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Victory Point Cards at the End of the Game
I had not played Catan in a long time, but I recently played in a friendly tournament and am wondering (1) if there was a rule change , (2) if the rule they  used is correct, or (3) if the rule I thought was correct was correct.
Scenario:
 Player A's turn
 Player A has 9 points on the board.
 Player B has 6 points on the board.
 Player C has 7 points on the board.
 Player D has 9 points on the board.

And
 Player A builds a city and reaches 10 points
 Player B then reveals 2 VP cards

Does Player B end the game with a score of 6 VP or 8 VP? (in 4th place or 3rd place (moving ahead of C)?)
Looking at the rules, on page 5, it states

You must keep Victory Point Cards hidden. You may only reveal them during your turn and when you are sure that you have 10 victory points—that is, to win the game. Of course, you can reveal them after the end of the game when someone else wins. You may play any number of Victory Point Cards during your turn, even during the turn you purchase them

Based on the wording "after the end of the game", I would assume they don't count.
Also, it's not directly answered but it seems to be mentioned here that they don't count. See related here. See also BGG link.

I don't have the rules to hand right now, but I believe the is "a winner" and everyone else - determining 2nd, 3rd etc is not covered.

I think this is not covered in standard rules but must be covered in the tournament rules.  In a standard game it is irrelevant and that is why the rules are not clear on that point..

Looks like tournaments normally let you sit on VP cards and count them in your score (https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/30522/victory-point-cards)

@virmaior You should take the information you found and turn it into a real answer so people can vote on it.

The cards count, so 8 VP.
From the Victory Point Cards entry of the rules:

Each victory point card is worth 1 victory point. You only reveal your victory point cards when you or someone else wins the game.

The winner only reveals their VP cards after they win the game, so VP cards are worth points even before they are revealed.
Furthermore, the non-winning players are instructed to reveal their VP cards when the game ends. There would be no point in doing so if they didn't count.
Finally, a player by the name Daniel Wilson claims the following on the BoardGameGeek message boards:

I've played in the Mayfair Settlers of Catan World/North American Championship Qualifiers the last few years running at Origins, and this situation has occurred multiple times in the games I've been in.
The way this situation was officially scored is exactly the way you described. The points are there and still count, whether revealed or not.

Where is that quote from? The rules directly?

@GendoIkari, Yes, from the passage on VP cards.


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How do damage increases and redirects interact?
I ran into a weird situation today. I was playing Absolute Zero on Insula Primalis. Two obsidian fields were drawn:

Obsidian Field
Increase all Damage dealt by 1. At the end of their turn, 1 player may discard 2 cards to destroy this card.

I had the Isothermic Transducer in play.

Isothermic Transducer
When Absolute Zero is dealt Fire Damage, Absolute Zero deals 1 Target that much Cold Damage.

Now my power is to deal either cold or fire damage to myself. So how do these two interact? It seems like one of two different things should happen:

I deal myself 1 + 2 == 3 fire damage, and then deal 1 target 3 cold damage. This is what I ended up doing. Or

I I deal myself 1 + 2 == 3 fire damage, and then deal 1 target 3 + 2 == 5 cold damage.

2 is what I would like to do, but this seems kind of cheaty. Is this really how these two cards interact?

From the way it's worded, something is dealing damage to AZ, and AZ is dealing damage to something else. These are both instances of something dealing damage, and thus both subject to being increased by OF. This is a comment because I have absolutely no knowledge of this game, and perhaps there's a rule or FAQ out there that says otherwise. But, this is how it would work in M:TG (both instances of "deals damage" would be modified by the replacement effect as they are separate events), and this is usually a good guide because M:TG formalized a lot of board game concepts.

@ikegami in the case of SotM there are some places where a MtG background actually makes it harder to intuit the SotM behavior because of how they work differently. (The big ones are that mass damage in SotM isn't simultaneous, damage triggers can and do interrupt the resolution and removing the source of an effect can halt the effect mid-resolution).  But none of those apply here, and everything in this case works basically the way it would in Magic.

Isothermic Transducer is not a redirect
Isothermic Tranducer is a triggered effect that deals damage.  Like any other instance of damage, it will be boosted +2 by the two Obsidian Fields.
The amount of damage that Absolute Zero (AZ) deals is calculated from the amount of damage AZ takes - that is, the amount of life he lost.  The initial number stated by the ability dealing damage before increases and decreases doesn't matter, only the final number.
So if AZ tries to deal himself 1 Fire damage, it will be boosted +2 and he will take 3 Fire damage.  Then Isothermic Transducer will react and he will deal 3 damage +2 and deal 5 cold damage to the target of his choice.
(If he choose to deal that damage to himself and he has his Null-point Calibration Unit in play, he will heal 5 hp)

There are true redirects in the game, such as Visionary's Decoy Projection, Baron Blade's Elemental Redistributor, and Legacy's Lead from the Front.  For a redirection effect, once you have determined who the damage is finally pointing at, recalculate the damage increases and decreases from scratch between the source and the final target.
For example, Obsidian Field is in play, Legacy had Fortitude (-1 damage taken) and Lead from the Front, and Tempest has Localized Hurricane (+1 damage taken) in play.  Baron Blade tries to deal Tempest 1 damage.  That would be 3 damage (+1 from the Hurricane, +1 from Obsidian Field), but Legacy redirects that damage to himself.  So we recalculate from scratch as 1 (base damage) + 1 (Nemesis with Baron Blade) - 1 (Fortitude) + 1 (Obsidian Field) = 2 damage taken.  The fact that Tempest would have taken 3 damage is irrelevant.*

Well, mostly irrelevant.  There are a few redirects that only trigger for certain amounts of damage.  But once the redirect has been triggered, it doesn't matter if the final calculated damage is different from the amount that triggered the redirection.

A quick break down of what would happen using his base power of deal himself 1 cold or 1 fire damage.

Use the power to deal 1 fire damage to himself
Damage is increased by 1 twice so he takes 3 damage.
Isothermic Transducer triggers causing him to be able to do 2 damage to 1 target
That 2 damage by 1 twice so the target takes 5 damge

Short and simple each time damage is assigned it is increased by the card so in the end he will do 2 more damage twice to the target than he was originally going to do to himself

source: Stack Exchange

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Can Sundial of the Infinite interrupt multiple-card draws while drawing?
I'm not quite sure about the interaction between the stack and multiple-card draws.

120.2. Cards may only be drawn one at a time. If a player is instructed to draw multiple cards, that player performs that many individual card draws.

According to Is drawing multiple cards an atomic action?, this means that:

"draw 2 cards" really means "draw a card, then draw a card". - diego

Now, my question is: Does that mean that a player, affected by a multiple-card draw (Divination for example), can draw one card and avoid drawing any more by activating Sundial of the Infinite inbetween individual draws?

No.
In order to activate an ability or cast a spell, a player must have priority. During the resolution of spells and abilities, players do not receive priority.
One advantage of declaring "multiple draws are done one at a time" is multiple card drawing cleanly interacts with cards like Abundance, Alhammarret's Archive, or cards that say, "whenever you draw a card"

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Hypergenesis vs Containment Priest - How does it resolve?
In an upcoming Legacy event near my residence, a friend of mine intends to play using an Hypergenesis deck.
However, recently we have a certain abundance of Containment Priests in our region. This creature makes things with Hypergenesis a bit messy, since it can severely cripple its combo.
I'm aware how Hypergenesis resolves triggered abilities. However, what is not clear to me is what happens in this scenario:
Player A casts Hypergenesis using cascade/suspend/whatever. Player B doesn't counter or respond to it.

Player A puts an Admonition Angel on the table.
Player B puts an Containment Priest on the table.
Player A puts a random land on the table, lets say, a Mountain.
Player B doesn't put anything on the table.
Player A puts a random creature that doesn't trigger anything, like, let's say, Progenitus.
Neither Player B or A puts anything else on the table, thus, Hypergenesis finishes resolving and is sent to the graveyard.

Now, what's the end result of the table, after Hypergenesis resolves?

Does Containment Priest exile Progenitus?
Does the Landfall ability of Admonition Angel trigger?
Does Containment Priest exile anything at all during Hypergenesis?

@John Your edit broke the links for the Contaiment Priest. By some reason, Gatherer doesn't seen to work nicely with some cards (at least for my region). I did a rollback to revision 1;

You're right - the auto-card feature does not work for cards that have apostrophes or cards whose names are a subset of another card (e.g., Sun Titan vs Sundering Titan). But that's not why John's edit failed. His edit failed because he (and you) both mispelled Containment Priest. I corrected the spellings and replace the hardcoded links with autocard tags (except for Progenitus, because it is one of those cards that does not work).

Containment Priest exiles just Progenitus. Admonition Angel's landfall ability triggers once.
Containment Priest's ability is a replacement effect (rule 614.1a says "Effects that use the word 'instead' are replacement effects."). Rule 614.4 says

Replacement effects must exist before the appropriate event occurs—they can’t “go back in time” and change something that’s already happened. Spells or abilities that generate these effects are often cast or activated in response to whatever would produce the event and thus resolve before that event would occur.

Admonition Angel enters the battlefield before Containment Priest, so it is not exiled. But by the time Progenitus would enter, Containment Priest is already on the battlefield, so Progenitus is exiled instead.

Admonition Angel's Landfall ability (like any Landfall ability) is a triggered ability because rule 603.1 says

Triggered abilities have a trigger condition and an effect. They are written as “[Trigger condition], [effect],” and begin with the word “when,” “whenever,” or “at.” They can also be expressed as “[When/Whenever/At] [trigger event], [effect].”

Rule 603.6d says

Normally, objects that exist immediately after an event are checked to see if the event matched any trigger conditions. Continuous effects that exist at that time are used to determine what the trigger conditions are and what the objects involved in the event look like. However, some triggered abilities must be treated specially. [Several exceptions that don't apply here].

Like with Containment Priest, immediately after the Mountain enters the battlefield, the Admonition Angel is already on the battlefield, so its ability triggers.

So, a replacement effect "replaces" the event with a new event.  (So, in a sense, it resolves immediately).  Where as a triggered ability gets placed on the stack, and resolves after the resolution of Hypergenesis?

That is exactly how it works. I didn't quote them because they're kind of tangential to the question, but the relevant rules to your question are 614.6 (and much of the rest of 614), and 603.3.

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How would some of the top deck archetypes handle discard decks?
In the past, I asked how to fight a discard deck, one that's designed to just empty your hand as fast as possible with cards like Hymn to Tourach and many others. I have also read this question on playing around targeted discard.
However, at this point my friend has rebuilt his deck to a very high degree of efficiency. I often lose one of my opening lands to Hymn, and any creatures I get out are killed by targeted kill spells or board wipe like Drown in Sorrow. I never have a chance to play higher cost creatures because my hand gets emptied by discard spells. Lately I've been playing white weenie / equipment with some very good cards like Mother of Runes, Swords to Plowshares, Aegis of the Gods, Jitte, Stoneforge Mystic, and more, but ultimately all my creatures get killed by board clear and my hand is emptied. He will sometimes clear the board 3-4 times before I get killed by a combination of Black Vise, Quest for the Nihil Stone, and Guiltfeeder.
Again, I know discard decks aren't exactly one of the main Legacy archetypes. But I'm looking at decks like Miracles, Jund, D&T, OmniTell, Merfolk, and others, and to be frank, probably because I'm inexperienced with tournaments, I can't see how they would respond to this strategy. (Okay, I see how D&T stops it fairly easily, but not the others.)
How would some of the major Legacy archetypes respond to a discard deck?

I feel like there are multiple issues with this question. It does look like a duplicate of your own questions, but if it's not, it's either too broad, or primarily opinion-based. Answers that invite extended discussion are generally not appropriate for Stack Exchange. We tend to prefer objectively answerable questions about a specific problem; the more specific and answerable, the better.

To broad. There are a vast number of legacy archetypes.

The top decks probably wouldn't, because discard decks aren't in their metagame. If a good discard deck entered the Legacy metagame, the other decks would change (perhaps only in their sideboards), not try to respond while staying the same. (And Madness is a mechanic that just got a shot in the arm…) I suggest the application of SCIENCE: your friend should start playing his deck in Legacy tournaments so you can find out directly. ;) If it is really good, it could change the metagame! Either way, those matchups will tell you how to fight it.


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X-Wing 'Overlapping' ships question
Let's say that a TIE fighter moves first and his final position causes an overlap with a X-wing fighter. Then the X-wing fighter moves and in its final position is no longer touching that of the overlapping TIE fighter's first move.
Is this still considered an overlap for the TIE fighter?

Yes, this is an overlap.  Each ships move is completed in order without regard to what other ships may do in the future.
If the TIE fighter overlaps the X-Wing follow the procedure on page 17 of the rules to resolve the overlap before moving on to the X-Wing's move.
Reminder - the TIE fighter loses his Perform Action step as a penalty for causing the overlap.

Thank you for the prompt reply, I will head on over to the rules and read on. To clarify, he will lose his 'Perform Action' but what about his 'Free Action.' Maybe the rules will clear that up, also.

The TIE Fighter will skip it's 'Perform Action' step due to the overlap when resolving its movement, so anything that would rely on that specific action would also be skipped. However, most free actions have other triggers (e.g. Squad Leader causes another friendly ship to immediately perform a free action, completely outside of their Perform Action step).

I see. I read through a lot of the rules provided in the link by Pat Ludwig, also, and your comment, David, also seems to fall in line with that. Thank you.


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Immortal Coil & State Based Actions
I don't think I understand State Based Actions (SBA) and how they work with Immortal Coil.
I understand that at ANY time I have Immortal Coil on the battlefield with no graveyard, I lose.  I understand that I cannot "cast a spell" and have it resolve in time to be put in the graveyard.
However, I saw this question about Sacred Mesa and responding to the trigger by tapping mana, which made me think about Immortal Coil and how I can respond to it.
If I have a Bazaar Trader in play, and play Immortal Coil with no graveyard, can I respond to the triggering of the SBA and tap Bazaar Trader to give it to my opponent?  Or do I lose before I can respond to it, because I have no graveyard?

Immortal Coil + Bazaar Trader + Tormod's Crypt ... Tehehehe

@Cameron I was playing with Boguka Bog but it's really just mean so I took the cards out.

That is not a State Based Action; it is a State Triggered Ability, so it goes on the stack, and you have a chance to respond before it resolves. However, the ability will still be there after you respond, so you still lose the game. Rule 603.1 defines triggered abilities:

Triggered abilities have a trigger condition and an effect. They are written as “[Trigger condition], [effect],” and begin with the word “when,” “whenever,” or “at.” They can also be expressed as “[When/Whenever/At] [trigger event], [effect].”

The ability on Immortal Coil says

When there are no cards in your graveyard, you lose the game.

so it matches that description.
Rule 603.8 describes state triggered ablities:

Some triggered abilities trigger when a game state (such as a player controlling no permanents of a particular card type) is true, rather than triggering when an event occurs. These abilities trigger as soon as the game state matches the condition. They’ll go onto the stack at the next available opportunity. These are called state triggers. (Note that state triggers aren’t the same as state-based actions.) A state-triggered ability doesn’t trigger again until the ability has resolved, has been countered, or has otherwise left the stack. Then, if the object with the ability is still in the same zone and the game state still matches its trigger condition, the ability will trigger again.

Once the Immortal Coil is on the battlefield, as soon as your graveyard is empty, the ability will trigger. At that point, giving it away with Bazaar Trader won't help, because the ability will still be on the stack, and you will still lose when it resolves.

if my opponent has no graveyard either, will I still lose first?  Or does the stack resolve before he gets control of it?

@JacobRaccuia That's a good follow up question. It looks like someone else had the same question, and they already posted it.

@Rainbolt ahh, thank you!  missed that one in searching


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Can I use an altered art card in tournament?
I have investigated a lot but I'm still not sure if I can use an altered art card in a tournament. I know that the golden rule is: The head judge will determine if the altered card is legal or not. But I don't want to paint my card if it will obviously be rejected.
To be more specific I want to make a border extension of my commander. The tournaments in which I am interested are mainly FNM and local shop little tournaments.
If someone doesn't know what border extension is, here is an example:

Here, Iona, Skithiryx and Thundermaw Hellkite have a pure border extension with no further modifications.
I have read a related post in this site but it doesn't clarify if this can be done or not because for one side it says:

If the card is legal then the card has black or white borders

and then it says:

Artistic modifications are acceptable in sanctioned tournaments, provided that the modifications do not make the card art unrecognizable, contain substantial strategic advice, or contain offensive images. Artistic modifications also may not obstruct or change the mana cost or name of the card.

Moreover I've read that if I use sleeves the card is most likely to be accepted by the judge. Considering that Commander is a more casual format and the commander(or general) almost never go into the deck I would like some help to decide if I do this art extension or not.  Maybe one judge can point me in the right direction.

I'm not sure you're reading that other post correctly. The black/white border restriction is part of the list of base attributes of tournament-legal cards, meant to exclude silver-bordered cards. The artistic modifications go on top of that; they're okay if they don't make it unrecognizable, cover up the mana cost, etc. Painting the border of a black-bordered card doesn't turn it into an Un-card, any more than it turns a genuine card into a non-genuine one.

It seems like you have already answered your own question. You quoted the relevant rules, and you even did some research about what is most likely to be accepted by a judge.

Also isn't commander by definition not sanctioned and thus not actually subject to the tournament rules?

It usually is, but stores can run sanctioned fnm commander

Generally yes, as long as the card is recognizable, but the Head Judge has the final say, and has the right to say "no".

Perhaps a clearer version of my first comment: Iona is a black-bordered card, even if you paint over the border. The printing itself is black-bordered, indicating it's in a not terribly old tournament-legal set, and you don't need to be able to see the border to know that any more than you need to see the set symbol to know something's in Standard. Similarly, Elvish Impersonators is a silver-bordered card, even if you paint the border black. (And that's why I think this is a dup - the actual thing that matters here is what you've quoted from the previous answer.)

@Jefromi the quote about the black border rule is just one factor to consider and there are others. For example another factor can be: if you paint border of a card then it may be recognizable when it is in the top of your deck. But maybe if you use sleeves you can't recognize it. For this reason I think this question was marked prematurely as a duplicate and a judge can be very helpfull in this situation.

@RenatoSanhueza if you can tell what a card is for any reason (whether from an alteration or some thing else) it is a marked card and is illegal to use in tournaments. Note that if you can tell what a card is without sleeves but can't with them it is legal to use only if you use sleeves.

@diego Thanks for the info. (I still think it would be better to answer the entire question in the answer section than to answer partially in the comment section like everyone is doing)

@RenatoSanhueza All of your question about the actual art alteration seem to be answered by the linked duplicate. Your one about marked cards isn't in your original question so that could be worth an answer if it were actually asked.

@diego My original question was to determine if the border extension I proposed is legal or not in tournament. Then I just added my research to show my effort in answering the question(it is not a complete answer). It hasn't any sense to make a question for something that I already know. I was hoping that someone that know about this topic could give me a full answer. Maybe next time I will not add information of my previous research to avoid this confusion.

@RenatoSanhueza What part of your question isn't answered by the other question's answer? Or what is still unclear, it is the part about needing black or white borders that these alterations sometimes cover up?

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

@diego I just told you one and you answered me in the comments. There are more. if I tell you all factors then ultimately I would be answering my question myself.

@RenatoSanhueza Please use the chat room I set up for further comments, the comments here are already getting rather long.

The image of the cards you sent are a perfect example of acceptable altering for tournament play. As far as commander games go, you can sometimes get away with not even having a legal copy of your commander and instead playing with an oversized version of the card. Commander is very lenient and you can usually get away with altering cards so that they don't have any rules text. So long as there is some way to identify that the card is what it is, people will be accepting of it.
Altered art mostly just falls in the category of DBAD. Don't draw porn on your cards, don't draw children being decapitated, don't try to alter your Misdirection to look like a Force of Will.


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Progenitor Mimic destroyed in response of its triggered ability
What happens if Progenitor Mimic is destroyed in response of its triggered ability? Does it still generate the token?
This questions is not a duplicate of Does an ability resolve if the source of the ability leaves the battlefield? because I am not asking if the ability will resolve. I am asking what happen when the ability resolves in this particular scenario when an object that was part of the ability is not longer in the game.
Thanks to Hackworth for his excelent answer.

Possible duplicate of If my Consul's Lieutenant dies while its second ability is on the stack, does the ability do anything?

Possible duplicate of Does an ability resolve if the source of the ability leaves the battlefield?

I think this one's different to those, because in this case the ability is also referring to a (now gone) permanent.

@doppelgreener yes, which was also my reason to answer it.

What does it do when it resolves? It does the same thing as any other time it resolves: what it says.

@doppelgreener The question about Consul's Lieutenant also refers to a now gone permanent. Your comment is upvoted, so I am probably missing something, but I still don't see the difference.

@Rainbolt Your question has some helpful info to answer this question, but this questions was marked as a duplicate of another one...

Possible duplicate of If my Consul's Lieutenant dies while its second ability is on the stack, does the ability do anything?

@Michael Politowski: Possible duplicate of Rainbolt's comment? :P

Yes, it will still create a token that's a copy of itself.
Spells and abilities on the stack that are resolving use the "last known information" of an object that has left the required zone, if properties of that object are required for that spell or ability to resolve.

Abilities

112.7a Once activated or triggered, an ability exists on the stack independently of its source. Destruction or removal of the source after that time won’t affect the ability. Note that some abilities cause a source to do something (for example, “Prodigal Pyromancer deals 1 damage to target creature or player”) rather than the ability doing anything directly. In these cases, any activated or triggered ability that references information about the source because the effect needs to be divided checks that information when the ability is put onto the stack. Otherwise, it will check that information when it resolves. In both instances, if the source is no longer in the zone it’s expected to be in at that time, its last known information is used. The source can still perform the action even though it no longer exists.

Alternatively:

Resolving Spells and Abilities

608.2g If an effect requires information from the game (such as the number of creatures on the battlefield), the answer is determined only once, when the effect is applied. If the effect requires information from a specific object, including the source of the ability itself, the effect uses the current information of that object if it’s in the public zone it was expected to be in; if it’s no longer in that zone, or if the effect has moved it from a public zone to a hidden zone, the effect uses the object’s last known information. See rule 112.7a. If an ability states that an object does something, it’s the object as it exists—or as it most recently existed—that does it, not the ability.


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In a four person game of Quoridor, can a player be forced to pass a turn?
As a follow up to my question earlier, can a player be forced to skip a turn when playing a four player game of Quoridor? The rules state that a pawn cannot jump over more than one pawn when moving, but this brings up an potential board state in which a player has no valid moves:

Suppose the turn order is Green, Red, Blue, then Yellow. Green started on the west edge, Red started on the north edge, Blue started on the east edge, and Yellow started at the south edge.
It is Blue's turn, and Yellow has already used all of its walls. Blue then traps all four pawns in the tight corridor by placing its final wall horizontally immediately south of it (noted here by the faded wall below Yellow and Blue). It is now Yellow's turn, but Yellow has no walls, nor does it seem that it has any valid moves. Furthermore, if Green and Red place walls on their next turns, Blue and Yellow are potentially trapped again.
What is the proper way to handle this circumstance?

Ooh, good catch! Has this scenario actually come up for you? My guess is that it's rare enough that the game creators either didn't think of it or didn't bother writing a rule for it. I'd just add one of the following house rules: 1) Blue's move is illegal or 2) Yellow skips her turn.

Thanks! There was something similar that happened the other day, all four pawns we packed into a corridor and it got me wondering how something like this ought to be handled.
Regarding the house rules, there are also ways something like this could come up without walls needed to be placed, which would then imply restrictions on movement, too, something along the lines of "if pawn movement or wall placement prevents a player from having any valid moves, that action is illegal".
That said, it'd be nice to find something more definitive :D

Oh, this can actually chain multiple turns: A's move can become illegal because it leaves B with only one move that is illegal because it would leave C with no moves. At this point I'd scrap that house rule: it should never be that complicated just to figure out what's legal. So instead I vote for the skip-your-turn rule.

@ikegami I know that e.g. chess calls it a draw when you can't move, but that seems really awkward in a 4 player game - the actions of 3 of the players can force the 4th into a draw?! (Imagine green was instead at R1C8 - it's not her fault the other three players are derping around in that dead end)

@ikegami I agree that if it happened without prior agreements, as you write in your answer, among competitive people it'd be too late to choose a house rule and you'd have to take the most commonly accepted meta-rule: the game is a draw. But unlike in say chess or MtG where that meta-rule is also both officially in the rules and a reasonable way of resolving the situation, here it is neither, so it is definitely worthwhile to come up with a house rule. I'd even get the group to pick one on the spot if I was in a friendly group - no reason to terminate a perfectly fine game.

Positioning of the fences
•  The fences must be placed between 2 sets of 2 squares
•  The fences can be used to facilitate the player’s progress or to impede that of the opponent, however, an access to the goal line must always be left open.

So blue can't place a fence here 'cause it will block the path to the goal line

Well, if ever there was a definitive source on the rules of Quoridor, David Gigamic would be the guy. Thanks for your help!
This circumstance could also come about based on players taking moves, would those moves then be illegal? I would be happy to post a visual example if that would clarify things.

@Robby I wouldn't be so quick to accept this answer, even from David Gigamic. Not only is it already stretching the no-blocking rule beyond how most players would read it, but as you point out it's also easy to come up with similar scenarios this doesn't answer, including ones that don't involve placing fences at all.

Hi Benjamin, i made a quick answer for your other problem :)

Thanks! To me that answer confirms this one is unnecessary: if a player can be forced to skip their turn, that seems like the easy solution here. The simplest reading of "access to the goal line must always be left open" (and the only reading directly supported by Fig 5) is that the walls themselves must not form a permanent barrier between a player and the goal. Here you read in more to that rule: that the walls together with the current configuration of pawns (and possibly the turn order?) must also not form a temporary barrier.

@ikegami Assuming 'access to the goal line' can be impeded for even a single turn... How do you mean v.v. common- I've never chanced upon it?

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Does exchanging a dead card count as a move for loss of a card?
I was recently playing Sequence at a friend's house. At one point in the game a player (player B) discarded a dead card and drew a new card before the previous player (player A) remembered to draw a card. Player A contended that since player B hadn't placed a token on the board yet they were still allowed to draw their card. The rules state:

Dead Card
If you hold a card in your hand which does not have an open space on the game board because both spaces representing that card are covered by a marker chip, you are holding a DEAD CARD and you may turn it in for a new card. When it is your turn, place the dead card on your discard pile, announce that you are turning in a Dead Card and take a replacement card (one card per turn). You then proceed to play your normal turn.
Loss of Card
Once you have taken your turn and placed your marker chip on the game board, you must take a card from the draw deck. If you fail to take a card before the next player makes a move AND takes his/her card, you lose the right to take a card and you must finish the game with less cards than the other players – a disadvantage.

In my mind exchanging a dead card counts as a move for the purposes of the "Loss of Card" rule. Otherwise the "Loss of Card" rule would have specified completing your turn. Is this the correct interpretation or should player A have been allowed to draw a card?

Now that the Sequence tag has been created and you have some rep under your belt, it may be helpful to add some information about the game to it's tag info pages to help out others who don't know much about the game.

Based on the wording, Dead Card exchange is basically a free action that you can do before taking your normal turn. Losing your draw is a result of the next player placing and drawing, which is effectively them finishing their turn. This strongly implies that you have until the next player finishes their turn to draw your new card.
In the scenario above, A is a 100% right to draw a card because B hasn't moved yet. Generalized, though, is technically vague but I think what I've said is the intentions of the rule.

The rules, as per your quote, aren't explicit. So we're into interpretation.
Personally, I'd suggest the rules are written with the aim to allow adequate time to pick up a card:

If you fail to take a card before the next player makes a move AND takes his/her card ...

Especially with that capitalised AND, the rules are stopping the next player from taking you by surprise, i.e. using speed to stop you picking up your card.
In normal (no dead card) play it would thus be:

Player A puts a card from his hand onto his discard pile
Player A places a token on the board
Player B may put a card from his hand onto his discard pile
Player B places a token on the board
Player B picks up a new card

Player A had all of steps 3 and 4 to make his own pick up.
With dead card play:

Player A puts a card from his hand onto his discard pile
Player A places a token on the board
Player B puts the dead card onto his discard pile
Player B picks up a replacement card
Player B may put a card from his hand onto his discard pile
Player B places a token on the board
Player B picks up a new card

In this scenario, Player A only has step 3 to make his own pick up. And step 3 is unusual, and hence may distract Player A.
So, personally, if Player B discarded the dead card really quickly and picked up the replacement card instantaneously, then Player A hasn't been given a reasonable chance to make his own pick up, and Player A should still be able to make his pickup. If Player B did everything at a reasonable pace, and was about to pick up his final (step 7) card before Player A realised he'd missed his pick up... I reckon it'd be too late for Player A.

You missed the step where Player B declares they're trading in a dead card. I agree with you that the intent of the rule is to give players a reasonable window to draw a card while making that window limited. At the same time I don't think a fuzzy reasonable rule is workable with a rules lawyer because a rules lawyer always feels the reasonable thing is what favors them.

@AndyT I figured it was just adding a bit of an angle to what you posted but I guess I'll drop it to it's own answer.

@Veskah - Hah, it's a more popular answer than mine too!

Did you "MOVE" a piece, or just create the "action" of the dead card. If you've ever played Magic, I'd say the dead card is more of an instant that can be played at any time, rather than a turned "move."


text:
Accessing an Archived Ambush
Can cards in archives affect the runner without explicitly saying they do?
In the rulebook on page 6, it describes archives like so (emphasis mine):

Archives- This is the Corporation’s trash pile. Archives is
kept adjacent to R&D. This is where Corporation cards are
placed when they are trashed or discarded. Cards in
Archives are inactive.

However, rules can be trumped by special abilities on cards. Compare the cards Snare! and Shi.Kyū.
Snare!:

If Snare! is accessed from R&D, the Runner must reveal it.
If you pay 4[Credits] when the Runner accesses Snare!, do 3 net damage and give the Runner 1 tag. Ignore this effect if the Runner accesses Snare! from Archives.

Shi.Kyū:

When the Runner accesses Shi.Kyū, you may pay X[Credits]. The Runner must take either X net damage or add Shi.Kyū to his or her score area as an agenda worth −1 agenda point. Ignore this ability if the Runner accesses Shi.Kyū from R&D.

So, does Shi.Kyū affect the runner if they access it from archives? It doesn't mention archives, so you'd think the default would be inactive (and therefore not harmful to the runner). But then why would Snare! explicitly mention that it doesn't work in archives? Is it just being redundant?

Cards in R&D are also inactive, as are cards in HQ and unrezzed cards in a server. ambushes work everywhere because on access abilities don't care about active or not, the reason these cards ave ignore conditions are because otherwise they would work in those locations. That is what makes cards like Shi.Kyū, Shock!, Breached Dome, News Team are as good as they are. This is also why they have the reveal on them, since access from R&D doesn't normally reveal, the corp needs to know it's an ambush.

Base rules state that the runner accesses all cards in Archives when they access Archives.  When they do, they resolve the effects of the cards normally.  This goes for things like Shock, NAPD Contracts, and Shi.Kyu.  However, text on the card always overrides basic rules in the game.  You can see this with cards like Snare! and Fetal AI where they specifically do not trigger their abilities if they are being accessed from Archives.  However, Fetal DOES still cost the two credits to steal from Archives, as that ability is not suppressed in Archives.
This is why a Jinteki thousand-cuts deck is deadly.  Even if a Shock is trashed, it's still deadly in Archives and will happen every time the Runner tries to access that server.  Another thing to note is that Personal Evolution still happens after the Runner steals any agenda from Archives.
One note on this, however.  Even though the Runner has to access everything if they want it to be considered a successful run, they are allowed to choose the order in which they access these cards.  So, if you would access Archives and steal your final few points, you do not flatline as a result of other cards doing damage to you.  Nice to know when Jinteki starts really burying their agendas in there.

When you say they can choose their access order, does that mean they can look at the cards first (imagine it's all face-down) and then choose the order, or do they choose the order and then reveal face-down cards?

When you access archives, you turn all the cards faceup and runner chooses the order of access.  From the FAQ: "When accessing cards in Archives, the Runner turns all cards faceup in Archives before accessing them. Then he accesses and resolves individual cards one by one, in any order he wants."

Short answer: ambushes that trigger upon reveal do trigger on archive access unless otherwise specified. This pertains to cards like ShiKu, Shock, Space Camp, and Crusium Grid. I'll elaborate more when I'm not on my phone!


text:
Is mandatory to play at least one skill card in skill checks?
When discussing an answer that I provided in another question (Battlestar Galactica: How to balance core game), the question arose of whether it is mandatory to play at least one card in skill checks. The rule book from the base game says:

Starting with the player that is Play Skills: to the left of the current player (and ending with the current player), each player may play any number of Skill Cards from his hand facedown to the common pile.

So, what does "any number" in this context mean? I assume that 0 would not be "any number", since playing 0 cards is not playing any card at all. I saw in this question (Strategy for succeeding at Crisis skill checks) that people generally assume that 0 cards can be played, but I think there is some flaw in the statement that makes it dubious. In the Revelead Cylon case, the book is very clear and states that a Revelead can opt for not playing cards in skill checks.
In the end, what is the rule for human players? Must them play at least one card or not?

Good idea to make it a separate question, I'll stay out of it and see what others have to say.

The fact that the rules use the word MAY instead of MUST quite clearly shows that you don't have to play any cards if you do not wish. Remember that if there is a skill check, even if no one plays in, the 2 cards MUST be added from the Destiny Deck.

The base rules, page 17, has an "Example of a Skill Check" (emphasis added):

The player to the current player’s left plays two Skill Cards into the pile. The next player decides not to play any cards, and finally, the current player plays a single card.

I don't think they would have included this if a person had to play a skill card.

Good work finding something canonical!

Frak! I didn´t notice that statement in the book! I´ll update my answer in the other question (and play the right way from now on...). +1

Sometimes, it's known that someone has only "negative" colours. Forcing then to play makes no sense. We've never forbidden zero cards in the above scenario or any other, and this is supported by the rules.

Starting with the player that is Play Skills: to the left of the current player (and ending with the current player), each player may play any number of Skill Cards from his hand facedown to the common pile.

The words emphasized indicate the user is not obligated to play any cards.


text:
Could Panther shark be played face-down defense when summoned by its own effect?
Panther shark effect is :

If your opponent controls 2 or more monsters, you can Normal Summon
this card without Tributing. If you control "Eagle Shark", you can
Special Summon this card (from your hand). You can only control 1
"Panther Shark".

Eagle shark effect is :

If your opponent controls 2 or more monsters, you can Normal Summon
this card without Tributing. If you control "Panther Shark", you can
Special Summon this card (from your hand). You can only control 1
"Eagle Shark".

I would like to know if I can play Panther shark face-down defense position from its own effect.

If you control "Eagle Shark", you can
Special Summon this card (from your hand).

And also can I summon in face-down defense position Panther shark according to the first part of its effect?

If your opponent controls 2 or more monsters, you can Normal Summon
this card without Tributing

To sum up does the normal and special summon allowed by the effect of panther shark allows me to play this card in defense position face-down?
Thanks ;)

If you normal summon you can play in face down
but
If it is special summoned it has to be face up

I would say no, because it specifically says "Normal Summon," not setting, which is a slightly different concept than just Normal Summoning.


text:
How can we avoid big money in casual games?
My girlfriend and I have recently discovered the Big Money strategy in Dominion, and it's killing the game for us. We're not very competitive, so we don't want to spend a lot of time and effort trying to play even better than Big Money (as the answers to this question propose). But Big Money is so easy that it's hard to not just play it, and then we lose all the fun of the kingdom cards.
Are there any house rules we could add to simply keep us from being able to play Big Money, so that we can go back to casual games with plenty of kingdom card excitement? I know that if we really wanted to we could learn to play better than Big Money, but the games wouldn't be as fun and easygoing.
We also have almost all the Dominion expansions so we can use them.

For my suggestion of a house rule to use, please see the section of this answer titled "Embargo Counters".
If I understand correctly, you were learning the game naturally by playing it - it's just that at the current stage of learning it you have got to, it isn't very interesting, which makes it harder than it has been to carry on learning it simply by playing it.
So, it may be that all you need is to see, or be shown the strategies that are more powerful than Big Money in a natural way, so that you can have fun exploring them, rather than feeling forced into big money all the time.
As part of that I would draw your attention to this list; http://councilroom.com/openings. This is a compiled list comparing how good the first two opening moves are. Silver / Silver (so buying silver with your first and second purchase) is only rated as a +1 - there are 962 better opening moves. The best move involving silver at all is rated as a +4, with 86 possible openings rated as being better.
Similarly the Thief isn't especially powerful, and wont show up highly on the list above, but does actively and obviously combat BM. With no moat or other defence cards in play BM could look a lot less attractive with a Thief available, particularly if there are some action cards that give money, like festival and market out as an alternative.
My suggestions
You could intentionally play a few games with cards specifically from the top of this list (same as linked above), and set a house rule like those suggested in Jefromi's answer, my suggestion involving embargo counters at the end of this answer,  or those in other answers, to force you to experiment with these strategies, while still enjoying the game. You should find yourself exploring ways that beat BM anyway. I suggest you employ the lightest touch home rule you can find that does the job in pushing you both away from BM.
You shouldn't need to always play with any particular cards, or with house rules, but seeing and playing a deck built around the cards at the top of this list should help show most obviously and quickly that BM isn't the best strategy. And hopefully do so in an enjoyable way.
Play with others
Having a few games playing with other people - who know the game better than you do. You will hopefully quickly see a wider variety of strategies, without having to put effort into learning them. It might help to see a strategy like Chapel being played for example - it is one of the most powerful cards in the game, as you can see from it's presence in a fair number of the best openings in the list linked above, though you never want more than one, and it's power is not immediately obvious.
Prosperity
Lastly, the top answer here: How can I beat "Big Money" in Dominion? suggests counter intuitively that including cards from Prosperity advantages Kingdom Card strategies, because it slows the game down. - I realise that question isn't the question you are asking, but thought it'd be worth pointing out as a potentially subtle way to further disadvantage big money. That said, it probably wouldn't be enough on its own.
Embargo Counters
It might work to put a small number of embargo counters on each coin denomination at the beginning of the game, so that whenever a player buys one, they gain that many curses. This house rule has the advantages that it should make BM less attractive while not preventing certain other kingdom cards from working, it uses a game mechanic and it doesn't require constantly remembering that you aren't using the cards as printed.
The disadvantage of this home rule is that it could be too heavy handed, particularly at the start of the game (especially with certain setups; for example one that manages to combine no ability to trash curses with no alternative, low cost sources of purchasing power).

I think the embargo counters are the thing here that really possibly answers the OP's question. Putting the thief in every game or taking money out of some games sounds pretty drastic, and learning from other players probably requires playing a bit less casually.

I have restructured the answer accordingly.

Putting embargo counters on silver and gold cards will be really annoying in the early game.

Not if they don't buy 'em!
But a good point nonetheless. I will edit that into my answer. Thank you.

I'm facing the opposite problem. I play once a week with a related family. They adore the game and have been playing it often for about two months, but their games always end when three supply piles are exhausted. They rarely get to the bottom of the Province or Colony piles. Their solution has been to add five more kingdom card piles. I'm considering using that Embargo method, but on the kingdom cards.

I think the best house rules here are going to be the ones which don't actually change mechanics of the game, and which encourage or at least allow you to play well, i.e. ones that are consistent with the better than big money strategies with most sets of kingdom cards. That way as you continue to get better at the game under your house rules, everything will still translate back to the normal game.
That means you don't want anything like modifying costs, gaining curses, removing money entirely from the supply, or any really drastic limits on what you can and can't buy.
I'd probably start simple, just requiring buying a decent number of kingdom cards. After some thought, my best initial guess is: require one of your first two buys to be a kingdom cards, then for the rest of the game allow buying basic treasure cards at most two turns in a row - once you've done that, you need to buy a kingdom card or victory card. (If that turns out too restrictive, you can make it three turns.)
Note that you might need a physical reminder for this, but that's pretty easy: buy a treasure, take a token. If you have two tokens, you can't buy treasure. If you buy something else, get rid of your tokens.
There are very few setups where it's actually correct to buy two silvers on the first two turns, so that rule's definitely good. The second part should get you pretty far in the right direction, at least. It's not exactly ideal, since late-game you might sometimes get stuck with 3 money and no good choices, but it's probably a good starting place and easy to keep track of. And since you can reset your counter by buying a kingdom card even before you're required to, it'll encourage you to make smart buys when you have 4 or 5 money instead of defaulting to silver. Note also that the requirement prevents you from buying too much treasure, rather than forcing you to buy kingdom cards, so if you're doing extremely well and just buying provinces every turn, it won't stop you.

Other things I considered...
I initially suggested a minimum number of kingdom card buys over the course of the game. That might still be a good thing to try, but I think it's a little awkward because some kingdom card setups will make that much less meaningful of a restriction than others. You might also have issues with reaching the end of the game when only one player has bought enough kingdom cards - kind of awkward.
Limiting the number of silvers and golds appears promising on the surface, but I think it'll quickly lead to you basically playing big money for the first half of the game, buying silver and gold whenever possible to make sure you get it before it runs out.
I do like some of the suggestions from other answers like embargo counters on silver/gold, but I think the issue is that they actually change the game. So while they might accomplish the goal of discouraging buying only treasure, you're going to be learning to play a slightly different game, and when you go back to normal rules, it'll be a lot harder to adjust. That doesn't mean they're bad, just that they might not be as helpful in the long run for getting you to avoid big money without needing house rules.
I have essentially the same issue with anything to do with always using specific kingdom cards. Sure, they might discourage big money, but you're only going to be learning to play the game with those cards, not how to find a good strategy with other cards.

Part of the reason I suggested the embargo counters rather than changing the cards ala alingex's suggestion, is the memory issue. Buying treasure no more than once every two turns would be a lot harder than not being able to buy treasure twice in a row. Remembering if you brought treasure last time isn't trivial (at least for me) without something physical to remind you, let alone remembering the time before. So even though it's a bigger change, I suggest not being able to buy treasure twice in a row instead - or adding some physical reminder mechanism.

@Isaac That is a valid concern, but I think it's better to deal with it (keep track with tokens) in order to avoid changing the game too drastically. I do still like the embargo counters and think they'll accomplish a similar thing, I just think this might be better in the long run.

I think you shouldn't limit the possible actions by removing the money, but you could try to somehow devalue money cards.
One way to do this would be to give money cards a negative victory point value, like copper -1, silver -3, gold -6 victory points. You would both start the game with -7 victory points obviously, but it doesn't really matter. For a weaker effect, -1 point for silver and -2 points for gold could be enough.
Another way would be to increase the costs to 4 for a silver and 8 for a gold. As a side effect, this would strengthen cards that provide free silver/gold cards.
Both methods require a fair amount of balancing, but should make BM strategy worse instantly.

"Devaluing" money the way you suggest actually makes BM more powerful, since gold and silver are actually cheaper to buy. The VP fix you suggest sounds like it would need a lot of tweaking to get right, and would take awhile to get used to.

Oh, you're right of course. I mixed up the costs to buy the cards and the value. I fixed that part now.

-1 for silver and -2 for gold would suffice. Punishing you for having copper is unnecessary; it's not like you'd ever buy it and trashing it is its own reward. The concern I have about these methods is that they'll train to to play a different game, not just discourage big money. (Messing with kingdom cards that let you gain treasure as you point out is kind of unfortunate too, but more isolated.) It'll still work though of course!

Yes, -1 for silver and -2 for gold would probably be enough. I do like Isaacs idea of using embargo counters / curses to achieve this effect, because it's an existing mechanic. However, having to deal with curse cards would be really annoying in the early game up to the point where you don't want to buy silver/gold at all.

I would just go with the text from landmark Bandit Fort from Empires which says "When scoring -2 for each silver and each gold you have. "

I think @Isaac and @Jefromi here have some good suggestions.  As pointed out in the top answer to How can I beat Big Money in Dominion? and by @Isaac here, after starting out playing almost exclusively action cards there comes a time when players learn the Big Money strategy, and I agree that Big Money is a boring strategy.  Luckily most groups realize that you can outdo Big Money in most cases.
One possible house rule until you learn strategies that beat Big Money is to disallowing buying treasures until a player has played his first action card.  After a player has played his first action card it is back to ordinary rules and the player can buy as many treasures they want.  This forces some action cards purchases and makes it more likely that buying/gaining more action cards to supplement those you already have.
In my opinion such a small house rule will make enough changes so that the game becomes more lively.

Purchase better Kingdom cards.
One option is to update your set. The base set has been revamped in Dominion: Version 2 with more powerful Kingdom cards. 6 cards that have been the source of many weaknesses to the game and issues such as the big money misunderstanding have been removed. 7 new cards have taken their place. Intrigue has also been given a remake in the same fashion. You can purchase these new sets or just get the update pack for each.
Similarly, most later expansions come supplied with Kingdom cards that offer some more obvious strategies than the original base game that are more powerful than big money.

The simplest way to modify the game to avoid big money is to remove the money! If you remove Gold from the game, then you will need to use Kingdom cards in order to get enough Silvers in your hand at once, in order to afford the Provinces. If you remove Silver from the game, then you will need to use Kingdom cards in order to get enough Coppers in your hand at once, in order to afford the Gold.
If you remove both Silver and Gold, then you need lots of Kingdom cards to get enough Copper in your hand at once. Although that might be a bit extreme.

I think this is extreme enough to not be terribly useful. A lot of kingdom card setups are going to be really unpleasant to play like this.

@Jefromi - I agree that it might not work with all card setups. Maybe, if playing with Mine, you would still be able to get Silver/Gold with Mine - you just can't buy it direct.

Another option instead of removing Silver and Gold entirely is just to limit the number in each pile. For example, only have 4 Golds and 8 Silvers in the game. Of course, that really ruins cards that specifically gain Gold or Silver, so maybe you just want to limit the number you can buy.
I think a better alternative might be to play using powerful cards like Wharf, Mountebank, Goons, Minion, Chapel, Remake, or Ambassador. Some of these cards aren't too tough to get the hang of - with the exception of Chapel and Remake, you basically just want to play as many as you can as often as you can (you'll need some kind of Village as well, usually). A big money player simply won't be able to stand up to these power cards, especially if going up against the attacks. This way, you're not changing the rules of the game, and it will get you used to being able to identify strategies that will beat big money. Big money is rarely the best strategy on the board, you just need to find something faster.
A common mistake is to buy too many action cards. It's great to play a bunch of Wharves and draw your whole deck every turn, but unless you have some cash to spend at the end of it, it's really not worth anything. Some strategies augment big money (like including a Smithy or two for draw), while some completely replace it (like a Minion deck that wants 10 Minions 0 treasure cards). Whenever you buy an action, you should think about if you'll be able to play it (do you have enough actions), and if so, how will it improve your economy. Buying actions you can't play is one of the worst things you can do, and buying actions that won't help you (more villages when you aren't using all your actions anyway) is also a waste of time.

Throne Room might be worth mentioning, as amplifying action card strategies.

Agreed, and King's Court takes that idea to a whole other level. Other action support cards could include sifters like Warehouse, which lets you play key cards that you only have 1-2 copies of more regularly, or gainers like Ironworks, which let you pick up more cheap cards than you normally could. Make sure those cheap $4s will actually help and not hurt, though, like Caravan, Herald, Procession, or Tournament.

Always playing with the same powerful cards sounds like it might unfortunately turn nearly as monotonous as big money.

I think it could still be worth pointing out some key cards though; seeing how strong these strategies are might help them break away from BM naturally, and a few games exploring some of the most powerful kingdom cards could help them see that.

Right, once you discover just how powerful some of those action cards are, you might start thinking about why that is, and what other cards are similar. Also, some of those power cards can play a bit differently depending on what else is in the kingdom, and if you include a few of them, you can't really go for them all.

But if there are a limited number of Silver/Gold cards, you're going to be competing to get them before they run out. Therefore you'll start the game playing BM, and only go on to buy kingdom cards afterwards.

Summary
Try playing with setups that have better trashing and action card synergy, and maybe try Colonies (or just add some extra Provinces during setup).
In detail
Some combinations of kingdom cards encourage you to fine-tune your deck with cards that serve specific purposes. But most random combinations just encourage you to buy gold to increase the average cash value of the hands you draw. This is because most random combinations lack good trashing and good synergy between action cards.
Example: together, Village and Smithy make a formidable combo. You can chain Village / Smithy / Village / Smithy together to explode your hand and sometimes draw your entire deck at once. But on its own, Village does nothing other than replace itself with a different card, and Smithy just increases your hand size by 2 at the expense of an action. And even Village + Smithy depends on each Smithy semi-reliably drawing the next Village instead of garbage (i.e. Copper and Estates).
So, try some combinations with good trashing and action card synergy. If you're playing base Dominion, try one of these:

Chapel + Village + Council Room + Sentry + others
Chapel + Cellar + Festival + Library + others
Chapel + Throne Room + Sentry + Market + others

No house rules needed.
Other than Big Money's simplicity and its robustness when there aren't good action cards, its main strength is that it starts buying Provinces really early. Looking at a setup of kingdom cards, how long would it take to fine-tune a deck built on action card combos? And once fine-tuned, how soon could it realistically catch up with Big Money's head start in VP? Can it catch up before the Provinces run out? Sometimes it can; sometimes it can't; that's just part of the game. Knowing these things is core to Dominion strategy.
But if you want to give a fine-tuned deck more of an advantage, you can lengthen the game. Dominion: Prosperity does this nicely with Colonies. You could even do something similar just by adding more Provinces to your game if you can get a hold of some extras or make your own.

Fund the next Dominion purchase with a "swear jar"
Make yourself a cheat sheet of all the kingdom cards with two checkboxes (first and last) for each. When you play a game the first player to buy a particular kingdom card marks the first checkbox for that kingdom off, and the other player has to put a quarter in the swear jar. Similarly if a player buys the last kingdom card of a stack they mark off the last checkbox for that kingdom and the other player has to put a quarter in the swear jar.
This will give you an external stimulus to avoid big money, with the added benefit that doing so will fund your purchase of the next expansion of Dominion whenever it's released! Finally you get the slightly addictive "achievement" of being the first/last to buy each kingdom card.
And the best part is it doesn't significantly alter the gameplay, so when you have friends over and play with other people you'll be less likely to have picked up bad habits from playing with house rules!

This would often end up being a "pay to win" mechanic, as you would be forced to choose between the optimal strategy and getting money in real life.

@GendoIkari Um... No. First off, the proposed purpose of the swear jar is to fund the next expansion. Since they already have all the expansions, they're probably going to pick up the next one already. Second playing a winning strategy forces the other player to put a quarter aside, but only partially...
The point is to encourage purchasing Kingdom cards (OPs problem) without altering the actual game.

With 10 cards in the Kingdom, it's often true that you only should buy 3-5 of them throughout the game. A player can hurt his own chances of winning by buying one of each of the other 5-7 cards, in order to force the other player to pay money. If one player has only a couple bucks to his name, while the other player is well-off, there would be a big difference in how often each player could afford to play the best strategy.

Again this is a couple, and the point isn't to force the other person into poverty, rather to incentivize pursuing other strategies besides Big Money.

I don't mean to criticize the intent; I know your point/intent; I just think that there would be unintended negative side effects from this system. As a general idea, introducing out-of-game rewards/penalties to in-game mechanics is a bad idea.

Why is it bad? They want to try and play other ways besides big money without being forced to do so. It could as easily be tokens rather than quarters in the swear jar, and end of the night whoever put less tokens gets a cookie. Basically every other answer offers house rules that significantly alter the play of the game; I'm offering a solution that doesn't significantly change the game but does give a reason to try Not Big Money.

Ultimately games will come down to having to choose between playing your best (doing the right moves to increase your chances of winning), and getting out-of-game rewards. And maybe that's fine for some people.


text:
Understanding Haste
This question is in response to an answer on another question.  Due to my lack of reputation on this SE I couldn't comment on the answer.
Based on JonTheMon's answer to Can a continuous effect that gives haste wear off? , destroying a creature that gives Haste to an artifact creature would remove Haste from the newly summoned artifact creature.  But then he goes on to say that the activated Tap ability would be allowed.  How?
According to the official rules on Haste (http://mtg.wikia.com/wiki/Haste), tapping or untapping falls under the same rules as attacking.
702.10b.
If a creature has haste, it can attack even if it hasn't been controlled by
its controller continuously since his or her most recent turn began.

702.10c.
If a creature has haste, its controller can activate its activated abilities
whose cost includes the tap symbol or the untap symbol even if that creature
hasn't been controlled by that player continuously since his or her most
recent turn began.

You misunderstood. The answer states that he could tap it in response (while it still has haste, before Thopter Engineer dies).

@Steve I think you might want to go read in the basic rules about how the stack works. Once the killing spell is played, it's not at all too late to activate an ability. The spell goes on the stack, then you activate the ability in response (as the answer says) so it goes on the stack on top of the spell, and resolves before the spell does.

In the current version of the basic rules the stack is discussed on page 10.

I've proposed as a duplicate a question that goes into a fair amount of detail about how the stack works and when you can do what. The answer to your specific question is an application of that, as mentioned in my first comment.


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Is not buying money the worst strategy in Dominion?
From all posts read on Dominion (ie. this), I see a stress on money. I must say that I played only 14 times, but I consistently lose: I try all the times to build a balanced deck , with lot of actions (especially those that give other actions), also attacks. I never focus too much in buying Silver or Gold, but maybe that's the problem.
So, it's not buying Silver and Gold the biggest mistake in Dominion strategy?

It is bad, but not the worst

I don't know about the biggest - you could buy curses instead - but yes, this is definitely a big mistake and one of the most common.
Buying only silver and gold (aka "big money") is actually a reasonably strong strategy. It's not amazing, it's pretty easy to beat, but it'll tend to win over beginner players and it's definitely way better than buying basically only kingdom cards.
You say you build balanced decks, with a lot of actions. That's not balanced. Money is one of the things that needs to be balanced; you need a decent amount of it along with the actions you get. (You also mention lots of attacks. While those can serve a purpose, making it harder for your opponents to buy provinces doesn't help much if you've already made it really hard for yourself.)
It might help to think a bit about the expected value of cards. Silver or gold in your hand is worth 2 or 3, clearly. An action that draws you three cards, in a deck with basically just copper and actions, is probably going to end up being worth only 1 or maybe 2 coin on average - you'll draw other actions and a little copper. In a deck with a ton of silver and a bit of gold it might be worth say 4 coin on average! And all that silver and gold you've bought is reliably worth 2 and 3 coin on average.
Another thing you can think about is what it'd take to get a province. Stuff your deck with silver and gold, and you'll get one with two gold and a silver, or one gold two silver and a copper; that's something that can happen fairly easily especially if you trash copper and estates. Stuff your deck with actions and you'll probably need a much more perfect combination. How often are you going to get two village-ish cards that give +1 card +2 actions, along with several actions that each give +2 coin?
And finally, silver only costs 3 and gold only costs six. Most of the time, an action that reliably nets you two coin will cost more than 3, especially when you keep in mind you can't play unlimited actions unless you also invest coin and turns and cards buying a lot of actions that grant +actions. Same idea applies to gold. So not only is the silver and gold often worth more to you, but you'll be able to buy it earlier and more frequently than the kingdom cards that'd be worth the same amount. Sure, you'd get there eventually, but the other players who bought silver and gold are going to get the provinces before you do.
So bottom line, yes, ignoring silver and gold is a huge mistake. Buy money - and only buy actions if you think they're better than the money would be.

There might also be action cards which allow receiving or upgrading money, then it might be possible to not buy money (but get it nevertheless).

@PaŭloEbermann I think if the best you can say is "it's possible but not optimal to get treasure without buying it" or maybe "in some specific cases, you only need treasure initially to bootstrap into actions that'll give you treasure/coin", that only makes this more convincing.

Check out different strategies here: http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Strategy

@neverendingqs Can you explain what specifically that has to do with my answer? There's tons of stuff out there about strategy; linking to a big page full of all kinds of things makes it a little hard to understand your point.

How much money to buy really depends on the strategy you're going with.  For example, if I want to go for a rush with Gardens + Workshop or Woodcutter, I might not even opt to buy any money.

@neverendingqs I think you're misunderstanding the question or my answer. The point isn't that you always buy lots of money, and always the same amount. It's just that in general money is very important.

Fair warning: Dominion Adventures has changed up some things.  There are cards that go to your Tavern mat when played, but can be called later.  One such card is Coin of the Realm, which is a treasure card worth 1 when played... but can be called from your mat for +2 actions after you finish resolving any action card.

@Powerlord Not sure if that really changes the fact that you generally need to buy treasure. It's an example of a treasure card that's more conditionally good than silver and gold, yes, but the point of the answer is not "any treasure is good treasure" it's "you need treasure".

OP here. After trying the Big Money strategy for several matches, I can say my game improved a lot ;-) I'm no more the worst player in my team! https://rankade.com/trepaste/ranking/dominion :-D

The generic answer is "depending on the kingdom". I will present to you both views on your question. A pro-money and an against-money.
Pro-money
Probably a common newbie mistake in Dominion is that they buy a lot of terminal action cards, e.g., Woodcutter, Workshop, Smithy, without being able to play them. Therefore, these actions cards collide together and by not having any treasures with them, which do not require actions to be played, cannot get past $3-$4 per turn.
You always need some money in the beginning, even in kingdoms which favor treasure-less strategies, to get started with. Some kingdoms may as well favor decks with a lot of treasures, for example the presence of the Throne Room. If you have Gardens on the table, or even Dukes (from Dominion: Intrigue), you can even benefit from Copper, as well!
Against money
If you're just playing the base game, you won't find many examples of kingdoms that favor treasure-less strategies. Such kingdoms usually have cheap engine components and treasures, especially Silver, are a liability. Other kingdoms may offer you Victory Points through cheap alt-VP kingdom cards, like Vineyard (from Dominion: Alchemy) or Victory Point chips (from Dominion: Prosperity).
Here are some examples to try with expansions. I will not tell you the exact strategy, you can either find it on your own or just read it online.

Try the "Infestations" recommended set from Dark Ages & Alchemy, with Rats and Vineyard.
Try the "Servants" set from Alchemy & Intrigue, with Steward, Scrying Pool and Conspirator. Plus, some Vineyards to spice things up.
Try together a Steward and some Minion(s) from Intrigue.

So I think this is all true, but you've presented it in a way which makes no-treasure strategies seem more common than they really are. Yes, it depends on the kingdom, but by far it's more common to need a fair amount of treasure. And although you mentioned this within the pro-money strategy section, even no-treasure strategies are actually some-treasture-then-not-much-treasure strategies, which is pretty far from the OP's basically-no-treasure strategy.

Actually, if you play the First Game for the base set with the recommended set up, a winning strategy involves buying very little money. However, it does involve using Mine and Remodel to turn your starting copper and estates into silver/gold/village/market.
There is a good article about it here http://dominionstrategy.com/2012/07/30/building-the-first-game-engine/
You pretty much always want cards which get you money. Once you have silver and gold in your deck, cards which draw cards get a lot better. This doesn't mean you have to buy the money though, if a Mine is available, then upgrading your starting copper to silver/gold while buying smithy and village can be the best strategy.
The key thing for a mostly buying kingdom card strategy to work, is getting enough +actions, +cards, and having a decent amount of total money in your deck. You'll be drawing your entire deck most turns, so you want to be able to buy 2 provinces each time that happens, otherwise you'd be better off just playing money and buying 1 province!

The hardest thing to get balanced in a Dominion hand is the number of action cards to the number of actions.
If you never gain an action card, you will end up with one action wasted on each turn because you had no action card. That is a little bit unbalanced, but it is very easy to build a deck which gives you much more unbalanced hands.
One possible strategy
If you during the game gain only a single action card and it is one which does not give you any extra actions, then that will be slightly more balanced. You'll often have a wasted action, but every once in a while, you'll draw the action card and be able to use it.
Taking that strategy further
But this only allow you to gain a single action card during a game. As soon as you have gained two such action cards, you can get hands where you have shifted the balance too far. You will sometimes have a hand with two action cards and only one action. If the action cards are some that draws extra cards such as two Smithy cards, then the risk of this happening is even higher.
You can try to counterbalance this by buying the Village from the original game or one of the variants from the later extensions. But you'll get more unbalanced hands as now you will often have a hand with a Village and only a single other action card to play or none at all.
Even if your deck overall is balanced in number of +2 Actions cards to action cards with no extra actions, the individual hands will not be balanced. If you take this strategy you need to ensure that the action cards you do buy are valuable enough to justify the unbalance that they inevitably will cause.
Another possible strategy
If you only gain action cards which say +1 Action, you will keep the slight imbalance between actions and action cards you would have with no action cards at all. This means you will always have the needed action to play any action card on hand, and you will always end your turn with one wasted action.
This strategy is likely going to beat the strategy of buying 0 or only 1 action card during a game. In particular if the choice is between buying a +1 Action cards of cost 5 and buying a silver, the +1 Action card is likely a better strategy.
Beware of cost 3 and cost 4 cards with no extra actions
There are many action cards at cost 3 and 4 which will give you two coin and something else, but no extra action. The something else may look compelling enough to make you believe that this card is more valuable than a silver. But often that something else is not valuable enough to justify the risk of having the card on hand with no actions left. The Chancellor is one example of a card I would avoid.
Any strategy can be undermined by some combination of kingdom cards
Whatever strategic advice you read about Dominion, you should expect that some kingdom card exists, which will undermine that advice.
A strategy of only buying Silver, Gold, and Province can often beat beginners. But that strategy becomes a lot less efficient if the Pirate Ship is in the game.

It depends on the card mix.  I remember a game where I could play the Band of Misfits as a Chapel and a Poor House (nice because I could keep my target hand secret until actually being able to play it).  And there was also a King's Court in play.  So I eventually got rid of everything except of one King's Court and a Band of Misfits that was then played as Poor House mostly (the King's Court being in play also implies that the highest property was the rather expensive Colony).
So any money card in your hand reduced the value of a triple Poor House by 3.  I overstocked on Misfits in that game, though, and was lucky that my opponent did not just buy out the Poor Houses in time and thus stop my Misfits from being usable as such.
At any rate: any strategy involving multiple Poor Houses is going to suffer from spurious money in your hand.
And cheap money is going to hold up your game later.  The Marauder is a rather strong card since it gets you good throwaway money (Spoils) while slowing down the other's play and not bogging you down in cheap money (particularly when Platinum is also in play) in the end game.
The problem with avoiding money too much is that you don't get your game into gears early on, and of course with grabbing money too much is that you may get bogged down in the end game with cheap money.  Of course it helps to refrain from adding money into your shopping cart when having spent most on other items.
I knew a player who was fond of the Woodcutter since its additional buy allowed her to get an extra Copper with every purchase.  Uh, don't do that.


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Calculating the probability of a combo hand
Before I ask the question, I should mention I already saw this and just don't get it.
I have a 40 card deck with cards I'll label:
A (3 copies)
B (3 copies)
C (3 copies)
D (2 copies)
E (1 copy)
F (2 copies)
G (3 copies)
H (1 copy)
I (11 copies)
And I need to know for a hand of 5, and a hand of 6, what the likelihood of getting any one (or more) of the following is:
(A and B), (A and G), (A and C), (A and F), (H alone), (E and I), (E and C), (E and H), (E and G)
What is it/how can I do it?

If you are able to write a computer program, it is often pretty simple to write a simulation to just simulate 1000 opening hands, and to estimate the probability that way.  Your question has so many special cases, that analytic solutions tend to be quite burdensome to compute.

The name of that sort of problem in probability is 'draw without replacement'.
When you do this sort of problem, it's easier to first figure out the probability of not getting what you want, then subtracting that from 100% to get the probability you're interested in.
First, we'll find probability of finding H alone.  We start by finding the probability of having a hand without H. If we draw 5 cards, then the probability of the first one not being H is 39/40, then, if that happened, the probability of the second one not being H is 38/39.  We want the probability of all draws not being H, so we multiply the individual probabilities with each other. The probability of all 5 cards not being H is (39/40) * (38/39) * (37/38) * (36/37) * (35/36) if you multiply that out, you get .875, so that's a 87.5% chance of not getting H in a hand of 5, subtract the percentage from 100 and you have 12.5% chance of getting that H.  If you do the same thing with 6 cards, you get 85% of not and 15% of getting it.
Did you follow all of that?  I hope so, because combinations of 2 cards will get more complicated.
Doing the same thing we did for H, we can find that the probability of getting at least 1 A is 33.75%.  The probability of getting at least 1 B is the same, but getting at least one of each together is a little harder.
To find the probability of drawing an opening hand with A and B (P[A and B]), we need to find 3 probabilities first, the probability of drawing just A but not B (P[A and ~B]), the probability of drawing just B but not A (P[~A and B]), and the probability of drawing neither A or B (P[~A and ~B]).
For P[A and ~B], take P[A] * P[~B].  That's 0.3375 * 0.6625 = .2235.
(NOTE: This is technically incorrect.  It's an approximation that works okay when A and B are a lot less than the total number of cards)
Since the number of As is the same as the number of Bs, P[~A and B] is the same.
The neither part is similar to the 'not H' problem.  Same as last time we do cards-in-deck-that-are-neither/total-cards-in-deck. Again for a hand of 5 cards: (34/40) * (33/39) * (32/38) * (31/37) * (30/36) gives you 0.4228 for drawing neither A or B.
Then we do P[~A and ~B] + P[~A and B] + P[A and ~B] = 0.4228 + 0.2235 + 0.2235 = 0.8698.  That's the probability of drawing 5 cards without the A and B combo.  So, you'll have a 13.02% chance of having that combo.
I hope that's enough info for you to calculate the other combinations you're interested in.

Thanks for this, this is very helpful. What would be the formula if you want to open a combination of 3 card combo[A and B and C]? Assuming that there are 3 copies of each.

@TentenPonce Comments aren't a great place to ask questions like this.  You should create a new question.  But, if you want my advice, don't use a formula. Use a simulation!  It is faster to learn a little code than it is to actually calculate the probabilities using a formula.  Look at the other answer on this question.

I'm going to post again because I thought of something else that might be an answer to your question.
Probability theory is complicated to learn and it's very tedious to calculate something like this.  If I were solving this problem, I would write a program to simulate a few thousand card draws and just look at the relative frequency.
If you wrote it in javascript, it might look something like this:
<!DOCTYPE HTML>

That will run if you copy that into notepad, save it as cards.html or something, then open it with chrome.


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Cthulhu flux metamorphosis/ madness clarification
If one of these two cards are attached to an investigator, is it no longer an investigator? (not talking about the powers the investigator has)
E.g. if Madness is attached to Pickman, is it still an investigator?

Madness: You cannot win if you have this unless conditions say otherwise. If you have any Investigator Keeps in play, you must choose one to attach this to. Any special powers of the Keeper become ignored. Both cards stay together until discarded.
Pickman: ???

It would help if you gave the text of Madness and Pickman for those of us who don't have them handy.

Reviewed my cards quickly and I see "Richard Pickman" and "Pickman's Model" but in neither of these cases does the question make sense to me so I'm not editing anything in nor can I attempt to answer.  Maybe been too long since I played.  Hope that helps someone else tho.

He's still an investigator.
When you attach a Creeper to a Keeper that is also an Investigator, it doesn't suddenly stop being an Investigator. There are two reasons for this:

Investigator is an icon, not a special power, so Madness does not remove it. (Attaching a Creeper to something with Doom icons doesn't remove those Doom icons, either.)
Just because they're stark raving mad doesn't mean they've stopped investigating or stopped being human. (Unless the Creeper is Metamorphosis. But even then, they're still an investigative... being.)

The "special powers" are the ones printed on the card in addition to the standard Keeper text, like the power that the Federal Agents have to discard any Creeper by discarding themselves from play. So the Federal Agents can't discard themselves to remove the Madness that they've been afflicted with (regardless of how appropriate that would be).


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Physical representation of static effects
As has been discussed many times, a +1/+1 counter is a physical object placed on a card, and is totally distinct from a +1/+1 static effect buff from something like Glorious Anthem. Is there any accepted method for marking static effects in order to make the board more "readable"? I typically play casual kitchen table games, but I'm also curious about more serious settings.
For example, with a Glorious Anthem on the board, I'll usually put a coin on each creature I control to represent the +1/+1 effect. If I cast a Nightmare (power and toughness equal to the number of swamps you control) with 5 swamps on the board, I'll stack 5 coins on the card and add more as I play more swamps. In games that also have potential for true +1/+1 counters, I'm very careful to keep separate the true counters from the static effect markers by stacking them in different corners of the card.
Is there a better way I should be doing this? I find the marking of the static effects handy so I don't have to re-count all my swamps or triple check all my P/T values when attacking, blocking or anything else. On a scale of "never do this" to "useful among friends but not acceptable in tournament play" to "that's legit", where does this practice fall, and what are some other options?

Quick note about tournament play: a well-respected pro player is noted for putting a physical object on his opponent's library to make sure they don't accidentally lose the game to a missed upkeep trigger. So clear and careful use of physical memory aids is acceptable at even the pro level.

If you do need something physical, the important thing is that it be totally distinct from counters.
My general suggestion would be a different type of marker, not placed on your creatures. This is especially true for anthems: they're pumping everything, so you only really want one indicator. For Nightmare, you could use a die next to the card, perhaps at the bottom since that's where power/toughness usually are. It'd best if you used something totally different from what you use for counters, e.g. a larger black die for Nightmare and smaller colored dice for counters. (You do see something like this in competitive games sometimes: a die for prowess triggers, or for Tarmogoyf power, but it's pretty much always off to the side for clarity.)
But the problem with all these things is that you can get out of sync. If you play a swamp and forget to update your Nightmare, instead of helping you, that physical reminder is now misleading you. I suspect you'll end up periodically counting anyway just to be sure. In contrast, physical markers are great for counters because you naturally make them correct: something adds a counter, so you do. You don't have to manually tie two things together.
And yes, I'd say that using coins on creatures for this is just asking for trouble, and I just wouldn't do it regardless of how casual the game is: it's not about formality, it's about not messing up. You have to take so much care to avoid mistakes, and if you do make them and end up adding counters instead of anthem-markers, there's not really a good way to sort out afterwards.

As far as legality in tournaments, this can be an issue, but the Tournament Rules are naturally not specific; judges have some discretion. The underlying principle is that players are responsible for "maintaining a clear and legal game state." There's a bit about applying this to game markers:

3.8 Game Markers
Small items (e.g. glass beads) may be used as markers and placed on top of a player’s own library or graveyard as a reminder for in-game effects. These markers may not disguise the number of cards remaining in that zone nor completely obscure any card.
Players using markers to represent in-game components (e.g. permanents) must have a way of clearly representing any in-game status, such as whether a permanent is tapped. Sleeves or card backs that appear similar to any player’s sleeves or card backs may not be used as markers. A tournament official may disallow the use of game markers that can cause confusion or that are deemed inappropriate or offensive.

(emphasis mine)
So, in the end it's up to the judges. If your physical representation of static effects is confusing your opponent, and they call a judge, the judge can ask you to stop using those markers. And if you make any sort of mistake due to confusion from those markers, you can face consequences just as you could for any mistake; you're always responsible for maintaining game state.

IIRC, they have special dice for Tarmogoyf P/T for feature matches at certain GPs/SCGs to help viewers who can't check the card types in graveyards.

@HaoYe I did mention that, end of the second paragraph, though in the GPs/PTs I've seen, they weren't special dice, just another one of the general-purpose video-friendly giant dice.

Yep. I can read. Sometimes. :) (Luckily cards usually have limited text.)

It is worth remembering that representing effects like Nightmare/Tarmogoyf means you are constantly communicating the value of that static effect to your opponent - if this isn't kept accurate, you are likely to be committing a Communication Policy Violation. From the Infraction Procedure Guide, page 21, section 3.7:

A player violates the Player Communication policy detailed in section 4.1 of the Magic Tournament Rules. This infraction only applies to violations of that policy and not to general communication confusion.

This rule cites the Magic Tournament Rules, page 20, Section 4.1:

Players may not represent derived or free information incorrectly.

I have given out more CPVs for Tarmogoyf dice than all the other ways of earning CPV combined.

I can't personally right this second as WotC are blocked on my connection; the first quote is from the IPG 3.7, the second is from MTR 4.1

I'm not sure what all is fully acceptable, but in other games with Power/Toughness changing effects, I've seen different colored dice used to represent static (and even temporary) effects.
One color dice is used for power increases, another color for toughness (if different from power).  If it affects a single card, put them on the card.  Otherwise if it affects all put in front of your creatures.


text:
Can I summon figures into a non-adjacent region?
While reading the rules for Chaos in the Old World, I came across the following paragraph on page 12 under the Summoning Follower Figures under the Summoning Phase section:

Note that the placing player may count a given region as occupied by his own figure if he chose the last figure in that region to summon. For example, a player who picks up his last figure in Norsca in order to summon it to a different location may summon that figure to Troll Country, even if he has no figures in Troll Country or in any regions adjacent to Troll Country.

On the surface, this is rule is in place simply to allow you to 'move' a unit across the board so you can summon in regions you actually want to (if, for instance, there is a particularly debilitating Old World card in play that refuses to fall off the track). However, the first sentence caught my attention and got me thinking.

Note that the placing player may count a given region as occupied by his own figure if he chose the last figure in that region to summon.

Does this allow for more advanced play tactics? For instance, would the following play (in bold) be legal?

Khorne has one Bloodsworn in Norsca, but no units in Troll Country or Kislev

Khorne summons a Bloodsworn from Norsca into the Empire.
Nurgle summons a Plaguebearer into Kislev.
Tzeentch plays a Chaos Card in Tilea.
Slaanesh plays a Chaos Card in The Border Princes.
Khorne summons a Bloodletter into Troll Country.

My reasoning for believing this is legal is because Khorne was the last one to summon in Norsca - and no one else summoned into or out of Norsca during that cycle of summoning - Norsca is still counted as 'occupied by Khorne'; and therefore Khorne can summon a Bloodletter into Troll Country, as it is adjacent to a region he controls. Had another player summoned a unit into Norsca after Khorne removed his Bloodsworn, this play would not have been possible.

If this is a legal play, it leads to some follow-up questions:

If the Summoning Phase had ended with Slaanesh, would Khorne be able to summon his Bloodletter in the Summoning Phase of the next round?
If Tzeentch had played his Chaos Card in Norsca instead of Tilea, would Khorne still have been able to summon his Bloodletter?

Note that the synonymous nature of "move","place" and "summon" only applies to figures and not Chaos Cards.(Emphasis mine)

To "summon" a figure, "place" a figure or even "move" a figure are all equivalent terms.

While Chaos cards are "placed" or "played", the above rule does not seem like it applies to them as it is found under the Summoning Follower Figures section, not the Playing Chaos Cards section or even the general description of the Summoning Phase.

It's a clever loophole, but I think it is an unintentional one. You've pointed out most of the reasons it's probably not intended to work like that already:

The rule is intended to model the movement of troops from one region to an adjacent region. It doesn't make any thematic sense to summon multiple troops to an adjacent empty region that you used to have a presence in.
What about the round after? And potentially the round after that?
How does this interact with Chaos cards?

The last two points are not defined in the rules at all, which is significant.
Most compellingly, this violates the general game design principle that it's a bad idea to make key decisions pivotal on invisible board states, stored only in player's fallible and biased memories. Once Khorne has moved their Bloodletter, everyone at the table would have to remember that he used to be in Norsca. Potentially they would need to remember this over multiple rounds, if Norsca remained empty. Since this state is not reflected on the board, if there was any dispute about who was where, it can't be resolved by inspection. That's just bad design.

I see your point about it being a technical oversight. Given how strong the theme is in CitOW, and the generally high standard of quality of Fantasy Flight games, it is highly unlikely that they would have expected this kind of play or designed CitOW to include it.