Is this Texas Holdem hand a misdeal? The dealer dealt all the cards to 10 players, 6 players are now in the hand, so he flopped 3 cards on the table and all 6 players checked. So as he was going to do the turn card he messed up the top 5 or 6 cards and he was not sure they went into the original order so he ruled the hand dead, Is this the right decision?

No, the hand is not dead.

Looking at Robert's Rules of poker here the following is included in rules for misdeals.

  In button games, action is considered to occur when two players after the blinds have acted on their hands. Once action occurs, a misdeal can no longer be declared

As action has occurred (players calling pre flop) then this rules that the hand can not be declared dead.

I'm confused as to how the top few cards would get mixed up but as long as they haven't got mixed with the muck (previously folded cards, or discard pile to boardgamers!) then the cards coming off the deck will still be random and continuing is possible.


Can non basic lands be tapped for colorless mana? For example, Evolving Wilds has a mana fixing ability, but it doesn't say you can tap it for mana. Other non-basic lands have a mana ability listed on the card. Should I assume that Evolving Winds cannot be tapped for mana?

Basic lands don't have mana tapping abilities listed, but are assumed you can tap them for mana of the color they represent.

No, you cannot tap non-basics for mana unless they have an ability that specifically says otherwise.

Basic lands are handled with a special case in the rules:

  305.6 The basic land types are Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest. If an object uses the words “basic land type,” it’s referring
  to one of these subtypes. A land with a basic land type has an
  intrinsic ability to produce colored mana. (See rule 406, “Mana
  Abilities.”) The land is treated as if its text box included,
  “Tap.gif: Add [mana symbol] to your mana pool,” even if the text box
  doesn’t actually contain text or the card has no text box. For Plains, [mana symbol] is {W}; for Islands, {U}; for Swamps, {B}, for Mountains, {R}, and for Forests, {G}. See rule 107.4a. Also see rule 605, "Mana Abilities."

http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Basic


Is there a reason not to play your whole hand at once if you can? Literally our first ever game of Yu Gi Oh, my friend got a hand consisting of 1 normal monster, 1 spell, and 3 traps. She played all 5 on her first turn, emptying her hand, since as far as we could tell there were no rules against it. It felt very strange, coming from MTG, but also odd because there didn't seem to be any strategic reason not to do it. Particularly with traps, why would you keep them in your hand rather than get them out on the field?

Yes, you can play all your hand if you want and can on your first turn. Don't worry, compared to MTG Yugioh is quite faster, and even has First Turn Kills (more frequent than any FTK that exists in MTG), so it's probably what will seem stranger to you at first.

  Particularly with traps, why would you keep them in your hand rather than get them out on the field?

Depending on your strategy, you may not want to play all your cards at once, even if you could. Why? Well, several reasons, and besides no strict rule on why; this strongly depends on your strategy and way of playing.

However, if you play or set all your cards, then you would be on a tactical disadvantage, as your opponent now knows exactly what kind of cards and how many you have. In the case of your friend, you now know he indeed has one monster and 4 spells/traps...

This may give your opponent the info they need to counter your moves; it is now obvious that one should attempt to neutralize your backrow (term used to refer to your spell and trap zone).

Another disadvantage is that your opponent may destroy all the field with some effect (like my favorite, Black Rose Dragon) and leave you helpless; that is why you should play all your cards only if your strategy requires so in that moment.

However, seeing your opponent set 4 spell/traps can be quite alarming or distracting("it's a trap", literally), thus a good strategy if used correctly. Just make sure that if you are bluffing you have a good plan that is worth it.

But, hey, I have in several occasions set my Dark Hole spell card (useless that way) in an attempt to bluff. Combined it with a brief grin and then poker face I have been able to scare the hell out of quite experienced players, or at least make them rethink their moves.

Another behavioral strategy I recommend is to periodically check your set card(s), as in considering its use in that moment. This may make your opponent think you have some powerful trap card waiting there, and hopefully affect to your advantage the response they take after your provocation. Things like these are key to an effective bluffing, so it is not just set everything and pass.

But yes, you can play all your cards, but strongly consider if it is worth doing so.


Alternative play for Splendor My husband and I like Splendor, but once someone manages to get one high level card, the game is pretty much over in minutes. Increasing the number of points you need to win doesn't make the game last much longer, either. And by the end, it's more just who-can-grab-the-card-first.

Can you think of a good alternative way to play? The game is beautiful and I'd like to use it more often if I had a better set of rules.

I play quite a bit of Splendor, love the game, but I've never run into this problem. Do you each pay attention to the other's gameplay? (that sounds rude, but I promise it's not meant to be!) Do either of you ever sabotage the other?

For example, if I see that my opponent's purchase power leans toward a particular premium card, I snatch that card off the market, along with a wildcard token. I'll score it later.

Also, if I notice that a particular gemstone is hard to find, I'll buy those up to slow a leading opponent.

Maybe you already do these things.

If not, try paying closer attention to what your opponent's cache could purchase, at any given time, and if it looks like he could spring ahead by purchasing one of the 4 higher level cards, then snatch that card, along with your wildcard token, and shout, "Punked! B!tch!"

That last part is very important.


Does it matter what faction Mech World is? I'm playing the core set of Star Realms and I find myself picking up the Stealth Needle and Mech World whenever I can afford them. Because of their abilities to mimic other factions, I really don't care what faction(s) I'm focused on. The Stealth Needle can only mimic one other faction in a turn, but it also retains the ability to ally with Machine Cult. So it's possible to imagine an alternate design where Stealth Needle belongs to another faction and it makes a difference in the game.

But Mech World is a whole nother story. Since it counts as an ally for all other factions, the Machine Cult color and emblem are superfluous. As far as I can tell, it would work just as well as an Unaligned card like Explorer, Scout and Viper. Obviously there's a lore component here. Machine Cult is the only faction devious enough to invent this type of base. But I'm thinking in terms of the game's mechanics, so to speak.

So for the core set, does the Mech World faction matter in terms of gameplay?

Bonus: Are there rules in any of the expansions that make the faction of this card matter?

It matters for the solo variants.  I can't find rules for these online but I can explain how they work in the app.

In a typical solo scenario on the bots turn a card is turned up and depending on the faction this dictate how it behaves.  This image is from Star Realms website to explain show what I mean and is best 'reference' I can fine.

In the app there is a weekly scenario in online 'Arena'. The rules for these are different each week but I have seen games with a random faction removed or different factions.

It also matters if playing with Missions expansions.  Some of those cards will refer to playing cards of the same faction type.  That is not the same as triggering an ally ability of all factions..

There may be other answers to this but there are lots of expansions to look at!


What's the name of the type of expansion set "packs" that MTG players can buy at release events? I've heard that MTG vendors can have release events for expansion sets.  During these events, players can spend a relatively small amount (say, $20 bucks) and get a collection of cards from that set (enough to build a deck or two).

What is the name for these value sets?  It seems like they're somewhere between a booster pack and a booster box in size. Can they only be purchased at release events?

The format of the pre-release and release party events is a tournament type called 'sealed deck' where you get 6 packs of cards to make a 40 card deck out of.

For recent sets wizards has been printing special "event packs" where one or two of the six boosters you get is custom tailored to a specific colour, colour combo, or deck archetype.  This is to make it easier for new players to build a half-decent deck, since looking at 6 totally random packs and figuring out which two or three colors are best takes some practiced skill!

It comes in a little box with a spindown d20 life counter also.  I think this is probably the product you're talking about.  Some event hosts will sell leftovers after the tournament.  As far as I know this doesn't violate any of their distribution agreements with WOTC.

This is a description of the most recent one:
http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/tcg/events.aspx?x=mtgcom/events/prerelease-facts


How to track score in Constellations In the Constellations game the rules say that there are 44 point tokens for tracking scores, but they are hidden from players until the end of the game. What does it mean "hidden"? Should there be one person counting and not giving out the current score, or each player should keep tokens in secret, or they just belong to each player and there is no indication of who is leading.

I'm looking at the rulebook right now, and here's the text for the point tokens on page 4 (emphasis mine):

  44 Point Tokens

  Points are tracked using Star Tokens, which remain hidden from other players until the game is over. Tokens come in 1, 5, 10, 25, and 50 point designations

Based on this, the conclusion I draw is that each player's individual score is technically hidden information - that is, each player knows their score but not any other player's score. The point tokens should be used to track scores on a per-player basis, but players are not required to reveal their collected Point Tokens to other players until the end of the game. In practice, this basically means making a stack of point tokens with 1s on top and 25s and 50s on bottom

It's worth noting that in this setup, because the events that give points is public knowledge, it is possible for a player to keep track of another player's point total.


Why do some players get starting trade goods in 7 player TI3? In 7 player Twilight Imperium there are 3 starting positions that get trade goods at the beginning of the game.  The position that gets 6 trade goods is obviously worse than the others. The two that get 4 don't seem worse than their adjacent starting positions. What is different about them, that they require the bonus trade goods?

Position 3, which gets the 6 trade goods is, as you say, clearly the worst, all cramped up there.

The two which get 4 trade goods, positions 1 & 2, only have 3 tiles which are directly connected to their home world, whereas the remaining 4 positions are connected to the board with 4 tiles. This gives them more movement options and I guess this would be why the others are compensated :)


Why are beginning to intermediate bridge players told to delay learning how to bid certain types of unusual hands? When learning modern bidding (Standard American 5 card majors in my case), I noticed that the system's bidding techniques and common conventions described good ways of getting to a reasonable contract for most common types of hands very well, but seemed to miss with certain types of hands*. I also misbid a number of hands that experienced players at the table said were likely to end up in the wrong contract using my bidding system, and that that was okay.

Why do experienced bridge players think it is okay for a bidding system to generally result in poor contracts for certain types of hands*, urging beginning to intermediate players to delay learning how to bid these types of hands until they have much more experience?

Examples of "certain types of hands" include strong hands such as very long suits (9+ cards), 2 voids, seeming slam potential despite missing an Ace, etc. But also weak hands that intuitively seem to have potentially good pre-emptive value despite not falling into traditional weak 2 or weak 3 types of hands.

To best understand the answer to this question, it helps to understand the purpose of bidding and bidding systems. Bidding is an attempt by two partners to predict the number of tricks their combined hands can win in the play. The purpose of bidding is for each partnership to ascertain which contract, whether made or defeated and whether bid by them or by their opponents, would give the partnership their best scoring result.

A bidding system is the set of agreements and understandings (treatments and conventions) assigned to bids and sequences of bids used by a partnership. As a beginning player, you might think it a simple matter to develop a bidding system which, if followed, would always land each partnership in the contract which yields the highest score. In reality, no perfect system has been developed. The problem is that the number of possible hands is too large to be mapped onto a tidy bidding system that works well for all of them. There is simply not enough bidding space to develop such a system.

Since designing a perfect bidding system is (probably) impossible, compromises must be made. The way this is usually done is to divide hands into types and develop a sense for which types of hands are most common, less common, uncommon, and extremely rare. When designing a bidding system, you make darn sure that the most common types of hands are easily dealt with, landing you in the highest scoring contract 100% of the time or close to it. Then you keep modifying the bidding system to deal with ever less common types of hands.

A beginning to intermediate student of bridge will do well to follow this same path of successive levels of approximation.

For example, if you're learning the Standard American system with a pair of books by William S. Root (Commonsense Bidding, Modern Bridge Conventions), you first master the bidding basics in the first 10 chapters of the book Commonsense Bidding. Perhaps that will enable your partnership to handle 65% of all hands once you've thoroughly mastered these chapters. Then you read the rest of the book to get your partnership able to handle 86% of hands. Then you cover the one-star conventions in the next book, Modern Bridge Conventions, to get you up to 93%. Then the 2-stars get you to 96%. Then the 3-stars get you up to 97%. Beyond these 2 books you'll get into increasingly esoteric conventions that come up so rarely in play that they're very hard to remember - but may help you tackle most of the remaining 3% of hands not covered by the treatments and conventions described in these 2 books.

The actual percentage of hands covered is almost certainly different than what I just described, but the concept is valid and can be applied to learning:

The most efficient way to learn bidding in bridge is to concentrate on the most common hands first and master the treatments and conventions for that thoroughly before starting to move on to deal with successively less common hands.

A common mistake of beginners and one which I made many times is to look at a certain hand and realize that the bidding I've learned so far probably won't work well for this type of hand. So instead of doing my best to follow the treatments and conventions I've learned so far, I simply ignore the system and try to do what feels right for the hand. This not only results in many misbid hands (your partner has no idea what you're doing!) but also slows down learning how to bid if you do this frequently.

Another common issue is getting obsessed about learning how to bid a certain type of hand. Yes it's very cool to learn how to bid slams that have a missing ace but a void in that suit (Splinter bids). But this type of hand comes up maybe once per thousand deals. If you try to learn that before you've mastered the basics, you're concentrating your efforts on a 1 in 1000 occurrence before you're dealing well with types of hands that come up every time you play.

So that's why you want to delay learning how to bid certain types of hands even if it lands you in poor contracts from time to time. By learning how to bid more common types of hands first, you make more efficient use of your learning time and get more used to applying basic treatments and conventions. Once you master the basics, you can better refine your bidding system with added treatments and conventions but if you don't have a good foundation to build on top of, this is more likely to hurt than help.

I know from experience as I had to unlearn years of bad habits developed during casual play - habits that would not have formed had I understood this concept of successive levels of approximation. Once I understood this, I then fully unlearned my bad habits, and my bidding improved dramatically.


Identify a fantasy board game from the 90's I had a game in the 90s when I was a kid. These are the traits I remember:

Some kind of fantasy game.
A big carton board consisting of two pieces: upper level and underground level.
The game paths were perpendicular to each other. There were carton doors that were set up all around the board. They can be unlocked with the card that has a key on it.
A couple of playing card decks.
As far as I remember only two usual dices.
There were a couple of figurines (not players) that were positioned across the board. Players had to fight them if faced. I remember they were plastic and nicely done. If I am not mistaken one was green and looked like the Grim Reaper, but not as tall.

Unfortunately, that is all I can remember. I played it in the late 90s, but I am from Ukraine so it might have been issued earlier than that.

Thank you in advance for your help.

I think you are thinking about Dark World (1991) and/or its two expansions:
Dark World: Village of Fear (1993)
Dark World: Dragon's Gate (1993)

Grim Reaper:

Green Arch-villain:

more images here


How does Cairn Wanderer work outside the battlefield? I'm a little unclear on how the wording of Cairn Wanderer applies when it is not on the battlefield (e.g. when it's in exile or in the graveyard itself).

The wording is:

  As long as a creature card with flying is in a graveyard, Cairn Wanderer has flying. The same is true for fear, first strike, double strike, deathtouch, haste, landwalk, lifelink, protection, reach, trample, shroud, and vigilance.

So if there is a Vampire Nighthawk in the graveyard, and Cairn Wanderer is in any zone other than the battlefield, will it have Flying, Deathtouch and Lifelink?

Cairn Wanderer's ability functions only on the battlefield. In any other zone it has none of those keyword abilities at all.

Here's how we find out

It's a static ability, so from CR 604: Handling Static Abilities we see:

  604.2 Static abilities create continuous effects, some of which are prevention effects or replacement effects. These effects are active as long as the permanent with the ability remains on the battlefield and has the ability, or as long as the object with the ability remains in the appropriate zone, as described in rule 113.6.

This points us to rule 113.6, which is the rule that tells us when abilities can actually function.

  113.6 Abilities of an instant or sorcery spell usually function only while that object is on the stack. Abilities of all other objects usually function only while that object is on the battlefield. The exceptions are as follows:

So Cairn Wanderer's ability functions only on the battlefield, unless it meets one of those (many) exceptions.

The closest we might get is a characteristic-defining ability:

  113.6a Characteristic-defining abilities function everywhere, even outside the game. (See rule 604.3.)

This points us to rule 604.3 which defines characteristic-defining abilities. It helps us identify them with some criteria, all of which must be met:

  604.3a A static ability is a characteristic-defining ability if it meets the following criteria: (1) It defines an object’s colors, subtypes, power, or toughness. [and some other criteria which don't matter at this stage]

Since it doesn't do those things, and instead defines abilities, it's not a characteristic-defining ability. It doesn't meet any of the other exceptions from 113.6 either. Therefore, this static ability functions only on the battlefield.


Does "Drive Him Back!" also prevent advancement of the monster on this turn? Castle Panic's "Drive Him Back" states:

  Play this card and move 1 Monster all the way back into the Forest, keeping it in the same numbered arc.

Does that monster then stay there during the next immediate Phase 5: Move Monsters?  Or does that monster go ahead and move to the archers ring?

Since the rules state that all Monsters move ahead in Phase 5 (and there is nothing specifically stating that this one should not move), I see no reason why it wouldn't move along with all the other monsters. That's how my group has always played.


Do you need military power when using the Rebel Sneak Attack to settle an additional military world? The card Rebel Sneak Attack, among its other powers, grants the ability to discard itself from the tableau to allow you to place an additional military world.

Do you need to have sufficient military strength to take over the world, or do you get it for zero cost? If you need the military, then this card seems like a weaker version of Improved Logistics, for only one lower cost.

You still need to have sufficient military power to place the world. Nothing about the placement text implies that ordinary requirements are suspended. Indeed, the game designer says (emphasis mine):

  Yes. And, just like IL doing a normal Settle after a declared
  takeover, the player doing this declares this additional settlement
  during their powers and payment step, discards RSA, pumps Military if
  needed, etc., and then delays the resolution of this additional
  settlement until the pending takeover is resolved. If the declared
  takeover fails, then the RSA additional placement is lost, RSA is
  still used up, etc., with the world itself then being returned to its
  owner's hand.

  Exactly the same restrictions as IL after a takeover apply to an RSA
  additional settlement after a takeover, along with the additional
  restrictions noted on the RSA power.

Regarding your Improved Logistics comment: Improved Logistics is a bit of an aberration - it's really, really good. But this card allows takeovers, which is a two card swing (from them to you), which you seem to be discounting. Also, consider that Rebel Sneak Attack would be extremely powerful if it allowed placement of any military world for free (think high value Rebel Homeworld, etc.).


Can you raise a one bid with only two "filler" honors in a suit? Suppose partner bids one of a (five card) major. Normally you need three of the suit to raise.

But expert Marty Bergen has opined that if your suit has four honors, you can bid it as if were one card longer. Mr. Bergen also wrote, "When partner promises a six-card suit, you can support him with a singleton honor."

So if I have KJ (or KT or QJ) of my partner's suit, I'a going to play him for a suit with two more honors: AQxxx, ATxxx, or even QTxxx. In that case, partner and I would have four (possibly five) honors between us. And in the worst case (partner has xxxxx, we'd have two honors). So I'd raise to two with the aforementioned trump holding plus a side king, because I've "borrowed" an extra (small) trump for my bid, based on my interpretation of Bergen.

Is this a reasonable interpretation of Marty Bergen's dictums? Is this a reasonable move to make even if you don't always agree with Marty Bergen?

Certainly it's reasonable, whether or not you are a Bergen acolyte. But it ought to be a rare hand where raising with only two trump is more attractive than the alternatives. These situations come up more often in competition. For instance, if the auction started

(1C) 1S (2C)

I would be happy to raise to 2S with something like

AQ
Kxx
xxxxx
xxx

I agree with Pieter that if you have fewer trump than partner expects you ought to be near a maximum in high cards. This point was made many years ago by Edgar Kaplan.


How can I play Somnium in real life? The computer game Civilization IV allowed large scale user customisation. One of the largest and most detailed of these game mods is the community-based Fall From Heaven II.

Within the mod, it is possible to play a card game called Somnium against your AI opponents. A game in progess looks like this:

The game is simple but addictive, and the cards are beautiful.

Does a real-life implementation of this game exist? Ideally, I'm looking for a deck of cards with the same artwork and numbering as the computer version, but I'm also interested to know if the game mechanics are implemented anywhere else, perhaps under a different name.

Ok, so I did a little research about the game. Here are the results. Hope this helps. Sorry about the long post.
Simple online Flash version - no original artwork
Here you can play simple Flash version against AI, but I guess that's not really what you are looking for. However, If you get your hands on 8 suited card deck (for example here or here). You can even make your own 8 suits deck combining standard card deck and jumbo version with the identical back. Just an idea.
Games with similiar mechanics
If you're looking for a game with similiar feel, user called Ooops mentioned on BGG that it reminds him of the game Can't Stop (you can try the game online on BGArena):

The developers have even designed their own card game from scratch, (...). Called Somnium, it features amazing art and
a push-your-luck gameplay in the vein of "Can't stop".

Original artwork
I've looked through forum discussion about the cards artwork in Somnium.
User Psychic_Llamas said that

the artist for the somnium cards is actually using the art for a deck
of Tarot cards. she is planning on releasing the deck in 2010 i
believe.

In the same discussion you can find a link to the ZIP file with JPEG Cards (the graphics are small unfortunately, 160x240px) from the FFH2, with "numbering". You can also find there a PDF file with card graphics (low quality). I guess you could print those and glue them on cards from one or two standard decks with the identical back. Or you could glue backs as well. On the other hand, you don't need to glue them, you could simply use card sleeves. Many options here.
However, I don't know how much of the original art is available online, but you definitely should have a look at both artist websites.

Stephanie Pui-Mun Law (Tarot section?) (Some other link)
Jason Engle's Gallery (probably in Illustration?)

As game designer stated in the mentioned forum discussion:

There are a few pics from Jason Engle in there. But most of them are
from the amazing Stephanie Pui-Law.

Cards are in much better quality, however they don't have Somnium numbering and game-relevant info, frames etc. You would need to do that yourself, apply it on the artwork, and then back to the printing aptions.
Purchase the deck
What you can also find on the Stephanie Pui-Mun Law website is information about buying Tarot deck in question. I would strongly suggest to look here first, as it is the best answer to your question I can get. You can buy this Tarot deck on Amazon.com.
I guess  you could buy a deck and glue necessary numberings on them?
About the game
This doesn't answer your question, but can give some insight about the game for those users who know nothing about it (as did I until I saw game's artwork in your post).
Credits

Game Designer: Derek "Kael" Paxton
Original programmer: Stéphane "Sto" Nadry
Art: Stephanie Pui-Mun Law and Jason Engle

Brief game explanation
Borrowed from the tarotforum.com:

In a popular mod for the fourth installation of the Civilization game
series, Fall From Heaven II, there is a funny on-the-side minigame,
Somnium, which is played with a deck of 54 cards; 3-7 in ten suits
(Angels, Devils, Pentacles, Staves, Suns, Moons, Towers, Dragons,
Swords and Cups) as well as three "Fool" cards and a "Death" card. The
objective of the game is to gather cards so that your set of
highest-of-each-suit sum beats that of your opponent, and you and your
opponent each takes one turn at a time at drawing cards; You turn one
card at a time and can "bank" the cards at any time, but if you hit
the "Death" card or turn up two of the same suit, all drawn cards are
discarded. The "Fool" cards allow you to steal a card from the
opponent. o You can win a minor diplomacy bonus towards leaders by
besting them in a tournament game, but will suffer a likewise relation
penalty by losing such a game.

Origins
Part of an interview with the game designer, Derek "Kael" Paxton:

Soren: I enjoyed trying out Somnium, the card-based, diplomatic
mini-game you recently added. Because the game encourages thinking
about probability, I would like to try a version of it where all drawn
cards are shown, including the ones underneath the top “banked” cards.
Considering that humans are so bad at estimating probability, I don’t
think that revealing more information would hurt the game. (To mix
things up, you could also remove five randoms cards each game.) Why
did you decide to build Somnium, and how was it designed?
Derek: Fall is a huge mixture of options that tie together in a
variety of ways.  I wanted Somnium to be the opposite, only one
decision, but a lot of complexity in it.  I didn’t want there to be a
right or wrong answer but instead to simplify the risk/reward mechanic
down to one yes-or-no choice.
I thought about showing the “banked” cards but, in the end, it got cut
because I wanted the interface to stay simple, and I wanted the player
to be running off of instinct and laboring over the choice.  If we let
all the banked cards show, the player who drew the 3 of swords could
see all the other swords cards banked and would know that he should
draw again.  I wanted to avoid that certainty.
As to why it was designed, we like doing things no one else has done,
things people don’t expect from modders.  Functionally, it offers a
nice break in long games if you want to jump in and play a few games
against the AI or play while your waiting for other players in a
multiplayer game.


Is there a strongly solved game with infinite possible board arrangements? Is there a game with infinite possible board arrangements (infinite experience conditions?), but which has been strongly solved, i.e. whose optimal move at every stage of the game has been solved?

If such a game exists and if its name is given, it will be of great help to me. Waiting for it. This is going to allow me make certain conclusions in other domains via analogy.

Yes, with Nim being the best-known example
You ask for a strongly solved game (presumably referring to the term in combinatorial game theory). According to Wikipedia, games that are strongly solved

Provide an algorithm that can produce perfect moves from any position, even if mistakes have already been made on one or both sides.

It goes on to note that in many cases, this is determined by brute force:

By contrast, "strong" proofs often proceed by brute force—using a computer to exhaustively search a game tree to figure out what would happen if perfect play were realized. The resulting proof gives an optimal strategy for every possible position on the board.

For instance, we can strongly solve 3x3 tic-tac-toe because we can brute force every possible combination and determine perfect moves. Of course, brute force is impossible for an infinite board size, and some games are only strongly solved up to a certain board size. For instance, Hex is only strongly solved up to a 6x6 board. Still, the hope is that this brute force on games like these will lead to an algorithm for perfect play that works for an infinite size (e.g. an NxN board).
The best studied strongly solved game is Nim, where an algorithm has been found that produces perfect play from any position of any size heaps and objects. This game can be played on a board (or just by drawing on a piece of paper), so it counts as a board game.
Most other combinatorial games are played on a fixed board and are not typically studied at NxN sizes. In some cases, an algorithm for those sizes may not be possible. As described above Hex has been strongly solved for a 6x6 board. However, an algorithm that works for NxN boards is unlikely to be found because the problem is PSPACE-complete, meaning that the number of possibles moves increases polynomially in relation to the size of the board, and it would take a polynomial amount of time to solve the game for a given size. It is suspected that this type of game is unsolvable because calculating for an infinite size would take a polynomially infinite amount of time.
Note that games like Chess, Checkers, and Go are EXPTIME-complete, which means that the number of possible moves increases exponentially in relation to the size of the board. Since an infinite board takes exponentially infinite time to solve, EXPTIME-complete problems like this one are also suspected to be unsolvable. Since exponential time takes longer than polynomial time, and PSPACE-complete problems are suspected to be unsolvable, EXPTIME-complete problems are generally considered to be completely unsolvable.
For reference, it took 18 years to strongly solve 8×8 checkers by brute force. It would take exponentially more work to solve a 9x9 board.
(It's been a long time since I've studied this stuff, but I vaguely recall some research considering what impact quantum computers might have on this type of problem. As I recall, it might be possible to reduce a PSPACE problem to a P problem, which can be efficiently solved in polynomial time regardless of the size of the input. That said, I'm not an expert in this field, so take it worth a grain of salt.)
Caveat: I'm not an expert in this field and it's been years since I've studied it. If I've made any incorrect statements about PSPACE-Complete etc. in this answer, please point it out in the comments or correct it.


Who or what is Gaea? What (if anything) is Gaea in the MTG universe?

I can piece together that she is mainly on Dominaria. Clearly named after the real-life mythical Greek figure. But is she a powerful mage? A planewalkers? A world-soul? a God? Some sort of Queen like figure?

Just basically what is she?

The MTG Wiki page about Gaea summarizes what is known about her. In part, it says this:

Gaea is a goddess worshiped on Dominaria.
Gaea is believed to be the plane's protector and its creator, and many elves and druids worship her. While never physically appearing, her existence seems to be confirmed by many individuals, and it looks like she assisted directly in protecting Dominaria during the Phyrexian Invasion.


Equip from same Equipment, two times on stack (Leonin Shikari) I have Leonin Shikari on the board and want to equip a creature. Can I activate the equip ability a second time and put it on the stack? Like when giving a creature hexproof with an equipment, and an opponent casts a spell to destroy the creature before it gets hexproof, can I activate the ability a second time to have it on the stack above their spell?

You can activate the Equip ability any time during your Main Phase, when you have priority and the stack is empty.

  702.6a. Equip is an activated ability of Equipment cards. "Equip [cost]" means "[Cost]: Attach this permanent to target creature you control. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery."

With Leonin Shikari on the board, aren't limited to activate it during your turn when the stack is empty (so not just "when you could cast a sorcery"). This means you're allowed to activate the ability in response to a player's attempt to remove one of your creature with a targetted spell.

Because the stack resolves last-in-first-out, your Equipment will be attached to the creature of your choice in time to give it Hexproof before the removal spell resolves. That spell will be countered by the game rules ("fizzle") for not having a legal target anymore.

  608.2b. If the spell or ability specifies targets, it checks whether the targets are still legal. (...) The spell or ability is countered if all its targets, for every instance of the word "target," are now illegal. (...) Illegal targets, if any, won't be affected by parts of a resolving spell's effect for which they’re illegal. Other parts of the effect for which those targets are not illegal may still affect them. (...)


Does the camel caravan gives points at the edge of the oasis? In Catan Traders & Barbarian expansion, if I place a settlement at the initial point of the caravan convoy, and it has a camel going through it, does it give an additional VP or not?

Catan Traders & Barbarians - Rules

  Three caravans are formed during the course of the game--each caravan
  consists of a string of camels that begins at the oasis. Each
  settlement and city adjacent to a caravan route is worth an extra
  victory point. (page 12)

According to the rules (page 14), the essential condition for obtaining an extra victory point is :

  Each settlement or city located between 2 camels is worth 1 additional
  victory point.

Therefore, in the situation you describe, if there are two camels - one starting the caravan and leaving the oasis, and another that has come back to the oasis (see photo) then, if you build a settlement on the oasis between these 2 camels, you will get an extra victory point. The edge to the right of the settlement is considered an initial point of a caravan because a camel is leaving one the 3 caravan starting points.

The photo above is a reconstruction of the example on page 14 of the rules.

In the photo, I have added the objects pointed to by red arrows : 2 red roads and one camel. By placing a red settlement (or city) on the oasis, in the position indicated by the red box, the red player will get an extra victory point because the settlement is between 2 camels.

Catan Traders & Barbarians - Rules


What is proper order of resolving players actions? In Jamaica each player selects a card with two actions on it. The left action is connected to the Morning die and the right one to the Evening die. So, basically there is somerhing that happens for every player in the morning and then later, in the evening.

The way we played our first game was that we woukd resolve morning action of each player first, starting with the captain of the turn. Then, we would go to the evening phase and resolve second action of each player in the same order. That's how I understood the rules, since morning comes to all residents of Jamaica at the same time, not after one of them has already seen an evening.

I watched a few playthroughs on the youtube and I noticed that this is not how other people are playing the game. So, I suspect I got this order of action rule wrong.

So, my questions are:

are both actions of the player to be resolved before moving to the next player? Is the Morning/Evening confusion just an effect of poor choise of wording?
playing with our simultaneous Morning actions rule, how would you say it affects the gameplay? Does it give you more or less control of the course of the game? Does it make it more exciting? Increase battle frequency? Randomness?

I believe that resolving Morning actions for all players seems more logical and it does minimise the downtime between player's involvement in the game, little as it is.

The rules seem very explicit.

"The captain turns his over and carries out the two actions"

"In turn, the other players do the same: they turn over their card and carry out the two actions"

I can't comment on what the effect of your house rule would be, but it clearly is not the intended way to play.


Where can I find a good source for  standard decks in Magic: The Gathering? I am just getting back into Magic: The Gathering, and I see a lot of people talking about specific decks, like CawBlade. So my question is two fold, is there someplace that lists what cards make up these specific decks, and are these specific decks always the same (does every CawBlade deck have the same cards) or are they just similar decks with the same theme?

Maybe this is two questions . . .

Thanks!

The best idea is to check out a few sites that are dedicated to the game. Most of them have a collections of Pro players that write for the sites, which gives a lot of insight if you are into reading about the game.

Some other sites provide a resource for viewing decks, seeing what decks work, and also seeing the decklists for decks that have done well at big tournaments.

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/

http://starcitygames.com/

http://www.channelfireball.com/

There are plenty more, but check out these three to start.


How to reach either a 6 Hearts or a 6 NT contract? Yesterday I picked up this in the South hand: 15 HCP, 5 spades headed by Ace Queen, two small Hearts, a Diamond triplet led by the Ace and in clubs the King, Queen, small. This is a pretty standard 1NT opening for us. My partner had 5 hearts and 17 HCP!

We couldn't figure out a clean way of bidding this out: I open 1NT, partner bids 2D for a Jacoby transfer to Hearts, I bid 2H and now partner jumps straight to 6H, leaving no room to check if we have a fit. 6H turns out to be playable, but 6NT is the better contract here.

I later thought of a way to bid this. The auction would be:
I open 1NT, partner uses Jacoby 2D to make me bid 2H. Now partner jumps to 6D; this should be an implicit question to bid 6H if I hold at least 3 hearts or 6NT on a doubleton.

Questions

Are there any biddings for such a type of hand? Preferably something that fits in our current Jacoby transfers.
Any obvious downsides to my proposal for rebidding the transfer at the 6-level?

Assuming you are also playing Texas (highly recommended) then the Jacoby Transfer by Responder followed by a jump in the transfer suit always shows exactly 5 card length. This allows partner to jump to 6H, giving you the choice to correct to 6NT with only a doubleton, as you had.

If Partner has 6 card length sufficient to play slam opposite a small doubleton, then partner transfers at the 4-level and jumps to 6H, which is to play.

Don't even think about a 6D jump without serious partnership discussion. Both sides of the table will be wondering if it is telling or asking; and what precisely the subject of the tell/ask is.

Here are some additional agreements for Responder's rebid that are typically employed by partnerships playing both Texas & Jacoby:

Texas followed by 4NT = Blackwood (your usual variant)
Jacoby followed by 4 NT = Quantitative
Jacoby followed by 4C = Gerber
Jacoby followed by 4 of the transfer suit = slam interest with a weak 6 card suit


Any defense against the forum cards in Roma? My friend and I have played about a dozen games of Roma, and it seems pretty consistent that the player with the most forum cards wins. They're just the fastest way to collect victory points. Has anybody successfully fought back against a player who has more forum cards?

Mercator is usually a sure fire way to beat a forum machine, but there are defenses against that too.  (Siccarius and Gladiator both do very well.)  If you Haruspex the Mercator and you have a Consiliarius and/or Scaenicus in play you can usually win handily against a forum machine.  This will usually force your opponent to play offensive with Legionarius and the like.  (The money you use to buy VP can quickly turn against you if your opponent gets decent draws - but they have to realize it and stop spending their action dice on VPs and draw cards or else they will likely lose.)

The Mercatus though isn't so good since you only get points for the # of forums your opponent has, while your opponent is typically generating more VP than they have forums on average.  It could be good in some situations but I personally have never seen it shine.

(Forgive my spelling of card names, I don't have them at hand to verify.)


How to effectively moderate an ultimate werewolf game? I'm hosting a werewolf game (there will be 10-15 people), but I have never played as a moderator. How do I make sure the game is fun for everyone, for example when a good number of people have been "killed"? Would the game be fast paced enough that people don't have to spend a lot of time standing idly by?

I had a fantastic time being a first time moderator/first time playing with a decent number of people, so I would like to answer my own question as I learned a lot from the experience.

Choosing Roles

There were 10 people, including myself. No one had played Werewolf before (or even Mafia) except me. I thought it would be best to start simple, so the roles I included were:

1 Seer
1 Bodyguard
1 Cupid
3 Werewolves
3 Villagers
last person was moderator

Moderator Duties

Best best thing to do is to be really animated when being the moderator, and actually try to tell a story. Even simple things like a more dramatic tone made the game more fun. To that end, I also had people go around and introduce themselves as a "villager" with a medieval job of their choice.

As a first time moderator, I used a notepad with a simple symbol based seating chart just to remember who was who, and who was dead.

Keeping a strict time limit on the day cycle was also important, as it ensured the "dead" people wouldn't have to sit by with nothing to do, although they found it extremely entertaining just to watch.

After people learned the game, they were eager to moderate as well, and that made the game more fun because everyone brought something interesting to the role.

Setting

In addition, it helped to play in a social setting, with drinks at a bar (I picked a large biergarten with picnic table style tables) because it made people more relaxed and more willing to "buy into" the story and ridiculous scenarios.

Also, it solved the problem of people being "dead". They could just order another beer and laugh at the villagers' flailing attempts to find the wolves.


Bridge, when does dummy hand get laid down? Does the dummy hand lay down trump before or after the first card is played?

After the opening lead has been made by Declarer' left-hand opponent.
From Laws of Rubber Bridge (2014):

Law 41 – Opening Lead, Review, Questions
After the auction closes, presumed (see Law 54C) declarer’s LHO makes the opening lead.   After the opening lead, dummy spreads his hand in front of him on the table, face up, sorted into suits, the cards in order of rank in columns pointing lengthwise toward declarer, with trumps, if any, to dummy’s right.
....


Can a Catan Volcano destroy a knight? When playing with both the Cities & Knights expansion and the Volcano variant, can a volcano eruption destroy a player's knight? (Knights occupy intersections, so theoretically the lava could flow down upon them.)

There's a German Q&A on this subject that says Knights are unaffected by volcanic eruptions. The reason for this is simply stated as "Because the rules on eruptions only describe the effects on settlements and cities, you can conclude that nothing happens to knights."

I find this answer quite unsatisfactory, and I recommend that you decide before the game starts how to handle this occurrence. Personally I prefer to think that the volcano drives knights away. The owner then has to move the knight to a different intersection, taking all relevant rules into consideration.


Declaring Targets with Hexproof If I cast a targeted removal spell like Path to Exile and all creatures have hexproof I actually wouldn't be able to cast it in the first place because all creatures have hexproof and therefore cannot be targets right? Or can I still target them and it just doesn't do anything.

No you can't cast the spell if there is no valid target for it.

601.2. To cast a spell is to take it from the zone it’s in (usually the hand), put it on the stack, and pay its costs, so that it will eventually resolve and have its effect. Casting a spell follows the steps listed below, in order. If, at any point during the casting of a spell, a player is unable to comply with any of the steps listed below, the spell was cast illegally; the game returns to the moment before that spell started to be cast.
601.2c The player announces his or her choice of an appropriate player, object, or zone for each target the spell requires.

magic rules


Discard pile and shuffling question Say I have a hand like follows: Estate, Upgrade, Upgrade, Estate, Copper. 1 card in Draw pile.

I play Upgrade (+1 card, +1 action) -> Draw the last card from my Draw pile -> Trash Estate from my hand and gain a Silver card. This silver card goes into discard. So far so good.

Now, I play my second Upgrade. Since there's no card in my Draw pile, I need to shuffle my Discard pile. Do I shuffle my silver card that I just gained or does do I leave it in the "discard-of-the-current-turn" pile.

The general question is, if I need to shuffle my discard, do I shuffle all cards that I gained during the current turn? I know that I do not shuffle cards that I have set aside.

You include the card you just gained when re-shuffling.  There is only one discard pile.

Cards that are set aside or revealed do not get re-shuffled until they are placed in the the discard pile as specified by the specific card.

Quotes from the rulebook:

  "Gain” – when a player gains a card, he takes the gained card (usually from
  the Supply) and puts it onto his Discard pile (unless the card says to put
  it elsewhere). The player does not get to use the card when he gains it.

  A player places cards he Buys or otherwise acquires during the
  game on his Discard pile unless he is specifically directed to place
  them elsewhere.


How does Ixalan's Binding work against God Eternals? Ixalan's Binding has this text:

When Ixalan's Binding enters the battlefield, exile target nonland permanent an opponent controls until Ixalan's Binding leaves the battlefield.
Your opponents can't cast spells with the same name as the exiled card.

God Eternals, such as God-Eternal Oketra, have this line:

When God-Eternal Oketra dies or is put into exile from the battlefield, you may put it into its owner's library third from the top.

If I target God-Eternal Oketra with Ixalan's Binding, and the opponent chooses to put it back into his library 3rd from the top, will he be able to cast the God-Eternal without destroying Ixalan's Binding? That is, does Ixalan's Binding "remember" the name of the card that was exiled before it was put back into the deck?
If the answer is yes, the opponent can recast the God-Eternal, does that mean that if the exiled card leaves exile for whatever reason (e.g. it was processed by Wasteland Strangler) then Ixalan's Binding second effect ceases to work?

One of the Rulings below Ixalan's Binding says:

If there is no exiled card (perhaps because the exiled permanent was a token or was a commander that moved to the command zone in the Commander variant), Ixalan’s Binding won’t stop players from casting spells.

Both the effects of God-Eternals and Wasteland Strangler will stop the second effect of Ixalan's Binding. The relevant rule is:

Linked Abilities

607.1. An object may have two abilities printed on it such that one of them causes actions to be taken or objects or players to be affected and the other one directly refers to those actions, objects, or players. If so, these two abilities are linked: the second refers only to actions that were taken or objects or players that were affected by the first, and not by any other ability.
607.2a If an object has an activated or triggered ability printed on it that instructs a player to exile one or more cards and an ability printed on it that refers either to “the exiled cards” or to cards “exiled with [this object],” these abilities are linked. The second ability refers only to cards in the exile zone that were put there as a result of an instruction to exile them in the first ability.

(emphasis mine) – basically, as soon as the card leaves the exile zone one way or the other, Ixalan's Binding stops keeping track of it. Re-exiled cards don't activate the ability again, thanks to the last sentence "that were put there as a result of an instruction to exile them in the first ability."


order of attack and blocking with a creature with modifying other creature's ability Suppose a situation where you have a Paragon of Gathering Mists and another creature, say X, with 3/3 on the battlefield. PGM is 2/2 and X becomes 4/4 because of PGM.

When I attack a player with both creatures, how is the order of fights decided?

If X fights first, it fights as 4/4. If PGM fights first and it dies, after that X fights as 3/3, since PGM is removed and its effect is removed as well.

Combat damage is all dealt simultaneously. They'll each deal damage equal to their power (i.e. X will deal 4 damage), then if one or both of them die, well, they die, but the damage is already dealt.

The one exception is if the creature blocking Paragon of Gathering Mists has first strike (or double strike). Then it'll deal its damage first during the first strike combat damage step, Paragon of Gathering Mists will die, and X will immediately become a 3/3, so when deals its damage during the normal combat damage step, it'll only deal 3 damage.

This has nothing to do with order of attacking and blocking, but for what it's worth, the steps of combat are:

Beginning of combat: a last chance to do stuff (cast spells or activate abilities) before the next step
Declare attackers: you declare your attacking creatures, all at once. (Yes, in practice you say "I attack with X and Y" but that order doesn't matter, they both attack at the same time.)
Declare blockers: your opponent declares which of their creatures block which of your creatures, all at once.
Combat damage: attacking creatures deal damage to blocking creatures and/or the opponent, and blocking creatures deal damage to blocked creatures, all at once. (If any of the creatures have first strike, there's a first strike combat damage step exactly like this before the normal one.)
End of combat step: a last chance to do stuff before the second main phase.

So yes, the steps go in that order, but within each step, nothing happens for one creature before another.

I do highly recommend reading the basic rulebook. It'll help you answer a lot of basic questions like this, and it's written to be easy to understand.

Side note: "fight" is a word with specific meaning, and has nothing to do with combat. When a card says "X fights Y" it means that X and Y deal damage equal to their power to each other, then and there, no combat, no attacking or blocking or anything.


Are experience awards additive in Battlestations? I'm having trouble deciphering the v1.1 rules in general, but especially whether some experience awards are additive.

For example, are the rewards for attempting the mission and the experience for completing the mission additive? That is, if Jimbo goes on a mission and succeeds, does he get the 50 exp for trying and 100 exp for winning or just the 100 exp for winning?

Also, if a character goes on a mission (50 exp) and dies (100 prestige) but the crew wins the mission (100 exp), what is he awarded? 150 exp and 100 prestige? Or just 50 experience and 100 prestige?

Finally, are the bonus awards for driving off / capturing / destroying enemy warships / freighters given out for the ships listed in the mission, or only when they show up for some other reason?

Unfortunately, for RPGs where the rules are the game, it is difficult to get a copy of the rules to answer questions like these. This means that we have to rely on designers answering these questions definitively on various forums.
Are the rewards for attempting the mission and the experience for completing the mission additive?
They are additive, The designer Jeff Siadek answers that question here

3. Is the reward of 100 XP for a completed mission in addition to or instead of the 50 XP for an attempted mission?
A character that completes a mission gets 150 experience. 50 for trying and 100 more for succeeding.

I have not found official answers for the remaining two questions.
If a character goes on a mission (50 exp) and dies (100 prestige) but the crew wins the mission (100 exp), what is he awarded? Players on BGG have said the following .

Killed crewmembers do not get experience but they do gain prestige for going out in a heroic manner.

Finally, are the bonus awards for driving off / capturing / destroying enemy warships / freighters given out for the ships listed in the mission, or only when they show up for some other reason? response

you don't get any extra xp for caputring/destroying the mission objective, nor extra credits. That's only for ships beyond the scope of the mission.
If say another ship arrived to assist the target and you destroyed that, then you get the size x 10 exp.


Activating a robber in Catan clarification Our family is new to Catan, please help settle a rule interpretation.

Does the player who activates the robber by rolling a 7 also fall victim to the "lose-half-your-resource-cards" penalty or are they immune from it because they rolled the dice?

a) Rolling a “7”✹ and Activating the Robber
  If you roll a “7,” no one receives any resources.
  Instead, every player who has more than 7 Resource Cards
  must select half (rounded down) of his Resource Cards and
  return them to the bank.

https://www.catan.com/en/download/?SoC_rv_Rules_091907.pdf

There's no mention of an exemption for the player who rolled a 7.


Odds question from mindblowing Pinochle hand What are the odds of a player getting dealt a double run, and another player also getting a run in the same suit?  We almost fell out of our chairs when we saw this unbelievable result.

Assuming double deck of 80 cards and four players, the number of ways you can get a double run and the player to your left can get a run in the same suit is:

4*(C(4,2)*C(2,1))^5*C(50,25)

(4 for the choice of suits, Choose two of the aces for one hand and one for the second, raised to the fifth power to repeat that sort of selection for the 10, K, Q, and J, and then choose any 25 of the remaining 50 cards to fill out the two hands).

The total number of two hand combinations is

C(80,20)*C(60,20)

So the odds is just the ratio of these two:

125820016084474822656 / 14819495547017580943365306953888400

497664/58616503648825943975

or about 1 in 117,783,290,832,420

Then you'd want to multiply that by 4*3=12 since you don't care which of the two players get those hands, and then you'd have to subtract the odds of one additional player coming up with the fourth run in that suit so you don't count that twice.


Is card counting allowed in Dominion? Just recently started playing Dominion. The rules say you can count remaining cards, but not in your deck or discard. I was wondering if it would be legal to keep tally marks on paper for specific card draws - both for my cards and an opponents. This might need to just be a house rule, unless it is specifically forbidden. And of course you still might miss something, throwing your count off.

I think you missed something in the rules:

  A player is allowed to count how many cards are left in his deck, but not in his discard pile. A player may not look through his deck or his discard pile. A player may look through the trash pile, and players may count the number of cards left in any pile in the supply.

(I typed this from my copy of the Intrigue rules; it looks like it says the same thing in the original rules - it's in the Additional Rules section in both.)

So... you can do exactly what those rules say. If you want to do anything else, that's up to you and the people you play with. It seems pretty clear that keeping track of your discard pile on a sheet of paper is equivalent to counting it. Donald X would seem to agree, saying that using a notebook to keep a tally of score is not officially endorsed by the rules. (Thanks to Rob Renaud for providing that link!)


What happens if I exile The Grand Calcutron with Do-It-Yourself Seraph? Let's take a look at The Grand Calcutron and Do-It-Yourself Seraph.

As you see from Calcutron's third ability, the "program" is treated like a zone, into which the cards of your hand are moved into.

While it doesn't say it on the card, Wizards stated the cards in the players' program are moved back to their hands if The Grand Calcultron leaves the battlefield.

What happens if I have The Grand Calculatron in my library and put Do-It-Yourself Seraph into play, attack, and exile the Calculatron with it?

Players are initially unable to play cards.

The Seraph gains the following ability:

When The Grand Calcutron enters the battlefield, each player's hand becomes a program (an ordered row of revealed cards).

It will never trigger because Seraph is already on the battelfield when it gains the ability.

The Seraph gains the following ability:

Players can only play the first card of their program.

Players are unable to play cards (play lands or cast cards) except the first card of their program. Since nothing placed cards in their programs, they are initially unable to play cards.

The Seraph gains the following abilities:

If a card would be put into a player's hand from anywhere, that player reveals it and places it anywhere within his or her program instead.
At the beginning of each player's end step, if that player's program has fewer than five cards, he or she draws cards equal to the difference.

These provide means of adding cards to one's program, allowing the players to play cards again.
In particular, the cards in one's hand are not counted when counting the cards in one's program.


Can anyone provide a citation for the existence of pre-alpha MTG rules about an initiative stat in combat? I remember years ago hearing about a rule/mechanic that existed in early prototypes of Magic the Gathering, before the Alpha set was released.

Basically all creatures had 3 combat stats: power, toughness, and initiative. After attackers and blockers were declared, creatures with the highest initiative would deal damage first, then the next highest initiative creatures would deal damage, etc. This proved to be tedious and was boiled down into first strike by the time the game got into print.

I think this may have been mentioned in the Battle Royale or Deckmasters booklets, but I sold them a long time ago and can't find a digital copy.

Can anyone verify this?

Mark Rosewater, Magic's lead designer, says it's not true that such a mechanic existed. He began working with Wizards of the Coast in 1995 (the game launched in late 1993) and has been the game's lead designer since 2003. From his blog, Blogatog (on February 22, 2016):

gatvin asked: Back when MTG magazines were a thing, I used to get Inquest Gamer. In one of their articles, they showed some early magic cards and they had three stats. Power, toughness, and initiative. Initiative determined damage order in combat and later turned into First Strike for simplification. Now, as with many things written by people, they were sometimes wrong. Do you know if that was true? It was weird to not hear anything about it at all in your story about the design of Alpha.
Mark: To the best of my knowledge, that is not true. The Star Wars TCG we made did have an extra stat for Speed. And yes, in our game Han was faster than Greedo. : )


What is the penalty for failing to follow suit? Assume the mistake is unintentional, what course of action should be taken when this occurs and is discovered?

If the person discovers themselves that they earlier made the mistake, is the penalty different than if an opponent discovers it?

In Duplicate Bridge the penalty for a revoke (failing to follow suit) is very clear.

The official rules handle revokes in Laws 61 to 64.  Wikipedia's summary of 61-64 is

  A revoke may be corrected (correct card substituted) without trick penalty before any player of the offending side plays to the next trick; otherwise, it becomes established. If a revoke is corrected, the exposed card becomes a penalty card and the opponents may change their played cards as they see fit (however, the revoking side may not take advantage of those seen cards—see Alcatraz coup). When a revoke is established, in general, one of subsequent tricks won by the offending side is transferred to the opponents. If the revoke card has won the trick, that trick is transferred too. (If the offending side did not win any subsequent tricks, no penalty is assessed). Additional tricks can be transferred if the revoke has caused more damage to the opponents than was redressed by those penalties.

If the revoke is not immediately corrected, there is no difference in penalties based on the person who establishes the revoke.  It makes no difference whether the mistake was intentional or unintentional.


Is more than one deck of cards ever used in Phase 10? When 4-6 players are playing Phase 10 is it possible that the deck can be exhausted before anyone completes a phase?

Yes, we have had an instance where we made it through the draw pile without anyone going out. (There were 5 of us). We used to play a lot, so I think it's rare. We just took the discard pile (except the top card) and shuffled it to make a new draw pile.  I didn't see this situation in the rules though, so it's unofficial.


What are rules for an overcall that have wide acceptance? This question was inspired by this link, http://www.jazclass.aust.com/bridge/br14.htm which required a five card suit with two honors, at least one of them a queen or higher, for a one-level overcall. Hence, QTxxx was acceptable, but not Qxxxx or JTxxx.

A variation of this rule is that you need five cards in a suit (headed by two honors) for a one level overcall, and six cards in a suit (headed by two honors) for a two level overcall.

Another rule I've heard is that the number of honors plus the number of cards in a suit ought to at least equal the number of tricks. Marty Bergen, at least, in "Points, Schmoints" would allow a one level overcall (seven tricks) with four cards in a suit if there are three honors. Likewise, he and his partner, Larry Cohen, would allow a two level overcall (eight tricks) with a five card suit if it were headed by three honors. They would, of course, want two honors (however defined), for one and two level overcalls with five and six cards in the suit respectively.

Are there any rules that most experts agree on regarding overcalls?

I do a lot of "weak jump overcalls".  That is to say, if my opponents open with 1H or 1S, and I have 6 clubs or 6 diamonds, and 6-9 HCP, I would invariably jump to 3C or 3D respectively.  (Well, I say invariably, but vulnerability and points below the line would actually be taken seriously into consideration.)

With 7 or 8 clubs I might jump to the 4 or 5 level.  I'm that serious about overcalls.

This is all based on the same principle as my favoured, weak, 1NT system.  It's better to get in there with a balanced hand and 12 HCP than it is to give the opponents all the bidding space they need.  Even though you will sometimes get severely doubled and go down in flames.  It's a risk you have to take, when quite often average players just have no idea to deal with aggressive overcalling, and you can totally take apart their game accordingly.

I'm always amazed when I play online with a randomly picked-up partner, and they chastise me for weak overcalls and general interferential play, when the alternative is to let the opponents bid an easy 1NT-3NT or something and take the match without any difficulty.  Going down and giving points to your opponents is not a crime against Bridge play - as long as you still have a chance of coming back and taking the match!  (I will agree, though, that keeping on overbidding and refusing to let the rubber end, when you are thousands of penalty points down already, is very irritating.  I assume the people who do this are mostly obnoxious kids...)


Avoiding stealing a resource when moving the robber in Catan Is it allowed to move the robber, but not take a random resource from another player? Avoiding stealing a resource may sound odd. One reason you might want to: you need to play a soldier card to move the robber, both to block another player from getting resources and to remove the robber from a vital hex for yourself. However, you already have seven cards in hand, and gaining one would put you at risk of discarding if a seven is rolled afterwards.

There are a few more related special cases:

Can you move the robber to the hex with no adjacent settlements (no stealing)?
What if the only player whose city is adjacent to hex of your choosing has no resources - can you move the robber there?
What if there are two cities adjacent from two players, but only one of them has resources - do you have to steal one from him or can you choose to steal from the player with empty hand?

Answering the question and its follow-ups:

In general, you are not allowed to decline to take a resource. Page 12 of the rules gives a more detailed explanation of the rule Pat Ludwig cited. There is no option about whether or not to take a resource card if you place the robber next to a city/settlement of one or more players, all of whom have at least one resource card. However, as the answers to your other questions will indicate, you can may have some tactics to wiggle out of this requirement if you really want to move the robber  away but not get your (presumably 8th) resource.
Yes, you can deliberately place the robber in a spot where you will not able to steal a card. P. 12 again states, "You must move the robber away from his current spot and
onto the number token of any other terrain hex." (p. 11 clarifies that the desert is legal even though it does not contain a number token.) Any other indicates that a hex is legal even if it contains no neighbors that have a stealable resource.
Yes, you can deliberately choose to steal from a player who has no resources. Again from p. 12:

  If there are 2 or more such players, you may choose your victim.
  The player you elect to rob keeps his cards face down while
  you take 1 of his cards at random. If he has no cards, you get
  nothing!


Can I put Lich's Mirror into play with The Ur-Dragon's ability to save me after drawing out with the same ability? Let's say I have The Ur-Dragon and a ton of dragons on the field. I attack with enough dragons to draw my remaining library (as per The Ur-Dragon's  ability "Whenever one or more dragons you control attack, draw that many cards"), I draw Lich's Mirror and use Ur-Dragon's "put a permanent from your hand onto the battlefield" effect to play Lich's Mirror. Would I lose as soon as I draw my entire library? Would I get a chance to trigger Lich's Mirror?

Lich's Mirror's would be on the battlefield to save you before you actually lose the game.

The pertinent rules are:

704.3. Whenever a player would get priority (see rule 116, “Timing and Priority”), the game checks for any of the listed conditions for state-based actions, then performs all applicable state-based actions simultaneously as a single event. [...]
704.5b If a player attempted to draw a card from a library with no cards in it since the last time state-based actions were checked, that player loses the game.

From that, we gather the following:

It's drawing more than the number of remaining cards that causes you to lose the game.
It doesn't happen immediately; it happens the next time a player would get priority. This means the ability finishes resolving first.

So, for example, let's say your library has two cards left, one of which is Lich's Mirror. And let's say you attack with three dragons.
The Ur-Dragon's third ability triggers, goes on the stack and (possibly eventually) resolves. During its resolution, you draw the remaining two cards and fail to draw the third one, then you place Lich's Mirror on the battlefield.
Immediately after the ability has finished resolving, an SBA would cause you to lose the game for having not being able to draw since the last time SBA conditions were checked. However, Lich's Mirror's replacement effect kicks in, keeping you in the game.


Cupboard size for storing board games We're currently in the process of furnishing the 'games' room* in our house and we're planning to get some storage units to go along one wall.  I'm interested to know if anyone has recommendations as to the size of cupboards we should look to get.  In particular are there standard game box sizes, or is there a largest game box size we should try to cater for?

I imagine there are some games that are ridiculously large, but it would be nice to be able to store all our games in one place.

* Also known as the 'craft' room by my significant other

When we moved into our house, there was a hand-made storage unit in the basement that I ended up commandeering for all my board games because of its near-perfect size.

The interior storage area of each shelf is 9 1/2" tall, 14" deep, and 48" wide.   If you make the interior dimensions a little deeper and wider, you should be able to affix doors to the front.

The storage unit has no doors, so a few games hang out by a quarter- to half-inch, but otherwise, the dimensions are spot on, assuming you don't mind stacking games on top of each other.

Almost all of the games I have are no wider than 14", and 1" or 2" tall, which makes things nice and consistent.

To give you an idea of what it can hold, I'm able to fit the following games onto two shelves horizontally except where noted as being rotated 90 degrees with an asterisk:

Shelf 1:  Carcassonne *, Puerto Rico, Risk, Axis & Allies, Dungeon, Hunt for Red October, Horus Heresy, two Munchkin games *, Boggle (Horus Heresy and Axis & Allies are stacked on top of each other with no more room; that should give you an idea as to how many "big-box" games you can stack on top of each other)

Shelf 2:  Chaos in the Old World, Lord of the Rings, Mastermind, Power Grid, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Scrabble, Monopoly, Upwords

Fireball Island and Battle Masters have to sit on top because they're too darn big.

Hope that helps!


Card "stack" and targeting in Unstable Unicorns- Irrelevance of a defensive Super Neigh In Unstable Unicorns, there are certain cards called "Neighs." A Neigh can be played at any time, and effectively "counters" a played card (similarly to Magic: The Gathering, or the "Nopes" in Exploding Kittens). There are also "Super Neighs-" Neigh cards that, additionally, cannot be Neighed. It seems to me that Super Neighs don't actually have any effect on gameplay other than normal Neighs when played defensively. It seems to me that the most logical way to resolve Neighs is similar to the "stack" in Magic. This would indicate that if, for example, your opponent plays a Pandamonium, and you choose to Neigh it, if they then play a Super Neigh in an attempt to win the "Neigh War" that may ensue, you could simply choose to play another Neigh, targeting the Pandamonium again, rather than the Super Neigh. Is this correct? Is there any reason that I MUST target the most recently played card with a Neigh, if there are multiple cards still unresolved?

TL;DR: Does Unstable Unicorns utilize a similar "stack" system to Magic, leaving cards unresolved and still Neighable until all more recently played cards have resolved?

http://unstablegameswiki.com/index.php?title=Neigh,_Neigh%27d,_Neighable,_Neighing

In Unstable Unicorns the stack is literally a stack.  The card being played is placed on top of the card it is responding to.  Therefore the only card targetable is the one on top of the stack.

The Super Neigh is the end of the stack and the entire stack will then resolve.


Interactive Deck came with Easy cards? After owning Agricola for quite sometime, I finally got a group of experienced players and decided to use the I (interactive) deck. I just opened it, and inside the deck there are cards marked with an E, which means the card is from the basic (easy) deck.

Was that a mistake? Is it on purpose? If so, how the heck am I supposed to figure out which card goes on which deck?

The Agricola cards are not wrapped in the box strictly by which deck they belong to. You'll need to open and sort through all the cards that came with the game. The terms "E-deck", "I-deck", and "K-deck" just refer to subsets of those cards. The E-deck is all of the cards with the E symbol, and so on.

Should you need a manifest of all the cards, this website contains a complete list of them. Only the E-, I-, and K-decks are part of the base game; the rest are expansions or promos.


German card game that involves betting 'knocks' Played this card game a couple years ago while backpacking in South America with some Germans (I think).

There was a betting system, but we didn't use any chips or currency, etc. It had a somewhat similar strategic angle like poker, but was less reliant on chance or bluffing and more reliant on statistics and probability.

Basically you could bet 'knocks' (like, knocking on the table) - and you had 21 knocks and if you were more confident in your hand, you could bet additional knocks. If you hit 21 (or ran out, starting at 21, I can't remember), you lost. You had some cards out in the middle, but some in your own hand.

I wish I remembered more about the scoring of how you won hands but it was a long time ago...

It sounds like it is Twenty-One; one of the variants of Black Jack which does not involve actual money.
At least it is helpful to count cards in Black Jack, that would match what you wrote about probability.


In Elder Sign, why do multiple locks have to be resolved in order? The rules on page 12 say

  For example, if there are two effects in play that lock the yellow die, the locks are addressed in the order in which they came into play: after the yellow die is freed from the first lock, it is placed on the second lock. After the die is freed from the second lock, the players may add it to their dice pool after using a common item that adds the yellow die to the pool.

This implies to me that two separate adventures that lock the yellow die must be resolved in order of appearance, but I'm skeptical that they mean to say we cannot simply resolve the second adventure first. Is there another way to interpret this rule as described?

I've always taken this rule to mean that the die would go to the next lock in order of appearance. I've assumed that if you resolved the other adventures/monsters that would lock the die, they would just disappear.

There is also this FAQ on Fantasy Flight Games website where they don't even mention this "order" rule.


How do the expansions for Carcassonne change the game? There are a ton of different expansions for the Carcassonne base game. What are some of the differences between them?

What does each one add to the game?
How does each one change the strategy and gameplay?
What new rules and tiles does each one add?

Abbey & Mayor

Introduces 6 "joker" abbey tiles. Six Mayor meeples, one for each player. Twelve new landscape tiles. Six wagon pieces, one for each player. And six barns, one for each player.

Wagons allow you to move from a road to an open city tile if you complete the road. This allows you to claim something new without using an extra turn.

The Mayor meeple can only be used on a city tile, and counts for an extra follower for every shield found on a city tile.

The six Abbey tiles allow you to fill a gap between a cross of tiles. It has to be surrounded from top, bottom, left, and right (diagonal is not necessary).

The barns allow you claim a farm on any corner where 4 green fields connect. Any farmers present on the farms at this point will get returned to their owners, and normal scoring rules will apply. The barn will remain, however, and score 4 points for each city at game end.

I think Abbey & Mayor has the most impact of all the expansion packs.

One of challenges of Carcassone was farming. Farming was a critical component to winning. But committing too many farmers, and getting into a farm-war early on, was quite expensive. You would lose many of your meeples until game end, which prevents you from using them at a critical junction later in the game. Striking the right balance between farming and other objectives was critical.

The barn invalidates this and allows you to be more reckless in the beginning to get a "point rush" until your farmers are eventually returned to you, freeing them up for other uses. Personally I'm not a fan of this feature; it places far too much emphasis on luck, and being the first to connect a barn is the most advantageous. This alters the beginning of the game where it's a race to farm and place a barn.

The Mayor meeple changes game fundamentals too. For every shield the Mayor meeple counts as an extra follower. This does make for interesting cut-throat gameplay. The game becomes far more aggressive where everyone is actively trying to steal others' cities.

This is also something I'm not pleased with. I feel, over all, the Abbey & Mayor shifts the balance of the game to a far more aggressive posture, and this could be annoying to some as they will rarely be left alone and must respond to aggression on every turn instead of trying to play their game.

Finally, the "joker" card, or Abbey tile, I feel is a cheap "get out of jail" card for the player, and invalidates some of your strategy if you like blocking your opponents while you work on your own objectives.

I am extremely competitive but I feel the game already has a fantastic balance with other expansions (Inns & Cathedrals, Builders & Traders) and this expansion just tips it a bit too far. My friends like this and as such I play this expansion very often.

Inns & Cathedrals

Introduces 18 new landscape tiles, and six large followers. The new tiles include two special cathedral tiles.

The landscape tiles now include Inns, which, if the road gets completed, let you score two points for each tile instead of one. This is a nice feature as it adds more value to road tiles, and shifts some of the emphasis from city building to road building. These tiles come with the added risk of, if they're not completed, not receiving any points for them. I think this is a nice feature in terms of risk/reward. It's very cool to watch others trying to join your long road that has an Inn for a share of the spoils!

Cathedrals applies the same concept to city building. The reward in this case is three points for each completed city tile, and no points for an incomplete city. This is fascinating because you can use cathedral tiles offensively to prevent opponents from earning points on their cities.

The large follower, which counts for two followers, is also intriguing since it presents you with a chance to steal your opponents points by taking over their cities, farms, or roads. You now have an incentive to be aggressive, whereas in the original Carcassone such insidious plotting required more careful planning and an extra turn to place two followers.

If you include Abbey & Mayor such strategies are somewhat mitigated since the Mayor will likely trump a large follower (the Mayor can only be used on a city tile). The Abbey, or "joker" card, will go some way to allow a player to complete their feature even if you strived to make this task difficult.

Traders & Builders

Introduces 24 more landscape tiles. Twenty trade good tokens (9 barrels, 6 grain, and 5 cloth). Six pig meeples, and six builder meeples.

The pig meeple is a great addition. It allows your to earn 1 additional point for every city connected to a farm. You must already have a farmer on the farm in order to place the pig.

The builder meeple is a fantastic addition and changes the gameplay substantially. You can add your builder to any city or road with a follower. On your next turn, if you can add to your city or road, you get an extra turn immediately for a maximum of two turns.

This is great because it adds an element of risk that plays into the largest part of the expansion: The trade goods. Each of the new added tiles has an icon denoting a trade good. The player who closes a city, irrespective of the owner, gets to keep whatever trade good tokens are denoted on the city tiles. If you close a city with two tiles that have barrels on them, for example, you get two barrel tokens. This is exciting because having a builder on a city gives you an extra turn that increases your chances of completing your city and gaining the tokens.

Whoever has the most of each token by game end earns 10 points for each type. If you have the most barrel and cloth tokens you gain an additional 20 points to your total.

This adds an incentive to close your opponents cities if you deem it beneficial to you, or damaging to your most threatening opponents. Closing a city with trade goods could deny your opponents points, or/and help you earn more points, or match their number of trade good tokens, thus invalidating their advantage. A lot of thought can be applied to how you manage this feature of the game.

I haven't played any of the other expansions, but I know of Tower, River II, Count, King & Cult, Princess & Dragon, Wheel of Fortune. I will give Tower a try this week and update my answer.

That said, of all of those I think the Count sounds most fascinating and will likely change gameplay drastically. It includes a separate set of pre-numbered tiles that must be assembled to create a castle. Your followers presence in the castle now and other events that take place on this castle now influence gameplay and scoring.


Is it a good strategy for the Seer to reveal his identity at the beginning? Should Seer take part in the Sheriff contest and indicate his identity at the beginning?

When I watched a so-called top werewolf boardgame live, this Seer publishes his identity at beginning, he argues with the werewolf who act as Seer with the aim of misleading the villagers to vote someone his claimed as "werewolf". I though this Seer will soon die, but werewolves do not dare to kill him at first two round. Interesting. Killing hims means accepting the fact that he is real Seer.

I though Seer should keep secret and survive as long as he can, so that to investigate more players. This is a way to keep him safe and time to get more information.

Is it a good strategy for the Seer to reveal his identity at the beginning?

It is almost never wise to claim to be the seer. And it seldom happens. But sometimes it can be a smart move. Especially if another player claims to be the seer.
If two people claim to be the seer, it is almost certain that one isn't. And that is most probably a wolf. The true seer can check this. And start a discussion. There are three possibilities:

The true seer fails to convince and is killed by the vilagers. Next day, the fake seer will almost certainly be killed.
The false seer is killed by the vilagers. Next night, the real seer will almost certainly be killed.
The vilagers decide not to kill any of those. In that case, if the wolves are killing the real Seer, the fake seer will almost certainly killed by the vilagers.

All three cases link the death of the seer with the death of a wolf. And that is not a bad ratio. Yes you lost the seer. But he took a wolf too.

But beware, sometimes a mean game master can add two seers to the party. And that can become a bloodbath.


Can Goblins conquer Lost Tribe regions for one less token? The goblins race power is to conquer in-decline regions with one less token. Do Lost Tribes count as in-decline regions? Are Lost Tribes considered an in-decline race?

Yes, Lost Tribes are considered an in-decline race and can be conquered by Goblins with advantage. Lost Tribes tokens have little broken column symbol, which indicates "in-decline" state in game assets.


Do Surge triggers happen "on cast" or when the spell resolves? Consider this new card from Oath of the Gatewatch -- Crush of Tentacles.

I realize the first part -- "Return all nonland permanents to their owners' hands" -- happens when the spell resolves, but what about the second part of the card text -- "If Crush of Tentacles surge cost was paid, put an 8/8 blue Octopus creature token onto the battlefield."

Does that trigger when the card is cast or when the spell resolves?

The effect that checks whether the Surge cost was paid resolves when the spell resolves. This is because abilities of Instants and Sorceries are by default "spell abilities", and resolve when the spell resolves. Rule 112.3a says

  Spell abilities are abilities that are followed as instructions while an instant or sorcery spell is resolving. Any text on an instant or sorcery spell is a spell ability unless it’s an activated ability, a triggered ability, or a static ability that fits the criteria described in rule 112.6.

None of those exceptions apply here. It's not an activated ability, because it doesn't have the form "[cost]: [effect]" [CR 112.3b]. It's not a triggered ability because it doesn't start with the word "At", "When", or "Whenever" [CR 112.3c]. And it's not a static ability, because it's written as an instruction, not a statement [CR 112.3d].

When you are resolving the spell, rule 608.2c says

  The controller of the spell or ability follows its instructions in the order written. [...]

so the Octopus token enters the battlefield immediately after the other creatures return to their owners' hands, and it does not itself get returned.


How do you count runs in cribbage during play 10-10-4 opponent started hand and can't play, I play 3-2-1 .  How many points do I get for the run?  4 or 7 ?

Seven. Scoring during pegging is performed after each card is played, based on the list of cards thus far. After playing the "2" you score three; after playing the ace you score an additional four. (Consider: if it were the other player that scored for the run of three, you wouldn't take those points away from them when you scored the ace!)


Bridge: Usage of the stop card The STOP card in bridge is used in order to help all players keep their rights, as far as thinking is concerned. However I have some questions.

When do we have to use the STOP card. Should STOP be used before ANY jump bid? I find logic to use stop in bids like 1S-3S or 1H-(2S). But how about 1NT-3NT. What is the official rule?
The second  question is about HOW to use the stop card. Here are some options.

This is what i think that should happen

Show STOP card
make your bid
Remove stop card (no waiting)
(opponent waits 5-8 seconds)
opponent makes his bid

This is what most people think that should happen

Show STOP card
make your bid
wait 5-8 seconds
Remove stop card
opponent makes his bid

Which one is the official way according to the rules?

The reason why I think that the second option is not "correct", is because the player who used the STOP could wait 10-20 (or more) seconds before removing it. What should the opponent do?

The answer to your first question is that you should use it either for all skip bids, or for no skip bid. Using it only for some skip bids but not for others could result in a director call and a procedural penalty against you for intentionally transmitting unauthorized information to your partner.

As to your second question: option 1 is correct under the jurisdiction of the ACBL (ie essentially all games in the US and Canada), while option 2 is correct under the jurisdiction of the WBF (essentially all other games).


Card (must be enchantment or artifact) that allows multiple of the same legend in play at once? I think its an older card. I've been googling for about a half and hour and cant find it.

The card you're thinking of is Mirror Gallery from Betrayers of Kamigawa. You probably couldn't find it because the wording on the card is a little odd:

  The "legend rule" doesn't apply.


Do I resolve non-Shadow "Revealed" effects when revealing a Shadow card? When I reveal a Shadow card during the Combat phase, do I also resolve any non-shadow Revealed effects on that card?  For example, if an enemy reveals The Necromancer's Reach as a Shadow card, do I also deal 1 damage to each exhausted character?

Step 3 of the Combat phase in the rulebook:

  Resolve shadow effect. The active player flips that enemy’s shadow card faceup and resolves any shadow effect that card might have.

You only use the shadow part of the card when resolving shadow cards. When you flip a card like The Necromancer's Reach where there is no shadow effect, you are in luck.


Can you turn around in Circus Imperium? In FASA's Circus Imperium, are you allowed to turn your chariot around on an oval track?

One of the tactics suggested during a previous game was for a player who has no chance of winning to turn around and kamikaze the lead player with a head on crash. The logic being, is your loss is worth my death.

There are rules for head on collisions when we have them with the figure-8 track. Would you allow the player to turn around and go the wrong way down the track? Is a full turn penalty enough? Having to start/finish in the inside/outside lane?

Normally the rule of play is no, you cannot turn your chariot away from the forward path of the track. You can plot to ram in the figure 8 and are encouraged to damage the other chariots to the point of destruction.

Additionally, the ruling class watching would scream for a laser show to cut you and your beasts down if you tried a turnabout, well before your collision could occur...  Give the boys in the corner seats their cheers by smashing into the wall, leaping into the other player's chariot and kicking them into the oncoming frenzy.


When a creature is enchanted with 2 auras changing it's base stats, what happens? If Ensoul Artifact is attached to an artifact, then Lignify is later attached to the same artifact, does the base power of the creature you are targeting change to 0/4 even if Ensoul Artifact is still in play and effect, stating the creature to be a 5/5?

If two continuous effects change the same characteristic in the same way, then those effects are applied in the order they were created (this is known as timestamp order).

In this case, both Ensoul Artifact and Lignify set the enchanted creature's base power and toughness. Ensoul Artifact entered the battlefield first, so Ensoul Artifact sets the creature's base power and toughness to 5/5, then Lignify sets the creature's base power and toughness to 0/4. The result is that the creature has base power and toughness 0/4.


Dice worker placement game about terraforming a planet I'm looking for a game I played about 3-5 years ago. It was set in space and centred around terraforming a planet (possibly Mars?).
It is a dice worker placement game where you roll dice and each dice is an action that you can use at one of the stations surrounding the planet, depending on the restrictions on numbers at that location.
Any ideas?


In axis and allies 1941 do fighters have to take off to participate in an attack? ON the UK players turn he attacks a Japanese destroyer in sea zone 32 with a UK carrier(carrying 1 UK and 1 US fighter) from sea zone 29. I know that if the carrier gets destroyed, the US fighter is also destroyed,since its a guest fighter. But can the UK fighter land somewhere in friendly territory (say in the Phillipines which would be 2 spaces from sea zone 32 because it already moved 2 from sea zone 29), or is it also treated as cargo and destroyed since it did not take off? Different example. And if the previous is a valid attack, (lets say UK fighter now in India), can during the combat move the fighter land on the UK carrier in sea zone 29, the carrier with fighter on it move to attack the destroyer in sea zone 32, gets destroyed,(the jap destroyer is sunk also), can the UK fighter now use its final movement to land on Borneo? Please help. Thank you.

The basic principle is that an air unit ends its turn when it "lands" on a space or a carrier. So if a fighter flies two spaces, fights, and lands on a carrier with its third space, its turn ends, and it cannot fly to an adjacent fourth space if the carrier is attacked. (The air unit is refueling while this happens.)

However, an air unit on a carrier can defend its carrier, which is to say that a player can choose to take fighters as casualties before, or instead of the carrier. (If the carrier is UK, and a fighter is US, the UK player needs the consent of the US player.) But most players will sacrifice a fighter to allow the carrier to be taken as a casualty last, because if it is sunk, the fighters are lost anyway.


What happens when you lose an invention that has a one-shot benefit? In Robinson Crusoe, the players are a collection of castaways on some remote island. There are 6 different scenarios, so the goals and perils of the game will change a bit.

During the game, you can "invent" items around camp, and various events can destroy those items. The trouble is that some items give one-shot benefits, while others give continual bonuses. For instance, the Shovel invention's benefit is "you have a shovel," which is useful because inventing the Cellar requires a shovel. On the other hand, the Spear (the Soldier's item) has a one-shot effect: +3 weapons.

What happens when an event destroys an item with a one-shot benefit? For instance, you build a Spear, get +3 weapons, use some of those weapons, and then you lose your Spear in an event when you only have 1 weapon in camp? Can you rebuild the spear again for another +3 weapons? Do you have to lose any of your existing weapons when you lose the Spear?

On page 16, of the Portal Edition rulebook it states that when flipping a item card over, that "If the Item had an additional effect, you should cancel it
if possible."

So if you lost, say, the Spear, you should reduce your weapon level by 3, if possible.

Earlier on the same page, it mentions the phrase "if possible", and clarifies that if you cannot pay that cost, nothing happens, and the Rule of Unfilled Demand does not apply.