Does the " Heroic " special power protects you against the Ice Witches special power? I'm kind of confused because in the digital(steam) version you can place ice markers to territories protected by the hero tokens.(which should protect you from special powers)

From the combined almanac on BGG:

Ice Witches by Andrew Capel A SPIDER’S WEB
Race Tokens: 5 (10 Max)
Power: Ice Witches collect 1 Winter marker for each Magic Souce (or Mystic Crystal Region) they control at the end of their Redeployment phase. At the end of their Redeployment phase, Ice Witches may place their Winter markers in their own Regions or any adjacent Region (there cannot be more than 1 Winter marker per Region, though). A Winter marker permanently augments the Region’s defense by 1. It remains on the board as long as the Ice Witches are active. Regions with a Winter marker that are not controlled by an Ice Witch earn 1 less Victory coin than usual.

Heroic SMALL WORLD
Race Tokens: 5
Power: At the end of your turn, place each of your 2 Heroes in 2 different Regions you occupy. These 2 Regions are immune to enemy conquests as well as to their Racial and Special Powers until your Heroes move. Your Heroes disappear when you go In Decline.

By my reading, I would say that the Ice Witches should not be able to place their Winter markers in a region containing a Hero. I could not find any specific ruling about the two, nor could I find any discussion about either Ice Witches or the Heroic power that would suggest otherwise.


Bang! replacement parts I recently got Bang The Bullet special edition. Unfortunately I did not realise that this edition does not have the bullets that represent life for each character and I really like that specific mechanic. Other than using some other kind of thing to represent the life. Does anyone know of a place that I can get some spare parts?)

If you are looking for bullets to represent life, look into purchasing snap caps or plastic dummy rounds. These products are normally used for safe handgun dry fire training.

If there is a gun show near you, you can likely get a pack of 20 for 15 dollars. Or try e-commerce.


is party bridge the same as rubber bridge? I am in a group that says we play party bridge and the rules for honors are different than for rubber bridge. What exactly are the differences between party bridge and rubber bridge, and why are they different?

For example, are the honors scored the same in both party bridge and rubber bridge?

I know of no rules for Party Bridge named as such, but there are other  scoring table besides standard Contract Rubber Bridge; it is possible that your friends are referring to what is best known as Chicago Scoring. Also known as Four-Deal Bridge, Chicago scoring frequently, though not always, omits scoring points for Honours; I played it both ways while learning the game many years ago.  To the best of my knowledge the rules for scoring Honours are always only On or Off - I know of no variations beside making it optional.

Chicago Scoring puts more points in play per hand than Rubber Bridge scoring, and is consequently also frequently preferred for high-level money games - the greater number of points in play further reduces the luck element over a session, and more easily accommodates rotating a fifth or sixth person in and out of a game.

This same dynamic is valuable in a party setting, because each table should finish a four-deal round in under 30 minutes. Players can then socialize for a few minutes before receiving their new seating assignment, typically determined either round-robin or progressive. A 6-round session should easily play in under 4 hours while still allowing frequent opportunities for socializing, or even in close to 3 hours for a more serious-minded group.

However if you attempt to break in to a new money game and find Rubber Bridge scoring being proposed, remember the old Poker adage - if you don't know who the sucker is, it's probably you. Amateur players will sacrifice far too often and frequently to save the rubber, and good players will rapidly fleece any person or partnership that exhibits this behaviour.


If I cast a spell with X in its mana cost "without paying its mana cost" what is the value of X? I want to use Omnispell Adept's ability

  2U, Tap: You may cast an instant or sorcery card from your hand without paying its mana cost.

to cast Entrancing Melody. Its effect reads

  Gain control of target creature with converted mana cost X.

What is X for the effect on that card?

The value of X is chosen when the spell is cast.
But the only legal choice for X is zero in this case.

  107.3b If a player is casting a spell that has an {X} in its mana cost, the value of X isn’t defined by the text of that spell, and an effect lets that player cast that spell while paying neither its mana cost nor an alternative cost that includes X, then the only legal choice for X is 0. This doesn’t apply to effects that only reduce a cost, even if they reduce it to zero. See rule 601, “Casting Spells.”

This is confirmed by a ruling on Omnispell Adept.

  If a spell has {X} in its mana cost, you must choose 0 as the value of X when casting it without paying its mana cost.


Replacing face-up cards when only two regular Train Cars remain The Ticket to Ride rules include this process:

If at any time, three of the five face-up cards are Locomotives, all five cards are immediately discarded and five new ones are turned face-up to replace them.

The designation "any time" seems to indicate that this replacement process will repeat when the new cards match the conditions for replacement. The designation "three" seems to be a minimum.
With the above interpretation, an infinite loop would occur when the cards players have not drawn include at least four Locomotives and only two regular Train Cars.
If this is the intended interpretation, how should the practical player continue the game when the infinite loop would occur? If this is not the intended interpretation, what is intended?

This would be a very rare situation, and the rulebook does not directly address it.
There are basically 2 options for how to handle it.

Simply leave the 5 face-up cards with them having 3 or more locomotives in the set. This is how the mobile and online versions are implemented.

Follow the rule for a similar situation that is mentioned by the rules:

In the unlikely event that there are no cards left in the deck and there are no discards (because players are hoarding many cards in their hands), a player cannot draw Train Car cards. Instead he may only claim a route or draw Destination Ticket cards.

It makes sense to follow this rule in this situation, because while it's not true that "there are no cards left in the deck and there are no discards", it IS true that the cards that are left cannot make a valid set of face-up cards. So the recommendation would be to act as if there are no cards left, and not allow players to draw new train car cards until a route is claimed.
Source: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1812513/there-are-only-locomotives-left-deckdiscard


Why isn't the minimum bid for a property its mortgage value? It seems rather odd that the minimum bid for an unmortgaged property in Monopoly is $1, instead of it being the mortgage value (or mortgage value -10% approximately).

  Bidding may start at any price.

You can mortgage a property at any time, getting its mortgage value out of it. The only point at which I can see this making a difference is when all remaining players except 1 have less than the mortgage value in assets, which is very unlikely since the maximum mortgage value is $200.

Imagine this scenario. I only have $20 in cash and the only assets I own are Park Place (Mortgage Value $175). Boardwalk is up for auction. The maximum bid I can make is $195, which is cash on hand and Mortgage Value of Park Place. If I can buy Boardwalk for $180 or less, I should do so. The worst case scenario would be that I would have to mortgage Park Place for $175, and pay an additional $5 when I win the auction. I could then mortgage Boardwalk for $200, use $18 to unmortgage Park Place, leaving me with $18 which is pretty much back where I started. While this calculation isn't perfect as it depends upon how many properties you have to sell to get enough cash to win an auction, it would seem reasonable to begin the auction at/near Mortgage Value - 10%.

From the official rules (emphasis mine):

  BANKER… Select as Banker a player who will also make a good
  Auctioneer. A Banker who plays in the game must keep his/her
  personal funds separate from those of the Bank. When more than five
  persons play, the Banker may elect to act only as Banker and
  Auctioneer.

As many people who play auctions in Monopoly know, starting a typical English-style auction at a $1 minimum bid and allowing increments of $1 each makes for painfully slow auctions, especially for higher value properties.  However, the Auctioneer's primary purpose isn't to make auctions fast, profitable, or even interesting; he's there to sell property.  Selling property moves the game along, and the faster the property gets into the hands of the players, the faster everyone can get to the interesting trading and development part of the game.  There should never be any cases where any property remains on the board after someone lands on it.

However, the rules explicitly state that the Banker needs to be a good Auctioneer.  Any Auctioneer who lets all of his auctions run forever for no good purpose doesn't really qualify as "good".  Adequate, sure.  Competent, maybe.  But not good.

Regardless of the starting bid, any decent auction will result in the property selling at a reasonable market price; the only variable is how long the auction runs before this price is reached.  If the opening bid is too high, nobody will bid until the Auctioneer lowers it.  If the opening bid is so low that everybody's bidding, he can make larger increments to weed out the cheapskates.  He has many tools at his disposal to figure out what this reasonable market price is, and exactly which tool is needed depends on the situation.

An Auctioneer who knows how to control an auction as efficiently as possible to sell property is a good Auctioneer.  An Auctioneer who does nothing but lets his players control the auction is just a Banker.

As the opening question states, properties will rarely if ever sell at below the mortgage value, if for no other reason than because other players don't want their opponents to get free money.  As such, starting an auction at or near the mortgage price is perfectly reasonable in most situations.

However, most situations are not all situations.  There will be cases where nobody actually wants the property at mortgage value; it could be because all cash is tied up in developments, it could be because people are saving up for that last property in a colour group, it could just be because nobody likes utilities.  By having no fixed minimum bid, the Auctioneer thus has the option to sell the property at a loss, just to sell the property.  That is his job, after all.  Sell property.

Breaking one of the tools in his toolbox makes for a less efficient Auctioneer, and we don't want that.

The chances of all players being unwilling to spend $1 on a property, which they can immediately mortgage for what is effectively a full refund, is negligible; if the price is right, any property should sell.  Fixing a minimum bid in the rules would open up too many chances of a property going unsold, which would inevitably slow down the game each time someone lands on that square and the whole process starts up again.

Even a property that's immediately mortgaged can eventually be paid off and activated, or traded to other players.  An unsold property is just useless.


Can you spend extra mana on a spell that is not part of the casting cost? Suppose I have a Hall of the Bandit Lord and a Plains out and I have a Sacred Cat in hand. Is it possible to tap both lands while casting to give it haste, or can the hall only be used on creatures with a colorless mana cost (assuming no cost changing effects are active).

Likewise, is it possible to ignore cost reduction? For example, if I had a Vizier of Remedies with Oketra's Monument out, would it be possible to still pay the colorless mana to give it haste?

You cannot overpay costs any more than you can underpay them. It's true that underpaying feels like "taking" an advantage (and thus unfair) while overpaying feels like "giving up" an advantage (and thus potentially fair), but the rules do not discriminate between the two: the way you pay a cost is by paying that cost, no more and no less. Similarly, you can't ignore cost reductions or other positive-seeming effects (like something that tells you to draw a card) any more than you can ignore cost increases or other negative-seeming effects (like something that damages you). Since almost nothing in Magic is good in every situation or bad in every situation, this is the really the most sensible, simple and consistent way the rules could be written.

[However there is one place that they do try to distinguish usually-good effects: if in competitive play you fail to notice that a bad triggered ability has triggered, it will probably get applied once it's noticed, but if you fail to notice a usually-good trigger (one of the ones on their list of "lapsing" effects), it will not be applied later. Purposefully "forgetting" any kind of trigger is still cheating though - the rules do not distinguish between lapsing and non-lapsing triggers.]


Does Rupture Spire turn your Reflecting Pool on in time to pay for the Spire's ability? If I play a Reflecting Pool turn 1 and then a Rupture Spire / Transguild Promenade turn 2 does the spire turn on the Reflecting Pool in time to pay for the spire's activated ability?

Yes, you can use the pool to pay for the spire.

As the spire enters the battlefield, its ability triggers. That ability is then put on the stack, where it waits until all players have passed priority, just like anything else on the stack. Once it is time for that ability to resolve, the spire is definitely on the battlefield, which means that the pool can see it and the mana it could produce.

Note that the spire doesn't "turn on" the reflecting pool per se. When you want to tap the pool for mana, it is the pool that will look around and see what lands you have available. The spire takes no active part in this interaction. If the pool can see the spire, it will be able to use the spire. Thinking about it like that might make it a bit easier to see why this will work.


Can I use the Grotesque Statue artifact on any effect and prevent loss on all affected targets? The Grotesque Statue artifact reads

  Once per round, you may spend 1 Clue to prevent all Sanity loss from a single effect

Does this mean I can use it on effects that target other players, even effects that target all players, such as the mythos effect that causes every investigator to lose sanity based on how many spells they retain (after losing half).  Could I use a single clue to prevent all Sanity loss from this effect on every single investigator?

From the FAQ/Errata (https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/eldritch-horror/support/EH%20Errata%20&%20FAQ%202015-01-23.pdf):

  Q Can the Grotesque Statue Artifact prevent other investigators  from
  losing Sanity?

  A No. The Grotesque Statue Artifact’s second effect allows the
  investigator to spend one Clue to prevent himself from losing  Sanity
  from a single effect. It does not allow him to prevent any  other
  investigator from losing Sanity.


How many Corridor Monitors can I make with Blade Of Selves and Strionic Resonator? I have Corridor Monitor attached with Blade of Selves. As well as this I have Strionic Resonator, and a load of spare mana. I have a way to give my creatures exalted (Sublime Archangel) or at least trigger Exalted, for later on.
When I attack with Corridor Monitor, and copy it with Blade Of Selves it creates two new copies of Corridor Monitor. I'm confident I can order the triggers on the stack so I can use the Strionic Resonator to copy the exalted trigger for each new Corridor Monitor (exalted trigger goes on first, then the Blade of Selves, as the top of the stack resolves more exalted triggered abilities get added by copying them). As they enter the battlefield each Corridor Monitor can untap the Strionic Resonator.
However, instead can I use Strionic Resonator to copy the Blade of Selves trigger and make more Corridor Monitors (copying the Blade of Selves triggered ability), to then repeat the effect of creating token versions of Corridor Monitor over and over. One I have enough finally using the last generation of Corridor Monitor copies to untap Strionic Resonator each one then copying the exalted trigger ? Or do I not end up with enough copies of the Corridor Monitor to then retap Strionic Resonator?
Otherwise is there some tweak to make this possible without changing the main game pieces?

If I understand the situation correctly you want to do this in a game with at least 2 opponents:

Attack with Corridor Monitor(CM) equipped with Blade of Selves, one copy of Myriad triggers and at least two instances of Exalted(CM, Sublime Archangel) trigger. Put Myriad on the stack last, so the token copies would enter first.
Use Strionic Resonator(SR) to copy the Myriad effect, the stack is now: Myriad, Myriad, Exalted, Exalted...
Resolve the top Myriad, creating (N-1) copies of CM, where N is the number of opponents.
Target SR with all copies of the CM trigger. Stack is now: CM, [CM...], Myriad, Exalted, Exalted...
Resolve first CM trigger, untapping SR.
Use SR to copy the myriad trigger. Stack is now: Myriad, [CM...], Myriad, Exalted, Exalted...
Repeat from step 2...

Yes, this will work, it's similar to Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker/Splinter Twin combos that have been played for some time, though it has more moving parts (2 cards minimum vs 3 minimum, 4 to guarantee infinite) and requires less colors (need to be in at least Izzet vs this in mono blue). The Kiki-Jiki and Splinter twin combos also let you attack all opponents with infinite token copies, letting you protect the original creatures by not attacking, this combo protects the one that you attacked first and risks your CM.
A possible addition to this combo would be Sol Ring, Everflowing Chalice, mana vault, etc. any artifact that can create at least 2 mana. This would, in a 4 player game (1 CR targets the Resonator, the other targets the mana source), guarantee that you have enough mana to continue the combo. It will then take 5 opponents (and a 3+ mana rock) to enable to you copy the exalted triggers also indefinitely, but this won't usually be much of a benefit, "infinite" small attackers are much more effective than one "infinitely" large attacker. This combo should be able to kill all opponents except for the one who you attacked originally.

To explain the mana rock addition (4 player game):

Attack with CM, putting Myriad on stack.
Tap mana rock(MR) to generate at least 2 mana, use that mana to pay for SR and copy Myriad. No mana floating, Stack is now: Myriad, Myriad, Exalted, Exalted...
Top Myriad resolves, 2 new CM enter the battlefield, one targets SR, the other targets MR, order on stack does not really matter, but is CM, [CM...], Myriad, Exalted, Exalted... With 2/3 mana floating.
CM resolves untapping MR.
CM resolves untapping SR
Return to step 2.

The reason combos like this are usually run off Kiki-Jiki or Splinter Twin is because they cost no mana to use, they just need Deceiver Exarch, Sky Hussar or Intruder Alarm to untap the enabler for free. It is mana neutral.
Most infinite combos need to be mana neutral or mana creating. Without some kind of infinite mana source, a combo like this that has a mana cost to repeat would only be able to go off a dozen or less times in most decks (that's 24 mana), powerful but not immediately game winning. By adding a 2 mana rock into the combo the combo becomes mana neutral, with a 3+ mana rock it becomes mana generating, either makes it as truly infinite as the rules allow.


Singing and Dancing Sword - Companion, Weapon, or Upgrade? Can a Singing & Dancing Sword be played on top of another sword, or is it equipped as your primary weapon?

For instance, would the Rapier of Unfairness become A Singing & Dancing Rapier of Unfairness?

This forum discusses the matter, stating that a Singing & Dancing Sword is a companion (that dances to "strike" enemies, needing no hands). I feel that it is a rather uncommon "companion" card, and should be applied and discarded with the weapon it was initially placed with. To keep in line with the previous example, should the player lose their Elf status, their Singing & Dancing Rapier of Unfairness would become a carried item, and the player would lose both bonuses in the process.

To counter the argument, the card does not say Singing & Dancing Weapon, so that the Chainsaw of Bloody Dismemberment would not obviously become a Singing & Dancing Chainsaw of Bloody Dismemberment.

It's a separate piece of equipment that does not use a slot, meaning you still have two hands free for whatever you want to do with them. The card does not depend on you having another weapon in any way.

The concept it represents is a weapon that can just kind of float next to you and attack stuff for you without needing you to swing it ("dancing swords" from D&D and various stories).


Looking for uber-accessible game formats for Android: Netrunner I've got about 8 friends with varying levels of interest in picking up Netrunner.  At least 3 folks have spent a lot of money on cards and play in local tournaments.  On the other end of the spectrum are friends who don't like the idea of 1) spending a lot of time assembling decks or 2) having to purchase much more than the core deck.

What kind of system/format would be fun for everyone to play together?

Some parameters:

Ideally we would stick with the core deck, but an additional cost of ~$15 is doable too
Minimal deck pre-assembly - several folks aren't interested in spending their free time doing this
Deck tinkering on game night is fine; ideally everyone would spend equal time on  deck modification
Experienced players should not have a card/asset advantage over new players

I imagine that restricting experienced players to just the core deck might be kind of dull for them, so I'm hoping someone has some ideas of fair ways to spice things up a little for them while keeping the game accessible for new/less dedicated players.

I was waiting to see if anyone would add anything more substantial, but - realistically - the answer to this is either: a) embrace the complexity and stop worrying about pleasing everyone, or b) choose a different game.  One of Netrunner's primary strengths is in the synergy between the cards and in the personal choices taken during deck building, which you are amputating in the name of simplicity.

What I would recommend:

1) For the first few sessions, only allow decks built upon the core set.

2) As soon as your group is familiar with the rules, they will know if they are invested in the game - or not.  If they are, then you've already got them hooked.  At this point, I would open the card pool to all available cards.  The nice thing about the LCG format is that there are no real "win more" cards, but just different strategies to win.  Some of the most powerful cards in the game are core.

It isn't a game where having all the cards == winning.  In fact, the last tournament I went to, a friend of mine - playing with just core cards and A Study in Static - ended up doing better than I did with access to all the available cards!

What opening the card pool also allows is for people to start seeing new cards that might resonate with them.  Before my first tournament, I didn't get why Jackson Howard was a big deal.  After my first tournament, it was very obvious. When encountering such a card, a new player can then pick that specific pack to add to their collection.  There is no real need to buy everything.  Plus, if the less dedicated people want to start participating in tournaments, removing the card restriction handicap will make your sessions substantially more realistic in terms of what to expect.

But again, I stress: core decks may be less efficient than a custom build based upon all available cards, but they can still be winnable.  As long as everyone is having fun, I would not worry too much about trying to balance everything perfectly.

In order to promote creativity, I would recommend incorporating a Netrunner Achievements thing (maybe with a prize).  See this link: Netrunner Achievements

The other option is, after you have done the core set matches, try drafting?  That is a bit more expensive but would make for some interesting games.


What happens with Jared and a dying monarch? Assume I'm the active player and I've cast Jared Carthalion, True Heir (alternate link before CMR releases) this turn. Part of his ETB trigger is "You can't become the monarch this turn."
I swing at the monarch. Obviously I can't become the monarch, so the damage trigger resolves without changing the monarch. But if I kill that player, the following rule applies.

718.4. If the monarch leaves the game, the active player becomes the monarch at the same time as that player leaves the game. If the active player is leaving the game or if there is no active player, the next player in turn order becomes the monarch.

I'm the active player, so the rule tries to make me monarch but can't. Is there now no monarch in the game?
Even if there were a ruling or a rules change that made the next eligible player the monarch (I haven't seen any indication of this though), the situation would happen if everyone had their own Jared enter this turn before the monarch died.
So, is this one strange case where there stops being a monarch in the game?

We probably have to wait until the Rulings under the card in Gatherer, but this seems to be a case where one of Magic's Golden Rules applies:

101.2. When a rule or effect allows or directs something to happen, and another effect states that it can’t happen, the “can’t” effect takes precedence.

The game doesn't require that some player is the monarch (it even begins that way) so for the moment there will be no monarch.


Pharika's Mender, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Rescue From The Underworld I have an Elvish Mystic (EM) and Pharika Mender (PM) in my graveyard, and a Gray Merchant of Asphodel (GMOA)on the battlefield. At the end of my opponent's turn, I play Rescue from The Underworld (RFTU), sacrificing my GMOA as the additional cost to cast it. I choose PM as my target for RFTU.

During my upkeep, GMOA and PM enters the battlefield and their trigger are put on the stack. I place PM's trigger first, and then GMOA's trigger.

In respond to GMOA's trigger, my opponent kills GMOA, and then GMOA's trigger resolves -- which means PM's trigger resolves next.

When PM's trigger resolves, am I able to target GMOA to return it to my hand?

No

The targets of abilities and spells are chosen as these go on the stack, so you should have had a target chosen already even before the merchant died in the first place.


What are the chances of going out on the first hand in Rummy? What are the chances of any particular player being able to go out in the first round of rummy?

For two players the hand size is 7.
For all other numbers the hand size is 5.

Going out requires a that a card is drawn, and that all but one card is played, and the last card is discarded.

I cannot imagine why you ask this. But anyways, with the rules you just put it's easy to calculate. (Though I have not played with the last card discarded rule.)

You can win from the start with either Three+Straight or 7 Straight or Three+Poker. Now we just add the probabilities. Assuming you play with 4 jokers

Using the Hypergeometric distribution you get.

There are 1,420'494,075 hands... in combinatoric that's C(56, 8). You can take 8 from 56 cards no matter in what order you take them.

One Set (three of a kind) and a Poker requires (C(4, 3) * C(4, 4) * C(4, 0)^12)/C(56, 7). However we have to consider jokers. In the case of 1 in the set, 2, 3, the full set is wildcards, 1 in the poker, 2, 3, the full poker is wild card, plus combinations, 1 and 1, 1, and 2, 2 and 1, 2 and 2, 3 and 1, 1 and 3. We add all of these scenarios. We should avoid counting twice any scenario...

Simple (or 0 jokers in set, 0 in poker): (C(4, 3) * C(4, 4) * C(4, 0)^12) / C(56, 8)
1, 0: (C(4, 2) * C(4, 4) * C(4, 0)^11 * C(4, 1)) / C(56, 8)
2, 0: (C(4, 1) * C(4, 4) * C(4, 0)^11 * C(4, 2)) / C(56, 8) --Ignorable
3, 0: (C(4, 3) * C(4, 4) * C(4, 0)^12) / C(56, 8) --Ignorable
3, 1: (C(4, 3) * C(4, 3) * C(4, 0)^11 * C(4, 1)) / C(56, 8)
3, 2: Not possible, only 4 jokers
2, 2: (C(4, 1) * C(4, 2) * C(4, 0)^11 * C(4, 4)) / C(56, 8) --Ignorable
1, 3: (C(4, 2) * C(4, 1) * C(4, 0)^11 * C(4, 4)) / C(56, 8) --Ignorable
0, 4: (C(4, 3) * C(4, 4) * C(4, 0)^12) / C(56, 8) --Ignorable

Notice that #4 & #9 are the same as #1. So we can ignore them and count #1 thrice.

#2, #3, #7, #8 are the same in different order; let's ignore but #2 and count it 4 times.

C(N, 0) is equal to 1. There's only one way to not take things from N available, right? Same with C(N, N)

3 * C(4, 3) / C(56, 8)
4 * (C(4, 2) * C(4, 1)) / C(56, 8)
(C(4, 3)^2 * C(4, 1)) / C(56, 8)

C(4,3) = C(4, 1) = 4. Taking one or not taking one out of 4 has 4 variants.
That's 3*4 + 4*6*4 + 4^3 = 4*(3+24+16) = 4*(3+40) = 172.

There you have it to win with a Set and a Poker you 172 hands out of C(56,8)... 1.2108463036003863655679098837494271139427315105133402... × 10^-7

For a 7 Straight flush the calculation is the following.

The first card is unimportant. However the second one, there's only one that works. And so on. That's (D equals the number of cards in the deck and N the number of cards in the straight):

1 * 1/(D-1) * 1/(D-2) * ... * 1/(D-[N-1])

However that is only true if the straight had to show up exactly in the order. So we have to multiply times all the ways those N cards could be ordered. That's N!

N! * 1 * 1/(D-1) * 1/(D-2) * ... * 1/(D-[N-1])

If you play a bit with the factors you can get this:

D * N/D * (N-1)/(D-1) * (N-2)/(D-2) * ... * 1/(D-[N-1])

Or

D * 1/D * 2/(D-1) * 3/(D-2) * ... * N/(D-[N-1])

Anyway that's, ignoring the jokers for now:

52 * 1/52 * 2/51 * 3/50 * 4/49 * 5/48 * 6/47 * 7/46
1/2572780
3.8868461353088876623729973025287820956319623131398720... × 10^-7

I have yet to figure a good model for straight flushes with wildcards. But I'm guessing the final answer will be about 1 in a million.

I will edit this as soon as I get more info...


Can a player get the second place points with no Maki Rolls in Sushi Go? In a two player game of Sushi Go!, if only one player has Maki Rolls they would get the 6 points since they have the most of that type of card. Does the second player get the 3 points since they technically have the second most amount, or do they have to have at least one Maki Roll card to be able to get the 3 points?

You have to have at least one Maki Roll to score. This clarification is missing from the Gamewright English rules, but some other versions (including this German one) include it.


On playing the Agricola Bielefeld minor improvement called Bielefeld Playing Cards, does it include animals? We are playing with the Agricola Bielefeld card deck.  When playing the card called "Bielefeld Playing Cards", it says whenever you use an accumulation space, place all items on this card until you have accumulated 4 like items.  Then you can move the items to your playing board.  We are wondering if that would include animals... specifically cattle, since there aren't enough moves (with other players taking cattle) to ever get 4 cattle accumulated on the card.  Is this calculated into the points of the card since the card comes with 5 points on the card?

You are right, the chances of getting any cows on your farm are going to be limited.

There is a nice post about the deck that includes a discussion of this card.

You are getting a lot of points in exchange for a lot of extra management of resources, so that is all factored in.  You have to decide if it is worthwhile and it probably depends on what other cards you might have that could assist.


Proper Sleeve size for Android Netrunner I am trying to find the right sleeve size to get for Android Netrunner.
Fantasy Flight was nice enough to put a color coded sleeve and number of packs needed for that box on the back of both the core set and the expansions.
However it shows Blue sleeves for the Core set and Sliver for the expansions. I am trying to figure out which sleeves are the proper fit.
If you can provide a link to where I can buy them that would be great as well.

Android Netrunner cards are the same size as Magic: the Gathering cards, so you can use any sleeves that are Magic sized for them. This includes Fantasy Flight, Ultra-Pro, KMC, and Dragon Shield. The color or design on the sleeves doesn't matter as long as the deck has all of the same color/design (the Corporation and Runner decks can have different colors/designs if you choose, but that isn't required).


Does anyone have a way to modify Ticket to Ride to accommodate six people? I recently bought Ticket to Ride to play at our monthly game night, which consists of three couples, i.e. six people. Stupid me, didn't read the five player limit before ordering the game. I've played a few times now, and I really like the game, but can't think of any way to accommodate an extra player.

So, am I stuck making someone sit out or putting two people on one team if we want to play this with six people? Or has someone else come up with some modification to make this work with one extra person?

The obvious approach is to simply reduce the number of carriages each player has available, by enough to allow another player to join in. Normally each player has 45 carriages. In the 5 player game that makes 225 carriages available to place on the board. Divide by 6 instead, and you get 37 carriages per person.

So your only issue then is where to get your extra carriages. You can either make substitutions yourself, or buy one of the other versions (e.g. Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries, or Ticket to Ride: Märklin Edition), which come with other train colours.

I wouldn't expect to see any other significant balance issues with the extra player - Ticket to Ride is a pretty straightforward game.


Starting Hands in Texas Hold'em How many possible starting hands are there in Texas Hold'em?

169

While Chris is technically correct, as far as strategy is concerned, there is no difference between having an Ace & King of spades vs. Ace & King of hearts. There is however a difference between having a suited Ace & King vs. a non-suited Ace & King. Looking at it that way, there are 169 possible starting hands.


Is there anything stopping the crownholder taking the King card every turn? My understanding is that the special rules regarding the King are:

If the King is turned face up at the pre-distribution phase, it goes back into the deck.
If the King is targeted by the Assassin, the crown still changes player.

The question I have is - if the current crown-holder always chooses the King as their card, then the crown will never change hands.

Is this a correct understanding of the rules?

Getting the crown is usually a small reward in comparison to, say, the architect or the thief abilities. The only way this can be a good strategy is focusing on golden districts. At that point, is it easy to target the king with either the thief or the assasin and break the advantage of having the crown AND a useful ability.

In short, there is no way of stopping some player keeping the king forever, but there is also not a good reason to do so.


Takenoko: What happens if you draw a card that has an existing pattern in the garden? What if you draw a objective card that has a specific pattern, and it already exists in the garden, for one reason or another.

Examples:

You draw a plot card and that exact same shape is already existing in the garden (including the right parameters). Can you just show your objective card as fulfilled and get the points without doing anything else?
You draw a gardener card and you need 3 four-level bamboo in the garden. If there's an existing four-level bamboo in the garden, do you only need to do 2 more?

What happens in each example?

You draw a plot card and that exact same shape is already existing in the garden
  (including the right parameters) Can you just show your objective card as fulfilled and
  get the points without doing anything else?

Yes. At any point in your turn, you can play as many fulfilled objective cards from your hand as you like. I've found this often happens at the end of the game... drawing a card in hopes that the objective is already fulfilled is a decent strategy.

  You draw a gardener card and you need 3 four-level bamboo in the garden. If there's an
  existing four-level bamboo in the garden, do you only need to do 2 more?

Yes, provided they're the same color. As it often happens with objective cards, other players may be configuring the garden to suit your objectives without even knowing it.


Who wins when everyone takes lethal damage simultaneously? I am building an edh deck for about 5 dollars and was wondering,
If I cast Sickening Dreams dealing more than enough damage to kill my opponent and I at the same time, who wins?

It's a draw. Whenever all remaining players lose at the same time, the game ends in a draw.

From the Basic Rulebook, under "Winning the Game:

  If both players would lose the game at the same time, the
  game is a draw—nobody wins.

Similar information is repeated under the glossary for "Life total" and "draw the game".


How does Spirit of the Labyrinth interact with Chains of Mephistopheles? If I have Spirit of the Labyrinth and Chains of Mephistopheles in play.  And then on my opponent's main phase (after they have drawn a card) I play Blue Sun Zenith for 8 mana and target my opponent.

What will happen?  My guess is that they will have to discard 5 cards.  But I am not sure, so I am asking...

From the gatherer rulings on Spirit of the Labyrinth:

You can draw a maximum of one card on each player’s turn. Subsequent card draws are ignored.
If a replacement effect would try to replace a card that you can’t draw, that effect can’t apply.

Spirit of the Labyrinth completely shuts off Chains of Mephistopheles. So in your specific scenario, Blue Sun's Zenith is shuffled into your library and nothing else happens.

BrianS pointed out a big hole in my original explanation below. Given the exact situation in the OP, the above is correct. It works differently if it's your turn or before your opponent's draw step.
If your opponent has cards in hand, the first attempted draw gets replaced by Chains. In that situation, your opponent will draw one card, then discard a card. At that point, the opponent will have drawn a card that turn and Spirit of the Labyrinth will do nothing. From Chains' gatherer page:

If a spell or ability would cause a player to draw multiple cards, this is treated as a number of individual "draw one card" actions. Apply the effect of Chains of Mephistopheles to each one.

If the opponent has no hand and has drawn no cards this turn, then Chains can have the full effect. This is because while the opponent has multiple draws replaced, they never actually draw any cards:

Here's what happens when Chains of Mephistopheles replaces a player's draw: -- If that player has at least one card in his or her hand, he or she discards a card and then draws a card. -- If that player's hand is empty, he or she puts the top card of his or her library into his or her graveyard. The player doesn't draw a card at all.

So, the lesson here is that if you have both Chains and Spirit in play at the same time, you should try to catch your opponent with an empty hand.


Running a MTG draft without actually having to buy new boosters for each player every single time? MTG drafting sounds like a really awesome way to play the game. I'd love to try it with some of my friends, but having to spent >5$ for each player every single time you want to play seems unnecessarily prohibitive.

How can I make MTG drafting work with cards I already have? The big issue I see is with the random selection of the starting cards. Do the boosters that are meant to used with drafting really contain completely random cards? How can I simulate their distribution? Should I have each starting set of 15 cards contain only cards from 1 set? How can I make sure there's a variety of cards (enough creatures, instant, and sorceries to keep things interesting) being used without destroying the randomness of selection?

I know not using boosters will take away a small part of the game, mostly the total randomness of what all the packs contain. I'm not looking for a perfect draft simulator, but as I have 3000+ cards I don't see why my group can't have >95% of the fun of drafting without having to buy new boosters every time.

There's a popular fan-made format called Cube where you create a set of cards and people pick them for their decks, either by assembling virtual "packs" by grabbing random sets of cards or (more rarely) picking them one-at-a-time from the whole set kinda like how teams draft rookie players in professional sports. Because you tailor the card pool to your group's needs, it's easy to create Cubes for unconventional formats like Commander (individual collection permitting).

If you're interested in having pack-based drafts that strongly resemble normal MTG Limited and Sealed, you can assemble your own packs from your personal collection, basically like Cube draft but with rarity. Here's a rough guide...

To my knowledge, the only thing that's truly fixed about boosters is rarity distribution (although you can get extra rares in a pack due to foils, or specialty stuff like double-faced cards or "hidden treasures"). There are some other correlations that arise due to how sheets are cut, but they're mostly at the box level rather than individual-pack level.

If you start with a fairly representative sample of a set and then construct cards with the same rarity distribution as regular MTG boosters, the laws of probability should ensure that you get a reasonable distribution of colors and card types in the vast majority of your packs (a few really skewed ones is acceptable or even desirable, just like you sometimes get really skewed "official" boosters). The easiest way to do this is just to create three big piles for commons, uncommons, and rares (/mythics) and make packs from them sight-unseen in the normal 1:3:10 ratio; you don't have to do anything special for the individual packs as long as your starting piles are at fair (e.g. if you collect certain colors much more heavily than others, make sure that bias doesn't filter into the big giant piles you've created). Ideally your big piles should be significantly bigger than the number of cards in any given draft; that way there's no guarantee that a particular card is bound to be in one of the packs.

The easiest way to create a coherent environment is to stay within a given block (set of 3-4 expansions). Playing a familiar block format will make it easier for players to evaluate cards. I don't think the extra effort that would be required to make sure your packs exactly match individual sets (like they do in "real" Limited) is really worthwhile -- if anything, I think you can have a more fun block draft if cards from the various expansions are mixed together across all three packs.

Of course, you can also vary (or just abolish) the rarity mix in order to create a very different play experience. I'm assuming other ways to alter the experience will come to you once you've tried this a few times. If you find yourselves wanting to fine-tune what goes into your card pool, look for articles on Cube drafting: the same principles folks apply to creating a Cube can be used to analyze what you're putting into the pool you draw packs from.


Are bidding systems geared toward "optimizing" contracts? Most contracts can succeed with some distributions and defenses of the 26 opposing cards, and fail with others. If a contract (except a grand slam) makes against any defense and distribution you've underbid. If one never makes against any distribution and perfect defense, you've overbid. The latter two are clearly "non optimal" contracts.

When I learned bridge in the early 1970s, I was taught to "bid to make." With a standard eight card trump fit and 26 points, one should be in a four level contract that would make if e.g. the trump suit broke 3-2 (a 68% chance) but would often fail if the suit broke 4-1 or 5-0. Other equivalent (68%) chances were a combination of 3-3 suit break followed by a finesse.

More recently, scoring rules have changed, especially for IMPs, so that you will come out ahead if your contracts have a 50% chance of making, and in some cases, even 40%. Have bidding systems adjusted to these changes, requiring say, 24 points instead of 26, so that your contract hinges on 50-50 finesses rather than the 68% chance situations described above?

Bidding systems, particularly ones experts use against experts, are built around optimizing results overall, not contracts.

Half the time, the opponents have better hands than you do, and you are still trying to make their results as bad as possible.  Sometimes this is by sacrificing - getting to a contract that goes down but for which the opponents score less for setting you than they would for making their own contract.  Often, this is simply by disrupting the bidding enough that the opponents cannot exchange enough information to decide on their best contract.

At the slam level, and even frequently for games, experts are frequently thinking about the entire probability distribution of what partner's hand could be, what opponents' hands could be, looking at their hand, and calculating if there is at least a 50% or 35% (depending on form of scoring and vulnerability) for the contract to make.  They are not counting points.


Can other pieces capture a threatening piece and prevent a checkmate? Total beginner here. I have a board setup that an app I'm using to learn described as a "checkmate" -- see below (the white pawn just moved below the rook and is threatening the king):

If I were playing black, I know I cannot capture the pawn with the king, as I would placing my king in check.

But: Why can't I use the rook or the queen (right next to the threatening pawn) to capture the pawn and get out of the check?

For example:

Keep the king where it is.
Use the rook to capture the threatening pawn.

Yes, you can capture the attacking piece with any one of your pieces, as long as you get out of the check.

But in this case, the king is also attacked by the rook. So, you are checkmate.


Can Sid Meier's Civilization (2010) be played cooperatively? Is it possible to play Sid Meier's Civilization as a team game?
Are there some specific rules that must be thought about?

As I can see this:

play by normal rules.
two players will both win if one of them wins.
only open communication is allowed.

Civilization can certainly be made a 2x2 team game.  The rules you wrote will work.  One slight addition:

Rules and culture cards referring to "an opponent" (such as A Gift From Afar or Disoriented) refer only to players on the other team.  If it refers to "another player", it can be used on a player on the opposing team or your ally (such as Exchange of Ideas).

Some things that would make it more strategic or interesting:

A players gains the benefit of his/her allies technology (if your ally has a technology and you don't, you play as if you had that technology, so can buy buildings/units on it, use it's abilities, and gather coins as if you had it).

Whether or not you allow trade between non allied players is up to you; I think it is more interesting to leave that as allowed and just rely on the competition between the teams to discourage it.

Whether allies start on adjacent corners or opposite corners is also of interest, though I think adjacent corners will be a better game play experience.

Playing it as a team game might change the balance of some of the win conditions.  Military victory probably gains some strength over the economic victory, as military cooperation is easier.  That said, having an ally that can just feed resources or culture points to the other could actually make the cultural victory distinctly easier.  And technology sharing probably makes the economic victory easier.  That there isn't anything obviously unbalanced about this means that it is an interesting variant and would require play to determine.

The original question could have been read as to whether or not Civilization the Board Game could have been played as a full co-op board game.

One of the fundamental tenants of a fully cooperative board game (like Pandemic) is that there is a way for all players to lose.  Civilization the Board Game has no built-in mechanic for all players to lose, so would not work as a full co-op game without serious modification.  If you are looking for something that feels vaguely similar but with more aspects of full co-op games, try Archipelago.


Activating Charnel Troll's ability during upkeep In MTG Arena, I'm having some trouble with Charnel Troll. You are supposed to be able to activate it's ability to discard a creature in response to its triggered ability that makes you exile a creature from your graveyard. But MTG arena doesn't seem to be letting me do so. If I have a creature card in my graveyard it automatically makes me select one and I can't seem to find a way to activate its ability. If I don't have any creatures in my graveyard, Charnel Troll is immediately sacrificed and nobody ever seems to get priority to respond to the ability. What is going on here?

Sometimes the client predicts actions that you may be able to take.  Sometimes it does not.  This is one of those instances.
To guarantee that the client will operate properly in a case like this, you have two options.

Enter a stop. i.e. you click on the upkeep step, and force the client to let you take an action.
Enter "Hold Full Control" mode, (Default is by Left Shift+Ctrl).

I play tested both scenarios you described above, and putting in the stop or entering Hold Full Control mode allows one to play out the scenario you describe.  i.e. you can respond to the trigger, discard a creature card, get it into your graveyard, and then exile the card for the upkeep trigger.
One might reasonably assume that "full control" mode would work in this scenario.  My play testing indicates it does not.  You have to put in the stops to get the desired behavior.  The reason for this, is that "full control" mode turns off as you transition between turn phases (possibly even turn steps).  You can't turn on full control in time.  This is the point of stops.  To force the game to stop in a phase and to give you priority.


Which cards feature direct manipulation of counter types on permanents? Are there any magic cards that allow for direct manipulation of arbitrary counter types? Eg, "Add a counter of any kind to target permanent"?

At this point (2014) I would be surprised if something along these lines didn't exist in some form or another, its ridiculously powerful abuse potential notwithstanding.

Edit: My apologies for such an easily query-able answer. I was not aware of the existence o such comprehensive databases and easily-searchable databases like magiccards.info before posting these questions. I will surely do more research from now on. Thank you!

Clockspinning, Gilder Bairn and Vorel of the Hull Clade allow you to add another counter of a kind that already exists on a permanent, and so does the Proliferate keyword.

And then there's Doubling Season which doubles the number of counters placed on permanents.


Discard a card to gain money Which cards am I allowed to discard in order to gain money in Seven Wonders Duel?

A card I already acquired and placed in my home?
A free unclaimed card from the board (a card a player could otherwise get paying its costs)?

In other words, discarding is an alternative to get a card from the table on one player's turn?

No, thats incorrect, you can not chose to avoid taking a card from the structure and discarding a card from your board for money.

The rules state under Game Turn :-

  "On your turn, you must choose an “accessible” card in
  the card structure and play it. An accessible card is a card which
  isn’t partially covered by other cards."

Note it says the structure, not anything in your play area.  'Structure' being the term for how cards are laid out each age. You then have a choice with the card you selected to build it, discard it for money, or construct a wonder.

So to answer your question, the only card you may discard for money is the one you took from the structure that turn and no other.  You do not pay any costs associated with building a card if you are just taking it to discard for money.


Are cards that interact with sacrificing rare, and why? For independent reasons, I was looking recently for cards that interact with Sacrificing. At the time (owing mostly to my lack of knowledge in MtG templating), I found none. Looking at the Avacyn restored preview card Sigarda, Host of Herons brought back the question, which was further piqued when I noticed that another preview cards is intended to "mess with" sacrificing (Angel of Jubilation).

Looking through Gatherer (with the above caveat), I found only a few cards cards (Sigarda's predecessor Tajuru Preserver, Dragon Appeasement, Furnace Celebration, Savra, Queen of the Golgari, Mortician Beetle, Thraximundar) with sacrifice trigger effects. I found no card with trigger effects when they are sacrificed to other cards (something which, coming fro a YGO background, I am used to).

Was my research too incomplete or are there really just few cards that interact with Sacrificing other than as a cost or effect?

If there are so few, do you see any design-related reason for it? I mean, given the prevalence of effects triggering by entering the battlefield, drawing cards, creatures dying, attacking, blocking/being blocked etc., it seems strange that such a prevalent game action as sacrificing would have been ignored.

You said:

  I found no card with trigger effects when they are sacrificed to other cards

In a design article, Mark Rosewater said:

  Originally, Perilous Myr dealt 1 damage when it was put into the
  graveyard from play but 3 damage if it was sacrificed. And it wasn't
  the only artifact creature with this rider. As I explained in parts 1
  and 2, black and red had a sacrifice theme that was a little stronger
  in the design handoff. The biggest problem with the rider was the
  phrase "When CARDNAME is sacrificed" led many players to believe that
  they were allowed to sacrifice it whenever they wanted. The
  development team decided that having a death trigger was cleaner and
  still would be slightly better in a deck capable of sacrificing its
  artifacts.

So Mark Rosewater considers sacrifice triggers of that kind bad design. Not that it couldn't work, just that the benefit of putting them into a set is not worth the complexity. Triggering when a card goes to the graveyard is just close enough in most cases that the sacrifice effect is not worth the potential confusion.


How does the Amazons "+4 When Attacking" power work? So I got a copy of Small World, and in our first game, the "Amazons" came up early.  According to the rules, they get "+4 when attacking".  What exactly does that mean?  We argued it out and what we eventually decided it meant was

  At the beginning of each of the Amazon player's turns, they receive 4 extra tokens.  When they end their "conquering regions" step, they remove 4 tokens of their choice from the board, then go on to compute VP.

But we're not at all confident in our interpretation.

Excerpt from the rule book itself:

Amazons
Four of your Amazon tokens may only be
used for conquest, not for defense, as
indicated by the +4 on the banner itself. So
you start your initial turn with 10 Amazon
tokens (plus any additional ones that may
be granted to you by the Special Power associated with the
Amazons, depending on your combo). At the end of each of
your Troop Redeployments (see Troop Redeployment, p. 5),
remove four tokens from the map, making sure to leave at least
one Amazon token in each of your Regions if possible, and only
take these four tokens back in hand to redeploy on the map
once you Ready your Troops (see Ready your Troops, p. 6) at
the start of your next turn.


buster blader the dragon destroyer swoardsman effect not working Why doesn't buster blader the dragon destroyer swordsman with DNA surgery on the field stop destiny hero plasma's effect that allows plasma to take my monster. Oh BTW this is in the duel links game

Buster bladers effect states:

Dragon type monsters in your opponents possession cannot activate their effects

Normally this would prevent Destiny hero - Plasma from activating it's absorb effect.
However, Plasma has a second effect:

Negate the effects of face-up monsters while your opponent controls them.

This is a continous effect, so it doesn't activate and so isn't blocked by Buster blader. This means that Buster bladers effect is negated and so can't stop Plasma from absorbing him.

For completions sake, in the case we have two monsters (e.g. 2 Plasma, or jinzo vs skill drain) that would negate eachothers effect. the one first on the field will win out and negate the other one.


King of Tokyo: Poison Spit Poison Spit states the following:

  When you deal damage to monsters give them a poison counter. Monsters take 1 damage for each poison counter they have at the end of their turn. You can get rid of a poison counter with a [Heart] (that [Heart] doesn't heal a damage also).

What happens with counters that are healed? Are they removed from the game or are they returned to the owner of the card? The card seems overpowered in the second case, as it only costs 4 energy. (The same question for Shrink Ray)

There isn't really a concept of them belonging to the owner.  They go back to the token pool, which is where people take them from as needed.  So they can be used again on the same or different players.


Do gods keep their +1/+1 counters if they stop being creatures? Do counters added to a god with Gleam of Battle disappear when the god stops being a creature?

Scenario: Purphoros, God of the Forge is a creature (due to devotion reaching the required amount) and Gleam of Battle is also on the battlefield. Then Purphoros attacks and gets a +1/+1 counter for attacking. If my devotion to red then drops below 5 and Purphoros is no longer a creature, would the +1/+1 counters stay on him or will he reset to his original power/toughness level?

My thinking is when he becomes an enchantment he loses it due to the fact that he is no longer a creature and that his power and toughness are technically not there and so he gets remade into being a creature only when devotion is high enough.

They absolutely stay. According to the comprehensive rules, emphasis mine:

  205.1a Some effects set an object's card type. In such cases, the new card type(s) replaces any existing card types. Counters, effects, and damage marked on the object remain with it, even if they are meaningless to the new card type.


Council chamber action in Village We've just started to play the Village board game recently with friends and we're not sure about this rule in Council chamber action:

  You may perform the privilege action which is shown below either the current or a previous stage of you family member.

Does a previous stage mean only one previous stage or all previous stages? In example if I have a villager on the last stage with action "exchange 1 coin to 3 points", can I also choose to take a starting player ring located on the first action?

You can choose any previous action. "Previous" just means "something earlier", it doesn't imply "exactly 1 space". The best evidence for this is the fact that it says "a" previous space, not "the" previous spot. So yes, you can choose start player using a guy at the top.


Why does Bonded Horncrest have to attack with another creature? Bonded Horncrest has the ability:

  Bonded Horncrest can't attack or block alone.

However, if Bonded Horncrest must attack, the ruling is:

  If an effect says that Bonded Horncrest attacks or blocks if able and you control another creature able to attack or block, you must attack or block with Bonded Horncrest and that creature.

Why must you attack with both creatures if only Bonded Horncrest must attack?  Isn't attacking with another creature an optional "cost" that you don't have to pay (like having to pay {1} to attack)?

The ruling is correct, you have to attack with that creature if you can make it happen.

  508.1c The active player checks each creature he or she controls to see whether it’s affected by any restrictions (effects that say a creature can’t attack, or that it can’t attack unless some condition is met). If any restrictions are being disobeyed, the declaration of attackers is illegal.

Note that an ability like "x:(this) loses defender" such as on Gargoyle Sentinel is an ability that indirectly lifts the restriction, but that ability is not part of the restriction because it doesn't follow the wording as described in 508.1c, and therefore you wouldn't have to pay the cost of that ability.

  508.1d The active player checks each creature he or she controls to see whether it’s affected by any requirements (effects that say a creature must attack, or that it must attack if some condition is met). If the number of requirements that are being obeyed is fewer than the maximum possible number of requirements that could be obeyed without disobeying any restrictions, the declaration of attackers is illegal. If a creature can’t attack unless a player pays a cost, that player is not required to pay that cost, even if attacking with that creature would increase the number of requirements being obeyed.

Bonded Horncrest being unable to attack or block alone is a restriction. Declaring another creature as an attacker or blocker is not a cost, as in cost:ability, but simply fulfilling the condition to meet the restriction.

Bounded Horncrest being forced to attack is a requirement.

Therefore, if you do not enable Horncrest to attack through declaring another creature, you disobey one requirement, but you could obey it by meeting the condition of the restriction. Therefore, you disobey more requirements than you had to, and therefore not attacking with Horncrest is illegal.


More conveniently randomizing the cardboard tokens Since BSG takes up quite a bit of real estate on the table I found it to be difficult at times to a good random pick among the damage or ship tokens.

I've thought about using the dice. Put them in a straight line and pick according to the dice roll. Now this should work easily enough for the damage tokens since there are never more than there are sides on the dice.

However there are 10 ships and only a d8 (assuming I don't have a d10 around). I'm thinking about splitting the pile in half and doing 2 rolls. First roll picks the pile (even/odd or low/high) and the second roll simply takes the n-th ship with rerolls if the dice shows too much.

Now to my question: Does anyone have a better solution or experience with a solution like this?

We just put the tokens on the table, face down, move them around a bit, and then pick them up at a random order. We never felt as if the result is not random enough, and it doesn't take a lot of time and effort.


Is there a way to play Twilight Imperium's "age of empire" variant with Shattered Empire's strategy cards? The third edition of Twilight Imperium has become one of the most-played games as of late, and we have finally begun to incorporate the first expansion into the game. In the core TI3 rules is an excellent variant, called age of empire, that makes the entire public objective deck accessible by the fourth round. We have a lot more fun playing with this variant, but ran into difficulty when incorporating Shattered Empire's new strategy cards.

Shattered Empire's eighth strategy card, bureaucracy, primarily deals with revealing objective cards, which is pointless with age of empire's fully-revealed setup. We ran into this problem the first and only time we played, and could not figure out a solution—letting the bureaucracy card pile up with bonus counters until there were none left. It was a disappointing way to end my new favourite game. I otherwise found these new cards to be much more interesting, so it would be nice to use them.

Has anyone figured out a clever way to modify their rules so as to incorporate both ? I would very much like to keep in the spirit of the card(s), but every modification I have come up with is terribly boring.

As it says in the rules for Shattered Empire, if you're using the Age of Empire variant, you have to use the Imperial II strategy card rather than Bureaucracy.


How does Spine of Ish Sah interact with It That Betrays? ...or anything else which tries to take over spines after destroying them.

So assume player A has an It That Betrays on the board, and player B has a Spine of Ish Sah on their side of the board. Now player A goes to combat, has their creature attack player B, the annihilator ability triggers, and player B sacrifices his Spine and something else.
From the rules:

  701.16a To sacrifice a permanent, its controller moves it from the battlefield directly to its owner’s graveyard.

So for my first question: Is the action of sacrifice the movement from the battlefield to the graveyard including the arrival in the graveyard, or, stated in a different way, does the sacrificed permanent enter the graveyard before being taken over by the second ability of It That Betrays?

  Whenever an opponent sacrifices a nontoken permanent, put that card onto the battlefield under your control.

Assuming it does (if it doesn't then ignore this second question), then how do the triggers stack? Or better said: Does the Spine go to its owners hand, or to the board of player A?

This is a situation for Active Player / Non-Active Player (APNAP) ordering:

  405.3. If an effect puts two or more objects on the stack at the same time, those controlled by the active player are put on lowest, followed by each other player’s objects in APNAP order (see rule 101.4). If a player controls more than one of these objects, that player chooses their relative order on the stack.

The attacking player is the active player, and the defending player is the non-active player. So:

The defending player sacrifices two permanents (including the Spine of Ish Sah) to the Annihilator 2 trigger.
Two instances of It That Betrays' triggered ability go on the stack first (one for the Spine, one for whatever other permanent was sacrificed), in an order chosen by the active player.
Spine of Ish Sah's triggered ability goes on the stack.
Assuming nothing else happens, Spine of Ish Sah's triggered ability resolves first, returning it to its owner's hand.
It That Betrays' triggered abilities resolve, but Spine of Ish Sah isn't in the graveyard anymore, so it won't be put onto the battlefield. The other trigger for the other sacrificed permanent can still put it onto the battlefield, though.

This does mean that if the Spine were somehow sacrificed during player B's turn, the order of the triggers will be reversed, and it'll end up on the battlefield under player A's control.


Identify Chinese board game I came across this Chinese board game. It has a cloth board and 25 black pieces and 25 red pieces with Chinese characters on them.
Can anyone identify it and link to its rules?
Thanks.

This is an abstract strategy game known as Luzhanqi ("Land Battle Chess").


Do Multiple Into the Wilds Stack What would happen if I hand more than one Into the Wilds in play? I was curious if I get an extra use of looking at the top card of my library and playing it if it's a land, or do I only get that once no matter how many I have in play?

Each one will trigger separately, so you'll check the top card of your library once per Into the Wilds you have in play.

We know this is the case because it's a triggered ability. Those use the words "when", "whenever", or "at". The rules for triggered abilities mention a more detailed format for them:

  603.1. Triggered abilities have a trigger condition and an effect. They are written as “[When/Whenever/At] [trigger condition or event], [effect]. [Instructions (if any).]”

Other forms of effects will be very carefully worded to not use this same formula.

In general if you've got multiple cards instructing you to do the same thing, you do that thing for each one. Cards in general don't care if you've got another one of them around; they still have their instructions and expect you to follow them regardless of whether another card also gave you those instructions.


Is the Complex deck in Agricola strictly better? I've played half a dozen games of Agricola — enough to get a feel for it, but not enough to know all of the cards or really weigh their balance.

It's my impression that the Basic and Interactive decks are roughly the same in power, just with (as expected!) more player interaction in the latter.

Ignoring any particular cards that might be outliers, is the Complex deck simply more involved to use, or are the cards in it generally more powerful?

My initial, gut reaction to this question is "no, the Complex deck is not intrinsically more powerful".

Sure, it has some truly standout cards in it - Wet Nurse, I'm looking at you - but for every one of those it has a card with little to no good applications, e.g. Smallholder.  There are some strong Minor Improvements, but again, as well as all the excellent cards there are near-last-picks-in-draft like Yoke.

Are the E and I decks weak?  I'd say not, not really.  Occupations like Clay Mixer or Field Watchman, used well, can be just as powerful as anything in the K-deck.  A Plough is pretty much a Plough, and I'm always happy to have access to one, whichever deck it comes out of.  Some of my favourite Minor Improvements of all are to be found in the E-deck: Private Forest, or the potentially completely insane Clay Supports.

I often draft all the sets mixed together and I'm pretty sure I've never observed any kind of phenomenon of K-cards being snapped up quickly and E- and I-cards being left till later.  If anything, because what you want is cards that have simple positive effects and work well together, too many K-cards with lots of complicated text are liable to be counterproductive.  Yes, you'll first pick Wet Nurse if you see her.  But you'll spend the rest of the draft trying to pick up straightforward utility Improvements and Occupations that back up the strategy suggested by your first pick.  As such, my intuition is that I probably favour Basic and Interactive cards over Complex ones at most stages in a draft.

tl;dr: Complexity can be very powerful, when it does things that are not normally permitted in a game of Agricola.  But synergy is almost certainly more important.  And it tends to be easier to find synergies between simple cards than involved ones.  Therefore I strongly suspect the K-deck of being no more powerful, or just a little bit more powerful, than the others.

It'd be a really interesting experiment to play some games of Agricola between evenly matched players, giving them cards from different decks to play with, though, I must say!  Would kind of defeat the main point of the I-deck, mind you...


Does Scrabble allow playing words which contain diacritics in their original spelling? I know the fact that the words which are always capitalized aren't permitted in Scrabble. But there are some French loanwords incorporated into English, which aren't capitalized and aren't proper names in any way but contain a letter with a diacritical mark. Perhaps most well-known examples are café, né (and née), fiancé (and fiancée), and naïve.

But standard English Scrabble set does not have É or Ï or any other letter with a diacritic.

I wonder if the words evidentiated in bold are OK to play in English Scrabble. (E. g. if I can play CAFE instead of CAFÉ.) I'd be very glad if I could watch an actual game with such a word. Thanks.

Scrabble does indeed allow words of a foreign origin IF they are used consistently enough in the English language to appear in an English dictionary.

Generally speaking this would result in the spelling being anglicised to remove diacritics since they have no meaning in English. As such you are highly likely to find the words naive, nee, cafe in an English dictionary without diacritics, thus they are usable.

From the Scrabble rules (at the end under Accepted Scrabble Words):

  When playing an English version of the game, foreign words are not allowed to be placed on the board. However, if the foreign word does appear in a standard English dictionary, it is allowed. The reason for this is due to the fact that the word is spoken enough and is considered part of the English language.

It is also worth noting that even in the French edition of Scrabble diacritical marks are not present in the letters and are merely inferred by placing the appropriate unmodified letter.

The Wikipedia entry for Scrabble letter distribution also specifically states that diacritical marks such as é are ignored in words borrowed from French.


What do dusk and dawn count as in Fury of Dracula 3rd ed? In the 3rd edition, the rulebook says

  Dawn occurs before the day, and dusk occurs before the night.

Does this mean that dawn = night, and dusk = day when resolving combat?

First, what edition are you talking about? If I'm assuming third correctly, then:

  If combat is at dusk or night, Dracula resolves the “at night” effects of his combat cards.

thus dusk = night; dawn = day for combat effects.


Can I deal indefinite amounts of damage to an indestructible creature? If I have an indestructible creature, can I deal an infinite amount of instances of damage since lethal damage isn't checked or since the effective "health" of the creature is at or below 0 would you not be able to target it anymore? Per se a creature with Enrage that was given indestructible could be dealt any number of instances of damage to constantly trigger?

Yes, you can keep dealing an indestructible creature damage.

Magic doesn't have any concept of “health”, although digital games might misrepresent this by appearing to reduce the toughness of a creature that's been dealt damage (no such thing actually happens in the game rules). The only relevant factors are that creatures have toughness and can have damage marked on them, and while creatures normally die when the damage equals or exceeds the toughenss, that doesn't happen for indestructible creatures. Since the indestructible creature is still there it can and will be able to still keep taking damage from effects.

This behaviour is seen in combos such as a Stuffy Doll enchanted with Pariah: any damage dealt to you is instead dealt to Stuffy Doll which then deals an equal amount of damage to your opponent. Stuffy Doll could take dozens of points of damage, or frankly millions, even though its toughness is only 1.

Yes, you could make an Enrage creature indestructible, ping it indefinitely, and indefinitely trigger its Enrage ability.


When something is put into play, who controls it and why? It seems to me that the underlying assumption with Hive Stirrings is that the Sliver tokens come into play under your control. However, I am building a random standard Polymorph deck (random standard is like t2 but sets are picked randomly) which could also use Defense of the Heart as a 4-8 copy of polymorph if I could give my opponent the slivers instead.

Can anyone point me to some kind of reasoning/ruling behind which player the tokens come out under because to me this seems like kind of an oversight on the part of the card creators by not being specific enough with the card wording.

The tokens will always come into play under your control, you cannot choose otherwise.

From the comprehensive rules:

  110.2a If an effect instructs a player to put an object onto the battlefield, that object enters the
  battlefield under that player’s control unless the effect states otherwise.

  110.5a A token is both owned and controlled by the player under whose control it entered the
  battlefield.


Catan cities and knights 2 player variation At start of player one turn ,he rolls all three dice twice. Is correct sequence roll 1st set of dice then 2nd set then resolve both event rolls then distribute resources, or , roll 1st set of dice then distribute resources then roll 2nd set of dice then distribute those resources.

Looking at rules here it says

  As is customary, each player rolls the dice two times when beginning his turn; for this, all three dice from C&K are used (white die / red die / Event Die). If the second dice roll gives the same result as the first roll, the second roll is repeated – but only the two number dice are used, without the Event Die. The Event Die result is resolved immediately. Therefore, even though you may have to roll the number dice more than two times, the number of Event Die rolls is limited to two.

So if the second roll matched the first you carry out the event die and resolve again.  If you hadn't already fully resolved the first roll you would then be resolving the 2nd event before the 1st due the 'immediately' instruction which feels odd to do unless explicitly told too.

The basic game rules here state :-

  Each player who has a settlement on an intersection that borders a terrain hex marked with the number rolled receives 1 Resource Card of the hex’s type. For an example see resource production

As the original rules say you get resources if you have a settlement on intersection rolled then I would do that straight away and resolve the even. and then make second roll and resolve that.

Also there is a video demo of the rules here and go to 2:40 you will see the demonstrate roll 1st, resolve 1st, roll 2nd, resolve 2nd.


How do cards with multiple Xs in their mana cost work with cards that reduce their costs? For example, if I have Astral Cornucopia in play along with Jhoira's Familiar, what happens? Can I cast it for X = 1 without paying any mana?

I know that there is a question here regarding to X spells with cost reducers, but the question does not cover spells with multiple Xs, which is why I am asking this.

Casting Astral Cornucopia with X=1 and Jhoira's Familiar in play will cost {2}.
The number of Xs in a casting cost doesn't matter for cost reduction effects. If you choose X=1, the mana cost of Astral Cornucopia will simply be {1}{1}{1}, or {3}, the sum of mana symbols. Jhoira's Familiar will reduce the mana cost by {1}, resulting in a total cost of {2}.

202.1a The mana cost of an object represents what a player must spend from their mana pool to cast that card. Unless an object’s mana cost includes Phyrexian mana symbols (see rule 107.4f), paying that mana cost requires matching the type of any colored or colorless mana symbols as well as paying the generic mana indicated in the cost.
601.2f The player determines the total cost of the spell. Usually this is just the mana cost. [..] The total cost is the mana cost or alternative cost (as determined in rule 601.2b), plus all additional costs and cost increases, and minus all cost reductions.[..]


MTG protection from color in multiple card multicolored scenario I just played a game of MTG Arena where Questing Beast attacked while I declared my Linden, the Steadfast Queen as a blocker. I sacrificed my Alseid of Life's Bounty and gave Linden, the Steadfast Queen protection from green. My opponent played Embercleave and assigned it to Questing Beast. If I correctly saw the situation, only the Embercleave damage was applied on the Linden, the Steadfast Queen which is exactly what I though would happen but after both "First strike damage" and "Damage" were applied, Linden, the Steadfast Queen perished and I can't make a sense of it why.

The primary issue here is that Questing Beast has an ability that overrides protection, so it deals damage even though your creature has protection from green. That ability is

Combat damage that would be dealt by creatures you control can't be prevented.

The relevant part of the protection rule is 702.16e:

Any damage that would be dealt by sources that have the stated quality to a permanent or player with protection is prevented.

You can see that they use the same wording: protection causes damage to be prevented, and Questing Beast's ability says that the damage can't be prevented. When there is a conflict like that, it is resolved by rule 101.2:

When a rule or effect allows or directs something to happen, and another effect states that it can’t happen, the “can’t” effect takes precedence.

When you saw that "only the Embercleave damage was applied", that is not actually what happened. Embercleave itself does not deal any damage, it just increases Questing Beast's power and toughness, so Questing Beast itself deals more damage. The reason Questing Beast only deals one damage to your creature is because of the interaction between deathtouch, which Questing Beast has inherently, and trample, which Embercleave grants to it.
A creature dies if it is dealt damage by a source with deathtouch, even if it is less damage than the creature's toughness. And trample allows you to assign any damage in excess of what is needed to kill the blocking creature, to the defending player. In combination, since any one damage dealt by the creature is lethal, the rest of the damage can be assigned to the defending player.
In this specific scenario, the attacking player assigned 1 of Questing Beast's first strike damage to Linden, and the other 4 to you. After that damage was dealt, Linden died because of deathtouch. Then in the regular damage step, there was no longer a blocking creature, so the attacking player could assign all 5 of the damage to you.


What would Resolve first? If my opponent has one Timberwatch Elf tapped, and I use Yamabushi Flame on it, can my opponent respond with a Wirewood Lodge and then use Timberwatch Elf to protect it?

Yes. Wirewood Lodge's ability will go on the stack. Once it resolves, Timberwatch Elf will be untapped and the active player will get priority. Yamabushi's Flame won't resolve until all players pass priority, so your opponent has a chance to activate Timberwatch Elf's ability targeting itself.

Of course, there will need to be at least one other elf in play in order for the ability to actually save it from the 3 damage Yamabushi's Flame will deal.


Are there different versions of Fortnite Monopoly? I see 2 boxes covers but can’t find which one is more recent I am coming across two different Fortnite Monopoly boxes, but can’t tell which one is more current skins. How can I check please? Thank you!

The Blue box is the 2018 edition. The Purple box is the 2019 edition.
Amazon links for reference:
2018: https://www.amazon.com/Monopoly-Fortnite-Board-Inspired-Video/dp/B07GX1DS6R
2019: https://www.amazon.com/Monopoly-Fortnite-Board-Inspired-Video/dp/B07SZRHWYZ


Which Settlers of Catan expansions are recommended? I was introduced to Settlers of Catan just a few weeks ago here.  I plan on buying it and I would like recommendations as to which expansions I should get.

The two biggest expansions for Catan are Seafarers of Catan and Catan: Cities and Knights.  I previously asked the question, "How is gameplay improved in the Cities & Knights Expansion?" recently before buying it myself.  I would check out the answers there for some other opinions on that expansion.  There is also a third expansion, Catan: Traders & Barbarians, but that isn't as popular.

Seafarers of Catan

This was the first expansion for Catan.  The expansion expands the size of the board and gives you the ability to have islands separate from Catan.  The game comes with a number of different scenarios and the ability to create maps with random landmasses.  (Random maps on Seafarers is a favorite of one of the people I play with, and how we usually play.)  Besides adding boats which are roads going across the water, and a pirate to act as a robber, Seafarers doesn't significantly increase the game.

Catan: Cities & Knights

Cities & Knights was the second expansion for Catan and take the base game and builds up on it.  Three commodities are introduced to the game: Coin, Paper, and Cloth.  Cities, now instead of producing two resources, produce a resource and a commodity for ore, wood, and sheep.  The development cards are not used and progress cards in three colors are now used.  Progress cards are gained by developing your cities, and can't be bought.  You use the commodities to upgrade your cities through different levels to increase the speed of you earning progress cards.

Knights also move from being cards to being tokens on the board.  In addition, every so many turns, the barbarians come and attack Catan.  All active knights defend, and if Catan wins, the person who helped to defend the most gets a victory point.  If Catan looses, the person who helped the least, looses a city.  A third event dice determines when the barbarian moves or when progress cards can be generated.

All of this increases the length of the game and makes Cities & Knights plays slower.  It's a much more strategic game with Cities & Knights.  The progress cards also give you a lot of different options.  A number of cards directly harm other players, while benefiting you.

Catan: Traders & Barbarians

This is the one I haven't played, but I do know it adds a lot of different scenarios and variants to Catan you can play with.  It includes the Catan Event Cards, and Settlers of Catan: The Great River.  (As a side note, I know my local game store carries The Great River as a separate expansion.)  The wikipedia article on this expansion has a lot of information available about it.

5-6 player Extensions

The main game and each expansion, has a 5-6 player extension for it that lets you play 5-6 players.  I have extensions so I can play the main game or Seafarers but have never actually had 5-6 people to play it.  Friends of mine speak very highly of playing Catan with more people though.  Adding more people does slow the game down though and if you play Cities & Knights with 6 people, your looking at a very, very long game.

Recommendation

I love variety when playing games, and I find Seafarers adds a lot of variety that makes each game different.  You get this with playing random maps with the core game, but random landforms really diversifies what's going on.  We've had games with large landmasses or narrow landmasses.  If you want to break out of the standard Catan island, this is the expansion for you.  I can also speak highly of Cities & Knights.  It's a different type of game, but adds a lot of depth and if your looking for that, get it.  No one has recommended Traders & Barbarians to me yet, so I would say the jury is out on that one for me.  I would suggest both the other two expansions first, and get Traders & Barbarians if your still looking for more Catan.

Finally, I would get the  5-6 player extensions on as need basis.  If you at least get the core game extension, you can at least play Catan if you have more people then usual.


Which, and how many, dual lands? Pretty new to playing magic, even newer to building my own decks. When playing multicolored, which and how many dual lands should be played? Also, if putting let's say 4 dual lands into a deck. Do I then take out 4 lands of the one color it produces and 4 of the other (or do I then have to little lands in my deck)?

It's not obvious, but the answer to this question is the same as that in How should I determine how many lands of each different color to put in my deck? The point is that you need 1) enough colored sources to cast your spells reliably and 2) few enough lands in your deck to prevent mana flood. You need to balance that, and dual lands helps by being two colored sources in one land.

This is abstract, so we'll use an example. Suppose you want to build a deck that includes both Rekindling Phoenix and Nullhide Ferox. The former is a 2RR card, and the latter is 2GG. You can see from Frank Karsten's seminal article (linked in my answer above) that to cast these two spells on curve, you need 16 red sources and 16 green sources. In other words, if you have only basic lands, you'll need to run 32 lands to cast both these spells on time.

Now you can see from the second question linked above that 32 lands is way too many. In fact most decks won't run more than 27 lands, and the average is about 24. This means You cannot run both Rekindling Phoenix and Nullhide Ferox with only basic lands. You will either flood, or you will not be able to cast either spell on time.

Dual lands help because they are both red and green sources. Let's say in addition to basic lands you also have all of Taiga, Stomping Ground, Rootbound Crag, Fire-Lit Thicket and Copperline Gorge. Now, by running four copies of all five of these lands, you suddenly have 20 red sources and 20 green sources in only 20 lands! That means you can even afford to fill your remaining land slots with utility lands (such as Sea Gate Wreckage) and you won't color screw.

To your specific questions:

If you add four duals, do you get to take out 8 lands? If not, which do you take out?

There's no answer to this question without knowing the rest of your deck. You analyze this question the same way you analyze the above. Which spells in your deck are the hardest to cast? Let's say you're playing Rekindling Phoenix, in which case as per above you need 16 red sources. How many does your deck currently have? How many will it have after you add the four dual lands? If you currently have 23 red sources, then you can remove 4 of those red sources for the four duals and you'll be fine. If you only have 15 red sources even after adding the four duals, then you can't cut red sources - you need to remove something else. Remember to analyze how many lands in total your deck wants after you've sorted out the colored sources as well.

As you can see, figuring out mana bases is not trivial. As you gain experience you'll be able to recognize some rules of the thumb (e.g. it's often possible for experienced players to guess how many total lands they need without playing any games), but actual fine-tuning will still involve doing the calculations.

Finally: total land count isn't something you can usually tweak with dual lands. You still need to draw those duals to have mana, and the odds of drawing lands depends on how many lands you have.

Which dual lands to run?

There's again no answer to this because it's going to depend heavily on what you're doing and you're going to play against. Most duals have a drawback such as coming into play tapped, can your deck afford them? Here're some more things to think about:

If you have access to no-drawback duals such as Taiga then you're pretty much in the clear to run all the duals you want, but since Taiga is only legal in Legacy & Vintage, that means you'll have to play against decks with Wasteland. Wasteland destroys nonbasics but not basic lands. That's why it's common for many Legacy & Vintage decks to run a few basic lands (so they can fetch - using fetchlands such as Scalding Tarn - for them against decks running Wasteland.)
In Modern, you might want some basic lands again, this time to deal with Blood Moon, Field of Ruin, or to have a search target if opponent plays Assassin's Trophy or Path to Exile.
In Standard, if you're playing the Scapeshift/Field of the Dead combo deck, then you need many different lands (i.e. duals) to trigger Field of the Dead's condition.

Absent considerations such as these then you're free to run all the duals you want. In Standard right now, it's perfectly acceptable to run 24 dual lands plus a few more basics if needed. You'll need to check how good these dual lands are. For example if you're playing B/W vampires, which is an aggressive deck with 1-drops, then lands that come into play tapped all the time might be too big a cost, while if you're playing something like Esper control (which doesn't usually play 1-mana cards) then they're great especially if they also have upside (e.g. Temple of Silence offers a Scry 1).


What happens if a transform trigger is copied? Similarly to my previous question, what happens when a miracle trigger is copied?, Strionic Resonator, a new card printed in Magic 2014 could also be used to copy a transform trigger such as on Huntmaster of the fells.

What happens when this trigger is copied?

If multiple transform abilities are on the stack for the same object, it will simply transform back and forth on each resolved trigger.

This one is pretty straightforward. It's the same object, and a transform simply flips the switch, no matter which side is currently on top, because Transform is not specific to either side.

The only ruling on Bloodline Keeper fully applies here.


Can one block with a protection from color creature? With the upcoming prerelease I'm currently wondering about the new protection creatures. When playing a creature which gets protection from a certain color, is that creature then able to block an attacking creature with the color it is protected from?

For example, if you play Blightbeetle, and the opponent attacks with a green creature, am I able/allowed to block with my Blightbeetle?

The reason I'm asking is, because I'm a little confused by the text. It says "can't be targeted". Is declaring the creature as a blocker considered targeting then, or does that only include other spells and stuff?

  Protection from green (This creature can't be blocked, targeted, dealt damage, enchanted, or equipped by anything green.)

Declaring a creature as a blocker isn't targeting; the rules don't mention the word 'target'.

  509.1a The defending player chooses which creatures they control, if any, will block. The chosen creatures must be untapped. For each of the chosen creatures, the defending player chooses one creature for it to block that’s attacking that player or a planeswalker they control.

If you want to know what counts as being targeted (a lot of it does), you'll need to read rule 114.

In fact, declaring the creature with protection as a blocker is very often the right thing to do, as the creature won't receive any combat damage and thus is likely to survive.


How can I find a FNM-competitive affordable deck? I've played Hearthstone for about 2.5 years and I'm looking to get into Magic. Since my favourite decks in HS are control, I'd like to try to get into Magic with a control deck. I'm aware a large part of playing a control deck is knowing what to play around, and how you use/save your removal. I went to a con recently where I played a couple of games with the starter decks, and the Blue deck was a lot of fun, despite just eyeballing what seemed good and when to use it.

I've played through the tutorials in Magic: Duels and I'm planning on heading down to my local store on Friday to see what FNM is like. I'm aware of MTG Goldfish's budget decks section, but I can't see any control decks in there.

Are there any good resources for finding decks (in my case, specifically control decks) that aren't going to break the bank, but will get me into MTG with a somewhat competitive deck for FNM? I've found things like TappedOut which lists a ton of decks, but has little explanation of what each one is or how it plays out.

In the current standard, a few decks I would look for are UW control, Mono-blue Brains and BW control. UW control utilizes white sweepers and blue counter magic.  Mono-blue brains is a control deck that tries to play sorceries at instant speed. BW control relies on spot removal to keep the board clear.

Another site you might want to check out is StrictlyBetterMtg's youtube channel. He does a lot of deck techs, with a fair number of them being budget.

Reddit also has good resources, with a particular subreddit for budgets: budgetdecks

For format information check out another question: Magic The Gathering: Where To Begin


Artisan of Forms and Gift of Immortality Artisan of Forms says:

  Heroic — Whenever you cast a spell that targets Artisan of Forms, you may have Artisan of Forms become a copy of target creature and gain this ability.

Say I play a Gift of Immortality on it which says:

  Enchant creature. When enchanted creature dies, return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control. Return Gift of Immortality to the battlefield attached to that creature at the beginning of the next end step.

Artisan of Forms' ability triggers and I make it a copy of another creature. Then my opponent destroys it. The way I would interpret the card is that Gift of Immortality will return Artisan of Forms to the battlefield in it's original form but it also seems plausible to me that it would still be a copy.

In the event it does return to it's original form can Gift of Immortality still "find" Artisan of Forms to reattach given it is now a different creature?

When a permanent that's a copy of something else leaves the battlefield, it immediately reverts to its original form as printed on the card. Anything that happened to it while it was on the battlefield has no influence whatsoever on it once it is in the graveyard or anywhere else (unless its effect says so). Artisan of Forms stops being a copy as soon as it leaves the battlefield, so how can it possibly still be one when it returns?

This is usually termed as a card moving between zones "forgetting" everything about what it was.

  400.7. An object that moves from one zone to another becomes a new object with no memory of, or relation to, its previous existence. There are seven exceptions to this rule:

Gift of the Immortality can find the right card in the graveyard because of one of the exceptions, but the card will still have reverted back to its original characteristics.

  400.7d Abilities that trigger when an object moves from one zone to another (for example, “When Rancor is put into a graveyard from the battlefield”) can find the new object that it became in the zone it moved to when the ability triggered, if that zone is a public zone.