Ruling — Star Wars: The Card Game

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Star Wars: The Card Gamebg-103886-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Players agree on who will represent the dark side of the Force (DS player) and who will represent the light side of the Force (LS player), deciding randomly if they cannot agree.[1]

2. Each player takes the three Force cards corresponding to his side of the Force and places them within his reach.[1]

3. Each player chooses which deck he will play; the DS player secretly chooses either the Imperial Navy or the Sith deck, and the LS player secretly chooses either the Rebel Alliance or the Jedi deck.[1]

4. Each player takes the affiliation card associated with that deck.[1]

5. Each player reveals his affiliation card, placing it prominently in his play area.[1]

6. Place the Balance of the Force token prominently in the game area with its light side faceup.[1]

7. Each player removes all objective cards from his deck and shumbles them facedown into a separate objective deck.[1]

8. Each player places his command deck and his objective deck in his play area.[1]

9. Players gather all focus, damage, and shield tokens and place them within easy reach in a token pool.[2]

10. The DS player sets the Death Star dial to '0' and places the dial within easy view of both players.[2]

11. Each player looks at the top four cards of his objective deck (hiding them from his opponent), selects three of those cards, and places the fourth facedown at the bottom of his objective deck.[2]

12. Each player places his three chosen objective cards facedown in his play area.[2]

13. Each player shuffles his command deck thoroughly and draws the top six cards to create his starting hand.[2]

14. The DS player puts his three chosen objective cards into play one at a time by flipping them faceup in the order of his choosing, resolving any relevant interrupt or reaction card effects on one objective card before putting the next into play.[2]

15. The LS player puts his three chosen objective cards into play one at a time by flipping them faceup in the order of his choosing, resolving any relevant interrupt or reaction card effects on one objective card before putting the next into play.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.10 · Setup · 1. Select Force Allegiances · 2. Select and Create Decks · Jedi Deck · Rebel Alliance Deck · Sith Deck · …

[2] RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook · p.11 · 6. Prepare Tokens · 7. Prepare Death Star Dial · 8. Select Objective Cards · 9. Draw Starting Hands · 10. Reveal Objectives · The Golden Rule

Question closed. Friendships intact.

🔧 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 172 ms · ask 3787 ms · total 12437 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 8474 ms · generation 3963 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "To prepare for a game of Star Wars: The Card Game , players must take the following steps: instances of objective sets 18 and 36 are found in the Core Set): Players agree on who will represent the dark side of the Force (i.e. be the DS player) and who will represent the light side of the Force (i.e.", "headingPath": "Setup · 1. Select Force Allegiances · 2. Select and Create Decks · Jedi Deck · Rebel Alliance Deck · Sith Deck · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.046176, "snippet": "The Star Wars: The Card Game Core Set is designed to be a complete two-player game experience with significant re-playability. Players should be able to enjoy many hours of play with the included pre-assembled decks. However, after players have sufficiently experienced the pre-assembled decks contai", "headingPath": "Custom Decks · why build a custom deck?", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.046032, "snippet": "Players gather all focus, damage, and shield tokens and place them within easy reach. This area is hereafter referred to as the token pool. The DS player sets the Death Star dial to '0' and then places the dial within easy view of both players. Each player looks at the top four cards of his objectiv", "headingPath": "6. Prepare Tokens · 7. Prepare Death Star Dial · 8. Select Objective Cards · 9. Draw Starting Hands · 10. Reveal Objectives · The Golden Rule", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "When playing Star Wars: The Card Game , players are frequently required to spend resources in order to play cards or use abilities. A card's resource cost is found in its upper left corner (only unit, event, and enhancement cards have a resource cost). When a player wishes to play a card or is requi", "headingPath": "Resources · generating resources", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 32, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "To play with the Pre-Assembled decks included in the core set, you may have to prepare them first. Below is an example of how to prepare the Jedi Affiliation deck: a) Choose the Jedi Affliation card and place it in your play area. b) locate the required Objective Sets. The pre-assembled Jedi deck us", "headingPath": "Preparing the Decks", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030886, "snippet": "The Star Wars: The Card Game Core Set includes four ready-to-play decks, each built around one LS or DS affiliation (Rebel Alliance, Jedi, Imperial Navy, and Sith). See '2. Select and Create Decks' on page 10 for details on how to construct each of these four decks. The Star Wars: The Card Game Core", "headingPath": "Starting Decks", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Deployment phase begins. As an action, the active player may play a unit or enhancement card from his hand. Deployment phase ends. Proceed to conflict phase. Conflict phase begins. Active player may engage one enemy objective. No Engage Resolve Engagement Conflict phase ends. Proceed to Force phase.", "headingPath": "4. Deployment Phase · PLAYER ACTIONS · 5. Conflict Phase · 6. Force Phase · Engagement Resolution", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "19 resolving the edge battle To resolve an edge battle, the players perform the following steps in order: 1. Place Edge Cards 2. Reveal Edge Stacks 3. Resolve Fate Cards 4. Finish Edge Battle 1. Place Edge Car ds At the start of the edge battle, the attacking player has the first option of placing o", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup · 1. Select Force Allegiances · 2. Select and Create Decks · Jedi Deck · Rebel Alliance Deck · Sith Deck · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "6. Prepare Tokens · 7. Prepare Death Star Dial · 8. Select Objective Cards · 9. Draw Starting Hands · 10. Reveal Objectives · The Golden Rule", "sharpsignalDocId": 997}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 997 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 997 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 0.93345 of 1758 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 24, 2026 23:18 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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	Setup · 1. Select Force Allegiances · 2. Select and Create Decks · Jedi Deck · Rebel Alliance Deck · Sith Deck · …	p.10	0.047938 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	Custom Decks · why build a custom deck?	p.28	0.046176 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	6. Prepare Tokens · 7. Prepare Death Star Dial · 8. Select Objective Cards · 9. Draw Starting Hands · 10. Reveal Objectives · The Golden Rule	p.11	0.046032 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	Resources · generating resources	p.16	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
#5	RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	Preparing the Decks	p.32	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
#6	RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	Starting Decks	p.7	0.030886 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	4. Deployment Phase · PLAYER ACTIONS · 5. Conflict Phase · 6. Force Phase · Engagement Resolution	p.31	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
#8	RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)		p.19	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

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 61 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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	Setup · 1. Select Force Allegiances · 2. Select and Create Decks · Jedi Deck · Rebel Alliance Deck · Sith Deck · …	p.10	#1	0.047938 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	Starting Decks	p.7	#6	0.030886 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	Deck Customizing Rules · Organized Play	p.28	#11	0.027693 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	Custom Decks · why build a custom deck?	p.28	#2	0.046176 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	Resources · generating resources	p.16	#4	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
#6	RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	6. Prepare Tokens · 7. Prepare Death Star Dial · 8. Select Objective Cards · 9. Draw Starting Hands · 10. Reveal Objectives · The Golden Rule	p.11	#3	0.046032 (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 Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)		p.32	#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
#8	RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	Preparing the Decks	p.32	#5	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	Setup · 1. Select Force Allegiances · 2. Select and Create Decks · Jedi Deck · Rebel Alliance Deck · Sith Deck · …	p.10	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Star Wars: The Card Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 997)	6. Prepare Tokens · 7. Prepare Death Star Dial · 8. Select Objective Cards · 9. Draw Starting Hands · 10. Reveal Objectives · The Golden Rule	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 172 ms · first delta 1477 ms · total 12437 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 8474 ms · retrieval 172 ms · ask 3787 ms · gateway work 3963 ms · total 12437 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3208
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 479
tok/sec: 201.0 tok/sec — 479 output tokens in 2.383 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 36s 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 9s 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 927), 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.