Setup mode & the sequence rail
The Setup mode of the Layout Editor answers a different question from Arrange: not where do zones sit, but what happens as the table is dealt. It presents the whole opening as one ordered sequence that runs top to bottom before play.
The sequence rail
Switching to Setup turns the left panel into the sequence rail — a single timeline that interleaves two things:
- Board-build groups come first and are derived from your setup placements — the pieces that simply start on the table. Each row is labelled and shows how many pieces it places (e.g. 19 placed on the table).
- Authored steps follow — the setup steps you add for shuffles, deals, and other opening automation. Each shows a type chip, its title, and a one-line summary.
Click any row to select it; the canvas previews the table at that point in the sequence, so you can watch the opening build up step by step. The board groups are always first and fixed; the up/down arrows on a step row reorder the authored steps among themselves.
Editing a step
With a sequence item selected, the right inspector becomes its editor — the same panel slot that edits zones in Arrange. From there you add a step (picking its type), edit the selected placement or step, reorder, or delete it. You can also seed setup by placing pieces directly: right-click a zone on the canvas, or drag a component from the browser onto it, and it joins the board-build groups.
Previewing setup options
If your game offers setup options — player-count variants, a chosen scenario, a difficulty — a preview-option switcher appears in Setup mode. Flipping an option re-previews the sequence for that choice, so you can check that each variant builds the table correctly. The switcher only changes what you preview; it doesn’t alter the saved definition.
“Some setup effects point at a choice you removed”
A variant step offers players a set of choices, and other parts of setup can be gated to one of them — a shuffle that only happens in the advanced game, a placement that only appears with an expansion. Remove that choice later and those effects are left pointing at something that no longer exists. They can never run again: nobody can pick a choice that isn’t there.
When that happens a green card appears above the canvas, listing every affected effect by name. Fix with AI removes them for you. It removes rather than un-gates them on purpose — clearing the gate instead would make an effect authored for one variant fire in all of them, quietly changing the table. Since the effects were already unreachable, removing them changes nothing about how the game plays.
The fix lands as unsaved edits, exactly like a change you made by hand. Nothing is stored until you click Save layout, and Reset discards it along with the rest of your unsaved work.
Most of the time you won’t see this card at all: removing a choice, switching a variant from choices to a toggle, or deleting a variant step now cleans up the effects gated to it as you go, and tells you what went.
Where the model is documented
Setup mode is the visual surface over taybl’s setup model. The underlying concepts have their own pages in the Setup & automation section:
- Setup placements — what starts in each zone (the board-build groups).
- Setup steps — the authored opening steps.
- Setup automation — shuffles, deals, and starting properties.
Related
- The Layout Editor — Arrange vs Setup
- Setup placements — the opening board
- Setup steps — authored setup steps
- Setup automation — shuffle / deal automation