage cited table rulings
← Commands & Colors: Napoleonics

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Commands & Colors: Napoleonicsbg-62222-en-1e · Commands & Colors: Napoleonics Expansion #6 – EPIC Napoleonicsbg-194084-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:
1. Select a battle from the scenario booklet.[1]
2. Place the board in the center of the table.[1]
3. Position players on the side closest to the army they will command, as each scenario specifies which army is at the top and bottom of the battlefield.[1]
4. Hand each player the applicable National Unit Reference Card.[1]
5. Each player takes an infantry in square track and a set of infantry in square counters numbered 1-4, placing the track and counters near their side of the battlefield.[1]
6. Place the terrain hexes onto the battlefield as indicated by the scenario map.[1]
7. Separate the French forces (dark blue blocks) and British/Portuguese forces (red and brown blocks).[1]
8. Set up forces by nationality, initially setting one block of the required troop type or leader block on the battlefield using the board's borders and flank boundaries (dotted lines) to locate the correct hexes.[1][2]
9. Complete each Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery unit with its required number of blocks as detailed in the National Unit Reference Card.[1][2]
10. Shuffle the Command card deck thoroughly and deal Command cards to each side according to the selected scenario's battle notes, keeping cards secret from the opposing player.[1]
11. Place the remainder of the deck face down, within easy reach of both players, alongside the battlefield.[1]
12. Place the eight battle dice and Victory Banner counters within reach of both players.[1]
13. Review any special rules or victory conditions that apply for the battle.[1]
14. The starting player begins play, as indicated in the scenario's battle notes.[1]
[1] RULEBOOK Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook · p.5 · 3. SETTING UP A GAME
[2] RULEBOOK Commands & Colors: Napoleonics Expansion #6 – EPIC Napoleonics — Rulebook · p.13 · 6. SCENARIOS · Some examples:

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 170 ms · ask 3406 ms · total 3580 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 3580 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 5, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "1. Select a battle from the scenario booklet. PLAY NOTE: If this is your first game of Commands & Colors: Napoleonics, we recommend that you set up and play the first battle in the Scenario Booklet-Rolica (French First Position) 17 August 1808, which is designed to introduce you to the basics of Nap", "headingPath": "3. SETTING UP A GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046751, "snippet": "At the start of your turn, play a Command card from your hand. Place it face up in front of you, and read it aloud. A Command card usually dictates the number of units or leaders ordered for the turn, as well as the section(s) of the battlefield to which they must belong. Hexes with a dotted line ru", "headingPath": "Phase 1. PLAY A COMMAND CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.04457, "snippet": "The object of the game is to be the first to capture a set number of Victory Banners (usually 5 to 9), depending on the selected battle scenario's victory conditions. A Victory Banner is gained for each enemy leader or enemy unit entirely eliminated. When the last block of a unit, or a leader, is el", "headingPath": "4. OBJECT OF THE GAME · 5. GAME-TURN (SEQUENCE OF PLAY)", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031498, "snippet": "After playing a Command card, announce which corresponding units and leaders you choose to order. Only those units and leaders that are issued an order may move, battle, or take a special action during your turn. You may only give one order to each unit or leader during the course of a single game t", "headingPath": "Phase 2. ORDER YOUR UNITS & LEADERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.031498, "snippet": "When setting up a game, players should pay close attention to which scenario type that is selected, Standard battle, EPIC battle or La Grande Battles . Each of these requires a different size battlefield game board. Players should also pay close attention to the units deployed in a scenario. Some sc", "headingPath": "6. SCENARIOS · Some examples:", "sharpsignalDocId": 932}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.03101, "snippet": "When a cavalry unit is Battling Back. When an infantry unit is attacking a cavalry unit in melee and the cavalry unit plays a First Strike Command card. When all spaces on a player's square track are filled with Command cards. If the infantry unit does not choose to form square, the cavalry melee at", "headingPath": "Forming Square and Combat · French Player's Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03031, "snippet": "The battlefield game board (hereafter referred to as the battlefield) is a hex grid, 13 hexes wide by 9 hexes deep. The battlefield is divided into three sections by two dotted lines, giving each player a Left Flank Section, a Center Section and a Right Flank Section. Where the dotted line cuts thro", "headingPath": "Battlefield Game Board · Terrain Tiles · Command Cards · Battle Dice", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029857, "snippet": "Announce firing unit Check Range Check Line of Sight Determine Strength of the Attack Apply Command card Dice Additions Apply Terrain Battle Dice Reduction Resolve Combat Score Hits Apply Retreats 1. Announce Firing Unit: Announce the ordered unit you want to fire with and the enemy unit it is targe", "headingPath": "Ranged Combat (Fire) Procedure", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. SETTING UP A GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 555}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "6. SCENARIOS · Some examples:", "sharpsignalDocId": 932}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 555 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 555 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 0.91377 of 1380 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Oct 22, 2026 09:13 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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555) 3. SETTING UP A GAME p.5 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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555) Phase 1. PLAY A COMMAND CARD p.6 0.046751 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555) 4. OBJECT OF THE GAME · 5. GAME-TURN (SEQUENCE OF PLAY) p.5 0.04457 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555) Phase 2. ORDER YOUR UNITS & LEADERS p.6 0.031498 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics Expansion #6 – EPIC Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 932) 6. SCENARIOS · Some examples: p.13 0.031498 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555) Forming Square and Combat · French Player's Turn p.17 0.03101 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555) Battlefield Game Board · Terrain Tiles · Command Cards · Battle Dice p.2 0.03031 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555) Ranged Combat (Fire) Procedure p.8 0.029857 (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 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 — 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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555) 3. SETTING UP A GAME p.5 #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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555) 4. OBJECT OF THE GAME · 5. GAME-TURN (SEQUENCE OF PLAY) p.5 #3 0.04457 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics Expansion #6 – EPIC Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 932) La Grande Battles Game Turn p.11 #20 0.013333 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics Expansion #6 – EPIC Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 932) p.4 #49 0.009434 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics Expansion #6 – EPIC Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 932) La Grande Battles Game Turn p.11 #27 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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555) Phase 1. PLAY A COMMAND CARD p.6 #2 0.046751 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555) Phase 2. ORDER YOUR UNITS & LEADERS p.6 #4 0.031498 (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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics Expansion #6 – EPIC Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 932) 6. SCENARIOS · Some examples: p.13 #5 0.031498 (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

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 Commands & Colors: Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 555) 3. SETTING UP A GAME p.5 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Commands & Colors: Napoleonics Expansion #6 – EPIC Napoleonics — Rulebook (corpus doc 932) 6. SCENARIOS · Some examples: p.13 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 170 ms · first delta 1356 ms · total 3580 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 170 ms · ask 3406 ms · gateway work 3580 ms · total 3580 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3593
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
378
tok/sec
176.7 tok/sec — 378 output tokens in 2.139 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 31s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child)
schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage)
reachable (for 5h, 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.
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 487), 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.