text:
Where can I find the rules for Word Thief?
I recently inherited a handful of games from a family member. One of those games happened to be Word Thief. When I sat down to play, I realized that the rulebook had been lost or was not included in the box. Is there anywhere that I can go to find the rulebook for this game?
The publisher appears to be Faby, which doesn't seem to have any sort of web presence.

Did you try Googling? The top hit for the search rules word thief card game seems to be what you want:
Rules for Word Thief, by Faby games

Actually, I did search around quite a bit for it. I recall coming across that link, but was hoping for something more like an official rulebook, which doesn't seem to be available anywhere. I'm guessing Faby no longer exists. But, you're right, I should have stuck with that result.

The ehow link is dead. Top hit in google search now points to this thread on BGG

Rules for playing wordthief
Wordthief is a game for two to four players. The object of the game is to make or steal as many words as possible to acquire points. The game is over when the deck has been fully dealt and one player has used all his cards or no player is able to make or steal another word.
The Wordthief deck contains 108 cards: 104 letter cards and 4 Jokers. Each of the four suits (spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs) contains 26 cards.  Each of those cards has a value of from 1 to 10, based on the frequency of the letter’s usage in the English language.
A full game with four players tables about 50 minutes. If only two people are playing, the deck may be cut in half for a shorter game.
Getting started

The deck is cut and each player turns over a card. The player with the letter closest to A goes first. The cards are then returned to the deck and the deck is shuffled.
Each player is dealt seven cards face down.
A card is dealt face up to serve as the trump suit. It will be picked up as the last card from the deck.

Beginning the game

The first player uses the letters in his hand to make a word listed in a standard English dictionary. Any word of two letters or more is permitted.  Exceptions are abbreviations and words requiring hyphens, apostrophes or capital letters.
The value of all the letters in the word made is added up and registered under the player’s name on the score pad or the player takes the equivalent value in chips.
Words made in more than one suit can be stolen by other players. If a player steals your word, he also takes the point value of that word. If all the cards used in a word are of the same suit, the word is wordlocked and cannot be stolen by other players. Wordlocked words receive double points, triple points if the word is in the trump suit.
The player who has made a word replenishes his cards. Players must have at least seven cards in their hands.
Play passes to the left. The next player must either make a new word from the cards in his hand or steal one complete word from another player. If a player steals a word, he must increase its value by adding letters to it.  He may also increase its value by breaking it into 2 or more words, then adding or subtracting letters until +all* the stolen letters plus at least one from the player’s hand have been used in the new words. The player must use all the letters from the stolen word and each new word made must contain at least one letter from the word that was stolen.
Once a player has created a word, he cannot steal, change, add to or lock that word. Only other players may do so.
As mentioned in rule 5, the value of all the letters is added up and registered under the player’s name on score pad or taken in chips.
A bonus of 5 additional points is awarded for each word of 5 letters or more.  5 bonus points for a 5-letter word, 10 points for a six-letter word and so forth.
If a player is unable to make or steal a word, he loses 5 points, takes another card and misses a turn.
When a word is stolen from a player, the points are registered in the minus column as points lost or chips are returned to the bank.  Bonus points remain with the player.
A Joker is wild and can be used for any letter of any suit in creating, stealing or locking new words.  Jokers have no value.
A player who uses all the cards in his hand (a minimum of seven cards) in one turn receives a bonus of 20 points.

Scoring

White Chips = 1 point
Blue Chips = 5 points
Red Chips = 20 points

Ending the game

The game is over when all the cards, including the face-up trump card, have been dealt and one player has used all of his cards or, when no one can make or steal another word.  Any cards remaining in the players’ hands are subtracted from their scores or the equivalent value in chips returned to the bank.
The player with the highest total, arrived at by adding points (or chips) made and subtracting point wins the game.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/


text:
What are some good ways to transition to more complex strategic thinking games?
What are some strategies that people have used to introduce novice players (kids or spouses...) to increasingly complex strategic gaming?
Ticket to Ride is a big hit at our house - we'd like to move along the continuum to Risk and then onward toward grand strategy - maybe not so far as Twilight Imperium, but into some more planning-centric and possibly backstabbing games.

In my experience, the order in which you introduce games is only of minor importance in comparison with understanding what kind of person you're dealing with and what games that type of person would like. So the key is introducing different types of games to identify the gaming personality type. Here are a few gaming personality types I've run across, and the progression that makes sense for them:

Nature-born game lovers. My son is one of these. He had mastered
the strategy of Sorry by the time he was 3 and by the time he was 4
wanted us to teach him every game we had in the house. He started
learning the card game of bridge at age 5. Progression: Order doesn't matter for people like him except for games that require reading and truly complex games like Bridge. He was not a fluent reader until age 7 but some games (i.e. Settlers) could be played anyway by memorizing the pictures on the card. More important than complexity is how interesting the games are. Nature-born game lovers usually want to keep learning new games and they end up getting bored with games of limited complexity and/or limited variation.
Socialites. You may think they hate games altogether but if you
find social enough games ("party" games) they'll play. Examples: Charades,
Pictionary, and many card games. It is interesting that many of
these people end up playing hard card games (i.e. Bridge) just
because it is easy to socialize around the games. But don't expect
these kinds of people to ever play Chess, Go, or any other
complicated game which limits socializing. Progression: Charades is a really nice one to start with. Kids will need the subject area(s) limited to things they know about. Most kids like to play the alphabet game on long car rides  (find a word you can see that begins with letter "a", then "b", and so on). There are other games like this with no components but as they get older you can introduce kids to games like Clue or Squint. Pictionary and some other similar trivia games are simple to learn and play but require extensive world knowledge so are going to be more appropriate for high school age and up.
Game haters. If you try a variety of different games on a person
and he or she hates them all, then give up. Some people just don't
care for games. At best, they may be willing to do 1 or 2 games they
learned as a kid and that's it. Progression: If they truly hate all games, then nothing you introduce will matter. However, be sure to have them try several completely different types of games, in case they only like one specific type of game.
Nature-born engineers. I have a friend who loves games but it
was looking like his son was in "Game hater" category. I gifted them
a copy of Settlers of Catan and we were all surprised that the son
loved it after a history of getting bored with every other game
tried. 2 months later, Eurorails become his favorite game. This kid loves building things so I'm guessing he would like
other games too where you see a network of pieces growing over a
board. Progression: Blokus is a good first one given how simple the rules are. Ticket to Ride is also fairly simple. Settlers and Eurorails are only slightly more complex. I'm not not sure if an empire-building game with economics such as Eclipse would eventually be appealing, as I don't know many people in this category.
Ordinary people (that don't fall into any of these extremes). I
have encountered a surprisingly small number of people who like
games a little but not a lot. Most people I know fall into the first
3 categories. With ordinary folks, I find that if you push hard to
get them to try many new games, or push games on them that take more
than about 90 minutes to play, or ramp up complication too fast,
then they end up not wanting to play at all. So just let them
proceed at a leisurely pace, playing the games they really enjoy. Progression: I would start with very easy traditional games like tic-tac-toe, dots, hangman, checkers, simple card games. You may be able to get them more interested in playing a game to fill in time like waiting for food at a restaurant (which is why I mentioned the first 3 games).
Word smithers. These people love word games and little else. Progression: This is far more age-dependent than any other category. For kids: Hangman, Boggle, Jotto, 25 words or less, Scrabble, might be a good progression. High school and older who already like crossword puzzles can jump right into scrabble.
Strategy-only. These people don't see the point in playing games
with random elements. They will play Checkers, Chess, Go, and
possibly logic and hidden information games like Mastermind or
Stratego. They may play them well - maybe even extremely well. But
the vast majority of games hold little interest due to the luck
element. Perhaps also in this category are people who tolerate modest amounts of luck so long as skill matters the most (Examples: Bridge and Poker). Progression: Tic-tac-toe, checkers, chess is a Western approach. Tic-tac-toe, Reversi (Othello), Go is an Eastern approach. Or a card track could look like solitaire, spades and/or hearts, bridge.
Other. Like the nature-born engineer type I described above, there are certainly other people out there who enjoy only one very specific type of game. The path to discovery is to experiment with very different types of games, and not necessarily with simple ones first.

Certain games are popular because they work well for at least 3 out of first 7 of the above categories of people. For examples, Monopoly, Ticket to Ride, and Settlers of Catan all work well for 1, 2, and 4. I have played a ton of Settlers over the past decade because it offers a particularly good balance for people in these three categories. (Our kid learned it before he could read. First we played without development cards, then he just memorized the pictures on the cards.)
It is likely I missed some types of people - if I did, please mention them in the comments.

Do you consider ultra-competitors a subset of game lovers? My wife does not talk to me if I win by one point in TTR or Fresco or you name it that runs the score above a hundred. And our dance teacher seriously does not want to leave until she wins a round of Settlers or Power Grid (a great engineering game, not only because of the theme).

@StasK - In my experience, I've seen a wide range in (what you call) ultra-competitiveness among many different game player types. So it's not so much a type of player, as another variable independent of game player type. So I couldn't really figure out how to work that into my classification scheme. I did think of one more type to incorporate into my scheme: Strategy-only.

That might also be another dimension. I am one of these guys who are reluctant to play the games of luck. I would consider Risk to be a game of luck, as I don't see deep strategies and transition from mid game to late game, which is often an important issue in many staged games. (Should I take new routes in TTR? Should I stop messing with aristocrats and buy off all the buildings in St Petersburg? Should I stop mixing browns and purples in Fresco, as there aren't any pieces left of these colors? Should I offer 70 euros for the only 7-capacity plant on the market in Power Grid?)

@StasK Do you think the #7 "Strategy-only" section I added adequately covers game players who dislike games of luck?

That's a bit extreme. I have not come across very many strategy-only folks even among mathematician friends of mine, whom I have plenty. But then few people would fall squarely into a single category of yours -- I can associate myself with 1 and 4, with some elements of 2 and 7, and have nothing along 6, although I did play a fair share of Scrabble as a kid with my parents. Would you say that the game of bridge is strategy-only, given the hands? If the hands are pre-dealt at tournaments, it means that the remaining interactions of players must be purely strategic.

@StasK My game-loving 6-year old son loves all games but has a friend who literally will only play Chess, Arema, and Checkers (My guess is he'd happily play Go if someone taught it to him). So that is all these two kids play. You're probably right that most people fall into multiple categories but I can thing of at least one person I know who is purely in one of these categories, which is how I came up with them (yes - I know - not very scientific). I would not say Bridge is strategy-only . . .

@StasK Duplicate-style play greatly reduces but does not eliminate luck from sources such as finesses, weak players, hands which play to your strengths, etc. First tournament I did with my wife we happened to play 19 out of 24 hands as defense. We won that tournament, because we happen to play defense together very well, and managed to avoid my wife's somewhat weak declarer play. More common example is that you play a run-of-the-mill obvious hand against brilliant opponents then play a challenging hand against the weakest partnership. That's lucky (1st hand average score, 2nd top score).

No, what I meant was the mechanics of the game, and whether it has randomness in it left after the hands are dealt. (Suppose you play against a computer opponent with fixed strategic behaviors, say.) Sure, we do come across newbies who play "Production" in Puerto Rico every turn they are in charge. (Just make sure you sit on their left, you will win even after ten shots of socializing beverages.). But it's not like you need to roll dice in Risk or, god forbid, Monopoly.

@StasK Given the interesting discussion, I'm sensing the formation of a good question here: "Once the hands are dealt - is Bridge a strategy-only game?" I think the answer is a nuanced "no." If I'm playing in a tournament with my human partner against 11 other Robotic partnerships, each with a different bidding system, then there is an element of luck as to which hands maps better to particular bidding systems. If you want to assume identical bidding systems, there is STILL a luck element that has to do with going for low probability overtricks which will lead to top or bottom score.

@StasK I did ask (will be interesting to see the answers): http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/6806/is-duplicate-bridge-a-game-of-pure-skill

Strategy-only games can include certain games where a (small) factor of luck is present: in the long run, luck will equal out amongst players and the strategist will win. Why do poker championships almost always see the same top players, even though it is a cards game?

@Konerak Based on multiple comments from you and StasK, I did add a line to the Stategy-only type of player indicating the willingness of some of these types of players to tolerate modest amounts of luck so long as skill matters the most.

I actually think that CCG and RPG gamers may be two separate categories for strategy complex gaming given their unique attributes. There is certainly crossover between these groups and people who play board games. However, the price/gotta catch 'em all qualities of CCGs and the immersion of RPGs create different experiences that only certain gamers will enjoy.

This seems like a fantastic answer to a different question. I understand your point, but really, there are ways to progressively introduce games that build on concepts, which is what the question seems to be asking for.

@VolleyJosh I think you have a valid point so I heavily modified the answer. I added in a progression in each category after first describing the type of person. What do you think?

Awesome update. You have my vote!

Technology has helped me convert/graduate more players than any other tool that I have used. Consider Dominion: this game is very easy to play online. You click on cards that are in bold and then you click "end turn". Notice that arbitrary button-pressing will probably never lead to a victory, but that the game mechanics can be easily learned since the computer will not let you do anything illegal.
I taught my friend's young (12?) son to play in one 6-minute game on the isotropic reserved.
Then when you transition to live play, you can say "remember when _ (you couldn't play two action cards because.../you couldn't build your settlement there/you couldn't claim that railway route", depending on which game you are playing.
I would also suggest using so-called "gateway games", such as Settlers, Ticket to Ride, and Dominion. Once socialites realize that there are other games besides pure luck games, true gamers can emerge!
Settlers -> Cities and Knights -> (not sure what game has similar mechanics)
Ticket to Ride -> Steam/Railroad Tycoon
Dominion -> 7 wonders/Ascension. Never MtG. For the love of god... :)
Pirate's Cove -> Merchants and Maruaders
Carcasonne-> ??
I'm not sure what an intro "worker-placement" game would be, but eventually people should graduate to Agricola and Lancaster,
For co-op, Forbidden Island is popular (though this game struggles - like many co-op games - to answer the question "how is this different than paying all four characters by myself?")

A decent worker placement starter is Stone Age. Our family played it a dozen or so times (which is a lot, given that we have about 40 boxes), but never graduated to Agricola or Puerto Rico -- we played both of these twice at most. Two coop games that worked well for us were Shadows over Camelot (especially for our son) and Pandemics (especially for our daughter).

Thanks for that, @StasK. A friend has that game - guess it's time to check it out!

When I introduce friends of mine to games, I find that the most important thing is the time cost. People are unwilling to even try games that will take up hours of their lives. As far as I'm concerned, the number one gateway game is Dominion. Others have mentioned it already, but I'll give you a couple of reasons why I love to cajole non-gamer friends to try it:

It's quick - You can get a simple game in within 40 minutes (depending on the supply, obviously)
It's simple - A B C, play an Action, play a Buy, Clear up. Come on, an idiot can understand this game within a half-a-dozen turns
It's tactical - After the first game, if they're unsure about the hidden complexity of it, just point out how different everyone's deck is, and remind them that you all started with the same small deck, and used the same simple restrictions
It's nice - One of my biggest failings is that I hate getting brutal with other players (in ALL games). I play games to make friends, not add a number to some hypothetical win column. That's just me, but it's also true of first time players: they don't mind losing, but they don't want to feel victimised, and they don't want to feel like they suffered hugely because they didn't know how to defend against attacks. Since almost all interactions (as of the most recent expansions) affect ALL other players, there's no feeling of targeting or victimisation. (Compare Risk for example, in which all interactions are targeted and deliberate.)

Or, if your friends already enjoy charades, Pictionary, Cranium, etc, then you might try a different route: I have a category of games that I think of as good social gateway games. These are games that don't revolve around over-thinking strategy but in actual face-to-face interaction. Games in this category might include Shadow Hunters (and other Werewolves derivatives), or games like Dixit (conceptually similar to Balderdash and other standard fare, but a nice reminder that These Aren't Your Grampa's Games).
Finally, the benefit of cooperative games can't be overstated. I introduced a group of friends to Pandemic, which is a great game for increasing complexity. For the first couple of turns, I pretty much took everyone's turns for them, making sure to explain the reasoning you might consider before every action. After a couple of turns, I started "thinking out loud", suggesting that one or two actions seemed appealing and asking if anyone else had opinions, happily taking whatever decisions the others agreed on (even if I could see gaping logical flaws; learning isn't ALWAYS about winning ;D ). As you release your grip, the opinions come a lot more freely, and by the end, you'll have full-scale discourse about every turn. One thing to note: Pandemic and other cooperative games require a very gentle touch to teach. Accept that you won't win your first game with them, and that mistakes will be made. Over-ruling new players won't make them want to play again any time soon, even if the "team" won in the end!

I find the main factor that affects game introduction is the learning curve.  Even if people enjoy playing new games, they generally don't enjoy actually learning them.  The longer the interval between "Hey, would you like to play a new game?" and "Okay, we're ready to play.", the less likely any novice gamer is to stick around.  Even if they do survive the initial training and make it to the game proper, you're still at a severe disadvantage; the only experience they have of this game so far is "This is so boring..." and now you actually have to fight against that.  First impressions are not easy to counter.
The main reason the classic board games are so popular and have withstood the test of time isn't because they're particularly great games.  It's because the rules are very easy to learn, and the games themselves are enjoyable enough to keep playing.
Add to that the fact that many of these games also share mechanics.  Learn how to roll a six-sided die and move a little piece from one square to another, and you've mastered almost everything that Parker Brothers and Hasbro can throw at you.  This makes the learning curve on future games that much easier.
So to bring this back around to the question in the opening post, you probably want to start with games that have as short a training period as possible.  These will fall into two main categories:

Games with easy rules
Games that rely on previously-learned mechanics

Ticket To Ride is a good example of the first category.  With the basic game, you can get new players up to speed on the rules in a matter of minutes.  With any of the subsequent games, as long as everyone knows the main rules it only takes a few more minutes to explain what's new.  In either case, the time between pulling out the game and getting new players to actually start playing is negligible; everybody's in the game proper well before their initial enthusiasm has a chance to fade.
Now, the jump from Ticket to Ride to Risk doesn't make a whole lot of sense; there is no practical overlap between game mechanics so you'd have to teach the Risk rules from scratch.  The jump from Ticket to Ride to, say, Settlers of Catan would be much smoother.  If they're well-versed in Ticket to Ride, then they've already got a good grasp on the following notions:

Collect cards for building stuff
Connect valuable points with roads
Stop other people from connecting valuable points with roads

Might not seem like all that much, but the more mechanics a new player already knows, the less time they have to spend figuring them out.  And the less time they spend figuring stuff out, the sooner they get to actually have some fun.
So if you have a particular game in mind that you're looking to lead everyone toward, break it down and figure out games with overlapping mechanics which are easier to teach.  If you're just trying to broaden your group's gaming horizons, introduce them to new games that are either easy to learn, or similar enough to stuff that they've already played.  Either way, the more games everyone has under their belt, the easier it will be to pick up anything new.

Your basic point is borne out in my experience as a nature-born game lover. I once joined some old friends for a gaming session where I played 4 different games, each one new to me, and had a headache by the end (though I did end up buying one). Similarly, my first experience with Dominion, there was an entirely new set of cards with each new round, including newly introduced rules - again the headache. And I'm a guy who picks up games quickly. For those who are not fast-learning game lovers, I would imagine the principles you laid out to be even more helpful.

Don't forget the most important thing about teaching new players games. Know the game, you're going to play, well!!! It is crucial that someone knows the rules well and can explain and answer questions fast to get some kind of flow. If you want to try a brand new game, pick it up the day before and read the rules. Maybe set the board and play around or watch someone else play it on youtube.
This will make your gaming session so much better!

I've found Pandemic to be a great gateway game to get people interested in board games in general. Then, once they're hooked, games like Dominion and Agricola are good because can be started simple and then gradually increased in complexity by adding more bits of the game into the mix.

The new web-show TableTop is pretty much explicitly designed with this kind of thing in mind. As of this writing only one episode is out, covering Small World. Note that there is a little bit of cursing, but the F-bomb is bleeped, so you may want to consider pre-watching the show if you are considering using it to convince your kids to play...

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
Can you spend extra mana on a spell that is not part of the casting cost?
Suppose I have a Hall of the Bandit Lord and a Plains out and I have a Sacred Cat in hand. Is it possible to tap both lands while casting to give it haste, or can the hall only be used on creatures with a colorless mana cost (assuming no cost changing effects are active).
Likewise, is it possible to ignore cost reduction? For example, if I had a Vizier of Remedies with Oketra's Monument out, would it be possible to still pay the colorless mana to give it haste?

You cannot overpay costs any more than you can underpay them. It's true that underpaying feels like "taking" an advantage (and thus unfair) while overpaying feels like "giving up" an advantage (and thus potentially fair), but the rules do not discriminate between the two: the way you pay a cost is by paying that cost, no more and no less. Similarly, you can't ignore cost reductions or other positive-seeming effects (like something that tells you to draw a card) any more than you can ignore cost increases or other negative-seeming effects (like something that damages you). Since almost nothing in Magic is good in every situation or bad in every situation, this is the really the most sensible, simple and consistent way the rules could be written.
[However there is one place that they do try to distinguish usually-good effects: if in competitive play you fail to notice that a bad triggered ability has triggered, it will probably get applied once it's noticed, but if you fail to notice a usually-good trigger (one of the ones on their list of "lapsing" effects), it will not be applied later. Purposefully "forgetting" any kind of trigger is still cheating though - the rules do not distinguish between lapsing and non-lapsing triggers.]

Recommend qualifying 'costs' by narrowing to mana costs; there is a cost you can overpay, e.g. crewing a vehicle.

@drunkcynic Sort of. Crew 3 has a cost of "3 or more",  not a cost of 3 that you can overpay. So paying 4 isn't overpaying the cost, it's still paying "3 or more" which is the cost.

Also of note, if cost reductions are optional they mention it explicitly like Training Grounds does.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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


text:
Why is this move considered bad?
I'm trying to play against simple online bot cosmi.net. I started playing about two days ago, so I'm a complete beginner, and even the easiest version on 9x9 board is really hard for me to beat. This is in fact the first time I managed to do that.
$$Wcm12
$$ ---------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . 4 3 . . . |
$$ | . . . . X O . . . |
$$ | . . . X . O . . . |
$$ | . . . . X O . . . |
$$ | . . . X . X O . . |
$$ | . . 1 2 . X O . . |
$$ | . . a . . 6 5 . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------

For some reason though, the bot marked black 17 as a bad move, and suggested to play at point "a" instead. Can anyone explain me why was that move marked as bad?

It seems that the AI thinks the move is bad because White can live in the corner.  I don't see a way to do it, though.  I think your move is okay.  It's strange that the bot marks the move as bad, but didn't try to live during the actual game.
Added:
I don't think that works, @jknappen, but it may still explain the computer's advice.  After this sequence, which prevents the ko:
$$Wcm12
$$ ---------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . X O . . . |
$$ | . . . . X O . . . |
$$ | . . 8 X . O . . . |
$$ | . 6 7 . X O . . . |
$$ | . 4 5 X . X O . . |
$$ | . b O X . X O . . |
$$ | . 3 . 1 2 X O . . |
$$ | . . a . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------

White can force at E6, and then has a nice endgame sequence starting at E9.  So it's better to play E2 originally.

Thanks for clarification. I'm really bad at this kind of problems yet, and I couldn't really guess if he can live in the corner or not. Since he didn't try, I guessed that he can't, that's why I got confused afterwards.

Thinking about the diagram: White plays below 13 (d2), Black plays e3, white b2, black d1 white c1 creating a Ko (which can be seen as a success for white). I'd play Black 17 on e2 instead of f2 to prevent this sequence.

When White "tenukied" with 16, you had a chance to kill 12, the stray white stone in your territory. The killing move is "a," which works well with your nearby Black stones. He will make points by extending from 16, but that is the compensation you will have to give for killing 12 with a.
Your 17 answered White directly, giving him the best of both move 16 and move 12, because he can now save the latter stone by playing "a" himself. Now he can save the two stones by either jumping to b5, or by connecting to 16. These two moves are "miai."


text:
What is the board game featured in this Houkago Saikoro Kurabu picture?
Can someone identify the game in this picture? It comes from the manga Houkago Saikoro Kurabu, which has a history of showcasing real board games (particularly eurogames) so it is very likely not just made up for the manga:

Here's a higher-resolution image of the board itself, which shows better details on the pieces and the map:

Do you have reason to believe that the board game actually exists and was not made up for the manga?

@jwodder
Yes, I do. I've seen images from same manga featuring Marrakesh, Catan, Spot It, Carcassonne and some other real existing board games. http://gekkansunday.net/wp-content/uploads/%E6%94%BE%E8%AA%B2%E5%BE%8C%E3%81%95%E3%81%84%E3%81%93%E3%82%8D%E5%80%B6%E6%A5%BD%E9%83%A8/saikoro_01.jpg
http://gekkansunday.net/wp-content/uploads/%E6%94%BE%E8%AA%B2%E5%BE%8C%E3%81%95%E3%81%84%E3%81%93%E3%82%8D%E5%80%B6%E6%A5%BD%E9%83%A8/saikoro_02.jpg

The wikipedia page for the series (japanese) has a list of featured games for each chapter of the manga up to volume 8 (not having read the manga, no clue how complete it is) but this doesn't appear to be any of them. Do you know if this image comes from any particular chapter/volume, or is it just a standalone promotional image?

@goldPseudo No, I have no idea what chapter this image comes from. Thanks for wikipedia link, even if it's not helpful it's definitely interesting

Found this thread on BGG. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1067202/after-school-dice-club-new-manga-about-board-games

Looks a lot like a simplified version of pandemic:P  Only 2 plague colours...perhaps because the other 2 are eradicated?  Maybe I am being swayed by games I own=}

@joedragons I would agree that it looks close enough, but authors are pretty consistent in accuratly describing other games down to smallest details. They also displayed rather well known games so far, so I hoped one woudn't be so hard to identify...

Honey’s Anime confirms that this manga contains good game research. https://honeysanime.com/top-10-board-tabletop-game-manga-best-recommendations/

Looks like the author’s twitter account shows the games he plays.  https://mobile.twitter.com/shimaneko555

The board looks like the image in this answer: https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/a/4385

The author has confirmed on Twitter that it is an imaginary game:

Translation courtesy Google Translate:

Hello! Thank you very much. The game with that illustration is my imaginary game and doesn't really exist ~ (^ ω ^)

Thats a disappointing answer!  I've been showing this picture to friends and googling descriptions of the pawns convinced I recognised it.   Thanks for finding there is no answer though.


text:
Go: How to count territory in this example?
I am very new to go and therefore I have some problems to count the territories. In the following example (13x13) in my point of view black wins.
But I still have some questions:

Does the black territory (marked with grey) take half of the board? What's with the red marked area? Doesn't white has an eye here and hence is still alive? So how many points are there for black? 27? Or 36?
Does the white area (marked with white, right side of the board) make 23 points here? And does white get one point for the red marked area?
How to handle the blue marked area? Is it neutral territory?
During the game black caught 24 white stones and white caught 21 black stones. Do they simple add up to the total points?

We played a subset of a larger 19x19 board, so in this photo our 13x13 area is delimited by the dots.

For ease of reading, here's the same board position rendered with markdown:
$$ +-------------+
$$ |.X.X.X.XXXOX.|
$$ |X..X.XXX.XOOO|
$$ |XX.X.XOXXXO..|
$$ |.X.,XXOX.,XOO|
$$ |..XXOOOX.XXXO|
$$ |.XX.XO.OXXXO.|
$$ |X.XXXO,OO..OO|
$$ |..XXOOO..OOOO|
$$ |XXX.XOO..O..O|
$$ |..XXXXOO.OXXX|
$$ |XXOOXXXO.OOXO|
$$ |XOOOOXOOOOOOO|
$$ |.XO.OXO.O.O..|
$$ +-------------+

The white stones in the lower left are dead, the black ones in the lower right and the one stone in the upper right are dead.
Using Chinese scoring (stones on the board plus territory,) black wins 95 (59 stones + 36 territory) to 78.5 (49 stones + 23 territory) + 6.5 (komi).
To use Japanese scoring, we'd have to know how many stones were captured during the game, but we can guess based on what is on the board. Black has 64 stones on the board and white only has 57, so presumably black captured 7 or 8 stones during the game? That would mean that black has a score of 36 (territory) + 7 or 8 (captured) + 8 (dead on board) = 51 or 52. White has 23 (territory) + 5 (dead on board) + 6.5 (komi) = 34.5.
Either way, black won by at least 16.5 points.
Another note regarding the two blue spaces. They are neutral and don't count for either side in either scoring system. If you had been using Chinese scoring, then the players would want to fill them for extra point. It is likely that each player would get one of the spaces and therefore the relative score would be unchanged.

Thank you for the detailed answer! Just to be sure: Assuming the lower left white group would have two eyes, would it than be alive? And there no territory for black? Komi was 6,5. Thanks

In order for the lower left white group to have two eyes, it would have to be larger. There's not enough room for two eyes within the space provided. But yes, if it had two eyes then it would be alive. That would transfer 9 + points from black to white which would give white the win instead.

Hmm... I just noticed that you said, "During the game black caught 24 white stones and white caught 21 black stones." That's not possible based on what is on the board. Black must have captured at least 7 more stones than white... Or did white pass 4 times?

Yes I saw that, too. Maybe I have counted incorrectly or white has suspended so much moves. Can't remember..

I'll assume you're using Japanese scoring, which is more popular in the U.S.  In that case, you count the open spaces you have surrounded.
This game is a little hard to count, because I can't see the edges of the board.  If we're pretending that the edges of the board are the outermost lines where stones have been played, then I count 24 points for Black, ignoring the lower left corner and the captured white group.  Since that group only has one eye, it is dead.  The easiest way to handle prisoners is to put the captured stones into the opponent's territory - taking points away.  We can also count each captured stone as two points - one for the space it's covering, and one for the opponent's space it will fill in when moved to their territory.  We'll get the same result either way.  Taking this into account, Black gets 16 points for the captured white stones, and two more for the open spaces in the lower left.
The blue area is neutral, so nobody gets points for that.
I count the white area as 28 points, including the dead black stones.

Yes Japanese scoring, and yes the borders are the outermost lines, it's a 13x13 board. But how do you count 24 points for black? What do you mean by ignoring the lower left corner? Why? How you come to 28 points for the white area?
So if the red marked group would have two eyes it would be alive and black wouldn't become any points in this corner?
Sorry for all the questions, but I somehow don't get it

Exactly, we just played 13x13 in the middle of a 19x19 board. So the big white points are the corners

I get 26 (instead of 24) for black excluding the dead white group and the fake ko at A1. Can confirm 28 for white tho.

If you are using Japanese scoring, then we need to know how many stones were captured during the game.


text:
Looking for a horror boardgame I used to play back in 1999 or so
Back when I was a kid (which would've been at least 15 years ago, so around 1999 or so) there was a game I used to play that I would like to find again.
This "horror" game took place in an haunted mansion or castle divided in four big rooms and multiple floors. Players can choose from different characters (and if I remember correctly, one of them was a dog) and advance through an high number of tiles by spinning a wheel. Some tiles had special effects on gameplay written on them, as "stop for a turn" or "go to tile number ###" and so on.
It was not "Ghost Castle" and not something about Scooby-Doo (the characters where anonymous). It was built in thick paper or cardboard (everything but the wheel was made in this material), and it wasn't a box but a book which become a 3D setting when opened.
It was none of those listed below, because this are way to small:

Which Witch
Haunted House
Haunted Mansion
Ghost Castle

Thanks!

Were you a kid 6 years ago? Escape from the Haunted Mansion

Nope, I was not a kid and it was not Escape From the haunted mansion, it's even bigger. Btw, now I'm 25 so it's been at least 15 years since last play...

Relic Raiders: Haunted Ruins looks like the game - it is 3d pop up, and has four rooms. Problem is it was released in 2008. Perhaps it's based on an older original?

As you said, it's not relic Raiders, but This is an interesting thread to follow, thanks!

13 Dead End Drive? - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1899/13-dead-end-drive

Nope, not 13 Dead end drive...  It is too small, also the four rooms are separated by wall, like an xy coordinate system where walls are the axes and rooms are the plain space... I'm sorry, it's difficult to describe :)

Found it! It's name is "Ghost Hunters!" by Brian Lee and it's not a board game but a book, published for the first time in UK by Tango Books in 1998.
ISBN (for Italian edition) is 88-450-7851-5, and you can see it online at http://www.lafeltrinelli.it/products/9788845107351/Gioca_con_gli_acchiappafantasmi/Lee_Brian.html

It is called 'Horror House'
I used to have it 3 dimensional board game with moving party and divided in to four large rooms, something used to roll down the stairs as I recall ad knock you over if you happened to be on that section.

Is it this game on board game geek?

TSR's "Nightmare House" by David marshal. No spinner but a power wheel. Haunted mansion & astral plane combat against an evil entity. A great game!  See:https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3535/nightmare-house

The "check mark" next to the top answer can only be given by the OP, so I think it's safe to say that the game has been identified as Ghost Hunters


text:
Why are there generic ship class cards in Star Trek Attack Wing?
The base game of Star Trek Attack Wing consists of three ships, one for the main factions.
Every ship has one ship card that marks it as a capital ship, for the Federation it naturally is the Enterprise.
Additionally, there is a generic ship card that marks the ship only as "Galaxy Class":

The generic ship is of course a little bit weaker than the capital ship. Why is this second card even there? Under what circumstances would I play with a weaker "Galaxy Class Starship" instead of the stronger "U.S.S. Enterprise"?

See that yellow starburst to the left of "U.S.S. Enterprise-D"? See also that there's no yellow starburst to the left of "Federation Starship"?

That starburst is the "Unique Icon" which denotes that the card is unique, which means you can only have one copy of it in play at any given time.
Being a Unique ship, you just can't have multiple U.S.S. Enterprise-Ds running around at once, no matter how awesome (and canonical) you might think that'd be. The Federation Starship, on the other hand, is not Unique: This means you can make a whole fleet of Galaxy-class starships if you wanted to (within your squadron point limit, of course), regardless of whether or not the U.S.S. Enterprise-D is already there.
Other than that, I guess maybe you might want to save two points and bring in the cheaper 26-cost Federation Starship instead splurging on the better 28-cost one.

Thanks for the clarification. This raises the question how I distinguish multiple identical ships on the board, but I guess I'll ask a separate question to that when the need for it arises.

Oh, and +1 for the artful labeling :D

Use tokens (two green tokens and two red tokens for example, put one of each tokens to the ship and the other on the card) or rubber bands (can be wrapped around the base or flight stand of the ship and the card could be put halfly covering the second rubber band) for quick or paint the base or flight stand and sleeve the card for longtime use.


text:
What game is this die from?
I have found a die. The faces depict Fire, a Sheep, a Lock, a Footprint, an "L", and a Magnet.
What game is it from?

Do you have a picture of the die or can you take one? Providing one would probably greatly help with identifying it.

Could it be one of
Rory's Story Cubes
?

After looking closely at those photos, I'm going to say definitively, why yes. Yes it could:

In the top photo, the front right die has an [L] and a fire facing the camera.
In the bottom photo, the die in the top right of the box art depicts a single die with a magnet, sheep, and footprint on three sides.

SQB points out in comments these are in fact the same die, with a lock on the side these photos don't show, so it matches the description of the die you found precisely.

I took out my copy and I can confirm that the standard set includes such a die. It's visible in the second picture, in the upper right of the box, showing the footprint, sheep, and magnet. It's in the first picture as well, in the foreground on the right, showing the 'L' and the fire.


text:
Machi Koro Millionaire's Row Moving Company and renovation questions
I have two rule clarifications that we've run into that we haven't been able to find an answer to while playing the Millionaire's Row expansion of Machi Koro:

Can you use a Moving Company to move itself?
Is a renovation token removed from cards when the number is rolled but they don't do anything. For instance, a Corn Field activates on 3-4, but only if you have less than 2 monuments. Would a renovation token be removed from a Corn Field if 4 was rolled but the player had 2 or more monuments?

Is this about an expansion or spinoff?

Both of those cards are from expansions, I just don't remember which ones.

"Moving Company" and the renovation tokens are introduced in the Millionaire's Row expansion.

According to the Note for the Moving Company card in the rules

The Moving Company can be given to other players

So the answer to the first part of your question is "yes."
The same rules also say

The next time a rollwould activate this Establishment and earn income, remove the token instead ...

They go on to give some examples of how card color (activating on your own rolls or other player rolls) behave. In the example you provided, the Corn field would not activate and earn income, therefor the renovation marker remains.
It makes sense if you think of it as the next round of income for the card paying for the required renovations and re-opening the establishment. If it never earns any income, the renovations never happen.


text:
Tzolk'in wealth card meaning
What does this wealth card mean? My guess is: I get 10 corn, one less worker and... Maybe get 1 less corn per turn... The rules book doesn't say anything about it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1mkG201ZcEndGdKQy1hQTZZNFk/view?usp=docslist_api.

This Tile comes from Tzolk'in - the mini-expansion 1 a goodie from Spielbox magazine.
Here is how to use it:

Bonus Starting Wealth - Cistern
Your tribe has figured out how to draw water out of the surrounding
  soil and and store it in an underground cistern. The ecological impact
  of this feat of engineering harms the other tribes
If you choose this Starting Wealth Tile, you get 10 corn. Each of your
  opponents starts with 1 less corn. (An opponent whose Starting Wealth
  Tiles provide no corn is not affected.)
If you draw this tile when placing dummy workers, it indicates that
  you will play this game with one less dummy worker than usual (11
  instead of 12 in a two-player game or 5 instead of 6 in a three-player
  game).
Help your culture grow and flourish, and the gods will smile upon you.

Note that this mini-expansion is also supposed to come with a monument tile: the Granary.


text:
Changes to rules in 'Hoyle's'?
Do the rules in official Hoyle's books ever experience changes, major or minor?
For example, I have a Hoyle's Rules of Games from 1963: can I assume whatever content is in the book is still valid for tournament play?
Obviously any content added since will be missing (additional games, since-clarified irregularities, etc.), but I'd like to know if anything could now be potentially incorrect in my '64 edition.

It depends what you mean by "Official".
None of the games in Hoyle have an "official" governing body to set the rules.  Or at least none of them did when it was first published.  Hoyle attempted to fill that gap.
Hoyle attempted to codify the rules of many traditional games that have been played for many years, often centuries.  Each part of the country playing to slightly different rules.
The different rules all still exist/existed and were not necessarily replaced by Hoyle, although it became common for players to agree to use his rules.  Hence the expression - still used today - of playing any game "According to Hoyle".  Such agreement does reduce the risk of arguments over the rules during play.
There is no mention in my 1980's copy of Hoyle of any rules of any game changing over time.  None of the games in it could be said to date from after your 1960's version.  So, assuming your tournament runs according to Hoyle, I would say your copy is just as valid as it ever was.

I understand that each game with international or regional tournaments likely has it's own governing body for rules. I simply meant that if, for example: I enter a causal tournament for any game, can I rely upon the rules in a '63 edition? Would there be changes to how certain irregularities are handled? Or would scoring have been modified since '63? Et cetera.

My last paragraph answers that.

I suppose a related question would be, "Are there any games for which tournaments (amateur or professional) typically deviate from 'Hoyle's'?".

Yes, that's a different question.  Although I can't see any of Hoyle's games having professionals - but I could be wrong.

Games in my book played pro that pop to mind: chess, poker, and Scrabble®…

Bridge.  And my 1970's Hoyle ('s book of card games) definitely wouldn't have the current Laws (rubber or duplicate) in them.

The 2001 edition of Hoyle's Rules of Games includes rules for Bridge, Cribbage, Gin rummy, Hearts, Spades Pinochle, Chess , Scrabble,  and Canasta, all of which have tournament organizations that publish official rules. The laws of Bridge (both duplicate and rubber) have surely changes several times, most recently in 2017. Moreover contract bridge had official laws almost since it was created, and Hoyle's was never the source of those laws. I suspect that the official rules of some of those other games have been revised, at least in minor ways, since 1980.
In addition, Hoyle's includes rules for craps, Poker, and  Chemin-de-Fer all of which are played at casinos that have their own official rules. Poker also has official tournaments.

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


text:
What do the sides of the movement dice in Runebound look like?
I lost my movement dice from Runebound. So I am trying to figure out what is on the different sides so I can use a normal D6. Anyone have images of the different sides or can give me a list of what is on each side?

Ok so based on the answers below the sides should be:

Plain, Mountain, Road
Hills, Plains, Road
River, Forest
River, Road
Hills, Plains, Road
River, Swamp

Someone who made cards to replace the dice. http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/828004/replacing-the-movement-dice-with-cards

closeup view of dice (maybe there is enough here to map it to a traditional d6): http://boardgamegeek.com/image/199023/runebound-first-edition  http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/25791-runebound-2nd-edition-dice-movement-d10s/

Cool! I have tried it, but i missed a side and the orientation is important as well. Maybe I should post what I cam up with and you can check if you agree?

As previously mentioned, someone made cards to replace the dice.
The following cards are in his deck: (Ignoring "city" he added to every card)

6x Road, Plains, Hills
3x Road, Plains, Mountain
3x Road, River
3x River, Forest
3x River, Swamp

So it's safe to say the following represent the face of the dice:

Road, Plains, Hills
Road, Plains, Hills
Road, Plains, Mountain
Road, River
River, Forest
River, Swamp

So you were correct.

If these dice are all identical, they have the following faces:
            +-----------+
            |       Ro  |
            |          >|
            |  Ri       |
+-----------+-----------+-----------+
|     Hi    |       Mo  |  Ro ^ Pl  |
|           | Rd       >|           |
|  Pl v Ro  |       Pl  |     Hi    |
+-----------+-----------+-----------+
            |       Ri  |
            |          >|   Ro Road
            |  Fo       |   Ri River
            +-----------+   Hi Hills
            |       Ri  |   Mo Mountain
            |<          |   Fo Forest
            |  Sw       |   Sw Swamp
            +-----------+

^, v, < and > denotes the top edge of the face. The icons are already correctly placed within the square. This indicates which way they should be facing. e.g. The Swamp will appear in the top-left corner of the face, while the Forest will appear in the bottom-right corner.

+1 ok so it looks like there are the right amount of each item, just their relationship to each other (which side of die they on) can be incorrect. But thanks at least I now know hwo to use my D6 d:-)

@AquaAlex, See update.

AWESOME, I have now updated numbers to be correct. I have same fold of a D6 so matched it to the sides and it should now be perfect.

Refined a bit further.


text:
Providing the spymaster with cues for clues in Codenames
Toward the end of a game of Codenames, a team might find itself with two agents left to find and five cards still uncovered — say, APPLE, BASS, CAR, DARKNESS, and ELEPHANT.  (The numbers are by way of example. My question is about the general case that there are any number of correct guesses left and any number of cards left uncovered.)
Would it be legal, while that team's spymaster is trying to think of a clue, for his teammate to give cues like the following? "If our words are APPLE and BASS, clue 'edible': they're both edible." "APPLE and CAR are 'self-driving'."

It does not address this directly in the rules but based on my reading it is illegal and against the spirit of the game. The game is wanting you to convey information from the spymaster to the operatives with a single word. While it may be acceptable to take the deliberations that the operatives have after a clue is given into account having them give directions on what to say is different.
If you look at the Keeping A Straight Face section of the rules it goes into the intent behind how clues are given.

The spymaster is expected to keep a straight
  face. Do not reach for any card while your
  teammates are considering the words. When
  a teammate touches a word, consult the key
  card and cover the word with the card of
  the corresponding color. When a teammate
  chooses a word of the correct color, you
  should act as though it was exactly the word
  you meant, even if it wasn't.
If you are a field operative, you should focus
  on the table when you are making your
  guesses. Do not make eye contact with the
  spymaster while you are guessing. This will
  help you avoid nonverbal cues.
When your information is strictly limited to
  what can be conveyed with one word and one
  number, you are playing in the spirit of the game.

I can't see the rules mention anything about information from the team to the spymaster, so in general, it's not forbidden for the spymaster to listen to their team.
The examples you give seem to be within the rules in the sense that apples and basses are edible, so the clue would be "about the meaning of the word". Then again, one could argue that after such a meta-clue is given, the clue would no longer be about the meaning of the words, but about the meta-clue.
In the end, it's something you need to argue within your group. If that came up in a game I was playing, I'd tell people to stop trying to break the game, and would stop playing with them if that didn't work.

Note that in the general case, you'd have to come up with quite a large number of possible clues to suggest clues about all the possible combinations. (There are ten even in this small example.) You'd need to come up with ways to combine words that don't need to be combined, along with the ones that do. At the same time, the spymaster can concentrate on the actual problem, so are you even sure that would help?
If you just give hints about the obvious combinations, they've probably figured them out already, and if you're really capable of coming up with ten clues in the time it takes them to come up with one, well, either wait for your turn to be spymaster, or find smarter friends to play with.

Furthermore, if the operatives start reciting an endless series of meta-clues for lots of possible combinations, another problem develops.  The spymaster doesn't need to remember the meta-clues (so they can be pretty stupid ones, only barely touching the meanings of the words involved).  They can simply wait for a set of words they like and then quickly repeat the last stupid meta-clue.  In this way, they actually conveyed information through timing of their action rather than so much through the clue itself.

It's a quite similar situation to the spymaster just listening to a typical well behaved team discussing various possibilities and giving "bingo" as the clue when convenient, except for the difference of a thin veil of having the artificial meta-clue to serve as the transient substitute of the clearly illegal "bingo" clue.

@JirkaHanika, oh good dear, that's just horrible. It didn't even come up to me to misuse timing.

+1, for the part above the horizontal rule, but I disagree with "You'd need to come up with ways to combine words that don't need to be combined, along with the ones that do. At the same time, the spymaster can concentrate on the actual problem, so are you even sure that would help?…". The guest has the luxury of picking words that are very tenuously connected or even words also connected to additional words, which the SM does not.

It is not against the rules for the spy master to listen to what the team says when making their choices but that is not even close to being the same as them giving instructions to the spy masters by saying what actions they will take for a given clue.

Feel free to edit your answer based on comments.  I think that @msh210 is right that once the legal operative-to-operative channel becomes cynically aimed at guiding the spymaster, the choice of clues can get quite cynical, too.  This is mainly because operatives can say lots of things while the spymaster can't.

It's not legal.

It's highly stressed in the rules that clues must be about the meaning of the words.
Until two seconds ago, I didn't know that Apple made self-driving cars. If I were the Spymaster in your hypothetical, and I said "self-driving, 2", I'd be giving an invalid clue because the clue would have nothing to do with the meaning of the words. The spies might as well have said "foo" instead of "self-driving" because they defined "self-driving" to mean "apple and car" regardless of what any of those three words mean.
The fact the spies created this new definition for "self-driving" doesn't go away if the Spymaster happens to know that Apple makes self-driving cars. The Spymaster would ultimately be using that newly-invented —and illegal to use— definition.

Additionally, the rules also say that it's up to the Spymaster to think of a clue. The pressure this places on the Spymaster is a fundamental part of the game. To have the Spies relieve that pressure is against the spirit of the game.

I am not sure if i would say it is agonist the rules because when most people think of apple they think of the company and I would say computer for apple without thinking about it.

@Styxsksu, There's indeed no problem giving "computer" as a hint for "apple". I don't know why you mention this to me. I think you misread what I wrote?

@Styxsksu I think the point to remember is that the meaning of the words would change from group to group as one group may see apple and car on the board and think of an apple car (iCar) and others may not.

I would be happy to use self-driving with airplane and apple which have nothing in common but it using self driving as a product of apple

@Styxsksu, The question isn't about whether you can use "self-driving" to describe "apple" or not, and neither is my answer. Your comments don't appear to related to the question or to my answer. If you have a different take, feel free to post your own answer.

I see nothing wrong with listening to the conversation about the game and using that to provide a valid clue

@Styxsksu, Me neither. It's creating associations from words to specific collection of cards that's illegal. There's obviously a grey area between the two, so you gotta remember: This is a party game, so play it so everyone enjoys it, or they'll stop playing it with you.

@hymie,  You're the one being way to strict in your interpretations. I simply said you're not allowed to say "Foo means square card 1 and card 2, Bar means card 1 and card 3, and Baz means card 2 and card 3" (or equivalent) because it makes the words irrelevant. Don't pretend I said that you gotta use what's written in the dictionary; I used the same loose definition as the rules do.

@ikegami -- you're right, I stand corrected.  I missed the part where the OP suggested "if the words are APPLE and CAR, then say SELF-DRIVING" .  I thought you were opining on the clues.

Joe's answer refers directly to the rules, but here's an interpretation of them:
Strictly speaking, the only information that passes from the spymaster to the field operative is a valid clue. This excludes cues like the one you suggest, as suggested in the last paragraph of the given rules section.
Likewise, the only information that passes from the field operative to the spymaster is the sequence of cards touched. The spymaster also knows the other team's clues and cards touched. This excludes information passed from teammates discussing among themselves. This interpretation is not explicitly stated in the rules.
You can imagine it as playing the game on the internet with no chat between players. In both cases, it is up to you how strict you want to be. Personally, I've found that both stricter and more casual play is fun.

"Likewise, the only information that passes from the field operative to the spymaster is the sequence of cards touched. " -- no, that's a rule you made up, it's not backed by the rules as printed, and doesn't work in the common setting where everyone is around the same table. The spymaster can and does hear whatever the team discusses, and can and should consider their future clues if the team gets on the wrong track. In the worst case, the team will start considering the assassin as the correct word, which is probably a good time for a zero-clue.

To prevent the spymaster from hearing what the team talks about would take part of the fun out of the game, and would require putting the spymasters in a different room. Of course you could do that if you like, and might be warranted in some sort of a tournament, but I doubt it's a common way of playing the game.

It would also require a player just to handle the answers from the players as you would need both spy masters to leave the room as to not get ideas from the other side and that would drastically slow the game down.

Upvoted. Obviously nobody plays so strictly IRL, but I think August is accurately describing the "polite fiction" which we strive to emulate. @ilkkachu describes a scenario where "the team will start considering the assassin as the correct word, which is probably a good time for a zero-clue." If I understand correctly, I would personally consider that a breach of etiquette by the spymaster, not rising to the level of "Bingo, 3" but still inappropriate.

@Quuxplusone If the spymaster realizes that one of their previous clues might accidentally hint at the assassin, whether by themselves or by listening to their team members' discussion, that's absolutely what the zero clue is for. (Obviously, the spymaster has to wait for the team to come to a decision and should not use timing as a meta-clue.)

@Quuxplusone, I was considering the regular case where the team deliberates the wrong word during their turn to guess, and doesn't try to feed the spymaster when it's their turn to think about the clue to give. The voiced deliberations and actual guesses made by the team can definitely be used to tune the future hints without using timing or other inappropriate methods. (That is, at least as long as the team doesn't actually pick the assassin word before the spymaster gets their turn to give a clue again.)


text:
Could player discard nearest cards to place the part of `War Machine` in proper order?
Suppose, player got a part of War Machine after attack. Could he discard nearest cards to place the machine in proper order, even if he have another rooms ?

No. You may only discard other cards if there are not enough open spaces. From the Fantasy Flight Chaos Marauders - Card Reference (page 14), regarding taking War Machine parts:

... He must then place the cards in his own battle lines - If there are not enough open spaces, he must discard cards to make room.


text:
How do I decapitate the enemy force?
I ran across a critique of the game Diskwars that I did not quite follow.
"There was an easy way to basically teleport a good unit to the far side of the battlefield, then decapitate the enemy force on their starting line."
What creatures/spells make this possible?

I think in this case, that the phrasing "decapitate" is more a metaphor than an actual skill. I haven't found a unit that has a skill named that, so I don't think that is the case.
Additional, i dont fully agree with the claim. Yes, you could to some heavy start nuking with some combos, but then it's a question of counterplaying it in your own lineup.
A lineup poised on striking fast and hard often have little room if they dont succeed in that first strike.
Having said that, some characters and units in Diskwars ARE a bit out of balance, but that's just my opinion.


text:
When entering Tokyo Bay, does the monster in Tokyo City take damage?
For a 5+ player game, the first two players to roll fists/claws can enter Tokyo.  If there is already a player in Tokyo City, but Tokyo Bay is open, does rolling fists/claws damage the monster in Tokyo City as well as allowing entry to Tokyo Bay or do they only get to enter without dealing damage?

Thank you Steven for creating the king-of-tokyo tag for me. I was unable to do so.

You deal damage to the Monster in Tokyo City, then take control of Tokyo Bay (or Tokyo City if the damaged Monster abandons it).
From the rules, page two far right column:

If Tokyo Bay is unoccupied but Tokyo City is, the Monster who attacks Tokyo deals damage to the moster controlling it, then takes control of Tokyo Bay - or Tokyo City if the damaged monster abandons Tokyo City.

Yes, attack damage is resolved before checking if you move into Tokyo (regardless of whether or not Tokyo Bay is available), so the monster who went into Tokyo first will take that damage. For example, if the monster already in Tokyo wished to yield, they could do so, and the second monster would go into Tokyo City instead of Tokyo Bay.

Thanks. We've always played that the second monster just gets to enter Tokyo Bay and doesn't deal damage but a new player asked about this and we couldn't find our rules. Nice to have the correct rules.


text:
New idea in Sicilian for white?
I was wondering if someone could explain why this may be bad for white. Engines say white is a 0.5 of a pawn down after this line, but other than stunted development, I do not see a clear way in which black is better. The line is

e4 c5
Nf3 Nc6
e5? Qc7
Qe2

On e4 the White pawn is strong, controlling the important central square d5 (which Black has given up some control over by playing c5). You might think that it is just as good to control d6, but d6 is less central.
The loss of time is also significant. You spend a move to put the pawn on e5, and then another move to defend it with the queen. You will have to move the queen again, or your g-pawn, to develop your king's bishop. That makes three moves you could have been spending developing minor pieces or central pawns or castling! Half a pawn seems a fair evaluation of that loss of time.
Finally, the pawn may be vulnerable on e5. Black has a pleasant choice whether to play g6 and Bg7, or e6, Ne7 and g6, or f6 exchanging the pawn but getting fast development. White will have trouble bringing more pieces to the defence of e5: in particular it won't be easy to support it with a pawn as Black controls d4 and White's knight blocks the f-pawn.

I think this is a pretty suspect line for White.
Consider this advice from Ludec Pachman, in his book Modern
Chess Strategy. He gives four general principles to
guide beginners in the opening.

Place the pieces without loss of time where they can develop their
greatest power.
Do not move a piece that is already developed unless there is a
strong reason for doing so.
Avoid putting pieces on squares where they can be driven off by
moves contributing to the development of enemy pieces and pawns.
Pawn moves in the opening are only an aid to development and a
means of fighting for the centre: they should therefore be kept to a
minimum.

The opening sequence you suggest conflicts with these principles in several ways:

Loss of time. The Q on e2 prevents quick development of the f1 bishop. White can continue with g3 and Bg2 but this is a slower development than Bc4,
Bb5 or Be2, which are all seen in in mainline variations of the
Sicilian. So, violates the first of Pachman's guidelines.
Unhelpful pawn move. Moving the pawn to e5 violates Pachman's fourth guideline.
Easy target. Putting the pawn on e5 makes it a target for Black to attack as he
develops his pieces. White will need to waste more time defending it. Obvious ideas for Black are ... g6 followed by ... Bg7 and/or ... Nh6 with threats of Ng4. If White then plays h3 to stop Ng4, the Black knight can go to f5 with the threat of exchanging knights on d4. So White has also violated Pachman's third piece of advice!

There are also some strategic considerations/weaknesses in White's sequence:

Loss of d4. One of Black's strategic ideas in the Sicilian is to fight for
control of d4. White has handed this control over by Qe2 and can no
longer play d4 unless he spends yet more pawn moves like c3, or b3
followed by Bb2.
Inferior Taimanov for White. An alternative Black development plan is 4. ... e6 followed by Ne7 and Ng6. This is a typical Taimanov Sicilian idea with the added bonus of a weak pawn on e5 for Black to attack.

The DISADVANTAGE is that your pawn is on e5, without the support of one on either d4 or f4, meaning that the pawn has to be protected by pieces, one of which happens to be your queen. If you are not careful, your queen could be "developed" prematurely. And it does block your light squared bishop for the time being.
That said, there are some potential advantages as well:
1) It prevents a Black knight from moving directly to f6.
2) It indirectly discourages Black from moving a pawn to d6 or f6, because if you capture, he can't recapture with the e pawn, which would be pinned by your queen. Also, if he moves one of those pawns, you could get into a gambit by playing the pawn to e6, etc.
3) A likely scenario is that Black plays e6, then moves his knight to e7 (instead of f6), meaning that you've cramped his game in a major way. Black might move his knight further from e7 to g6 and eventually capture the pawn. But he's disrupted his pieces in a major way and lost time, which you might then be able to use finish your development ahead of him and start an attack, perhaps against his king. Under some lines, the early move by the queen turns out to be an advantage.
This is something of a gambit in the Sicilian. All in all, it's a complicated, tricky opening move. But it may be a good one to use for a surprise.
Another gambit that you might use in the Sicilian is the wing gambit, 3. b4, favored a century ago by the American master Frank Marshall. If Black captures with either the pawn or the knight, he's lost time.

This was my intention by the move 3.e5, to top it off, if black had played 2... d6, then 3.e5 really looks like an interesting move as now both players will eventually have isolated d pawns or no central pawns. However, is the idea of 3.e5 itself questionable?

@picakhu:Is the idea of 3e5 questionable? I would say that depends on what kind of game you're in, and who your opponent is.

@picakhu: your pawn is on e5, without the support of one on either d4 or f4, meaning that the pawn has to be protected by pieces +1 this is the real correct answer.  If black had played a different first move (say, 1..c6 or 1..Nf6), all of RoundTower's and ire_and_curses' points would still hold, but the e5 push wouldn't be so bad because white could back it up with d4.  However, with black's pawn on c5, white can't play d4 without trading.  If White could play c3 then d4, the e5 move would be fine, but as OP's line shows, White simply doesn't have time for that.

On http://gameknot.com/chess-games-database.pl there are 23 games with this opening, 39% white wins, 56% black, and 4% draws, but this is a pretty weak database so I wouldn't go on that too strongly. If someone has a chessbase account maybe they can get better stats. It seems like the best continuations for black are:
4 ...d6  After this move the only real option seems to be 5 exd6 and then after 5 ..Qxd6 6 Nc3 Bf5 7 d3 the position looks fairly equal - both sides will need 4 moves to complete their development (including castling) although if white Fianchetto's the king-side bishop the white squares around the king look very weak, so possibly castling queen-side would be better here (black might be able to attack on the queen side in that case).
4 ...g6 After g6 black will look to try to win the pawn with 5 ...Bg7. White can counter with 5 b3 and then 6 Bb2, after which it starts to look uncomfortable for black. The idea of 6 ... Nh6 followed by 7 ... Ng4 to further pressure the pawn is easily countered by 6 h3 and I'm not sure the knight looks too happy on f5 either. 5 ...e6 is another way to develop the hapless knight, but makes the dark squares look weak. 5 ...d6 or even 5 ...d5 opening the centre look like better options for black from here, and both look like they are roughly equal to me.
4 ...e6 with the idea of getting the other knight to g6 at some point. I don't think this is that good for black - it really weakens the dark squares and helps white out.
4 ...d5 After 5 exd6 e.p. Qxd6 we reach the first position. White could try 5 c3 and 6 d4 to firm up the centre, and this starts to look like a position you might expect in the French, with the exception that black's white bishop will be free to develop and annoy white here.
It would be interesting to supplement this with engine analysis but I don't really have the time! It looks to me that with careful play, it should lead to equality for most of black's continuations. Perhaps engine analysis would provide some more insight.


text:
What has been the popularity trend for D&D Miniatures?
How have D&D Miniatures been faring in terms of popularity? Has it been decreasing or increasing; slowly or fast? Recently (as in the last year), and if possible, on a broader scale as well. On the internet as a whole, as opposed to local trends.
Anything conclusive within a limited scope is a welcome answer (e.g. number of topics/tags on a given card game site). Also the answer could be solely based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence thought to be representing of a broader trend, such as popularity perceived from internet forums.

@whoever, when you vote a question down, it's quite helpful to leave a comment explaining why.

It would indeed. D&D Miniatures, despite the name, is both a card and a board game.

I downvoted, and I'm now adding a close-vote for "too broad". This question seems to be asking for an enormous statistical analysis, which is way out of scope for this site.

Definitely not enormous statistical analysis, I edited the question to reflect it. And if it's not on-topic on this site, as you suggest, it wouldn't be on any other as well. But I think it's an objective and answerable question, easy even for someone who has been in constant touch with D&D Miniatures recently, as is not my case.

The last expansion for the game was Lords of Madness in 2010. The release of the Dragon Collector's Set this December -— a 5-figure fixed set -- suggests that the future of the line will be in the arena of figures to assist the play of the Dungeons & Dragons RPG. This evidence supports the idea that the "popularity trend" for this game is declining, if not moribund. However, Wizards of the Coast has announced that, in 2012, a new miniatures-based skirmish game will rise to replace it.

Nice, this seems a great summary of the situation, thanks!


text:
Saint Petersburg: What happens when you upgrade a full warehouse?
In Saint Petersburg, if you own a warehouse you can hold an extra card in hand.  What happens if you have four cards in hand and then upgrade the warehouse?

Do you keep the fourth card, but can't take another fourth in hand
after you've played it?
Do you discard one?
Are you just not allowed to do the upgrade?

As with your first option, you keep the extra card but your hand limit goes back to normal.
This is covered in these rules in the special cards description (which I think isn't part of the main rules book but is an extra rules reminder sheet):

The player can have up to 4 cards in his hand. If the player upgrades the warehouse, he need not immediately reduce his hand to 3 cards.


text:
What sequence of moves in Solo Caverna result in the maximum score?
The solo game of Caverna is completely deterministic.  There is no luck.  There are no opponents to mess up your strategy.  So, a particular sequence of moves will always result in the same score.
Which means that there is a particular sequence of moves that will result in the maximum possible score.
Now, I'm not actually expecting anyone to put forth each and every choice that you would have to make--though that would be very cool.  As a computer geek, I've spent a few minutes musing about how to design a program that will do the search; but, I'd rather spend my time playing Caverna than to write such a simulator.
But, surely there are some good Solo Caverna players out there, who could at least talk about their particular strategies for maximizing points.  Are there particular furnishings that you get?  Ruby maximization?  Weapons?  6 Dwarfs?  What do you do that breaks the "magical 100 point mark?"

The key to maximum points for my solo endeavours has been to use the Office which allows overhangs, and the Guest room for multiple actions.  I then work to get many tunnels inside, and overhang tunnels.  After the overhang tunnels are placed, I also place Ore mines, for even more overhang bonus, and use the double action to place two ruby mines at once.  For this to work, you need extra dwarfs, preferably 5.  You should be pulling in about 30ish gold.

All in all, because of the possibility of a 'optimal' strategy based on card layout, I also tend to use some dice to add some random blocking, so the game has some more replay-ability solo.
I usually score around 140.

So, what kind of scores do you generally get with this strategy?

Apparently this is now illegal.  You can't place deep mines or pastures as overhangs, and you get no bonus gold for placing them already overhanging tiles.

I am not going to duplicate the text here, but there is a walkthrough for a 200 point game here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1187325/real-magical-score-solo-game-200-points

In an effort to analyze how to get 6 dwarves on the 7th turn, using office room to net ~24 coins, guest room to net ~6 free actions, and primarily banking on furnishings for points (state parlor: 16, food chamber: 12, main storage: 12, broom chamber: 10, treasure chamber: 8, beer parlor: 7), I was able to attain 156.
6 points (1 dwarf + 5 broom) + 4 actions (averaging 5-6 points) seem to certainly make the 6th dwarf worth getting. Basically trading 16 resources and action for ~33 points.
might be able to push it higher by replacing beer parlor and one of the mines with a better food engine/farming/animals.
Final board state: https://i.sstatic.net/b9sfI.jpg


text:
7 wonders Babel and Armada
When is the exact release date for Babel? It seems to be some time in November, but It was due to come out in Feb, so why did it drag on?
Also what happened to Armada, which was tested by some players two years ago:
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/851200/7-wonders-armada-playtest-summary

My FLGS got Babel in on Wednesday... So assuming there isn't a run on the the first printing, you should be able to get your hands on a copy fairly easily now.

@aslum cannot find them on sale from a UK seller. slightly unwilling to pay another 12 euros for shipping...

According to the 7 Wonders article in the French Wikipedia,

Armada has no release date, and
Babel is supposed to be released in the first half of October 2014.

In his private blog, Antoine Bauza (the author of 7 Wonders) published an image of the Babel box, with the caption

OCTOBER 2014 (Essen)

This refers to the SPIEL tradefair, which takes place from 2014-10-16 to 2014-10-19 in Essen, Germany. So it’s likely that the extension will be released then.


text:
How many points are won/lost during this exchange?
$$ six=two
$$ -.a.....
$$ -.......
$$ -...OOOO
$$ -4....XO
$$ -1OOOOOX
$$ -XOXXO.X
$$ -2X5.XX.
$$ -3......
$$ --------

White territory around a is safe.
Move 2 and 4 can be swapped for identical result.
Most moves have a name (at least in Chinese) I believe 2 would be called 破 (pò) = break (not absolutely sure)
Does it have a name in english?
More importantly, in terms of points what is lost or won by both sides?

The English name for a move like W2 is a "throw-in"

Now that the black mistake in the original sequence has been explained by Laval, maybe it's interesting to give an analyse of the original position. It's not very easy to tell who will be able to play first at a.
$$ Initial position
$$ -.......
$$ -.......
$$ -...OOOO
$$ -.....XO
$$ -.OOOOOX
$$ -XOXXO.X
$$ -aX..XX.
$$ -.......
$$ --------

If the temperature of the board is sufficiently low (<6 pts) then a is a double sente and should be played as soon as possible by both players. (Net gain will be 1 point if black is ko master, but up to 3 points if he is not)
However let's have a look at the continuations if the other player does not reply:
$$B Black continuation, 7 points
$$ -.......
$$ -46.....
$$ -32.OOOO
$$ -578..XO
$$ -1OOOOOX
$$ -XOXXO.X
$$ -XX..XX.
$$ -.......
$$ --------

and:
$$W White continuation, about 6 points (12 points gote, assuming black is alive)
$$ -.......
$$ -.......
$$ -...OOOO
$$ -.....XO
$$ -.OOOOOX
$$ -XOXXO.X
$$ -OX12XX.
$$ -.3.....
$$ --------

Black continuation is a lot bigger than white's one. (Sorry in my previous count, I miscounted.)
Black continuation is only slightly bigger than white's one. This means that both players might have the opportunity to play at a first. Black might play it while the temperature of the board is between 7 and 6 (that is, before it strictly becomes double sente), but white will only play it below 6. So, black having the opportunity to play a first is a little bit more probable, and it might be taken into account when estimating the score.

The "slow" connection on A2 is actually the biggest move. That's because it protects the cut at c2, as well as the stone on a3 from capture. And it threatens a big sequence starting with a4, meaning that White is forced to play a4, and Black has the next move.
Compared with the diagrams above, Black is two points better, and White is one point better, for a net gain of one point for Black, who keeps sente.
In a close game, if one person gets to make 5-10 one-point moves in sente, that's enough to win the game.
So the above sequence is better than Black's pushing out at a4, getting cut by a2, and having to capture on a1 AND go back to prevent the cut at c2. Even if it were a point more than the sequence above, it would be gote.


text:
Combat super crisis cards during final jump in the Pegasus expansion
Can a combat super crisis card that has a civilian ship in its set-up evacuate a prepared civilian ship from the New Caprica board onto space around the Galactica?

No. From the rulebook (pg. 15):

During the Prepare for Jump step of every subsequent New Caprica Crisis Card, when an evacuation icon appears, the current player takes one civilian ship from the top of the Prepared Civilian Ships stack and moves it to any space area with a viper launch icon.

There's no mention that it can happen any other way.
To be honest, I'm surprised that there is even a combat set-up card in the New Caprica Crisis deck that would have a civilian ship on it, although I don't have it in front of me to check. Can you show an example of the card you mean?
I wonder if you've switched back to the regular Crisis deck after Galactica returns? You should be continuing to use the New Caprica Crisis deck. Additionally, just some extra info from pg. 16:

During the New Caprica phase, ignore any effect that would place, destroy, or move ships in any space area around Galactica or centurions on the Boarding Party track, until the Galactica returns to orbit (see page 17).

Sorry, it was a super crisis card.  Question updated.

Thanks for the update. I still think the answer is still no :) There's nothing in the rules that state it can happen any other way than using the evacuation icon on New Caprica crisis cards.

More importantly, your notes from page 17 explicitly forbid other effects from placing ships, so the combat super crisis won't change the configuration of ships (though in theory it could add other effects, e.g. if it said "FTL can't be activated until you jump").


text:
Can a Thief Steal a Really Impressive Title?
I thought that this one was pretty simple, but the argument got heated after multiple instances of challenging the rule that a thief can only steal something tangible, like weapons/potions/etc. The notion that a thief could steal your title is akin to (according to my argument) stealing someone's job.
What's the verdict?

Thieves can only steal Items. An Item either has a gold piece value or "No value" printed in the corner. Really Impressive Title has neither of these, so it is not an Item, so it can't be stolen.
Note that in earlier editions of Munchkin, this card was actually misprinted, and confusingly did in fact say "No Value". Per the official Errata, this is corrected in the 19th printing:

Corrected Errata
Corrected in the 19th Printing
Really Impressive Title is not an item, so it should not say "No Value"

And there you have the basis of my argument. The big rock, aside from being next to useless, does serve an important purpose in distinguishing items of tangible and intrinsic value.


text:
What are the differences between Elder Sign and Elder Sign: Omens?
I've played the board game Elder Sign. I have read some reviews and seen a gameplay video of Elder Sign: Omens, the iOS app based on the board game, but I haven't been able to find info on exactly how similar the two are. I see that they even share the same tag on here, so I'm guessing they are pretty close, but I'd like to know more definitively.
Is Elder Sign: Omen basically a straight-up single player version of the board game, or are there some mechanical differences between the two? If so, how do they differ?

There is a thread on BGG discussing the changes. They are far to numerous to mention all the changes, but some of the most notable are:

There are no allies.
Spells are cast after rolling, but don't carry over to other investigators.
Only 1-4 investigators instead of 1-8
There are no midnight events.
Assisting investigators aren't penalized when you fail.
Monsters are added automatically, you cannot choose where they are placed.

The base app had Yig and Azathoth. There was also a 3rd one that was locked... I think this was the purchasable Cthulhu expansion, but I could be wrong, as I did not purchase it, and haven't seen it unlock itself during my small bit of gameplay.

There is a purchasable Cthulhu expansion, yes.  As for the description, this seems complete.  I will note that while I'd prefer to have things like the midnight events and some of the other parts of the board game in the mobile adaptation, what remains still gives much of the same flavor.

Quick point, it is good to duplicate information in answers rather then just linking. That way if BGG (or any external site) goes down the answer is still useful.


text:
How many Corridor Monitors can I make with Blade Of Selves and Strionic Resonator?
I have Corridor Monitor attached with Blade of Selves. As well as this I have Strionic Resonator, and a load of spare mana. I have a way to give my creatures exalted (Sublime Archangel) or at least trigger Exalted, for later on.
When I attack with Corridor Monitor, and copy it with Blade Of Selves it creates two new copies of Corridor Monitor. I'm confident I can order the triggers on the stack so I can use the Strionic Resonator to copy the exalted trigger for each new Corridor Monitor (exalted trigger goes on first, then the Blade of Selves, as the top of the stack resolves more exalted triggered abilities get added by copying them). As they enter the battlefield each Corridor Monitor can untap the Strionic Resonator.
However, instead can I use Strionic Resonator to copy the Blade of Selves trigger and make more Corridor Monitors (copying the Blade of Selves triggered ability), to then repeat the effect of creating token versions of Corridor Monitor over and over. One I have enough finally using the last generation of Corridor Monitor copies to untap Strionic Resonator each one then copying the exalted trigger ? Or do I not end up with enough copies of the Corridor Monitor to then retap Strionic Resonator?
Otherwise is there some tweak to make this possible without changing the main game pieces?

I'm not clear on how exalted is relevant to your question. Are you wanting to both use exalted an arbitrary number of times, as well as creating an arbitrary number of tokens?

@gendolkari once I have enough Corridor Monitors, I can copy the exalted triggered ability.

If I understand the situation correctly you want to do this in a game with at least 2 opponents:

Attack with Corridor Monitor(CM) equipped with Blade of Selves, one copy of Myriad triggers and at least two instances of Exalted(CM, Sublime Archangel) trigger. Put Myriad on the stack last, so the token copies would enter first.
Use Strionic Resonator(SR) to copy the Myriad effect, the stack is now: Myriad, Myriad, Exalted, Exalted...
Resolve the top Myriad, creating (N-1) copies of CM, where N is the number of opponents.
Target SR with all copies of the CM trigger. Stack is now: CM, [CM...], Myriad, Exalted, Exalted...
Resolve first CM trigger, untapping SR.
Use SR to copy the myriad trigger. Stack is now: Myriad, [CM...], Myriad, Exalted, Exalted...
Repeat from step 2...

Yes, this will work, it's similar to Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker/Splinter Twin combos that have been played for some time, though it has more moving parts (2 cards minimum vs 3 minimum, 4 to guarantee infinite) and requires less colors (need to be in at least Izzet vs this in mono blue). The Kiki-Jiki and Splinter twin combos also let you attack all opponents with infinite token copies, letting you protect the original creatures by not attacking, this combo protects the one that you attacked first and risks your CM.
A possible addition to this combo would be Sol Ring, Everflowing Chalice, mana vault, etc. any artifact that can create at least 2 mana. This would, in a 4 player game (1 CR targets the Resonator, the other targets the mana source), guarantee that you have enough mana to continue the combo. It will then take 5 opponents (and a 3+ mana rock) to enable to you copy the exalted triggers also indefinitely, but this won't usually be much of a benefit, "infinite" small attackers are much more effective than one "infinitely" large attacker. This combo should be able to kill all opponents except for the one who you attacked originally.

To explain the mana rock addition (4 player game):

Attack with CM, putting Myriad on stack.
Tap mana rock(MR) to generate at least 2 mana, use that mana to pay for SR and copy Myriad. No mana floating, Stack is now: Myriad, Myriad, Exalted, Exalted...
Top Myriad resolves, 2 new CM enter the battlefield, one targets SR, the other targets MR, order on stack does not really matter, but is CM, [CM...], Myriad, Exalted, Exalted... With 2/3 mana floating.
CM resolves untapping MR.
CM resolves untapping SR
Return to step 2.

The reason combos like this are usually run off Kiki-Jiki or Splinter Twin is because they cost no mana to use, they just need Deceiver Exarch, Sky Hussar or Intruder Alarm to untap the enabler for free. It is mana neutral.
Most infinite combos need to be mana neutral or mana creating. Without some kind of infinite mana source, a combo like this that has a mana cost to repeat would only be able to go off a dozen or less times in most decks (that's 24 mana), powerful but not immediately game winning. By adding a 2 mana rock into the combo the combo becomes mana neutral, with a 3+ mana rock it becomes mana generating, either makes it as truly infinite as the rules allow.

Ahhhh I didn't know if the last generation of Corridor Monitors untapping Strionic Resonator to then copy the  exalted trigger would be possible. I'm not sure where the mana rock comes in?

@Pureferret Resonator takes 2 mana per use, so in order to generate infinite tokens you need to have 2 mana per cycle - a mana rock means you can generate the mana as part of the combo rather than needing some other combo to generate it, 3 mana rock means there is more mana than needed to sustain the myriad, so every 2 cycles you can copy an exalted trigger, if you have enough untaps. Even with just enough to fuel the myriad, the last generation can copy the exalted, but that would only give an extra +2 or +3.

ah that's much more complicated than I had imagined, but it does make sense to involve something that fuels the cycle as it goes. Thanks for explaining.

@Pureferret No problem. This kind of combo would only work in EDH anyways as it needs 2 or more opponents for myriad to function - and most EDH decks run the rocks anyways, sol ring is in over 98% of all EDH deck lists after all.

You can do this as long as Strionic Resonator is untapped to begin with.
You need to copy the initial myriad triggered ability before any token copies are created; it would be too late otherwise.
If you do so, then the stack will have 2 myriad triggers on it; the original and the copy. The top one resolves, creating new Corridor Monitors. When they enter the battlefield, their triggers go on the stack on top. When the ETB trigger resolves, you untap Resonator. You then get priority to use Resonator again on the initial myriad trigger.
At that point the stack will again have just 2 myriad triggers on it; everything is the same as the first time around except you have more token creatures and less mana. You can repeat this as long as you have mana.
This works as long as you have at least 2 total opponents; more opponents would cause more creatures to be created (and more ETB triggers; but they aren’t needed).
That is the simplest example of using this idea. If you have 4 opponents, then each myriad trigger creates 3 tokens when it resolves, which would allow you to use Resonator to copy the initial myriad trigger up to 3 times, instead of just once.
If Strioinic Resonator started tapped, you couldn’t do this, because by the first time it became untapped, there would be no myriad trigger on the stack to target with it.
You could do all of this while there is also an exalted trigger on the bottom of the stack. Each time you untap Resonator again, you could choose to copy exalted instead of myriad if you wanted. With unlimited mana, the final result would be that the opponent you initially attacked is facing a single creature of unlimited power and toughness, while each other opponent is facing an unlimited number of 1/4 creatures.

Ahh that final result of one opponent facing an infinitely power creature, Vs and infinite number of 1/4s Vs the other opponents is just what I wanted to know.


text:
Does the Ward keyword trigger Baral's card draw clause?
Ward, the new keyword introduced in Strixhaven, counters spells and abilities that target that creature unless you pay a cost.

Ward {2} (Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, counter it unless that player pays {2}.)

Now, Baral, Chief of Compliance says this:

Whenever a spell or ability you control counters a spell, you may draw a card. If you do, discard a card.

Does the Ward keyword count as an ability for the purposes of Baral's draw ability?

If I saw this card without context, here's how I would analyze it: this word is unfamiliar, so it must be an ability word, keyword action, or keyword ability. It's not an ability word, because it's not italics, and it's not a keyword action, because those always appear within the text of other abilities. Therefore, it must be a keyword ability, and those are all abilities by definition. The reminder text starts with the word "Whenever", which makes it specifically a triggered ability.

Yes, this is confirmed by the Strixhaven mechanics guide:

Ward is a triggered ability.

More generally, a triggered ability is defined as (Comprehensive Rules 603.1):

Triggered abilities have a trigger condition and an effect. They are written as “[When/Whenever/At] [trigger condition or event], [effect]. [Instructions (if any).]”

The reminder text for Ward meets that pattern; while reminder text formally has no bearing on the game, it is intended to be helpful and it would be very unhelpful for the reminder text to meet the pattern of a triggered ability without being one.

It might be worth pointing out that Ward will only trigger effects triggered by spells being countered if the opponent chooses not to pay the Ward cost.