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In Elder Sign how does removing a monster via a card effect work?
I am trying to figure out how to resolve "Flute of the Outer Gods" and "Bind Monster".
The Flute removes a monster after rolling. The Bind Monster does it at any time.
Can either item/spell be used mid-adventure?  When the monster is removed, does it reveal the task underneath that now must be completed? Is this different for the two cards?
When using the flute, does defeating the monster count as a success and allow a re-roll without assigning any dice nor losing a die (normal success)? Can you still complete a task on this die roll?

Coincidentally ti me asking, Elder Sign Omens just came out, and i was able to find out how some of these rules function in the digital version of the game.
As a disclaimer Omen rules are not identical in some ways to the paper board game. This particularly applies to when spell cards are used.

Can either item/spell be used mid-adventure?

Yes they can be used at any roll

When the monster is removed, does it reveal the task underneath that
  now must be completed?

The task below a defeated monster does not have to be completed

When using the flute, does defeating the monster count as a success
  and allow a re-roll without assigning any dice nor losing a die
  (normal success)?

No the monster is removed outside of die rolling.  You must still place dice on one of the tasks, or resolve a failure.


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Step 6 in Elfenland
In Elfenland, it states that on step 6, all the transport counters that were placed on the map are to be removed and shuffled with the remaining face down counters.
Should I understand from this, that the map will never be completely filled with counters?
If that is indeed correct, then if 4 players are in separate regions and have no way of interacting directly and no interest, can you only use your few counters to move around your position?

As far as I understand it, the Transportation Counters are removed at the end of the turn, but all players play out the Transportation Counters before the movement phase starts.  In the movement phase, you can use the counters that other players have played onto routes.  If the players start the turn isolated from each other, it seems likely that a successful tactic would be to move towards and make good use of the Transportation Counters laid by another player!

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text:
Simple games that involve psychological factors?
I need to find a simple game in which several people need to interact with each other. The game should be simple for an analysis (it should be simple to describe what happens in the game, what players did). Because of this last reason, video games are not appropriate for my purposes. I am thinking of a simple, schematic, strategic game where people can make a limited set of simple moves.
Moreover, the moves of the game should not be conditioned only by a pure logic (like in chess or go). The behavior in the game should depend on psychological factors, on relations between people. In more detail, I think it should be a cooperation game where people make their decisions based on mutual trust. It would be nice if players can express punishment and forgiveness in the game.
Does anybody knows a game that is close to what I have described above?
ADDED
As requested, I would like to provide more details. I do want to use a game for experimental purposes. To elaborate, my hypothesis is that people play differently depending on who their partner is in the game. Or, in other words, a player's strategies depend on their interpersonal relations. It is a very general statement. At the moment I do not know what kind of interpersonal relations can exist. In the simplest case we can speak about "friends" and "strangers" (people who know or do not know each other). Another aspect of interpersonal relations I can think of is trust. People can play differently depending on the level of trust between them.
I am looking for a game that captures several aspects of interpersonal relations. The repeated Prisoner Dilemma game is close to what I need. But I am afraid that it is too trivial (people will just cooperate).

Have you considered multiple-round Prisoner's Dilemma? It's a game theory classic, and when played with people, has distinct psychological elements. Trusting one another leads to the maximum outcome for the group as a whole.

It sounds like you may want to use the game for some sort of psychology case study or experiment. If that's true, perhaps if you gave us more insight into your hypothesis and intended experimental methodology we could help you design/tailor something. I admit my first thought was also a more complex Prisoner's Dilemma.

@ire_and_curses: based on the clarification above and some thoughts I had on simple modifications, I'm going to try and write up a PD-based answer. I feel bad though since it was originally your idea. Feel free to edit like crazy or make community wiki or whatever.

@Adam Wuerl - No need to feel bad at all. If you write up an answer, and I can't be bothered, you clearly deserve the rep! :)

I cannot think of a better game to match what you describe than Diplomacy. It requires seven players, and it is lengthy. You can speed it up by having all the negotiation happen at the table in front of everyone, but that changes the nature of the game. However, there are plenty of places on the internet where you can play "by email" for free (for example, The Diplomatic Pouch) -- there, you can enter games all by yourself, but the time taken to play a game typically spreads out over days, weeks, or months (because you spend a few days emailing negotiation letters, before each time you "submit orders" for the next turn's actions).
Diplomacy's rules do include strategy, and the rules are quite simple. The game has been around for fifty years, so there are lots of online resources describing various strategies and tips and so forth.
Note that BoardGameGeek has a Negotiation style category for boardgames, and there are lots of other games listed in it; many would be suitable for fewer players and less playing time, but Diplomacy is pretty much the prototypical experience for what you describe in my opinion.

Diplomacy is an excellent answer I think.  There are only 4 moves to be made for a small set of units: but strategy and negotiation play a huge role.  For research you may want to use a variant map from here: http://www.diplom.org/Online/variants1.html  Look for symmetrical maps.  It depends on what you want to study.  In standard diplomacy, some nations are disadvantaged and must rely on better negotiations to win.  A symmetric map will put all players on even footing, meaning that victory relies entirely on negotiation and strategy.

Best of all, Diplomacy has no dice, so luck is almost completely removed from general play.

Diplomacy is a game where you can only win by trusting people at the right times... and betraying their trust at the right times, too.  I know for a fact it has ended engagements, and possibly marriages too!

Given the recent clarification that this is for a controlled experiment, I think Diplomacy is too long of a game. Multiple trials would be necessary to achieve statistically significant results. I'd say you could data mine an online database of Diplomacy games, but you wouldn't have any meta data on the relationships between the players, thus no experiment.

@Adam, generally I agree with you; however, I have a counter point. The play-by-email systems make it perfectly feasible to set up a game where (a) all players' real identities are known to each other, and (b) all players' real identities are not known. In both cases, the game itself is perfectly playable. Setting visibility options, and options for the scope of press, are easily done with Judge-moderated games, and do (in my experience) change the tone of the game (in interesting ways).

@Adam, also Judge-moderated games would give you a way to keep track of all the press sent between players during a game, as well as complete records of the game. And, of course, the moderator would always know who everyone was and could see all of the press (I believe). Yes, the games would be lengthy, but I think the Judge software would be an excellent tool, thus, for a more controlled study. (Plus players could be physically remote from one another.)

Mafia
is a party game I've played which I've discovered was actually designed by a Russian psychologist.
It's also commonly known as Werewolf, Assassin or Witch Hunt.
One person is a moderator. Everyone else is dealt a card that gives them their secret role as a player.
Roles:

Townspeople (The innocents)
Mafia (Who win by killing off the
innocents)
Sheriff (An innocent who
can detect mafia members)
Nurse (An innocent who can protect other
innocents from attack)

There are two phases of the game, night and day. During the night the moderator tells everyone to close their eyes (the villagers are asleep.) There is then some general tapping by everyone involved to mask movement. Then the moderator tells the Mafia to wake up and acknowlege each other. Wordlessly, they must choose someone to "assassinate" (i.e. remove from the game.) They silently gesture until they show unanimity.
Next the Sheriff wakes up. He is asked to point out someone as a suspect. If the suspect is indeed Mafia, the moderator nods.
The Sheriff is told to go back to sleep, then the Nurse wakes up. She is told to point out someone to protect.
Then the day phase begins. Everyone is told to "wake up", open their eyes, and the moderator reveals who was assassinated (unless that person was protected by the Nurse.) For the enjoyment of all, this is embellished with narrative detail, etc.
Then the players deliberate over who should be nominated for execution. Once the deliberation is over the moderator asks for a vote and whoever gets the most votes is "lynched" and removed from play. In some variants of the game (the way we played we did this) that player's card is flipped over so everyone knows the accused's true role.
The game ends either when the last Mafia member is killed (Innocent victory) or the Mafia members outnumber or equal the Innocents during the day (Mafia victory).
When I played it with several families, I found especially fascinating the interaction between spouses, and between spouses and their children.
It doesn't take that long to play, and I think it might be close to what you're looking for. The Wikipedia article I linked in the heading has many different variations including additional roles that you can tweak to investigate what you want. One variant we played was a Spy role, an innocent who was able to peek at any one person's role card each night.

I have no idea if this would make for a good experiment, but it simply sounds so awesome I need to up-vote immediately.

Sounds like an awesome game. Doesn't get more psychological than this.

Modified Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma
I think an ideal co-operative game for your experiment is the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma:

There is substantial literature in the field of experimental economics on this game, and ample theoretical and experimental bases for determining optimal play strategies. These experiments can form a baseline control group (as they are typically played with strangers) for you to compare your results to.
You mentioned that you think the game is too simple and that people will simply co-operate. However, the experimental results show that for strangers this is not true. Tit-for-tat is one of the best strategies, yet even this only works if both players use it and if the game has indeterminate length. So I think it would be significant if the experimental results demonstrated alternative optimal playing strategies given non-stranger relationships.
The game is simple to play and players can quickly gain an intuitive feel for how they're doing. Compare this to a game like Diplomacy, where teaching your subjects to play with any skill is going to consume enormous amounts of time (unless you drew from a pool of experienced gamers, which would probably introduce unacceptable bias into the results anyway).

I would be fascinated to see this kind of experiment with various types of uni-lateral and bi-lateral relationships:

strangers (baseline)
uni-lateral stranger: player A knows and trusts player B, but B thinks that A is a stranger
false pretenses: player A plays many games with a fake player B who always co-operates, but then B is switched out part-way through the game for someone more nefarious
perfect collusion: players who know each other very well or who are required to evenly split their winnings
perfect collusion with mutation: same as above, but sometimes, randomly, the computer switches their choice
sympathy: player A is given back story on B that B is a nun or an orphan or something else sympathetic and told that B gets to keep their winnings but A will not (hypothesis that A might as well co-operate because they have nothing to lose but has the ability to help B in the "real world")

If this game is too transparent, you may be able to find a way to disguise it so the coop/defect decision is layered away. A simple stock trading game may work well enough; I would be surprised if no one has done this yet but I cannot think of an example.

The easiest way to think about a unilateral stranger relationship is if the game were not played face-to-face (i.e. via a computer). One player could be told (or perhaps shown) that they were playing against someone they trusted--a friend, their spouse, etc. The other player could be told they were playing against a stranger.

In the same vein as the Mafia and Werewolf suggestions, I'd suggest The Resistance. It doesn't have the player elimination that Werewolf or Mafia has, which means you have more ongoing relationships throughout the game to study.
In The Resistance, the players are a resistance cell fighting against the empire. Some number of the players (1-3, depending on the total number of players) are spies trying to sabotage the resistance in their fight. There are 5 possible missions in the game. Either side needs to win 3 of them to win. For each mission, the leader (a role that rotates frequently during the game) first selects his proposed team (which is a subset of the group) to go on the mission. The entire group debates the proposal and then after the debate there's a vote. If the majority of people approve the mission, then the mission is a go. If the proposal fails, the leader role passes to the person on the left who then makes a proposal. The cycle repeats until either a mission passes or 5 proposals in a row fail (at which point the spies automatically win).
When a mission is a go, each of the people on the mission are given success and failure cards. They secretly pick one (each person who is a loyal resistance member always votes for mission success, while spies can vote for success or failure) and the chosen cards are shuffled together. Most missions fail if there is a single failure card played, though one requires 2 fails. With each mission, the entire group analyzes the information they have (who voted for or against a proposal, whether a mission passed or failed, who was on a given mission) and try to determine who the spies are so they can make proposals guaranteed to pass.
There are a lot of elements of trusts and interpreting behaviors in this game, and the playing time clocks in around 20-30 minutes per game, so I think it might be an ideal choice for a psychological experiment like you describe.

Agreed. If a Mafia-style game is what you want, The Resistance serves your purposes much better than Mafia itself. The wikipedia article gives a good description, but if you want a detailed run down, this video is good, if a bit slow-paced.

I played The Resistance for the first time last night, and really enjoyed it.  One question - you say above that the leader role passes if a proposal fails.  The group I was playing with had the leader role pass automatically each time, regardless of whether their proposal succeeded.  Is that the correct rule?

It's been a while since I played the Resistance, but as I recollect, yes that is the rule. At the start of each mission, the leader rotates normally. If a proposal fails, the leader rotates immediately for the current mission.

Shadows Over Camelot or Battlestar Galactica both have interesting player interactions similar to Mafia/Werewolf. The group is working together as a team with a potential for one player to secretly be working against the group. I wouldn't classify either game as simple, however.

Cosmic Encounter (BGG link) is a simple game that offers plenty of opportunities for players to ally and attack each other. This BGG review offers a quick description of the game. The relevant mechanic:

Encounter cards can either Attack or Negotiate. Attack cards have numeric values that players add up to count their strength. Attack is very simple with the player with the higher score winning the battle. Defender wins ties. Negotiate auto loses but here's the kicker, the one who Negotiates gets to draw cards equal to the number of ships he had involved in the Encounter, from the winner. If both sides Negotiate, they have one minute to deal (meaning trade cards or colonies), or they both lose 3 ships.

to add to that, the fact that you play the game differently depending on what power you initially draw does provide a way of determining how people play against each other - ie the game decides what traits a player has that affects how the others react to you.

The Castle of the Devil is a great game where you use support, attack, and trade to try and reveal who's on your side by exchanging information.

Bang! is a relatively simple, fast-playing card game with hidden, conflicting roles.

The easiest game I know that matches your needs is Ghosts!. It's a 2 players game. Each one has 8 ghosts, 4 are good, 4 are bad. The goal is either to eat the opponents 4 good ghosts or to let him eat your own 4 bad ghosts.
A strategy would be to send bad ghosts to the opposite side of the board, expecting the other player to eat them. But the opponent knowing that, you could try and tempt him with good ghosts, making him think that they are bad. But him knowing that, you could...
For your information, such a mechanism is called "Second guessing".

Strange no one has proposed Munchkin. It's some sort of D&D and MtG hybrid, but unlike former it has strict rules and is card-based (much easier to analyze in-game situation) and unlike latter players' interaction with each other (trading, forming temporary alliances, doing bad stuff to other players etc.) play a big role in it. The rules, however, could not be called very simple.
Other good game: Life boat. Pretty simple, has strict rules and is actually about players' interactions. It also sort-of enforces in-game friends and enemies (each person randomly receive two cards specifying his "friend" and his "enemy". These cards can't be shown to other players, and if "friend" is alive (and "enemy" is dead) when game ends, one get additional points).
And also vote up for Mafia (I don't have enough rep. to actually vote up), it seams to suit your purposes excellently.

I don't really understand how anyone could call the rules of Munchkin "strict" compared to either D&D or MtG, but apart from that I like your answer!

Well, by 'strict' I meant that hmm... the in-game situation is easier formalized. But I've played D&D only twice, so I might just not grasped the concept, or it was just the way we've played. And I wasn't saying Munchkin's rules are stricter than MtG's.

I see what you mean - I think D&D has very strict rules, but it's also definitely more open-ended than Munchkin.

I do not believe that any of the games given so far will be quite what you're looking for.  You've stated two things are important, one that strategy will depend on pre-existing trust and that there's some notion of 'partnership'.  Here's a quick game off the top of my head which might address this:
You need 5 players, seated at a table in a pentagon shape.  The two across from you are 'enemies' and the two to either side are 'friends'.  Each player is given 3 cards or tokens (identical).  The only requirement of the tokens is that they are easy to conceal, and can be played in one of two ways as you will see.   A random player is chosen to go first.
No private or public discussion is allowed (this ensure that decisions are made from pre-existing biases about the people, per your experiment's needs); the starting player chooses a person to attack.  This may be a friend or an enemy.  Then all the other players choose as many token as they'd like played either in support of the attack or the defense, and kept concealed, but unchangeable.  You MAY choose support an attack on your friend, or support the defense of your enemy.
Once selections are made, all players reveal and the attack is resolved.  Each support of a friend is worth twice as many points, likewise each attack on an enemy is worth twice as many points.
The attacker himself cannot play any tokens.  Likewise the defender cannot play any tokens (the success or failure is based only on the support of others).
whichever had more points win, the other is eliminated from the game (but retains his position on the table for friend-enemy purposes).  A tie goes to the attacker.
Play continues with the next player making an attack, so one person is eliminated each time.  Obviously, at some point two 'friends' must attack each other.  The winner is the last person remaining (NOTE: on the last round, no token may be played, and the attacker immediately wins).
Optionally, you can have eliminated players gift any remaining tokens to others players of their choice.  However, this will have drastic consequences on your results and vastly complicate their analysis.
In addition, if you can afford it, I suggest letting players play on a computer simulator first only a few times to get the idea of the game.   This eliminates the learning factor from affecting your experiment.  The computer players may act randomly, and only feedback like (you friend supports you!  Or your friend betrays you!) is necessary.

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Water damage on cardboard pieces
Someone just spilled water on my Carcassonne tiles. The illustrations are coming apart from the cardboard (they're wrinkling).
What's the best thing to do? How can I dry them with best results?

Bummer!  Sadly, I don't have any advice.  Good luck!

Obviously I couldn't wait for answers, but if this happens to anyone else, I've posted what I did as an answer below.

Here's what I did, and they don't look bad.

Used a towel to pat dry the tiles.
Used my fingers to press out the wrinkles and squish the expanding cardboard back together.
Laid them down between two towels, put a textbook on top, and pressed down to get some more water out.
Pressed out the wrinkles and squish cardboard together again.
Laid them down between two paper towels (paper towels are thinner and I wanted to make sure they stayed flat) and laid several textbooks on top.
After several hours, squished with fingers again.
Dry paper towels and textbooks again.
The next day, I pulled them out and laid them on a dry towel.

At this point they're holding together really well and are only marginally thicker than the undamaged pieces.

The damaged piece on the left is only a bit thicker than the dry one on the right.

Was there anything you did to prevent damaging the illustrations when pressing out the wrinkles?

Yep! Classic blotting technique. 8) The trick is, you must act while the counters are still wet, and the quicker the better. Once they're already deforming and starting to dry, it's sadly not doable. 8(

@Rob once or twice the illustrations stuck to my fingers, but they were coming off as a whole sheet so I just had to be careful not to tear or crease them. At most a centimetre from the edge came loose.

Customer Service at Rio Grande Games will replace pieces for a fee upon request.
I ended up with a set second hand that was missing a tile, and they sent it to me. I'm not sure how cost effective it would be if a lot of tiles are damaged though, compared to getting a new set.

Manners dictate the clumsy culprit should offer to buy you a new set. Beyond that, you can laminate the tiles.
That said, you have to see this from a cost-to-benefit perspective. Unless this particular set is dear to you, I would buy another one. Especially since laminating the damaged tiles also means laminating all of them; you don't want to make damaged tiles distinct from their intact brethren.
Short of that, you can try a one-sided pseudo-lamination by sticking plastic sheets only on one side.

The sad answer is that the only real shot you have at saving wet die-cut cardboard counters is when they're still wet, as far as I know. If you immediately put them on a tray, or in a plastic box (if in layers, separate the layers with wax paper), and put them in a very cold freezer and leave them there for a long time (i.e. weeks or months), then the water freezing will tend not to mis-shape the cardboard, and gradual sublimation will happen very slowly over time and your counters should dry out. Taking them out of the freezer later will require care as condensation will occur on the counter surfaces: best to bring them into air that's as dry as possible and as cool as possible, and have lots of blotting material ready until the counters' temperature gets warm enough.
If all you're concerned about is functional tiles that don't have separating layers, you can try re-gluing with a decoupage solution (good decoupage glue will dry clear), but I have never tried that and I suspect such a project would require great patience and care (and again, I suspect would meet with more success if done while the tiles were still wet/damp). In terms of this particular game where it's important to have relatively non-distinguishable tiles, I suspect this solution isn't going to produce happy results.
In the long run, you may find that the easiest, least expensive (in terms of materials and time) solution is to simply buy another copy of the game (and ask the water-spiller to help defray the cost, if you feel comfortable doing that).

For sublimation technique: you probably need something to squeeze them flat because they wrinkle very quickly (unless you have a flash freezer : )

I used an iron set to Cotten.  Placed on a granite counter. Pressed back, then front.  I pressed hard and straight down leaving the iron in contact for a good five seconds.  Could do three to four at a time. Wiped moisture off counter with paper towel as I went along.   Took a few cycles on the wettest tiles.  Left flat on counter over night.  The iron did not burn the paper and the paper did not stick to the iron.  Turned out great.

I had a go at the straight in the freezer trick and it worked a treat. 2 weeks of being frozen, they like they had just come or of the box. I then put paper towel under and on top of them, before setting a mountain of cookbooks on top. They did perfectly (Smallworld lives again!)

I actually had the exact same issue - someone spilled water on my carcassonne tiles, and I blotted/placed it in between paper towels under a textbook.
When they dried, I put a bit of white glue where the cardboard was peeling. When the glue dried, I ran the pieces through a laminator without the plastic a few times - they came out good as new!

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What are common replacement components?
As my board game collection grows and wears down, I find myself curious about efficiencies that can be made when hauling games around from place to place. The first time I realized that you could simply improve on the shipped components was replacing all paper money with poker chips.
What are some other good ways to improve upon some of the lesser quality game components included in board games?
Specific side-questions:

What components can be completely replaced/improved?
What are some ways to reduce the storage/carrying impact of games?
Is it wise to start condensing games?

As the question notes, Poker Chips in place of money is quite viable. I don't remove the money, just leave it bagged in the box.
Gaming stones or poker chips can be used to track victory points as well.
On some sports games, counters or standups are replaced with meeples or minis readily. I've found that meeples fit beautifully on the Crash Tackle board, for example.
Any game using a pawn or meeple can usually be replaced with nice minis.
Any game using cardboard stand-ups is readily able to use minis in place of the stand-ups.
Condensing Components
The issue of condensing depends a lot on how you play.
Putting all one's Ticket To Ride games in one box simply means not being able to sell them off separately; the component overlap is quite high.
Putting all one's 18xx games in one box, however, may result in a jumbled mess.
Putting all one's Dominion cards in one box is rapidly approaching impossible, but since the core boxes are equipped with decent organizer trays... it really isn't a superior approach, aside from issues of volume.
Many card-only games can be readily condensed down to just a zipper-bagged set of cards and the rules.
The typical condensation level apparently is a game and its own expansions.
My Carcassonne box can't hold anything more, but has in it: Carc., River I & II, Inns & Cathedrals, Traders and Builders, Tower, Count, Princess & Dragon, King, and one other small one. The Tower literally is filled with all the tiles.


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How do I tell potential game designers their ideas are bad?
Many groups of gamers will eventually attract potential game designers. I love testing games or playing with mechanics and enjoy play testing or theory crafting. But a good boardgamer does not a designer make and I find that most ideas are terrible or have already been done a few times.
This also encompasses most of the fan variants and expansions for games. People, generally speaking, have no idea how to make a game. Unfortunately, I have problems being too direct or speaking in wild absolutes. This tends to make these potential designers (who are often friends I would like to keep) offended or defensive.
This question boils down into two parts:

How can I explain my objections or concerns clearly without being too direct or aggressive?
What are these potential designers actually expecting from me? Am I putting myself on too high a pedestal in thinking they want me to respond as I have been?

My tips:

Understand the expectations.  Is your friend asking you to playtest, debug, and improve the game with critical feedback?  Or does he think it's great already, and just wants to play it with you? Ask him what he wants from you before playing, even!
State your criticisms as opinions where possible.  Instead of "this is a bad mechanic" try to go for "I don't personally like this mechanic because of X".  Even if you think that EVERY right-thinking gamer will share your opinion of the mechanic it's ultimately your view of the situation, and stating it that way instead of as an absolute is a less confrontational path.
Instead of just criticizing elements you don't like, dig down into them. Ask questions and try to find out why your buddy used that element in the first place.  What was the goal of that element of the design?  What "feel" is it supposed to evoke?  Heck, sometimes this kind of digging will reveal to them that they don't HAVE an answer for these questions, making the element's weakness clear.

Upon re-reading I see that my tips are largely things you already acknowledge as the problems (knowing the expectations, avoiding wild absolutes) but perhaps this will help to some degree regardless.

As for the howto.  Consider the volume of materials on the web about how to give constructive criticism.  For example:  http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-constructive-criticism.htm

As a game designer, I know I want the truth from people I show the game to.
I also know that most people just don't give critical feedback. By "critical," I mean a skilled judgment or analysis, as in "critical thinking." I've been involved in enough creative endeavors to know that most think only as far as, "I liked that," or, "That sucked." I've shown short films to an audience, watched them laugh uproariously, and then say, "It was OK," when asked if they liked it. So I've learned to take feedback for what it is, and not to hang too much of my own self-worth on it. I don't know if your game designers have grown the requisite thick skin or not.
But this combination of factors makes me able to give you advice about giving feedback - good or bad. I know it seems easier to say, "That was fun!" but both kinds of feedback should follow the same rules.
When someone asks you to test a game, if you don't want to put the effort in to provide decent feedback, just politely decline.
If you decide to accept, you now have a responsibility to think about the game and what you like and don't like about it. Instead of just a blanket, "This rocks!" or, "That was awful," you owe the designer the courtesy of considering the question, "Why?" And then you can give the designer the answer to that question.
For instance, I have an RPG in playtest right now, and something like, "I felt like it was too hard to succeed - even things my character was good at seemed out of reach," is good feedback. It gives me something to look at, or even questions to ask the playtester. And I would rather have critical negative feedback than thoughtless positive feedback.

Include a list of things you do and don't like about the design, rather than just the bad.
Put it in writing; edit it, and reread it after writing it but before delivering it.
Be prepared to explain in more detail, but don't be over-detailed in your initial list.
Don't be confrontational; it just makes life harder.

I would tell people WHY something is bad without telling them that it's bad. E.g.:
Mechanic X takes up a lot of time.
Mechanic Y causes people to focus on the mechanic, and lose focus on the game.
Then let the designers decide for themselves whether "takes up a lot of time" or "causes a loss of focus" is good or bad.


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How long does one get to keep the third bean field in bohnanza?
Does the third field stay forever once you have 3 coins to buy it? If not when does it disappear? The rules aren't terribly clear (or maybe I should say "are terribly clear").

Well, it doesn't stay forever - it disappears at the end of the game!  It would be a terrible rip-off if disappeared earlier (e.g. when you harvested the beans in it), it's very debatable if it's worth buying as things stand!

You keep the third bean field for the duration of the game.  It would be harsh if it was limited as it does cost you 3 gold coins (victory points).
Here is a discussion about when to buy or not buy that third field.  Due to the cost, it is not always the right thing to do to purchase the field.


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Does Play X go into effect immediately?
In Fluxx, the Draw X cards state that the current player may draw more cards so as to have drawn that number of cards on their turn.  Does the same thing apply to Play X?  For example, if the current Play rule is for 1 card, and the player plays a Play 2 rule, does that very play get a second play on that turn?

Yes.
This is answered in the online Fluxx FAQ:

Q: Suppose the rule is Play 2 and for my second play I change the rules to Play 3. Do I play one more card or am I done because I played 2?
A: All rules take effect immediately, so you would need to play 1 more card because the rules at that point had become Play 3.

Worth clarifying, if clarification is needed, that the reverse is also true: If the current rule is Play 3 and your second play is Play 1 you stop your turn immediately.


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Why is real-money-betting necessary for poker to be fun?
Obviously, all games may be played with an ante, but it is often not mandatory for the game itself to be fun.
I've long wondered what makes poker so different from everything else: poker, when played without real money, instantly becomes boring and random. And what's even more curious is that even a very small amount of money in play (say, 1€ per player on an 8-player table) is sufficient to turn the game into a very interesting and very disputed battle.
Do there exist out there some other games that are meaningless when not played for money? I'm told that old timers always play backgammon with an ante, but I've played backgammon many times without, and found the game pretty interesting by itself.
So what's the big deal with poker?

I realize that my question is very related to that one: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/2076/rewards-and-punishments-for-card-games However, I'm more curious about what within the game rules is so different between poker and the-rest-of-the-world (and I'm completely OK with gambling at poker, as long as I gamble small amounts :-)

I've really enjoyed playing poker without real money. I don't feel at all that betting real money is "necessary" for poker to be fun. If anything, I think it can add a bit of a thrill, since now there is an actual risk involved. But that's an adrenaline thrill, not any more actual fun.

Sure, but still, from the comments of the question linked in my previous comments, it seems that some games (poker obviously, but to my surprise, "Uno" as well) kinda lose (some of) their interest when played with no "risk" at stake.

From what I've observed serious Backgammon requires gambling to be an interesting game. Without gambling in Backgammon a major element of the game when played between highly skilled players is lost - specifically the doubling cube and the decisions about when to offer it.
Between skilled players backgammon is as much about when to put the other player to the test by extending the doubling cube as it is about the "luck" of the dice rolls. Skilled backgammon players play a rather different game than what more casual players play.

The chips in a poker tournament don't represent real money, do they? They don't seem to be boring and random.

If you are interested in Poker please commit to the new Poker SE Currently on Area 51. @DJClayworth - But watch how betting patterns change as the tourney approaches money bubbles.  It does have a noticable effect even in smaller money tourney's but is dramatic if you watch the WSOP.

@DJClayworth They don't represent money exactly, but they do represent your ability to extract real money from placing high enough in the tournament. As you get toward the very end of an MTT (multi-table tournament) with say 3 or 4 players, very often the players will make a split of the remaining prize pool based on the current stack sizes. At this point (6 or less players left) players tend to be what is known as "ICM aware" recognizing that a higher chip stack means a higher payout when you split the prize pool. Research "chip-chop" and "ICM" (Independent Chip Model) for more info.

When you fall behind in a "for fun" game, the best strategy becomes to make high risk yet high reward choices. Essentially, if you are sitting in last place, you've got nothing to lose so you might as well risk it all for a shot at the top.
In real life poker, you are always in a situation where you have something to lose: your money. Every dollar counts, so players will not change their strategy.

thanks for that crystal-clear answer. I think it pretty much sums up everyone else's.

It depends on the form of poker. In a tournament, then the loser might take this approach, regardless of whether they are using real money or not. But in a game where one is entitled to cash out, then a losing player might sensibly get out of the game when they're not doing well enough.

Even in real money tournaments, when you fall behind, the best strategy is to make high risk / high reward bets. They're commonly referred to as "push fold charts" - which basically says when you're low enough on chips, you don't raise - you either go all-in or fold. An example of a push fold chart published by Jonathon Little (who has more than 7 million in lifetime poker tournament winnings) is here

This answer explains only why some finite resource people care about must be used, and not why that resource must be money. Of course, people do gamble with other resources (such as cars), but the question remains, how much must people care about a resource before it is usable for poker betting?

Poker is a game that really isn't very complex.  Once you have a basic grasp of some of the probabilities, you can sit down and start winning hands even against good players.  There aren't very many ways to improve your odds of winning a given hand, important though it is to know what they are.  For boardgaming types like me, who like a complicated tangle of rules and factors in which it's possible to maximize one's chances, poker in and of itself does not seem to be a particularly interesting game.
However, the very basic-ness of poker is actually what makes it a great game.  Once you've established that the major appeal of the game is not in its rules, it's pretty easy to see what poker becomes about: you're playing the other players, not the cards.  Poker is all about the psychology of reading, bluffing and intimidating the other people at the table, free of the need to master a really complex set of rules.
Now I (and, I see, others) would say that this sort of thing can be fun without the introduction of real money to the equation.  But I can also see how real money does add something.  If there's nothing substantial at stake, then the players are basically jollying along and not taking the game very seriously.  If they lose concentration, go all in, and lose all their chips, so what?
I'd therefore suggest that real money poker is "more fun" insofar as, if you're pitting yourself against other players in a battle of deadly psychological warfare and stamina, you want them to be as focussed on the game as they possibly can be.  A real money stake sharpens the experience for all involved.  Makes the outcome actually matter.
If, as I've posited, there's not much more to poker than the psychological duel element, it will be highly unsatisfactory to play against people who are barely paying attention!  Whatever else you want to say about money, it sure gets people's attention...

The money raises the stakes beyond simply winning or losing a meaningless game.  This is what makes the game.  +1

Yeah, that's the point. Without money, you walk away from the game exactly as you were before sitting. With money involved (even if very little; we usually play 5€) you know what you do will matter (even if very little).

Regarding other people are not paying attention, it also helps in that you don't really mind stopping someone flat when you are getting paid to do it.

There is an old saying that if you want to get good at a game, play it for an amount of money that will "hurt."

When real money is on the table, the Kelly criterion and implied odds actually matter. I've found that you only start getting fiscally-correct betting when the returns cease to be trivial in terms of time (accrued fake chips) and money (accrued wealth). -- But then, I find Poker theory fascinating, so I've actively sought out answers to this question myself.

Knowing basic probabilities can help you win certain situations against good players, but mostly not. I would argue that the rules of poker are simple, but the incomplete information makes the game very very complex. The amount of adapting to how other people play is amazing. Speaking of no limit and pot limit games. Limit holdem will probably be pretty much solved within few years.

This is a really, really incorrect answer. Poker strategy is extraordinarily complex and it is primarily a game of mathematics. Statements like "you're playing the other players, not the cards" are only true in movies. It is completely false for real life.

Aside from what others have said, certain variations of poker also take on very different aspects depending on the wagering structure and if there are stakes to back it.
A clear example would be Texas Hold 'Em, as played in one of three variations: Limit Ring Games, No-Limit Ring Games, and No-Limit Single Table Tournament.
A ring game is a "sit down, buy in for some chips, and play" kind of game.  Each chip has a real, 1-to-1 correlation to a value of money.  In a tournament game, sometimes called a Sit-and-Go, players all pay a set wager (say $10 flat) and get a set number of chips (say $10,000 worth of chips).  Players compete until only one is left holding all the chips, and then the last few out (usually the top 3 players) get paid a percentage of the total stake.  In a tournament, the required bet (the blinds) will increase constantly to add pressure to the game.
The way that each game is played, and the psychology of the players, varied quite a bit from each game type. In a Limit Ring game, top players will tend to be very technical in play.  Since there is a limit to how much a bet can be, the correct play (check, call, fold, bet, raise) can be evaluated purely on a risk-vs-reward basis.
In a No Limit ring game, any bet amount is allowed at any time, but this actually makes most players very cautious.  Since each chip is equivalent to real money, most feel an attachment to it and are afraid to bet too much, lest they risk a lot of money.  Good players can use that restraint to "steal pots" by wagering a large amount and scaring people into folding.  In contrast to the methodical play of Limit games, No Limit games require a bit of savvy in knowing how much to bet. Too much and you over extend yourself or scare off players.  Too little and lots of players call your wager, and you risk that one of them will luck into a better hand than you.
Finally, in contrast to both the Ring game types are tournament games.  A tournament still has the allure and risk of real money, but diluted into a large number of chips.  It can almost feel like play money at times, and the play reflects this.  Weak players will often wager all their chips on a long-shot, basically hoping to win a coin toss and win a big pot.  A typical tournament game goes through stages: an early game where good players play safe while loose players bust out, a mid game that resembles Ring play, and a late game of high-stakes bluffing and luck to try and be the last one at the table.
Sorry, that was a bit long, but what I'm trying to express is this. It's not just the notion of real money being at stake that affects the way a game of poker is played, but also the structure of the game and how much "per chip" value the players have.

Real money (or a real stake of some kind) makes poker more fun because it adds a basis for you to predict and interpret another player's actions.
When no real money is involved, a player's bet will not be based on any real risk and thus will not tend to reflect the strength of their hand.  Their bet is correlated to their hand much more loosely, giving you less information.
Likewise, you are less able to influence the other players with your own betting patterns.  If you make a big raise, there is very little reason for the other players to care - they can call your raise without any real risk, so they will tend to do so more often.  That is, their responses to your actions are ALSO correlated to their hand more loosely.
Ultimately everyone at the table has less information to work with, so everyone's actions are more random and skill matters much less, making the game less fun for most people.
It's not much fun to discover someone stayed in the pot with a ridiculously lousy opening hand (like 2/7 offsuit) just because there was no risk involved.  This kind of thing happens much more with the absence of real money.

As wdypdx22 points out, the stake here doesn't HAVE to be money.  There just has to be something at risk that the player cares about so that they behave in a self-interested way.

Poker requires a "wager".

–noun
  1.
  something of value risked or staked on an uncertain event; bet: to place a wager on a poker hand.

So, for poker to be fun or interesting at all, one must wager something with some sort of value. Usually it's chips or money. Could be anything, but it must be valuable in the context of the game.
Here's an example of a zero money holiday poker game. It's a holdem-tournament where all family members start with 100 chips. Basically, the top two winners get 1 week free from chores; and the bottom two are doing many dishes, shoveling snow, and taking out garbage. Believe me, the 10 and 12 year olds don't go "all-in" with crappy hands.

Poker is a single game played with a cumulative score over a lifetime.  It becomes boring without money because the score=money distinction has been seared into a poker player for years.
Hustling (losing small to win big later) applies strongly enough to a "play money" game, that it's never possible to determine someone's true skill when money is not involved.  This also reduces the enjoyment.

+1 for the interesting point re hustling.  I'm not a big fan of poker generally, but that seems like a really interesting extra tactical layer - pretending to be worse at a game than you are so you can pounce later on - that's possibly missing from other games that I play.

Poker doesn't need money, it just needs a way of keeping score, and money is a convenient way of doing that, although it has other advantages as well.

Poker, like Chess, is a lifestyle game. Most of the people who play it with any frequency rarely play anything else. This distinction is coincident with different mindsets in the majority of players than from players of other games. If you get a table full of "poker players" to play Puerto Rico together, the game will be very uncompetitive and random unless you add a money factor to it. Similarly, get a table full of modern board gamers together and you can have a very intense and challenging game of poker with no money involved.

If your goal is to make money, and you are playing a game for nothing, the optimal strategy is to convince your opponents that they can beat you.  You can accomplish this by playing poorly, winning but publically mis-analyzing why you won, or against better players by playing well but building in a few inconsistancies you think astute opponents will know and attempt to exploit in future games.  This is why the game will be uncompetitive and seemingly "random", in my opinion.

the goal being to make money (which is a form of metagame) is a unique trait to "poker players".

"Most of the people who play it with any frequency rarely play anything else." << That pseudo-fact is false for pretty much every poker player I know.

To add a bit to thesunneversets excellent answer, any individual game or table of Poker is not interesting in and of itself to matter with fake points. If you held a long standing leaderboard with fake points you could easily find a group of people who started taking the game seriously. Turning the fake points into money makes them matter again and succeeding a Poker becomes a long-term strategy over many, many games played.

That's in the 'nature' of poker.
You get 2 cards, and you need to decide whether you play or not. If you don't have anything to lose you'll always say 'I'm in' or 'all in'. You don't need money, you can also play with chips, or just write a table of numbers for each player on a piece of paper, but you need to keep the score/points every player has.
Poker is based on calling, raising and checking, and without these options poker is not poker, so scoring is simply part of the poker game.
As answered already, you can decide if you read psychology or play with probability, or both, but money (or points) is just part of the game, that can't be excluded.

Well, poker is competitive game so no wonder so many people love gambling. It combines luck and skill and, unlike casino games, you compete with other players and can have an advantage. But poker is not the only opportunity, for example, many games are described here: Skill Games for Money Taking part in a tournament risking a small amount of money can be much more interesting. It will make you play your best game.


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What is the difference between 'passageway' and 'regular door' links?
In Munchkin Quest, what is the difference between 'passageways' and 'regular doors'? They both cost 1 movement, and I don't think monsters are affected. So, how are they different?

Are there any monsters that can't open doors?

There are monsters that can't pass through the doors, Dragon for example. And the Bullrog kicks out the doors and make them a passageway instead.


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Best way to improve ourselves when playing against a computer
It's often said by world-class Backgammon players that the best way to improve one's play is to analyse one's games with a computer program such as gnubg, JellyFish or Snowie.
gnubg has a "tutor mode" that evaluates the quality of the player's proposed move, to know before making a move if this one is bad. I assume the same exists for chess programs (hence the tag).
Alternatively, it's also possible to do all the analysis at the end and walk through our moves to look at the errors. My question is whether one of the two methods is better.
A third way I often use is to play normally and ask the computer to analyse the move when I'm unsure of the best answer. I do this just after my thoughts, but without following the computer's advice (to stay motivated).
Do you know of any public statement from top Backgammon or Chess players, or a study regarding the best way to improve oneself by playing against a program, using these or other methods?

What are you really looking for?  The best way to play against the computer?  If playing against the computer will make you better?  Quotes from top players?  For backgammon or chess?

I think the OP is asking for an authoritative source of advice for a systematic approach to playing chess or backgammon against a computer, that most efficiently allows you to learn and improve.

@ire_and_curses, yes, it's that. The best way to use a computer to improve. Winning against the computer is not the goal itself at all.

I have no sources to cite, but I think it depends a lot on your own learning style. You will certainly not learn well if the computer just tells you the best play and you follow it, but if you can carefully think through your move before being told by the computer if it's bad, and if the computer has a better move you can reason out why it's better, immediate feedback is fine. However, if you find yourself getting impatient and cutting back on your thinking time, perhaps you should wait until the end.
I do Go problems on the computer a fair bit. With Go problems, usually the first move is the key, and often is the hardest move to find. Some programs will tell you immediately if the first move you've made is correct, but I much prefer the ones that will let me play out a bad sequence without telling me it's wrong until the end. That way I see exactly why it doesn't work, and it reduces the temptation to just try something that looks promising to see if it's right.

Thanks shujaa. Maybe there isn't a way that is the best for every one. I asked this question to know if researcher in learning (or top player, it's similar) have studied it. Maybe not...
Of course, it's important to think and search before asking the computer.

For chess there are many ways to use both chess playing programs and database programs:

Play over your own games (you should always record your games, even skittles/fun games, to see where you need to improve) in "infinite analysis" mode (where the computer doesn't make moves, it just evaluates the position and finds the best sequence of moves for both sides) to find moves where you (or your opponent) made tactical mistakes.   When the score changes by more than 1 pawn of value that is usually considered a mistake.   More than 2 or 3 pawns of value change is like loosing a bishop/knight, etc.
I find using a computer program (like Fritz) to analyze my games and to go over master games much more efficient than doing so on a board because you can easily try out different variations and go back to the main line without having to physically move the pieces around on the board.
Practice technique (one of my favorite uses of a computer): play out theoretically winning positions against the computer to make sure you can always win them.   (Sometimes programs make very silly moves when they're losing by a lot and there aren't many pieces left on the board, but if you set them up to use "endgame tablebases" then they make moves which put up the most resistance).   Practice the basic checkmates until you can do them on auto-pilot.  Practice pawn endings, etc.   Play out master games where one player resigned to see if you can win the 'winning' side.
Set up positions from books (especially endgame studies work well), and play them out against the computer, to see if you can win won positions, and draw difficult positions.
Use database programs to research the openings you like, to see what kind of games arise from various opening move options.
Not only master games, but amateur games from databases are very instructive to go over, to see if you can spot the mistakes and how you would take advantage of them.  You can find large numbers of amateur games on sites like: http://team4545league.org/

+1, I really like the idea of playing out master games where one player resigned.

You may also want to look at the following two books from Gambit Publications:

How to Use Computers To Improve Your Chess by Christian Kongsted.
The second half is specifically on how to use chess computers to improve our play.
Secrets of Practical Chess by John Nunn
The new edition has an expanded chapter on chess computers.

You can download PDF samples from their respective pages.


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Is there a traditional card game with similar rules to "Lost Cities"?
It's often pointed out that the excellent Reiner Knizia card game, Lost Cities, could be played with a standard deck of cards if there were one extra suit.  Thinking about the simplicity and elegance of the rules made me wonder if there might exist a traditional card game with similar mechanics but just four suits/cities?  (I don't know many traditional card games, so I'm not even sure if there's a broad category that Lost Cities might fall into.)

I don't think I've ever heard of such card game. To me it's pretty clear that Lost Cities were developed and designed using standard card deck, but I don't suspect it's actually based on some truly similar traditional card game. Maybe the basic idea was to design a 2-player game with simple rules, something a little like Solitaire, but competetive, with  piles shared between the players?
I heard Lost Cities being described as 2 player Solitaire with an extra portion of suspense - source. If there was more similar game to Lost Cities, maybe such descriptions would mention it.
I guess this isn't the answer you were looking for, although I can't give you any game title that would have the feel of Lost Cities. This is the interview with Reiner Knizia in which he mentions origins of Lost Cities. You also may want to take a look at this interview and this one.

It started out as a two-player card game. I then tried to develop it into a larger game that would accommodate between two and four players. In the end, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to leave it as I originally had it [as a two player game]. When I start out with a game, it is usually unclear where I will end up with it. If you build up internal obstacles and say "this has to be a card game" or "this has to be a tile-laying game" then you restrict yourself. I think you need to do the game justice -- you need to let it develop. Lost Cities developed into a two-player game: it is clean, it is pure, it is simple, it is challenging, and it is fun.

You might also try checking Patience category on pagat.com


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What are good strategies for deciding which expeditions to start in Lost Cities?
I've been enjoying playing Lost Cities a great deal, but find it very difficult to decide what to do over the first few turns — in particular deciding things like:

How long is it worth waiting to see if an investment card comes up, if you have some good high cards for an expedition?
What are enough points in a city to make it worth starting?  I've been typically waiting until I have about 15 points, and I'm guessing this is too cautious.
Is it worth starting an expedition if you just have three low cards, say?
How do you deal with having a hand of high cards (which you don't want to discard) but nothing lower to start off an expedition with?

Of course, part of the fun has been in taking a big risk because you don't have any better options, but I wondered if people had any tried-and-tested rules of thumb to help beginners deal with the opening of the game?

1) You want to wait, but you can't wait all that long.  Sitting there with half your hand made up of cards that you don't want to play is normally a huge problem in Lost Cities, and you risk giving up a huge amount of tempo to your opponent, in the very small hope of drawing one specific card.  Sometimes you just have to quit hoping and start playing - after all, your opponent may have those investment cards in HIS hand!  (Of course, holding out can result in the dream scenario - your opponent laying down multiple investment cards for a colour in which you hold a balance of points...)
2) With multiple investment cards?  15 sounds a safe-ish bet.  But let's not forget that you can embark on expeditions without investment.  I'm perfectly happy to start off expeditions with barely any cards sometimes - just because putting pressure on and psyching out your opponent can easily be worth the potential loss of 10+ points.
3) As above.  I certainly would, but I almost certainly wouldn't risk multiplying my losses by 3 or 4 by playing investment cards first!
4) Possibly the most difficult scenario - you don't want to discard high cards and you don't want to play high cards, so what do you do?  It can be quite good to bait your opponent by discarding medium-value cards, while holding the higher values so when they snap your discard up, you know they're on a hiding to nothing.  But I agree, it's a hard situation to deal with comfortably.  (Then again, it's difficult for me to feel much sympathy for someone whose "problem" is being dealt a hand of strong cards!  Just play out an 8-9-10 for +7 points, and see what you draw in the meantime: a few investment cards would obviously have been nice to have, but it's not like you've really lost anything, is it?)

If you're looking for an advanced strategy, the game comes down to basically one question: "Will I get card X before the game ends?"
These answer to this is based on two things, first, is the odds of you getting any particular card you want, and second, the likelihood of getting it 'in time'.
Getting a card you want is fairly simple, it's the odds it's still in the draw pile times 50%.  When the game starts you have the best chance of it being in the draw pile, as opposed to already in your opponent's hand.  You need to read your opponent to get at the first part of this, but for any strategy for early game, it's probably safe to assume slightly less than 50% chance of getting any card.
For the second bit, namely playing things 'in time' the rules allow counting the remaining cards.  This needs to be combined with the likelihood that either you or your opponent will draw from the discard piles instead of the draw pile, thus slowing the game down.  You control your draw choices, so, in effect can slow the game ending by up to twice as many turns as the remaining number of cards.
As for rules of thumb, which there aren't many because the game is quite tactical, I'd say that calculating the expected value of remaining probabilities for cards undrawn, and assuming that your opponent's hand is 75% full of the cards you need is the safe way to go.
Also, don't reveal your intentions (start expeditions) until you absolutely have to, as this increases the chance that your opponent will start/discard cards you need before you do.  In this way it's not about what cards to have before starting, it's about your opponent's reveal.
So, specific answers:

Draw until odds are less than 50%.  If you have 3 cards, and 10 remain in the deck, assume your opponent has four of them, so there are 3 remaining.  With proper math probabilities, you need to draw 3 times to have a better than 50% chance of getting one of the those 3 cards.
This depends on when in the game you are.  15 points is probably too high early on, but I wouldn't start an expedition with 15 until I know if my opponent is or isn't competing in it (and they don't have hand room to block me on it)
Probably not.  Even early game.
Depends on when in the game it is.  Early on you can try for cornering the market early on it, before it's revealed.  However, it's probably the first expedition you start, getting those cards out early so you can keep the next one secret (where there will be more competition).

This seems like a good analysis; the only thing I would want to add is that you don't always have the luxury of not playing.  If you don't play, you run the risk of giving your opponent the cards she needs, so sometimes it's just better to play.  Which is why I disagree with, e.g., your answer to (3).  Would you rather lose a few points on an expedition that doesn't quite make it... or hand your opponent the cards to put together a lucrative 8-card-plus expedition?  Sometimes you just have to take a risky plunge and dictate the tempo of the game!

Yes, very true.  I did not go far into the start vs discard descision, as it's a tough one mathematically.  My answer to #3 is better qualified then as no, if you can do something else (except discard)

Thanks for your very helpful answer - I was very torn about which to accept.  These were all very useful points, and it makes me think that it would be worth trying running some simulations to evaluate various choices for their risk / reward...


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How do the expansions for Race for the Galaxy alter the game - are they worth buying?
Can someone give a good summary of each expansion for Race for the Galaxy, and explain how it changes the game? Is it worth it to buy the expansions straight out? Or is it fine to stick with the base game as long as you want? What's the compelling reason to expand? Just curious!

The expansions all have different themes to them, and they change up the game play in significant ways.  The first expansion, The Gathering Storm, is easily the most interesting in terms of changing up the game play.  It adds in the goals, which channels play in different ways in each game.  That, plus the new start worlds, provide enough extra variety that I'd suggest it's worth getting after playing roughly 25 games or so of the base game.  That many games allows you to see the different strategies that are available and become familiar with the approaches.
Rebel vs. Imperium has an excellent new start world mechanic, where each player gets dealt two start worlds with their opening hand and then gets to make a choice.  This, on its own, justifies the expansion I think.  The takeover mechanic isn't especially interesting, it just doesn't come up terribly often, so really here, you're talking about just beefing up the deck and providing more variety.
The Brink of War, honestly, I don't care for.  The prestige mechanics seem to tilt things pretty far back towards military being the most successful strategy.  Perhaps I'm just not very adept at it, but after about 15 games or so, I'm close to taking the cards out of my deck.
Alien Artifacts is actually the start of a new expansion cycle. It's designed to be played with just the base game, and it changes things in a very different way than the first three. It introduces a map that the players build, with the players moving around on the map to find new stuff. Explore becomes a first-class action with the expansion, which isn't really much true in the other ones. I only have four or so games with it, and I think some of the rules for building the map are kind of inelegant (although understandable why they are the way they are), but it's a fun experience. I'd still probably buy it third of the four expansions, though.

This (and the other answer) do not discuss Alien Artifacts, which came out in 2013. I'd be curious to see this answer updated for that expansion as well.

Updated with quick thoughts on Alien Artifacts, @Scribblemacher.

Same complaint about Xeno Invasion now

@Deo I haven't played Xeno Invasion yet, I'm afraid. I've been wanting to play Race again recently, though, so I'll move it up the pile and post thoughts here when I get that chance.

The most compelling reason to get the RftG expansions is to get more cards overall. This makes the game more replayable and allows for different interactions between cards from the original set and the expansions.
As for each expansion, you can expect the following:

The Gathering Storm: Ups the total player count to 5, adds more cards, new start worlds, goals (ways to score VPs by accomplishing certain things), and a "robot" that allows you to play solitaire. It introduces drafting rules.
Rebel vs. Imperium: Ups the total player count to 6, adds more cards, new start worlds, introduces takeover/warfare mechanic that allows players to conquer other players military worlds (sounds more interesting than it really is).
The Brink of War: Adds more cards, more goals, new start worlds, more counters for the solitaire game, introduces Galactic Prestige mechanism and a once-per-game power to search cards or add bonuses to your selected phase.

You can play RftG with all of these expansions by using Keldon's RftG AI.

+1 for mentioning RFTG AI - it's a really great try-before-you-buy thing, and was what sold me on Brink of War.

It depends on your groups and their preferences:
--The "proper way" is to get a few dozen or hundred games under your belt (not too impractical since Race does play relatively quickly).  Then add each expansion at its core (e.g. The Gathering Storm without Goals), then add those optional material (e.g. TGS, but now with Goals)
--The "save on costs" is to stick with just base because you think that's fine as is
--Some groups jump to later expansions sooner than later, or immediately since they want more advanced game play, and don't want to waste time with "training wheels"
Other factors include saving on shipping costs if you buy online, or buying them as you need them to ensure you don't buy an expansion that won't end up getting used.
As for the expansions themselves, there are 5 of them, forming 3 separate arcs (where each arc's set or sets should NOT be mixed in with other arc's cards)...
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Xeno Invasion (arc3)
The theme here could be from any one of the many literary works in sci-fi, but the closest one I can think up of are the aliens in the movie: Edge Of Tomorrow.
The core game includes new homeworlds, and many new cards.
--Many cards introduce new combos for consumption.  For example, consume a green good and any good for 2 VP and 1 card (of which the reward is new too, as we've had 1 VP + 1 card, 1 VP + 2 cards, and 2 VP, but not that)
--The mix and match Explore power is now a global rule in this expansion, so it makes exploring much more 'viable'
--Xeno and Anti-Xeno are 2 new keywords
--The Xeno aliens (not to be confused with other types of aliens you've run into from previous sets) have military worlds that can NOT be settled via "pay-for-military-world" powers.  They must be conquered via military strength.  OTOH, there are powers that grant military against Xeno military worlds only to help with that.
The optional Invasion module has players utilize anti-Xeno defense powers.  This I hear is similar to the Barbarian in Cities & Knights Of Catan.  PLayers are still playing competitively, but there's a "co-petitive" element where they need to work together (or not) to collectively repel a large xeno invasion force.  I hear this adds to the game length, but not as long as the Orb Scenario from Alien Artifacts.
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I've only played the core game via Keldon's AI, and did like the new stuff sans the Xeno Invasion module (on account it's not implemented).
However, without the Xeno Invasion module, I still prefer arc 1 with all options available.  I like the power creeps, the wide variety of cards and powers, Goals, and even Takeovers from time to time.
I prefer Alien Artifacts WITH the Orb Scenario, but unfortunately, Keldon's AI doesn't have that implemented.  Furthermore, one is hard pressed to play it with that IRL since it can double the game length, which is a turnoff for many folks.
With just The Gathering Storm, it adds a few more options (not too many, and too little for my tastes), but at least still keeps it within easier reach for newbies).
With just The Gathering Storm + Rebel Vs. Imperium, more options, more fleshed out military paths, and ability to pick a homeworld from a red color coded one vs. a blue one.


text:
Axis and Allies 2nd Edition: to Pearl Harbor or not to Pearl Harbor
When playing as Japan in Axis and Allies, 2nd edition, should Japan attack Pearl Harbor on its first turn?
If so, why and what force structure do you use? Do your actions depend on what Russia and the UK have done on their first turn (e.g. heavily fortified Eastern Russia or build an Indian factory)? Do you press on with the attack no matter what or is there a point at which you'd cut your losses and retreat? If you win, do you take your fleet back to home waters on turn two, or do you continue South or East?
If you don't attack, what's your rationale and what do you do with the units that might have participated?

About the "worst case" for Japan is "mutually assured destruction" of the two Pacific fleets. That's actually not too bad.
That occurs if the U.S. brings its bomber and fighter from the East coast, and uses its west coast fighter, battleship and transport in a counterattack on the Hawaiian Islands sea zone. The Japanese are likely to lose in all, one battleship, one carrier, one sub, and two fighters. The U.S. stands to lose one battleship, one carrier, one sub, two or three fighters, and one transport (in total), leaving the bomber and perhaps one fighter. That leaves a stand-off in the Pacific.
The U.S. may prefer this strategy if the Japanese player is better than the German player. But the U.S. loses at least a turn in the Atlantic by sending the bomber and fighters west.
Don Rae had a brilliant plan to defuse this threat: Move only the batttleship and sub into the Hawaiian sea zone, and leave the carrier in the Wake Island Sea zone, out of range of U.S. aircraft, while allowing two fighters to attack, and retreat to the carrier. You will lose the sub in the battle, and the battleship either in the battle itself, or in the counterattack. That's a total of 32 IPCs, versus 38 IPCs at stake for the Americans (possibly another 8 if they lose the transport from the Pacific in the counterattack.)
On the following Japanese turn, the lone U.S. battleship in the Hawaiian seazone is vulnerable to air attack from at least two fighters and a bomber, meaning that Japan stands to recover its "investment" of a battleship. And it still benefits from the setback to America's Atlantic buildup.

What the Expert Says...
In his excellent essays, Don Rae says Japan should always attack Pearl Harbor on its opening turn (see Essay #1):

The Pearl Harbor attack (this should be obvious to all players) should be conducted, always, without exception.
If this U.S. fleet is not removed, it will be used against you in the Pacific (non-optimal), or it can be driven through the Panama Canal to assist the U.S. Atlantic invasion front (optimal). Any anticipation of anything less than the optimal response movement from the U.S. player is generally considered as weak play....
Because of this, you must always use enough forces to take out this sea zone area decisively.

Don then goes on to describe what units to use, which depend on whether you follow his suggestions for "basic" tactical play or "advanced" play. In the basic approach, he suggests throwing everything you've got at it except for your transports. That is, you're going to send two battleships, your sub, two fighters, and the carrier.
If you use the advanced play, Don suggests a more muted attack:

1 battleship (Japan)
1 submarine
2 fighters (one from Japan, one from the carrier)
1 bomber

With the carrier stationed off Solomon Islands.

Don is awesome. Good to have his advice under this question. In fact, the rest of his essays are so spot on I've always felt a little pinch at being so unconvinced that Pearl is a no-brainer strategy for Japan. I agree that if you don't attack America can probably be most effective taking it to the Atlantic, but I wonder how effective it is there. The US/UK will have something unattackable anyway regardless of the Pearl fleet so does it buy them much? On the other hand, foregoing Pearl let's Japan get additional air units mainland end of turn 1. I'm curious to see other's calculus.

@Adam: Having the US battleship off the UK waters is quite helpful in launching an attack on WE, I've found. But I agree, the US carrier seems overkill. The problem with the US keeping a Pacific fleet is that it has to divert IPCs to sustain it, build transports, troops, subs, etc. to island hop. And that distracts from penetrating Europe.

Agree a US Pacific fleet isn't worth the investment in IPCs, but this raises an interesting point. If NOT killing the fleet at Pearl encourages a less experienced US player to spend resources into the Pacific, and if the worst case is that they move the fleet East instead and get one more shore bombard roll in the Atlantic, then I think a case can be made for not attacking Pearl. It provides an opening for an unforced error by the US  and sets you up as Japan to have a kick-butt turn 2. That said, I've had some luck island hopping with just the Pearl fleet and the Wake + HI infantry.

@Adam: One problem with a US fleet for Japan is that it pins Japan's navy around the Japan island. You can't venture south to Australia or send support to Africa, because you have to worry about the US fleet causing problems. On an aside, I like to play the "No new factories" variation every now and then, and that encourages the US to build a fleet because Japan is toast if they can't keep and maintain a large trannie presence.

I'd say "almost without exception." The exceptions are if the British overreach with a "Kwabang" attack leaving India wide open, or the Russians overreach with an attack on Manchuria, leaving Yakut and/or the Soviet Far East wide open. Then Japan should head west and punish these Allies. Killing the Pearl Harbor fleet is "nice," but Hawaii has little strategic value. If you forego this attack and get India and/or Yakut (more than you can normally hope for), go for the latter.

I have a strategy that I use for Japan. Take Pearl Harbor on turn one with your fleet-- don't purchase any units with your IPC's and build them up for 2 turns to purchase a battleship. On turn 2-3 go after India with all of your might.
In the first two turns, Germany needs to buy Infantry to use them to defend the western front-- meanwhile Germany should focus on crippling Moscow and going after Africa. Germany should also attack the British fleet, otherwise the German fleet is rendered useless.
On turn 3 Japan should use all of their force and go after USA, if USA and UK stockpile their warships, bombers, carriers and can combine their resources--- then Japan can't help much out on the western front. Japan should try to help and prevent this situation from occurring.
On turn 4 Japan should try and take the Caucaus (with help from Germany). If Japan gets this then they can help fortify the Western front... If Japan has India they can also purchase bombers to help for fly by attacks. Having the Caucaus is crucial for Germany and Japan to win-- because it allows for the two teams to work together. Solidarity is the key to the Japanese victory.

I have my doubts about this strategy.  On turn 3 it is suggested to go after U.S. with all your might, even though you might not even have taken India by this time.  And what does going after the U.S. mean?  Full scale invasion of Alaska?

I have read and studied Don's essays with interest and appreciation. His analysis of the game mechanics and general strategic principles are masterly. However, I find myself in disagreement with him on both British and Japanese strategy. Ignoring Britain for the moment (a questionable proposition) I will limit my remarks to Japanese srategy. Historically, by the late spring of 1942, which is ostensibly when the first turn takes place, The battle of Pearl Harbor had been won and lost (and both sides knew which was which). So it helps me to think of it as the battle of Midway. This battle is often referred to as "the turning point in the pacific". My advice is: ignore America. The American fleet lacks the combat power to be more than an annoyance without significant re-inforcement. If the American player chooses to invest resources in attempting to attack Japan through a naval war of attrition, you will have provided sterling service to the Germans for every IPC the Americans devote to the Pacific.
     Instead, use your existing fleet agressively. The carrier and submarine are sent to Japan to screen the new transports. I agree whole-heartedly with Don on Jpan's first turn purchase, although for different long-term strategic reasons. The remainder of Japanese combat power in the central and south pacifc is massed off the coast of Burma. Your land based forces will be used to attack eastern China (it is critical to destroy the American fighter even at the cost of not capturing the territory), and possibly a strafe attack on India. This leaves the Americans with their pacifc fleet dispersed and ineffectual and the cores of two battle forces for Japan poised to strike either north or south to respond to any American move in the region. This gives Japan the tactical flexibilty to respond to any move that Britain might have made. America can certainly choose to be a pain in the logistics, but there are a lot more juicy targets out there to help the swing the economic balance back to the Axis side. Good Hunting!

So to be clear, Don’s main point is that if the Hawaiian fleet is not destroyed it can be moved to the Atlantic, where it can be used to devastating effect against Germany.

Not before its too late. US warships in the pacific will require 2-3 turns before they can threaten Germany, removing them from combat as effectivelt as if you had estryed them. This also represents an act of surrender on the part of the US. It will take even longer to move those ships back to the pacific. In other words these ships are rendered meaningless to Japan merely through the act of ignoring them.

If Japan does not attack at Pearl Harbor, then the U.S. fleet has enough to hurt Japan seriously. When I am Japan, I usually spend my entire naval force (all that can reach) to Pearl. That way, the U.S. will either decide that it isn't worth it to keep the navy in the Pacific, or they will fight you and Germany will have a chance to do something significant.
If the U.S. focuses all of its attention on Germany and moving into the European theater (while keeping defensive units in the Western U.S.) then the game will be over shortly. Japan is not really a threat to the U.S. in all honesty. Japan needs to keep its navy strong and the only way to do that is to eliminate the U.S. from the Pacific. If the U.S. player is smart, they won't care. If they aren't then Japan needs to be ready for a mean hammer to come down from the U.S.

Can you give an example of how the US Pearl fleet can hurt the US significantly? Obviously the it's insufficient to defeat Japan's on the first turn, and even with the addition of the battleship and transport it's not much stronger. Couple that with the fact the fleets defend better than they attack, and I'm not sure how much havoc it can wreak. At most, I've seen the US pick up a couple of infantry and go around stealing piss-ant South Pacific islands. Annoying surely, but perhaps worth the additional good lead Japan gets by focusing it's first turn energy on the continent. Not convinced yet.

The fleet in Pearl is insignificant unless it is left unattended to by the Japanese. If the US player isn't attacked, they need to consider two things: 1. How good is the Japanese player; and 2. How good is the German player.
The US is probably the most crucial player, in my opinion. Unfortunately, they are at the largest disadvantage since their entire force (East and West) are so far from battle.
The US needs to decide to devote IPC's to Germany or Japan. It's your call. I've seen it work out in both cases for the better and for the worse. It depends COMPLETELY on who you are playing

All in all, Japan is meant to last. Most strategies involve leaving your fighters behind to aid in invading everything to the West. In the basic game, you will probably want to send just your Navy (and 1-2 transports, if possible). You are virtually guaranteed to take out their AcC and might get to invade Hawaii. And why WOULDN'T you want to give your tanks and artillery teams a nice, tropical vacation? However, if you plan to abandon Japan and let Germany liberate it (which might just be crazy enough to work, with the right dice rolls,) then send everything you have against America and, if you get lucky, you might get the Western U.S. (you get the victory city AND a factory.) If that works, as you all know, build a sh*tzillion infantry. Or infantries, or whatever. All in all, though, I would recommend sending a naval force of at least a destroyer, a battleship, and at least one transport (with infantry and a tank). This'll guarantee that you get Hawaii and maybe even invade the Western seaboard. Playing by the 1942 SPECIAL rules, however, you can kamikaze the living shiznit out of Hawaii, if that answers your question. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "Dear black baby jesus, I've been shot! Someone, please help me!"


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What is the best opening in Hansa Teutonica?
What opening move should I prefer in Hansa Teutonica with 3, 4, or 5 players, and why?

As the first player in a 4 or 5 player game, I like to play a merchant (disk) and a trader (cube), one on each road into the action city. In the crowd I play with, these roads are highly contended, so I will likely have 3 additional pieces on the board before my next turn. This will leave me in good position to become the third player to get a third action, or perhaps the first to improve the movement or refresh skill, or to get the "remove 3 pieces" bonus marker. In short, I find it maximizes my flexibility while getting additional pieces onto the board.

This seems to be the way it works in our group.

Can you explain in more detail why you think this is a good move?

@ire_and_curses: good idea. Done.

While contending for the action city is a classic opening move, it by no means is the only way to go.  I recently won a 4 player game using the policy of non-competition, and worked on creating as big of a network as possible, as that has the most bonus.  In fact, I only gained one additional action the whole game, which balanced out because I didn't waste all those actions contending for the action city.
If you go first, then this question makes some sense, but if you're not first player, the correct opening move will depending both on the other players' actions and their play-style.


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What are the rules for playing with this unusual Mancala board?
I recently received a Mancala set hand-made from Africa.  It has an unusual set up, and I was hoping someone knew the rules for playing on this set up.
The board is an arrangement of circle and square pits in a board.  There are 4 rows and 8 columns arranged as follows (o = circle pit, x = square pit)
oooooooo
oooxoooo
ooooxooo
oooooooo

Has anyone seen a board like this before?  Does anyone know if there are rules for playing on a board like this?

Sounds like you've got a Bao board.

Bao, an East African Mancala, is the only known Mancala to make use of square pits as well as round ones. These are called nyumba (house), one for each player, and marks your starting position. There are also some extra rules for the nyumba in the main variation Bao la kiswahili. The Wikipedia article I've linked to has detailed instructions for both simplified (Bao la kujifunza) and Bao la kiswahili.
You can also use the same board, and ignore the shape of the special pits, to play other four-rank Mancala variants. One example would be Omweso. Enjoy the cool board!

That's it!  My board is just like the hinged one on the wikipedia page.  Thanks :)


text:
How many IPCs does the USA receive in Axis & Allies Global?
In the combined global game for Axis & Allies: Europe 1940 and Axis & Allies: Pacific 1940, how much money does the USA receive before and after it is engaged in a war? Many references I've seen list the USA economy at 52 IPCs, but is this the starting economy?
I've also read that the USA is supposed to receive a boost of 30 IPCs when they are at war. Are these 30 IPCs in addition to money potentially gained from fulfilling national objectives, or does it simply mean the player is now eligible to receive up to 30 from national objectives?

I believe that in the 1940 version of this game the USA starts with around 27 IPC's on the Pacific map and 35 on the Europe side, so a total of roughly 62(?, perhaps my numbers are wrong) as a STARTING income. Then they will have the 30 IPC's per turn added on once at war, which is their only national objective, so when they are at war, they will have an economy of exactly thirty IPC's more than what they gain from territories(convoy losses and extraneous circumstances aside), no more, no less from NO's. I do not own this version, so this is only my take on it.

62 is wrong, it is supposed to be 52, according to the rules.

This is my understanding of the rules: at the start of the game, the players and countries IPC's are calculated by what territories they own. So at the start of the Global A&A game, add up all of the U.S.'s territories and that is there starting income. When they enter the war, they get an IPC boost of 30. That is how I understand it... hope that helps.

According to the rules, page 34, the US starts with 52 IPC both in treasury and income:

The powers start with the following IPC income levels
  and treasuries:
Power  |
  Starting Income
(...)
United States  52
(...)

In the global version, the U.S. pre-war points are as follows:
Eastern U.S., 20 points.
Central U.S. 12 points.
Western U.S. 17 points.
Caribbean (Mexico, Central America, West Indies): 3 points.
Total, 52 points, which is the starting economy.
After the war begins, there are three bonuses:
Western U.S. intact, 40 points.
Central and Eastern U.S. intact, 20 points.
All three Caribbean territories in U.S. hands, 5 points.
Total bonuses: 65 points.
Sub Grand total:117 points.
There are also another 15 bonus points in the Pacific that the U.S. may or may not be able to get.
Philippines: 5 points.
Holding both Alaska and Mexic: 5 points.
Holding four island chains: 5 points.
Grand total: 132 points.
Some versions of the rules confuse the issue by saying only 30 points bonus for the Western U.S. in Axis and Allies Pacific, but this map makes it clear that it's 40. That is, it shows 10 IPCs for the U.S. prewar, and 50 IPCs (an addition of 40), after war begins.


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Do you know any rules that make Pandemic's difficulty more even?
Pandemic varies vastly in difficulty depending on the number of players. Does anyone know of any custom rules that make it more even?

There seems to be differing opinions on this, so could you elaborate on how you think the number of players affects difficulty?

Most times I've played, it been with 4 or 5 players.  Is this why we get our a**es handed to us all the time?

@Todd, it gets much more difficult with more players. @keithgrant, yes, play with 2 or 3 and it'll be easy.

You could for example always play with the same amount of pawns. If you have 3 players everyone gets a pawn for themself and you have to discuss what happens with the 4th. Considering there's already a lot of discussion on what to do with your own pawns it's not going to be much of a problem...

But what happens with the cards of the faceless players?

I suppose you could share them amongst everyone.

I'd probably place them in a separate spot. Just play as if there where a 4th player - just one who doesn't play on his own.

Pick up the On the Brink BGG expansion.
The forums at Boardgamegeek state that it definitely eases up the difficulty of the 4 and 5 player versions as well as providing more options.

I agree; particularly if you're choosing roles, as it provides some more flexible choices, and one good fix to an existing role.  However, it's an expensive buy just for that; most of the expansion provides variants that make things harder...

Allowing players to choose their roles, rather than having them assigned randomly, is one way to lower the difficulty. The players can choose roles that they prefer to work with and that have better synergy.

But it makes it a more limited and repetitive game.

A big part of the variation in difficulty is the fixed number of event cards.  In the base game, you play with 5 event cards in the deck regardless of the number of players.  If you pick up "On the Brink" there are more event cards, so you play with 2 event cards in the deck per player.  This seems subtle but I've found that it smooths most of the effect of different numbers of players (assuming you are good at coordinating).

Consider making the epidemic cards predictable.  Space them out as stated in the rules, but always put them at the bottom of each pile.  This keeps the fun of dealing with the challenge, while enhancing the requirement that players work together to handle what they know is coming.  It does make it easier though, in general, due to this predictability.

In my experience, it's the timing of the first epidemic that has the most significant impact on difficulty.  The others don't matter as much as long as you have a chance to get on top of the outbreaks early on.

Timing and position of the first outbreak are crucial.  If you don't like putting the card always at the bottom of each pile, consider always shuffling into the bottom half of each pile.  This is no more work than the regular way, and keeps randomness while preventing early wipe-outs.

I found that a nice touch is to not shuffle the top stack of cards when mixing in the epidemic cards.  In the first stack, place the epidemic card at the bottom and shuffle the rest normally.  This just lets you get a leg up on the game at the beginning while leaving the rest of the game unchanged.

2 things to make the game a bit easier.
1) once a cure is found any player can cure a city of all diseases for only 1 action
2) shuffle all the infection cards back into the deck when an Pandemic occurs (may be to big of a change)

First one would make the game slightly easier and could be a nice touch, but the second one would break it entirely. Since you will always draw an epidemic card that puts the infection discard pile on top of the draw pile every several turns, this keeps the tension up that those cities will keep getting more cubes. If you shuffled the entire discard pile, you'd be drawing many cards for the first time after an epidemic, putting them on places with no cubes yet and not threatening outbreaks at all, which is exactly the opposite of what is supposed to happen (going on already infected cities :).

Number 1) is the actual rules.

Normaly, you can trade city card on the city of that card. So, I suggest that you can trade city black card on a black city, blue one on a blue city, yellow on yellow and red on red. That way, you still restricted but it'll be easyer. It'll make a donw grade for the Researcher but...  your choice.

In a 4 player game, you can make sure the researcher is in play for one of the players, and deal the other 3 roles from the deck. I have played with almost every combination of roles (with 2 and 4 players) and the researcher has significant advantage and is very difficult to win with 4 player without her.

My group feels that Pandemic is easier with fewer players, so as player count goes down we increase the epidemic count to maintain the challenge level.
Other adjustments will depend on how you think the difficulty changes.  In player counts that you consider harder, try dealing out multiple roles and letting players choose, or try choosing play order only after seeing roles and starting cards.  For player counts that you consider easier, reverse these decisions.
On the Brink adds some variability and complexity.  I'm not sure if (after you get past the learning curve of any new variant) it adds difficulty, but it might.

If you're playing with 2p, use the next difficulty level in terms of # of Epidemics.  For example, if you play 4p on "Easy" (4 Epidemic cards), then with 2p, play on "normal" (5 Epidemics) to get the same effect of difficulty.
If you have On The Brink expansion, rather than adding another Epidemic, consider adding in the Virulent Strain.  The rules for that is only 1 page long, so you should be able to learn it in no time.  Mutation Challenge is more involving even if it's still only 1 page as well.

I have a number of variations that I like, but I may not use every variation every game. I like the On-the-Brink expansion, but these rules are not specific to it.
Roles: Cures & cards (Researcher & Scientist); Treatments/prevention (Medic & Quarantine Specialist); move/build (Operations Expert & Dispatcher); and misc for everything else. For a 4 player game have at least one of each the first three types.
First research station (instead of Atlanta): When dealing the initial infected cities include 4 (instead of 3) cities with 1 cube; the first research station can go into any the of cities with 1 cube and all the players start there. If there are disagreements, the player going first decides.
Preparing the deck: (1) Put one event card in each the piles with one of the epidemic cards; any remaining cards are shuffled in as normal. (2) If there are extra player cards after put the same number cards in each pile, they go on the top of player deck to delay the earliest epidemic card.