Ruling — Spirit Island

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Spirit Islandbg-162886-en-1e · Spirit Island: Branch & Clawbg-191831-en-1e

This game has a verified setup checklist. Every step is quote-checked against the rulebook, judged for entailment, and approved by a person — with honest holes wherever any of that failed.

Open the setup checklist for Spirit Island →

This checklist covers Spirit Island's rulebook. It does not cover Spirit Island: Branch & Claw.

approved Jul 13, 2026 · baked by gemma4:12b · prompt checklist-structurer-v3

1. Select an Adversary and/or Scenario first, as they can change how the game is set up [1]. 2. If playing for the first time, do not use a Blight Card (use the pre-printed Blight space instead) and do not use an Adversary or Scenario [2]. 3. Randomly pick one Island Board per player and arrange them to form the Island [3]. 4. Populate the Island Boards with Invaders, Dahan, and Blight (from the box, not the Blight Card) as indicated by the icons in each land [3]. 5. If using the thematic side of the Island Boards, add Beasts, Wilds, Disease, and Strife tokens as indicated by the Setup icons in each land [4]. 6. Each player takes all Spirit Presence and Single-Turn Effect Markers of one color [5]. 7. Each player chooses a Spirit by taking a Spirit Panel and its four Unique Power Cards (their starting hand) [5]. 8. Each player starts on a different Island Board and follows Setup instructions on the back of their Spirit Panel, which includes putting Presence into one or more lands on their starting board [5]. 9. Players flip their Spirit Panels and place all remaining Presence onto the dashed circles on their Presence Tracks, leaving the leftmost numbers with solid circles uncovered [5]. 10. Shuffle the Minor and Major Power Decks and put them near the board with room for each deck to have a discard pile [3]. 11. Put the Energy, Cities, Towns, Explorers, and the Dahan near the board [3]. 12. Create the Invader Deck by taking 3 Stage I cards on top, 4 Stage II cards, and 5 Stage III cards on the bottom, mixing up the cards from each Stage and choosing without looking [1].

[1] RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook · p.6 · MAKING THE INVADER DECK

[2] RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook · p.3 · TABLE OF CONTENTS

[3] RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook · p.6 · THE ISLAND AND SUPPLY

[4] RULEBOOK Spirit Island: Branch & Claw — Rulebook · p.17 · SOLO PLAY · THEMATIC MAP

[5] RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook · p.6 · PLAYER SETUP

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 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 406 ms · ask 12699 ms · total 13117 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 13117 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 6, "score": 0.045774, "snippet": "Each player takes all Spirit Presence and Single-Turn Effect Markers of one color, then chooses a Spirit by taking a Spirit Panel and its four Unique Power Cards, which is their starting hand. New players should choose a low-complexity Spirit and take its Power Progression Card, as described on page", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045583, "snippet": "Set aside all the Minor and Major Powers listed on the card. During the game, when you gain a new Power Card, add the next Power Card on the list to your hand instead of using the standard method. If everyone is playing the game for the first time, also: Don't use a Blight Card. Instead, use the pre", "headingPath": "TABLE OF CONTENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "If you're getting crushed and it's no fun: For a slightly easier game, give all Spirits a bonus Growth at the end of Setup. For a moderately easier game, omit the Invaders' initial Explore at the end of Setup. For a much easier game, do both. Note: Two Blight rules can make the game extremely punish", "headingPath": "GAME TOO HARD?", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.04405, "snippet": "The Thematic Boards have a fixed layout relative to each other. Y ou can use any of them that you want - but for the definitive geography at each player count: 1 Player: Use Northeast. 2 Players: Use West and East, touching on the side opposite the Ocean. 3 Players: Use West and East as above, plus ", "headingPath": "THEMATIC BOARD SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.043668, "snippet": "As you play Power Cards, put the required Energy on top of them. This will help you remember to pay for them. When you resolve a Power Card, you can push it forward or turn it sideways to note that it has been used. Don't discard it until end of turn, because you may be making use of its Elements fo", "headingPath": "STREAMLINING GAMEPLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "To set up the Island: Randomly pick one Island Board per player and arrange them to form the Island (see sidebar). Populate the Island Boards with Invaders, Dahan, and Blight (from the box, not the Blight Card) as indicated by the icons in each land. To set up the Supply: Shuffle the Minor and Major", "headingPath": "THE ISLAND AND SUPPLY", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029631, "snippet": "To set up the Invader Board: Place the Invader Board on one side of the play area. Put 4 Fear Markers per player into the Fear Pool. Shuffle the Fear Cards and put 9 on the Fear Deck space. Place the 'Terror Level 3' divider 3 cards from the bottom and the 'Terror Level 2' divider 3 cards above that", "headingPath": "INVADER BOARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029199, "snippet": "To finalize the Setup, the Invaders take an initial Action. Reveal the top card of the Invader Deck. The Invaders Explore in that land type (see Explore, page 10). Then place that card face-up in the 'Build' Action Space.", "headingPath": "INVADERS' STARTING ACTION", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MAKING THE INVADER DECK", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TABLE OF CONTENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE ISLAND AND SUPPLY", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SOLO PLAY · THEMATIC MAP", "sharpsignalDocId": 220}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 58 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 58 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)
debug row retained until: Nov 2, 2026 14:23

retrieval — what the search arm returned

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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	PLAYER SETUP	p.6	0.045774 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	TABLE OF CONTENTS	p.3	0.045583 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	GAME TOO HARD?	p.21	0.045228 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	THEMATIC BOARD SETUP	p.23	0.04405 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	STREAMLINING GAMEPLAY	p.20	0.043668 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	THE ISLAND AND SUPPLY	p.6	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
#7	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	INVADER BOARD	p.6	0.029631 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	INVADERS' STARTING ACTION	p.6	0.029199 (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))	221

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	MAKING THE INVADER DECK	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	TABLE OF CONTENTS	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	THE ISLAND AND SUPPLY	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Spirit Island: Branch & Claw — Rulebook (corpus doc 220)	SOLO PLAY · THEMATIC MAP	p.17	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58)	PLAYER SETUP	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 406 ms · first delta 10466 ms · total 13117 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 406 ms · ask 12699 ms · gateway work 13117 ms · total 13117 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 1721
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 388
tok/sec: 148.6 tok/sec — 388 output tokens in 2.611 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 50s ago)
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: 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

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 7), 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.