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Counter heavy proactive control with a distruption-based aggro deck in the Legacy format
[Feel free to edit my question, English is not my primary language]
Legacy is a format with a pretty high number of cards available. It is arguably the format with the most possible different strategies possible. Being an eternal format with very low card renewing, I think it is fair to say that decks with names like Canadian Treshold, Reanimator, Jund, StoneBlade(any) or Burn are not subject to drastic, heavy changes or stop being played anymore in the next years. That is why I feel secure posting a question which will contain specific deck names, assuming their strategies will never change. A discard will always be a discard, land destruction won't radically change from what it is now and so on.
What brings me here is this: How to handle massive proactive control (discard, land-destruction and creature killing (mostly by eddict effect)). Yes, I'm talking about Pox (or SmallPox, if you prefer).
As a distruption-based aggro deck, if I don't run counter-Magic at all because I'm purely creature based, how should I handle the adventure of the game? Somewhat playing as Maverick would be relevant.
I know the importance of a sideboard. I know cards like Loxodon smiter and Sigarda, Host of Herons exists. I know the mechanics my decks can use to disrupt my opponent (activating knight Knight of the reliquary in response to a Wasteland targeting my Savannah and so on).
I want to know how to counter the goal of proactive control deck, which is to get me out of fuel and making me unable to come back from it. Should I keep my cards in my hand, creating a card advantage, should I try to go "all-in" and play as much creature as possible, trying to race his life points before he's able to completely shutdown my battlefield with his many warth effects and eddict effects. Maybe it would be preferable to do the smart plays, playing just the cards that respond to his moves, hoping each turns he will not rip my hand, leaving me unable to keep advantage on the game.
Mostly by my own, little experience, I tend to rush him, overwhelm his board, making him unable to deal with the number of creatures I'm able to put into play. Sometimes it works, sometimes he warth and I have no other choices than wait for my slow and painfull death, unable to comeback. That is not a strategy, it is trying to overrun the problem.
I want to know how to deal with the problem.
Thanks in advance.

Just to make sure I get it: you're asking how to play a Maverick-style deck against Pox, right?

Actually, and out of any un-natural, pesky, egocentric ways, Yes. But, asking it like this would have probably been very badly welcomed. I tried to my best to protect the integrity of the, in my opinion, fair, legitimate and good question it was.

"Kill him before he can take away my resources" is a fine strategy, I do not know why you are dismissing it.

FWIW, this question was deemed legit by the site and got some decent answers. So I think this is a totally reasonable question.

It works, of course. But I don't like the fact that it comes to a point where it relies on chance. I am not winning because I made the right decisions in the appropriate time nether does my opponent. In the world of strategies and possibilities that is Magic, there must be a way to do the smart thing. In fact, there must be a smart thing to do.

@Sinity What I am trying to say is that it could be the smartest thing to do. If it works, what makes you think it is not a smart thing to do? There may be better strategies, sure, but this is one that can and does work at least some of the time. Chance is a part of the game.

@bengoesboom You are right. It works and chance is a part of the game. I will take this in consideration but I won't stop there. I'll have to do the maths behind discard effects and their potential turn-drop and draw card advantage. I'm sure there is, somewhere, an answer that has mathematically best possible result regarding effect statistics. If I don't find it here I won't find it anywhere. I'll then have to make it myself since crawling the web made me see that probably no one done that specific thing before.

doesn't this come down to "how can my scissors beat rock?" though? Legacy isn't a format where you can be good against all, or even most opposing strategies. Be faster may well be the only option. If you played some kind of turn 1-2 combo deck, your opponent might well be asking the exact same question. There are a lot more obvious "This deck almost always beats this deck" situations in Legacy than other formats.

@Patters Yes, I said that in my question. I was asking though if someone knew a playstyle/strategie/race or wait technic to overcome partially the "bad match-up" Pox is for Maverick. Legacy has maybe the most "This deck almost always beats this deck" but it is certainly the most versatile in term of card pool and the most decision heavy of them all. We are not playing dump creature smashing here like in a other format I won't name. We make thought plays and pretty much all the game is in the decision you make. There is lot of fair decks among the unfair ones.

... isn't aggro racing the opponent's life total before they stabilize the point of aggro?

@BrianS I will answer No. I specificaly did the choice to write distruption-based aggro deck in my question and I will continue arguing that way. While pur aggro tend to do only that. A distruption-based aggro archetype doesn't just try to race the win before something scary happens, it handles it. And the question was pointing this goal. In my opinion, distruption-aggro archetype has the most difficult decisions to make. Way over "Do I counter-spell this or this". And this is even more true in Legacy.

@Rusher You are right. But, like in a chess game, there's some moves that, by experience, you know that are going to reward most. Sort of guidelines. its the decisions you make according to what you know to do best against a certain situation that marks you as a better player among others. It is exactly what I'm asking here. From more experienced players, who knows their way around and could answer my question with tips from their past experience.

My apologies, I mis-read the question.

So, we know you are looking more for a heuristic for how to play your deck as is (or with minimal changes) against an attrition based opponent playing a pox/gate like deck.
The aim of your opponent's deck is to slow the game down as much as possible, so it can abuse its central cards to gain an incremental advantage (usually though the difference in how the values of your respective resources at the time Pox is cast are rounded). To beat this kind of strategy, you either need to come in underneath it, by killing it before it can accrue enough advantage, or go over the top of it, by negating the advantage it is trying to accrue (investing in resources it cant/doesnt interact with, such as artifacts/enchantments) or preventing it from gaining that advantage at all, such as with countermagic.
The most obvious answer (for your deck) is to mulligan aggressively to aggressive hands with lots of efficient, aggressive creatures, and try to overwhelm them before they can lock you out. Creatures that you can discard to the battlefield (some of which you have mentioned) augment this strategy.
Pox decks tend to rely heavily on buying back from their graveyards,finding a way to limit that (such as Deathrite Shaman or Scavenging ooze removing Bloodghast) should help make that strategy harder. On the subject, scavenging ooze provides a good way to rebuild following a wrath effect.
Similarly, as they attack against the axis of lands and creatures, combating that by playing artifacts, enchantments, and planeswalkers that make their strategy problematic is useful. Elspeth, Knight Errant is a very good planeswalker to consider for your deck, and the various swords (particularly Sword of feast and famine) will work well with her tokens to let you stay in the game with resources your opponent can't easily control.
If land destruction is going to be an issue, fetchlands for basics for the first few turns may well be the best way to mitigate that. Pox/Smallpox wont be affected, but at least wasteland will have less impact.
Silence in your opponent's upkeep or drawstep could give you a valuable Time Walk against them, allowing you to further establish yourself. Lingering souls will give you enough to work with to protect your bigger creatures from a few edict effects, particularly if you have black mana to flash it back.
There isn't any way, as a deck built around a board presence of a small number of highly effective creatures, for you to overcome a deck like this in terms of attrition. As is, your only option is to be aggressive and cross your fingers. This IS a strategy, and one that you can try to maximize. You know which of your cards are the most aggressive, and you can mulligan to try and get a hand that will kill your opponent quickly. A Mother of Runes, Knight of the Reliquary reliant hand will probably struggle, but other hands with more aggressive creatures would do better.
With the possibility of making some changes, the above options should be plenty of food for thought, it is worth bearing in mind though that every advantage gained here is potentially (I would say almost certainly) a loss in another match-up. The minimal impact would probably be some Silences, or to consider Lingering souls and/or an Elspeth, Knight Errant or 2, with Swords to back up your tokens. I can't tell you the best combination, but these are all the options I can think of for ways to combat this strategy. It's not for a tournament, so you have plenty of room for experimentation and finding what works best for you.

This may well be far from the answer you were looking for, but as I wrote another comment on the question it ended up feeling more like an answer.

I'll give you the accepted answer with a +1 for giving me general commands on the match-up. It actually does help. I'll also consider the card choices you gave me. Thanks.


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Playing Catan for the first time, what should I know?
Tonight I'm going to play Settlers of Catan for the first time. The thing is that I will play with very expérienced players and they strongly recommended me to gather the more information I could in order to start playing at a fairly good level. I took the time to read a lot on the ruling, the game, how to manage ressources and how to arrange my board but I feel I won't do as great as I could for a first time. I don't need to be as good as them but they really don't want to have a ''noob'' in the game since they play for a long time.
So my question is, what would be your best to-go pro tip for a beginner and what should I focus on for my first game in order to not be a dead mass in the game.
Thanks in adance !

The placement of your initial settlements is very important.
Your initial settlements (along with the first couple rounds of dice rolls) have a large impact on your game, affecting whether you get off to a quick start or lag behind. Some things to keep in mind when placing your initial settlements include:

Probability of numbers: All else equal, a space bordering more dots is better than a space bordering fewer dots.
Diversity of numbers: In general, starting with, e.g., 4-5-6-8-10-11 is going to give you an easier game than 4-4-6-6-10-11, since you will receive cards on more dice rolls, which then helps you build and/or trade more consistently, and helps you avoid having too many cards in your hand when a 7 is rolled.
Mix of resources: All else equal, it's better to have direct access to more resources.

Subpoint: In general, wheat is important at all stages of the game, sheep tend to be slightly worse than other resources (due to lower need and relative abundance). Note that the usefulness of resources changes as the game progresses.

Scarcity of resources: However, there will usually be one resource that is scarcer than other resources. Having access to this resource can give you an advantage in trading. A simple way of evaluating scarcity is to count the dots on each resource.
Don't ignore ports: Sometimes, ports (especially a 2:1 port) can increase the appeal of a spot. A wood-wood-__ spot next to a 2:1 wood port may be more appealing than one with three different resources. (Of course this depends on many other factors.)
Don't count on being able to expand to the good spots -- or the interior of the board: In general, it tends to be harder to expand into the center than towards the edges.

Make sure you consider the consequences of your trades
Sometimes a trade that in other situations would be relatively even will give one player a large advantage. Trading a card to a player so that he can build a settlement on a wood port before his neighbor can might be a fine move, even if it upsets his neighbor a bit. But if that player has settlements on 8-wood, 6-wood, and 4-wood, it might give him too much of an advantage.
Consider the robber placement
Placing the robber on a player with an unplayed development card might not be the best move, since it is relatively likely that the player has a soldier to move the robber away.
Don't neglect development cards
Soldiers (the most common card) provide you with a resource, deprive an opponent of a resource, free your number (if blocked by the robber), block an opponent's production, and can potentially provide 2 VP. Road Building, Year of Plenty, and Monopoly are nearly always useful, except perhaps for a late-game Road Building. Victory points are of course useful. But make sure to evaluate the potential drawback of using (in particular) ore and wheat for a development card instead of a city.
Longest road is nice -- when no one else wants it
In my experience, many beginners go for the 2 VP from the longest road. Roads are easy to build since they only require two resources, but also provide the fewest benefits. The best way to claim the longest road bonus, in my opinion, is (1) in the mid- or end-game, after establishing a good resource engine with multiple settlements (and therefore multiple resources / numbers), (2) when other opponents are not focused on attaining the longest road, and (3) when you have an excess of wood and brick and other players aren't willing to trade at a good rate for either. Otherwise, it's probably better to focus on building settlements, cities, and even buying development cards. In short, don't just build more and more roads because they're easy to build.
Other resources
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/137013/tips-beginners-catan-dummies
https://boardgamegeek.com/article/7450280#7450280

Great answer. I'll take your advices in cnosideration!

How does "Diversity of numbers" help you avoid the robber? Putting a robber on 6 doesn't suddenly block all 6's on the entire board. It just blocks that one 6.

@Rainbolt I'm guessing that it is because with a variety of numbers you are less likely to have large spikes in the number of cards you have so you are less likely to have to discard

@diego That makes sense, but I don't understand how that helps you avoid the robber. I asked how diversifying your numbers helps you avoid the robber. You replied with how it helps you avoid discarding to a roll of "7".

@Rainbolt: diego is correct, and this is what I meant to say. I got my wording mixed up when composing and editing the post. It is corrected now. Sorry for the confusion!

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What are some Battlestar Galactica Daybreak Human Strategies?
My group and I have recently acquired the Battle Star Galactica Daybreak expansion. We also have all the previous expansions and base game. To give context, the previous expansions made it very difficult for a single cylon to win the game on there own. With Daybreak a single cylon can easily bring the human players to their knees, with the strategy of always drawing treachery cards and playing them appropriately in the skill checks and reacting to the current situation on their turn (Human Fleet, Cylon Fleet, Caprica).  For instance, giving out mutiny cards as best you can to brig human players, and sending players to the sick bay when they are on Demetrius' missions so they also get a crisis.
So, is there a valid strategy for playing humans besides get to Demetrius ASAP and get through the missions?  Also, is there a strategy for playing the humans without Demetrius (i.e. Kobol or Ionian Nebula)?

The strategies vary based on which expansions are being used and the number of players in the game.  For purposes of this answer, I'll assuming you're using ONLY the base game and Daybreak (which is my favorite way to play BSG), and have a full complement of 7 players (including a Cylon Leader).
Overall, Battlestar is a resource management game.  For the humans it means spending resources evenly as the game progresses.  Resources are skill cards, fuel, food, morale, population, (lack of a) mutiny card, (lack of) enemy ships in space, (lack of) damage to Galactica, raptors, and vipers, nukes, etc.
Usually, if human are losing too often, it's because they're not using some of their resources properly.  What does this mean?  Well, after a loss take a look at what unconsumed resources you have.  Maybe population is still in blue when you run out of food?  In this case you should have spent more population (letting civilian ships die) to save cards for food checks.  Maybe Galactica was undamaged at the end, in which case you should have spent less time shooting things in space.  It may seem counter intuitive, but you have to let a lot of bad things happen (e.g. intentionally fail skill checks), to have the resources later when you need them.
You check/validate your resources by how far you've progressed on the jump track.  So, based on jump track/jump distance you can evaluate where you 'should be' on resources.  Fuel is an easy one to see, and can be used as a guide, as it tends to steadily drop throughout the game as you jump.  The same should occur for other resources.  If you're halfway through the game, and all of your resources aren't at half, then start consuming the higher ones to save lower ones.  Remember, things like mutiny cards in your hands work the same way.  If half of the players have mutiny cards halfway through, that's fine, don't spend them, but if everyone has one at the halfway mark, half of you should spend them to get back up.  About 3/4 of the way through the game, let Galactica stay damaged, don't repair it, if you can avoid it.
As for Demitrius, the most important space is the Captain's Cabin.  For one action you can get everyone a card.  In a 7 player game, this is very powerful.  It's even better to have someone sit there and be XO'ed to do it twice for effectively 1 action.   Be careful about spending time searching the mission deck and running those missions.  In a 7 player game (early), this is probably fine, as the threats haven't built up and you can get some extra distance, but actions are everything, so consider the opportunity cost of not spending them elsewhere.
For games with 3-5 players, I would consider ignoring Demitrius (including the cabin), it simply takes too long and with fewer players it's harder to hit the skill targets.
Carefully decide weather or not to play mutiny cards.  They again cost you an action, and if your only purpose is to avoid the brig, reconsider if being in the brig is all that bad.  You still draw cards, you still can XO (executive order), and the president can still use quorum cards, PLUS you don't draw crisis cards.  This increases your effective skill-card-draws per crisis card draw.  If it happens, consider leaving someone in the brig at least until people are starting to reach their skill card limits.
Things don't change too much for the non-Earth destinations.
In general:

Don't over-pass your skills checks, this is a waste of resources.
Intentionally fail at least 50% of skill checks.
Make sure your Admiral is not a Cylon (most important)
Make sure your President is not a Cylon (less important).
BE Presidential, 1 resource for one action (e.g. Inspirational Speech) is VERY powerful.
Don't waste too much time hunting for Cylons.
Trust each other.  If you don't, the Cylons have already won.
Always XO.
Advancing the jump track is more important than anything else
Use the early FTL jump if you have extra population for that stage in the game.
And most importantly, HAVE FUN!

Keep the Mutiny well managed.  You don't want all 3 humans in the Brig.
if the cylon president already has a Mutiny, use Admin to force the president title to a human
Use the other Colonial One location to discard a Mutiny card without playing a harmful effect
Use Treachery that gives characters Mutiny to Brig unrevealed cylons
Play Mutiny cards that help your situation, like +1 jump, or attack a centurion at +2
Consider using Restore Order to keep skill check effects, like from Treachery cards from wreaking havoc at crucial moments
Many of the Skill Check cards (the 0-strength ones) require a decision point.  That forces unrevealed cylons to out themselves, or play nice
Definitely take advantage of the pro human skill cards like Test The Limits (free jump icon!), or Raptor Specialist to get an Assault Raptor, or get back a rare Raptor
Make sure everyone's using their OPG to effect!  You don't always get a chance to use it, but not using it can sometimes make a difference!
Always use XOs and special abilities when you can.

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Are there any Xanathar Strategies for Skullport
I played a game of Lords of Waterdeep and received The Xanathar as my lord, who in my opinion is the worst of them all.  My question is are there any viable strategies to win with the Xanathar, knowing that my opponents will avoid having minimal if any corruption tokens at the end of the game?  When playing this lord I always seem to end up in dead last, due to not having access to any bonus points.

See discussion on this here: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/999951/the-xanathars-scoring. It appears many on the internet agree that Xanathar is too weak to be competitive.

As a general rule, you should be looking to take more actions that give you corruption than the other players. For all players, these actions give more resources than other actions in exchange for an end-game penalty. For The Xanathar, this end-game penalty is less than it is for other players. If you end the game with no corruption tokens with The Xanathar, then you haven't taken any advantage of his strategy, and you have just played the way you would have with any other Lord.
If you end the game with 10 corruption tokens, and no one else has any, then you will get -40 from the penalty, and 40 from The Xanathar's bonus. It is NOT accurate in this case to say that you got no bonus from The Xanathar. Rather, you got a 40 point bonus. The -40 that you got is theoretically offset by the extra-powerful actions and quests that you had throughout the game.
While other players will be taking those extra powerful actions and quests sometimes, they will also be spending other actions to get rid of corruption. Either way, this means that the player who ends with the most corruption should have gotten more out of their actions throughout the game than other players.
This doesn't mean that you should go crazy with taking corruption. If you have 19 corruption tiles, for -7 each, then the bonus isn't going to be enough to save you from that.
Finally, keep in mind that The Xanathar is more difficult to play than the other Lords, and it very well may be weaker in general.
Here are a few threads where this is discussed in depth:
How to win with the Xanathar
Xanathar, Halaster, Sangalor: New lord cards broken?
The Xanathar

I play on the iPad and I've been having to exclude the whole expansion, because there doesn't seem to be a way to just remove The Xanathar.
The problem is that there is really only one, very specific scenario where the bonus is of any real value: If you end the game with little or no corruption and all of your opponents also have at least that much. If everyone else has no corruption (or at least less than you), your bonus is effectively negated.
Since the strategy for this ecpansion seems to be ridding yourself of as much corruption as possible by round 8 (given that there are quite a few ways to do that), most games seem to end up where The Xanathar's bonus is basically worthless.
If there weren't ways to get rid of corruption and/or there were more ways to force your opponents to take corruption, it might be worthwhile, but as it is, it relies way too much on your opponents playing badly.
Cheers,
cScott

This doesn't make sense to me... If corruption hurts you less than it hurts any other player, then you should be ok with ending up with more corruption than the other players. If you have less corruption than the other players, then you aren't taking advantage of the fact that your corruption doesn't hurt as much.

I just played the Xanathar on the PC version and I was able to win, which is why I came to this thread because I was also looking for strategies to win as the Xanathar.  I was nervous the game because I didn't think I was playing the lord correctly.  But my plan worked out.  Basically, I tried to gather as much points as possible.  I completed quests that were in the mid level reward range (12-18 points).  I bought buildings that were popular and gave me good rewards.  I ended up with no corruption at the end, because the level was up to -9 and I would have lost points.  I feel breaking even is better than losing points.

"I tried to gather as many points as possible" - good plan!

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Activating abilities of creatures while it is in stack
When I cast a creature with an ability that costs 2 mana to gain hexproof.Can I activate its ability as I'm casting it ?

Which card is this? Horror of the Dim comes to mind, but that only costs one mana and I'm aware of a creature that costs 2. The wording could be important here - or it might be irrelevant, but I'd be interested to know the answer to this.

No.
The only kind of abilities you can possibly activate during casting are mana abilities.
Even if you could activate arbitrary abilities, you couldn't activate its ability because that ability (like most) can only be activated when the object on which it resides is on the battlefield. From the time you start casting the creature until it resolves, it's on the stack.
Finally, hexproof (like most static abilities) only work when the object on which it resides is on the battlefield, so even if he spell had hexproof (e.g. Ascended Lawmage being cast), it wouldn't have any effect whatsoever.

Does this mean hexproof creatures can still be countered whilst they're being cast?

Yes, static abilities of permanents only function while the card is on the battlefield unless otherwise stated or required.  Hexproof does nothing while a card is on the stack.  (Neither does, Protection From Blue, for example.)

@Jonathan Hobbs, Correct. You'd find "This can't be countered" to prevent it from countered. (It can target, you'd find ""This can't be countered by spells or abilities" so it could still be countered for lack of valid targets, though.) See Thrun, the Last Troll

@ikegami Thrun isn't the best example because he also has hexproof (he's so hipster he had hexproof before it was called hexproof). I think a better example would be Loxodon Smiter.

@corsiKa, Quite the contrary, Thrun is a better example because it has hexproof. If hexproof prevented countering, there would be no need for Thrun's additional ability.

@ikegami an interesting interpretation. I like that reasoning.

Really depends on what you mean, a real example would help a lot.
You can respond to a spell on the stack by activating an ability, yes (assuming there is no timing restriction and that the spell doesn't have Split Second). But you can't activate the ability of the spell itself while it's not in play and still on the stack. It means that you can't give your spell hexproof (and that doesn't make any sense anyway) to prevent countermagic for example.
Each players receive priority before each elements of the stack resolve. Every time you receive the priority, you can do things as long as you respect timing restrictions. But you can't activate an ability during the resolution of a spell (you can't split the spell in two even if it has 2 sentences). For example, you can't activate Elixir of Immortality during the resolution of Brainstorm (shuffling your deck after you draw only 1 or 2 cards).

Your brainstorm example is in contrast to something like Jace's Ingenuity where you can draw the first card, cast it if it's an instant, activate elixir to shuffle, and potentially draw it again with the next two draws.

@corsiKa, No, you can't activate or cast anything between Ingenuity's draws. Like dnLL said, you don't get priority during the resolution of spell.


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What's the most efficient way of determine individual card values for my collection?
With an extremely large variety of Magic: The Gathering Cards that exist out there from so many sets and a loose definition of utility and value in the game, it's often hard to gauge a card's individual worth/price without checking it out online. Of course, the rarity is generally a good indicator, but there are plenty of expensive common and uncommon cards too.
My question is What is the most efficient way of determining card value without individually loking up each Magic card?

Note that your link for 'expensive commons and uncommons' is very much online-specific; OTOH, there's a very similar article for offline play (the prices are slightly out of date but still fairly close) at http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/print.php?Article=25391 , sorted by set.

There are apps out there that can quickly scan cards as you flip through them, and provided estimated prices. Delver Lens is a good one. Not to mention it can keep track of your collection, or export to other collection tracking websites.

Welcome to the site! Just curious but how did you come across this app?

A friend told me about it. I know it sounds like an advertisement, but I'm in no way related to this app or it's devs.

No problem, was just curious. It is a good answer and the app looks decent from the store page.

The most time efficient way to sort the wheat from the chaff is hard to gauge, there are a number of different ways that will work for different people.
One option is to take a buylist from your preferred website, which will give you prices for most cards that are valuable. This lets you quickly look through a list of cards (often sorted in alphabetical order and set) all in one place, and check if its on the list.
This wont give you the ACTUAL value of your cards, but generally a buy list price indicates whether a card has much value.
many websites will also let you type in a list of cards and bring up their sale prices of each, which might be quicker depending on how quickly you can go through them.
a further option would potentially be a mobile app, many apps have collection trackers where you can enter your entire collection and then traverse the list in the app to get values for them.
whatever you choose, it will probably be pretty time consuming. Rather than going through your cards and comparing them against the web or a list, it might be better to try and learn as many commons and uncommons worth more than a specific threshold (e.g. $1) as possible, and then go through your collection looking for those specific cards, seperating out any rares and foils to check later. While there are plenty of commons and uncommons that are worth money, there arent so many that you cant have a good idea of what most of them are. having a threshold as low as $1 makes it significantly harder, but starting at $5 cuts out a huge number, and gets you most of the value in your collection quite quickly, before making further passes to pick out the rest, knowing you dont need to look for anything above $5.

If you didn't want to go online, you can go to a local gaming store and get them appraised. A good gaming store should be able to list out what each card is worth and what they are willing to buy it for.

If you know which sets you have, there is an excellent tool for doing this exact thing at http://mtg.dawnglare.com/?p=viz
Simply select the set(s) you own and click submit. You will get a picture of every card in those sets with the most expensive on the left & largest, with descending price towards the right.
Then you can simply leave that page up and flip through your collection looking for image matches.
Dawnglare pulls prices from TCGPlayer.com.

I searched for Google for "magic card prices by set  sized images". Apparently the site that I was looking for was taken offline by the creator, and this arose in it's place. I don't know where I first saw the other site I was thinking of- probably on a MTG forum.

I found the online card manager Deckbox to be quite useful. It allows me to add any card to my inventory with a single click and will display prices, has some nice search and filtering functions and even provides a platform for deck building and trading.

The site mtggoldfish.com is my source if I want to know if there are any valuable commons or uncommons in a set.
Click on Prices in the top left and choose either a format or a set and it will list all cards that are worth more than 50 cents (or 0.5 tix if you need online prices).

My preliminary sift through a collection is usually just looking through all the cards and looking for things that see a lot of competitive play.
This, of course, requires at least some knowledge of the competitive meta at the time of searching. You can learn the meta quickly in 2 ways: looking up Star City Games on YouTube and watching their most recent open series events or (the faster way, but with less joy from watching play) looking on mtggoldfish.com 's "Metagame" tag. If your cards are from very recent sets, the Standard format is what you're looking at. Otherwise you're probably looking at Modern.
And a word from the wise: look at land cards. Other than basic Forest, Plains, Swamp , Mountain, and Island, there's a fair chance you have something of value in your pile of lands.


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Are some MTG sets statistically more likely to yield more valuable cards?
When buying booster packs, I always wonder which one I should by this time, and I often pick randomly (or for superficial reasons). However, it must be that some sets have more useful, valuable or expensive cards than others (which is often determined by players after the cards have been released), and all of these being more likely to be found than others in a booster pack.
My question is in fact a few inter-related questions. Is there a way to determine the likelihood of obtaining individual cards in a booster pack? If so, based on average card prices, is it possible to determine what packs should yield statistically better cards? Has anyone ever done this before?

See this question for the distribution of rarities. (Some past sets have different distributions, but I expect you're going to be buying more recent things.) If you combine that with a list of card prices, you could certainly calculate the expected value of a booster pack. (But the value of the cards will be less than the pack, and you won't be able to personally sell them all at the prices you see resellers asking.)

Look up the costs of buying boosters from each set online.  The sets with the highest expected card pull values (hint: Worldwake and Future Sight) have their booster costs increased accordingly (and always so that you won't make a profit in the long run).

Also note that a card's value is subject to change (especially for in-print sets) as new sets are released, old sets fall out of the various formats, and decks enter or leave the meta for whatever reason.

You're thinking about this as if you are buying packs to sell the cards, but are you really buying packs to play with the cards?  Unless you are likely to immediately sell the rare cards out of your pack, picking ones based on the current selling price is pretty much meaningless.  If you're buying to play with the cards, it would make a lot more sense to think about cards that you are interested in adding to your play collection, and then buy the set that gives you the best chance of getting those cards.

Different sets definitely have different average booster values, and you can calculate the current value of opening a booster relatively easily. You have a 1/8 chance of a mythic, and a 7/8 chance of a rare, so you need the average rare price (ARP) and the average mythic price (AMP). These values may not be directly available, but are trivial (if time consuming) to calculate.
With those values, you can work it out as follows:
(((ARP) / 8) * 7) + ((AMP) / 8).
This might give slightly too high a value as you cant get a rare AND a mythic in a pack, but it gives a reasonable representation.
For more accuracy, you can also factor in the value of a foil (the chance of a foil I believe is 1 in 7 packs, the probability of any individual foil I believe is 1 in the number of cards in the set, however both of those may be incorrect, I'm sure someone else can correct that).
The average value of the uncommons can be factored in (you get 3 in a pack) and if you REALLY want, the average price of a common also.
all of this can give you an estimate, but for someone buying boosters its of little use. Its valuable for vendors to calculate these values as they can figure out how to value buying and opening boosters to sell singles, but only because they can open large supplies of product to realize these averages. An individual will not be able to buy enough.

Actually, mathematically there's no added complication to be had - since each uncommon is still equally likely, the 'decrease' in EV from not being able to have e.g. multiple Wastelands in a pack is precisely made up for by an 'increase' in EV from not being able to have multiple Excavators. You can still just take (average price of an uncommon) x (number of uncommons).

For what it's worth, you can get a general idea about the prices from a site that sells singles. For example, if you do this with the Theros price table from tcgplayer, the low prices (presumably the ones people are actually managing to sell the cards for) give an average booster pack resale value of $3. But to get that, you have to actually sell all the cards, dealing with shipping, and so on.

Are you planning on selling the cards after you open them?  If not then the real value is which set do you enjoy more than another.
I've been playing for many years and for me I enjoy the new sets and the new cards just because they are new -- however, objectively opening a current pack will always contain less $$ value than opening a pack of beta.
On the other hand, I'd never play with the cards from a pack of beta, I'd sell them!  So I would get no play value from the beta pack.


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What happens when a player loses all of their colonies in Cosmic Encounter?
It may seem hard to believe but I played a game recently where I lost all of my home colonies and foreign colonies (all of my ships were in the warp), and I wasn't playing the Masochist.  How does the game go on?  The way I played it was that I got a ship out of the warp on my turn, but since I had no colonies to land it on it was simply "in space" so that I could use it to launch an attack.  I have not found anything in the rule book or on the internet that addresses this.

Yes, when you regroup, you take a single ship out of the warp an place it in the hyperspace cone for your attack.

The Fantasy Flight Games rule book addresses this in multiple locations

Stripping a Planet of Ships
As soon as a player removes the last of his or her ships from any planet, that player no longer has a colony on that planet. Any ships involved in the encounter cannot return to that planet. Ships retrieved from the warp cannot return to that planet. That player has no colony there. If a player has no ships left on one of his or her home planets, he or she must still defend it (with zero ships). If a situation arises where a player must relocate ships but he or she has no colonies anywhere on the board, those ships go to the warp. (Pg. 12)
1. Regroup
Throughout the game, ships will go to the warp when encounters are lost. At the start of an encounter, one of the offense’s ships is retrieved from the warp and placed in one of his or her colonies (home or otherwise). If a player has no colonies, the retrieved ship is placed directly in the hyperspace gate. (Pg. 7)

The FAQ covers what to do if a Mobius Tubes is used.

Q: How does Mobius Tubes work if you have no planets?
A: Your ships exit the warp, then any ships that have no colony to return to are returned to the warp. If you are the offense, you may place up to four of your ships in the hyperspace gate before the others are lost to the warp.


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King of Tokyo: Dice resolution -> Yield -> Card buying?
when exactly must a player choose to yield Tokyo? Today we had a game and the player in Tokyo took 1 attack and decided to stay in Tokyo. The player whose turn it was, then bought a card that dealt two damage to all other players. The player in Tokyo now decided to yield Tokyo.
I feel like the player must make this decision based on the dice resolution's results and not be able to change their mind after a card if purchased.
The rules are awfully unclear on this but do specify that a player can not decide to yield tokyo based on taking damage from a card.

This is what the rules have to say:

If you are attacked while in Tokyo
  and you don’t want to be there
  anymore (and who can blame you
  – it can be rough!) you can yield
  to the Monster that attacked (he
  has to take your place). You still
  take the damage, however.

And close by:

Warning: A Discard card that
  deals damage to you is not
  an attack

Does he think he can leave at any point in the turn after he is attacked?
The rule says "if you are attacked", not "if you were attacked". Everyone with whom I've played has understood the first paragraph I quoted to mean one can only choose to cede Tokyo as one is attacked. There is no chance to leave Tokyo at any point until the monster in Tokyo is attacked again.
Does he think taking damage from a card is an attack?
The second paragraph I quoted makes it clear it isn't.


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Can the Corporation know which HQ cards were accessed?
When the Runner accesses cards from the Corporation's HQ, does the Corporation get to know which cards were accessed, or are they returned to the HQ before the Corporation sees them?

According to the Netrunner FAQ:

Does the Corp know which cards the Runner accesses from HQ?
Yes. The Corp should know what cards are accessed and in what order.


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What can a Runner do to trash ICE that is in play?
I know that the card parasite can potentially trash ice, but is there any other way? (I've just recently started playing)

I believe the only three current cards that can trash ICE after it's installed are:

Parasite - program that reduces the strength of a rezzed ICE until it hits zero, at which point the ICE is trashed.
Forged Activation Orders - event that forces a Corp to rez an ice, or trash it if it can't (or doesn't want to) pay for it.
Kraken - event that forces the Corp to trash a piece of ice on a server that you choose (but can only be played if you've just stolen an agenda)

In addition, there are other cards (e.g. Imp, Demolition Run) that can trash cards that cannot normally be trashed - such as ICE - from HQ or R&D, preventing them from being installed in the first place.
Edited to add:

False Echo - program that can be trashed when you pass an unrezzed ICE to force the Corp to rez it or take it back into HQ (which is a trash-like effect)
Forked, Knifed, and Spooned - run events that let you trash a piece of ice of a particular type if you break all subroutines on it

Note the addition of Forked, Knifed, and Spooned from Order and Chaos


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In bridge, what opening bid(s) should be made with a high card point in "no man's land"?
Recently, I was dealt a hand with a high card point and distribution too strong to open 1 NT but not enough to bid 2 of a suit, i.e. in "no man's land".  Any advice you can provide about how I should open the bidding with such a hand would be much appreciated.

Can you be specific about the hand?  While the general question isn't a bad one, a question of 'How do I bid hand X?' is IMHO likely to generate much better answers.

A hand "too strong to open 1 NT but not enough to bid 2 of a suit" is of two possible ranges of interest: 18-19 and 20-21. If we are talking a balanced hand with (according to the most common partnership agreements) at worst Kx or Qxx in every suit:

18-19 points opens one of a suit (preferably a minor) and jumps to 2NT as a rebid
20-21 opens 2NT

If the hand is unbalanced then it opens one of a suit and either jump-shifts as a rebid with 20+ points, or reverses as rebid with 18+.
Don't get in the habit of opening hands 1NT that are unsuitable for notrump play, just because they fall in the 15-17 point range; you sill seriously stunt your development as a bridge player, and alienate potential partners. There is a very good reason why Victor Mollo called the member of his menagerie prone to such bids the Hideous Hog.

As strong as your hand is, it is not strong enough to do much unless partner responds. Once that happens, you have probably the makings of a potential game contract if there is a fit.
One problem with the description of your hand is that it encompasses a fairly wide range, from 18-21 high card points (HCP).
With 18-19 points, I would bid one of any five card suit, especially a five card major, but one of a "short" minor otherwise. This allows partner to respond with 1 at a higher suit, or 1NT, showing at least 6 HCP.
If partner responds "one over one," you can go to 2NT with a balanced hand. Partner will raise you to 3NT (or four of a six card major suit) unless he has the bare minimum 6-7 HCP, in which case he will sign off by passing or going to three of his suit.
If you had bid a five card major, and partner raises to two, you should raise to three. Partner will take you to four with anything more than 6-7 points.
With 20-21 points, you open directly with 2NT, assuming that the hand is balanced. If it's unbalanced, bid one of a suit, as above, and then "play it by ear." Use "strength showing bids" such as jump shifts or reverses to show your extra values. Partner will take you to game unless he has the bare minimum 6-7, or there is a misfit.
If partner shows a suit at the one level (four cards and at least six HCP), you can go directly to 3NT with 20-21, and a balanced hand.


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what is "the next time in this round" in Ascension?
I have just started playing Ascension Storm of Souls. Since i have no previous experience from other card games like this, i find the description of some of the rules to be not quite as clear and precise as i would have liked. Which, to some extent, might be explained by the fact that English is not my mother tounge. Anyways..
After playing a about ten games, i think that most of my questions have been worked out. But one.
Many of the cards have effects that are worded like:
Example 1 - "Gain 2 runes. The next time you acquire a Hero this turn, you may put it on top of your deck." or
Example 2 - "Gain 1 rune. You pay 1 rune less the next time you acquire a Hero this turn." or
Example 3 -"You may destroy this to pay 2 runes less the next time you acquire a Mechana Construct this turn."
How should "the next time you do X in this turn" be understood? In example 1 do i get the effect for the second Hero i acquire during that turn?
If my reading comprehension dosen't fail me completely, that's what i think it says. But, if so, then i almost never get to use those effects, because i rarely acquire more than one hero per turn. Which makes me believe that I just maybe is reading it wrong.. and that the effects are supposed to be read when i draw them from the card and put them out on the table in front of me. Which would mean that "the next time you acquire a Hero/destroy a construct etc" is actually the first time i acquire/destroy something, because "next" i just refering to a later time in the same round...
Śo, which is it?
Thanks!

Are you asking if those cards have that effect the first time you gain them, or when you play them from your hand?

When you buy the card in Example 1, you don't get 2 runes. Why would you think that "The next time you..." is applied?
All of these things happen when you play the cards, not when you buy them.
Many times, the order in which you play cards from your hand does not matter. Bt if you are planning to buy two cards in a turn after playing the card from Example 1, make sure the one that you buy first is the one that you want to go on top of your deck.

So when i play a card that says "the next time you acquire a hero this turn" it could also be read "the first time you acquire a hero this turn"?

@Erik: no. Technically, you could play that card after already having acquired a hero, so any subsequent acquisitions would not be "the first" of the turn. Contrast this with Dominion, wherein the Buy Phase is necessarily after the Action Phase.

I can see the confusion. No, "Next" in this context does NOT imply that it's already happened once before. The next time might be the very first time. Or it might be the second time, if you already did it once before playing the card with the "next time" effect.
Compare to MTG. Some cards say "the next time damage would be dealt..."

@Gen: right. I guess they could read "the next time, after you play this card, that ...". But that is ugly!


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How does the Sorcerer flare card work with non-viable races in Cosmic Encounter?
This issue came up in a game of Cosmic Encounter tonight and we were unsure how to resolve it.  The wild effect on the Sorcerer flare card allows the player to force the two main players (offense and defense) to swap powers. It then says this swap continues after the encounter is over.  We took this to mean that the swap is permanent, which is pretty freaking powerful!
However, adding to the confusion was that the defending player only had two of his home planets colonized at the time, meaning that his power was removed at that time because his race was "non-viable."  The attacker had three of his home planets, so his power was active.  We could not agree on whether this meant the defending player would get to use the offensive player's power, while the offensive player would have no power (because the defending player "traded" his non-power), or whether the powers would swap but then the defending player would lose it immediately because they still only had two home planets colonized.
In addition, is the trade really permanent?  That seems like a very powerful ability to be Wild, especially when the Super ability for the Sorcerer on the same card is relatively weak (allows them to use their ability to swap Encounter cards even as an ally)

The change is permanent. (Yes, it is powerful, but Wild flares are often powerful; frequently more powerful than the Super, which is usually just an enhancement to the base power.)
The fact that the change is permanent also helps to clarify your question. The defender isn't using the attacker's power; the defender is using their own power, which happens to be the power the attacker started the challenge with. Since it's their own power, its usage is controlled by the number of their home bases.


text:
Can you discard inactive jobs in Firefly
When you deal during your action and you finish having more then 3 inactive jobs in your hand, can you choose 3 to keep from all of your jobs or no ?
Game rules are not clear about this and in something that looks like unofficial game FAQ it looks like you can do that.

Yes, you can end up with more than inactive 3 jobs in your hand after dealing, but you must immediately discard back to down to a maximum of 3.
Basically when dealing you consider 3 cards (these cards are not counted as being in your hand yet while you are considering them). You then select a maximum of 2 of these cards to keep depending on which ones you like (the selected cards, if any, are now placed in your hand). Then you must immediately discard back down to a maximum of 3 cards (so you would discard jobs you previously had that you didn't want to keep).
The FAQs hosted on flamesofwar.com are the official ones as they are linked to from this official page, although the version you linked to (v2) is outdated, the most recent FAQ is v4.1.


text:
Is an Enchantment Creature card an Enchantment card?
is it possible to return an enchantment creature card (like
Baleful Eidolon) with Dawn to Dusk from the graveyard? I'm not sure if an enchantment creature is a special type or just two types (enchantment and creature).
I appreciate your help!

Yes, you can. Baleful Eidolon is an enchantment and a creature. Anything which targets or affects either of these permanent types can target or affect it.


text:
Multiplayer Rules Considering Enchantments
Rule 810.5 about the Two-Headed Giant game variant says:

810.5. With the exception of life total and poison counters, a team’s resources (cards in hand, mana,
  and so on) are not shared in the Two-Headed Giant variant. Teammates may review each other’s
  hands and discuss strategies at any time.
  Teammates can’t manipulate each other’s cards or
  permanents.

Now, my question is: Is it possible to enchant or target my teammates' permanents or does this rule forbid this?

That rule is using "manipulate" in the sense of "physically interact with". It's saying that you can't grab cards out of your teammate's hand or tap your teammate's permanents, for example. This does not prevent you from targeting or enchanting your teammate or their cards/permanents.

To be extra clear; you can only do so if the target is valid under normal rules... in other words, if an aura says "Enchant creature you control", then your teammate's creatures are not valid targets because teammate or not, you don't control them.

So in practice, the big things this stops are probably people trying to play for their teammates (not really the spirit of 2HG!), and maybe "stop touching my stuff" fights.


text:
Is there a movement penalty when starting in the same room as an opponent?
In Betrayal at House on the Hill there is a rule for Moving Past Opponents on page 17:

For each opponent in a room with it after the haunt starts, an
  explorer or monster must use 1 extra space of movement to leave that
  room. (Heroes slow down the traitor and monsters, and vice versa.)
No matter how many penalties you have on a turn, you can always move
  at least 1 space. This is also true if a monster rolls a 0 for
  movement (see "How Monsters Work," page 18).
Stunned monsters don't slow an explorer's movement in this way.

I interpret "moving past an opponent" as walking into a room with an opponent, then walking out. Is there a movement penalty if you are ALREADY in the room with your opponent at the beginning of a turn?
For example, say I am in a room with 3 zombies at the start of the turn. Does it take me 4 movement points to leave the room (1 for each zombie and 1 as a normal movement point) OR does it take me 1 movement point?

I interpret "moving past an opponent" as walking into a room with an opponent

It doesn't say "to move past an opponent", it says "to leave that room."

Is there a movement penalty if you are ALREADY in the room with your opponent at the beginning of a turn?

Yes, there's a movement penalty for leaving a room with an opponent. This penalty is not conditional on you having started in another room.

For example, say I am in a room with 3 zombies at the start of the turn. Does it take me 4 movement points to leave the room (1 for each zombie and 1 as a normal movement point) OR does it take me 1 movement point?

It will take 4 points if you have at least that many. If you have less, it will take however many you have (including none) since you can always move at least once.

"Moving Past Opponents" is the section title. If the title had simply been "Leaving Rooms Containing Opponents" then I feel the rules would be clearer and there would be no room for discussion. As a first time player the penalty for leaving rooms penalty seems very unbalanced as almost all heroes only have a 3 or 4 base movement speed. A single monster in a room with a hero effectively means that it is very difficult to escape. Multiple monsters in a room with a hero make it nearly impossible to escape. I've only played one scenario though... perhaps the penalty is more balanced in others.

@Jon the idea is that you are moving past them within the room, to get to the door.

The title is conceptual, and it should be hard to escape when you're surrounded!

@Sparr If we go with that thought then we should track which door players/monsters enter. If I enter a room via door A and monsters enter via door B then I should at least be able to retreat through door A without penalty.

You could always make that a house rule.

@ikegami But I am very spry and zombies are slow. I was dodging and weaving during the fights such that I was positioned right next to the door I wanted to use. I've watched many seasons of Walking Dead! :)

@Jon I disagree. There is no reason you would assume a monster would be/stay near door B. They are just "in the room". Your turn is not instantaneous, you are "in the room" with them for some seconds of game time (long enough to ascertain that they are there, at least) in-character, so you have to deal with them (evasion or otherwise) regardless of what other actions you take.


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Why do the opposing sides of a D20 generally add up to 21
Most D20s I own (with the exception of poorly made foam ones or MTG spin-down dice) seem to have all opposing sides add up to 21 (20 + 1, 15 + 6, etc).  Why is this?  Who started this?

You'll notice this on most other dice, too: a d6, a d8 and many others follow the practice of putting the highest number opposite the lowest, the second highest opposite the second lowest, and so on, so that any given side added to its opposite adds up to the same number as any other choice.

D6 always add up to 7 too. You have to arrange the face some way, and having opposite faces add up to N+1 seems to be the traditional way.

D20 sides

Opposite sides add up to 21 on a d20 for the same reason that opposite sides add up to 7 on a d6: if there's a manufacturing or design defect, and the die ends up slightly flatter than intended, then the average result of the die will not change.
Consider a d6 that ends up a bit flat: two sides opposite each other will both have an increased chance of being landed on. But since these two sides' numbers are "opposite" to each other, they will not affect the average of the die. For example, a d6 might have a 1/3 chance of landing on a 1, a 1/3 chance of landing on a 6, and, and a 1/12 chance of landing on each of the other faces. The average of this seriously-deformed die is: 1 * 1/3 + 2 * 1/12 + 3 * 1/12 + 4 * 1/12 + 5 * 1/12 + 6 * 1/3 = 3.5, the same as a normal die.
Of course, various other deformities (malformed corner, air bubble in the plastic, some enterprising fellow put a little lead in the die, etc.) will still play merry hob with the probabilities in an unfair way, but a flattened die will be somewhat fair in that its biases favor both high and low numbers equally. The layout for d8, d10, d12, and d20 dice were probably created from this same idea to make the dice somewhat fair if they're flattened.

I may be misinformed, however my understanding of the situation is that this is a result of trying to normalize the value of each region on the d20.
The best comparison is between an MTG spindown (where the numbers count down from 20-1 in sequence spiraling around the d20) and a regular d20. A spindown has all the high values clustered at one end, and the low values clustered at the other. with practice, you could easily learn to roll a spindown to get 10 or more the vast majority of the time, for a regular d20 this is impossible as the numbers are spread evenly, so high numbers are surrounded by lower numbers.
It is very hard (if not impossible) to roll a d20 for an exact individual side, so spacing them out in this way is the best way to "balance" the values, such that a practiced roll aiming for 20 has a high chance to land on much lower numbers that are adjacent, where a spindown would have other high numbers adjacent.
by laying out the numbers such that all sides add up to 21, you give a memorable way for users to navigate a d20, whilst also giving a reasonable (if not optimal) proportionality in value accross the areas of the d20.
as for who started it, I couldnt answer that, d20 themselves have been around since the Romans (http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2008/06/what-version-of/), but I can find no information on who decided the numbering scheme.

This explains the scattershot distribution, but it's orthogonal to the specific 'opposites add up to N+1' question; you could easily put 11-20 on one hemisphere and 1-10 on the other and still satisfy the opposites adding constraint (in fact, a lot of older spindowns do this).

I see what you are saying, Paul Marshall's answer seems to cover that aspect quite well, so I wont try and repeat it.

The tradition of numbering a d6 with 1 opposite 6, etc. goes back to the Ancient Greeks, if not before. As far as I know, the original reasoning behind that numbering isn't really known. It is, however, a way to improve fairness for a slightly flattened die, as noted above.
Other defects such as voids could cause a particular region of a die to preferentially land facing up. In order to minimize the effect of such defects on fairness, dice would ideally have the faces surrounding a vertex (a point where three or more faces come together) summing to the same number. Bob Bosch, Henry Segerman and I have just produced such a numerically-balanced d20 for the first time. For more details, please visit http://thedicelab.com/BalancedStdPoly.html.

Another reason might be that originally 6-sided dice used little holes to mark the numbers. The material removed to create a 6 is more than that to create a 1. As such, the different sides of a die had different weights. To balance the weight across all three directions of the die, opposing numbers were chosen to balance out the different directions. The material taken out of 6 and 1 would be the same weight as the material taken out of 5 and 2, and 4 and 3. All three directions would lose material equal to 7 holes. This, combined with distributing the numbers as far as possible from one another would lead to the current distribution of the numbers on a 6-sided die. However, on dice with more than 6 sides, the sum rule would not be enough to guarantee that all numbers are as far as possible from each other. Also, on 20-sided dice, numbers are not usually created by holes but using digits. As such, the material argument doesn't hold anymore.

Is the total amount of material removed on each axis really the relevant quantity? Wouldn't removing some material move the center of gravity towards the opposite end, meaning that it's really the difference between the amount of material removed from the opposing sides that matters for balance? Hence, putting 1 opposite to 6 would maximize the offset on that axis as far as the COG is concerned. And the closer the COG is to the side opposite 6, the more the die is weighted towards the 6...


text:
Pandemic--epidemics with eradicated diseases
If an Epidemic card is drawn, but the card from the infection deck that is then drawn has an eradicated disease on it, is it necessary to shift the infection rate forward--or does the fact that the disease is eradicated mean that the epidemic has been avoided? Is it necessary to intensify by shuffling the infection discards and putting them on top of the infection deck in this case?

Yes, you still move the infection rate forward and intensify by shuffling the discards. The only thing that eradicating a disease does is prevent you from placing more cubes of that disease on the board.


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Magic card database for websites
How is it that websites like SCG or CFB created their card database inventory. How would i be able to do this myself now? I want to create a similar website where a user can search and find any card with images. Obviously entering manually into a sql server is not feasible. Any help on easiest way to get this done?

How would your site differ from either Gatherer or magiccards.info?

@jwodder well it will be store based like the so many other card web stores out there. I am coming with a totally different approach though. Oh course problem is i don't know how to setup the DB.

possible duplicate of Where can I find a database with a list of all magic cards?

@ghoppe I actually think that question should be closed as a duplicate of this one! The one you linked is just a plea for a current file (an excel, database or even text file) that contains all cards - a file which will expire within months - and it sets a very low bar for what's acceptable. It's a poor canon question. This one however is asking for a way to gather such a database oneself, rather than asking for one, and answers to this will be relevant to users possibly several years into the future. This question is way better.

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about programming and commerce. This site is for asking questions about games, not how to build a website about them.

While I agree with Jonathan that this is a better question, I also agree with Pow-lan. Even though it's similar to the previous question, it's actually off-topic.

There's a program called Gatherer Extractor which can extract all info and images from Gatherer. You can export it to an XML file which you can import easily into (eg) a MySQL database.
You can check the sets which you want to download, and the info you want.
Link: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=303454

i wish i had known about this a month ago, i spent hours writing android code to parse a full text spoiler file from atogatog, and its still not finished!

@Ivo, Is this legal?

I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure magic.tcgplayer.com offer a crystal commerce solution to the stores selling cards through their platform. This includes a card database which is updated by them (an advantage if you are lazy, can be a disadvantage if you want to take advantage of the pre-order market).
I believe they only offer this to US based stores, so outside of the US you might not be able to make this work for you, inside however its a very easy set up which works well on mobile devices as well as regular browsers, and can be customized quite significantly.
This may not suit your needs personal, but others looking to start a new online magic singles store may well want to go down this route.

TCG Player has an API which you can use to get card prices. These prices are based on US stores. You can use this outside of the US (I use it from the Netherlands). For this API you have to send a command with the card name and the setname (not mandatory). It's not possible to get a complete list of cards.

@IvoGeersen that's true, however that is their publicly consumable API, I am talking about the system they hand out to the stores who subscribe to their program, which is different. The original question does not include it, but the asker commented that he was looking to open a card store, this answer may well be useful for him or others in a similar position.

I have the "closed" API, and I can only look up prices per card (not by bulk). However, it's possible to send a complete deck to the tcgplayer.com shopping cart, but if Mnramos92 wants to open his own store, he should probably build his own database and fill it with the tcgplayer.com prices, but I don't know if they want to give access to someone with his own shop ;)


text:
When do I play with the full board in Neuroshima Hex?
I have just bought Neuroshima Hex and read the rulebook. It mentions just using the hexes in the centre of the board, but that the other spaces around the outside are included incase a scenario is played. What are these scenarios? And will I need to use the bigger board in a 3 or 4 player game?

Looking through the Neuroshima Hex 3.0 rules (pdf), I see the following:

So the extra hexes are for when there are five to six people playing. The rules suggest that if there are four people playing, you might decide to use the expanded board as well.
This rule book doesn't mention scenarios. However, I looked up one of the expansions: Neuroshima Hex: Babel 13 (pdf), and it mentions scenarios:

A Neuroshima Hex scenario is a single game which applies additional conditions to the basic rules of the game. These can include Terrain, unequal distribution of forces, conditional events, etc. Campaigns for Neuroshima Hex consist of a series of interrelated scenarios.

This would imply that a scenario might make use of the extra hexes for, perhaps, unequal distribution of forces.


text:
What to do when briefcases in the bag run out?
Near the end of the game, when a price adjustment occurs 9 or 10 briefcases can be puled from the bag, but only 5 will be replaced.
I played recently where the bag ran out of cases except for these 5 that got added. In this situation, everybody knows exactly what will come out and the game loses the randomness which the stock market is meant to have.
Is there any rule for what to do in this situation, should a stalemate be declared, or is this normal and acceptable?

The rules say that if there aren't enough briefcases in the bag, you just take all remaining briefcases from the bag. So you're right that this could be a problem, but at least Friedemann Friese seems to think it's acceptable.
This situation never happened in any of my games, so maybe it's a rare exceptional case.


text:
How to expand Love Letter to accomodate more players?
Love letter was a surprise hit in my group. Everybody enjoys the fast pace and player interaction. It's just a shame that it only allows up to 4 players, because it seems like it would be better for say six players. I would have no problem buying a second copy of the game to shuffle the two decks of cards together, but I'm wondering if it would work in theory.
Has anybody got any suggestions as to how to try and increase the player limit?

If you've not already, I'd suggest looking at other similar games.  Coup in particular takes six and has a somewhat similar feel.

If you're really up to it, you might want to buy the Love Letter Premium Edition which lets you play with up to eight players. It might be a bit different from the Love Letter you're used to though as it comes with new characters like the Assassin (which eliminates an opponent if that opponent forces you to reveal it).

It's an official game though so I you can rest assured that it's been playtested and was intended to be played with more players. I hope that helps :)

Don't invent it if it already exists and available for purchase. This should be the accepted answer.

To be fair, the Premium Edition wasn't out yet when the question was asked but I do think the OP can't do better than buy this now that it's out ;-)

Ah, right, I didn't catch it was an old question. Well in that case - Lost Legacy. Same point.

Yup. I agree. No reason not to buy this now.

One way that I use lets you accommodate up to eight players. You will need two decks of Love Letter cards, and two tokens distinctly different from the tokens of affection. Remove one Princess, and give each player two tokens. Play normally, but when someone would be out, have them discard their card and draw a new one. Then they get rid of one of the tokens. When they have no more tokens left, they are out.

If you read the design diary of Lost Legacy (a game designed to be in the same system, from a games mechanics perspective, as Love Letter) you'll note it's pretty similar. It also has explicit rules on how to incorporate more players (because it's a series of games and there are more)
The Lost Legacy "MegaMix Set"

This variant allows up to six players to play the game. Use the following guidelines to create a set of 31 cards:

Use all the cards in this set (16 cards) and one expansion set (16 cards again. Expansions for Lost Legacy are essentialy stand alone games. Each it's own variation on the Love Letter formula)
Remove one of the Lost Legacy cards (Princess would be the closest analogy)

If players with, it's perfectly possible to play with a Megamix Set even with only 2-4 players.

Lost Legacy Rulesbook Page 10
For Love Letter you could simply combine two decks and remove the extra princess and you should be able to fit six players comfortably. If you enjoy Love Letter might I suggest the only SLIGHTLY more advanced Love Legacy series. It takes the same mechanics of Love Letter and makes the game a little less repetitive plus it also also expansions that add even more spice to the game beyond mere cosmetic changes as we see so often in Love Letter sets.
Love Letter is at the end of the day a micro game that probably shouldn't expand the player count because a lot of what makes the game works is the 4 player cap. With more players the tension in target selection is changed. The despiration to knock out a player can get replaced with the hopelessnes of knowing there are too many players to knock them out. It's a very tight and very well designed microgame.

+1, good points:

Expanding Love Letter as it is is going to harm the game
There are options in this family specifically designed for more players: Lost Legacy and Love Letter Premium
Love Legacy would be an interesting game to play :)

We've recently been playing with 5 and 6 players, first to 3 favours.
For a 5 player game, add a Guard, a Priest and a Baron just to pad the deck a bit.  This seemed to work seamlessly.
For a 6 player game, on top of the above, also add another Guard, a King and a Countess.  This worked well, but we found that the strategies started to change.  The Countess is more confusing because you discard it if you have one of 2 Princes, 2 Kings, the other Countess or the Princess.
We found that 7 and 8 players games became simultaneously more random and more deadly.  Strategies started to break down and the Baron became a liability.

Look in the Variant subforum on BGG, there are quite a few ideas.
For example: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1094976/2-8-players-queen-jester

Links are great, but please summarize the link's content.

@Twitch_City -1 for the link-only answer

Having played quite a bit of Love Letter in all sorts of places, I can say it isn't too rough to play the game as written with up to seven people. It can be a little more chaotic and random, yes. The trick to playing with larger groups is just to manage your expectations. It's not going to be quite as tactical and tricky, but it can still be plenty of fun.

Having more than four players seems like it would be a lot more chaotic, cause they probably play tested the game and chose that number for that reason, I played a game called 7 wonders with a group of friends, and we had 7 people and the game is a 2 to 7 player game, and I will never have 7 people play it again, was supposed to be half an hour at most, it took us 1 to 2 hours, so, adding more players to Love letter might be more chaotic than you want, but give it a try, it doesn't hurt.

Either those people were all new or you weren't playing it correctly. 7 Wonders is often touted as a game that doesn't change in length based on the player count.

7 Wonders should only require you to look at the player to your left, and the player to your right. And all turns are simultaneous. Someone two spots away is utterly irrelevant to a novice game. (If you're playing card-denial against some opponents, then you might pay attention to them, but for the most part you should only care about your neighbors.)

This is not answering the question of how to do it. Board Games SE is a Q&A site, not a forum - please see our [tour] to understand how this site works. Answers need to answer the question, and aren't for discussion.

Welcome to B&CG, Cody!

Seems like this answer is saying "there is no good way to do this." That might or might not be true, and it's certainly not what the OP was hoping for, but it does address the question.

...Yeah, I think it's on-topic, though I think it's a bad answer specifically because it's advising against it based seemingly on speculation ("Having more than four players seems like it would be a lot more chaotic"); the only experience mentioned is with playing a totally different game one time with 7 players. And if it is arguing "there's no good way to do this", it should explicitly state that.


text:
Returning agents to pool in in Waterdeep Harbor phase
If I move an agent from Waterdeep Harbour and complete a quest which allows me to return agents to my pool, can I assign those agents again this round?
If so, can these agents be placed in the harbour?

Yes, you can reassign the returned agents; you do so immediately before continuing with the Waterdeep Harbour phase. But no, you cannot place them in the Harbour. From the FAQ:

Q: If I complete the "Recruit Lieutenant" quest as a result of reassigning an agent from "Waterdeep Harbor", do I get to assign that agent immediately?

A: Yes. If any effect puts a new agent into your pool during reassignment from "Waterdeep Harbor", you assign that agent immediately. However, you can't assign him to "Waterdeep Harbor" (he follows the same rule as the "Research Chronomancy" quest, a returned/new agent can't be assigned to "Waterdeep Harbor" during the reassignment phase of the round).


text:
Using Wizard on another player when draw deck is empty?
Description of situation: A player's turn begins and they draw the last card from the deck and get a Wizard. The use the Wizard on the other player which forces them to discard their hand and redraw it. There are no more cards to draw. What happens?
The way my group played is that the player who has to redraw is automatically eliminated because they must first "discard" to get rid of their hand, but no card to draw means they will not have a card for the final showdown.

For anyone like me who has the alternate version; the Wizard is the equivalent of the Prince.

According to the rules. A single card is to be removed from the deck at the start of each round. This removal serves two purposes. The first is to remove perfect information. So that in the final rounds you can deduce the likely card your opponents have but not necessarily with 100% certainty. The second is to be used in situations like you describe. If you need to draw a card for the final action that card is the card which was removed from the game. Then you compare numbers and establish a winner of the round.


text:
What do I use the curse and coin randomizer cards for?
I have the big box Dominion which includes Prosperity and Alchemy. It came with randomizer (purple-backed distinct) cards for curses and coins. What are these used for?
I understand the Kingdom randomizer cards can be used for playing with unknown Kingdom cards sets.


text:
When a treasure is recovered do you remove those treasure cards from the deck?
When using your four cards to get a treasure item do the treasure cards (and any extras that may be drawn or in another's possession) get removed from the game? This seems to drastically increase the number of times Waters Rise is drawn since the deck gets thinner.

No.

When you capture a treasure, discard cards to the Treasure discard pile and move the
  figurine in front of you.

This is also where encountered Waters Rise! cards are placed.

Discard the Waters Rise! card to the Treasure discard pile.

The treasure cards are effectively useless once you use them to get the corresponding treasures, but they do remain in the deck.  If they did come out, it would both make it far too easy to get the remaining treasures, and with less padding on the Waters Rise cards, cause the island to accelerate its sinking to a really absurd degree.


text:
Trading item cards to another player that already has 5
On a player's turn can they give an item card to another player that already has 5 cards? Would that player just have to discard a card or is it not allowed?

You may only have 5 cards at any given moment. If you share a treasure card (or cards) with a player that already has 5, that player must immediately discard down to 5.


text:
When multiple monsters enter a Vortex during a turn do multiple Dunwich tokens get added?
From the Dunwich Horror rule book:

For each monster returned to the cup in this fashion, raise the terror
  level by one. In addition, if there are fewer than three Dunwich
  Horror tokens on the Dunwich Horror track, add one Dunwich Horror
  token to the track.

Does this mean if three monsters move onto a vortex in one monster movement phase that three Dunwich Horror tokens are added (if none are there) or just one?

The wording specifies that this action is in addition to raising the terror level.
The rules does not state that you add one Dunwich Horror token for each monster added. After increasing the terror level, if there a fewer than 3 tokens, add one token only

Do you have a source for this ruling? I think the issue is that the wording in the rule book is ambiguous (that being said, I do interpret it the same way as you)

No source... I scoured the FAQ and couldnt find a corresponding ruling for this particular rule


text:
Does movement end when you land on an open gate?
If you have 5 Speed and use 1 to move into a location that has an open portal does your movement end or do you continue on into the gate?
Similarly if you use your last movement point and land on an open gate are you unable to go into the gate until the next movement (and in this case have a separate Encounter on the Arkham location)?

There are two different forms of movement in Arkham Horror.  These are described on page 6 of the rulebook.
They are:

Arkham Movement
Other World Movement

Each investigator must choose which they will use based on where they are located at the beginning of their movement.
If you are using Arkham Movement, use your speed points to move as you will.  Of course you need to stop if you fight a monster.  Other than that, there are few limits.
You do not use speed points to go through a gate.  Going through a gate is typically done during Phase III: Arkham Encounters

So the steps would be 1) Movement: onto gate in Arkham even with leftover Speed; 2) Encounter: go into gate and have other world encounter; 3) Finish round?

@riv_rec - Basically, yes.  The steps for each round are: Upkeep, Movement, Arkham Encounters, Off-World Encounters, Mythos.  Each player does each phase before going onto the next phase.


text:
Do you only get one chance at casting a spell?
There is an Encounter card that was drawn that caused Stamina damage. The player has a spell that negates any Stamina damage at the cost of one Sanity if roll is successful.
If that roll fails is the player able to re-roll until they are successful or lose all Sanity?
In addition to that, if the current Environment effect is Planetary Alignment which reduces all spell Sanity cost by one it would make the Sanity cost zero. In this case would the player be able to roll until successful with infinite chances?

It's best to name the actual spell, since in general the wording on cards matters. I'm guessing you're talking about Flesh Ward, which reads "Any Phase: Cast and exhaust to ignore all Stamina loss being dealt to you from one source. Discard this spell if the Ancient One awakens."

I believe that's it. I will have to double check when I get home from work and edit it in.

Okay. In this case, I don't think it matters, since all the spells say "cast and exhaust", but in general it's helpful!

Yes, you get only once chance.
The key phrase is "cast and exhaust". An exhausted card can't be used again until it's un-exhausted during the next turn's upkeep. And the spell is exhausted whether or not you succeed at casting it.
The rules are a little bit fuzzy on this, but this official FAQ has a pretty clear answer:

Does an unsuccessful attempt to cast a spell still exhaust it?
Yes.


text:
Can you use sandbags as your discard when you have more than 5 cards?
I have 4 cards, take my turn, then draw two cards with one of them being sandbags. I must now discard a card to be at 5. Can I use the sandbag card instead of discarding even though I have 6 cards in hand?

Yes.  Page 6 of the rules states

Note: You may use the power of a Special Action card if you are
  forced to discard it.


text:
Which rules advance the chapter end marker in Mice and Mystics?
There are some rules, such as many of the achievements, that advance the chapter end marker in Mice and Mystics. Which other rules, cards or events do this?
Our experiences so far are that the hourglass advances pretty quickly. We already lost two times in the first level because of this. So I am interested if we missed some rules that play in our favour, and which for example advance the end marker, to give us more time.

The only things that move it are achievements and specific story line events that will be listed in the story book.  I believe Chapter 1 has one or two of those.
Some tips for keeping the pages from advancing too quickly:

Try to get the first attack.  Most rooms start with the monsters a ways away from you.  If you act first, hold back out of their range.  They will blindly charge forward and you will be able to get in the first attack next round.
Don't be too stingy with your cheese.  Using special abilities kills monsters faster, reducing the number of dice you roll that could come up cheese.
Don't spend a lot of time searching after you've killed the last enemy.  Try to have the last mouse on the track be in position to explore, and only let the people in between search.  Some times you can delay killing the last enemy to give yourself a bit more time, but this can also backfire.
Don't spend a lot of actions healing during battle.  Kill the enemies first, then heal before leaving the room.
If someone is getting close to an achievement like Roach Master, you can leave the final kills for them so that they can advance the end marker for you.


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How to play the intro of Legends of Andor with two players?
I just got Legends of Andor and was trying to play the intro with two players. Having only two heroes, it seems the objectives cannot be reached in one day. Is Andor meant to be played with all heroes always, like e.g. In Mice and Mystics? I couldn't find any hints so far in the manual.

I advise you to play with 2 characters each, you only have 14 hours to spend with 2 players on a given day vs. 28 with 4 players, so you have way more time with 4.

It is possible to reach all the objectives with just two players, and that is the way that it is designed.  Unlike Mice and Mystics, Legends of Andor has much more of a puzzle feel to it and you need to plan carefully in order to accomplish things within the time limits.  Keep in mind that you can move through the castle, that is one thing that often makes people think it takes longer than it really does.

Yes, the game seems much more strategic to me than M&M. However, I cannot figure out how to achieve the very first goals in one day on the A1, the very first card. Movements alone take more than 7 hours.

Which characters were you using?  The exact moves will vary based on that.  I can try to figure them out for you if you want, though I don't actually own the game.

Apologies if I've used any wrong terms. I've only got the German version and translated names and things myself. Feel free to fix them if they don't match the English version of the game.
The intro legend is definitely possible with any pair of heros. With some combinations it's definitely not trivial, but I quite liked that about it, that it immediately drives home the point that this game has a strong puzzle component, where you need to plan your collaborative actions to achieve the goals with the limited resources you have.
Provided I didn't make any mistakes, below are "walkthroughs" for all 6 possible pairs of heros for the very first legend card on the intro legend. The trickiest one is probably the dwarf and ranger combination. Also for most of these, the solutions are not unique (maybe for all of them).
The number in parentheses represents the number of hours remaining for that particular hero.
Dwarf & Warrior:

Dwarf → 13 (fog; 3)
Warrior → 5 (well; 4)
Dwarf → 17 (coins; 2)
Warrior passes (3)
Dwarf → 18 (merchant; 3)
Warrior → 0 (castle; 1)

Dwarf & Ranger:

Dwarf → 17 (coins; 3)
Ranger → 13 (fog; 4)
Dwarf → 18 (merchant; 2)
Ranger → 5 (well; 1). Note that this path goes through the castle.
Dwarf passes (1)
Ranger → 0 (castle; 0)

Dwarf & Mage:

Dwarf → 17 (coins; 3)
Mage → 11 (fog; 5)
Dwarf → 18 (merchant; 2)
Mage → 5 (well; 3). Note that this path goes through the castle.
Dwarf passes (1)
Mage → 0 (castle; 2)

Warrior & Ranger:

Warrior → 5 (well; 4)
Ranger → 13 (fog; 4)
Warrior passes (3)
Ranger → 17 (coins; 3)
Warrior passes (2)
Ranger → 18 (merchant; 2)
Warrior → 0 (castle; 1)

Warrior & Mage:

Warrior → 17 (coins; 3)
Mage → 11 (fog; 5)
Warrior → 18 (merchant; 2)
Mage → 5 (well; 3). Note that this path goes through the castle.
Warrior passes (1)
Mage → 0 (castle; 2)

Ranger & Mage:

Ranger → 17 (coins; 4)
Mage → 11 (fog; 5)
Ranger → 18 (merchant; 3)
Mage → 5 (well; 3). Note that this path goes through the castle.
Ranger passes (2)
Mage → 0 (castle; 2)

Of course, this is only the first part of the intro legend, and there's quite a lot more to it. However, I can't really give a detailed walkthrough for this, because the actual outcome depends partly on luck and you'll have to improvise a bit. I suppose, if you have really bad luck it might be impossible to solve it, but we did manage to get through on the first try. It definitely required some thinking though, and the game is supposed to be challenging.
I'm sure there's other ways to solve it, but if you want a hint, here's a neat trick which helped us make it through to the end and which probably applies to most if not all pairs of heros:

 Once we got the final (non-ending) legend card on "day" H, we had one character pick up the scroll and the other move to a field around 36. So on the next turn we could do a sort of torch relay, where the first character brings the scroll to 36, hands it off to the other one who can then use their own moves to get to 71. There we waited for two turns to let the Skral pass and then the goal can easily be reached within one turn.

 One thing worth noting is that we really needed to use up the monster slots in the top left corner. Every killed monster is "worth" a day, and you'll easily reach day N if you try to kill them all. Note that the monsters that spawn on step H can't really reach the castle at all (the same was true of a few other monsters in our case). Their only point is to create a bottleneck near field 39 on the rush to the goal. Every monster that you allow to reach the castle is one more turn you've got to reach the goal, so it's definitely a trade-off worth considering (and probably necessary to some degree).


text:
Fortifying an already fortified city (or placing a caravan in a city with a caravan)
In Civilization Fame and Fortune expansion, a player may disband his army/scout figure in one of his cities. Disbanding a army figure is called fortification, and this gives an additional one-time-use +2 combat bonus. Discarding a scout is called sending a caravan, and it gives a one-time-use +2 production to the city.
Is it a legal move to discard scout/army figures voluntarily and without benefits to an already fortified/'caravanicated' city?

Yes. This was covered by the FAQ, v2.0:

Q: Can a player disband an army figure in a city that already contains a fortification marker, or a scout in a city that already contains a caravan marker?
A: Yes. However, the player does not add an additional fortification or caravan marker, or gain an additional bonus.


text:
Why to declare the city a scout is sending goods at the "Start of the Turn Phase"?
In the rulebook of Civilization (p.26) it says, that

The player declares which of their cities the scout is "sending" the square to during the Start of Turn Phase, and all the icons in that square (including trade, production, culture, coins and resources) are then considered to in that city's outskirts for the rest of the turn.

In many cases in our play groups we forget to declare the cities at each 'Start of Turn Phase'. Then, we declare the cities at the 'City management Phase'. This is sometimes even an agreed rule, because it makes the 'Start of Turn Phase' a much faster. That is because then you will not have to plan the whole round beforehand at the 'Start of Turn Phase'.
Is there any reason that the decision for the "home city" of the scout should be decided at the 'Start of Turn Phase' and not at the 'City Management Phase'? Would it harm the game somehow, if the decisions are made at the 'City Management Phase'?

If could affect the game in the way, that you do not know if some player will trade with you. If he does not accept a trade you might be interested in, you could lack the ressources to do what you intended to do and have misplaced your pioneer (or vice versa, could have done some better move due to a surprisingly good deal).
However, we always decide where to use the pioneer during city management, since the game rule causes unneeded memory issues that are only relevant in niche cases (the game is already complex enough by itself).

Can you clarify your answer? If I have misplaced my scout, it does not matter if I declare the city for the scout in the 'Start of Turn Phase' or in the 'City Management Phase'.

Say you need 8 hammers to build a building. Your city produces 6 by itself, your scout 1. Now you have the choice of trading 3 points from another player which you can exchange for an eight hammer. This results in 2 possible outcomes: You trade, get the eight hammer and use the scout in order to build the building. Noone trades, you build a building for 6 hammers and waste a hammer you could need in another city or should have placed the scout on a resouce that you cannot farm now.

Ok, i got your point now. I upvoted your answer, but I will still wait for some while before accepting any answer as the "most helpful answer".


text:
Maximum number of coins from a tech?
On page 26 of the rulebook it says

Coin tokens placed on a tech card as a reward for accomplishing a
  certain task are treated just like coins on the map, except that there
  is a maximum number of times a given task will provide a coin token.
  Coin tokens advance the economy dial when gained and cannot be lost

Since there are ways to remove a coin token from a tech, how is the maximum number on the tech card interpreted?
a) The maximum number on the card means the maximum number of times that you may use this ability.
b) The maximum number on the card means the maximum number of coins that can be placed on the card using this ability.
Example
The pottery tech card reads max 4. Player A uses this four times (on four different rounds) and gets four coin tokens on it. Player B plays a culture card which enables him to discard a coin token on a technology card, and discards one of the coin tokens from the player A's Pottery card.
Can player A use the ability on the Pottery card fifth time to get a fourth coin token on the tech card?

From the Official FAQ v2:

Q: What exactly does “(max 4)” mean on techs such as Democracy, Code
of Laws, or Pottery?
A: It means that a player can only have four coin
tokens on the Tech card at one time. If a coin token is removed from
the card, the player can fulfill the condition on the card to add
another coin token to it.

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


text:
Late Arrival: What to do with the other two cards? (Guillotine)
The "Late Arrival" card tells to look at the top 3 cards, and add one of them to the end of the line. What should one do with the other two cards?

Not backed by any rule, but we discard the cards afterwards since otherwise we would know them already.

As the card doesn't tell you to do anything special with the other 2 cards they should remain on top of the deck in their original order.
This is supported by an answer to a similar question here.


text:
Can you construct a railway to Toulon through Marseille? (Paris Connection)
A round in Paris Connection will end, when someone constructs a route to Marseille.
If player A has enough pawns to construct a route also to Toulon, can he/she also make a route to Toulon on the same turn as he/she places a marker on Marseille? (see the attached picture).

According to this response on BoardGameGeeks, immediately means after you are done completing the action that causes the game to end. This is a poor wording then in the game rules, and it should say instead of 'immediately' "at the end of the current turn", or something similar.