text:
What is the formula of rank difference to handicap stones?
When the difference in rank is one (examples: 1 dan vs 1 kyu, or 1 kyu vs 2 kyu), the weaker player takes black and the komi is 0.5 for white (sometimes called "no komi" even though that's not technically correct).
From then on add one handicap stone per rank difference (black playing first with white getting 0.5 komi is equivalent to one handicap stone if free placement is used).
However, this formula doesn't work after about a 5-rank difference, because handicap stones start reinforcing each other. With some discussion I was able to find others who seem to know this is true. I can find no authority however, nor anybody who seems to have any idea of the correct formulation.

Very related (dupe?): http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/5575/are-professional-ranks-representative-for-how-many-stones-of-handicap-players-ca

@balpha No that's no duplicate. The other question is about how pro ranks are defined. This one is about linearity of handicap stones.

@Joshua What exactly do you mean by reinforcing? I doubt this is an issue, since even 2 stones are already reinforcing, though less easily visible. It is true that high handicap stones work together a lot, but they have to, to make up for the more and more extreme difference in strength (just think about how inferior/superior your Go is to someone just a few stones stronger/weaker).

Regarding your question: To my knowledge, handicap is intended to be linear.
The observation that large handicap games tend to end with a large score difference is not necessarily true. A large difference in score is usually a group dying involuntarily, which happens in both high handicap and even games on a regular basis.
However, it is far less common to resign in handicap games. Regular games in comparison often feature a high score difference as well, but those games are usually just won by resignation.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the rank system in use may very well be wrong for larger rank differences. You can see this very clearly by just comparing the rank difference of various players in different rank systems. For instance, KGS ranks tend to be a little bit more spread out than EGF ranks.
This means that two players with a difference of 8 stones on KGS may be only 7 stones apart in EGF rank. Which makes you wonder which is correct - and unless you got a huge database of high handicap game results, you won't know which of the systems is closer to the statistical truth.
This leads to my final thought: The EGF rank system (along the European Go Database) clearly specifies the intended win percentage for certain rank differences, also taking into account handicap. According to their formula, it is linear. I believe that AGA uses a similar system, too.
Edit (2018): I have recently worked more closely with rank computations than I hoped, and there is one thing I want to add, described here (I should note that some other information on that page appears to be outdated or wrong, in particular regarding AGA rating).
The skill difference that is supposed to be balanced by handicap stones depends on the skill of the players. That is to say, a single handicap stone in a high level match has a lot more impact than it does in a game between beginners.
This can in fact be quantified: A handicap stone in a pro game equals around 300 elo difference, around 150 for high dan amateurs and only around 50 (!) for kyu players. This adds another dimension in how rank differences and stone differences between players interact.

By the way, these data also show that adding more handicap stones is linear at least up to 4.

And by the time you have a large statistical sample on a beginner, the beginner has gotten noticeably stronger...

@KarlKnechtel Certainly. Ranks do not really work for beginners. They become a reasonable approximation starting around 10 or 15 kyu I guess. To create meaningful statistics, you'd have to refer to dan level games so the noise in the samples is lower.

The formula I use for the point differential for handicap stones is 2/3 (X**2) +12x-6.
That means 6 2/3 points for one stone, 21 points for two stones, 36 points for three stones, 53 points for four stones, 71 points for five stones, 90 points for six stones, 111 points for 7 stones, 133 points for eight stones, 156 for nine.
Each stone is worth more on an exponential basis, while handicaps are linear. A nine stone handicap worth 10-11 levels rather than nine.

According to my experience, I do also think that this conversion is better than a linear one if you exchange komi for handicap stones between same level players. However I'm still not sure that A wining by x points against B and B wining by y points against C makes A wining by x + y points against C. And I'm disappointed I never found any analysis on this topic.

So, in other words, if I consistently beat someone by about 21 points, then 2 stones handicap would make us even? (on average)

@FlorinAndrei: I'd say so, yes.

I don't think there is a "correct" formulation that has been in any way validated. It is supposed to be approximately linear because we essentially define it that way: a 1 dan is defined relative to a 2 dan by being able to win around 50% of the games with a komi of 0.5.  It is fairly traditional, going back to old game series (pre-komi) where they would progressively change the handicap to indicate relative strength ("forced X to take black" etc).
Part of why you generally should think of ratings as relative to others in the same system–and possibly the same area–rather than absolutes.  Don't get me started on Korean "1 kup" players… -.-
The challenge (beyond all of this) is that handicap is essentially an imperfect approximation, and there is a skillset that is particular to handicap games.  Due to playstyle/psychological differences, handicapping is also not strictly transitive, to quote David Mechner:

Most people consider the handicap system very elegant because it's simple and it works well. However, it's not perfect. For one thing, the value of a stone is not really necessarily constant. For example, against an opponent of constant strength going from 4 stones to 3 stones is a bigger jump than going from 5 stones to 4. Also, there are style interactions that cause intransitivities. Player A might be able to give B at 2 stones, and B might be able to beat C even, but because of the specific strengths and weakness of the players, C might be able to give A two stones.

Combined with that DDK (and even some higher SDK) ratings tend to fluctuate wildly game-to-game since they haven't "stablized" yet, and what you are essentially looking at is a system that is considered a "good enough approximation."  Straight-komi systems also tend to break down after a certain point, because the difference in skill isn't linear no matter how much we try to shoehorn it into that model.

Black going first without Komi is equivalent with 0.5 stones. 6.5 points of Komi is also equivalent with 0.5 stones (they even out). 3 stones handicap is equivalent with 2.5 stones.
E.g.: on IGS, players with a rank difference of 3 will be auto matched with 3 stones of handicap and reverse Komi. Rating systems also use this rule to predict the outcome of a game.
Back to your question, you are basically asking if handicap is linear: if A and B require a handicap of X and B and C require a handicap of Y, does that mean that A and C require a handicap of X+Y ?
In my experience this is pretty much true. However, a handicap game requires somewhat different tactics (or at least a shift in balance). So some players are more experienced at receiving handicap while others are better at giving handicap. That can influence the odds.

I am very much a novice, so I claim little experience and no expertise.  But I think handicap stones are supposed to be linear.  I know I have taken a 9 stone handicap and lost before, and even as a novice I have given 6 stones to complete beginners and won.
Naturally the handicap stones work together (even with just 2, though its less obvious, and they reinforce each other much more above 5), but they are supposed to.  If they are refinforcing each other too much for White to have any chance, perhaps that is a sign that one of the two players is being misranked.
If you want to fine tune handicap a bit without giving more stones, you could use a reverse komi or permit free placement of the handicap stones, but give fewer of them, rather than enforcing traditional placement.

A Kris noted the first handicap stone is actually just half a stone. Sensei's has a related page: Proper Handicap
The main part of the question seems to be if scaling the handicap linearly in the rank difference works.
In my experience it is a good approximation, at least up to 6 stones. But this depends a lot on style. I'm a relatively aggressive fighting oriented player, and I tend to do pretty well in handicap games as white. But there are other players whose strength is a proper opening game in an even game. I assume they will have a harder time in high handicap games.
In my experience high handicap games tend to be very unstable. Wins by a 100 points in both directions are very common for me.

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Are professional ranks representative for how many stones of handicap players can give each other?
It was mentioned elsewhere that a 9p could not give 7 stones to a 2p. I have no databases available and wondered if this is correct.
Bonus:  If they aren't representative, why not? And is there a historical reason for it developing that way?

Historically, pro ranks were an indicator of playing strength. It was said that 3 (later: 4) ranks are about a stone difference. To my knowledge, there never was a time when 1 rank difference actually meant 1 stone.
In the 20th century, there was a sudden and increasing change in the strength of new pros. This is generally considered to be a consequence of intensified training in insei schools as well as the advent of the internet and the worldwide communication it enabled.
For instance, earlier, Go schools occasionally developed secret moves - new moves that would stump many opponents who were not familiar with it. Nowadays, such a move would be known by millions right after it is played, and days later, everyone would have studied it already. Modern insei schools make use of this and always present their students with the most up-to-date material and worldwide research, making sure their students are fully aware of the current moves in Go.
Also, there is incredibly fierce competition among the insei. Only a handful of new pros is selected each year, and even the slightest mistake will ruin your chance to become pro. Therefore, everyone is working extremely hard.
This leads to new pros being able to compete on par with previous pros. They already possess the same knowledge as their seniors, and thanks to their young age get less easily exhausted from long, intense games, they are sometimes even said to be stronger than older pros.
In fact, to be successful as a professional Go player, you have to become pro early (around the age 15) and win titles while you still have a slight edge over the competition. In just 10, or 15 max, years, you'll be overwhelmed by the next generation. Very few pros could stay at the top for an extended period of time, one of the most notable being Go Seigen, who dominated the Go world for 30 years. But apart from exceptions like him, modern pros, even huge talents like Lee Sedol, are falling behind very quickly.
This means that rank is basically meaningless. A new 1p may well as strong be as an older 9d. Or the other way around. I asked several pros about this and the reply was always the same: Rank is no longer a useful measurement of playing strength. Personally, I call it an 'experience indicator', but even that is not completely correct.
To compare pros, you need to look at their results in games over time. There are various lists that attempt precisely that, and those lists are a lot more useful than the rank given. Since young pros who do very well get promoted quickly they ensure that the top spots in those lists tend to be occupied by 9 dans, still.
Interestingly, high dan promotions in China and Korea are linked to great performance in title tournaments - both for amateurs and professionals. For instance, a Chinese 6 dan (amateur) is a 5 dan who won a regional tournament. A Chinese 8 dan (amateur) is the current champion of all China (meaning there is only one of them at any time), former champions are 7 dan (*). In a similar fashion, winning an international tournament yields an immediate promotion from 1p to 8p in Korea, while regularly, advancing the ranks is a lot slower. (I'm not 100% up-to-date on details of this topic though.)
Seen this way, ranks of new pros can be seen as a measurement for achievements. Being awarded 9p is indication of outstanding accomplishments. A rank of 1p should not be seen as failure, especially with young pros it simply means their accomplishments will be for later.
Edited to add in 2014:
At times there is a promotion for professionals that specifically promote Go in the West. This is meant to compensate for their lack of tournament experience that is implied by their increased teaching. Since pro rank is an important factor in payment (when teaching), this is an important help for pros working in the West. I am specifically aware of a Korean promotion of Korean professionals from 8p to 9p or from 1p-7p to 8p.
(*) This information about Chinese 6d-8d amateur players appears to be incorrect. I've received multiple explanations as to what the current state actually is, and they all differed, so I'm at a loss here.

At the professional level, rank differences are very slight. ON AVERAGE, it may take a three or four rank difference in pro rank to equal one stone.
But ranks are largely a matter of achievements; how many games or tournaments you've won. It could be that a gifted "newcomer" (few victories, hence relatively low rank) is actually stronger than a higher ranking person with a longer record (but maybe lower win PERCENTAGE).

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Is playing on a 9x9 board a solved problem?
I would think that on a 9x9 board, the number of possible moves is small enough that computers could exhaustively search all possible permutations and compute a line of play that always wins by moving first.  If so, by how many points are you guaranteed to win by?
Has this been done, and was it determined where the perfect move is for a 9x9 board to guarantee a win when going first.  Can you guarantee a win even with some number of handicap due to the perfect first play?

Go was solved up to 5x6 only as of 2009. This table by Erik van der Werf and Mark Winands shows how many points komi to give white such that the solution is a draw for boards up to that size. For instance, on a 5x6 board White should be given 4 points; on a 5x5, White should be given 25 points.
Notice that 25 points is the size of the 5x5 board; ergo, White cannot make a living group on a 5x5 board given optimal Black play (which, I'm not positive, but I think can begin with play in the center). With the 25-point komi, using territory scoring, it becomes optimal play for Black to begin by passing, as it is the case that if Black places a stone, White can win by passing.
I would imagine that with the current state of algorithms and processing power, we're not too far off from solutions for 6x6 and 7x5 Go. But to give a sense of how the problem scales, their 2009 paper about solving 5x6 Go states:

The question now is when would 6×6 be solved? In 6 years time we went from a surface
of 25 (i.e., 5×5) to a surface of 30 (i.e., 5×6) of solved Go boards. This was not
only because of better hardware but also due to a better search engine.
We can try to predict when MIGOS II would be able to solve 6×6 in a reasonable amount
of time by extrapolating the current results....
An optimistic extrapolation suggests that on current hardware MIGOS II would require a
few years to solve 6×6. However, we could easily be underestimating by a factor of
100. Nevertheless, we believe that with some effort αβ-based solvers, such as MIGOS
II, should be able to solve 6×6 within the next 5 years, especially because signiﬁcant
improvements in the evaluation function are still possible.

Thanks, I guess this partly answers my Deep Blue question.

Bump ... 2017 ... is it solved now?

How about training a policy network to get a better move ordering which potentially makes PVS faster and reduce the tree size?

The 5x5 board is a perfect example of why territory scoring is inferior to area scoring

No. 6x6 is the largest actually solved. 7x7 has a solution that is believed to be correct but is not proven to be correct. 9x9 is not anywhere near solved yet.

Here's a reference of 7x7 unsolved: http://senseis.xmp.net/?Willemien%2Fsolving7x7go. Here is a copy of what is believed to be optimal: http://www.goproblems.com/prob.php3?id=12825&pths=1

Sorry that I wasn't explicit, but I was wondering about why Daniel mentioned 6x6 as unsolved while you mentioned it as solved. Well, it does not really matter as the question is about 9x9 and Daniel says it will happen somewhere soon; but it would be nice to have a reference about 6x6... :)

Correct Komi on 6x6 is listed as known to be 2.0. This is equivalent someone having solved 6x6. Here's one reference where it's handled as a known fact: http://www.mail-archive.com/computer-go@computer-go.org/msg09447.html

The computer-assisted human solutions by Ted Drange for some smaller boards turned out to be in error when they checked using the MIGOS. So Ted's opening & response trees for the first few moves on the 6x6 and 6x7 may turn out to constitute a partial solution in the sense that each branch ends with "left as an exercise to the reader" and is correct, or there might be errors.

Almost...
In 2009 (looks like it was a good year for computer go) a program called MoGo managed to beat 9p and 5p players on a 9x9 board with no handicap. The program uses Monte-Carlo tree searching and ran on a research grid.

This is not an answer to the question at all though. Chess bots beat pros all the time yet chess is still far from being solved.

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What is a good way to get used to counting points?
Being able to count is important - in the end, it's about the points. Does anyone have any tips to get used to counting during a game, little things that can speed it up or make it a little less tedious in the beginning?

The advice I have heard most is to count in pairs.  The human mind can easily count groups of around four objects, and so it may be beneficial to eventually move to counts of fours, but pairs tend to be easier in my experience.  Count a dead stone as one pair, and if you see a lone empty spot, just mark that in your mind and continue, removing the mark and adding a pair once you see another lone empty spot.
Once you have your count for one colour, either subtract that number from 50 (or 100, if there's a lot of empty room), or start counting down.  Otherwise, you are very likely to forget the score you counted, making you start all over again.
Another useful trick is to simply balance large pieces of territory against each other, and then count what's left;  this is less accurate, but in the mid-game speed may be more important and you may be unable to give good estimates, anyway.  Make sure to multiply the value of an area by the probability of the player keeping it;  a good way to do this automatically is to count in threes or fours when looking at large areas that are very likely to be invaded.
A fairly obvious trick is to count in your opponent's time; however, be careful that you still count the effect of your move before you play it (if possible), and not afterwards.  Especially in the yose, if you have time, try to count how many points a move will cost.  In many cases, you may find that taking sente may be worth more than responding to the opponent's move.
Finally, if you happen to have trouble keeping track of the score, consider learning binary;  it'll let you count to 1023 on your fingers, which should be enough for most games. :)

+1: I found this very effective.  Another advice is to count pairs as one point, not two. Easier to do 1,2,3, ... than 2,4,6, ...

Certainly, apologies if this was unclear from the post. :)

"Consider learning binary..." - You could also count using a Gray code, which is easier to count on your fingers because you only have to move one finger at a time.  However, that's even more difficult to learn how to translate :P

Also try an intuitive count as a way of training that intuition.  Think about how you've come out in the exchanges you've had with your opponent.  Did you get something and your opponent got something?  That's roughly equal. Did you come out with a very poor result in one place and your opponent in another?  That's also roughly equal at that point.  If you've been robbed and your opponent has not then you're behind.  This approach will also lead to you asking others for advice on how to assess positions and results of exchanges.  In the long term this is very useful.  Point by point counting is actually easier to learn.

You can make notes. Note what are your estimates of every territory avery 10 or 20 moves.
Not only it will allow you to track the score but also you will learn on your mistakes (in the end of game you will get accurate score). But also you will learn values of particular moves expanding territories. You also will get a grasp on value of thickness as territories will start to appear "out of thin air".
Also with time you will remember all you have written, as it will become a habit.
Good luck!

For some reason, it never really occurred to me to use pen and paper while playing go. Would that not be considered rude, or at least poor form?

It depends, but in general that is ok. For instance it is encouraged to make notes of your moves in the game.

The way I was taught is to count groups of two points:

0.5 for each empty space (1 for every 2)
1 for each of the opponent's dead stones on the board.

In my experience, this makes counting board score much easier.

So you end up with "half the score", which means you have a lower number in your head, presumably easier to remember? Thanks :)

Count the space, ignore the stones. I usually count space like Japanese rule.
I don't count very often, usually after most of the board are shaped.
After counting, remember the delta. For example, if I am 5 points behind, play like I am going to gain 6 points. Adjust the delta along the game. In such way, I don't have to count staring from zero every time.


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Is there an equivalent of Deep Blue in the Go world?
Deep Blue was a chess-playing computer developed by IBM. On May 11, 1997, the machine won a six-game match by two wins to one with three draws against world champion Garry Kasparov. Kasparov accused IBM of cheating and demanded a rematch, but IBM refused and dismantled Deep Blue. Kasparov had beaten a previous version of Deep Blue in 1996.
Is there an equivalent program that challenged and won the top Go masters (on the standard sized board)?
Is there a specific research project like this in progress?

Off topic: I found Kasparov's argument for cheating truly compelling when I read about it years ago, but I guess we'll never know the truth!

Perhaps you could make the question a bit more specific by asking what's the highest ranking any bot has ever reached to date

AlphaGo
Now there is AlphaGo by Deep Mind, a company recently bought by Google playing currently a match against 9p Lee Sedol. It is the Deep Blue of Go.
EDIT: The final result of the match of five games was AlphaGo 4 – Lee Sedol 1. This confirms the former conjecture: AlphaGo is the Deep Blue of Go.

Edit your answer to : "by a company that google bought" and I'll like your answer !

No link(s) to coverage?

@hkBst: Not yet, Links are plenty at this time, but many of them will be short-lived. Use your favourite search engine.

@hkBst https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP7jMXSY2xbc3KCAE0MHQ-A/videos?live_view=502&shelf_id=2&view=2&sort=dd

https://deepmind.com/alpha-go.html  AlphaGo 3 - Lee Sedol 0, when I write this.

Might be worth updating this answer with the final score of AlphaGo 4 - Lee Sedol 1. I think it's safe to say AlphaGo is the Deep Blue of Go.

I would also recommend to remove the "breaking news"...

On an 19x19 board there is no computer that evens top level players (9p) as of November 2011. It seems that the strongest programs for the moment use Monte Carlo methods and from time to time matches with pro's are organised, though usually with handicap. The level reached by programs for the last couple of years seems to indicate that they need at least 7 stones handicap against a 9p player.
Amongst computers you can get an idea which programs are strongest by checking this page however that doesn't necessarily tell you very much about the strength vs human players.
Wikipedia has a quite up to date recent results section on computer vs human player go.
On senseis library there is a list of programs and if you check the pages for individual programs you find a summary of their most important matches against both humans and other bots.

No professional player can give 7 stones to another professional player. A professional 9-dan would most likely lose a game against a professional 1-dan at two stones, assuming the professional 1-dan is reasonably young. The top 7-dan amateurs can utterly annihilate professional 9-dans at 3 stones, for that matter.

Not sure how you got 1p-2p from being 7 stones below 9p. This would put them in the middle amateur dans, with is consistent with their results on KGS.

I'll follow up your links, it seems like the answer is No -not for standard board sizes.

yes, sorry, my answer talks about 19x19. I am not an expert on the handicap professionals can give each other. In principle one dan of difference means you can have an "even" game with one stone of handicap. Maybe in practice that is not the case. If some definite conclusion about this is given here, I will update the answer.

1 handicap stone = 1 rank only applies to amateur ranks. Professional ranks are much closer. Perhaps 2 stones from top pro to weak pro. And pro-dans aren't a direct reflection of strength. I'd see them more as achievements which get awarded for good tournament results. "BillSpight: The traditional pro handicapping made a difference of three ranks per stone. However, with the new (post-WWII) pro rankings, there seems to be a two-stone difference between 9-dans and shodans, which translates to about 1/4 stone per rank."

No Go-playing program to date has been known to match the strength of professional players.
The Wikipedia article on Computer Go offers an in-depth discussion about the subject.
According to that article, as of 2011, "the best Go programs running on stock hardware are ranked as 2 dan - 5 dan."
One of the problems is the large number of possibilities.
According to the aforementioned Wikipedia article, in 2008, a program called "MoGo" won a game against a professional on a 9x9 board, but the same program lost to the same professional on a 19x19 board, despite receiving 9 handicap stones.

Thanks, I noted that on the computer go wiki page. Was hoping for more research based answers. Good answer otherwise.Thanks.

To my knowledge, no. I barely know how to play go, but I can speak to the AI side of things a bit.
Deep Blue basically uses a big ol' search tree to look many, many moves into the future, like it's testing out numerous parallel games. If a series of moves doesn't terminate in a win or loss, a unit called the "static evaluator" applies a bunch of heuristics to figure out who gains an advantage from the board state. These values then percolate up the tree and are used to decide which current move is most likely to win some advantage for the AI player.
There are two main limiting factors prohibiting a Deep-Blue-like approach to an AI for go: game complexity and hardware limitations.
The first is the inherent complexity of the game. For instance, there's "branching factor". Try to visualize a go game in progress and a chess game in progress, like you've just sat down in front of a half-played board and are trying to make your next move. Because the go board is larger you can place a stone anywhere, there are more possible moves you could make on any given turn. The set of an opponent's possible plays in response to that move is also greater, and so on and so on. This means the tree of all possible game states grows much more quickly, making it harder to look many, many moves into the future. (You can work around this somewhat with "pruning" techniques: basically write off any branches that seem like they're quickly heading off into a losing position; there's no evaluative shortcut that works as well as counting material in chess, though.)
The other is actually the rules for AI players. If I recall correctly, the major tournament organizations require AI software to run on off-the-shelf consumer hardware. Deep Blue had a supercomputer's worth of memory and processing power, including custom-built chips for performing static evaluation in hardware.
So, in essence, a go AI in the style of Deep Blue, using deep search supported by massive processing power, is infeasible. However, a go AI in the style of TD-Gammon (which essentially operates based on learned heuristics) may be. The best information I can really offer on the current state of the field is a Wikipedia link, though.

Is there an equivalent program that challenged and won the top Go masters (on the standard sized board)?
No. According to Wikipedia a win at 6 stone of handicap was the best result against a pro. It's quite far from an even match
Is there a specific research project like this in progress?
In fact several scientific does reasearch in computer go theory exist and the most improvement by such researcher is monte carlo tree search which enabled computers to play even against strong amateurs (5 dan) on a 19x19 board. A good overview of top research can be found in Łukasz Lew phD thesis. However maybe due to the difficulty of the task the means given to computer go is not comparable to the ones of computer chess.


text:
When is the winning condition checked in Fluxx?
New Rule "Draw 4" is in play.
One opponent changes the Goal to "10 cards in hand".
I have six cards in my hand. It's my turn and I draw four cards.
I contend that the game is now over, as I have met the winning condition. (I don't have any Creepers.)
Another opponent says "no, you have to finish your turn".
Who is correct?
I don't see how he can be right. For one thing you can win on someone else's turn assuming you have the winning combo.

You won.
From the Fluxx rules:

Winning the Game
The game continues until one player meets the conditions of the current Goal. That player wins immediately, regardless of whose turn it is.

The word 'immediately' doesn't match with what your opponent was trying to tell you.

A more common situation where that rule comes into play is when someone plays several goals from their hand consecutively. This is almost equivalent to playing one goal and discarding the others (assuming no Double Agenda in play) -- except that, if someone else happens to meet one of the intermediate goals, they've won and the game ends.


text:
Can you play 'After You' when Callous Guards is in play?
The "Callous Guards" card states:

Put this card in front of you.  Action cards that alter the line may not be played.  (This includes adding or discarding nobles.)  You may discard this card at any time.

If a player has the "Callous Guards" card in front of him/her, can another player play the "After You..." card which states:

Put the noble at the front of the line into another player's score pile.

A couple of us could not agree whether the play was allowed or not.  I'm on the "it's legal" side because putting the noble at the front of the line into another player's score pile is not "discarding" the noble.  I understand "discarding" as removing the noble into the discard pile (i.e. no one gets points for a "discarded" noble).
Others argued that putting the noble into another player's score pile was "altering" the line.
Thoughts?

Related note: The game designer for Guillotine recommends removing the Callous Guards card from the game.

The consensus on this "Official Guillotine FAQ" thread is that yes, you can play After You... with Callous Guards in play.

After you does not change the order of the line, nor does it "add" or
  "discard".  Ergo, you're fine to play it.

It's a consensus that no one has stepped forward to challenge for a couple of years, at the very least!

+1 For a good source. I am surprised that the consensus is that "putting" is different from "moving" in terms of whether or not an alteration is made. Especially since Callous Guards does not specify the order of the line. Might have to create a BGG account...

Nice find.  I recently registered at that site at hadn't considered checking their forums.  @shujaa made some good arguments in his response but since I agree that "Double Feature" and the Fast Noble are fair game when "Callous Guards" is played, I have to side with playing "After You..." being legal.  Best to be consistent!

If you read the thread referred to (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/217462/offical-guillotine-faq) you’ll find out that the answer really is NO; you can’t play After You in that case.
See answer from Robert Eng.

We did check with Wizards on this. After You...: "Put the noble at the front of the line into another player's score pile" "Putting" a noble anywhere is moving it explicitly moving it, which is prohibited by the Callous Guards card. The fact that the noble goes into another player's score pile is incidental. It is technically not "Collecting" a noble, which is why Double Feature works. The effects are similar but different.
Robert Eng
VP of GameTable Online

I believe you are in the wrong. The "adding or discarding nobles" is included in the definition of altering the line, but this is not presented as a definition. "After you..." is an action card, and it has an effect on the line, changing it. Thus it qualifies as an "action card that alters the line," and cannot be played due to "Callous Guards".
"Callous Guards" allows cards that change a player's actions, for example "Collect an additional noble from the front of the line" is fine as the effect is on your turn (and the number of collections), not the line. But "put the noble at the front of the line"  sounds just like moving a noble, i.e. altering the line.
My last argument is: if you were to re-write "After you..." so it would be clearly allowed by "Callous Guards", it would be very easy: "Choose another player. That player immediately collects the first noble in line. Then continue with your turn." However, to rewrite it to clearly be disallowed you might end up with something like "Move the noble at the front of the line to another player's score pile." (If you think "move" more clearly "alters the line" than "put" does.) But this is basically how it's written, just more awkward sounding.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Why is Homelands considered among the worst Magic expansions?
In various forums and articles, it is frequently mentioned that Homelands is one of the worst, if not the worst, Magic the Gathering expansions. Even on the main Wizards website, you will occasionally see this mentioned. Is there any canonical consensus as to what was wrong with the expansion?

It helps to look at the whole set in Gatherer and think about what you don't see.

The only counterspell is Memory Lapse (this is actually better now than it was back then -- remember this was competing with Counterspell and Mana Drain).
There are no real card draw spells. There is one looting spell, Forget, and one search spell, Merchant Scroll; all the other "draw a card" cards are cantrips.
The only straight-up removal spell costs 5 (beyond that, you've got the annoyingly-specific artifact-smashing Legends and Serrated Arrows, which is one of the few cards to escape Homelands and actually see competitive play).
The only sweepers are a couple of cards that do 1 damage to everything (e.g. Dry Spell) and Apocalypse Chime.
There's no real burn in the entire set. Direct damage is limited to overcosted pingers and cards like Winter Sky.
There are no mana-ramp cards in the set. Only Renewal, which is an awful Crop Rotation.
There are a lots of cards like Æther Storm and Aysen Highway -- which do practically nothing (one notable exception: An-Zerrin Ruins).
Its flagship cards are Legends-style giant honkin' Legends that are practically unplayable against the competitive decks of its day.

Basically it's a set that's full of rather weak creatures and almost nothing else. Have fun turning Spectral Bears sideways!
Mark Rosewater described Homelands this way:

It wasn't very innovative. It didn't introduce any strong mechanics.
  It didn't have good synergy. It wasn't particularly elegant. It didn't
  have many of the qualities that we now judge a set's design by. (To be
  fair, the set was very flavorful, so it wasn't without any design
  merit.)

This reputation was further cemented when Wizards tried to "fix" Homelands' unpopularity by adding stupid rules forcing you to use Homelands cards to the first Pro Tour.

What I find surprising isn't so much that Homelands had all these problems but that the original Magic set (Alpha/Beta/Unlimited) largely didn't. Most of the design space of modern-day Magic can be traced directly to about 300 cards in ABU: direct damage, removal, countermagic, bounce, fast mana, mana ramp, card draw, card filtering, tutors, sweepers, tokens, reanimation, X-spells, even morph.
Now, Homelands was never really meant for stand-alone play; note the inclusion of Leeches, for instance, without any in-set poison cards. As a 1995 Duelist article explained:

Legends also sparked a few key card ideas; in response to
  Serpent Generator and Pit Scorpion, for example,
  Scott and Kyle added an anti-poison card to the set — one of
  what would turn out to be a series of cards meant to help
  counteract various deck strategies.

But, even if you use the core set or previous expansions will make up for them, I think the gaps in the set are still noteworthy as reflections of the designers' general unpreparedness and confusion: Why are there no real burn or removal in Homelands? Because the designers just couldn't seem to get their heads around the role of those things in a game of Magic. Instead you've got way too many narrow cards that try to answer strategies that were mostly too weak to need "answers" anyway.
Overall, it has the feel of someone taking their "kitchen table" dynamic and turning it into a set. I think that's a reflection of the set being designed by folks who weren't really plugged into the ways Magic had developed as a strategic game.

Really good answer.  It's all very well to say "Homelands is bad, with weak, overcosted cards" (nobody likes those, after all) but this really gets to the heart of what things are missing from Homelands that we would expect to see in a good Magic set.  It was obviously not designed to be a fun, self-contained environment to play in; and because the power level is so comparatively low, it doesn't add much to your Magic collection as a whole either.  Blah.

Some of it always felt a bit to me like someone's roleplaying game setting, lovingly but incompetently translated into Magic the Gathering.  Interestingly I tried doing a "Legends Sealed Deck" with a friend at one point, and it was TOTALLY unplayable, so it's not just Homelands that was lacking in proper thought-through gameplay in the early days.  If Legends is better regarded than Homelands it's solely because it had a few powerful "marquee" cards, methinks...

@thesunneversets: I don't think it's just the few "marquee" cards... Legends was at least exploring new design space.  Multi-coloured creatures, cantrips, Enchant Worlds, Legendary cards - all new and interesting at the time.  While few Legends cards are still relevant, most of its mechanical ideas are now staples.  Homeland had no such innovation; its few new ideas were specific anti-strategy targeting.

@Tynam: Legendary multicoloured cards certainly have the "wow" factor... but the legendary mechanic of the time didn't really work (the new implementation is MUCH more playable!), Enchant Worlds were silly and fiddly, and cantrips were really an Ice Age thing.  While I agree that Legends may have tried hard to be cool and flashy, in a way that Homelands dourly failed to be, its ambitions far exceeded its ability to deliver...

@thesunneversets: Sure, Legends wasn't an all-time great.  But at least it put new ideas into the pool; Homelands didn't.  (The legendary mechanic wasn't revised until much later, and it still owes a lot to the original.  And I submit Planechase in evidence that Enchant World is not dead, and should not be.  But we're moving off Homelands, so I'll shut up.)

The same could be said for modern sets like battle for zendikar. Yet those sets are often celebrated by the people from wotc.

First off, let's clarify; Homelands was "bad" in that it was a poorly designed set for the purposes of playing Magic.  This is observable via the incredibly small pool of Homelands cards that have ever seen play in any Constructed format, ever. It was so bad that at the time of Homeland's release when the first Pro Tour was happening, Wizards instituted a rule that each deck had to contain at least five cards from every Standard-legal set in their decks, just so that new the Homelands cards would be showcased in Pro Tour decks.
As for why it was bad, the general consensus is that it was a set designed from a plot and story perspective, with not enough care given to gameplay and mechanics.  A good history of the design is given in the reprinted article, Homelands: The Making of a Magic Expansion.
Overall, it just didn't do enough:

From Mark Rosewater's Make No Mistake:

It wasn't very innovative. It didn't introduce any strong mechanics. It didn't have good synergy. It wasn't particularly elegant. It didn't have many of the qualities that we now judge a set's design by. (To be fair, the set was very flavorful, so it wasn't without any design merit.)

From Why Kamigawa IS the Worst Block Since Homelands:

Why was Homelands so bad? Mainly because the effects generated by the cards didn't impact the game very much and cost a lot of mana not to do anything.

Even ignoring all the aforementioned reasons in the others answers, I would simplify saying that  it's just not fun to play with.
I tried playing with my friend using only Homelands set cards and it was horrible. You couldn't do any interesting combination, no strategy. You feel powerless, impotent.
A lot of people (kids at the time) bought large quantities of Homelands boosters because they were cheaper than the alternative (Revised, fourth edition, Ice Age, Mirage), only to realise the cards were unplayable. People ended up hating the set.

If you want more in depth details, you can listen to the episode 25 of Drive to Work podcast by Mark Rosewater. Here is a direct link, but you can find in most of the podcasting apps

One other factor it was way over printed. This combined with its unplayable cards nearly sank Wizards of the Coast and Magic. Wizards sank a lot of money into a product that didn't move, cost them players, and gave them few to no new tools. There is few cards that left there mark on the game and no mechanics. It couldn't stand on its own. The packs was often sold at a loss. I remember stores selling packs at $0.25 and even $0.15. Commons sold for $0.05 to $0.25 depending on playability. Think about it a good in print common like lightning bolt or Terror was worth more than an entire pack of homelands. Even today you can buy Homeland packs at $2 a shot.

Do you have a source for the statement that Homelands was overprinted? Are you sure you're not mixing it up with Chronicles, the set that was so badly overprinted that Wizards had to create the Reserve List?

How do packs go for as low as 15 cents if commons go for 5 cents and up? At that rate wouldn't it be best to crack them and get the buck worth of commons, plus uncommons and rares, financially for the stores?

I'm tempted to mark this question as subjective, but I suppose we can try and look at it from a more objective "what makes magic work" and how you define "bad" viewpoint.
What makes an expansion bad? I can think of two things: how it contributes to the limited environment (drafts, sealed deck tournaments) and how it contributes to the constructed environment (standard, extended, vintage, etc.)
So let's take a look at commons to evaluate how limited for Homelands is like. Ugh. Overcosted, low power creatures, quite often with significant drawbacks or costs for minimal abilities. As just one example, compare Samite Alchemist to that staple of original Magic: Samite Healer.
Now, Samite Healer was never that great to begin with. Two mana for a 1/1 body in white, tap to prevent one damage. So if he's blocking alone, it's like getting 1/2 body for two mana. Of course you could use the healer on other creatures for fancy combat tricks. Still, its impact is fairly minimal.
For Samite Alchemist, you have to pay two more mana for to get a 0/2 body, and to prevent 4 damage (not an insignificant amount, I concede) not only do you have to have two untapped plains to save it, but you also have to give up the use of that creature for next turn. If someone decides to use direct damage before your attack, to save it you must give up two turns of it not attacking.
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to go through those commons and see how weak they all are. If I remember correctly, the only common to see significant constructed play was Serrated Arrows.
The Uncommons and Rares were also similarly weak and overcosted. The uncommon filter lands were terrible. Here is a list of Homeland cards on Gatherer rated 4 or better. Count 'em. Seven. Not sure how Didgeridoo snuck in there but I suppose it would work well with Changelings. :)
How do you judge an expansion as bad objectively? Well I suppose by the value of the cards, when it came out and over time. I remember when Homelands came out at the height of Magic's initial wave of popularity, and if I remember correctly, its print run quite outstripped demand. This also contributes to it being perceived as the worst expansion, as none of the cards really got to be worth much due to overprinting and low demand.


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What is a good strategy for selecting commons and uncommons for trade folders?
I recently came into several large collections of Magic cards that I am looking through for trade stock, obviously cards such as Counterspell tend to be good trade stock even though they are common; however, what is a good strategy for going through the rest of the cards? Are their certain abilities or creature types that I should look for or is it best to just look for what is still legal in Standard?

Quick question - are these collections exclusively older cards, or are there recent sets included as well? I'm planning on putting a quick list of eye-grabbers for you.

@IanPugsley They tend to be a mix. I recently stored out a collection that was mostly The Dark and Ice Age, but I have another collection that is going to be primary the Urza block.

What I'm asking in particular is if there's anything printed since October 1, 2010 (Scars of Mirrodin's release date), which would be included in Standard right now. Some of those commons and uncommons have some considerable value, but if you don't probably have any, there's no need for me to include a list of key Standard cards that aren't reprints.

@IanPugsley Pretty much everything is older cards, the Urza block cards are among the newest.

There are really three distinct things you're looking for:

Playability in Standard
Playability in Vintage/Legacy
Playability in EDH/Commander and other popular variants

The first two are actually fairly easy to gauge; the more playable a card is, the higher its price is (typically).  Use something like Magic.TCGPlayer, http://magiccards.info/, or another pricing site to look up your cards and see if they're of value.  Alternatively, you could look up lists for the most playable (read: highest value) common/uncommon cards in those formats and look for those cards specifically.
The third option is a little more difficult; since EDH decks are built with 100 cards with no more than 1 of any given card (besides basic lands), lots of commons and uncommons are more popular and playable than in Vintage/Legacy.  I'd recommend looking up lists of common and uncommon EDH staples and seeing what cards you might have.
The key thing you're looking for really in any card is the effect-to-mana-cost ratio.  Cards like Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, Mana Leak, Terminate, Sensei's Divining Top - things that are cheap with powerful effects are really what see play.

I've been taking the price list approach but it tends to be a bit time consuming, so what I'm really looking for are specific abilities to look for, i.e. Counter target spell. I've heard that cards that give a card advantage, mana advantage, or deal direct damage end to be good for trade stock but I'd like to know more beyond just that.

@RobZ I'll see what I can put together (in general, if it's got blue in it it's worth more :P), but the issue is that you're looking more for mana efficiency than specific abilities. Even cards like Mind Funeral are high-value because of their effect-to-mana-cost ratio, despite the fact that mill decks see very little play.

@RobZ I think the price list approach is the best one, but I think you may be going about it backwards.  Rather than looking up each of your cards, go the other way: go to your dealer site of choice (mine is Card Kingdom, but Star City Games and Channel Fireball are also popular choices), pick a particular set and look at the commons for that set - it should take you just a few moments to find all the Urza's Saga commons worth more than a dollar (Dark Ritual, Exhume, Priest of Titania and Rewind). Now just search your collection for those; if it's organized by set, this should be easy.

(And if it's not organized by set, I'd encourage organizing it that way - in my experience, people tend to prefer browsing by set even on older cards).  In general, I'd set the threshold at $1 for commons and around $2 for uncommons - that should still give you a few cards (at either rarity) from each set without polluting your binder with too much cruft that people have to sift through.

It really depends on who you're trading with routinely. Generally speaking, if you want to move your trade stuff, you want to match your binder to both the interests and budget of the folks you're trading with. Legacy staples won't move very quickly with a crowd where everyone plays Standard, for instance; nor will $20 tournament cards with a crowd that mostly trades "dollar rares".
I use two rules of thumb for common and uncommon cards:

"Is this played competitively?" That's why a simple uncommon like Go for the Throat is $1.50 now ($6.00 for the alternate-art FNM card). Generally, tournament staples for Standard are the most common and easiest to move, though it may vary in your local area (some places are noted Legacy hotspots, for instance).
"Is this an obscure card with an interesting ability that someone might want for casual play?" The idea here is to put up the cards that'll interest folks who like discard decks, token decks, tribal decks, &c. These cards aren't actually worth a lot, but they make it easier to balance out a trade. They also encourage casual-leaning players to trade with you, since they'll think of you as a source of fun cards they can pick up easily rather than a guy with a binder full of terribly overpriced stuff. I like trading with casual players because they're less likely to be obsessed with gouging you for "value" any time you want a card from them. To showcase these a bit, I generally put thematically-related cards together: Words of Waste and Geth's Grimoire (not uncommons, I know) look so much cooler next to each other, for instance.

Here is a nicely formatted list of staples for EDH:
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/21014577/EDH_Format_Staples_%42NEW%42
While many of the cards on that list are rare there are plenty of commons and uncommons to look out for.  Due to the popularity of EDH/Commander these staple are in high demand and are well worth trading.

I'm afraid I have to agree with some of the criticisms in that thread - that's certainly a list of some cards that EDH decks use, but as a list of staples of the format (and more relevantly for this particular question, a list of 'cards that have value because of EDH'), it falls down a little bit; I would say that the list at http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=252037 is a much better starting point.

I have now read both lists and agree that the mtgsalvation one is the better of the two, I'm new to EDH deck building and will find that list very helpful.  Thanks for the link @StevenStadnicki

You're very welcome - and hoorah, welcome to EDH!  Will look forward to seeing what you come up with as you start to dive into the format. :-)


text:
Does newer card text on a Magic: The Gathering card override the old wording?
While going through the Gatherer database I noticed that the Alpha version of Icy Manipulator says,

{1}: You may tap any land, creature, or artifact in play on either side.

whereas the Tenth Edition of the Icy Manipulator says,

{1}, {T}: Tap target artifact, creature, or land.

This has me wondering, does the newer Tenth Edition card text retroactively apply to the Alpha card or does the Alpha text still apply when that card is in play? In other words, if I were to play the Alpha version, would I play by its rules, or the newer rules on the Tenth Edition card?

All versions of a card are considered to be equivalent and are played with the same text: this text is known as the Oracle wording of the card.  From the comprehensive rules:

108.1. Use the Oracle(TM) card reference when determining a card's wording. A card's Oracle text can be found using the Gatherer card
  database at http://gatherer.wizards.com.

Note that a card's wording isn't always the most recent text on a card!  There are a handful of cards that have errata of one form or another - for instance, Time Vault's Oracle text has changed numerous times, and it's still different in a few small ways from the card as printed.
As far as Icy Manipulator specifically goes, note that the wording on the Alpha (and Beta) versions isn't as different from the 10th Edition version as you might think; while neither uses the tap symbol, they both have the type 'Mono Artifact' which by the rules of the time meant that they were tapped as part of their usage (and thus could only be used once in a turn).  Again, quoting from the comprehensive rules:

Mono Artifact (Obsolete) An obsolete term that appeared on the type
  line of artifacts with activated abilities that caused the artifact to
  become tapped as a cost. Cards printed with this text have received
  errata in the Oracle card reference to simply say "Artifact," and
  those abilities now include the tap symbol in their costs.

Nice comprehensive answer!

I would say there is a crucial difference between the Alpha and 10th Icy: The Alpha wording did not include the word "target", which today could be interpreted such that it's not a targeted ability, meaning you could tap an object that is not targetable by the Icy, for example because of Shroud or Hexproof.

Hackworth: agreed, and that was why I said 'not as different as you might think' rather than claiming they're identical wordings. :-)  Note that 'target' doesn't appear on Magic cards for several years into its lifespan, so this isn't too surprising!

@StevenStadnicki, When did this "Oracle wording" rule came into effect?

@Pacerier Long enough ago that it's difficult to remember - at least a decade if not a chunk longer. Probably close to the time of the 6th edition rules?

And since all cards with the same name are considered identical, this means you can bring your pre-8th-edition cards to Modern and Standard tournaments: https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/15363/can-you-play-older-versions-of-cards-in-standard

The Oracle is the official word on a card's text, unless this* is in play.

*Unglued/Unhinged card sets are not tournament legal cards.

That doesn't actually affect Icy Manipulator, due to the old "Mono Artifact" rules. It's worth a laugh with Floral Spuzzem, though.

Good point!  That's the wonderful thing about Magic, for any rule you care to quote there's always a different rule that can come along and break it :)

@AlexP But if the "mono" rule no longer exists... and we're playing cards exactly as written, and ignoring errata... I can surely use an older Icy Manipulator to pay X and tap X. :)

The Oracle text always takes priority over any card.  I actually did not notice the difference in the two cards at first.  I thought you were referring to "in play on either side" but it would make no sense to tap something that was not in play.  Instead, you are referring to the cost of tapping.
Originally, you were required to tap mono artifacts in order to activate them.  This means the cards are actually played exactly the same way.  Pay the mana cost and tap cost (for either the older or newer card), and you can tap a creature, artifact, or land.  The cost was simply updated because mono artifact cards were made obsolete.  When they changed it to only being an artifact, the cost of tapping had to be added so it would be played the same.
Basically, whenever you have such a question, it is best to use the updated text because it is often more clear based on the current rules; however, if you have the time to access the Gatherer database, you should check the Oracle text because it overrides everything.


text:
How are jokers colored in decks with more than two jokers?
So, normally you have two jokers, a big joker and a little joker. The big one is sometimes distinguished by being red (or colored). How does it work with decks with 4 or more jokers? Is is supposed to alternate black, red, black, red, or is only one supposed to be red, or should the red thing just be avoided with > 2 jokers and some other scheme used to identify their rank?

Ok, I just had a look around... you guys do use this site for regular old playing cards too, right?

@Autohpil Yes. It's not all Magic questions, we swear. :)

Hahah I was tempted to tag it with that, had to look around for [tag:rules]

To delete your account, follow these guidelines (http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5999/how-can-i-delete-my-account) and contact SE directly.

The one 4-joker commercial deck I've seen used 2 black and 2 red.

Thanks, this is helpful. Do you remember if there was any way to tell which pair of red-black jokers outranked the other?

Hmm actually I guess red should always outrank black since it's like a trump suit. I'm still not sure how I should distinguish their rank though.

One of the two blacks was the trademark. The reds were identical.

Good enough for me. I'm going to alternate black/red and put little dots under the center of the card to represent their rank, no dots for the lowest, the most dots for the highest, unless anyone has a better suggestion. That should be pretty scalable.

Jokers aren't normally differentiated by rank in the games I've seen where jokers are used.

I guess I've only ever really used jokers in spades; I know in that case if two people throw jokers they both act as high trumps so one needs to outrank the other. Now that I think about it, though, I'm wondering if some decks have extra jokers as cards you can write on if you lose another card? I've never played with more than two jokers, I just assumed up until now that the extra ones were used in some game though.

This is the strangest accepted answer I have seen. One example apparently explains how decks with 4+ Jokers are supposed to be colored.

@user1873 4-joker single-decks are so bloody rare as to be next-to-impossible to buy. Special order kind of rare.

@GGG What game are you needing joker ordering for? The trick taking games I've encountered with wilds, 1st one played takes it. And many normal decks have two identical jokers; red/black is common, but not entirely standard. Everything else I've encountered simply requires the joker substitute for a valid card

@aramis I'm not entirely sure they need to be ranked, I just feel like they should, just in case. I'm not sure what game they'd need to be ranked in, except for trick-taking games. I guess the whoever-goes-first thing can kind of be explained if you treat each joker as being its own separate untrumpable trump suit. I just want to accommodate any set of rules basically.

@GGG since I've never seen a set of rules for ranking jokers in any game, I really think you don't need to worry about it.

@aramis there are definitely variations of spades that differentiate the jokers (although none use more than two AFAIK). I want my deck to be as flexible as possible :)

There is no common convention for 4 Jokers.
According to Wikipedia

There are usually two Jokers per deck, often noticeably different. For instance, Bicycle Playing Cards prints their company's guarantee claim on only one. More common traits are the appearance of colored and black/non-colored Jokers.

and other websites, there are normally only two jokers. The qualities of which, including appearance were probably borrowed from the Tarrot trump cards the Magacian/Juggler and (which is red in color, and outranks) the Fool (which is black in color), both of which have the apperance of a court jester.

I had a deck of cheap playing cards I bought at the dollar store that had four jokers. I don't remember what they looked like now, though.

The Maverick brand of playing cards (U.S. Playing Card Co.) is one example that sometimes has 2 jokers that simply say, "Maverick" on them and two that show the logo.  Each design is in red on one and blue on the other.
To the best of my knowledge, there's no standard for ranking jokers.

Thanks, this is very helpful. I am trying to conceptualize jokers in a way that resolves them with the other cards and this is consistent with suits and rank... in this case two "ranks" of jokers in each "suit" for a total of four cards.

Most playing card decks I played with here in Hungary usually come with 3 jokers. They have circled stars in the corners. Two of the jokers have black stars, one of them have red.


text:
Are there any non-supply cards besides Black Market?
According to the designer of Dominion, Donald X. Vaccarino:

Bridge makes all cards cheaper, not just ones in the supply. This was to prevent problems in weird situations. I am not sure the kind of thing you'd need to get those problems will ever happen, but I knew that this way of doing it meant I was safe. This also allows some unusual combos to work.

Which non-supply cards does he refer to? The only example I can think of is the Black Market.

All cards not in the supply could include:

Cards in your hand
Cards in your opponents hand
Cards in play (including opponents)
Cards in your deck
Cards in your opponents deck
Cards in your discard pile
Cards in your opponents pile.
Cards in other locations (ie Village Mat)
etc.

Example Play from Intrigue cards:
Play a two Mining Villages, play two Bridges, play a Swindler.
Opponent turns over an Estate which is now valued at $0, replace opponent's Estate with a Curse.

Also, the Prize pile, Madman pile, Mercenary pile, and Spoils pile are all not part of the supply. Of course, these aren't the cards that Bridge rule had in mind.

As of the release of Adventures, there are also the Traveller upgrade lines, which have non-zero costs so they would be affected by cost reduction as well. (Events, since they're not cards, are not affected.)


text:
Will the Star Wars LCG game have Force power cards?
Will the Star Wars Living Card Game have Force power cards, like Force lightning and Force push?

Your question is quite speculative. It's not really suitable for this site, where you should ask "practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face".

@RoToRa, although this question is regarding the future, the game was previewed recently, and is slated for a Christmas launch (or early next year). Although, that is kind of what they said last time before they pushed the release. I personally don't like this question, because it feels like a promotional piece for FFG to get people to go out and watch their video.

Yes. The demo at GenCon 2012 featured at least 3 force power cards, Force Lightning, Force Choke, and Force Rejuvination.


text:
Can't understand the meaning of 'heart finesse'
What does the phrase heart finesse mean? It appears to be a card term:
From "The Logic of Women" by Bernard Marcoux, Montreal:

Think about it a little: if the heart finesse was necessary to the
success of this contract, then the King has to be with West.

From Dictionary.com:

He could try the heart finesse or, if the spirit so moved him, play
for a major-suit squeeze.

That section of the article is about the author (Bernard) getting the lead back into his hand (instead of in dummy) and psyching out West (Aujaleu) by not finessing the king of hearts, which the author had decided had to be with West.  Author led queen of hearts from dummy and made it good when West ducked (didn't use king to take trick) and pulled the king three tricks later, after which his 9 of hearts was good.

Heart Finesse is really two words that should be dealt with separately.  Heart is just one of the four suits in a standard deck of cards.  One could substitute Clubs, Diamonds or Spades and use it in the same phrase.
Finesse is the more interesting term.  It is a form of a dilemma posed to one's opponents in a game of bridge.
When a team makes a contract in bridge they are obligating themselves to capture a certain number of tricks.  For this example we'll choose a contact of "Four Spades".  This obligates the team to take 10 tricks.  The total number of tricks available is 13 and a bid requires (6+the bid) to be successful.
Absent trumps, high cards win each trick in bridge, so aces, kings and queens take most tricks.
To continue this example, the player who made trump is going to realize that he can only make 9 tricks with some certainly and needs to figure out how to gain an extra trick.  A common way to do this is to use a finesse.
The finesse utilizes a gap in the owner's suit of cards and tries to force an opponent into not getting a trick for a high card.
To continue our example assume that the declarer has AQ in hearts and 72 on dummy.  After capturing a trick on dummy he leads the 7.  The opponent now has a dilemma, she can play the King only to see it fall to the Ace, or she can play a lower card and Declarer will cover it with his Queen.  In this way, the Declarer can possibly get two heart tricks when only one was assured.
This is an example of a direct finesse.  There are many other kinds of finesses which you can read about at Wikipedia.  They all have the same basic theme though, trying to get an extra trick (or more) by exploiting a gap in a sequence of cards.
Without any special knowledge a finesse has a basic 50% chance of success.  You can only finesse one opponent and the card you are trying to finesse could always be with the other opponent.  Usually, due to the bidding nature of Bridge you have a pretty good guess at which opponent to finesse, but you never quite get to 100% certainty!
Depending on your knowledge of cards and Bridge in particular I don't doubt that I used terms that are unfamiliar.  Please ask clarifying questions or leave comments and I will explain further.

You can also finesse the A by playing from xxx towards Kxx. So the point about gap is not entirely accurate (but I guess you could say there is a huge gap between the K and the next highest x).

@Aryabhata - true, I purposely stuck with what I felt was the most common finesse and pointed to wikipedia to "cover the bases"  Not knowing the questioners base of knowledge I found it hard to find a balance between explaining too much and too little.  In that particular example, I'd call the gap the A itself, there's just nothing on the high side to bracket it. :)

Yes you could :-)

"Heart finesse" means finesse in the HEART suit.
"if the heart finesse was necessary to the success of this contract, then the King has to be with West."
Let's say you (South) have two little hearts in hand, and AQ of hearts in dummy North. If you lead a low heart, and the king is in West (left), you will play the ace if West plays the king, or the Queen if he doesn't. In such cases, the king is said to be ONSIDE (relative to A-Q in dummy), and you'll win two tricks and make the contract.
If the king were in East, you'd have to make your choice A or queen from the dummy, then East could choose to play the king or not (assuming that he has one small card). In that case, the king is said to be OFFSIDE and you'll lose one trick to the king and lose the contract.


text:
Scrabble variation: use double and triple word scores (but not double/triple letter scores) twice?
Is there a popular Scrabble variation that:

lets you play double/triple word scores twice, once vertically and
once horizontally?
does NOT let you play double/triple letter scores twice?

This is how I've always played, so it surprised me to learn that
official Scrabble rules do NOT permit using double/triple word scores
twice.
Perhaps this was true in an older version of Scrabble (I started
playing in the 70s).

I searched Changes to the Box Top Rules, 1949 - 1999 and found the following clarification was made in 1953:

1953: If a word is formed that covers two premium WORD squares, the score is doubled and then re-doubled (4 times letter count), or tripled and then re-tripled (9 times letter count) as the case may be.

Nowhere in the rules was there any mention of being able to use the same premium square twice.
The Diamond Anniversary Edition rules includes some interesting variations, but does not mention your scoring rules.
Personally, I would find your scoring variation confusing and prone to error, since Scrabble tiles are not transparent, and therefore a novice may have trouble realizing that they are reusing a premium word square.

I have certainly played Scrabble games with people that thought you could re-use bonus squares, though I haven't heard of the distinction you make between word and letter bonus squares. I think this is not so much a common variation as it is a common misconception (like Free Parking in Monopoly).
I have had reasonably-good success weaning people of their attachment to this non-rule by purposely making solid blocks of tiles that have to be carefully lifted and replaced for every word I play :-)

Ha ha! ROFL. +1 just for
by purposely making solid blocks of tiles that have to be carefully lifted and replaced for every word I play". I always play that way.

I'm playing right now.  And the rules state it CAN be done.  Rule 7. When two or more words are formed in the same play, each is scored.  The common letter is counted (with FULL premium value, if any) for EACH word.

Thanks! My question was unclear. I meant forming two words on separate turns, not at the same time. I'm now convinced my "variation" was something totally made up.

Your question isn't completely clear. Once a word has been played. the bonus can't be used again in a later turn, for whatever reason.
If, however, you play a letter that makes one word across and another word down (usually filling in a block of four), then you score both words; if the letter is on a bonus square, presumably you count the bonus twice.

To answer your question directly - yes, I have come across many people,  many times, who were unsure or even adamant that bonus squares should be considered following their intial play.
Does that make it alright? Sure, if every player participating preemptively agrees upon it, much like they must agree to limitations of time, specify what book will settle their disputes should they arise and so forth. Does that make it wrong? Technically, yes it is incorrect but who cares? Anyone considering playing this way is obviously no Joe Edley so naturally they wouldn't!
The beauty of Scrabble lay in its malleable nature! In no two parts of the world are there identical rules and conventions set in place that agree with the next game's set of rules;
Everybody uses a different dictionary.
Everybody subscribes to their own personal rendition of the game.
I have encountered many people over my lifetime of scrabble who have been confused and or were insistent on this variation you bring to light being The Rule. Though I do not agree that this is a proper rule of the game as its creators and overseers have seen fit to include - I do not see any just cause for stifling your own enjoyment of the game!!!
I say play it however the hell you please and let no other signal guide than those variantions that move you :*)

Scoring this play is a point of contention frequently in current games. Interpreting the meaning of [FULL premium value for each word] this way.   I learned to play with 'old timers' in the early 60's.  This kind of play where the premium value for a tile covering a premium word score  was called a 'double-double' or 'triple triple' and so was scored as x4 or x9, like when it covers two premium word scores.  In other words, one play vertically or horizontally makes 2 words such as adding an 's' to pluralize an existing word and continuing the play with a word starting with an 's' like 'shift' would be a double double.   So point seven above would be incomplete,  the common letter ('s') is counted for each word.  However if that common letter covers a premium WORD score then the total letter count of the 2 words is x4.  An example of a triple word premium score like placing an X to make the word OX (vertical) and OX (horizontal) would count the letters of both words -the 'X' counted twice for the letter score- and the total x9 for placing the 'x' on a triple premium word score.   I would be interested to know if anyone else has interpreted it this way.

We always played that if you make two words at once and they are sharing a bonus square only one of those words gets the bonus score


text:
What happens to armor a marine has gained during a campaign when he dies?
Preface
This question is about Doom: The Boardgame. I have translated the rules and items etc. from my native tongue to english to the best of my knowledge, so please be gentle.
The Question
Suppose you are playing a campaign. A marine has found a piece of armor in scenario I and did not die in that one afterwards. So he starts with armor +1 in scenario II. Now the question is: What happens, if the marine dies (kill) in scenario II. Does he respawn with armor +0 or +1 ? Does it make a difference when he has bought the armor using killpoints instead of finding it in one scenario ?
My interpretation
The combination of
A killed marine respawns with the initial amount of armor and health. (rulebook)
and
A marine starts a scenario with the armor and health of the previous scenario (campaign book)
has lead me to the conclusion, that if e.g. Martin the marine starts scenario II with armor 2+1 and health 4 (of maximum 9) and he dies within the scenario, the he respawns with armor 2+1 and health 4 (while maximum remains 9 of course).
However, this interpretation is both counterintuitive (regarding health) and (maybe) a balance issue (regarding found armor).

Please retag using the tag "doom" which seems not be present on the board (yet). With rep < 150 I am not allowed to create that tag on my own.

I'm not a player of the Doom board game, but I'm a player of many other board games and the Doom computer game and therefore think I can make a fair interpretation as to what the rulebook and campaign book rules might mean together.
I think rule 1 (A killed marine...) means that at any time the marine is killed during a scenario he will respawn with the default (as in without any items and bonuses) armour and health.
The second rule (A marine starts a scenario...) in my opinion is not contrary to that because it refers to the beginning of a scenario.
If a marine is killed during the scenario then rule 1 applies and rule 2 does not, if it is the beginning of the scenario rule 2 applies. This seems to match with the Doom computer game, if you finish a level you can take the armour and life to the next level, however if you are killed during a level you respawn with the default armour (0 I believe) and the default health (100 I believe) at the beginning of the level.

thank you. I did not play the computer game, but I always got the feeling that they try to mimic it as best as possible with the board game. So the rules within the computer game are indeed a strong indicator.


text:
What are the rules of the game Senet?
I tried searching the game, but all I got were complicated instructions. So in basic rules, how do you play senet and what do the different symbols mean?

The original rules have been lost. There are two competing interpretations about how the game might have been played. These rules are usually used when the game is reprinted these days. One version is R.C. Bell , the other is Kendall. Both rules sets can be viewed here.
Both rule sets believe that this game was a precursor to backgammon. The game was originally played with 4 sticks that were marked on one side. You would move a single pawn 1-5 squares (one for each mark, or 5 for no marks) along the backwards S-path. Two pawns could not occupy the same space. Your own pawns block your movement, and landing on an opponents pawn either swapped (Kendall) or removed (Bell) the piece(s).
The Bell rules:

Is played with 10 pawns, five for each player.
Players add pawns to the board at the specially marked squares based on their roll, or
Move a pawn already on the board.
Special squares are "safe" from attack.
Landing on an opponents piece removes it from the board, your own pawns block your movement.
Landing on the last, upper-left square scores that player 5 points and sets the ending alternating pattern.
The first player go get all their pieces into the alternating end squares gets 10 points, and one more point for each additional turn their opponent takes.
Pieces in end squares cannot be attacked.

The Kendall rules:

Is played with 10 pawns, five for each player.
Pawns start already on the board in an alternating pattern.
Landing on an opponents square swaps positions, your own pawns block your movement.
The next square marked with the Ankh is where pawns go that fail to make their rolls to get off the board.
The special squares at the end require specific rolls to exit, or send you back to the Ankh.
Winner is the first to get all their pawns off the board.

From (left) - House of Beauty (or Good), House of Humiliation (or Water), House of Three Judges (or Two Truths), House of Two Judges (or Ra-Atum), House of Heru (or Horus).

This is a good answer, but do you have a source for this. A source will let you have proof. More proof means more up votes for you and to me!!!

Proof for what, that the original Papyrus rules from ancient Egypt don't exist, proof that Kendall / Bell came up with their best guess at the rules set? I think if anything, my answer could be shortened. The OP is asking how it is played (like backgammon), this could be covered by how the.pieces are moved, win conditions, etc. They also want to know the meaning of the symbols (need to flesh out the 5 symbols at the bottom, what the symbols are, and what they mean).

The answer itself is good what do the squares do?

Try watching this video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R2bxk5K4J0
I hope it helps!

Hello and welcome to BCG.  Could you expand this answer?  If that video ever gets taken down this answer won't be very helpful; we try to aim for answers that stand on their own.  Links are fine, but link-only answers are kind of fragile.  Thanks.


text:
Can I start with my identity card unrezzed?
The rules state

There are six types of Corporation cards: identities, operations, agendas, ice, upgrades, and assets... Corporation cards are installed facedown, and are inactive unless rezzed.

Does that mean if I'm playing as the corp I can start with my identity card unrezzed (and therefore inactive and providing no bonus), or must I reveal my identity to the runner immediately? Or is it special and not technically "installed"?

At the very start of the Setup section the rules read:

Choose Sides: The players decide who will play as the  Runner and who will play as the Corporation. Then, each  player places his
  identity card faceup in his play area and  takes a corresponding deck.

Initial identities go face up.  It's only subsequently that Corporation cards should be installed facedown.
"Rezzing" is furthermore defined as "the act of flipping a facedown card faceup"; so if the initial identities are faceup, there can be no question of them starting the game "unrezzed" (if that wasn't already obvious).


text:
How do I tell at a glance whether a Warjack is focus hungry or not?
I'm fairly new to Warmachine and whilst perusing through various fora and what not, I hear that some Warjacks are focus heavy and some are not. Obviously some like the Berserker are focus-light but how does one generally tell whether a Warjack is focus hungry at a glance?

It may not be easy as a new player since some of that will come with experience.
Ask what role the warjack is going to fill and then how much focus it will normally need to do that.  Will you need to spend focus to run/charge/power attack?  Will you need to boost to hit? To damage? To make extra attacks?  Do they have something that lets them save on focus (this is why the Berserker is focus-light)?
A basic jack designed to run into melee and whack something is going to need more focus than a 1 ROF ranged jack with a good RAT, or one that is mostly just used for its arc node.


text:
Space Marine Charge & Rapid Fire
In the 6th edition, the "Declare Charge" rule specifies that if the unit shot a Rapid Fire weapon then they can't charge.
Tactical Space Marines have a bolter (24ps range) and a bolter pistol (12ps range) as basic equipment.
I understand that within a 12ps range, I can't shoot the bolter (not even as single shot) and charge. I also understand that within the 12ps range, I can only shoot as rapid fire (two shots)
But within the same 12ps range, can I decide to shoot with the pistol and then charge?
My understanding would be "yes".

When a model is armed with multiple separate ranged weapons, you only have to follow the restrictions of the ones you use.  So if you choose to fire your Bolt Pistol instead of the Bolt Gun you are free to charge in the same turn.  Pistols have no restriction against assaulting after using them.
If you choose to fire the bolt gun at either its full or rapid fire range you cannot assault.


text:
Space Marine squads and "Split Fire" rule
With the 6th edition rules, squads must all fire upon the same unit. An exception is made if the unit contains at least one model with the "split fire" rule (6ED, page 42).
Neither the Devastors, nor Tactical squads, in the Dark Angels codex (6ED, page 103), nor in the Blood Angels codex (5ED, page 95) have the "split fire" rule. As a side note, some Dark Angel units have it but no Blood Angels have it at all.
This youtube video (starting at 6:50) suggests that the squads have "Split Fire".
First question: where in the 6ED rules is it specified that Devastator squads have split fire?
Second question: do Tactical squads have split fire? If so, where in the 6ED rules is that specified?

I'm not 100% on this (and I can't check the video right now) but maybe they mean combat squadding a 10 man devastator squad? This means you would have two units of 5 marines with 2 heavy weapons- then you could fire at two different targets, but still only take up one spot on the force org chart. I'm fairly sure neither devastator nor tactical squads have split fire.

I've edited the post to add the time for the video

Devastator does not have split fire. No marine devastator-equivalent except Space Wolves Long Fangs have the ability to target more than one unit. Fritz either made a mistake or he meant that even if they were to get split fire for free, that's still a lot of points in one unit.


text:
Is this card game found in casinos?
In the paper [1], the authors write

"... the problem is equivalent to a card game played in Las Vegas:
   The cards of a shuffled deck are dealt one at a time and face up.
  At the same time the player calls the denominations in the order
  ace, two, three,..., queen, king; ace, two,...
  A match occurs when the player calls the same denomination as the
  card dealt; the suits need not match. The player wins if no match occurs."

Is this game actually played in Las Vegas casinos, and if so, what is it called?
[1] F. F. Knudsen and I. Skau,
On the Asymptotic Solution of a Card-Matching Problem,
 Mathematics Magazine 69 (1996), 190-197.

I'm not entirely sure but that sounds sort of like pharo, which has not been in casinos some time as it was proven to not favor the house.

@AdamP I had trouble finding your reference but Faro or Pharaoh seems to be close.

@Pow-Ian yes that is the game I thinking of. Sorry for the misspelling I was going purely off memory. I do not know if it is the game described by the OP but it sounded similar enough to bring the game to my memory.

This question seems to be answered in the comments:
@AdamP I had trouble finding your reference but Faro or Pharaoh seems to be close.


text:
Victory point counting and Sanguinary Priests
Up to 3 Sanguinary Priests (Blood Angel Codex) count as a single unit choice, but how must we count the victory points for killing them?
Do all 3 must be removed for it to count as 1 VP? Or do each causality count as a single VP?

I don't know about this, but I had a look around for you and found this: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/261515-sanguinary-priest-spam/
in it, Xenith states:

Individual models are each a kill point. KP is not based upon how many
  force org slots are taken up.
Case in point being dedicated transports.
Sorry

Hope this helps :)

authors: สําราญ คล้ายเดือน


text:
Can we take "Death Company Tycho" in an army without a Death Company?
Captain Tycho (Blood Angels Codex, 5ED) can be chosen as either as "Captain Tycho" or "Death Company Tycho".
I haven't found any indication that you must have a Death Company to include the DC version of Tycho.
Can I have an army with "Death Company Tycho" but with no Death Company?

Yes.
He is an individual model. He does not come attached to the Death Company nor can he join it, because he is not an Independent Character (the 'normal' version is an Independent Character). This is how the rules are written and was confirmed in the Blood Angels FAQ published on the Games Workshop website, last updated February 2013:

Q: Are the Sanguinor, Mephiston and Death Company Tycho Independent
Characters, or single model units in their own right? (p.41, 47, 51)
A: Single model units in their own right.

Wow. I've just noticed (after your post) that "Independent Character" is, in fact, missing from those 3 profiles in the codex.

Here is an official e-mail answer from Games Workshop customer service:

I cannot find any restrictions, so I believe you can take Death Company Tycho without a unit of Death Company.
Thanks,
David Monroe
Games Workshop
North America Customer Services

Just clarifying: are you posting this as yourself, or is this an e-mail reply that GW sent you (in which case I'd like to edit it to look like a quote)?

It's an e-mail I received from custserv@gwplc.com

Thanks! I modified your original answer slightly to include the info.


text:
Is it required that someone is Admiral?
When starting a game of Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game, the three players selected Roslin, Tyrol, and Apollo. Per page 5 of the rules, none of us are the Admiral. Then we got a Crisis card that clearly expected someone to be the Admiral, as the Admiral makes a choice.  The rules have a full line of succession for Admiral on page 28, but no text makes it clear that this list applies for game setup when determining who the Admiral is.
Is there supposed to always be an Admiral, and if so how are they selected?

That's a great question. I never noticed that the setup rules only list the top three in the line of succession. We have always played as if the full line of succession were in play there. So in your example, the admiral would be Apollo. Not having an admiral (or president for that matter) would cause some significant game play issues. I have to assume the intention was to always use the full line of succession. So I would say, yes, someone always has to be admiral.
In the base game, the only way this can happen is in a three player game where someone chooses a support character, i.e. Tyrol. I think this was an oversight in the rules. Without Tyrol, it would be impossible for this to happen, because someone would have to choose one of the three military leader characters.
If you follow the rules-as-written, to the letter, it could be even stranger in a game including the Pegasus expansion. Cain is first in line of succession, but I don't believe anything in the rule book technically modifies the rule you mention on page 5 of the base rule book. So if Cain and Helo were both selected, a literal interpretation of the rules would give the admiral title to Helo. Clearly that isn't the intent. I think the obvious answer is to always refer to the line of success lists.

Yes, you MUST always have an Admiral, just as you must always have a President. Page 28 of the rulebook has the full line of succession. If none of the players have selected a character from that initial list, the Admiral title simply goes to the next person on the full list:

Adama
Tigh
Helo
Apollo
Starbuck
Boomer
Tyrol
Zarek
Baltar
Roslin


text:
How long are magic cards actually "printed"/"In production"
Basically I'm wondering how long Magic cards are actually printed/in production. IE: Being made.
I would assume it's just whatever is in the standard block? but it could go further back. Wizards has a reprint policy, but it has more to do with specific cards and not decks as a whole.
Thanks!

depends on how the set sells, usually there is a second print run, sometimes a third...

I cannot speak towards any product printed and packaged for general consumption (ie. booster boxes, theme decks, special sets such as Planeshift or Commander, and Fat Packs, among others), but Wizards does list redemption guarantee dates for sets redeemable from Magic: the Gathering Online.
From their Magic Online Product Release & Redemption Schedule:
As a general rule, Magic Online sets will be available for redemption roughly one month after they are released. If a redeemable set runs out of stock before its Redemption Guarantee Date, the set will be reprinted. After a redeemable set's Redemption Guaranteed Date has passed, such set will be available while supplies last or until its Cutoff Date, whichever comes first. All cutoff times are 9:00 AM.
At the very least, it appears that Wizards will print new product at least until approximately one month after a set rotates out of the Standard Format (if the initial print run is not sufficient to meet the Magic: Online redemption demand.)

Here is an article on wizards.com which explains how a card goes from conception to print. Magic the Gathering cards are printed by a company called Carta Mundi. I was going to theorize that sets are just printed in one run and warehoused for distribution, but your answer has specific details on how long a set is printed. It seems you only have to look at Magic Online Redemption Guarantee Dates to see how long a set is in production. Good answer.

I think if that ever actually happened someone in supply chain management would be looking for a new job :)

@Affe I agree. Though if a set turned out to be surprisingly very popular, I can see there being more print runs within the window. Similarly if a set bombed, there probably wouldn't be reprints and a good deal of surplus stock (like Fallen Empires back in the day).

I do know for a fact that the Innistrad set stopped being printed several months before rotating out of standard, meaning your final statement is incorrect.

@bengoesboom My final statement is predicated upon Wizards following their own policy, which means that if they run out of redeemable product before 10/31/13, they will print more Innistrad.


text:
How can I persist XP and gold when my players change between games?
I've been playing Descent a few times with a few different players. Unfortunately players change, but we keep the XP and gold for the heroes that do play, and when a new player joins they are restricted to choosing only a hero that hasn't been picked yet.
However I'm really not sure how to manage the XP/gold when either

A new player joins halfway through the campaign (or whatever act they may be on).
The Overlord player wants to actually play a hero (because as much as I like being the Overlord.....it's nice to be a hero too).

I see only a couple of options:

The "New" person picks a hero and starts with starting equipment.
Some sort of house rule. To me maybe this would be a new person starting with whatever the "weakest" person has earned gold/XP-wise?

I really can't figure out a good way to do this. Having multiple campaigns with multiple sets of people would get really confusing, plus those who JUST played a certain act, wouldn't want to have to replay it. Plus, RP wise, new people join groups all the time so there is that?
What I've been doing is tracking XP/Gold per hero or Overlord, and not per player. So if someone new comes by and they want to play hero X, then they'd get all the benefits of that hero.
Anyone have any ideas for this conundrum?

I've found that Descent is really made for one-off games, and not for campaigning.  As much as anyone's tried to tack it on.
If every game is a new game, and everyone always starts again at zero, then this problem just disappears entirely.
For campaign-style play, we just stick to classic pen-and-paper RPGs.  Works well.

I suggest involve 4 heroes every campaign, regardless the players number, that will be fine, some veteran can handle more than one hero. If some new player join, he can pick any one from the four heroes.
There's some variant in BGG forum can make this like a co-op game, like this one.

We start with 4 Heroes. Everyone gets the XP and the loot. Even if there are only 3 Heroes, we take the 4 Heroes Loot (if its making an difference). Else the Heroes would be Later on to weak. Also for Shopping we play with 4 Hero rules. And if the Playnumber increase between scenes. We allow the Overlord to draw one Card. Groupsize should fit to the heroes (as normal).


text:
What is the term for a stalemate or locked board in Magic?
I listen to the Limited Resources Podcast quite a bit, and I always hear this word used that sounds like "Parody". In context:

My opponent and I were at "parody"; neither of us could do anything.

I cannot find this term anywhere online. I've searched for "parody", "parroty", "peredi"... It must sound silly, but what is this word they are using?

Parity, in this context meaning equality (of game state, in some sense). In general, equality of game state doesn't necessarily mean a stalemate or locked board, but in Magic it's often the case that the player to make the first move is at a disadvantage.

Ugh, thanks. I feel foolish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parity_(sports)

So not like this? http://asset2.cbsistatic.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2013/03/06/fmimg4855090770787555538_257x386.jpg

...but yeah as far as it relates to Magic, I guess a good example would be a bunch of vanilla 2/3s on each side. The attacking player is at a disadvantage (not considering combat tricks, etc.). Another term I've heard is "Draw-Go".

@WesleyMurch Or just such that things will trade, you'll be tapped out and die on the swing back, or even a control matchup when whoever tries to cast a spell first will have less mana to back up their play, or the fact that playing your instant first lets your opponent respond. It does sometimes depend on context; if you're both at 1 making the first move might win you the game.

Right, exactly. Thanks, for the knock on the head. I didn't realize this was a word, and now I realize it's the opposite of "disparity" (I'm learning things!).

the player to make the first move is at a disadvantage - in chess, this is called zugzwang.