Ruling — Wallenstein

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Wallensteinbg-3307-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Assemble the three parts of the dice tower: the funnel, cardboard tower, and tray.[1]

2. (For 3-player games only) Remove the following county cards: Bremen, Holstein, Lüttich, Burgund, Konstanz, Fm. Bayern, Steiermark, and Tirol.[2][3]

3. Assign initial counties by shuffling the county cards and placing the pile face down.[3]

4. Reveal the two top cards of the county pile.[3]

5. Starting with the oldest player and moving clockwise, each player either takes one of the two revealed county cards or the top card from the pile, then selects a group of armies from their player mat and places it in that county on the game board.[3]

6. Continue this process until all players have placed all their army groups on the game board; any remaining armies become the player's personal supply.[3]

7. Place all remaining county cards in a face down pile next to the game board.[3]

8. Flip all player mats to the front side.[4]

9. Place each player's victory points marker on space '0' of the victory points track and their grain marker at the lower end of the food track.[4]

10. Place the green peasants' armies next to the game board as common supply.[4]

11. Fill the dice tower by taking one of each player's armies and cubes and casting them all at once through the funnel into the tray.[4][1]

12. Put any cubes emerging in the tray back into the concerned player's personal supply or the common peasants' armies supply.[4]

13. Place all coins not given to players at the start of the game next to the game board as common supply.[4]

14. Shuffle all event cards well and place them as a face up pile next to the game board.[4]

15. Draw the four topmost event cards and place them next to the event cards pile.[4]

16. Put the action cards and bonus tiles on the table.[4]

17. (If playing Emperor's Court) Place the Emperor's Court next to the main game board.[5]

18. (If playing Emperor's Court) Players place their extra player board next to their standard player board.[5]

19. (If playing Emperor's Court) Shuffle the favor cards and place the deck face down next to the game board.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook · p.3 · Game components · Object of the game

[2] RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook · p.17 · Setup (details see rules book) · 3a. Select initial counties · 3b. use default line up (see below) · Default line up of initial counties

[3] RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook · p.4 · Assigning initial counties

[4] RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook · p.5 · Assigning initial counties · =PJ[VY` WVPU[Z HUK NYHPU THYRLYZ · ;OL KPJL [V^LY · Coins · ,]LU[ JHYKZ

[5] RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook · p.14 · Set up · :LX\LUJL VM WSH`

So says the rulebook. So plays the table.

🔧 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 183 ms · ask 3803 ms · total 3990 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 3990 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 17, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "3-player game only: remove certain county cards Hand out game components; each player receives: r 7SH`LY TH[ TPSP[HY` SLHKLY [VRLU HUK HYTPLZ r 4VUL`! WSH`LYZ ;OHSLYZ WSH`LYZ ;OHSLYZ WSH`LYZ ;OHSLYZ r ZL[ VM TVUL` JHYKZ [V ;OHSLYZ r WSH`LYZ KLWSV` HYTPLZ [V JV\\U[PLZ r WSH`LYZ KLWSV` HYTP", "headingPath": "Setup (details see rules book) · 3a. Select initial counties · 3b. use default line up (see below) · Default line up of initial counties", "sharpsignalDocId": 792}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Use the same setup procedure as in the basic game Place the Emperor's Court next to the main game board. Jeder Spieler erhält zusätzlich zum Material des Grundspiels: r ,_[YH WSH`LY IVHYK r 7 courtiers in their player color, and r KPJL [V^LY JHYKZ The players place their extra player board next to t", "headingPath": "Set up · :LX\\LUJL VM WSH`", "sharpsignalDocId": 792}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "If there are only WSH`LYZ they do not need certain JV\\U[` JHYKZ . These cards are removed from the game; the corresponding counties on the map are marked by a light border. These counties are off-limits during the game, i. e. no armies may enter there. Each player takes the WSH`LY TH[ of their chose", "headingPath": "Counties used in the game · ( WSH`LYZ PUP[PHS JVTWVULU[Z", "sharpsignalDocId": 792}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "After assigning initial counties is completed, all players flip their player mat to the front side, depicting the action boxes. All players place their victory points marker on space '0' of the victory points track and their grain marker at the lower end of the food track. Place the green peasants' ", "headingPath": "Assigning initial counties · =PJ[VY` WVPU[Z HUK NYHPU THYRLYZ · ;OL KPJL [V^LY · Coins · ,]LU[ JHYKZ", "sharpsignalDocId": 792}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Shuffle the JV\\U[` JHYKZ well and place the pile face down in easy reach. Reveal the two top cards. Next to the picture of the military leader, the IHJR VM LHJO WSH`LY TH[ shows 9 numbered locations, embedded in a landscape. Depending on the number of players, each player places a number of armies a", "headingPath": "Assigning initial counties", "sharpsignalDocId": 792}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Shuffle the face up event cards (2, 3, or 4, depending on which round this is) and draw one of them. Place this card face up in the event box of the game board. This card indicates the event of this game round. It will modify certain actions for all players during this round. Put any remaining event", "headingPath": "+L[LYTPUL L]LU[", "sharpsignalDocId": 792}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "All players reveal their bid (the card in their auction box) and pay the amount shown on the card to the common supply; players who had bid a county card pay nothing. In order of their bids, highest bidder going first, next highest bidder second etc., players now select their position of the player ", "headingPath": "-P_ WSH`LY VYKLY", "sharpsignalDocId": 792}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "When planning their actions on their player mats, the players additionally plan their actions on their extra player boards secretly and simultaneously. They must place 1 card on each space of their extra player board, if possiblen. The 3 action boxes on the extra player boards allow the players to J", "headingPath": "7SHU PUKP]PK\\HS HJ[PVUZ VU WSH`LY TH[Z HUK L_[YH WSH`LY IVHYKZ HUK WSHJL H IPK · *V\\U[` JHYKZ · +PJL [V^LY JHYKZ · 4VUL` JHYKZ", "sharpsignalDocId": 792}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game components · Object of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 792}, {"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup (details see rules book) · 3a. Select initial counties · 3b. use default line up (see below) · Default line up of initial counties", "sharpsignalDocId": 792}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Assigning initial counties", "sharpsignalDocId": 792}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Assigning initial counties · =PJ[VY` WVPU[Z HUK NYHPU THYRLYZ · ;OL KPJL [V^LY · Coins · ,]LU[ JHYKZ", "sharpsignalDocId": 792}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Set up · :LX\\LUJL VM WSH`", "sharpsignalDocId": 792}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 792 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 792 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 0.90302 of 1753 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 29, 2026 19:13 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 Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Setup (details see rules book) · 3a. Select initial counties · 3b. use default line up (see below) · Default line up of initial counties	p.17	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 Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Set up · :LX\LUJL VM WSH`	p.14	0.048652 (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 Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Counties used in the game · ( WSH`LYZ PUP[PHS JVTWVULU[Z	p.4	0.045928 (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 Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Assigning initial counties · =PJ[VY` WVPU[Z HUK NYHPU THYRLYZ · ;OL KPJL [V^LY · Coins · ,]LU[ JHYKZ	p.5	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
#5	RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Assigning initial counties	p.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))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	+L[LYTPUL L]LU[	p.8	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
#7	RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	-P_ WSH`LY VYKLY	p.9	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 Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	7SHU PUKP]PK\HS HJ[PVUZ VU WSH`LY TH[Z HUK L_[YH WSH`LY IVHYKZ HUK WSHJL H IPK · *V\U[` JHYKZ · +PJL [V^LY JHYKZ · 4VUL` JHYKZ	p.15	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 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 33 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 Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Setup (details see rules book) · 3a. Select initial counties · 3b. use default line up (see below) · Default line up of initial counties	p.17	#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 Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	+L[LYTPUL L]LU[	p.8	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	End of the game	p.16	#17	0.012987 (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 Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Assigning initial counties · =PJ[VY` WVPU[Z HUK NYHPU THYRLYZ · ;OL KPJL [V^LY · Coins · ,]LU[ JHYKZ	p.5	#4	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	# 5, 15, 20: · Components · Preparing to play the game · Playing the game · Benefits:	p.20	#9	0.029206 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Game components · Object of the game	p.3	#16	0.013514 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Assigning initial counties	p.4	#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
#8	RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Set up · :LX\LUJL VM WSH`	p.14	#2	0.048652 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Game components · Object of the game	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Setup (details see rules book) · 3a. Select initial counties · 3b. use default line up (see below) · Default line up of initial counties	p.17	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Assigning initial counties	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Assigning initial counties · =PJ[VY` WVPU[Z HUK NYHPU THYRLYZ · ;OL KPJL [V^LY · Coins · ,]LU[ JHYKZ	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Wallenstein — Rulebook (corpus doc 792)	Set up · :LX\LUJL VM WSH`	p.14	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 183 ms · first delta 1191 ms · total 3990 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 183 ms · ask 3803 ms · gateway work 3990 ms · total 3990 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3320
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 537
tok/sec: 196.9 tok/sec — 537 output tokens in 2.727 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 46s 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 727), 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.