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How to mitigate the intial luck factor in Race For The Galaxy?
Background (feel free to skip):
My mom and I often play RFTG together (I am a very fortunate child to have a game-playing parent :), and we've noticed that there usually isn't as much luck in the game as we initially thought; there are few situations where you cannot find some favorable way to play out your cards and tableau. While the luck factor is definite present, as it will be in any game that involves powerful combinations of randomly drawn cards, but smart play can mitigate the effect. In fact, one of my favorite situations in the game is when I have a bunch of cards with no obvious strong combos and have to work with what I have to find some sort of strategy.
However, I've noticed that there is substantially more luck in the early parts of the game. If you get an initial draw that contains mostly high-drop cards, cards that aren't good in the early game, or no good combinations (tons of goods, but no way to actually do anything with them except trade ONE of them for 2-4 cards). Some luck later on can easily fix this if you get a nice card, but sometimes I feel like the game is decided after turn 4 when one of us has a killer initial combo and the other has had a bad start.
I understand that the luck factor is relatively small and will be minimal in a series of 5 or more games, but I would still like to reduce it since we purely play for fun and rarely get to play 2 games in a row. I don't consider myself anywhere near an expert player, and I'm sure we're not always playing our cards optimally. However, I am sure that there are some opening hands that are sufficiently worse than others to drastically effect the outcome of the game, and I'd like to adjust this in our friendly games.
Question:
Here's some ways I've thought to prevent players from getting screwed over by bad initial draws in RFTG:

Start with 7 or 8 cards instead of 6. Still discard down to 4.
Implement a mulligan system for initial hands. You can discard your 6 initial cards, reshuffle the deck, and draw 5 (still discard down to 4). I suppose this could probably be extended to allow players to discard those 5 to draw 4 and keep all of them, even though I don't think many people would go for the second mulligan.

Would these methods potentially be effective in reducing some of the initial luck in the game? How might I improve them? What other methods might be effective towards reaching this goal of a slightly more 'skill-based' RFTG by mitigating the effect of terrible initial draws?

I really like mulligans. Just, like, generally, for pretty much any game.

In my experience, the most effective way to reduce luck at the beginning is to give players a choice of two start worlds. A world you know will be on the table the whole game is a much bigger deal than four cards, of which you'll likely only play one or two, and sometimes none. The implementation of Race for the Galaxy at keldon.net does this. (Side note: some of my friends think Rebel Freedom Fighters is overpowered. You can always just disallow a start world if you're in that camp.)
This said, I think you might be overstating the importance of the starting hand. It's not meaningless, but I can't reliably predict how well my game will go based on it. I've had scores over 100 when I started out with no clear path based on my start world and hand. You have to be willing to explore (+5) on the first turn sometimes. It really doesn't put you that far behind - at most one turn, and there's a good chance you'll get to piggy-back on someone else's develop/settle anyway. (Half the time you don't, it's because they explored too.) However it happens, each time you draw cards, it may completely change your game. Luck isn't just on the first turn, and I think that with a choice of two start worlds, the luck in the rest of the game will be more significant than the initial luck.
Finally, if you're not playing with the third expansion, maybe you should be. It adds the ability to do a one-time search for a chosen category of card; you can choose to search for a 1- or 2-cost windfall world (or 1- or 2-defense if you're going military). If you're really desperate to get going, it is more reliable than the +5 card explore on the first turn.
(Of your suggestions, I think mulligans are better - larger initial draws can improve average and good hands too. I think you'll probably be pretty satisfied with two start worlds, but if you do still want to allow mulligans, you might want to restrict it to "bad" hands by some definition, to keep from focusing too much on the mulligan decision, and possibly improving some okay hands.)

Yes, both suggestions would lessen the amount of luck in an initial hand. +2 cards reduces initial bad hands by an additional 33%-100%, depending upon whether you are counting total draws or total discards. Your second suggestion makes players make an interesting decisions, but might lean too heavily on trying to find the perfect draw (I would need to do some math to figure that out).
Either suggestion will still be subject to some unluckly starting hands, but both will lessen the degree to which those hands will occur.

Luck in your cards runs throughout the game. The enjoyable thing about RFTG is trying to make the best of whatever cards you have at any particular point. But when it comes down to it, luck isn't actually that important in RFTG! My wife and I used to play it a lot, but she got tired of it because I won about 95% of the time. Skill is far more important.
So, my answer of how to mitigate the luck factor is to play enough to develop your skill, such that the luck is less important!

I give each player 2 start world ; one of each type - military and production.
The each player gets 6 random cards and then you start drafting by picking one of the six according to you're preferred start world and then each of you give the remaining five cards to the left player. Do that 3 other times and on the last draft you have to choose between 2 cards and the other goes in the discard.
Then you choose one start world from the two you got according to your draft and everyone unveil their start world at once.
If a player really had a baaaaaaad drafting I let him have a mulligan and he can get to do a normal draft of two other start worlds and he picks 4of6 cards.
That's how I reduce luck factor.

This still has a luck factor an a player can get a better start then others and this would be even worse when you have experienced players playing with newer players as the experienced players know what to pick for a better start.


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What does it mean for a game to be 'Caylus-like'?
Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but while browsing board-game related forums I've often heard the term 'Caylus-like' used to describe a game (One usage I remember is that the family version of Agricola was called 'Caylus-like' when compared to the full version). Never having played Caylus, I have no idea what it means, and haven't been able to figure out a good definition from the context. If I had to guess, I'd say it meant that the game had a lot of strategy with very little luck, but I still think I'm missing something.
What exactly does 'Caylus-like' mean? What are people saying about a game when they describe it in this way?

The four distinguishing features of Caylus are

It's a worker placement game.
It has perfect information - you know everything about the state of the game, and nothing is hidden.
It has a clever and unusual turn-order mechanic, which is complex to play well, and absolutely critical to the strategy.
It has no luck. Like chess, there are no sources of randomness in Caylus.

Someone describing a game as Caylus-like can be referring to any of these fairly unusual characteristics. In your example, the Family version of Agricola is "Caylus-like" partly because it is worker placement, but also because there are no Minor Improvements or Occupations, so no cards held in hand, so there is no hidden information.
I play this game fairly regularly, and I have to say, it's pretty special. Other games often share one or more of these features, but the combination of mechanics is unique to Caylus.

What is probably meant by this, is Worker Placement game. With Caylus being a good example of such a game, with the added benefit of having very little random elements (only the initial neutral buildings, and starting turn order), and ranking high with many board game enthusiasts within their favorite games.

This geeklist is a collection of all boardgames that are considered "worker placement" games. Thanks to some insightful comments, the following attributes define this category:

Placement of the pieces gives you something. (This eliminates games like Chess.)
There is a limit to the number of pieces per location. (This eliminates area majority games like Leonardo Da Vinci, Louis XIV.)
In general, all workers are removed after each turn.
There is more than one worker per player. (This distinguishes worker placement from role selection like Puerto Rico.)
Players are competing for the limited locations to place their workers.

As for why the Family Version of Agricola would be considered more Caylus-like, that is probably because the family version removes some of the randomness (Occupation & Minor Improvement cards). Those 7 cards that are dealt to each player are unavailable to the other players, and are hidden information, where the Major Improvements are available to everyone and open.

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Looking to identify a particular form of solitaire played in-hand, not on a table
Back in college I had a friend teach me a different way to play a solitaire-like game.  It was played in-hand which meant you could play it while standing in line or any time you were bored and had a deck of cards handy.  Here's the rough idea of what I remember of the rules:

Cards held face down in a stack.
4 cards drawn from the bottom of the deck, flipped and put on top
Goal was to match the outside 2 of the top 4 cards (cards 1 and 4 if you number them from the top)
Matching may have been based on suit or card number
Might have been matched as all 4 of the same suit or outside matching by number, I can't quite remember
There were rules I can't remember that let you rearrange the top cards
If top 4 cards can't be matched then you draw from the bottom until you can match
When a match was made it was moved to the bottom of the face-up cards to get it out of the way

One nice feature of the game was that it always stayed in a stack other than fanning out the top cards.  If you have to stop playing you just collapse the fanned cards, put the deck back in the box.  Later on you can pull out the deck and start right where you left off.  It was a fun way to burn time while waiting for something.
Does this sound familiar to anyone?  I've looked for the rules but I have no idea what the game is called and I haven't been able to find anything similar.

Just wanted to comment to say that the friend that taught me this game back in college lost his battle with brain cancer on Saturday. Sergio "Hula" Perez will be missed.

It sounds like you're describing One-Handed Solitaire, or a variant of it. Here's a second description of the rules. It's actually possible to play several solitaire games in this way, where you use the top of the deck as a kind of compressed tableau, and store the discards in the draw deck itself.

Yeah, I remember that game. A good puzzle is to flip the entire deck face up and try to find a way through the cards to get them all discarded. I am fairly confident most shuffles are unbeatable but I never bothered trying to figure out how many.

Thank you! That looks very much like the rules I remember.

We played in threes rather than four, if the two outer cards were same value or suit then the middle card is discarded. If all three are same suit or value, all three are discarded. Continue to discard as long as is nessessary before drawing another card from the bottom.  Never knew the name, but its my favorite game to play alone. Have actually won several times but have been playing it since 8th grade- i'm 54 now!

FWIW, simulations of the game you describe using a 3-card "window" and your particular rules, shows Pwin ~ 0.0061 (~160 games/win). This compares to Pwin ~ 0.0071 (~140 games/win) for the "standard" version of One-Handed Solitaire with a 4-card window as described by the OP. Simulations also show that if we use a 3-card window but keep "standard-like" rules that discard all 3 when the outer 2 are same rank and discard only the middle 1 when the outer 2 are same suit, then Pwin ~ 0.000043, which is more than 23000 games/win!

I remember learning that from a book of 50 solitaire games and I believe it was called Pirates Booty

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Rules for Churchill Solitaire?
I've been hearing about the double-deck version of solitaire, played by Winston Churchill, that's way harder than normal solitaire. I can't seem to find the rules posted anywhere. Anyone know the rules?
I watched a video showing the iOS game which is useless to me since I don't use iOS and I'd rather play card games with actual cards. I was able to figure out some of the rules but considering the fact that I beat it the first time I played my make-shift version of it I suspect I was not playing correctly.

Use 2 standard decks of 52 cards and deal 10 piles with the following rules:
Dealing the cards

When dealing each row, the first and last card is always face up, while the rest is face down.
In each row, after you have dealt the card to the 5th pile, the next card is dealt face up to the "devil's six" pile.  The "devil's six" pile is placed on the upper left hand of the tableau.  You always deal to the "devil's six" pile after dealing to the 5th pile, regardless of which pile you began dealing in that row.  After dealing to the "devil's six" pile, you continue dealing to the 6th pile as normal.
For the first row, start with the first pile and deal to the 10th pile.
On the second row, start on the 2nd pile and deal to the 9th pile.
On the third row, start on the 3rd pile and deal to the 8th.
On the forth row, start on the 4th pile and deal to the 7th.
On the fifth row, deal face up to the 5th pile directly and deal next card face up to the "devil's six" pile.  Then deal a card face up to the 6th pile, and deal the next card face up to the "devil's six" pile.
At this point the devil's six pile should have 6 cards in total.
The rest of the cards remain face down and form the stock pile.

Gameplay

Same as other solitaire rules, you build up in sequence with alternating colors in descending order (K->Q->J->10->...).
The entire ordered sequence in the pile can be moved (e.g. If the pile is 2->5->9->8->7, you can move 9->8->7 to a different pile with a top card of 10 as long as they are alternating colors).  Also note any number of cards in the sequence can be moved, it doesn't have to be the entire sequence (e.g. you can move 7, 8->7, or 9->8->7).
If after moving cards to other piles results in the top card being a face down card, turn the top card face up.
If a pile is empty, only K or a sequence starting with K can be placed to the empty pile.
Any Ace is immediately moved to the "Victory Rows" (foundations).
The cards in the devil's six pile can only be moved to the Victory Rows directly, the cards cannot be used to build any sequences.
Only the top card of the pile is available for moving to the Victory Rows, including the "devil's six" pile.  You cannot move a card underneath the top card in the "devil's six" pile to the Victory Rows.
Moving cards to the Victory Rows is optional.  You may, for strategic purposes, choose to leave cards in play and delay moving them to the Victory Rows.
You move cards to the "Victory Rows" in ascending order (A->2->3->...).
When you run out of moves, you can deal from the stock pile, dealing one card to each pile that does not start with K as the first card of the pile.
You win the game when all cards are moved to the Victory Rows.

I haven't played this yet, but from a review the rules are as follows.
Initial Setup

You need two standard decks of cards, so 104 cards in total.
Deal 6 cards face-up to the top left of the play area (The Devil's Six)
Deal out 10 columns of cards: One face up card in the first column, one facedown followed by one face up card in the second, two facedown followed by one face up in the third, three facedown followed by one face up in the fourth, four facedown followed by one face up in the fifth, then the sixth like the fifth, etc, until the tenth like the first, forming an upside down triangle as shown below.

How To Play
Play is the same as normal solitaire with the following differences:

Cards in the Devil's Six can only be moved to the Victory Row, not the main play area.
When you run out of moves, deal an extra card face-up on top of each column.

That's basically how I played it but I ended up with situation that weren't clear. For instance, when you deal the new face up cards onto the stacks you end up with cards stacked face up that aren't in red-blue descending sequence. Can I move an part of a face-up stack or an entire face-up stack onto another stack, including the out of sequence cards? That's why I'd love to see actual rules, those edge cases are unclear based on the video reviews I've seen.

Your second bullet is incorrect.  It should state "When you run out of moves, deal an extra card face-up on top of each column that doesn't have a king-based string (and no face-down cards)."  So, in the image you show, face-up cards get dealt to all but the far-right column.

You can only move them when they are in the correct order. You can move all or the bottom part. You cannot pull some from the middle or the beginning and only move those.
Only a king (and its descending cards, if they are in the correct order) can be moved to an empty column.

Ah, that makes sense and would likely have made me lose the game (which I expected to do).

You do not place a card on top of a pile which starts with a King and descends when adding to the columns (you still place one if there are unturned cards beneath a King).  Also, there are many permutations of Devil’s six which are impossible.  For instance, any sequence of three descending cards in the same suit can’t be solved since you are unable to clear the second card without getting to the third first.  I’m unsure how to formally deal without running into these.


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Can Goblins conquer Lost Tribe regions for one less token?
The goblins race power is to conquer in-decline regions with one less token. Do Lost Tribes count as in-decline regions? Are Lost Tribes considered an in-decline race?

Yes, Lost Tribes are considered an in-decline race and can be conquered by Goblins with advantage. Lost Tribes tokens have little broken column symbol, which indicates "in-decline" state in game assets.


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Does Shepherds/Ambassadors give me gold when I build by moving a settlement?
The Nomads expansion has a Shepherds Ambassadors Kingdom Builder cards, which give you gold during the game for building in certain places (solo terrain hexes and next to other players, respectively). Do you get gold by moving a settlement into a qualifying hex via locations like Paddock and Caravan?

I would say no. Moving a settlement is not building it.
The rules say:

The active player must check whether the conditions on red cards have been met after building each single new settlement. If these conditions have been fulfilled, the player immediately records the gold earned on the score track.

This interpretation is confirmed by the BoardGameGeek’s FAQs Shepherds only gives points for built, not moved, settlements and Ambassadors only give points for built, not moved, settlements. Both reference the thread Questions on rules, in which Kingdom Builder’s game designer Donald X. answered:

No. Shepherds and Ambassadors do not score for moved pieces.


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How does the Prestige Leader mechanic work?
I just got the Race for the Galaxy: The Brink of War expansion and it adds Prestige mechanics to the game. Those I understand. The Prestige Leader mechanic, however, I don't understand and the rulebook isn't too clear. Why is it there? How does it work?

The instructions in the rules are pretty clear if you read them and follow them directly. If it helps, it pretty much boils down to:

if there's a single prestige leader, and they gained prestige last turn as they became prestige leader or afterwards, they get 1VP and 1 card
if there's a single prestige leader, but they only gained prestige on earlier turns, they get 1VP
if there's a tie for prestige leader, all tied players get 1VP

In practice, the condition for getting 1VP and 1 card (the first bullet point) is pretty much always equivalent to whether the sole prestige leader gained prestige on the previous turn. The only time it's not is if, say, they became prestige leader during Develop, they lost it/became tied during Settle, and they became sole leader again during Consume; that's of course quite rare.
In order to remind yourself of all this, you pass around the prestige leader token. Whenever there's a single leader, they get that token, and they put any prestige they gain on it as a reminder that next turn they'll get 1VP and 1 card. When they get that bonus, they take their prestige back as a reminder that next turn they'll just get the 1VP. When there's a tie, you flip it over to the tie side, and the former leader takes back their prestige, as a reminder that it'll just be the 1VP bonus next turn.
And... the point of this is to provide small ongoing rewards for prestige! In some cases, it's even enough to make prestige a good overall plan for your game.

When one player has more prestige tokens than any other player at the start of the round, he gets the Prestige Leader token.  Any Prestige earned during the round goes onto that token.  At the start of the round (before selecting phases), the leader removes the Prestige from that token (putting it with the rest of their Prestige/VP), earns 1 VP chip, and draws a card.  If, at the start of a round, the Prestige Leader has no prestige on top of the token (i.e. they didn't earn any new Prestige last round), they still get the 1 VP chip, but do not draw a card.
If two or more players are tied for the most Prestige at the start of a round, then they all earn 1 VP chip.  No cards are drawn in this case.
In my estimation, the Prestige Leader mechanic is there to ensure that Prestige doesn't become nothing more than a different color of VP chip, and to reward players who continue to earn Prestige throughout the game.


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What cards use coin tokens?
My son really wants to play a game with the coin tokens. What are all the cards that use coin tokens?

Although the cards using coin tokens are already listed in the answer by RM Bee (including the comments), Coin tokens appear in currently four expansions (Seaside, Prosperity, Cornucopia & Guilds, Renaissance, and Allies) and are used slightly differently in each set.
Please note that all the named cards have additional abilities besides generating or converting Coin tokens, but as the question is about Coin tokens this answer also focuses on them.

Seaside 1st Edition
The first expansion set to feature Coin tokens is Seaside. Using its card Pirate Ship, Coin tokens can be collected by individual players on their own Pirate Ship mats. Alternatively the collected tokens can be converted to +$ using the same action card, but the Coin tokens are not used up, so they remain on the Pirate Ship mat.
In later turns, this basically makes Pirate Ship kind of a Treasure which is possibly huge, but needs to be played as an action to generate money. Pirate Ship was removed from Seaside's 2nd Edition printing.

Prosperity 1st Edition
Prosperity also features Coin tokens with its Trade Route card, but this time the Coin tokens are placed on top of the victory card piles in the supply (one each) during setup. Once a card is gained from such a pile, the token is moved onto the Trade Route mat.
Amongst other effects, playing Trade Route then generates money according to the number of tokens on the mat. Again, the Coin tokens remain on the mat when used. In contrast to Pirate Ship, however, the Coin tokens on the Trade Route mat do not belong to a single player, but can be used by anyone. Trade Route was removed from Prosperity's 2nd Edition printing.

Cornucopia & Guilds
Using Huge Turnip, Candlestick Maker, Plaza, Baker, Butcher, Footpad, or Merchant Guild from the Cornucopia & Guilds expansion, players can get Coin tokens individually. The Second printing of Guilds uses the name "Coffers" for these tokens; when a card says "+1 Coffers", you add a coin token to your Coffers mat. The details or conditions on how to get them are different for each card.
The Coin tokens from these cards can be used like other Treasures during the Buy Phase to pay the costs of the cards. Each coin generates $1 and is returned to the coin supply after using it. So basically, you can use these action cards to save some money and use it in later turns, which you cannot do with regular Treasures, obviously.

Renaissance
Renaissance brings back the same coin tokens from Guilds. It includes a "Villagers/Coffers" mat, which can replace the Coffers mat from Guilds. Certain cards give you either Villagers or Coffers, which you track by placing coin tokens on the correct half of the mat.
Coffers work exactly the same as they did in Guilds. Villagers can be spent at any time during your action phase to add +1 Action.
Cards that provide Coffers include Ducat, Pageant, Exploration, Patron, Silk Merchant, Guildhall, Spices, Swashbuckler, and Villain.
Card that provide Villagers include Acting Troupe, Recruiter, Sculptor, Lackeys, Patron, Silk Merchant, Academy, and Exploration.

Allies
The newest expansion, Allies, brings coin tokens back. In Allies, coin tokens are used to mark how many "Favor tokens" you have. Favor tokens can be spent in different ways each game depending on which Ally was chosen for that game. All cards with the new type "Liaison" can give you Favor tokens, and if your game includes any Liaison cards, you pick an Ally to add to the game.
Cards that provide Favor tokens include Bauble, Sycophant, Importer, Student, Underling, Broker, Contract, Emissary, and Guildmaster.

This is the list of all cards that use coin tokens.  They are used in Dominion: Guilds.

Candlestick Maker, which grants +1 Action and +1 Buy in addition to the Coin token
Plaza, a village that can optionally discard a Treasure for a Coin token
Baker, a Peddler variant that gives Coin tokens instead of Coin.png
Butcher, which gives two Coin tokens, and allows you to trade in Coin tokens to Remodel other cards
Merchant Guild, a terminal +Buy that grants a Coin token whenever a card is bough

What about the Pirate Ship?

Trade Route also

The "coin tokens" used for pirate ship and trade route aren't coin tokens in the way that Guilds uses them; they're arbitrary tracking markers.


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How can I find what basic and stage 1 Pokémon cards can evolve to?
My son just got a Breakthrough Elite Trainer Box. He's got several basic and stage 1 Pokémon and I'd like to find out what Pokémon those cards evolve to. What's the best way to find out how basic and stage 1 Pokémon can evolve?

I was gonna say "memorize the Pokedex", but Kate's answer is way better.

TL;DR - Simple way
Use official Pokémon TCG Card Database where you can find cards that evolves from a card you have.
Explanation and hard way
Pokémon TCG uses the same evolution system as video games and anime, i.e. every Pokémon has determined number of possible evolutions. However, most of them has only one or zero evolutions. Bulbapedia List of Pokémon by evolution families has all possible evolutions available, if you don't know them at all. Mega evolutions are included here.
TCG also has its own additions to that system, although they are rather simple.
Sun & Moon evolution mechanics:

any Pokémon other than ♢ Pokémon

normal evolution rules: Basic → Stage 1 → Stage 2
some Baby Pokémon are excluded, i.e. Pikachu is Basic Pokémon

Pokémon ♢ (Prism Star)

card is Basic even if the particular Pokémon is normally not Basic

Deprecated evolution mechanics:

Pokémon EX, Pokémon SP, and Pokémon ☆ - always Basic, can have Lv.X or Mega Evolution
Pokémon BREAK and Pokémon Lv.X - power-up that enhances some Pokémon
Mega Evolution Pokémon

evolve like Stage 1 (are put onto Basic Pokémon)
player's turn ends immediately after Mega Evolving a Pokémon

Restored Pokémon - evolve like Basic Pokémon (can evolve into Stage 1 Pokémon)
Baby Pokémon

generation 2 and 3: evolve into Basic Pokémon
generation 4: Baby Pokémon are Basic cards that don't evolve at all

all other mechanics follow normal evolution rules

To get all cards your Pokémon can evolve into, find if it has an evolution and look it up in Pokémon TCG Card Database, which includes released cards, or in Bulbapedia List of Pokémon by evolution families (select a Pokémon, then select In the TCG), which includes also very old cards and cards yet to be released in English.


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How do I score rounds 2 and 3 when I am the only player with a kind of building?
Last night at the end of round 2, I was the only player with any Pavilion tiles in my Alhambra. First place gets 8 points, second place gets 1 point. How do I score this? Do I get all 9 points? Or just the 8 points for first place? It's only 1 point, but I could see a situation with higher-value kind of buildings where this division would matter.

You only get the points for first place. There simply is no second place person to receive those points. If a game wanted to let you get the second place points also in that case, it would need to be spelled out as a special rule.

Quoting from the rules on second round scoring :-
"points are awarded to the players with the highest number and second highest number of building tiles of each type."
Later it says "You must have at least 1 building tile of a particular type to be awarded points for that category".
So lets say you have 2 pavilions and the 2 other players have 0.  You have have come first and get 8 points.  the other players score nothing.  You have not come 1st, 2nd and 3rd in this category to entitle you to all the points.


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What's a good way to shuffle sleeved cards?
I usually use a riffle shuffle with unsleeved cards. Riffle shuffling sleeved cards however is, uh, slightly disastrous as cards frequently get caught in the sleeve openings.
What's a good way to shuffle sleeved cards? i
Is there's good riffle technique?

While cards are equally thick across the surface, cards in sleeves are not. They get thinner near the edges. This makes for a very easy faro shuffle.
But generally, just make sure you're shuffling the cards along their long edges. This prevents cards falling out of their sleeves and sleeves intertwining.

Yep, I still corner riffle but with the cards oriented side by side rather than end to end. It works great!

I usually use a riffle shuffle with sleeved cards with not problems. What I do is have the top of the sleeves pointed away from me, split the deck into two parts, and riffle them so they are in a V shape with only the bottom right corner of the left pile over lapping the bottom left of the right pile.
If you sill cannot shuffle them that way the next best way is a mash shuffle or side shuffle. For this one take the deck and split it in two piles again, then take the two piles and 'mash' them together along the long side.
There are other ways of shuffling as shown on Wikipedia, but from what I've heard these are the two techniques that create a random deck the fastest.

The two techniques mentioned in this answer are, in my experience from many large tournaments and watching countless hours of video coverage, the two most popular techniques by far. If you wanted to improve the answer, you might mention this YouTube video on mash shuffling sleeved cards, and this YouTube video on diagonal riffle shuffling sleeved cards. It would help people visualize what you are writing about.

@Rainbolt I will look at those videos when I get home from work and consider adding them, thanks.

Riffle is not easy on the sleeves or the cards.  Use the faro shuffle on the long edge and then do a "power shuffle".   One by one from the top of the deck make 6 - 8 files. Once all cards are in 6 - 8 smaller piles, randomly start stacking the piles.  Then cut and perform a faro shuffle.  Performing both of these techniques a couple of times will give you an adequate shuffle without damaging sleeves or cards.


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Are treasure cards spent by Storyteller still in play?
I played a game tonight with Storyteller and Alms. Storyteller says:

+1 Action
  +1 Coin
Play up to 3 Treasures from your hand. Pay all your coin; +1 Card per coin paid.

Alms is an event that costs 0 coin. It says:

Once per turn: If you have no Treasures in play, gain a card costing up to 4 coins.

I had a turn where I played the three coppers in my hand to get +4 cards, after which I had no more treasure cards in hand but multiple buys. I was going to buy two silvers with Alms, but the other players said I couldn't because of the treasures I had paid to draw cards with Storyteller. I argued that those cards weren't in play since I used them. Are treasure cards spent by Storyteller still in play?

Note that treasure cards are not in any way tied to the coins that they produce, same with actions that produce coins like Woodcutter. Spending coins, whether through storyteller or just by buying a card, has no effect on any treasures or actions you played to get those coins.

Yes, treasure cards stay in play. You may view the process as follows:

During your action phase, you play any action cards (or treasure cards, as well with the help of the Black Market) that generate Coins.
You play the Storyteller; you gain +1 Action and +$1.
You may play now up to 3 treasure cards from your hand.
Any total money that you have generated and have available so far (as you might have spent some with the Black Market), is lost; you draw that many cards.
Any subsequent money you generate is not lost and may be spent in the Buy Phase.

While the Storyteller card explicitly mentions that you have to "pay all your coins", it does not mention anything about any card leaving play. A card only leaves play during the Clean-Up phase (base game rulebook) or when a card effect explicitly says so (e.g., the Mint from the Prosperity expansion, or the Duration cards).
Furthermore, the Adventures rulebook (p.15) makes it crystal clear that "spent" treasure cards stay in play:

You can track that the Treasures have been "spent" by putting them under the Storyteller.

However, if for some reason you have $5 and two buys, it is perfectly legal to buy a Mint for $5, trash all your treasure cards in play because the Mint says so, and then buy the Alms event, gaining a card costing up to $4. But not with the Storyteller.


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How do treasure tokens work?
Some of the encounter cards in Wrath of Ashardalon have you put a treasure token on a tile. How do the adventurers pick up a treasure token? What can we do with the treasure tokens? They are worth gold, but I don't see anything to buy. Is it just for bragging rights?
P.S. Can someone with more rep than me create a "dnd-wrath-of-ashardalon" tag and add it to this question?

Miguel's answer is largely correct. However, there are also rules for handling treasure tokens in an adventure that doesn't use treasure tokens. In the same rules, page 16, the FAQ tells you how to handle events that refer to treasure tokens when you're not using them:

Dragon’s Tribute (59): If you aren’t using the Treasure Tokens in this adventure, draw 2 Treasure Cards and select the one with the lower gold piece (gp) value. If the values are the same, pick the one that you want.
Hidden Treasure (70): If you aren’t using the Treasure Tokens in this adventure and you draw this card, draw and place a Treasure Card on the tile. A Hero that ends his or her Hero Phase on the tile can claim the Treasure Card.

From the rulebook (source), under optional rules (page 15):

Monster and Treasure Tokens
  Some Adventures use Monster or Treasure tokens to add an element of surprise or risk to a particular scenario. The Adventure explains how to use the tokens and when they are needed.

If an adventure gives no explanation for their use, then yes, they simply give the players bragging rights.


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Do dead monsters really have to leave the game?
The one part of King of Tokyo I don't like is when players have to leave the game because their monster dies. Are there any variants/house rules that keeps players in the game?

What are they supposed to do after they lose other than play kingmaker?

@Joew; a variant could include something that says that running out of health doesn't prevent you completely from being able to win.

Considering that eliminating other players is a big part of the game that would be a major change.

@GendoIkari This doesn't really make much sense. The game is centered around two resources: victory points and health. If you remove health, you also take away many of the game mechanics, and effectively eliminate two sides of the dice. So now we've eliminated one way to win and 1/3 of the main game mechanic (dice rolling). At this point, it's time to design a new board game.

I don't have any specific ideas, which is why I'm not posting an answer, but I can see how you can make just a small change so that while health is still important to your final score, you don't auto lose for having 0 health. For example, count remaining health points as part of your score at the end of the game.

From a game design perspective, adding a house rule that eliminates monster deaths doesn't make much sense.
King of Tokyo is centered around two resources: victory points and health. If you take away the death of monsters, you essentially remove health as a resource from the game. This also eliminates many of the game mechanics, such as monster powers through cards, but most notably two sides of the dice have now become useless (the attack and health symbols).
Now we've eliminated one way to win the game (kill the other monsters) and 1/3 of the main game mechanic (dice rolling), plus a number of monster power cards that deal specifically with attacking and health. At the point were these changes are made, it might be time to find or design a new board game that uses mechanics you enjoy while avoiding those you don't.
As a side note, I understand where the frustration is coming from. If a player gets eliminated because their monsters dies early, having to sit around and watch this game being played while not participating is not much fun. Because of the dice rolling mechanic, this game tends more toward chaos, so you risk playing solitaire for the next hour on your corner of the table if things don't roll your way.

I disagree. There's a difference between saying "when you run out of health, you are no longer eliminated from the game" and saying "health no longer exists, and the thus attack side of dice do nothing".

"you risk playing solitaire for the next hour". Our games of KoT tend to last about 10 minutes tops - I don't quite understand how you can make it last an hour.

@GendoIkari I think your answer of how to transform the health resource into points makes sense, I just think that the OP may as well find a new game that more appropriately aligns with their gaming preferences.

@PhilipKendall Maybe a bit of an exaggeration on my part, but the first person eliminated from our games generally has to sit around for much longer than is desirable before a new game starts. And maybe we're being too strategic for a game about smashing Tokyo...

It's also worth noting the card It has a child which allows you to be "reborn" if you are "killed." If the rules were altered to allow players to play post-mortem, It has a child wouldn't mean much.

If a player gets eliminated early on, it's because he gambled on staying in tokyo for too long. If everyone plays normally the eliminations are only when the game is about to be finished. If after the first player gets eliminated you still play for an hour something weird is happening.

There are a few things you could do, but they would have a significant impact on the way the game works.
There are 2 ways to win King of Tokyo. Get 20 points, or be the last monster alive. Any suggestion that makes it no longer a game of elimination would remove the second way of winning.
The trick is that if losing all your health doesn't eliminate you from the game, you need to decide what it does mean. There are a few options of how you could handle it though:

If you have no health, you cannot earn any points or attack. Thus the only thing you can do on your turn is heal. So you are still in the game, but you are slowed down a bunch, making it harder to win.
Similar to above; if you have no health, you just skip your turn, and instead automatically heal some given amount of health. This way you aren't relying on continually re-rolling, hoping for health, to get back in. But you are still slowed down as you miss a normal turn.
When the game ends, consider your health points to be part of your score. Thus someone who has no health left will not have as many points. He could still win, but it would be harder.
When you have 0 health, damage takes away your points instead. In this way, your points act kind of like additional health. Having no health is still really bad, because then you can't win by getting enough points either.


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Do I score fishermen for settlements on water?
The Fisherman kingdom card states:

1 gold for each of your own settlements built adjacent to one or more water hexes.

With a harbor sector in play, I can move a settlement to a water hex. At the end of the game, do I get a point for settlements on water hexes in addition to hexes adjacent to water?

No. For scoring the Fishermen card, you can ignore any settlement on a water hex, no matter if it’s adjacent to another water hex or not.
From the rules about the Fishermen card (page 5):

Note - Extra harbor action:
  The "Fishermen" card does not generate
  gold for settlements on water hexes.

This is also part of BoardGameGeek’s Kingdom Builder FAQ: Fishermen: no points for settlements on water hexes


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Are there simplified rules for Race for the Galaxy?
I'd like to teach my 10-year-old son to play Race for the Galaxy. I'd also like it to be easier to teach new players. Are there any simplified/beginner rules for Race for the Galaxy?

I'm not aware of any simplified rules. I suspect it'd be pretty difficult to remove significant things without throwing the game out of whack.
But the base game does have suggested starting hands for your first game, which is easy to forget. From the setup section:

[normal rules for dealing start worlds]
Your first game: instead, for two players, use start worlds 1 and 2; for three, use start worlds 1-3; and, for four, use start worlds 1-4.
[normal rules for dealing starting hands]
Your first game: instead, each player uses the four numbered game cards
matching his start world’s number as his initial (preset) hand. After finding these preset hand cards, shuffle all the remaining game cards, including any left over start worlds and preset hand cards, together.

This is sort of like simplified rules in that your first choices are pretty obvious, and that initial setup will guide the rest of your game.
The quick summaries in the margins of the rules also provide a nice way of explaining the important things to new players without getting bogged down too much in details. Most importantly, you really don't want to explain a lot of individual cards' powers before you start playing - that can wait until you're looking at them in a game.
If you're playing with experienced gamers, that's probably enough; they can figure it out as they go along, especially with you watching out for anything they might misunderstand on cards. If you want to make it a bit friendlier, playing the first game open hands takes off a lot of the pressure and makes sure everyone gets to see how it all works. It can also be extremely helpful to run through an example turn before you start; some people don't really grok the whole selecting phases deal until they see it.

For what it's worth, by far the hardest and most time-consuming thing for new players is having to read so many cards during their first game. You have to do it all the time - not just when picking a phase, but when picking what to keep from explore, when picking what to spend to develop/settle, and so on. If you still really want to simplify the rules, that's probably the thing you want to attack. I'm not sure exactly what to suggest, but perhaps something like keeping half the cards you draw face down, so that they're purely resources to spend, not options to consider? It'd make your options more limited and slow everyone down, of course, but if it's only for the first game it might be tolerable?

It might be reasonable to try removing certain aspects of the game to simplify the decision tree. For instance, maybe you ignore the "selecting phase" aspect, and just go through all the phases each round. That way, novices can get a feel for how the various actions of deploying, trading, consuming, etc. work.

@HaoYe I suppose, but I'm a bit wary. It'll save you from having to plan ahead, but at the same time it'll introduce a ton of extra decisions since you'll have to decide every single turn whether you want to develop and settle. And if you include explore, you'll have to pick cards every turn, which I think is actually the hardest part - you have to read them all and think about your plans.

I guess another option is to just use the dice from the first expansion to choose a phase at random?

Maybe so, though then unlucky rolls can make for useless turns. I guess more broadly I think that picking a phase is actually one of the very important and fairly simple choices, so if you want to simplify the game into something that's a stepping stone to the full one, ideally you'd leave that choice in and try to take out some of the less significant choices. (I did edit one idea into the answer.)

If something more extreme than the beginner starting hands is needed it might work to filter all the cards for one strategy out, so that all the cards your son draws are decent choices. E.g. Give him all the industry cards, or all the military cards.

Yes, there are player-created simplified rules, you can find them on Board Game Geek. They are published by user Cathal.  Unfortunately, due to their lengths, I cannot fully reproduce them here.
The main idea is, that there are 6 introductory levels, on Level 1 you are playing a vastly simplified game, and gradually you re-introduce concepts, until you get to level 6, where you are playing the normal game.
The author gives a nice background for that method, saying that "levelling up" appeals to kids and adults alike.
The levels are roughly like this:

Level 1 - Take out all 6-cost developments, and a number of cards requiring more complex rules. The full list of cards to take out is provided. Also remove Explore +5, both Consume actions, and the Produce action. Shuffle all the start worlds into the main deck without giving any out. Then deal 6 cards to each player and allowed them to keep all 6. Each player’s chosen action card only affects that player.

Level 2 - Re-introduce the rule about an action card affecting everyone, not just the player who played it.

Level 3 - Re-introduce the start worlds.

Level 4 - Re-introduce some of the 6-cost developments. Re-introduce the Explore +5 card.

Level 5 - Bring back production/consumption using the auto-consumption “house” rule. The rule is explained in details. Re-introduce the developments and planets left out of the deck initially, for being too complex.

Level 6 - Re-introduce the consumption cards and the normal production / consumption rules. The last of the missing level 6 cards should also be re-introduced.
At this point you are playing the normal game.

The document linked above goes beyond this simple summary though, and explains when, how and why in more details.

As an off-the-wall answer, consider playing "San Juan" instead.  It's basically the same game, themed like Puerto-Rico, but with a much more limited set of cards.
It's a much easier learning curve than RftG.  Some of us even think it's better! ;)

Suggesting a different game in no way answers the question, regardless of how similar you might think the games are.

They are almost exactly the same game, only with different cards.  They aren't just similar - San Juan is basically a simplified version of RftG.

Um, actually, basically a simplified version of RftG is
Jump Drive
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/205597/jump-drive

Cool - although that was released /after/ my answer ;)

Actually both games come from the same source. When board game Puerto Rico was a great success, publisher Alea asked authors (in a kind of competition)  for ideas for a (simplified) card game version of PR. They found two of the submissions really appealing. The simpler then became San Juan, but Alea said  they liked the other concept so much that they gave permission to publish it with a different theme - that became RftG. That explains the similarity in both games, and even though I don't support the "play SJ instead of Race"-approach, I suggest teaching SJ first, then Race.

I found this summary helpful:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/661014/quick-and-basic-rules-get-you-playing

I would suggest summarizing the link, so that if the link is no longer valid it will still be an acceptable answer


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What's an effective Small World strategy for new players?
I've played one game of Small World.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite losing badly.  For one, I had no game plan, and was sort of just trying things randomly.  Is there an effective, yet basic, strategy I can use next time to at least play with a sense of purpose?  At the risk of asking too many questions at once...

Should I always spend coins to get a race with more troops?
How do I know when to decline an active race?
Is there a good VP target to earn per turn?

These are just some general suggestions:

Go for numbers early. When
the map is still mostly empty, it
seems like quantity of troops is
slightly more valuable than quality.
I'm willing to give up a coin or two
on the first round to get a few more
troops.
Don't be afraid to abandon all
regions and relocate all your troops.
Sometimes this is a very good thing
to do.
Try to place troops on mountains
before declining. They'll hold out a
little longer there.
Decline early to get two races working for you.

So a simple strategy that may work reasonably well is to start with a race that has a high number of troops, deploy those into as many mountainous regions as possible, and then decline on turn two. So on turn three you will already have two races working for you. I'm not saying it's a great strategy, but it's not a bad place to start.
Beyond that you need to play off the powers you have. The powers and races you get make a big difference in what would be a good strategy and what would be a bad one.

+1 for the "play off the powers you have". Todd and Pat have insightful points, but the single unfailing strategy is: use the opportunities that the game throws into your lap to your maximum benefit. Of course this is not really a useful strategy until you have good insight into what is possible and what the good and bad points of different events are, but it is important to be aware that you need to be flexible about your plans and long-term strategies. Also: note that nothing in this comment is Small World-specific - all of it holds verbatim for many, many games.

One thing I'm discovering about Small World (especially in games with smaller number of players) is that it's not inherently balanced - your opponents can easily snap up amazing race/ability combos for cheap, leaving you with much less attractive options, just by random virtue of the seating order.
As such, you simply have to play a competitive game.  Don't just look at your race/ability combo in isolation: look at it also in terms of how much it can do to hamper the efforts of the player currently winning the game (or the player most likely to stop you from winning).
Barring special circumstances, you will generally have two races on the go at once: one Declined race in as defensible a position as possible, and one Active race doing things.  The Active race has a lot of work to do: it needs to take lots of territory (to get points here and now); take defensible territory (to keep getting points while in decline); and also, crucially, mess with the opponents: oust them from defensible areas and force them to go into Decline at points that are disadvantageous to them.
In short, I'd agree with everything the other answers have said about this being a game about adapting to circumstances - Small World is nothing if not a game of taking advantage of opportunities as they arise - but I'd add that it's not a game you can play without reference to how well the other players are doing.  If they have some good race/power combos going, then grab an aggressive race, get in there and do them over, as quickly as possible!  Defensive powers and play is all very well, but save it for when you're obviously in the lead...

Totally agree. To that point, my group considers the tracking who's ahead to be so central to the game's strategy that we open up a laptop and record in a spreadsheet the coins gained every turn. (Yes, this is extreme, and runs counter to the game rule of hiding your coins.)

@warbaker Small World's predecessor, Vinci, had public scoring. The advantage was that, as you note, everyone could concentrate on the leaders, which was great for addressing the power combination imbalance. On the downside, though, most games ended with someone having no choice but to play kingmaker. Small World addressed that weakness through private scoring, failed to do entirely solve the power imbalance.

@matthew I generally hate the kill-the-leader mechanic, but somehow keeping things completely open removes the its worst result: the endless, tiresome debate. With a spreadsheet, it is always obvious who is winning and by how much. There's just nothing to say. That said, maybe I take winning a bit too seriously. :)

@warbaker I hear ya. Unfortunately out solution is to just not play it much, despite it being a good game in every other way. FWIW, we largely solved the problem in Vinci by having the game have a 1 in 3 chance of ending after someone hits 100 points, checked one each time around the table. This uncertainty largely removed the kingmaking in Vinci, which definitely ended when someone hit 120 points.

I've played Small World a lot and i still find that the main strategy isn't even a real strategy: it's to look at the power/race combinations and think about how you might use them AT THIS EXACT MOMENT (so maybe it's all about tactics rather than strategy).  Sometimes the other player(s) have a combo which is particularly vulnerable or resistant to some of the available-to-buy combos. You don't need lots of experience with the game to figure out what these are, but when you first play there are so many races and powers to think about that it's quite overwhelming.  That doesn't help much :/

In general...

The number of troops is really important. Until the endgame, don't fret too much about how many coins you're spending.
You should have have 2-3 races over the course of the game.
Target 8-11 points per turn once things get going. Overextending yourself is dangerous.
Dwarves deserve special mention: they are terrible.

Your first race should try to spread to mountains, say 3 mountains and 1-2 non-mountains, then go into decline.
A bit on mountains:
Mountains are valuable for in-decline races because they make it much less desirable for someone else to interfere.
For example, if an opponent has 4 troops to spare and already has a race in decline, she's better-off conquering 2 open non-mountain regions than conquering your single mountain region, even if you're winning. She closes the gap with you by 2 territories either way, but she gets more coins versus her peers if she leaves you alone.

Should I always spend coins to get a race with more troops?

No.  Those are victory points!  Spend them wisely and be eager to grab VPs that other folks put down.  Most race/power tokens can be useful if used correctly.  Just figure out how you get extra VPs with the combo and keep focused on that.

How do I know when to decline an active race?

The easiest way to know is when your previously declined race has been wiped out or has been reduced to 1-2 territories that look like they won't last long.  I believe that you need to earn VPs from declined empires as often as you can.  It is better to decline too early, than too late.

Is there a good VP target to earn per turn?

1 more than everyone else? :)  Sorry, I can't give a definitive answer here as most of my Small World experience actually comes from the game's predecessor Vinci.  Always try to get a few VP's per turn, this fits with my "Decline early and often" strategy.  Then make the most of your big turns.  Know who is your competition at any point and be sure to take a territory or two from them each turn if at all possible.

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


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How do you pronounce Agricola?
I played my first game of Agricola yesterday.  Naturally, I'm left with a bunch of questions, but chief among them is: How do you pronounce the name of this game?  Our group was split pretty evenly between "AG-ri-co-la" and "a-GREEK-o-la".  Which side (or maybe neither!) is correct?

Pronounce it however you pronounce agriculture.

Erik P's reference to Wiktionary is correct, but he is interpreting the IPA pronunciation incorrectly.
/aˈɡri.ko.la/  is ah-GRIH-koh-lah.  You can hear it pronounced by Merriam-Webster here.

+1 Thanks. I'm Dutch, so translating the latin pronunciation in my head into a fake English one is not my strong point :)

My browser crashed on that link so I looked for alternatives. I found this one for latin: http://de.forvo.com/word/agricola/ And this one for spanish: http://www.forvo.com/word/agr%C3%ADcola/

I studied Latin at Oxford, so I'd hope I'm at least a moderate authority on such matters, and this answer looks correct to me!

@Kempeth: Try this link and click on the little speaker symbol next to the word.

Thanks but it still crashes. The other links are enough for me...

I wasn't looking for this question, but I'm so glad I found this answer! Now to go tell my gamer friends that I was right and they should stop saying a-gri-COH-la.

Actually, Eric is right about the IPA and you are wrong. The symbol /i/ is EE, not IH, as the very Wikipedia link you gave points out.

@BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft, right, and those are the vowel in "greed", not the vowel in "grid".

I learned ah-GREE-ko-lah in school, and Wiktionary seems to bear me out: according to this page, the (classical) pronunciation in IPA was /aˈɡri.ko.la/, and according to this table on wikipedia the quote precedes the stressed syllable.

My high school Latin taught me a-GREE-ko-lah as well.  The second syllable definitely gets the stress, though as BlueRaja points out it may be "grih" instead of "gree".

I pronounce it the way they do in Dead Poets Society (AG-ri-co-la).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxFPc3Q_Lh4&t=1m4s

Among my group, we pronounce it "ah-greek-OH-la". Based on the fact that the designer is German, my so-so knowledge of German, and lack of facts that prove me wrong, I 'd say this is the "correct" pronounciation.
Disclaimer: I 'm Greek. We pronounce things quite differently than Americans.

Say it however you want (don't insist that all your friends say it the 'right' way).  If you care, the author of the game pronounces it ah-GREE-ko-la.
10:20 into the interview:
http://www.cliquenabend.de/videos/450000-Hernevideospezial-Uwe-Rosenberg.html


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How do you score the Mayor in a city with no pennants?
We played our first games with the Abbey & Mayor expansion tonight, and ran across a scoring question that's not precisely covered by the rules.  The rules are pretty simple:

The Mayor counts as a meeple, so you can't play him where another meeple is already present.
The Mayor counts as one follower for each pennant in the city.

What happens if a city with no pennants is closed (or the game ends) and the only meeple in the city is a Mayor?  Does that player score zero points for the city?

No points are scored.
From the Carcassonne Annotated Rules p58 (note 161)

Question: Blue has a mayor in a city with no pennants. Does the city count as occupied? And if
  so, when the city is scored, will blue score points? Answer: The city is occupied. The mayor has no
  ‘strength’, so he counts as if there is no follower, and scores no points.

Good, that's how we played it.


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Consume>Trade in RftG Base game
In the base game of RftG, if you chose Consume>Trade as the action, do you have to trade on a card that has a $ ability? If it is a +3 and do you get +3 cards in addition to the normal trade value?

You first sell any one of your available goods for the number of cards indicated by the kind of good (i.e. 2 cards for a Novelty good, up to 5 for an Alien good).  Some cards in your tableau may have Trade powers (marked with a $) that may affect what you get from this trade.
Then you must use as many of the Consume powers (marked with a IV) as you have on your cards as possible, on as many of the remaining goods that you have as you can.  You can use these powers once only each, but you can use them in any order you like.
From the way you phrase your question, it sounds as though you think that the initial Trade is performed based on one of your Consume powers, somehow.  It isn't; the initial Trade is a completely independent bonus and takes place before you refer to the special powers of the cards in your tableau.

So if you don't have any Consume Trade bonuses on the cards on your tableau, if you choose Consume Trade you get to trade based on the generic consume trade as indicated on the card? I'm guessing another read through the rules would clarify it for me.

@Tuxhedoh: Even if you have no cards with Consume powers, you can still Consume>Trade, and convert a good into cards by the power of the Trade bonus alone.  Once you've resolved that, you have to start using Consume powers until you have either no Consume powers or no usable Goods left.  The RftG rules are quite involved, and take a little bit of work to understand at first, but once you "get" them they soon become second nature!

Part of my problem was I learned from a friend years ago.... played it about 15 times, than shelved it until just recently.   So the basic gameplay I still remember, it's just this Consume Trade that's getting me.

Consume > Trade gives you access to a special phase that only players who select Consume > Trade can perform.  During that phase, you must sell any one good from any planet in your tableau for 2/3/4/5 (blue/brown/green/yellow) cards.  If you have any $ powers, those will change your payout for your single allowed trade, but you do not need any of them and the traded good can come from any world.

Now this makes it sound to me like Consume >Trade will only allow you to trade one card, regardless of the powers available on the cards on your tableau. I can see I've definitely been remembering the rules incorrectly.  So one could play Consume Trade even if not having any cards on their tableau with that ability, unlike normal consume which requires cards to be able to consume there.

@Tuxhedoh: Consume->Trade does allows you Trade only one card.  But then you can (and must) Consume as many cards as able.  I think your confusion is understandable: the Trade and Consume halves of the operation work in pretty different ways.  But that's just Race for the Galaxy really...

That's right, the Trade phase only allows you to Trade one good, unless one of the powers in your tableau overrides it.  Most trade powers just increase your payoff for your single trade, though.  After Trade is complete, all players (whether they selected Consume or not) perform the Consume phase, where everybody must consume as much as possible.

Its also confusing that it is written as "Consume>Trade", but the Trade happens FIRST, followed by the Consume.


text:
What do you do when you run out of Zombies?
When playing with the base game Zombies, is there an official rule for what to do when you run out of Zombies? I checked BGG and the official rulebook and found nothing.

You're right, the official rulebook doesn't cover this, but their FAQ does:

What if I run out of zombies or tokens?
Use any kind of markers you can get a hold of. You can keep track of the zombies you have killed in other ways, such as glass beads, and return the zombies to the pool.

If you want more zombies, Twilight Creations sells a Bag O' Zombies for $10, which I believe contains 100 zombies.

I looked at that FAQ and somehow did not see that question there!  Good catch.

I usually take a zombie who's already in use but far from the action and unlikely to be involved in the rest of the game and re-use it. It's not quite the same when you're running away from glass beads!


text:
How to explore with wormhole generator in Eclipse?
In the Eclipse board game, how do you explore with the wormhole generator? You have to select where you are exploring before you draw a new hex. You must be connected to that empty space with half a wormhole, or a whole wormhole. Does this mean I can explore from an edge of my current hex that does not have a wormhole half as long as I use the wormhole half of the newly drawn hex to connect? Or do I have to explore from an existing wormhole half of the current hex, and I can then connect to an empty edge of the new hex?

You are correct that you must select the unexplored space you wish to explore before drawing the hex tile from the appropriate stack. And yes, if you have the wormhole generator technology, you may explore a space adjacent to a side of your controlled hex that does not have a wormhole half. However, you must then make sure you orient the new hex so that a half wormhole is positioned next to that side of the new hex. If you look at the examples on page 9 of the rulebook the hex marked D, which is a legal placement for a player with a wormhole generator, is an example of the above described situation.


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Can you sacrifice yourself to use an Elder Sign in Arkham Horror?
The cost to use an Elder Sign to seal a gate is 1 Sanity and 1 Stamina. If you are at 1 on either one of these (or both), can you essentially sacrifice yourself in order to use it? Will the sealing occur before you become insane/wounded/devoured?

Yes,
This is explicitly allowed in the rule book, p18

To use an elder sign, do the following:
The player removes 1 Sanity and 1 Stamina from his
investigator sheet. This may knock the investigator
unconscious or drive him insane, but the elder sign still
takes effect.

Pat has come up with an authoritative answer, but even if the rulebook had left things ambiguous, that scenario sounds so atmospheric that, if it were my house and it came up, I would definitely want to allow it.
Arkham Horror is a game that thrives on its atmosphere: if something so cinematic was disallowed by the rules, I'd feel a bit cheated by them!


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What are the most effective action combinations in Dominion?
I've only played a few games of the base set, but I already noticed some very powerful combinations:

Laboratory can be repeatedly combo'd with itself to draw a massive amount of treasure from your deck early in the game.
Remodel can be used on Gold to quickly convert it to provinces during endgame.

Share your favorite powerful combinations.

This is a very broad question.  There are currently 112 Kingdom cards in Dominion's 5 sets, plus an additional 3 promo cards.

Yeah, that's true. Part of the fun of the game is figuring out the right cards to buy in any combination. I love it when a card I would usually buy a lot of is useless because of other cards on the table.

Revisiting this question, I think a better one might be "Which cards in Dominion lend themselves to Action Combos?". It's also worthwhile to note that Action chaining is a big theme, in my opinion, of the Alchemy expansion in general.

Nobles
Nobles combine very well with themselves, or with action multipliers like Throne Room, King's Court or Golem.

Found another great combo with nobles today: Scout. Since nobles is a victory card, you may draw one or more of them with each scout you play.

The dominion strategy blog has a bunch of interesting combos.
My favorites are:

Black Market/Tactician: Use the black markets ability to play (not neccesarily even spend!) your money before the buy phase, to subvert the tacticians "throw away your hand" downside.  You got to keep your money AND play the tactician!
Ambassador/Curse:  After you get your deck small, intentionally buy a curse to "upgrade" your ambassador into a sea hag!
Quarry/Talisman:  Talisman lets you gain an additional card when it costs <= 4.  Quarry reduces action costs by 2.  Play a Quarry and Talisman together and for a single buy of a six cost action for $4, you get an additional one.

Good find with that blog!

My friend writes it and I edit it ;).

I'm a fan of the Scout combos:

I was wondering why scout was useful :)

With any other multiple action card:

5 Victory point tokens for trashing a card that could cost you nothing if you played 4 actions:

No, seriously, the possibilities are endless.  There's a reason why card randomizers are so common... so that you play with a different set of 10 cards of the 112/115 available cards each time.

What happens when Golem fails to find two action card apart from other Golems? Your entire deck (minus your hand) is discarded.
What happens when Golem finds one Counting House and nothing else?  Every single Copper in your deck comes into your hand.
Buy one Counting House, several Golems, and an extra Copper (or four, if you're going for Colonies), and you're guaranteed a Province every turn you have Golem and no Counting House in your hand.  It gets boring after a bit, but, man, is this combination fun to pull on your friends once.

I feel like posting more combinations.

Just a couple I've encountered recently:

Treasure Map + Watchtower - being able to put new Treasure Maps on top of your deck in the early game significantly improves the odds that you'll get two in your hand.
Counting House + Cellar - discard all your Copper, draw replacements, then put the Copper back in your hand.
Herbalist + Platinum - really, this is just obscene.
Scrying Pool + City - the Scrying Pool is so weak, and so cheap, and so horribly effective if you've got a lot of Cities in your deck.

Oh, and I forgot:

Counting House + Vault - sure, you need +1 action to pull this off, but at a minimum it makes all the copper in your hand worth double.
Contraband + Gardens - especially if your opponent doesn't think to ban you from buying more Contraband with your Contraband.  It's not hard to average 3 cards a turn with this.

Yick, Treasure Map is broken enough on its own, isn't it?

The beautiful thing about Dominion is no matter how "broken" a card is, everyone has an equal opportunity of buying it.  That said, there are a dozen other cards I would call "broken" before Treasure Map; it takes enough work to pull it off that by the time you cash it in, you've earned the four Gold.

When you are trying to cash in Treasure Maps, use Chancellor to reshuffle your deck if you missed the pairing.

Buy a Tactician and a few Banks.  I just discovered this one yesterday; combined with a Festival, I was able to buy three Provinces in one turn, and still have change left over for a smaller card.

I have not personally pulled this off but I have seen this in action - in which, you can use a Remodel card to remodel a remodel card so that you can increase your costs to gain a card of a higher value.
This is a very slow process but it can come in pretty handy when there are limited avenues of income within a very thin deck.

There are several cards similar to Remodel: Upgrade from Intrigue (+1 Card, +1 Action, trash a card and gain a card costing exactly 1 more), Expand from Prosperity (trash a card and gain a card costing up to 3 more), and Forge from Prosperity (trash multiple cards and get a card costing exactly their combined cost).


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Guillotine: Face up or visible?
In Guillotine, the rules state that the cards should be "face up". But is it ok to stack the nobles on top of each other into piles? Technically, they are still face up, but the points are not visible. Or perhaps the point value should be visible at all times as to avoid confusion?
I guess the real question is, should other players be able to "count" your points at all times, or is it ok to make it harder for them to do so?

Unless firmly stated otherwise, "face up" does imply that the information should be easily accessible to all players. I don't see any reason you couldn't pile them all up in one nice little stack, but you do need to allow other players to look through your entire pile if they choose to do so.

Page 9 of the official rules states that players are allowed to check your nobles to see how many points have been scored.

In my personal opinion, "face up" is intended to mean "all information is visible to all players". Otherwise, you could also place them face up on the table but under a nontransparent cloth, which would give even less information than placing them face down.


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Power Grid - Simpler Resource Grid
I've heard that there is a printable chart for Power Grid somewhere online, possibly BGG.
Said chart breaks down the players & steps into individual cards that are more convenient than the bulky back of the rule book.
Something like this:
Players: 4
   Step 1 Step 2 Step 3
Oil   1       2       3
Coal  2       3       4
etc.

Does anyone know where I can find this?

Have you tried looking at any of these? I've ordered that list by popularity, so the stuff at the top should be the most useful. There are lots and lots of summaries and crib sheets available. Which one works best for you is really a question of personal taste.

I don't know why that was so hard for me to find, but yes! This is what I was looking for. Thanks!

I think the key is finding the game on BGG, then clicking on "files", then looking through said files for what you're looking for. This is what eluded me.

Having each of the number of players info on separate pages is great! I'm going to have to print these. :)


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do all players win star realms pirates co-op
OK, with the Star Realms Pirates of the Dark Star co-op challenge, if a player dies but at least one other remaining team member still beats the Pirates, is it a team win or an individual win? e.g. if Bob and Sally play, and Bob is eliminated, but Sally still hangs on and wins it, is it a team victory, or was it just Sally who won?

By the nature of it being a co-op then everybody wins.  I can't anything specific in those rules to say an eliminated player doesn't win so I wouldn't rule that just those surviving are winners.  It seems very against the spirit of a co-op game to try and claim you won solo unless thats specifically in the rules such as Archipelago where everyone wins/loses and if players win there is a 'grand winner' amongst them.


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Lazax ally advantage conditions
In Rex Lazax ally advantage allows Lazax player to give influence to an ally before she makes a legal bid on a strategy card. The tricky point which prompted questions when we played is: is the ally required to have sufficient amount of influence to make a bid before Lazax gives him some?
E.g.: Sol is allied with Lazax but has no influence, so he cannot make a bid by himself. Can he receive influence from Lazax in such situation to make a bid?

The ally does not need to have enough to make the bid before the transfer, as long as the ally has enough to
The rulebook indicates:

The Lazax may give his ally any amount of influence during this
  Bidding Phase. This influence must be given before the player makes a
  legal bid on the current Strategy card.  The ally
  is not required to bid all of the influence given

(Note the implication that the ally is very much allowed to bid influence that has just been given.)
Then, in the rules for bidding:

Bid: If a player wishes to bid, he announces how much influence he is
  willing to pay for the card. ... A player cannot bid more influence
  than he has in his reserve.

The transfer from the Lazax comes before the player makes the bid, and the requirement is only that the player has enough to cover the bid at the time the player makes the bid.
In your example, Sol would be able to receive influence from Lazax and then subsequently make a bit with it.


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Firefly "Reaver Cutter" nav card
Situation: Player1 moves into a sector containing a ship of Player2 and draws "Reaver Cutter" nav card (which means moving Reavers into the same sector and applying Reaver Contact effects immediately). Do Reavers attack both ships or only the Player1? I.E. does Player2 have the contact immediately or only on the start of his turn? There is a difference because Reavers may leave the sector before the turn of the Player2 begins.

@ikegami probably not, similar situation is described in the FAQ_v3 regarding Alliance Cruiser. It's said that Contact is resolved once per encounter, quite reasonably.

I'd say yes, and apply that rule to the reavers too.

The Reaver Cutter is resolved upon the players turn start. The Alliance Cruiser is resolved immediately. This is to simulate the Reavers "not being hungry" and the Alliance Cruiser "getting awfully crowded in my sky..."


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Firefly 'Sky Hook' ship upgrade
There is a "Sky Hook" ship upgrade which "Counts as TRANSPORT" and "Requires Pilot to use". What exactly the rules of its use are? I see several possibilities:
1. It should be "equipped" by a Pilot going on a mission (like gear)
2. A Pilot should stay on the ship (because the ship is acting as a transport)
3. It always counts as a transport if you have a Pilot in the crew.

If the mission calls for a transport, they use the firefly as the transport. The transport is not expected to be in their pockets, so either they used the transport to get to the job, or they went back to the ship to do the job. You're good if you got a pilot on the job.

In other words, the rules make sense, so there's no reason to believe there's an exception here.

sorry, cannot get it yet, can the pilot equip some other gear or should he have his hands free to drive the firefly?

It's not gear, so yes he can. Having a gun in his pocket doesn't stop him from piloting.


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Seafarers - Ships over Ports?
Quick question about seafarers. Ports are added onto the map by placing them alongside the edge of a hex. Once a port is there is it right to consider that edge as Coastal or not? i.e. Can a ship be built along that edge?

Which scenario are you playing?  Most scenarios specify the location of the ports.

A port is coastal.
A ship can be build if a settlement or city is present (or as a continuation of other ships).


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Does a hero suffer wounds from new minions as Darkness Spreads?
In the Defenders of the Realm rulebook, the Suffering Wounds section (p. 7) says

If a hero ends a turn in a location with enemy minions, the he suffers a wound for each minion at that location.

On first reading, I thought that meant that once a hero's actions were spent, they would suffer a wound for each minion present on their location. But, a player's turn is divided up into three segments (p. 5): Daytime(hero actions), Evening(draw cards), and Night(darkness spreads) and new minions are placed during Night.
Does a hero suffer wounds if minions were placed on their location during the Night as darkness spreads?

This question has been asked before. Luckily, the designer has clarified the answer. You suffer wounds at the end of your heroic actions when minions are in your location, not during the Night when new minions are placed.

Wounds are suffered at the end of your actions - the end of the Daytime Phase of play and prior to drawing Darkness Spreads cards. If Minions appear on your location by a Darkness Spreads card, you do not suffer wounds to them.

You will also note that the rules regarding wounds suffered in this manner are covered within the Daytime section of the rule book, and not near the end of the rule book covering Night.

Thanks! I got caught up in the definition of a 'turn'. Apparently, it is also appears in the DotR FAQ on p. 11, though I couldn't find it when I was looking for it the first time.


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What is a good modification of rules to make a game of Dominion slower?
In Dominion my family sometimes complains, that the game is over to fast because they couldn't build up their deck. While Dominion is designed to work that way, it might be useful to try some rule modification to slow it down somewhat while people still can buy the different action-cards. Have you a way to this that you recommend? How for instance would making money and point-cards more expensive would work out?

I think you should specify you want it longer, not slower

Shouldn't they learn that they're not building the most powerful decks?

Things that require no actual house rules:
1. Get and use the Prosperity expansion (or the Dominion Base Cards set), and play more games with Colonies/Platinum.
Games with Colonies usually last longer, because it is not often worth buying Provinces. Instead of trying to get to $8 for Provinces, you are trying to get to $11 for Colonies.
2. Use setups that create longer games.
Some setups make the game go longer than others. Games with attacks will last longer on average than games without attacks. Games with more powerful cards like Wharf or cards that gain more cards like Workshop will be shorter on average.
Cards like Philosopher's Stone (from Alchemy), and Counting House (from Prosperity) become better in longer games. Any cards that give out Curses usually make the game go longer, because people's decks will be clogged. Strong trashing cards like Chapel will usually make the game go much faster.
Finally, alternate VP cards like Vineyards (from Alchemy), Duke (from Intrigue), Gardens (from Dominion), and Silk Road (from Hinterlands) can make the game go much longer, because one player can ignore Provinces completely and go for points with those cards instead (if the rest of the setup makes that a viable strategy). It takes 1 person a very long time to drain the entire Province pile, so if (in a 2 player game) 1 player is avoiding Provinces completely, he can make the game go long enough that his Vineyards and Dukes will be worth more than the Provinces that the other play managed to get.

I have not personally tried either of the following (as I prefer to play multiple faster games than fewer slower games), but a couple ideas that come to mind:
3. Increase the number of Provinces available.
If playing 2 player, you can use all 12 instead of 8. For 3 or 4 player, you could use 15 or 16. Either take the extra cards from the Intrigue set if you have it; or just use blanks or unused cards as proxies. The biggest issue here is that players will need to learn to not start buying Provinces as early as normal. If they start buying Provinces as soon as they hit $8, then the first 8 Provinces may be bought up, but then it may become unlikely to ever be able to buy the last few because your decks are clogged. This will also not make any difference for some setups.
4. Increase the cost of Provinces, like you suggested.
You do have to be careful with this, because in certain setups it can be literally impossible to ever reach certain amounts on a given turn; like if there's no way to increase your handsize. This will also not make any difference for some setups.

Colonies and Platinums are also available in the Dominion Base Cards set.  Do not confuse this with the Dominion Base set.  It replaces all the "basic" cards... including Alchemy's Potions... with updated artwork.

@powerlord Good point, added.

+1  Increasing the number of Provinces available is in my opinion the simplest way to make sure most games last longer  ("most", because some combinations stop after emptying x number of supply piles)

4 Ideas we Use:

Make 2 or 3 Stack of Pointcards and Mix the Pointcards, so every Stack. is random. So you are forced to wait or buy bad cards And more buying Options can be very valuable. Play it until one (or two) Stacks are empty. Use the Normal Number of Pointcards.
Use more Cards :D
Use Aggressive Cards which make people throw cards away or polute there decks with useless cards
A rule until you are not allowed to buy provinces. (One Stack of the Actioncards has to be empty, the Provinces are under some Mansion Cards(don't know the English Word), or a random Pointcard Staple (like in Suggest 1) has to be Empty) to buy Provinces. Be creative ;-).

Remove Gold from the game. If you want to go further, remove Silver from the game too. This will limit which Action cards can be used, as some of them specifically work with the money cards.
When I first started to play, I didn't buy much Silver or Gold. Then I played a friend who basically only bought Silver and Gold, and not many action cards. He demolished me by being able to afford Provinces a lot sooner than me.

Interesting idea and would definitely slow down the game, but at the same time break many things. A lot of actions directly interact with different money-cards and the genereal assumption that they exist is often also implied.

Good point, answer updated


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Starting Hands in Texas Hold'em
How many possible starting hands are there in Texas Hold'em?

169
While Chris is technically correct, as far as strategy is concerned, there is no difference between having an Ace & King of spades vs. Ace & King of hearts. There is however a difference between having a suited Ace & King vs. a non-suited Ace & King. Looking at it that way, there are 169 possible starting hands.

I was thinking of looking up that number.  Guess it's farther down in the wiki article.

@Chris TL;DR? ;)

@John Exactly :).

This is a very useful link.  It shows the starting hands in a nice grid format:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_hold_'em_starting_hands

It depends on how you define "starting hand."
There are 52*51=2652 permutations of any two cards.
There are (52*51)/2 combinations of two cards, if you treat (Card A, Card B) as being equal to (Card B, Card A), e.g. ace of spades, king of hearts as being equal to king of hearts, ace of spades). the total is 1326.
There are 169 different hands consisting of the following:

13 pairs (one for each of 13 denominations from A to 2.
78 combinations of (X, Y) of the same suit. That is (Ace of spades, king of spades) is considered equivalent to (ace of hearts, king of hearts).
78 combinations of (x,Y) of two different suits. That is (ace of spades, king of hearts) is considered equivalent to (ace of clubs, king of diamonds).
13+78+78=169 different two card hands.
Reconciling different hand combinations:
13 pairs times 6 combinations= 78 pair combinations.
78 suited combinations times 4 (suits)= 312 suited combinations.
78 unsuited combinations times 12 =936 unsuited combinations.
78+312+936= 1326 hand combinations.

1326
According to Wikipedia,  using the formula (52 * 51) / 2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker_probability_%28Texas_hold_%27em%29


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How to recognize the 2nd edition of Railways Of The World?
The 2nd edition includes cards for the Mexico map, which as far as I understand are rather indispensable for the 2 and 3 player variant of the game. My question is: is it possible to differ between the first and second edition on the box's outsite?

Besides for the Mexico variation, the reprint have slightly grayer art and a photo of the game in use on its backside..
Here is the two games for comparison :

Aparently, someone has already asked on BoardGameGeek. As I expected, it is very hard to see.


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Can you choose not to assign damage to a second blocker?
In a game of Magic, I attack with a 5/5, indestructible, trample. My opponent blocks with a 2/3 and a 2/2.
He hopes the 2/2 will die because of an effect when that creature dies.
Can I choose to just sink my five damage into the first creature and not touch the second

Looking at the answers I feel like a Magic Stack Exchange is more of a law website than a fantasy one.

@user1717828 That's what you get when you have one of the most complex games ever with the most comprehensive rules around :)

@user1717828 As a Magic player myself, Magic is for D&D players who can't get a group because they fight over the rules too much. :-)

Also, if you don't want to bother with all that assign damage crap, jut play Butcher Orggs (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=39658), this way you choose to deal damage however you want ;)

You can always assign more than lethal damage to a creature. In your example, you can assign five damage to the 2/3 and not touch the 2/2.

510.1c A blocked creature assigns combat damage to the creatures it’s blocking. If it isn’t currently blocking any creatures (if, for example, they were destroyed or removed from combat), it assigns no combat damage. If it’s blocking exactly one creature, it assigns all its combat damage to that creature. If it’s blocking two or more creatures, it assigns its combat damage to those creatures according to the damage assignment order announced for it. This may allow the blocking creature to divide its combat damage. However, it can’t assign combat damage to a creature that it’s blocking unless, when combat damage assignments are complete, each creature that precedes that blocked creature is assigned lethal damage. When checking for assigned lethal damage, take into account damage already marked on the creature and damage from other creatures that’s being assigned during the same combat damage step, but not any abilities or effects that might change the amount of damage that’s actually dealt. An amount of damage that’s greater than a creature’s lethal damage may be assigned to it.

The Judge's Corner has a great video that covers the specific scenario in your question and more.

Though from what I can see, 510.1c and 510.1d are word for word identical except "blocked" vs "blocking".

Yes, per 510.1c, quoted below in its entirety with emphasis added.

510.1c
A blocked creature assigns its combat damage to the creatures blocking it. If no creatures are currently blocking it (if, for
  example, they were destroyed or removed from combat), it assigns no
  combat damage. If exactly one creature is blocking it, it assigns all
  its combat damage to that creature. If two or more creatures are
  blocking it, it assigns its combat damage to those creatures according
  to the damage assignment order announced for it. This may allow the
  blocked creature to divide its combat damage. However, it can’t assign
  combat damage to a creature that’s blocking it unless, when combat
  damage assignments are complete, each creature that precedes that
  blocking creature in its order is assigned lethal damage. When
  checking for assigned lethal damage, take into account damage already
  marked on the creature and damage from other creatures that’s being
  assigned during the same combat damage step, but not any abilities or
  effects that might change the amount of damage that’s actually dealt.
  An amount of damage that’s greater than a creature’s lethal damage may
  be assigned to it.

You announce the damage assignment order for the blocking creatures, putting the 2/3 first and the 2/2 second. Assign 5 damage to the 2/3, leaving 0 damage to be assigned to the 2/2.
Since your 5/5 has trample, briefly look at 702.19.b. Since lethal damage hasn't been assigned to each creature that blocked it, you can't assign damage to their control.

Yes. You can assign as much damage as you want to a single blocker. The only restriction is that you cannot assign damage to a second blocker until you have assigned lethal damage to the first.

510.1. First, the active player announces how each attacking creature assigns its combat damage, then the defending player announces how each blocking creature assigns its combat damage. This turn-based action doesn’t use the stack. A player assigns a creature’s combat damage according to the following rules:

510.1a Each attacking creature and each blocking creature assigns combat damage equal to its power. Creatures that would assign 0 or less damage this way don’t assign combat damage at all.
510.1b An unblocked creature assigns its combat damage to the player or planeswalker it’s attacking. If it isn’t currently attacking anything (if, for example, it was attacking a planeswalker that has left the battlefield), it assigns no combat damage.
510.1c A blocked creature assigns its combat damage to the creatures blocking it. If no creatures are currently blocking it (if, for example, they were destroyed or removed from combat), it assigns no combat damage. If exactly one creature is blocking it, it assigns all its combat damage to that creature. If two or more creatures are blocking it, it assigns its combat damage to those creatures according to the damage assignment order announced for it. This may allow the blocked creature to divide its combat damage. However, it can’t assign combat damage to a creature that’s blocking it unless, when combat damage assignments are complete, each creature that precedes that blocking creature in its order is assigned lethal damage. When checking for assigned lethal damage, take into account damage already marked on the creature and damage from other creatures that’s being assigned during the same combat damage step, but not any abilities or effects that might change the amount of damage that’s actually dealt. An amount of damage that’s greater than a creature’s lethal damage may be assigned to it.