You asked
How do I setup the game?
Answered counted as answered1. Put all blue, green, orange, red and purple cat tiles and all rare treasure tiles into the discovery bag [1]. 2. Place the island in the centre of the play area (side up); the areas on either side of the island are known as the fields [2]. 3. Place Vesh's boat on space 5 of the day tracker [2]. 4. Place the common treasure tiles below the island, using 5 of each tile for 1-player, 5 of each tile for 2-player, 8 of each tile for 3-player, or 11 of each tile for 4-player [2]. 5. Place 6 Oshax tiles below the common treasure [2]. 6. Place all the wooden cat pieces, 1 fish token, and 5 fish tokens in the supply [2]. 7. Shuffle the discovery cards and place them in a face-down pile [2]. 8. Place the permanent basket tokens below the discovery cards deck [2]. 9. Place the discovery bag somewhere all players can reach [2]. 10. Each player receives: 1 random boat (side up) and 1 permanent basket (green side up) [3]. 11. Randomly decide who goes first [3]. 12. Beginning with that person, go around the table and have each player choose a colour by taking their favourite cat figure from the supply [3]. 13. Place the chosen cat figure on the island in turn order [3].
🔧 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 218 ms · ask 4123 ms · total 4351 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 4351 ms
- retrieval refs (raw)
- [{"page": 4, "score": 0.016393, "snippet": "Each player receives: I random boat side up). I permanent basket (green side up). B Randomly decide who goes first. Then, beginning with that person, go around the table and have each player: Choose a colour by taking their favourite cat figure from the supply. Place their chosen cat figure on the i", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 106}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.016129, "snippet": "Island. Place the island in the centre of the play area ( side up); the areas on either side of the island are known as the fields. Vesh's Boat. Place Vesh's boat on space 5 of the day tracker. Common Treasure. Place the common treasure tiles below the island. Use 5 of each tile for I-player. Use 5 ", "headingPath": "GLOBAL SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 106}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.015873, "snippet": "If you own any expansions you can find some additional setup information on page 23.", "headingPath": "EXPANSIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 106}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.015625, "snippet": "If you prefer watching videos to reading rulebooks, you can find a video explaining how to play this game on our website: www.thecityofkings.com/theisleofcats/ IFISH 5FISH 42 fish tokens 20 x 1 fish and 22 x 5 fish 6 oshax I discovery bag 5 solo colour cards 4 colour cards These can be given to anyo", "headingPath": "HOW TO PLAY VIDEO", "sharpsignalDocId": 106}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.015385, "snippet": "The first time you play, you will need to put some of the cat and treasure tiles into the discovery bag. Place the following in the discovery bag: All blue, green, orange, red and purple cat tiles. All rare treasure tiles. Do not put the Oshax tiles or the common treasure tiles in the discovery bag.", "headingPath": "BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 106}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.015152, "snippet": "Hlatr+++trfl-", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 106}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.014925, "snippet": "You are a citizen of Squall's End and are on a rescue mission to save as many cats as possible before Vesh arrives. You must explore the island, rescue cats, gather ancient treasures and find a way to fit them all onto your boat before returning safely to Squall's End. As you explore the island, you", "headingPath": "GAME PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 106}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.014706, "snippet": "At the end of the game, you will earn points :or: Each cat family you have. A family is 3 or more touching cats of the same colour. Your rare treasures. Any lessons you have completed. You will lose points for: Every visible rat on your boat. Any rooms on your boat that have not been filled. The pla", "headingPath": "HOW TO WIN", "sharpsignalDocId": 106}]
- citations (raw)
- [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 106}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GLOBAL SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 106}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 106}]
- 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 02:28
retrieval — what the search arm returned
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 rank | document | heading | page | fused RRF score | snippet chars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | RULEBOOK The Isle of Cats — Rulebook (corpus doc 106) | PLAYER SETUP | p.4 | 0.016393 (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 The Isle of Cats — Rulebook (corpus doc 106) | GLOBAL SETUP | p.4 | 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 |
| #3 | RULEBOOK The Isle of Cats — Rulebook (corpus doc 106) | EXPANSIONS | p.4 | 0.015873 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) | 84 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK The Isle of Cats — Rulebook (corpus doc 106) | HOW TO PLAY VIDEO | p.3 | 0.015625 (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 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK The Isle of Cats — Rulebook (corpus doc 106) | BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME | p.5 | 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 |
| #6 | RULEBOOK The Isle of Cats — Rulebook (corpus doc 106) | PLAYER SETUP | p.5 | 0.015152 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) | 13 |
| #7 | RULEBOOK The Isle of Cats — Rulebook (corpus doc 106) | GAME PLAY | p.2 | 0.014925 (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 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK The Isle of Cats — Rulebook (corpus doc 106) | HOW TO WIN | p.2 | 0.014706 (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 |
chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited
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.
| # | document | heading | page | quote chars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [1] | RULEBOOK The Isle of Cats — Rulebook (corpus doc 106) | BEFORE YOUR FIRST GAME | p.5 | no quote on the wire |
| [2] | RULEBOOK The Isle of Cats — Rulebook (corpus doc 106) | GLOBAL SETUP | p.4 | no quote on the wire |
| [3] | RULEBOOK The Isle of Cats — Rulebook (corpus doc 106) | PLAYER SETUP | p.4 | no quote on the wire |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 218 ms · first delta n/a · total 4351 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 218 ms · ask 4123 ms · gateway work 4351 ms · total 4351 ms
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 15s 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.
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 36), 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.