Affecting win percentages in turn based games In an interview, Ben Brode (former Hearthstone game director) revealed that Hearthstone has very close to 50% win rate for both sides due to the coin and the extra card given to the person going second.

What techniques employed in other turn based games to try and even the probability of winning for the players?

There are many different options:

Hex uses the "swap rule", which states that after the start player makes his first move, the other player can decide to switch colors and play as if he were the start player and had made that move. This means that the start player must choose a move that's not obviously great (like going directly in the center).
Magic the Gathering has the player who takes the first turn skip his initial draw, so he starts with one less card. Certain types of decks prefer to still take the first turn, while others prefer to draw the extra card. Similarly, Innovation has the first player only take a half-turn on the first turn. Or the first 2 players in a 4 player game.
Dominion has the loser of a game go first in the next game. This only works when playing multiple games in a row with the same people; but it's designed to be played that way. Dominion also has the second player win tie games if the first player got an extra turn (if he was also the player who ended the game).
Many games give extra starting resources to players in later turn orders. Temporum, Castles of Burgundy, Agricola, and many others do this. Sometimes it is as simple as the start player receiving fewer than the rest, other times it is each player getting 1 more of something than the previous player. (So players will get 2, 3, 4, and 5 workers respectively in Castles of Burgundy).

Some games give later players a victory point bonus.  Go and Castles of Mad King Ludwig do this.  This can also overlap with the starting resources handicap in games where resources are directly converted to victory points at game end.

Many games only end when all players have had the same number of turns. Whether due to having a specific number of rounds, or having the game continue until the last player has a turn after the game-end has been triggered. Even in games like this, there may be a first player advantage, though there can also be a last-player advantages instead.
Catan evens out the setup by reversing the placement order in the second round of setup. In theory, this gives the initial player a great location and a poor location, while the last player gets two average locations. In this arrangement,
the second last player might be in the worse position, because the last player has the advantage of placing twice in a row.

Some games don't try and balance first player advantage at all and instead rely on player politics to do so.  These tend to be high luck games such as Munchkin or Fluxx.


What to do in "Elfenland", if stuck in the desert There are rare cases in Elfenland, where it is not possible to move away from a certain place for the whole remaining game. E.g. if you are in the desert city and you have no transportation cards for desert terrain. As you cannot play some cards, they never get exchanged.
It seems not to be described in the manual. What would you do? Exchange the players cards?

Are you playing with the Caravan rules?  From the rulebook:

  If a player cannot play the Travel
  Card(s) required by the type of
  transportation, he can play any three
  Travel Cards (including Raft Travel
  Cards) instead. This move is called a
  “Caravan”. “Caravans” only move on
  roads that provide a type of
  transportation. Caravans do not travel
  on rivers and lakes. If there is an
  Obstacle on the road, the player must
  play any four instead of three Travel
  Cards.

As I understand it, Elfenroads did NOT have this rule, making it easier to get stranded.  Apparently some people hate the Caravan rule because it means players don't have to be supremely careful not to get themselves stuck any more...


How is 6-player Castle Panic (with wizard tower) supposed to work? Has anyone played Castle Panic with 6 players?

I've tried and I think that the rules don't make sense. With more players you actually need more cards, not fewer. Sure you can trade two cards, but even if you use all your cards each turn, the amount of damage just won't equate to the amount of hit-points of the incoming monsters.

Did you house rule the number of cards? If so, how many?

The point of reducing the number of cards is to keep the players from having too many resources at their disposal. If you have 5 players with 5 cards each, that's 25 cards for the players to work with. If you have 6 players with 4 cards each, that's 24. It's about the same number of resources in total.

Being able to trade twice is a huge advantage in resource management; I suspect the lower number of cards is actually to counteract the strength of being able to trade two cards instead of one. The extra trading allows the players to more precisely control who has access to which resources at a given time.

If the players had that amount of control and the extra 5 cards, the game would be too easy. The game is designed to be a challenge.


Where are the components listed? I got my first Dice Throne box yesterday and want to do a component check. But I can't find the information on what's supposed to be included.

Found it!
Each character has a list of their own components, on the back of their leaflet.
As the game is made up solely of character components, and a rulebook, that basically works.


What should you do when someone mistakenly builds the same building twice? You're not allowed to build the same building more than once. I noticed that this rule is easily overlooked, especially in 7-player games and when the table is not that big (and so the cards need to be partly stacked).

If a player has built a building twice, but it is only spotted in the following round(s), what can you do?

Discard the card
Discard the card and give the builder 3 gold
Let the builder choose: discard card for 3 gold OR use the card to build the wonder
Keep the building
… something else?

Of course there might be other side effects, as when the builder (or neighbours) already made use of the illegal building. It could be very hard to retrace everything, so I guess it'd be best not to try to undo any side effects.

If it is too late to undo, option 3 is your best bet (assuming they can build their wonder). If it's been more than 2-3 turns, and other people have been using their resources, I might consider letting it stand. Especially true if there are a lot of people who haven't played before in the game.

Really it's not the end of the world, unless a player consistently does it (e.g. more than twice) in which case it's probably cheating.


In 7 Wonders Duel what happens if I don't have enough coins to discard? In 7 Wonders Duel there are some actions that force the other player to discard coins.

Is there any penalty if they don't have enough coins to discard?

For the Military Tokens, the description says:

Looting 2 or 5 coins
Your opponent loses 2 or 5 coins depending on the token.
They are returned to the bank. Then the token is returned
to the box. If your opponent doesn’t have enough coins, they
lose all of their coins.

That means they can't lose more coins than they have; there is no additional penalty.
While it's not explicitly stated this way for other cards that lose coins, they use the same symbol, so it can be assumed they work the same way. There is nothing in the rules anywhere suggesting there is an additional penalty for not having enough coins.
(Note that this is a difference between the Duel version and the original version, as in the original version there is an extra penalty, but Duel does not mention extra penalties anywhere, and also doesn't have tokens to represent them.)


Would Heartless Summoning reduce a spells colorless mana cost? If I had two Heartless Summonings on the battlefield, and I wanted to play Matter Reshaper, would it be free? Or would he cost one colorless mana. I checked the gatherer for Heartless Summoning for an answer, but it only referred to colored mana.

Heartless Summoning and similar cost reduction effects like it only reduce the generic component of a mana cost. They do not reduce colorless or colored parts of the cost.
The symbol in Heartless Summoning's ability specifically refers to a generic mana cost, as described in rule 107.4b:

Numerical symbols (such as {1}) and variable symbols (such as {X}) represent generic mana in costs. Generic mana in costs can be paid with any type of mana. For more information about {X}, see rule 107.3.

Rule 117.7 governs cost reduction, and 117.7a in particular covers reducing a cost by an amount of generic mana:

117.7. What a player actually needs to do to pay a cost may be changed or reduced by effects. If the mana component of a cost is reduced to nothing by cost reduction effects, it’s considered to be {0}. Paying a cost changed or reduced by an effect counts as paying the original cost.

117.7a Effects that reduce a cost by an amount of generic mana affect only the generic mana component of that cost. They can’t affect the colored or colorless mana components of that cost.


Can Turn to Frog prevent 'enter the battlefield' abilities? Can my opponent cast Turn to Frog, to prevent 'Enter the battlefield' abilities?

There are two cases of "Enter the Battlefield" abilities.

If the ability is on the creature entering the battlefield, such as Abbot of Keral Keep, Turn to Frog isn't an answer. You can't target the creature until it has entered the battlefield. Once it has entered the battlefield, the Ability has already been triggered and is being added to the stack.

However, if the ability is on a creature already on the battlefield, such as Agent of Erebos or Ivy Lane Denizen, Turn to Frog is a valid answer. In response to any number of effects that would cause creatures to enter the battlefield, casting Turn to Frog while they are on the stack will pre-empt the ability. Turn to Frog will resolve first, affecting the target with the Enter the battlefield effect. When other creatures enter the battlefield, the ability no longer exists.


What kingdom set would lead to the highest scoring games of Dominion? Obviously anything that puts curses into circulation would be anathema. I'm not necessarily looking for one player to have the highest score possible, so much as to have games where everyone's scores where really high.

I figure Monument is obvious, and Great Hall, Island, etc. seem like they might also contribute to a high scoring game.
On the other hand if there are tons of non-terminal action cards and Vinyards that could lead to some pretty ridiculous scores as well.

I am starting to do some analysis of games on the online dominion server at http://dominion.isotropic.org.  The top 5 scoring games there all involve a combination of Goons and King's Court.  These are all solo games where people are trying to run up the score, so they aren't representative.  But from my experience, Colony, Goons, Vineyard, Bishop, Duke, and Gardens all contribute to really high scores in real games.

2941  Alchemist, City, Colony, Gardens, Goons, Grand Market, King's Court, Platinum, Potion, Steward, Throne Room, Vineyard, and Watchtower

 2760
Ambassador, Bridge, Chapel, City, Council Room, Goons, King's Court, Throne Room, Watchtower, and Worker's Village

 2722
Bishop, Bridge, City, Colony, Council Room, Fishing Village, Goons, King's Court, Monument, Platinum, Wharf, and Worker's Village

 2681
Bazaar, Bishop, Chapel, Colony, Council Room, Goons, Grand Market, King's Court, Market, Platinum, Throne Room, and Wharf

 2625
Bishop, Black Market, Bridge, Caravan, City, Colony, Goons, King's Court, Monument, Platinum, Throne Room, and Wharf


What are the advantages and disadvantages of going first Going first, you have 9 cards to take out, and going second you have 8 cards to take out. Here are some of my ideas:

Going first better:

If the average turn of the setter/guessers is 2 cards except one of
the turns (probably the first turn where it's the easier with 9
cards) is 3 cards, is it better to first because 2+2+2+3 cards.

Going second better:

If the average turn of the setter+guesser is 2 cards correct, then it
is better to go second because 2+2+2+2=8 cards. Sometimes, aiming for
2 cards a turn is a safer play and strategy because when you try to
hit 3 cards, it's very frequent that one of them may overlap an
opponent's card or at worst a black card. If you have 4 animals on
the board, 3 of which are yours "bear" "donkey" "crow" and 1 of which
are your opponent's "dog", it can be quite difficult.

Not sure what else.

I think you covered most of it already; of course there are many other possible turn-counts. Theoretically team 1 can go for a 3+3+3 win in 3 turns; though that would be very difficult and require some luck as well.

Another minor advantage for team 2: On team 1's first guess, they will always have the full board of 25 options to pick from. Whereas for team 2, at least 1 and usually a 2-3 of the options will already be covered up, making the guessing for team 2 slightly easier on the first turn.

Other than that, the swings of which words got covered up when will tend to be pretty much random for either team, and I think this luck ends up outweighing any potential advantage for either team.


Why do some board games have long-lasting appeal? Often, one plays a computer game through once and then is done with it. "Replay-ability" is something that is a great plus with a game, but not every successful one has it. But with board games, being able to play again and again is a basic necessity for its success. And some games are still loved (e.g., Monopoly and Risk) generations after they were first invented. The ultimate in replayability. Why is it that some games continue to hold lasting appeal even when society, culture, and the people themselves have changed so much since they were invented?

I agree with Lo'oris' argument that most older well known games are still widespread mostly because they already are everywhere. How many people go out and buy chess boards compared to the number of people who simply have them around from previous generations?

I think there are some additional aspects:

Simplicity

In my experience games need a good balance between complexity and depth in order to be popular. Basically the ratio of options a player has divided by the amount of rules he has to learn. A lot of games that are popular in our family are relatively easy to learn but offer a lot of possibilities in comparison. This can be illustrated especially well with games that are in very similar but somehow one of them just feels better. Compare Pachisi and Dog/Tock. The have the exact same basic concept — move your pieces around the board one time and get into the safe haven. But in all the groups I've played in Dog/Tock has completely displaced all other Pachisi variants because with a few additional rules it has become a much more interesting game.

Uniqueness

Most modern boardgames aim to produce a specific atmosphere or experience that is perhaps unusual for the players — a feeling they would otherwise not have. With so many games out there a lot of times games can feel similar to each other. There are countless games where you throw dice, move along a path and do something according to the field you landed on — nothing special. And then there are games that somehow manage to capture something special. For example Pandemic expertly captures the rush of working together against an overwhelming threat, Bohnanza produces an intense trading atmosphere, and games like Werewolves or Battlestar Galactica allow people to play out their mischievous and paranoid traits.

Whenever a game is released that succeeds with a good combination of these two (and maybe other) aspects then it is likely to become quite popular. Of course others will try to copy and improve that mixture. Some will fail but others will eventually succeed. At that point a battle will take place between the improved qualities of the newer game and the established following of the older one.


In chess, when is it appropriate to resign? I know I should not resign after losing the exchange, or a piece, and probably not even if I lose a Rook.  But how about if I lose a Queen for a Knight?  Would it be expected of a player to keep fighting in such a scenario, or is he expected to give up then and there?

It would be helpful to know the unspoken rules regarding resignation, if they exist.

I once, in a serious tournament, in the very last round won a game when I was down a whole queen (at one point in the game - by the time I won I had recovered the queen and much more).

I had also before I eventually turned the position around to be clearly winning offered my opponent a draw, a draw which would have advanced him to a statewide individual tournament, but assuming he had a won game (which technically he did but over the board he failed to see how to win - in part because he ran into time trouble) he declined my draw offer.

My point is that even in a serious tournament situation I had not considered resigning in this specific position because the game was still highly dynamic and because since we had not yet met the time control conditions I still had a very real possibility of winning on time even if I was down in materials.

So what more general advice can I offer?

1 - do not resign if the position is still highly dynamic - i.e. even if you are down in pieces you still have more than enough pieces to both technically win the game and have the ability to create counterthreats your opponent will need to deal with before they can win the game

2 - DO resign if you see a clear path to defeat - i.e. if you see a forced mate or a clear consolidation of the game such that your opponent has an overwhelming advantage. This is especially true if you have a lot of respect for your opponent's game - but even in a casual play you should probably resign when it is clear that you have lost. (i.e. when you could only get back into the game seriously if your opponent made major blunders).

In the game I cited above I won because due to persistant threats by my Knight and other pieces my opponent moved his king into a position where I was able to then fork his king and queen - and then proceed to capture many more pieces and come back from a seemingly insurmountable piece deficit to a clear and decisive victory. But I was able to do this because the position was highly fluid with lots of tactical options open to me even with the loss of my queen. It was a complex position, with both kings fairly advanced and I still had plenty of my own pieces and pawns to threaten my opponent with. Furthermore he was in significant time pressure due to a looming time control which we had not yet met - while I had more time on my clock (but still played quickly to keep the pressure on him)

My general rule - resign when you can no longer learn from the game in casual play and in tournament play resign when you no longer have a realistic ability to make serious threats or eek out a draw (and don't forget to look at the clock's impact on play in tournaments)


How would Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker's triggered ability work with the Strionic Resonator? How would Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker's triggered ability work with the Strionic Resonator?

My interpretation is that the ability would trigger twice, but only on the original player that took the combat damage.  It could not be copied to a second opponent.  Does anyone have any additional info?

The copies will always affect the same player as the original ability.

Strionic Resonator would indeed copy Voks's ability because it's a triggered ability. It allows you to change the targets of the copied ability, but Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker's ability does not contain the word "target", so you can't change anything about the copy.

  706.10. To copy a spell, activated ability, or triggered ability means to put a copy of it onto the stack; a copy of a spell isn’t cast and a copy of an activated ability isn’t activated. A copy of a spell or ability copies both the characteristics of the spell or ability and all decisions made for it, including modes, targets, the value of X, and additional or alternative costs. [..]


If a sorcery card gives -X/-X to a 1/1 creature till end of turn does the creature die? I use Urge to Feed (-3/-3 until end of turn) against a 1/1 creature, does that creature die?
If I use Zealous Persecution in a multiple player game, would it destroy all 1/1 creatures on the battlefield except mine?
If I use Dead Weight to enchant a 1/1 creature, would it destroy that creature?

I am confused with the first 2 because it says "Until end of turn", so would the 1/1 creature go back to normal after my turn?

For the 3rd one, if it does destroy the creature then would the creature come back to life if the enchant is destroyed?

The creatures die in all of those cases. If a creature's toughness is reduced to zero (or less), it is immediately put into the graveyard. It doesn't matter if at the end of the turn its toughness would become positive again; it died long before then. There's no coming back from the dead (not without playing a card like Unburial Rites, anyway). In the third case, when the creature dies, since Dead Weight no longer has a creature to enchant, it also immediately goes to the graveyard.

If you care about details of the rules, this is an example of a state-based action. Here's the actual rule:

  704.5f If a creature has toughness 0 or less, it's put into its owner's graveyard. ...

State-based actions happen automatically*; others you already know include creatures dying when they've taken lethal damage or you dying when your life is zero. Another state-based action: auras being put into the graveyard when the creature they enchanted dies (like I mentioned with Dead Weight).

One more general thing you should learn here: when an object changes zones, like a creature being moved from the battlefield to the graveyard, it doesn't "remember" anything about where it came from. The creature card in your graveyard doesn't know it used to be a creature on the battlefield, that its toughness was reduced, and so on. It's just in the graveyard, and it stays there. (If you're curious, this is comp rule 400.7. - it does have a few specific exceptions, mostly things that you'd expect are necessary to make cards work.)

* State-based actions don't technically happen immediately; they happen whenever a player would get priority. This distinction doesn't usually matter, though - pretty much, it means the creature dies when the spell or ability finishes resolving, not halfway through, which doesn't usually make a difference.


Resource board game with villagers, huts, and breeding About 5 years ago I played a 4-player board game.  It had villager pieces that you could assign to huts and they would breed.  There were resources like wood, and a trade/merchant/ports area where you would get cards that reminded me of development cards in Catan.

I think the win condition was victory points like Catan.

What was the board game?

Sounds like Stone Age by Z-Man games.
Copied from the website:

THE BEGINNING OF TIME
Life was hard in the early days of human history. Our ancestors were
hard workers, but through ingenuity learned to make much of this work
easier. Over time, they developed tools to collect resources and
develop human civilization. In Stone Age, you take on the role of a
human in this bygone era. Beginning with archaic tools, you collect
wood, stone, and gold to attain higher levels of knowledge and build
sturdier structures. With resources being scarce, you must compete for
the limited number of spaces on the board that produce them while also
gathering food to feed your growing tribe. Through diligence and
insight, you can forge your way through the early days of recorded
history and build the foundation of human civilization.  ￼
CARVE VICTORY IN STONE
Stone Age is an engaging and accessible game where players take turns
placing figures on board spaces to perform actions and gather
resources. There are a limited number of spaces, so you must determine
the best actions to take each round. It’s up to you to develop your
tribe by gathering resources, constructing new buildings, and
advancing their culture while also maintaining enough food to feed
your people. Strike the right balance to create the most advanced
civilization and lead your people to a better life!


Why are Shocklands better than Guildgates? I recently read a review about Return to Ravnica and the reviewer says that, for example, Temple Garden is way better than Selesnya Guildgate. Can someone point out the reasons behind that? Additionally, why is Temple Garden called a Shockland?

Shocklands (which allow you to "Shock" yourself in order to get an untapped land) have many advantages:

Good color depth without loss of tempo. Oftentimes, getting your land into play untapped is worth two life; shocklands give you the option to set that up.
Excellent color-fixing with fetch effects.

The synergy between shocklands and fetchlands is what makes Modern mana bases so strong. I can crack a Misty Rainforest and get any of these color combinations: W/G, W/U, U/B, U/R, U/G, B/G, R/G. See this answer for more information about the shocks + fetches style of mana base.
We can have four- and five-color decks in Innistrad/RTR Standard thanks to Farseek's ability to fetch any of the ten shocklands.

Shocklands interact positively with other cards that care about basic land types as well. In particular:

Shocks power up M13 and Innistrad "buddy" lands (like Sunpetal Grove), which require you to have lands of specific basic land types in play. In a three-color deck, a single shock in play is sufficient to make every single one of your "buddy" lands enter play untapped.
Shocklands have powerful synergy with "Kird Ape" creatures like Wild Nacatl (which was once banned from Modern for being too consistent of a 3/3 on turn 2) and Flinthoof Boar (which saw tournament play in Standard Gruul decks).


Is there any way to stop someone from sacrificing a Golden Urn? My friend had a Golden Urn on the board with 10 counters on it.  If I destroy it and he sacs it in response to gain the life, is there anything that can be done about that?  Like, can I put another destroy artifact on the stack to resolve before his sac resolves?

Golden Urn's ability is an Activated Ability. You would need an effect that counters activated abilities in order to prevent it. Stifle and Trickbind are the most common choices (In my own experience), though other similar cards do exist.

You could also cast a spell to prevent players from Gaining life (False Cure, SkullCrack, etc), or End the Turn before the effect resolves (Time Stop)

Golden Urn's ability cost includes sacrificing itself. Therefore, it is no longer on the field by the time you would have an opportunity to respond.


When is a battalion trigger considered "missed" at Competitive REL? At exactly what stage of combat would a Competitive REL judge change his ruling from "The trigger happens" to "Your opponent decides" to "The trigger was missed"?

  The trigger happens -> Your opponent decides -> The trigger was missed

To help answer this question, I have enumerated a few stages of combat. Feel free to reference these in your answer. Please assume a clean slate - no judge warnings, no prior history of poor conduct, and a generally positive but strict attitude from both players involved.

Declare Attackers Step

My opponent declares Ash Zealot, Ash Zealot, and Legion Loyalist as attackers
My opponent pauses for five seconds
My opponent passes
I pass

Declare Blockers Step

I block Legion Loyalist with Elvish Mystic
My opponent pauses for five seconds
My opponent passes
I pass

Combat Damage Step

My opponent assigns first strike damage from the two Ash Zealots. He neglects to assign Legion Loyalist's damage.

I shouldn't need to continue. Once we arrive at the combat damage step, the trigger has clearly been forgotten. If for some reason the trigger could still be "remembered" after first strike damage has already been dealt, please explain why.

In a real game, players generally do not explicitly pass priority. Generally, one of the players will simply offer "Declare blockers?" If this would have an effect on the judge's ruling, please explain. I suspect that explicit priority passes would be more incriminating than shortcuts.

Why am I asking this question?

When I declare blockers, I need to determine if the trigger occurred without reminding my opponent while he still has a chance to "remember" it.

The DCI Infraction Procedure Guide, describes very specifically how the judge should rule various infractions, and section 2.1 covers missed triggers. It describes both when a trigger is considered to be missed and what the penalty should be. In your case, Legion Loyalist's Battalion ability changes the game state in non-visible ways by giving abilities to creatures. Therefore, according to that document, its controller has to mention it the first time it would affect visible state or it is forgotten. In this particular case, that means that the trigger is considered forgotten if the player doesn't mention it by the time Legion Loyalist would deal first strike damage.

When this happens, the judge is instructed to issue a warning only if the triggered ability's effect would be detrimental to its controller. Otherwise, they are not supposed to intervene unless they think the player is intentionally missing the triggers. This is one of those non-intervention casees.

If a judge does intervene, the Additional Remedy subsection at the end of the missed triggers section describes how the game state may be corrected. In this case, the ability does not "specify a default action associated with a choice made by the controller" and is not "a delayed triggered ability that changes the zone of an object". The triggered ability creates an effect (granting abilities) so if that effect's "duration has already expired" (at the end of that player's turn), then play continues and the ability is ignored. Otherwise, the judge follows the final paragraph of that subsection and

  the opponent chooses whether the triggered ability is added to the stack. If it is, it’s inserted at the appropriate place on the stack if possible or on the bottom of the stack.

The overall effect of this is that if a judge is called over in regards to this missed trigger, then if it is still the same turn, then the ability's controller's opponent (you) chooses whether the ability goes on the stack. Otherwise, you ignore it and move on.


Does a spell cast via cascade resolve before the cascade trigger finishes resolving? Cascade says to:

Exile cards until you reveal the appropriate spell
Optionally cast that spell
Return the exiled cards to your library

I am wondering whether or not 3 happens before the cast spell resolves. For example, if you cascade into Pull from Eternity, could you choose one of the cards that was exiled by the cascade trigger?

Pull from Eternity will be useless. Those cards will be put into your library again immediately after you finish casting the spell, before it resolves.

This means you could choose one of those exiled cards for a target of Pull from Eternity as it's cast via Cascade, but the exiled card will have left exile when Pull from Eternity resolves. That makes it an illegal target (since it doesn't exist) so this manoeuvre becomes a fancy way to get Pull from Eternity to fizzle and put into your graveyard.

The steps

First for clarity let's grab the Cascade reminder text off Bloodbraid Elf:

  When you cast this spell, exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a nonland card that costs less. You may cast it without paying its mana cost. Put the exiled cards on the bottom of your library in a random order.

Here's the basic order of what happens:

You cast a spell with Cascade. In doing so, you take it from your hand, put it on the stack, choose targets (if any) and pay its costs.
The cascade triggered ability goes on the stack.
Cascade resolves:

You reveal cards from your library until you find Pull from Eternity.
You choose to cast Pull from Eternity, pay costs, and choose targets: you pick one of the cards in exile.
You remove those cards from exile and put them back in the bottom of your library.

The stack now looks like this:

Pull from Eternity (top)
The original spell (bottom)

Pull from Eternity resolves. It can no longer find its target, and so it gets countered by the game rules. [400.7, 608.2b]
The original spell resolves.

Rule 400.7 governs step 5 here, which reads like this:

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

None of the exceptions match. Pull from Eternity wasn't expecting the exiled card to change zones and so doesn't keep track of it as it leaves exile. The card now at the bottom of your library has no relation to the object Pull from Eternity was targeting in Exile. Because there are no more legal targets, Pull from Eternity fizzles (i.e. does not resolve, but is also not countered), and is put into your graveyard per rule 608.2b:

  608.2b If the spell or ability specifies targets, it checks whether the targets are still legal. A target that’s no longer in the zone it was in when it was targeted is illegal. [...] If all its targets, for every instance of the word “target,” are now illegal, the spell or ability doesn’t resolve. It’s removed from the stack and, if it’s a spell, put into its owner’s graveyard. [...]


Dryad of the Ilysian Grove and Imprisoned in the moon Following on from this conversation, what happens if we replace Icthyomorphosis with Imprisoned in the Moon in that scenario?

I think:

All Lands become all basic land types
Dryad of the Ilysian Grove becomes a land and loses all other types.
Dryad gains all basic land types to its own ability, then loses them again from Imprisoned in the Moon, due to timestamp order.
Layer 6 removes all abilities from Dryad, including any mana abilities it may have inherited from becoming all basic land types (although, as it had already resolved as non-basic in layer 4, I'm not sure that's even relevant, as it wouldn't have received those mana abilities until layer 6 anyway), and adds "t: add colourless"

Your description has the correct result. This looks like the interaction with Magus of the Moon.

The steps are different though.
 1. In the layer 4, Dryad becomes a land. Then its ability gives it all basic lands types (and the associated mana abilities). Dryad's ability is applicated second because it depends on Imprisoned's one.
 2. In the layer 6, Dryad loses its printed abilities and its additional mana abilities but gains "{T}: Add colourless".

No timestamp order is involved.
As a bonus, if you care about land types, Dryad still has all of them.


What techniques do high level SET players use when looking at a layout of cards? I've played SET a few times now and have noticed some general strategies arise. At the beginning, I try to take in the distribution of the 4 characteristics so I can figure out if I should be looking for sets that are all different or all the same in each of them. If there are a lot a purple cards, some green, and 3 or less red cards, the most likely sets are going to be either all purple, or involve those red cards, so I should probably either look for all purple sets or look at the red cards, see what green cards I could combine with them, and finally see if the final purple card is present. If the distributions are pretty even, then I should probably look at another characteristic or look for 3-different color sets.

However, beyond this, I am at a loss of how to advance my strategy. I could try to do a more thorough analysis of each of the 4 characteristic distributions, but this takes time and only tells me where the most likely sets are to be found, so I sometimes wonder if I would be better off just looking randomly for sets from the very beginning.

What are some good strategies for SET? Specifically, how can I tell when I should look for sets randomly rather than try to use intuition?

For purposes of describing things, I'm going to divide sets in "easy" sets -- those with 2 or 3 matching characteristics and only 1 or 2 non-matching ones, and "hard" sets -- those with NO matching characteristics.  I think this corresponds to how hard the sets are to spot for most people -- the easy sets will get spotted right away by most people, while the hard sets are hard to see even when they're pointed out.

So when the cards are first revealed, I glance at them without concentrating on any particular card to see if there's an easy set.  If there is, it will generally get spotted by someone immediately.  If I don't see an easy set after a second or two, I start looking for a hard set.  First step there is to figure out which attributes are rare in the array -- if there's only a single red card or only a single solid card, any hard set will necessarily include that card.  Any attribute that appears on only two or three cards means that one of those cards will be in any hard sets.  This generally means you can narrow things down to 5-10 pairs of cards that differ in all attributes, and any possible hard set must include one of those pairs.  Then for each of those pairs, figure out what the third matching card is, and see if its on the table.

The process above will generally only take around 10 seconds or so.  By that point, if noone has seen a set there probably isn't one, but you can start looking for sets with 1 matching characteristic -- Look for the single most common characteristic on the table, and see if any three of those form a set.


What happens if Ravager of the Fells can't target an opponent? Ravager of the Fells (the flip-side of Huntmaster of the Fells) says,

  Whenever this creature transforms into Ravager of the Fells, it deals 2 damage to target opponent and 2 damage to up to one target creature that player controls.

What happens if I cannot target my opponent (e.g. due to Witchbane Orb giving her hexproof)? Are her creatures protected as well?

You must be able to declare legal targets for all targets of a spell or ability. Since Witchbane Orb prevents you from targeting your opponent, you cannot choose their creature to target either. Therefore CR603.3d forces you to remove it from the stack.

It should be noted that if your opponent gains Hexproof after you choose valid targets, the spell will still resolve because the creature is still a valid target (it knows that it is controlled by the same player that you targeted, even if it cannot target that opponent)

  114.1. Some spells and abilities require their controller to choose one or more targets for them.The targets are object(s), player(s), and/or zone(s) the spell or ability will affect. These targets are declared as part of the process of putting the spell or ability on the stack. The targets can't be changed except by another spell or ability that explicitly says it can do so.

  114.1d A triggered ability is targeted if it identifies something it will affect by using the phrase "target [something],"where the "something" is a phrase that describes an object, player, or zone. The target(s) are chosen as the ability is put on the stack;see rule 603.3d.

  603.3d The remainder of the process for putting a triggered ability on the stack is identical to the process for casting a spell listed in rules 601.2c–d. If a choice is required when the triggered ability goes on the stack but no legal choices can be made for it, or if a rule or a continuous effect otherwise makes the ability illegal, the ability is simply removed from the stack.


Do I have to take mana from my deck or hand when tapping a dual land? I have a land card, for example Stone Quarry which reads "{T}: Add {R} or {W}." Do I take the mana from my library or my hand?

You are confusing Lands with Mana, a common beginners' mistake.

Mana is a resource that you use to cast spells; it is not represented by cards; you can not physically see it. When you tap a land, such as a Mountain, you add a red mana to your mana pool, which means you now have 1 red mana to spend.

When you tap a Stone Quarry, you choose to either add a red mana to your mana pool, or to add a white mana to your mana pool. Either way you end up with 1 mana in your mana pool. You do not get any land cards from your library or your hand.

Note that tapping a Stone Quarry is very similar to tapping a Mountain. When you tap a Mountain, you are activating an ability that says ""{T}:Add {R}." This ability is just not printed on the card for basic lands; it is instead within the rulebook for all basic lands.

An effect that has you put a land card from your hand or library onto the battlefield would specifically say so:

Arid Mesa's ability says:

  Search your library for a Mountain or Plains card, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle your library.

and Terrain Generator's ability says

  You may put a basic land card from your hand onto the battlefield tapped.

Note that Arid Mesa can't even produce mana, even though it is a land. Lands commonly produce mana, but not all of them do.


Organizing a rule book Bit of Background
I am currently trying to organize a comprehensive rule book for a board game I have been designing for some time now that is about to go into a testing phase. This being my first board game I've run into a wall.
The Problem
I don't know how best to structure the rule book. For instance, I'll be trying to explain how a piece moves in relation to the kind of tile it is on. Because in my game different pieces do different things depending on how they are positioned, this is quite complex. What ends up happening is I don't know whether to put the information under the type of piece, or under the type of tile, or under the specific situation in which the rules apply.
I feel if put the information in one place or the other it will leave the players confused, and if I put it in multiple places the book could get kind of lengthy, and scare potential players away.
The Potatoes
What do you guys do when you make your comprehensive instruction booklets to avoid this problem?

One issue is staring at this blank canvas of a rule book and not knowing where to start.

To find out where to start, first realize exactly what you're trying to accomplish:

Tell someone how to play.

I might suggest you show the game to a few friends, preferably the most interactive ones. If they ask questions, then when you explain it to another friend, you have the insight of what they may be thinking and the ability to answer just what's on their mind.

You will learn exactly what to write by sheer redundancy of explaining the rules over and over, and subconsciously you'll build a structure of your explanation that you could use while writing your rule book.

Hope this helps you getting started.


Can "Healing Stone" be used to gain Stamina or Sanity beyond the investigator's initial values? Can the unique item "Healing Stone" be used to gain Stamina or Sanity beyond the investigator's initial values?

The card doesn't include this restriction so I am assuming you can but wanted to make sure.

Your copy of Healing Stone may differ depending on what version of the game and/or which expansions you have. In particular, Dunwich Horror comes with a new version of this card.
However, according to the rulebook (second printing), sanity/stamina as listed on the character's initial values are also their Maximum values. (emphasis mine)

  SANITY AND STAMINA An investigator begins the game with a number of
  Sanity and Stamina tokens equal to the values listed on the
  investigator’s sheet. These two values are the investigator’s maximum
  Sanity and maximum Stamina.
  While an investigator may gain and lose Sanity or Stamina over the course of the game, the investigator’s current Sanity or Stamina may
  never exceed the investigator’s maximum Sanity or Stamina.


In reference to Ashenmoor Liege What abilities target Ashenmoor Liege that triggers 'Whenever Ashenmoor Liege becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, that player loses 4 life.'  Would deathtouch qualify?

Deathtouch does not qualify because it doesn't target. Note Ashenmoor Liege says "... becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls". Spells and abilities that target will use the word 'target' (Auras also count as targeted spells). For example, the text of Seal Away says (emphasis mine):

  When Seal Away enters the battlefield, exile target tapped creature an opponent controls until Seal Away leaves the battlefield.

So casting Seal Away on Ashenmoor Liege triggers the ability. Deathtouch's text, however, says:

  Deathtouch (Any amount of damage this deals to a creature is enough to destroy it.)

Hence it doesn't target, and it doesn't trigger the ability.


Recommended strategies for Mercante in Fiera? Last night I played a traditional Italian card game, Mercante in Fiera (Merchant at the Fair) with a big group of friends. While everyone had a great night, as the auctioneer was very entertaining, and everyone was very committed to having fun, the game itself struck me as being mostly random luck. I couldn't figure out a reasonable strategy, and in the end chose to be very conservative in order to minimise my losses. Some players lost huge amounts of money, having bought as many cards as possible. Of course, the fun in bargaining and bidding for cards has its value, but if you are focused purely on winning, what is the optimal strategy?

In our group, there was around 20 players, who paid €5 each for the first card, and then everyone bid on the remaining 20 cards. The final pool was over €500, divided into 5 prizes (ranging from €25 to €250). I would estimate that the average price paid during bidding was €20 per card (the prices rose as the game went on and people became more excited).

What strategy recommendations would people make?

There are only two strategic decisions over which a player has control: the amounts bid in auction and the quantity of cards traded. A winning strategy requires paying less on average for one's cards than (all) the other players; and then having a bit of luck.

So, based on whatever patterns seem to be discernible in the merchant's average choice of how many cards to auction off, only bid less per card than the expected pot divided by the total number of cards (40 or 55 depending on edition) in play. Posture all you want to mask this strategy, but adhere to it strictly.

Second, never trade down on the quantity of cards held. Again, mask this strategy by posturing with and to the other players, but adhere to it strictly. You want to posture as an "active trader", in hopes of occasionally leveraging another player's superstitions to trade-up on card quantity; but don't expect  doing this more than once or twice an evening.


How does Le Havre compare with Agricola? At my gaming group, we are looking into getting a new boardgame. We're all relative novices with boardgames but not with games in general.

Among our options are two games that seem rather similar: Le Havre and Agricola. They're designed by the same guy and offer similar mechanics (different theme though). Even though Agricola seems more popular and has a better overall score at the BoardGameGeek, there are quite a lot of people that describe Le Havre as an upgrade to Agricola.

We have watched some introductory videos and have become familiar with the basics of the rules in each one, but obviously we can't get a real feel of them until we've tried them.

So, how do the games compare with each other? We're looking for information that's not immediately obvious, such as setup time, how much fiddling with bits and other bookkeeping there is, game flow, downtime, complexity of decisions, tactics vs strategy, extent of player interaction etc.

We are not looking for subjective opinions (unless they can be backed up somewhat) or obvious things that can be observed without playing the game, such as theme, mechanics, rules etc.

I've played Agricola (my favourite game) about a million times, and Le Havre only once so far.  But I'll give you some of my basic impressions.

Agricola and Le Havre are much more similar to each other than, for example, to other Uwe Rosenberg games like Bohnanza and At The Gates Of Loyang.  Both are about creating a working food engine in an environment of resource scarcity and then making whatever profit you can on top of that.

The key differences, as I see it are these: in Agricola, the resource tiles come out in a partially randomized but largely predictable order.  Once they're out, they're not "owned" by any player: if you're the start player, you get first dibs, but that's all.  In Le Havre, though, the development of the game can be intimately shaped by the players, because they choose which resource spaces to buy and introduce to the game.  Who owns that space is then a consideration - you may desperately desire a resource but desperately not want to pay its owner for it!  In addition, there's quite a nice mechanic in Le Havre that means you can sit on a resource square and thus deprive other desperate players from using it - though quite often you have much more important things for your people to be doing than sitting around, of course...

This makes Le Havre sound much deeper and more interesting than Agricola so far, and it's true, if you're a fan of games on the Caylus end of the complexity spectrum, then Le Havre may be more appealing to you.  But of course, Agricola has some tricks of its own up its sleeve.  Le Havre is completely lacking in an analogue to Agricola's "Occupation" and "Minor Improvement" cards", which are basically hands of cards that are private to each player, and which can exert dramatic effects on the game.  Now, some people HATE these cards: because they add a big whack of randomness to the game, especially if you just deal them out and don't draft them or anything.  I personally like them: they ensure that every game of Agricola is really different, even if, yes, sometimes someone will play a busted Occupation card for their first move and it'll be a huge uphill struggle for everyone else to win for the rest of the game.

Personally, and please forgive me for entering into subjective territory for my final paragraph, so far I prefer Agricola because the theme and mechanics mesh more satisfactorily for me.  Assembling a "food engine" just seems like a more appropriate occupation for a farmer in the Dark Ages than a businessman in an industrial port!  Plus the Occupations and Improvements, with their cartoony illustrations and all, bring the world of Agricola to life with greater verve than the world of Le Havre.  And Agricola is still a fantastic little game, mechanically, if you don't mind the randomness for the card deal.  Le Havre takes a bit longer, is a bit more complex, has a bit more interaction, and has enough randomness to keep things interesting but almost certainly not enough to give any player a significant advantage through sheer "luck of the draw".  I feel like Le Havre was an attempt to improve the Agricola experience for really hardcore gamers, and it does succeed!  But it's still Agricola I want to bring out all the time, saving Le Havre for special occasions.


Why am I seeing the same 3 Spider Solitaire games today that I saw 2 days ago For the third time in 5 or 6 games today and yesterday I am seeing the same Spider Solitaire layout that I saw two days go. These three games all had very unique patterns, and took a large number of moves to solve, nearly 5,000 the second time on one because I had one move wrong early on that took a while to identify. Does anyone know how this happens? I'm running 64-bit Windows 7.

The random number generator could have been seeded with the same seed, which would cause the same sequence of random number to be generated. The RNG in Microsoft's C library repeats every ~32,000 numbers (which is pretty abysmal), so there's effectively only that many seeds.

Different seeds:

>perl -E"say srand; say join ' ', map int(rand(52))+1, 1..10;"
1819759215  # The seed
41 35 23 9 35 2 41 11 50 51

>perl -E"say srand; say join ' ', map int(rand(52))+1, 1..10;"
994223390
47 13 12 51 35 7 37 42 11 2

But what if the same seed was picked the next day:

>perl -E"srand(994223390); say join ' ', map int(rand(52))+1, 1..10;"
47 13 12 51 35 7 37 42 11 2


Is the Talisman Upgrade Pack worthwhile? I own the Talisman 4th edition game published by Black Industries. Talisman revised 4th edition is now published by Fantasy Flight Games. I have seen an upgrade pack that is supposed to make the 4th edition game compatible with the revised 4th edition and its expansion packs.

The upgrade pack contains:

Rulesheet
Over 160 Cards
14 Character Cards and Figures
4 Plastic Toad Figures
36 Fate Tokens

My questions are:

Is this upgrade pack worth purchasing? Retail is  approx. $20 USD and that seems like it could be a bit much for no new content.
Does the new rulesheet address all the typos and misprints in the 4th edition rules and board?
Can someone with the 4th edition use the revised 4th edition expansions without this upgrade? I know Fantasy Flight would say, "No way," but I want to know what things have changed that would make the expansions not work right.

"No new content" is wrong. There is a small change with big impact in the FFG rules... fate points. (Reroll failed rolls.)
Most of them.
Yep. The only change in rules is the addition of fate points.

The cards are, IIRC, all errata items.


Using the King as an attacking piece Are there examples of expert-level games where the King is used as an attacking piece early in the game?  I.e. brought out into the center of the board behind the bishops, pawns and knights, to gain a superiority of attacking force over the opponent?  Certainly there would be great risks in doing this: the opponent can check you any time he wants - but do you think, if handled with care and expertise, this strategy could work?  As another example, maybe developing the King would become desirable if a player loses his ability to castle.

Thank you very much.

There was one very famous game, Spielmann vs. Tartakower, where Black kept his king in the center instead of castling, moved it forward on the 15th move, and again on the 21st move to reinforce his other pieces. Note, however, that these moves were made in the middle game, and not the opening.

This game is actually unusual, because as another poster pointed out, it's not usually a good idea to move the king too far forward early in the game. That's because the king is a likely target, and a liability to his own pieces when there are many of them on the board. For instance, the other side can often attack a king and fellow pieces through forks and "skewers," and also pin pieces against a king.

The reason why Black's maneuver worked was because all the minor pieces (Bishops and Knights) had been exchanged, and both sides were "short handed" in the center and kingside. In effect, Black's king was an "extra" piece. It traveled with a protective screen of pawns, and Black secured the king further by offering White chances to exchange the heavy pieces. (White declined and lost important ground.)

But this kind of maneuver goes against the logic of most games. One test of this was that I had to go back almost 100 years to find a suitable game to answer your question And although Tartakower (Black) was an international grandmaster, he was considered a bit "unconventional."


Can you support through ships in Game of Thrones? In Game of Thones, one can send attacking troops to a distant region in one order with a chain of ships.  Does this also apply to support orders?

That is, can I support a combat with land troops in an otherwise non-adjacent region if I can connect the two regions with ships?

Absolutely not! Quite apart from the fact that that makes no sense whatsoever, it also explicitly states that you can't on page 23 of the rulebook (bottom right).

  While land areas connected by ship transport are considered adjacent
  for purposes of marching and retreating, they are not considered
  adjacent for any other purpose (including supporting and raiding).


Can a route be included in more than one destination ticket? The rules that come with the game do not specifically state the a route (between two cities) can be included in more than one destination string, but this is assumed when we play.

Is that a correct assumption?

Yes. The section about scoring says:

  Players should then reveal all their Destination Tickets and add (or subtract) the value of their Destination Tickets still in hand, based on whether
  they successfully (or not) connected those cities together.

So the only thing that matters is whether those cities are connected to each other. It's very possible that all your routes will share a single link across the middle of the country, and that's fine.


Can I sacrifice an opponent's creature to Shadowborn Demon? I have a Shadowborn Demon and I was a little curious about the description of it. It specifically says "At the beginning of your upkeep, if there are fewer than six creature cards in your graveyard, sacrifice a creature."

So what I was wondering is, do I have to sacrifice my own creature? Or can I try and keep less than six creatures in my graveyard and sacrifice an opponent's creature every upkeep? Since it does specifically says "a creature" — it does not say "your creature" or "a creature you control." Most cards that have a sacrifice involved are extremely specific about that and will say "your creature" or "a creature you control" if it wants you to sacrifice your own creatures.

You cannot sacrifice a creature you do not control. The rule on sacrifice, 701.14a says

  To sacrifice a permanent, its controller moves it from the battlefield directly to its owner’s graveyard. A player can’t sacrifice something that isn’t a permanent, or something that’s a permanent he or she doesn’t control. Sacrificing a permanent doesn’t destroy it, so regeneration or other effects that replace destruction can’t affect this action.

From a common sense point of view, getting rid of something that's not yours isn't really a sacrifice.


Can an Aura be attached to itself? Let's say I have an Indestructibility attached to a land I control.

  Enchanted permanent has indestructible.

I try to use the second ability of Simic Guildmage to attatch the Indestructibility to itself.

  Attach target Aura enchanting a permanent to another permanent with the same controller.

What happens?

You cannot do as you described, there is a ruling on Simic Guildmage (emphasis mine):

  For the second ability, only the Aura is targeted. When the ability resolves, you choose a permanent to move the Aura onto. It can’t be the permanent the Aura is already attached to, it must be controlled by the player who controls the permanent the Aura is attached to, and it must be able to be enchanted by the Aura. (It doesn’t matter who controls the Aura or who controls Simic Guildmage.) If no such permanent exists, the Aura doesn’t move.

Since you cannot attach an Aura to itself due to rule 303.4d you cannot choose to attach Indestructibility to itself:

  303.4d An Aura can’t enchant itself. If this occurs somehow, the Aura is put into its owner’s graveyard. An Aura that’s also a creature can’t enchant anything. If this occurs somehow, the Aura becomes unattached, then is put into its owner’s graveyard.

Even if you could make that choice, the Aura would not move due to rule 303.4j:

  303.4j If an effect attempts to attach an Aura on the battlefield to an object or player it can’t legally enchant, the Aura doesn’t move.


Recommendation for D&D players who want a faster dungeon/questing game after dinner? My friends and I play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons from time to time. Since it's cumbersome to make so many preparations to play so little, I'd like a faster alternative reason to get together and play some board games.

It could be a war game or preferably a dungeon/questing game. Ideally, something to play in two or three hours, maybe more.

If it's legally available to print & play, all the better.

For Dungeon Questing, your best bet is, sadly, long OOP¹: the GW game HeroQuest² or it's sequels Advanced HQ and Warhammer Quest. Note that the rules are available for free from Hasbro, but the bits aren't, so if you find it on ebay, you can replace the rules.

Another excellent, light, but not actually short, ans sadly in between printings, game: Wiz-War. (The more expansions, the longer it plays...)

If your players like medium length (30min to 2 hours) PVP, Dungeoneer (Example: Tomb of the Lich Lord is also excellent. It's a series of standalone games (which can be combined) of dungeon-crawling hack-n-slash. It is PVP, tho', and brutally so. It can be a blast with the right players, tho'.

Order of the Stick is popular; if I could stand OOTS at all, I'd probably enjoy the game, but the art is utter drekh, and interfered with my ability to enjoy the game. It's also longer than I care for.

Another fun one, very different, is Aye, Dark Overlord. It's not of need a dungeon crawl, but the descriptions needed are usually dungeon crawl-ish.

¹ Out of Print
² Not to be confused with the Issaries RPG of same name.


Do the rules as written make Assault weapons and Pistols useless? I recently got into a discussion with somebody, as they tried to explain to me that  both Assault weapons and Pistols were actually completely useless in 8th edition. He did not mean "useless" as in "not as good as other options", but as "the rules as written mean they don't give any advantage".

The Basic Rule Book for 8th Edition contains the following phrase regarding "Advancing":

  When you pick a unit to move in the Movement phase, you can declare that it will Advance. Roll a dice and add the result to the Move characteristics of all models in the unit for that Movement phase. A unit that Advances can't shoot or charge later that turn.

The section regarding assault weapons states the following:

  A model with an Assault weapon can fire even if it Advanced earlier that turn. If it does so, you must subtract 1 from any hit rolls made when firing that weapon this turn.

Likewise the section regarding pistols states the following:

  A model can fire a pistol even if there are enemy units within 1" of its own unit, but it must target the closest enemy unit. [...]

The rules in the section 1. Choose Unit to Shoot with states the following:

  [...] First, you must pick one of your units to shoot with. You may not pick a unit that Advanced or Fell Back this turn, or a unit that is within 1" of an enemy unit. [...]

His argument was now as follows: Since the rules regarding the shooting phase disallow you from even selecting a unit that Advanced or Fell Back, you never get to section 2., which tasks you with selecting a weapon. Since you can never select that you want to shoot an Assault weapon or a Pistol, you can't fire it. He further mentioned that the rules-as-written do not mention that you can select these units in the shooting phase, only that it would allow you to fire this weapon if you were to select them.

Intuitively, this seems wrong. The intent of the rules clearly seem to be that pistols can be used in close combat, and assault weapons can be used while charging. However, upon looking at the rules-as-written, there seems to be at least some logic to his statements. Is this a simple oversight? Or is there something I am missing entirely?

Emphasis mine on all quotes

The Most Important Rule

Basic Rules, Page 6 Sidebar, Summarized:

  When you aren't sure of what's supposed to happen, talk with your opponent and apply the most sensible resolution that you can agree on.  If you can't agree, roll-off, and apply the victor's resolution.

The fact that this is labeled "The Most Important" implies that this trumps any other rule.  Additionally, it relies on sense, rather than interpretation.  It would not make sense for the rules to include exceptions which do not apply, regardless of how you interpret the "hard" restrictions on Advancing.

As is true in almost any game, general rules are to apply until an exception says otherwise.  WH40k's version of this rule is "Do what makes sense", and an exception to the rules will only ever make sense if the exception can be applied.

Since the rules under Pistol and Assault weapons state they're an exception, those exceptions must apply, since it makes more sense to obey these exceptions than it is to accept they were arbitrarily added to the Basic Rules for no reason.


What is the difference between "flying" and "this creature can only be blocked by creatures with flying"? Tons of creatures have flying in Magic:The Gathering, but I noticed Treetop Rangers have this ability:

  Treetop Rangers can't be blocked except by creatures with flying.

Obviously this means that Treetop Rangers can't be blocked by creatures with Reach, which can block creatures with flying. Is that the only difference? When else would this distinction matter? Is Treetop Ranger's ability generally 'better' than flying?

I know it's the "simple answer", but I have to add it for completeness' sake!

A creature that "can't be blocked except by creatures with flying" has about half the functionality of a creature with flying.  In terms of its evasive power, it's quite similar to a creature with flying; a little better because it can't be blocked by the likes of Giant Spider, and "super-high-flyers" such as Cloud Elemental.

In terms of its defensive capabilities, however, it's much worse than a flyer, since it can only block ground creatures, never a flyer!  And as David Z rightly points out, it is susceptible to a different class of spells such as Earthquake, while laughing at the likes of Hurricane and Plummet...


Maximum number of parties in MTG Apologies if this has been answered, but
How many parties can you have in MTG?
I’m aware that a party consists of 0-4 so cleric, rogue, wizard and warrior.
But if I have a full party and say another 4 creatures, (1 from each) does that mean I have 2 parties or is the maximum allowed 1 party?

There isn't a card nor an entry in the rules that mention multiples parties, therefore the number of parties you can form is irrelevant.
Also, rule 700.8a state s

The calculation of the number of creatures in a player’s party is performed automatically by the game and results in a number between zero and four. Players don’t declare which specific creatures they control are in their party.

The party mechanic doesn't care about the individual creatures but cares about the diversity in your whole pool of creatures.


If banished token then try to resummon it, possible? I have a token on the field, then I used Interdimensional Matter Transporter, will it return to the field?

Interdimensional Matter Transporter:

  Target 1 face-up monster you control; banish that target until the End
  Phase.

The token won't return to the field, as as soon as the token leaves the field it is removed from the game entirely.

From the rulebook:

  Monster Tokens are monsters that appear on the field as the result of a card’s effect. They are not included in the Deck, and cannot be sent anywhere other than the field


How can I speed up the setup of Eclipse? I think I got everything separated and packed pretty well (including the upgrade tiles), but what's really taking a long time during setup is the cubes.

Is there a way to set it up faster for players? It's also a drag for new players, gives them a bad first impression...

I've found through my plays of Eclipse that there are 4 things you can do to speed up setup:

1) Take the bags where you put the ships in for each player. Add 3 colony ships, the storage markers, the starbases, all cubes and disks. You'll have a bag for each player with all the stuff they need to setup their player board.

2) Buy a 'bead storage box'. Craft section of Michaels or Walmart. Put your sorted upgrades in here. Setting up the supply board is as simple as taking the lid off of this box and placing technology tiles.

3) Buy some Population Trays off the internet. These are specifically for eclipse. You can buy the ones with lids and that will let you store all the cubes for a given player in the tray. Setting up a player board is as simple as opening the lid and dumping the contents of their bag next to the board.

4) Have all other components pre-sorted and bagged seperately.

It takes < 5 minutes to go from putting the box on the table to making my first action with this setup.

Population Trays: http://www.beklaser.com/en/6-eclipse


In Gloomhaven, can you get the effects of winning a scenario twice? I am not sure what the answer is. It doesn't say you can't, but I assume you can't

It depends on which effects you're referring to. You always get the experience (including the base XP depending on the scenario level), any loot you've picked up, as well as your checkmark or two if you've completed the battle goal, and any progress you've made towards your personal quest.

You do not however get any of the scenario rewards that are listed in the scenario book. This is because after beating the scenario, it can only be played in casual mode, which doesn't grant these rewards. You also can't loot any numbered treasure tiles if you've done so before (however, if you missed the treasure the first time around, you can replay the scenario to grab it).

Relevant sections from the rule book:

  Numbered treasure tiles can only be looted once. After they have been looted, they should be crossed off in the Scenario Book as a reminder. — p. 15

  In addition, once a scenario has been completed in campaign mode, it cannot be undertaken again in campaign mode by any party. — p. 34

  [In casual mode,] Players can still gain experience and money, loot treasure tiles, complete battle goals, and make progress toward completing their personal quests, but any story text or rewards listed at the end of the scenario are disregarded. A party in campaign mode can switch to casual mode to go through a scenario they have already completed [...]. — p. 34


At regular REL can players rewind the game state? Suppose that at a regular REL (Rules Enforcement Level) event, you have an experienced player, and an inexperienced player, and the in-experienced player has a gideon's lawkeeper on the battlefield.

The experienced player declares the beginning of the combat phase, and the game then proceeds to the Declare Attackers step.  The in-experienced player tries to tap down an experienced player's creature during the Declare Attackers step.

The experienced player explains to the inexperienced player that in order for the tapping to stop the attack, he has to do it during the Beginning of Combat step.

Are the players authorized to agree to rewind the game back to the Beginning of Combat step so that the in-experienced player can do his action correctly, or would the players have to ask a Judge's permission?

There is nothing in the CompRules about taking back legal actions, so when in doubt, ask the judge, unless you both want to risk a sanction in the worst case. He may nor may not allow it, and he may or may not require to be asked in the first place. In the end, a judge can give whatever ruling he wants, and the opposite of it on the next case. So there is no general answer.

That being said, in high REL, where a lot is on the line in the tournament, you probably won't see many of the situations as described by you, either because there are no inexperienced players, or nobody would agree to have a mistake taken back to get any advantage possible. In lower REL, like pre-Release or somesuch, if I were a judge I would definitely allow it to commend the sportsmanship and teaching effort of the more experienced player.


Looking for a simple yet deep card / board game featuring superheroes to use as an introduction to games I am looking to introduce a new player to the world of card and board games. This person shows an interest in getting into the hobby and after a conversation I was able to ascertain that she is a fan of superheroes. Playing primarily fantasy and sci-fi games myself, I don't know of any good choices to start off with. I want to keep to the superhero theme to help this new player engage more with the story, since it is something they are in to.

Bonus points if the game has an electronic version that can enforce rules without us having to remember them all, at least until they feel comfortable with them.

In terms of complexity, I am probably looking for something more akin to Munchkin than Magic: The Gathering for a card game, or Forbidden Island rather than Arkham Horror for a board game.

Sentinels of the Multiverse is a cooperative card game that fits all of your needs:

  I want to keep to the superhero theme to help this new player engage more with the story, since it is something they are in to.

The players in the game take on the role of superheroes who work together to fight a supervillain and their minions, all while dealing with an unstable environment that may help or hurt them. Each of the character's powers are reflected in the mechanics (e.g. Tachyon the speedster draws lots of cards, Ra the Egyptian god has a scepter and deals lots of fire-based damage).

  Bonus points if the game has an electronic version that can enforce rules without us having to remember them all, at least until they feel comfortable with them.

There is an app version of the game for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS that enforces all of the rules. It's not a rules helper, it's the whole game. After a a game or two, you'll definitely know the rules, but I personally think that the real game has a low enough learning curve that you should be fine without it.

  In terms of complexity, I am probably looking for something more akin to Munchkin than Magic: The Gathering for a card game, or Forbidden Island rather than Arkham Horror for a board game.

Well if it's any indicator, both Munchkin and Forbidden Island are recommended for ages 10 and up and Sentinels of the Multiverse is recommended for ages 8 and up. Personally I think that the game is about as complicated as those two, but hey, the manufacturer thinks that it's simple enough to be played by younger players than those two games. While there are a lot of card effects, they tend to be pretty straightforward and since the game is fully cooperative, players can help each other out if they're having trouble keeping everything straight.

Your question title also mentioned the game being "simple yet deep." The rulebook rates heroes by complexity, so new players can play a hero with a lot of one shot effects while more experienced players can have depth by playing heroes with lots of ongoing effects that interact with each other. Also the fact that there are over a million combinations of heroes, environments, and supervillains (and more if you add the expansions) means that there is a lot of replay value and depth as you try different interactions between characters.


Does Proliferate work with Energy Counters? Can a players Energy Counters be increased using Proliferate?

This seems like it would be the case, as Poison Counters seem to work in a similar way.

Yes, like poison and experience counters before them players get energy counters, and proliferate can add an additional counter of a type a player has.

When Thriving Rhino enters the battlefield, you get {E}{E} (two energy counters).

This means that 2 energy counters are placed on you when you play a Thriving Rhino.

121.1. A counter is a marker placed on an object or player that modifies its characteristics and/or interacts with a rule, ability, or effect. Counters are not objects and have no characteristics. Notably, a counter is not a token, and a token is not a counter. Counters with the same name or description are interchangeable.
701.25a To proliferate means to choose any number of permanents and/or players that have a counter, then give each exactly one additional counter of a kind that permanent or player already has.


Can one caravan touch one oasis at multiple adjacent spaces? In Through the Desert:
Is a player's caravan permitted to occupy multiple spaces next to a single oasis, in effect blocking other players from accessing the oasis?

The rules imply that this is permitted.

The section Linking Oases in the rules from FFG (see page 4, left column) includes the clarification

  If a player places another camel of the same caravan adjacent to the same oasis, he does not claim another oasis scoring marker.

Were such a placement not permitted, it would make no sense to specify it doesn't score additional points.

The rules are however clear that in all cases, camel placement must obey the normal rules i.e.

you must add them adjacent to a camel in the caravan you control; your extra camels will spread around the oasis from where the first camel reached it.
you can't add a camel that links caravans of the same colour belonging to different players; you must maintain the caravan separation if another player has already reached the oasis with that colour too.


Kukemssa Pirates combo I have Kukemssa Pirates and several copies of Ashnod's Transmogrant.  (Plus Cloak of Mists and similar cards.)
If I attack with my pirates and they aren't blocked, can I use my transmogrant before triggering the pirates' ability?
In other words:

Attack
Not blocked
Use transmogrant to beef up opponent's creature, and turn it into an artifact creature
Use pirates' ability to take control of the creature I just transformed.

(I believe this is a fairly basic rules question, but I never learned much about the order in which spells and abilities resolve or how fast are "fast effects" in various cases.)

No, whatever you want to target with Kukemssa Pirates already has to be an artifact by the time the Pirates trigger.
Kukemssa Pirates' ability is a targeted, triggered ability. That means that its desired target must be legal by the time the ability enters the stack, and you do not get priority after the ability triggered and before it enters the stack. That means that once the Pirates have triggered, you can't activate any ability, like Ashnod's Transmogrant's, or cast any spell to make the desired target legal. That has to happen before the trigger.

603.3. Once an ability has triggered, its controller puts it on the stack as an object that’s not a card the next time a player would receive priority.

603.3d The remainder of the process for putting a triggered ability on the stack is identical to the process for casting a spell listed in rules 601.2c–d. If a choice is required when the triggered ability goes on the stack but no legal choices can be made for it, or if a rule or a continuous effect otherwise makes the ability illegal, the ability is simply removed from the stack.

601.2c The player announces their choice of an appropriate object or player for each target the spell requires. [..]

Note that if the Pirates' ability was not targeted, but let you choose the artifact only at resolution, you could react to the ability with the Transmogrant. For an example of such wording, see Boreas Charger - if your opponent has more lands than you when the Charger leaves the battlefield, you could react to the ability by sacrificing enough land to make your opponent a legal choice for the Charger.


What happens if you go bankrupt trying to pay the bank? Let's say I land on someone's hotel. I'm short in cash. So, I sell houses, mortgage everything, and am still short in cash. I am now out of the game and that player gets my money and mortgaged properties. If I remember right, they pay the 10% tax or unmortgage at that time. And the game continues.

Now, let's say I had just barely enough cash to pay them. I'm safe and still in the game. I've got nearly zero money and all my stuff is mortgaged. The next turn I land on chance/community chest/luxury tax/jail and I need to pay the bank. I cannot pay.

Who gets the properties? Do they disappear from the game? Go back for sale as mortgaged? Unmortgaged?

From my understanding they all go back to the bank. They all then actually got auctioned off (I thought they went back for sale like at the start of the game).

  Should you owe the Bank, instead of another player, more than you
  can pay (because of taxes or penalties) even by selling off buildings
  and mortgaging property, you must turn over all assets to the Bank. In
  this case, the Bank immediately sells by auction all property so taken,
  except buildings. A bankrupt player must immediately retire from the
  game. The last player left in the game wins.

Taken from the final Bankruptcy page from the offical Hasbro Rules

I would add that I would treat the properties as unmortgaged for the purposes off re-selling them and deem that as the mortgage loan was owed to the bank, they would write off that debt if required.


What may happen after a stack of spells resolves? Within the same phase, once a stack of spells has resolved in its entirety, is priority once again given to a player so that more spells may be cast?

For example:

I attack with a creature. Opponent opts not to block. Now, I want to buff (e.g. +3/+3) my creature multiple times, but I'm afraid of my opponent responding with a burn (e.g. Deal 3 damage) spell at the top of the stack. Can I buff once, ask if opponent wants to respond, then allow the stack to resolve. Then, in the same phase, cast more buff?

The active player (whose turn it is) receives priority after any spell or ability resolves
If that player passes, every other player in turn order gets priority as regular, and everyone with priority can cast spells or abilities, including when the last item on the stack resolves.
From the comprehensive rules:

116.3. Which player has priority is determined by the following rules:
116.3a The active player receives priority at the beginning of most steps and phases, after any turn-based actions (such as drawing a card during the draw step; see rule 703) have been dealt with and abilities that trigger at the beginning of that phase or step have been put on the stack. No player receives priority during the untap step. Players usually don’t get priority during the cleanup step (see rule 514.3).
116.3b The active player receives priority after a spell or ability (other than a mana ability) resolves.
116.3c If a player has priority when he or she casts a spell, activates an ability, or takes a special action, that player receives priority afterward.
116.3d If a player has priority and chooses not to take any actions, that player passes. If any mana is in that player’s mana pool, he or she announces what mana is there. Then the next player in turn order receives priority.


What happens if the Starting Tile gets a 6? If one of the 4 rooms of the Starting Tile gets a 6 and explodes what happens?
I suspect it's game over but I couldn't find any documentation about this one way or another.
It is possible that the game just becomes extremely hard (until you POSSIBLY get the Dinghy placed) but there's no hinting that 1 room exploding causes the remaining 3 to, except inferance by the fact the Starting Tile contains 4 rooms that I see.  I am also skeptical that if players are on those tiles they're just out of the game (seems against the spirit of the game or games of the "players keep playing genre").

For purposes of room explosions and consequences, each room is considered a separate "tile." If one room explodes, then that particular room on the starting tile is off limits, but the other 3 are accessible (until such time as they explode as well.) You can mark this by keeping the "6" on the tile, as the dice supply should be enough to have 1 die on each room in the game (should you be so lucky to have no explosions) You don't "flip over" the entire start tile, pirates on other rooms on the start tile aren't affected (pirates in the exploding room still suffer the normal consequences,) and the game doesn't end.

It seems that the OP is playing with the first edition copy of the game. The second edition does not have a "starting tile", instead it has 4 separate tiles for the starting rooms, allowing for each one to be individually flipped over, which clarified this rule. If you're playing the first edition, you can either keep the die on the room to indicate that it's impassable (or otherwise mark it) or you can visit this BGG file page, where the publisher has made a file of 4 "destroyed room" tiles you can use to cover them up.


What can I do against Aetherling? Suppose that my opponent plays an Aethering:

, and I can't counter it so it arrives on the battlefield. How can I remove that card from the battlefield? I'm playing Standard Constructed.

Removing Aetherling is useful, but not always necessary. The key thing is: how can you use the cards you have in your deck to deal with the threat?

Turn off its abilities

Aetherling is only powerful because of its activated abilities (in particular, the unblockable and bounce abilities). Pithing Needle will turn it into a vanilla 4/5, which really isn't a very powerful creature at this stage in the game. Which is a pretty good deal if you're stopping your opponent's best win condition or hosing multiple copies of it.

Outside of Standard, cards like Linvala, Keeper of Silence and Damping Matrix can play the same role.
Race it

While an Aetherling can do significant damage every turn, it's not actually the fastest kill card in Standard. When the Aetherling comes down, look at the board position — are you better off trying to kill it or just killing your opponent?

If you plan to race, focus your removal on swinging the game's tempo. Use it to get rid of blockers (including Aetherling, if only for a turn) so your guys can get in more damage. You can also use instant-speed removal like a Fog against the Aetherling.

Life gain can be very useful to keep you afloat. If you're playing Bant or BUG in a control mirror against UWR or Esper, for instance, you'll likely have more life and more ways to gain life than your opponent. Even if you can't hold out forever, you can try to use your life gain to force your opponent to commit more than just U (for the unblockability) to the Aetherling each turn in order to kill you quickly. At which point you can take advantage of the next tactic...
Overload your opponent's mana

Aetherling is only survivable as long as your opponent has access to blue mana. Watch you opponent's mana usage. If you have more ways to kill the Aetherling than he has blue mana, it's dead. You may need to spend more than one spell to do this, but it's better than losing the game altogether.

The easiest example is right after he casts it. Say you're playing Jund and your opponent just cast Aetherling with one Island in reserve to flicker it. You've got Liliana of the Veil and Putrefy in hand. Play Liliana's edict. When they put the Aetherling's exile trigger on the stack (spending their last U to do it), Putrefy the Aetherling in response.

"Machine-gun" combos also work pretty well. I've seen Olivia Voldaren and Nightshade Peddler overload an Aetherling pretty easily.
Prevent it from attacking

Aetherling is annoying to get rid of, but it's still just a creature that has to attack you to end the game. Sphere of Safety and Stormtide Leviathan are the only such cards in DGM Standard, but if you have access to a wider card pool you can play cards like Moat, Blazing Archon, or Ensnaring Bridge (your opponent could pump down the Aetherling to allow it to attack, and then pump it back up to allow it to do damage, but that costs a ton of mana, so it's not exactly a problem for you).

"TurboFog" decks are also very effective at blocking out creature damage, even from nasty creatures they can't kill outright.
Split second

The "phasing" ability won't save Aetherling from a split-second card. These are cards like Take Possession, Trickbind, and Sudden Spoiling.


Can I block enemy's port if my navy is on the sea sector next to a factory zone? No House Rules

So lets say I have a navy as the Japanese on the american port of western america.

Is that port now blocked? Or does America have to build its navy at the other factory or build a navy on that sea zone and go into instant battle?.

I don't see going into an instant battle being realistic to the game rules because that's not the attack phase.

I was able to find the answer after reading the rule book for 17th time after awhile.

Clearly the rules state on page 20 paragraph 2 in section restrictions on Placement

"Place sea units only in sea zones adjacent to territories containing eligible industrial complexes. New sea units can enter play even in a hostile sea zone. No combat occurs because the Conduct Combat phase is over."

So yes build your navy in the hostile navy sea sector adjacent to your factory but no battle is committed.


Why is Tolarian Kraken worded this way? Tolarian Kraken has this ability:

Whenever you draw a card, you may pay {1}. When you do, you may tap or untap target creature.

So if you choose to pay {1}, this causes a separate triggered ability to happen. Sparktongue Dragon is another example of this, but pretty much every other use I can find for “when you do” is in the reminder text for Madness or Conspire.
Most often, whenever a card has an optional ability like this, it says “if you do”, which makes the rest of what happens simply part of the same ability, rather than a separate triggered ability. There are a large number of cards worded this way, such as Carrion Thrash.
Is there a known reason that these 2 cards are worded differently than the rest? It is a functionally different, but most of the time it would work out the same. With this wording, you don’t have to choose targets for the second ability if you don’t choose to use the effect, but most of the time that’s going to be the same as choosing a target and then not choosing to use the effect anyway.
Has there been anything written about why these cards are worded this way? Or is there a more obvious explanation that I’m missing?

Waiting until after the cost is paid to choose the target is the big difference here.
If the ability used "if you do", like on Throwing Knife, then an opponent who wanted to "save" their creature from the ability would have to do so before they even know if you are going to pay for it. That gives the ability the unintentional power of forcing your opponent to react to the possibility of paying the cost, without actually paying any cost. With the "when you do" wording, the opponent can react to your choice to pay the cost, making it more like an activated ability.


Eldritch Horror test resolutions in other board games I'm new at modern board-games, basically, and I got Eldritch Horror as a present.

I love the test resolution system where you through n number of dice and the number of 5 or 6 determines if a test is passed or failed.

Is their any other board game that use exactly this system (by exactly, I mean throughing n dice, then counting the number of 5 or 6)? Does Arkham horror use the same system for instance?

Thanks!

Hello and welcome to the world of modern board games. The mechanism you are talking about is a common mechanism for a number of board games.

You are correct that Arkham Horror uses this exact mechanism.

Other games use a similar mechanism:

Summoner Wars - uses a 6 sided die for combat but here you typically hit on a 3+
Eclipse - uses a 6 sided die for combat but here you initially only hit on a 6

I'm quite positive there are dozens more that could be listed, but those were the first games that came to mind that I was familiar with.


Cluedo with bonus cards. Does move anywhere card let you interact with the place you entered? I own a Cluedo version that has some bonus cards, which are collected by ending your turn in a red question mark on the board. These bonus cards are: Bonus question, Make someone reveal a card, move anywhere, add six to your dice roll, take a sneaky peek, and take an extra turn.

My confusion is mainly about two cards: Add six to your dice roll, and move anywhere. The description of the other cards is pretty obvious; but what about the 'move anywhere card'? Am I allowed to move anywhere and interact with the place I have moved to? For example:

It is my turn and I drew a 'move anywhere card', can I move to another question mark and take another bonus card? Can I move to any room and make an accusation? Or am I only allowed to move (which could be very pointless, given that somebody else could move my character throughout the next round).

How about the 'add six to your dice roll'?

Both possibilities seem odd (if you are allowed to interact with the place you move to, then these cards are almost the same as 'take an extra turn'), but which one is correct?

If you give us the version name we can give you a better answer but based on what you wrote :

Since you draw cards at the end of your turn you should not be able to use them instantly
I guess that the move anywhere is instead of moving or before moving, if that's the case you should be able to interact with the room...
Otherwise you shouldn't be able to interact
You can add six to a dice only after rolling them, since you drew cards after moving, you shouldn't be able to use it instantly in order to move again

That's all we can conclude without the edition's name.


What are the rules regarding play of a singleton? A player waited 3 minutes to play a singleton.  We were playing 3 NT and an opponent paused 3 minutes on the second trick leaving 2 minutes to play 11 tricks.  What are the rules regarding this unethical play?

Let's look at the relevant Bridge Laws.
Law 16B1 says:

Any extraneous information from partner that might suggest a call or play is unauthorized.This includes remarks, questions, replies to questions, unexpected alerts or failures to alert, unmistakable hesitation, unwonted speed, special emphasis, tone, gesture, movement or mannerism.

(a) A player may not choose a call or play that is demonstrably suggested over another by unauthorized information if the other call or play is a logical alternative.

Law 73D1 says:

It is desirable, though not always required, for players to maintain steady tempo and
unvarying manner. However, players should be particularly careful when variations may
work to the benefit of their side.

Law 73D2 says:

A player may not attempt to mislead an opponent by means of a question, remark
or gesture; by the haste or hesitancy of a call or play (as in hesitating before playing a singleton); by the manner in which a call or play is made; or by any purposeful deviation from correct procedure (see also Law 73E2).

Law 73E2 says:

If the Director determines that an innocent player has drawn a false inference from a question, remark, manner, tempo or the like, of an opponent who has no demonstrable bridge reason for the action, and who could have been aware, at the time of the action, that it could work to his benefit, the Director shall award an adjusted score

Law 74A2 says:

A player should carefully avoid any remark or extraneous action that might cause annoyance or embarrassment to another player or might interfere with the enjoyment of the game

Law 74C prohibits "violations of procedure" including 74C7:

varying the normal tempo of bidding or play for the purpose of disconcerting an opponent

The above are all from the most recent (2017) Laws of Duplicate Bridge. All boldface is my addition. The laws for contract bridge are very similar except for mentions of a director.
All club and tournament games have time limits for each round. So do all online games that I know of.  A three minute hesitation in play, especially when holding a singleton of the suit led (not at trick 1, when there might be a need to plan the play) is very much longer than usual, and would usually be considered quite improper. A director or club management would have discretion whether to take action. It would be normal to ask, after the hand is over, what reason there was for the delay. If there was not a good reason, the player might be warned, or even removed from the game or barred from the club or event. A warning would be usual for a first offense. If damage seems to have been done, an adjusted score would be awarded.
Note, however, that such action is only "unethical" if it is done with intent to secure an advantage or disconcert or annoy opponents. If the player was belatedly trying to plan the defense, that is not unethical, although 3 minutes is excessive.
Online and tournament timing is usually 7-8 minutes per hand, including the auction, with the time limit applied only at the end of the round, often 2 or 3 hands, although it may be as few as one or as many as 5 or more hands long. Club play time varies widely, but many clubs use a rough figure of 7 1/2 minutes per hand. Online "speedball" events are typically 15 minutes for three hands.


Koi-Koi : does players score their points in case of tie game? This question refers to the Hanafuda gard game, with Koi-Koi rules.

When you form a Yaku (let's say a 1 point Yaku : Tane, 5 animals), you've got the possibility to call Koi-Koi and keep playing the turn instead of scoring your points. In this case, the turn's winner will double his points.

  You've formed a 1 point Yaku, and you've called Koi-Koi.

Now, let's imagine that your opponent form a Yaku with the same value as yours (for the example :Tan, 5 ribbons) and decides to call himself Koi-Koi.

  Your opponent forms a 1 point Yaku, and also call Koi-Koi

What will happens if the turn finish without any other Yaku to get formed?

  Tie game. 1-1

Both players have the same points (here : 1 point), should they score it or no ?

In fact, the question could be different. To avoid this kind of situation, is it allowed to call Koi-Koi if my opponent has already did it, or am I forced to score my points?

According to one resource (http://sloperama.com/hanafuda/koikoi.htm), if the last card does not complete a meld, no score is awarded to either player; and the deal remains with the same player.