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Are there any artifacts that tap for white, blue or black mana?
I'm looking for artifacts similar to the crystals from the Ikoria set (e.g. Indatha Crystal) or the banners (e.g. Abzan Banner), but instead that produce white, blue or black mana.
I'm not opposed to lands either like Arcane Sanctum but I'm more interested in finding artifacts for my Alela, Artful Provocateur Commander deck.

Shards of Alara had a cycle 3 mana artifacts that tapped shard colors. I cannot remember there names though

@NeilMeyer Obelisk of [Shard name] in this case Obelisk of Esper

Scryfall offers a produces: operator that returns cards that produce the mana you ask for. It takes into account statements like “add N mana of any color” as well as treasure production and the ability to produce additional mana (like Heartbeat of Spring).

If you give produces: a set of mana types out of WUBRGC—the five colors plus colorless—it returns cards that produce at least those types of mana, possibly including others.
If you give it a number, it returns cards that produce exactly that number of types of mana. produces:6 is the maximum, which is all the cards that produce WUBRG and also colorless.
produces:any finds cards that produce any type of mana at all. (It's equivalent to produces>=1.)

These would be your primary options when searching for Esper mana generators the way you are:

Most helpful: produces:w or produces:u or produces:b will find cards that individually produce at least any of those colors, possibly including other colors and/or colorless.
produces:wub will find cards that individually produce at least white, blue, and black—a card that produces just one or two of these won't match. You can also do produces:esper for this result.
produces:any commander:wub will find Esper cards that produce at least one type of mana, no matter what it is, but it will also match cards that only produce colorless mana.

You've requested artifacts that tap for mana, but there are artifacts like Altar of Shadows and Caged Sun that produce mana without requiring being tapped for it. Since Alela doesn't interact specifically with tapping/untapping artifacts, it seems these may work well for you too.
I suggest one of these searches:

If you want artifacts that produce at least one of those colors: (produces:w or produces:u or produces:b) format:commander type:artifact commander:wub
If you want only those artifacts capable of producing all of those colors, like Obelisk of Esper: produces:wub format:commander type:artifact commander:wub

Technical notes on the produces: operator
The produces: operator can also take different comparators: produces>, >=, =, <=, or <.
When you're supplying a set of colors, produces: is equal to produces>= (at least equal to this set).
When you're supplying a number, produces: is equal to produces= (exactly this number).
This is fairly typical of Scryfall operators that take numbers and/or mana: if you see : followed by digits or a number of sets of mana, usually that operator will take some set of >=< too. The : case will default to the behaviour that's the most common or intuitive search for that operator.

Looks like Obelisk of Esper is the only one that explicitly produces only those colours, though, instead of producing any colour.

@nick012000 Oh, yeah, I hadn't actually taken a look at that list. Also Dromar's Attendant. Only two artifacts that produce exactly esper mana! (None that produce esper + colorless)

I found 97 matching cards on Scryfall using the following search

t:artifact o:/{T}:.*\badd\b.*({[WUB]}|any|that)/ f:commander ci:wub

This finds artifact cards with {T}:, add and {W} or {U} or {B}, or the word any (for "any color") or that (for "that color", referring to an earlier choice), in that order, that are legal in commander, and have a color identity that matches white, blue, and/or black, so that they are playable in an Alela commander deck.
For cards that can tap for all of those colors instead of just some of them, this search finds 59 cards:

t:artifact o:/{T}:.*\badd\b.*(({[WUB]}.*){3}|any|that)/ f:commander ci:wub

The difference is that this looks for three mana symbols that match {W}, {U}, or {B}. Technically this would also find cards that add {W}{W}{W}, but that doesn't actually come up.

Only one of those actually produces all three colors.

@ArcanistLupus The question (even before editing) asked for "white blue or black" mana (my emphasis).

@PhilipKendall, do you mean like Indatha Crystal, which produces "W, B, or G"?  The examples the OP lists are all 3 color producers. I agree that the wording is open to interpretation, but it's clear that the OP is more interested in three color producers.

Note that this misses artifacts that produce mana of any color, such as Coalition Relic

This is a Gatherer search for Artifacts that have a tapped ability and mention the word "add" and either white or blue mana. It looks like most of them involve mana abilities, which makes sense. Obviously some of these are not going to be appropriate for certain circumstances, and I make no claim as to which might be more easily obtainable than others. We can refine the search to only list cards which are legal for Commander, and it only takes about 3 entries of the list so there are still plenty of choices.


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What is "finding a card" while searching your library?
Is there a specific order/action when searching your library?
Opposition Agent says:

Flash
You control your opponents while they're searching their libraries.
While an opponent is searching their library, they exile each card
they find. You may play those cards for as long as they remain exiled,
and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any color to cast
them.

Are they exiling only the card they are searching for or 1 card at a time till they find it?

"Find" has a specific rules meaning in Magic, per comp rule 701.19a (emphasis mine):

701.19a To search for a card in a zone, look at all cards in that zone (even if it’s a hidden zone) and find a card that matches the given description.

A player only "finds" the specified number and description of cards, not the rest of the cards that they happen to encounter during the search process. Only the cards that are chosen (because you control the player, you make that choice) are exiled, and they must be cards that could normally be chosen for that particular effect.

If you look at the rulings for the card Opposition Agent it may answer your question.
It appears you are confused as to the order of events.  To make it specific, let's use an example.  Say your opponent casts a Cultivate.
In response, you flash in your Agent.
The Agent resolves, and enters the battlefield.
Then, the cultivate resolves, and you search your opponent's library for 2 basic lands.  They both are now exiled.  You can play those cards, following the usual timing rules—so these lands can be one of your land drops later.
The "exile" effect only happens after you have selected the cards from their library that meet the search criteria.  (In the case of cultivate, that would be basic lands.)

"You can play those cards at any time" Opposition agent doesn't change the timing rules for playing lands - still has to be on your turn, one per turn, with an empty stack.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Do players have to match big blind if player in bb position can’t afford to match bb?
A previous question on this board asked: In Texas hold'em poker, if a player doesn't have enough chips to pay the big blind, what happens if the next players want to call? Must they pay the entire big blind or not?
For example, a tournament starts and after some time, the SB/BB is 50/100 but the player who must pay the BB has only 60. Other players want to call only.

Player A (SB): mandatory bet 50 and is waiting.
Player B (BB): mandatory bet 60 chips and all-in.
Player C has more than 110 and wants to call, must they pay 100 or only 60?

The answer was YES they do have to pay the bb. But how is that fair for player C?  For instance, if Player C folds, then player A only has to match Player B’s all-in at 60. So Player C is the only person who was forced to match the bb.

Are you asking about what the actual rules are (which may not be "fair" but are still the rules) or what you think the rules should be (which is opinion-based and therefore off-topic on Stack Exchange)?

Just making sure what the rules are because generally the rules are fair. My opinion is that I know the rules but could be wrong. Are you answering my question with more questions or do you know the rule?

If C wants to call the BB, they have to put in 100. However, the 40 that's over B's blind of 60 is put in a side pot, and B is not eligible to win this extra money. If A folds, then there's no one left to contest the side pot, and so it is returned to C. So A and C are in the same position: if A wants to call and C doesn't, then A only has to put in a total of 60. If C wants to call and A doesn't, then C has to risk only 60 (although they have to initially put in 100 in case A wants to call). If both want to call, both will have to put in a total of 100.
Their positions are not completely equal in that A gets to see what C does before deciding whether to call, but this is at the cost of having to put up the SB, so overall C is better off in this position.

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


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Who wins this Texas hold 'em hand?
There was a full house on the board queens over jacks. One player has pocket 9s and the other had a 9 and a 5... Who wins? Or is it a split pot?

Assuming this is Texas hold 'em, then the strongest hand each player has is the full house on the board so the pot would be split.
As per the article under The Showdown with relevant parts bolded.

On the showdown, each player plays the best poker hand they can make from the seven cards comprising their two-hole cards and the five community cards. A player may use both of their own two hole cards, only one, or none at all, to form their final five-card hand. If the five community cards form the player's best hand, then the player is said to be playing the board and can only hope to split the pot, because each other player can also use the same five cards to construct the same hand.

If the best hand is shared by more than one player, then the pot is split equally among them, with any extra chips going to the first players after the button in clockwise order.


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Chronatog: am I required to take a turn?
Assuming my opponents do not have a way to remove Chronatog from the battlefield, prevent me from activating the ability, or win the game, can I avoid ever taking another turn by simply activating it on each my opponent's turns?

Lethal Vapors is too expensive to play and someone will catch on. =D

Can you explain your question a little more clearly? I’m not sure what you’re trying to ask…

Are you asking if you can have all of your turns skipped by activating the ability on other peoples turns?

Assuming that the edited title is correct; no you are not required to ever take a turn; you can simply use Chronatog's ability on each of your opponent's turns. If your opponent really doesn't have any way to actually win with their deck, then you would eventually win by them decking themselves.
There are many other cards such as Yawgmoth's Bargain which cause you to skip your draw step. These would play out similarly, where you simply do nothing the whole game, forcing your opponent to draw their normal 1 card per turn, until they are unable to draw and lose the game.
The only way these scenarios would be different would be if your opponent were playing some sort of strange win condition that required you to have turns for them to win, such as Barbed Wire.

Another way it could be different from is if you're running something like Stasis/Kismet and want to skip your upkeep.


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Svick Czech Card Game
It came up in some discussions today about an old card game called "Svick" that was played about 35 years ago. We can't really remember how this game was played, or all the rules to it, so I took on the job of trying to find out more about it. Unfortunately, Google cannot find anything (And autocorrects it to "Stick") beside a single reference of the game. We are unsure if the game is a Czech game, or from somewhere else.
Here it is: https://www.tributearchive.com/obituaries/19962741/Donald-Donnie-Klanecky
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/theindependent/name/donald-klanecky-obituary?pid=197769817
If anyone knows of the game, would they be able to provide information, or even a webpage about it?

Any additional details would be help. For example, is it played with a 52-card deck? If there are details in the link, please [edit] your question to include any important quotations.

I haven't been able to find anything more than corroboration that it is actually a game... http://www.montanaroue.com/2017/11/oh-games-people-play.html?m=1

My family is Czech and from El Campo and Shiner, TX. My grandpa played Svick and my aunts, uncles and cousins still play weekly. It's really fun but seems to be sort of a "dead game" as there's no real information on it online. It's been years since I've played but I reached out and was given the rules for you all. As far as I know, my family is the only family that still actively plays this game so I would love to hear if someone else out there plays it still. I don't know anyone else who's played or has even heard of this game and was surprised to find this thread. It's a fun game and many people can play at once. It seems like the optimum number of people is around 4-6 but I think up to 8 or even 10 can play. There are a lot of rules so this will be pretty long but I don't know of ANYONE who still plays this game so it's nice to have it preserved somewhere online.
I looked at the rules for Zwikken and Svick is a completely different game.
For those of you who don't play card games with trumps and tricks (ie. games like Spades or Hearts etc). A trump is a suit that beats all other suits but unlike Spades or Hearts it can be any suit turned over by the dealer in Svick. You can only use a trump if you can't follow suit. Example: Diamonds are turned over as the trump.. Hearts are led, if you don't have a heart you can trump with a diamond (a 2 of diamonds would beat the ace of hearts in this situation) and the highest trump played (if more than one) would win the trick. If no one trumps the highest heart would win the trick in this example. A trick is the round played... so if 5 people are playing they all play their first round of cards, 1 card each, in the middle and whoever wins the round, takes the cards and keeps them. That's a trick and there are four tricks to be had per hand in Svick. At the end you count up who has how many tricks for dividing up the pot. Also, in this game Ace is high.. so Ace, Joker, King, Queen, Jack, 10 through 2. (the joker is always a trump and only one joker is in the deck)
The Deal:
First everyone antes up (.20 cents always makes it even). You are dealt four cards (so there are four tricks) so depending on what you ante, the dealer has to add the extra few cents to make it divisible by 4. For example if there are 5 playing and everyone antes .15 cents that's .75 so the dealer puts in a penny to make it .76 and the pot is now .19 cents a trick. You could also make the ante .19 or .07 cents to keep it even. (That's the money aspect.. divisible by 4). You could also play for chips but we always played for change. It's more fun to see actual money on the table, imo.
Knocking in or folding:
4 cards are dealt to each player then the dealer flips a card which designates the trump (spades, clubs, diamonds, hearts). The dealer can choose to keep the turned trump by knocking on it WITHOUT looking at his hand first. 10 and below he only has to make one trick, Jack and above he has to make 2 tricks or he goes 'set'. Then each player, after looking at their cards, decides if they will 'go' (play) by knocking on the table (in order, to the left from the dealer). Those who knock and are 'in' discard all cards that are not trumps in their hand and the dealer gives them replacements. (1,2 or 3 cards.. if you don't have a trump you would fold and not knock... unless you like losing money) :) You don't bid, you just ante, then knock or fold. When it gets back around to the dealer, he picks up the overturned trump (if he knocked on it) looks at his cards and makes his discards and deals himself replacements. If the dealer doesn't knock on the trump card he can look at his cards and knock in at the end of the round but can't pick up the trump card. Also, if the dealer knocks on and picks up the trump card the dealer leads the first round of play, if the dealer doesn't pick up the trump card the first person to his left that knocked begins the round of play. If no players knock (want to play their hand), the dealer cannot knock at the end.. that's the end of the round and the dealer adds 4 pennies and deals again. Once everyone has knocked or folded and has their four cards play begins...
Play:
The dealer plays first and can lead trumps if he wants (ie. the ace if he has it). If you don't have a card to match the suit that is lead you must trump it, if you don't have any trumps you can discard anything. Whoever wins that trick plays first on the next round. When all tricks have been won, play is over and the pot is divided between those who won tricks. (two tricks you get half the pot... 1/4 for one trick and obviously this is why the pot must be divisible by four). Then everyone antes for the next round or if one or more went set they pay their fines and the new dealer puts in four pennies and no one else has to ante. The new dealer must put in four pennies even if they paid a fine for going set.
Going set and fines:
If you knock into the hand you must make at least one trick or you go 'set' and have to match the whole pot (the fine) on the next round (and no one has to ante in and gets a free round if there's a fine). More than one person can go set and all people who are set must pay the fine. (so three people go set, the pot gets matched 3 times). If you are the dealer and knocked on the trump card lower than 10 (1 trick) and go 'set' you have to match the whole pot on the next round. If the dealer knocks on a face card, joker or ace, he needs to make 2 tricks or he goes 'set' and has to pay DOUBLE the pot on the next round. (everyone with me so far? haha!) OH and if the dealer knocks on a face card, joker or ace, he has the choice after looking at his cards to fold if he would like... but he has to pay the fine on the next round (which is better than matching double the pot if he doesn't make 2 tricks). Like I said before, if there is a fine, the next dealer always has to add 4 cents. Even if the dealer payed the fine. The next dealer is always the person to the left of the last dealer.
This matching the pot thing is where the pot can really grow. 5 people playing at .20 cents each the pot is $1 but if you have 2 people go set and one is the dealer who knocked on a face card the next pot is $3. Then say, two more go set on that round.. now the pot is $6). Small money but the money is what makes it fun and if it's a $6 dollar pot.. you really think hard before you knock to play!
Clear as mud right? Have fun!

Now that I checked Czech card games with similar names again, there is a card game called Cvik in Czech that has very similar (if not the same rules), so that's most likely what this is.

OMG! Thanks so much! I will show this to my family later and see if it seams right. @TheRedFox, I’ll look into that as well. Thanks!

A shot in the dark, but there's a Dutch card game, which is pronounced similarly, called zwikken. It's a trick-taking game with a betting element. Here is a machine translation of the rules. If it's definitely the game you're looking for (or close), I can do a manual translation and add it to English Wikipedia. For what it's worth, I've never played the game myself, but I friend of mine did, and he would be able to elaborate the rules.

We play Svick regularly in Minnesota.  I'm from New Prague, so it is only fitting that a small town in MN named after the Czech Capital, hold a ton of Czech traditions.  Our version of Svick is played with 3 cards.  We play 30 Cent Ante for the players and 60 Cents for the dealer.  6 -7 players is the optimal game size.  At 6 players you have a pot of $2.10 for 70 cents a trick.  7 players is a pot of $2.40. Since we play with 3 cards, Queen and above if robbing for 2 tricks for the dealer.  Jack and below is for 1 trick.
Regardless of what the dealer does, play always begins with the person to the left of the dealer.  The game is played in the same fashion of Euchre for the most part.  the biggest rule that we play by is that the Ace of Trump must come out if you are the first to lead.  At all times you are looking to Set the dealer or someone in order to make the pot grow.  If 4 people knock...you know someone is getting set in our 3 card version.  Get set, pay the pot.  Rob for double as a dealer and you have 2 options. 1) play the hand and pay double the pot if you don't get 2 tricks, or 2) you can "slide" after seeing your hand.  This means you don't think you can get 2 tricks and then you get off easy and only pay what the pot size is.  Then the remaining players are playing "easy" to try and allow everyone left in the hand to obtain a trick since the dealer is already set.  We have set a max set limit of $12 for a set on non dealers and if the dealer "slides".  $24 if the dealer robs for double, plays and still doesn't get 2 tricks.  We had to institute this as pots often grew to over $100.  Which was very pricey for a family game.
When I was younger, my father and his friends would play $1.50/$3.00 for the Ante.  So in a 7 player game, the "normal" pot was $12 for $4 a trick.  Serious cash would change hands on those nights if you ran into a string of bad luck.

This answer is hard to understand and follow, can you please remove the commentary about your history playing and just leave the rules?

I'm a native Czech speaker and I quite like card games, but I can't say I ever heard of a card game called "Svick". I also can't find anything on Czech sites about it either.
I would assume that most likely the name was slightly corrupted over time due to the person and their family living in the US and presumably having limited contact with native Czech speakers. That can and has happened. E.g. see kolache, which is a Czech plural turned English singular from the Czech word koláče.
If we go with that assumption, then I think the two most likely candidates are the card games Švindl and Svršky. Both of them start with "Sv" and have only one more character than "Svick" has.
Another possibility is Cvik, which sounds somewhat similar to "Svick" and has similar ruleset to what cmvox is explaining in his answer. So that's the most likely candidate. The rules of the game (in Czech) can be found at https://cs.wikibooks.org/wiki/Pokladnice_her/Klasick%C3%A9_karetn%C3%AD_hry/Cvik.
But ultimately, it's hard to tell which one of the two it is or if it's a completely different card game without knowing anything about the card game other than a name that doesn't give any results on Google.

This really doesn't answer the question.

I think I see the answer here, but I suggest that you [edit] your answer to emphasize your guesses of Švindl and Svršky and providing gameplay reasons you think they might match.

It's not a full answer, but it's an honest attempt at providing useful information.

@ryanyuyu how am I supposed to provide gameplay reasons for why I think they should match when the original question has nothing about gameplay? The only lead is the name, so of course that's what I use to find a game they are looking for.


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Can Jinxed Idol be activated many times in a turn?
Irecently played a game with my group and I used Jinxed Idol at the beginning of my end step so I sacrificed a small 1/1 token to pass to 1 of my 3 opponents (next in turn after me) but then a game of hot potato began.
Me sacrificing token and passing it to next person in turn.
Them “I sacrifice this to pass to another person”
2nd person does same thing to third person,
3rd P does same to me, so I sacrificed another token and pass it to next person, they then sacked another creature and this is how it went until one person (not the person who’s turn it was at the end of my turn) controlled the idol but no creatures left to sac.
So is this allowed or have we been too ambitious with the wording as it doesn’t specify when you can do it but it’s not an instant either.
Also can I in response to my own sacking of a creature sacrifice another creature using jinxed idol and repeat process until I sacrifice as many as I want? Then let it resolve and pass to opponent?

You played correctly.
Jinxed Idol has an activated ability (in addition to the triggered ability that causes its controller damage). Activated abilities can be activated by a player who has priority, and unless there is a restriction written into the ability itself, there is not a limit to how many times it can be activated on a single turn. As long as you can pay the cost, you can activate the ability.

602.1. Activated abilities have a cost and an effect. They are written as “[Cost]: [Effect.] [Activation instructions (if any).]”

117.1b A player may activate an activated ability any time they have priority.

Once an opponent gains control of Jinxed Idol, they can now use the activated ability the next time they have priority.
While the activated ability is on the stack, you could activate it again in response, but unless you get some benefit from sacrificing creatures, this wouldn't help you. The second activation would go on top of the stack, and after everyone passes priority, it would resolve, giving control of Jinxed Idol to your opponent. Then, if everyone passes priority again, the other activation would resolve, which would also give control of Jinxed Idol to your opponent. But because your opponent already controls it at that point, there would be no effect from trying to give control of it to your opponent again.
Technically, your opponent could activate Jinxed Idol after your second activation resolves but before your first activation resolves... in which case you would gain control of Jinxed Idol back temporarily, before your original activation resolves and control goes back to your opponent. But unless your opponent actually wants Jinxed Idol; they can just wait until all your activations have resolved, and then activate it themselves to get rid of it.

You can play Jinxed Idol's activated ability whenever you can play an instant, as long as you have priority and the creature to sacrifice to pay the cost.
Your opponents can do the same if they control the Jinxed Idol and have priority.
You can respond to the ability by playing the ability again before the ability resolves, if you have priority.

Your final paragraph is a bit unclear, but it sounds to me as though you're saying that you can respond to an opponent giving you the idol by giving away the idol before your opponent's donation resolves. This doesn't work.

Apologies I mean I have the idol, I sacrifice a creature, but in response to me sacking the creature I activate the affect of idol, so I sacrifice a 2nd creature, in response to that I trigger it again to sacrifice a 3rd 4th or 5th creature, then when I have nothing left I want to sack let it resolve and pass it to an opponent. Or is this not possible?

@LyndonBrocklesby you can, and at the end of it all whoever you first were going to pass the idol to would have it. If you're using it as an outlet to get off effects when your creatures die that's not too bad, otherwise you're probably better off just using it the once.

You all played it correctly, at least legally - though that's a lot of creatures being sacrificed to pass the "hot potato" around. Lets look at your real question. It's your turn (active player(AP)), there are 3 other players(non-active players (NAP1, NAP2, NAP3), you have the idol and 3 1/1 creature tokens. Lets look at how this works.

AP uses Jinxed idol, targeting NAP1 and sacrificing a 1/1 token.
AP keeps priority and  uses Jinxed idol, targeting NAP2 and sacrificing a 1/1 token.
AP keeps priority and  uses Jinxed idol, targeting NAP3 and sacrificing a 1/1 token.
All players pass priority, the top on the stack resolves and NAP3 controls the idol.
All players pass priority, the top on the stack resolves and NAP2 controls the idol.
All players pass priority, the top on the stack resolves and NAP1 controls the idol.

This is fully legal, but a bit complicated and rarely something you'd want to do:
First while the other players NAP2 and NAP3 did control the idol for a few seconds, they don't control it at the beginning of their upkeep so it does nothing to them, only NAP1, if he still controls it when his turn starts, will take any damage from it.
Second you now are down 3 creatures, it will take NAP1 only 1 to give you the idol back - using it only once would still have thrown it to NAP1, and given you 2 more tokens to use however you needed to.
NAP3 or NAP2 could have sacrificed a creature while they had the idol to pass it, but it wouldn't have mattered because the idol would still keep moving in reverse order through the players you targeted with it. In the end it would still be in NAP1's lap - and if they had creatures they were willing to sacrifice they could always pass it on again.
Generally you want to use something like this at the last second - block a creature that doesn't have trample and sacrifice it to the idol since it's going to die anyways or at the end of the turn on the player before you, right before your turn starts and you would take damage. If you have something that gives you benefits when your creatures die like Grave Pact sacrificing tokens like this could be made more useful - but there are better outlets like Ashnod's Altar for that,


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How to score the play of this Cribbage round?
Two players kept the same hands: 2 threes, 1 four, 1 five.
The play went as follows (count is in brackets, scoring was quickly beyond us)

Player 1 led with a 3             [=  3]
Player 2 followed with a three    [=  6]
Player 1 followed with a three    [=  9]
Player 2 followed with a three    [= 12]
Player 1 followed with a four     [= 16]
Player 2 followed with a four     [= 20]
Player 1 followed with a five     [= 25]
Player 2 followed with a five     [= 30]

How does one score this round? (Counting the crib and hands are irrelevant to this, just the play, please.)

3
3 scores 2 for the pair
3 scores 6 for the triple
3 scores 12 for the quadruple
4 scores nothing
4 scores 2
5 scores nothing
5 scores 2.
And then that last play also scores 1 for being the last card played to that series, since the opponent has no cards to play and must say "go" at that time.

None of the plays scores a run, as there are other (foreign) cards that interrupt the runs.
Bicycle rules:

it is important to keep track of the order in which cards are played to determine whether what looks like a sequence or a run has been interrupted by a "foreign card." Example: Cards are played in this order: 8, 7, 7, 6. The dealer pegs 2 for 15, and the opponent pegs 2 for pair, but the dealer cannot peg for run because of the extra seven (foreign card) that has been played.

So, in other words, double runs can't be scored during play?  (And instead of playing the second 4, it would have meant another point to have played the 5 for a three-card run...)

Exactly right. The double runs only score in the counting of hands (and then only as a shorthand way of counting all the combinations of runs; they're equivalent).

Thanks very much!  It has been eons since I've played, and my opponent is new to the game.  We were trying to add up all the double, etc. runs and got boggled!


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Identify this game - strange yellow plastic piece
We recently purchased the game Cootie second hand (Good Will style), and inside the box we found a piece that we are pretty sure doesn't belong. It's a curved plastic yellow piece that we think came from a different game and was included for some reason in this box.

There is writing on the end: BART INDUSTRIES INC and some other text that I can't make out.
So does this come from another game? Or is it something else entirely?
Edit
Dimensions are approx. 2.5" tall, with about a 1" diameter base (the first photo below is slightly misleading due to the hidden base on the object and the space at the end of the ruler)

That looks familiar, I think it's the tail or horn from a toy animal. Can you tell us its size?

Dimensions added

It appears to be the tail piece from "Zoo it yourself" Tupperware animal toys.
https://www.amazon.com/Tupperware-Tuppertoys-Zoo-It-Yourself-5-piece-ELEPHANT/dp/B00FN34D34

You can see the individual pieces here:

Nice Find! I added another photo off of Google Image search of "tupperware Tupper toys"

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What is the highest game score theoretically possible in Scrabble using 1 player and the International Scrabble Dictionary?
This is one for simulation and some guesses on the strategy to used e.g. is it best to always get the bonus every turn or do the most combinations even if it doesn't use up all the letters every turn.
You don't need to definitively prove your answer is the highest (which is way too hard) just come up with a reasonable answer using a particular strategy
Defining a strategy  (such the following) would reduce the computing power needed:
Long word:
Find all the 8 and 14 letter words that are respectively 1 and 7 letters longer than 7 letter words.
Determine what subsets have a long continuous net of those words together.
Remove those that use more of the individual letters than the Scrabble set allows.
Finally lay the net on the board as a standard one player game and determine the score.

This is a very interesting question to me, but I doubt that anyone can currently PROVE what the highest theoretically possible score is.  I imagine that there is no definitive answer to this question possible with our current computing power.

It's not technically dependent on the strategy: given sufficient computing power (and time), this can be solved explicitly.

All that needs to be done is agree on the dictionary.

@LeppyR64 That's why all competitive Scrabble is played with a standard word list, which human players do their best to memorize.

In tournament rules, words stand if unchallenged. Ditto if the first word isn't placed on the centre star. One could thus place two invalid triple-triple-triples and one triple-triple-double and not challenge oneself. How to distribute the tiles is left as an exercise for the reader.


text:
What is the lowest score scrabble game possible if both players place valid words on each turn?
Probably the shortest game ended in a negative score when both players passed in consective turns and players could even worse deliberately but snarling the board so badlY that words can't be placed just like many players achieve partially. I think the think the killer end would be some sort of word square. How low a score game can achieving by locking up the board using official English scrabble dictionary? The end is when both players no matter what they draw can still not play a valid word on the board.

My guess would be 4 words each with a length of 5, making a box that crosses on the 2nd and 4th letter each. The corner letters would have to be something that does not allow for 2 letter words

There is a professional game where they didn't play a word and both scored in the negatives

Related: What are the odds in Scrabble of not being able to make a legal move on opening turn?

What is your end criterion? Is it (a) no player can play a word no matter what they draw from the bag in an exchange; that is, every combination of letters is invalid; or (b) neither player has a legal move on their rack currently and as a result they both pass? If the latter, suppose the players each played one move and drew tiles that could not form a word on the resulting board; how is that meaningfully different from both players passing without moving?

Option (a) is the end criterion.


text:
What are rules for an overcall that have wide acceptance?
This question was inspired by this link, http://www.jazclass.aust.com/bridge/br14.htm which required a five card suit with two honors, at least one of them a queen or higher, for a one-level overcall. Hence, QTxxx was acceptable, but not Qxxxx or JTxxx.
A variation of this rule is that you need five cards in a suit (headed by two honors) for a one level overcall, and six cards in a suit (headed by two honors) for a two level overcall.
Another rule I've heard is that the number of honors plus the number of cards in a suit ought to at least equal the number of tricks. Marty Bergen, at least, in "Points, Schmoints" would allow a one level overcall (seven tricks) with four cards in a suit if there are three honors. Likewise, he and his partner, Larry Cohen, would allow a two level overcall (eight tricks) with a five card suit if it were headed by three honors. They would, of course, want two honors (however defined), for one and two level overcalls with five and six cards in the suit respectively.
Are there any rules that most experts agree on regarding overcalls?

This (very old) question of mine has been edited by "fresh eyes", who appended an "answer" in his comment, and also received an upvote. Would you consider reopening it?

I do a lot of "weak jump overcalls".  That is to say, if my opponents open with 1H or 1S, and I have 6 clubs or 6 diamonds, and 6-9 HCP, I would invariably jump to 3C or 3D respectively.  (Well, I say invariably, but vulnerability and points below the line would actually be taken seriously into consideration.)
With 7 or 8 clubs I might jump to the 4 or 5 level.  I'm that serious about overcalls.
This is all based on the same principle as my favoured, weak, 1NT system.  It's better to get in there with a balanced hand and 12 HCP than it is to give the opponents all the bidding space they need.  Even though you will sometimes get severely doubled and go down in flames.  It's a risk you have to take, when quite often average players just have no idea to deal with aggressive overcalling, and you can totally take apart their game accordingly.
I'm always amazed when I play online with a randomly picked-up partner, and they chastise me for weak overcalls and general interferential play, when the alternative is to let the opponents bid an easy 1NT-3NT or something and take the match without any difficulty.  Going down and giving points to your opponents is not a crime against Bridge play - as long as you still have a chance of coming back and taking the match!  (I will agree, though, that keeping on overbidding and refusing to let the rubber end, when you are thousands of penalty points down already, is very irritating.  I assume the people who do this are mostly obnoxious kids...)

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text:
Do multiple encounters combine for craft?
On page ten of the rulebook, there is the rule:

If there is more than one Enemy that attacks by Strength on a space and they have the same encounter number, they fight as one during battle, adding their Strength together with just one attack roll to make a single, combined stack score.

Does this rule still apply if a player encounters two or more enemies that attack by Craft? What if one enemy attacks by Strength, but the other attacks by Craft?

You should specify which edition of Talisman you are asking about.

I am assuming 4th edition (Fantasy Flight Games) here.
For the two cases you laid out:

If there are two Craft enemies on the same space, then according to the rules as written, their craft scores would be combined. The rules for Psychic Combat (combat using Craft) are literally Ctrl-C Ctrl-V the rules for Battles (combat using Strength), and then find-replace "Strength" with "Craft". So, yes, that rule does apply for encountering two enemies that attack with Craft.
If a Craft enemy and a Strength enemy are on the same space, both enemies are fought separately (one in Battle, one in Psychic Combat). The lower encounter number is fought first, then the other.

For reference, the exact text from the 4e rules, page 12, is: "Psychic combat is resolved in exactly the same manner as battles (see “Battles” on page 10), except: 1. Craft is substituted for Strength. 2. No Object can prevent the loss of a life."

Your interpretation also matches the way that the official Talisman app behaves, so I presume that it is correct.

This rule only applies for Strength, unless there is some errata they choose not to print. I hope this help!


text:
(Meta) game design to facilitate educational game design workshop/class
I would like to develop a framework to support teachers and their students in developing mini-games for their class.
For example, a math teacher organizes several workshops and classes with his or her students to develop 2 or 3 mini-games. The objective is not to have playable games, although that would be nice. The objective is twofold:

Promote design thinking and design skills, bot for the teacher and
students;
Use the game design workshop as an instrument to think deeply about the (in this example) mathematical content being taught.

Ad 1. The teacher learns to think about levels, providing challenge, using imagination and fantasy, personalization, feedback mechanisms, social interaction, engagement, etc in relation to his teaching.
Ad 2. To be clear about the second: students develop challenges that fit within their game, The teacher supports them in thinking about relevant challenges, but in order to make a 'playable challenge', they first have to really understand the content and outcome of the challenge. The hope is this leads to a deeper understanding of the topics.
Are there any examples on how to organize the workshops/class in a gameful manner as well? In other words, what other game-to-design-a-game games are there? And what are their features? I am working in a low-tech environment, so preferably the examples do not require too many technical resources or programming skills, but mostly focus on fun and creativity.
EDIT: Just found an interesting and widely cited paper by Druckman that compares game/simulation DESIGN vs game/simulation PLAY and concludes that (in this case) DESIGN has much stronger effects on retention and learning than PLAY. The approach is very rigorous and I believe his results can be generalized. However, to be critical, I would also predict that playing a game that is designed by a lay-designer would be less effective than doing the design yourself (as a layman). Search for "Druckman - Onstage or behind the scenes? Relative learning benefits of simulation role-play and design"

Well... If one wants to teach game design, he should be quite capable in the field himself. Crafting a "gamified" workshop plan should be among the competences of the teacher ;) My point being, there are some good courses/books on the subject, likt the Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton, but I know of no "gamified" versions of these resources. Also, you didnt mention the age of the students. Are they college students? High school?

It looks like you hit submit before finishing your train of thought. Could you edit and add the rest of your post please?

Why this overwhelming imperative by today's teachers to teach students to be terrible at something; to reward those students for this effort that merely embarrasses most of them; and for teachers to wade into complicated areas far from their areas of expertise? Some things in life are complicated, and best left to experts. The notion that one can teach a subject that one is not already competent in oneself is beyond absurd.

Frankly, I will be astounded if any tangible result comes from such a class, beyond the bullying of any student who actually shows aptitude and is of below average interpersonal skills.

I just had a baby born, so I am sorry for not being able to comment or refine my question, but I appreciate the feedback so far (especially K.L. and Jules - @Pieter, we can have a philosophical discussion about this and about pedagogy, didactic skills, motivation etc., but as you will understand I have little time for that. Also, I am not sure I understand your comments, so maybe I have to make the question a bit clearer as well).

@K.L. thanks for your comment. The age is between 16 and 20 (final years highschool, first year college/uni).

I think you could provide a set structure for the game mechanism while keeping the actual content of the game to be defined by teacher and students.
This allows less skilled people to join in while these boundaries (you may call them guiding principles) to provide guidance and inspiration.
Example: think of a customised happy families (kwartet in Dutch) as one of the easiest examples. The content could be the actual course material.

thanks @Jules, this is the kind of answer I was looking for. I think that such an approach does help teachers and their students go from scratch to a rudimentary game design.

If you are interested in redesigning a classroom experience into a game format, I would recommend the author The Multiplayer Classroom by Lee Sheldon. In addition to discussing his own experiences as a college professor trying to teach game design by turning his course into a game – and incorporating game lingo such as mobs for quizzes, raids for presentations, game master for teacher , it contains several case studies of teachers redesigning their courses or classrooms as game experiences.  Perhaps the most relevant example would be the case study of a seventh grade math class that was transformed into a multiplayer classroom.


text:
Looking for a really dizzying boardgame
Long ago, I think it was in the 1980s-1990s, I once played a game that really made me dizzy.
I think it was a game made by a German game maker. It was a 2 or 3 player game played on a round board, consisting of 6 concentric circles and connecting lines and spirals. The goal of the game  was to create certain combinations of stones, by which you could capture stones of your opponent.
Because you were constantly looking around circles and spirals, you just became dizzy, something you didn't notice while playing, but you noticed when you stood up...
I would like to buy this game , but I don't know the name.

There are 4 pages of spiral games on bgg. Maybe it is one of those: http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/160261/games-spirals/page/1?

This sounds like a variant of circular chess. There is a 1993 board game under the name of Noble Celts that comes close to your description. (There are 8 concentric circles instead of 6.) Here's the board:


text:
How does the medic work in Pandemic - In the lab once a disease is cured?
The In the Lab expansion requires you to move cubes into dishes in order to cure diseases and beat the game.
Once a disease have been cured, the "automatic" ability of the Medic is that all of the cured disease cubes are removed when he enters a city.
In the rule-set it is stated that the ability of the medic cannot move any cubes to the sample dishes.
I interpret this as once a disease is cured, the Medic can no longer move any cubes of that color to the dishes, because when he is done taking his move action, the city already has all the cubes removed, before the treat action could be taken.
Is this the correct interpretation of the rules?

Yes, your interpretation is correct.
From the rules for Pandemic In the lab:

A cube removed from the board by Events, the Containment Specialist’s
  ability, the Medic’s ability to automatically remove cured disease
  cubes, etc. may not be placed in a sample dish.

From the rules for Pandemic:

The Medic removes all cubes, not 1, of the same color when doing the
  Treat Disease action. If a disease has been cured , he automatically
  removes all cubes of that color from a city, simply by entering it or
  being there. This does not take an action

I could find nowhere in the rules that said the medic's ability was optional.


text:
What are the reasons behind naming the "community chest" and "chance" cards in Monopoly?
Why are the cards called so?
Are there any plausible reasons as why they are included in the game of monopoly?  Does their naming have anything to do with real-world namings?

Community Chest is named from the original Atlantic City version of Monopoly.
In Atlantic City, the Community Chest was a welfare organisation.  Therefore, Community Chest cards are more likely than not to give money.
On the other hand, Chance cards are more likely to move you to a random 'chance' location.

Atlantic City is also primarily known for its casinos and gambling, hence 'Chance' being thematic.

@Affe: The first Casino in Atlantic City dates from only 1974; Monopoly has antecedents dating back to 1903, and was published in its current standard form in 1935., almost 40 years earlier.

@Forget I was ever here :There were casinos in Atlantic city in the 1920s, during prohibition. "Racetrack gambling was legalized again in 1939, but despite the fact that gambling was illegal in the state until then illegal casino and bookmaking operations, slot machines, and numbers rackets abounded in Atlantic City." Reference : «The Complete History of Gambling in Atlantic City», https://www.njonlinegambling.com/atlantic-city-history/


text:
What is this stacking game with rotating coloured sides?
If anyone could help I would love to find the name of this game.

As you stack the block the blocked the sides on the block below rotate and they change color (see the stickers) and there are four "bases" or the bottoms in total.  Have been searching the internet for hours now to no avail, hoping someone has seen this before!

Is this a multiplayer thing, or more like a one-man puzzle game?

This is from Chameleon

Its the 3-D building game with a colorful twist! As players race to
  build towers using their Chameleon' blocks, there's a surprise with
  every move - the Chameleon blocks magically change their colors!
Place one red block on a tower and the block below turns green. Choose
  another red block, add it to the tower, and the block below changes to
  red. You'll need skill and luck to correctly "predict" what colors
  will appear. Matching colors earns you another turn. If block colors
  don't match, dismantle the tower, block by block, and start from the
  ground up!


text:
Board game dice-unrecognized
I found a white die in our box of board games and I don't know what game it belongs to.
It has six sides with white numbers on them; 1 - 6, one number to a side. Each number has an orange circle around it.
Does anyone know what game this die might belong to?

Also, could you please provide a picture of the die?

This is hopeless without  a picture.

A white number in an orange circle? Like this?

Quick notes: "six sided die" can just be described as "d6". Is it "normal" die size, or something bigger/smaller? Is it a solid orange circle with a white number inside, or just an orange circle line with another color inside and then white letters? What color is outside/inside the circle?]


text:
How can I save myself from Arcbond?
I run a white and red burn deck with an Arcbond and want to be able to save myself from taking damage but still have it deal the damage to everyone else.
Are there any white or red cards that could do this?

In what format?

Is there an enchantment version of this card? I would quite like to cast it on an indestructible creature and cause chaos with it...

Choose a card from your format, undefined, to give the targeted creature lifelink.

Genius. Or just run creatures with lifelink.

Cards that I would suggest are Purity, Personal Sanctuary (when doing it on your turn) or maybe Runed Halo (naming the card you are going to cast Arcbond on)

There are a couple of common types of damage mitigation cards in those colors (primarily white): damage replacement effects and damage prevention effects. A search for damage replacement effects in those colors finds 3 cards:

Ajani Steadfast's ultimate ability says

−7: You get an emblem with "If a source would deal damage to you or a planeswalker you control, prevent all but 1 of that damage."

Gisela, Blade of Goldnight has the ability

If a source would deal damage to you or a permanent you control, prevent half that damage, rounded up.

Hedron-Field Purists can level up to gain the abilities

If a source would deal damage to you or a creature you control, prevent 1 of that damage.

and

If a source would deal damage to you or a creature you control, prevent 2 of that damage.

A different search for damage prevention effects in those colors yields another 18 cards.


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In Scrabble, how to determine the main word if the player has just played one single tile but formed two different words?
Suppose that a Scrabble player has just made his/her turn. He/she played just a single tile but made two different words. One of the newly formed words is horizontal and another one is vertical.
I am quite new to Scrabble, and I know there is a concept called the main word. I wonder how to determine the main word in the above case. Is it simply determined randomly?

How do you determine between your right and left which is your main shoe?

the player takes credit for both words created.

Main words are not a concept of the game of Scrabble itself, only of the written Scrabble notation commonly used to record tournament games (and likely also found in some computerised versions of the game), although it has since been incorporated into some rule sets that also outline the notation system.
Since the notation system is used simply to track moves, it doesn't matter which combination in your example would be chosen as the main word - both words still score the same within the game, and the notated move would still create the same two words on the board if the game were to be replayed.
As such it doesn't matter if the main word is selected randomly, always horizontal, always vertical, alphabetically, or otherwise.

Highest-scoring could potentially be an option for how to choose it, too.

I bet in practice it is up to whatever the person keeping score picks.

+1. BTW "alphabetically" wouldn't be a well-defined way of choosing the main word. As you might simply have a move with two identical words.

@GrzegorzOledzki That would be a more common problem when going with "highest-scoring", but you still have a point.

@SomeoneSomewhere: Highest scoring seems a bit pointless, as you still need a tie-breaker when they score equal.


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I am trying to remember the name of a card game
Here's everything I can remember about it:
I believe I first found it on the Pagat website.
I think it's a trick taking game, there are 5 (perhaps less or more?) different hands of play and I think the dealer chooses one of them based on his hand and throughout the course of the game the dealer must pick each of them once, being unable to choose the same one twice.
Each player has there turn choosing one of the "hands" to play until all players have picked each hand once then the game would end.
The one other thing I remember are the rules stating something about making a chart for each hand and player and marking off when each hand gets played to keep track of what's been picked and what's left to play.
Barbu has somewhat of the ideas here but that's not the game I'm looking for.

Sounds a little like Nyet, but I don't think it's the same.

I think the game is Trex, also known as Trix, Tricks, or Ticks.
The game is played by four players and consists of four cycles of five games each. During each cycle, a new player is the dealer. The dealer chooses in which order the five contracts are played (one in each game).
The Wikipedia article notes that it's similar to Barbu.

Could you elaborate on why you think that this game matches the poster's description?


text:
Board game about setting fairy tales right
In my childhood (late '80s to early '90s) there was a board game around where you were part of sort of a book patrol. You had to set fairy tales right that went wrong.

The main story as far as I remember was about Long John Silver and the treasure he was after. The treasure island being the map you played on.
You gained "stars" whenever you did win out in a part of the game.
You fought the adversaries from different stories and also tried to overcome traps while you travelled the map.
You played as a group trying to achieve the same thing as sort of a party.

Edit:
I remember now that the stars you could use to increase your attributes. Also on some map fields there were traps where you had multiple choices (and or rolls?) which could lead to you becoming trapped, or succeeding in avoiding the trap.
One point I'm unsure about is... I always took it as a precurser (despite different setting) to The Dark Eye (thus maybe a Schmidt Spiele game). At least from what I remember of the box the box itself was similar to the later Dark Eye 1st edition boxes.

I found it in the meantime. The game was called:
Der Geheimbund des Schwarzen Auges   and nicknamed DSA Junior
Seemingly it is only available in german (which could be the reason why it was so hard to find out). Back then it seemingly did not have a long run as only a few boxes and books were released. Its purpose was to introduce kids with roleplaying games and also to some core concepts from dsa (english the dark eye).

If you managed to solve your own question, make sure to mark your own answer as the solution to the problem. :)

@Phil  tnx forgot about that^^'


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Does anyone recognize this monster family board game?
I am gonna drive myself nuts because I can not remember the name of a board game from my childhood. It would have been between 1993–1999.
The box was shaped like a creepy castle or house and there was a laughing skull piece (like it's eyes glowed and it had this evil laugh). All your player pieces were tiny brightly colored skulls and the family of the house was all these monsters (granny mummy, Lord Skull?, a little girl vampire, I think a cousin or uncle was a werewolf) I think there was a rubber spider too. You had to go through the house (which may have been the box) and there was a goop soup monster. It Actually came with a book explaining how the soup monster was made.
It had the same humor of The Addams Family or The Munsters but was like a niche or indy game.

That's a hard one to find. This doesn't match everything you remember, but closest I could find is Horror House: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17754/horror-house/images

The game is called Creepy Towers.

The box was shaped like a creepy castle or house and there was a
laughing skull piece
and you had to go through the house (which may
have been the box)

From the publisher's description:

Includes light-activated laughing skull

and all your player pieces were tiny brightly colored skulls
I think there was a rubber spider too…

From the publisher's description:

Includes ... two rubber creatures

It would have been between 1993-1999

The game was published in 1995

Actually came with a book

From the publisher's description:

as kids read Creepy Towers

And from the BoardGameGeek entry (linked above)

Within Creepy Towers there is a board game, short story

Maybe Which Witch? / Ghost Castle / Haunted House? The player pieces aren't skulls but it does have a glowing skull that rolled down some stairs and knocked your piece over. And it has a set of cards with characters on them.

The game is called "Creepy Towers".

Can you provide more information about this game and why you think it is a match?

@JoeW She's right though - loathe to add my own answer when this is correct https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/167495/creepy-towers

@MattThrower That wasn't a comment on the answer being right or wrong but the fact that the answer just contained the name of a game with no link or other information explaining why it is thought to be the correct game,

@joeW sure, I get that. I'm saying I'm not sure what to do in this situation  - post my own answer, edit this one, wait.

@MattThrower Do what you feel is best as this is at best a poor answer when it was posted since it just included a name and was later edited to at least include a link.

@MattThrower - Based on the general practices on english.SE: If you came up with the answer yourself, but then found that someone else had posted it but poorly explained/referenced it, then please go ahead and post your own good quality answer (especially if the first answerer has ignored requests to edit in explanation/research). If you didn't know the correct answer until you saw this one, please edit the research into this one.


text:
Go game board - what is this on the back?
The back of my (19×19) go board looks like this:

Does anyone know what this is? Is this for a different game?

Looks like a board for Xiangqi, with the river in the middle and the palaces on either end.


text:
How semi-cooperative games handle players who have nothing to lose?
After watching Jumanji I wondered if the eponymous game was meant to be a co-op or a competitive game. Having difficulty figuring it out on my own, I have asked that question on a different stack exchange, and that's how I found out about games that are semi-cooperative: where one player might win, but all players can also lose.
I used to think this kind of games would be unplayable, as the cooperative part can quickly crumble once players whose assistance is required realise that they have no chance to win ("If I can't win, what's the point of me trying just to give you the win?" etc). Turns out, however, that those games do exist, as shown in the list above.
How do they circumvent the problem?
Out of all those mentioned I have only played Arkham Horror and for the life of me I was sure that it's pure co-op (wasn't the goal to defeat the Old Ones together?). Jumanji itself isn't much of help either - it basically forces the players to metagame and doesn't seem to give any reward of note to the winner (turning it into a co-op game in all but the rules).

Betrayal at the House on the Hill has an interesting structure somewhat like what you've described. Players all basically start on the same team, cooperatively exploring a haunted house gathering tools/skills and preparing for the betrayal. The betrayal is publicly known and the game alters drastically based on the circumstances of the betrayal. The nature of it is based on a scenario in a deterministic booklet. The end states vary based on scenario which is usually the betrayer vs everyone else but can also be a free for all and anyone can kill or be killed at all times depending on goals

"If I can't win, what's the point of me trying just to give you the win?" - sorry can you clarify, from your description I understand there are three different outcomes for a player, you won, you did not lose (some one else took the first place though) and everyone has lost. If I understand correctly, one would still prefer not losing (second outcome) to losing (third outcome) - same as in any other game. So could you clarify the difference?

There is really not much that you can do in rules to totally eliminate this problem, but you can try to reduce it.
One possibility is to implement catch-up mechanisms so that it is rather unlikely that a player falls so far behind that (s)he has no chance of winning any more before the game is close to the end.
Another one is to have all or at least part of the victory points secret, so no one knows exactly who is in the lead and by what margin.
Similar to the one above is to give players secret objectives they have to fulfill, up to the point where 2, 3 or even 4 out of 5 players can win the game.
But in general it depends on players' personalities whether semi-cooperative games work or not. The players should be wise enough not to crush another player to the point where (s)he can't win anymore. Semi-cooperative games only work when players find a healthy balance between acquiring progress to their individual goal of winning and investing enough in fighting against the mechanisms of evil that threatens to defeat all players. Being too altruistic and others will win, being to selfish and all players will lose.
There are players who are so ruthless that they try to blackmail the others like "either you let me win or no one will win" - those players are unsuitable for this kind of game (or vice versa).

The social contract does most of the heavy lifting
The social contract is an unspoken agreement between all the players of the game as to how the game should be played to maximize the enjoyment of all the players.  (Sometimes it's a spoken agreement, especially in tabletop roleplaying games.  Regardless, it's always present.)
The goal of a game isn't to win.  The goal is to have an enjoyable play experience.  That's why Cards Against Humanity is a much more popular game than Rock-Paper-Scissors, even though your odds of winning are lower.
Of course, winning generally contributes to the experience of a game.  For some people, in some games, it contributes a great deal.  But in other games, victory takes a back seat to the process of the game itself.
Semi-cooperative games are almost exclusively highly thematic, highly variable games.  These are not the sorts of games that attract players whose primary method of enjoying games is to 'win'.  Instead these games are designed to reward players who enjoy creating a narrative together, who want to do things just to see what will happen, and have a good story to tell at the end.
This means that players are less likely to feel dissatisfied because they aren't winning as much as one of the other players, and are still incentive to avoid the big loss conditions.
Also, even if a player does decide to tank the whole thing out of frustration, that doesn't necessarily mean a negative play experience for everyone else.  There's a reason that LEEROOY JENKINS! became the battlecry of the internet for a while.  Dramatic disaster can be just as fun as dramatic victory.
Which is not to say that a discontented player can't ruin the experience for other players.  The mechanical structures that Volker talks about are built in to reinforce it against this sort of behavior, and they're there for a reason.  But the bulk of the heavy lifting is done social contract, by making the focus of the game be about something other than victory.

1
I think terminology here is a big issue: semi-coop is simply a wrong way to define a game, and after a decade or playing hundreds of games with the widest possible audience I honestly can't remember anyone ever using it. I know it's used on BGG, but to me it sounds really weird.
A game is either cooperative or competitive. In a coop you must collaborate to win, in a competitive not. There are some variant to both (team vs team, traitors, alliances and diplomacy) but the bottom line is the same: a game is coop or it's not.
Why this matters? Because in a cooperative game the only way to win is to cooperate. As simple as that, that's everyone's top priority, be it playing against the game or another team, if you don't cooperate you lose.
Then, once the dust has settled down, once everyone is happy because the game is won, many games have ways to declare who was the best player; that player is now the winner among the players, but every one won anyway.
That's why the idea of semi cooperative is odd. There is no semi, you either cooperate to win or you lose.

2
Arcanist Lupus already mentioned the social aspect. It's something that come up every once in a while on RPG.se too, but every time I expose my theory I get downvoted brutally, so let me try here too :-D
It's really simple: no one has been kidnapped by the Nazists, put on a train, chained in a cold wooden shack and forced to play a game with other people. We are all happily living in a very nice environment where no one has a gun to our head to force us to play anything nor to force us to play with people that we don't like.
In my current city I manage a group of 850 players. We meet and play every Wednesday for 5-6 hours in a row: we get to know each others, we interact a lot, we form friendships. And we form ideas of each others play style. So on Wednesday, if someone invites me to a table, I can still say no if I don't like their gaming style an then join another table. Or I can sit there all evening drinking a beer enjoying conversations, and then invite the people I like at my place to play something else.
And maybe I'll invite some specific people to play Terra Mystica because I want some very competitive players, but I'll not invite some of them to play Mage Knight because last time we tried it's been a disaster.
The game rules do not  need to babysit me or solve any issue: I am an adult and I can choose which people I like to play which game with. And when. And for how long. Etc.

I totally disagree with your point #1. Semi-coop is a well established term in gaming. Let's assume we have a typical competetive game of economics, where the winner is who is the richest: you build factories, produce goods, sell them, use the profit to build more/better factories etc. Now add a new element to the game that can make *all players lose: environmental damage caused by your factories, hordes of barbarians jealous of the whealth of your city, civil unrest by uncontend workes or something like that. If every player still tries to maximize their whealth, that negative parameter ...

... will soon exceed a certain limit and the game ends without any winner - all players have lost. But there is something the players can do against that: spend some of their money not into the primary goal but into some combined effort to keep that parameter low (buying recycling equipment, building up a defence force, building facilities to make workers happy...). If the combined effort of all players is sufficient, then there will be an individual winner. That's why this type of game is semi-cooperative.


text:
FreeCell: How many cards can be moved at once?
I'm working on a FreeCell implementation and I'm currently stuck determining how many cards the user is allowed to move from tableau to tableau at once. I've seen multiple formulas for this, but no explanation them. (empty_columns is decreased by 1 if we move to an empty column)

2 ^ empty_columns + free_cells
2 ^ empty_columns * (free_cells+1)
(empty_columns+1) * (free_cells+1)

What I'd like to know is if one of these is correct or (even better) anyone knows a small algorithm to move cards like the in Microsoft implementation
I'm asking this in this stack because this question is not about the implementation itself, but about the game mechanics.

Clearly, 52 is an upper bound.

Technically, one
In FreeCell, you are only allowed to move 1 card at a time, either to or from a free cell or from one stack to another.
That said, it is trivial to move an entire stack of N+1 cards, where N is the number of free cells, by moving N cards to the cells, moving the last card to the new stack, and then pulling down the stored cards onto the new stack.
Most computer implementations of FreeCell allow you to move entire stacks without having to step through the intermediate storage on the free cells (as long as there are enough free cells).  An implementation without this ability would be totally playable, but it would be aggravating to use because simple actions would take significantly more work on the part of the player.
Empty columns can be used as free cells, simply adding 1 to your free cell count.  But they're also much more powerful than that, because they can hold stacks.
If you have a single empty column, you can transfer N+1 cards to that column, N+1 cards to the new stack, and then transfer the N+1 cards from the formerly empty stack onto the new column, for a total of 2*(N+1) cards moved.  Obviously, this only works if you're not transferring cards to the empty column, in which case you're limited to only using the free cells, for N+1.
If you have two empty columns, you can transfer 2*(N+1) cards to that column (using the other empty column, N+1 cards to the second column (since you no longer have an empty column to use), then N+1 cards to a new stack, then reverse that process to pull all 4*(N+1) cards onto the new stack.
With three columns, the third column will be able to store 4*(N+1) cards, leading to (4+2+1+1)(N+1) = 8(N+1) cards being movable.
I hope you can see at this point that the trend will continue, and the total formula is
(2^M)*(N+1), where M is then number of empty columns and N is the number of empty stacks.
All of that said, transfers that utilize columns to their maximum effect are more complicated, less common, and less labor intensive than just using free cells.  If your implementation forces players to use columns manually it won't have the same excessive effect on quality of play that not using the free cell shortcut would have.  Experienced players would probably be unhappy, but it would still be playable.
Additionally, it's not necessarily obvious to new players how to get the maximum transfer using 2+ empty columns, so by doing those maneuvers for them you are possibly allowing players to make moves that they couldn't figure out on their own.  Remember, the goal here is to shortcut routine, obvious, and boring moves without actually providing strategic aid to the player.  That's a judgement call on your part.
My vague memories of Microsoft's earlier implementations was that it either only shortcutted free cell moves, or free cell + one empty column moves, and if you wanted to use more than one empty column you had to figure it out yourself.  I don't remember for sure, though.

Thank you! So that's equivalent to formula #2 in my original question! I can see how allowing this maximum of auto-card-moves might lead to intransparency; is there a less potent formula you'd suggest instead?

this FAQ I've just discovered also describes (2**m)(n+1) as the maximum

@gir as I sort of hinted at, I would lean towards using the free cells + one empty column (2*(Cells +1), with column, Cells+1 without).  That said, the current Microsoft implementation seems to allow the full (2^m)(n+1) move, so using that one wouldn't raise any eyebrows.

neat! I'll probably make this a compile time flag and play around what feels nicer. If anyone's interested, klondike and spider are already implemented: https://gir.st/sol.htm (requires a linux/bsd/osx system)

Any move other than a single card requires enough free cells, either in an empty column or in the talon (the four single spaces above the tableau) to hold the cards.  If, through some miracle of randomness, you have a stack of six cards in the as-dealt tableau and want to move them, you can't -- because there are only four spaces in the talon, and you'd have to move five cards to the talon to move a stack of six.
Now, if you have an empty column, you can move enough cards to fill the talon, then stage them back to the empty tableau column, fill the talon again, then unload all of those cards (by reversing the process) to their new destination.  If you have two free columns, you can do this to load the second column, then load up the first column and talon before starting to unload to the destination.  If you started with two free columns and an empty talon (rather unlikely, but not at all impossible), you could move fifteen cards -- loading two empty columns with five each, then the talon with four, and moving the fifteenth card directly.
Of course, you'll never do that, because the longest sequence of cards you could ever move would be twelve (king down to deuce), and that could only be moved to an empty column (and would still require two additional empty columns).

Thanks, this helps. So what do you thinkof this formula: emtpy_talon * (1+free_columns) + 1? I think this maps what you're saying in §2 ("fill talon, move to tableau, repeat"), or am i still mistaken?

That sounds right.


text:
Paying Extra Rents
Somebody (who was also the banker) just landed on my Vine street with a hotel on it and needed to pay me $1000. However, he gave me an extra $100 bill, which both of us did not notice.
Two other players rolled the dice and took their turns.
After I also took my turn, I started to develop my Yellow group with 7 houses (I had $27 left at the end of the process) and the person who landed on my hotel found out that I had $100 more than I should have had, while he was $100 short. He demanded his money back and that meant I had to sell the houses to pay the "debt".
According to the rules, do I have to?

I'm not familiar with Monopoly specifically but most games have a "dice rolled" policy where once the dice roll everything prior is set in stone. In a tournament, someone may receive a warning, and consistent warnings lead you disqualified. Out of a tournament, you just lose friends and they won't play with you. Again, this is general and I'm not familiar with the intricacies of Monopoly specifically,

Just noticed this was closed as "opinion based" however it is standard game policy (and common sense) that if a mistake is not caught before the next player starts their turn than it is too late to call them out on it. If the rules of Monopoly do not specifically state what to do then, like common law, that standard would apply.  Of course the players can negotiate a settlement if they want, but there is no obligation to. The fact here that TWO other players took their turn... there can be no reasonable way to say NOW fix it! Not opinion, but historical gaming tradition fact.

No you absolutely should not have had to sell the house back in order to pay the extra 100 back to the other player. At worst you should have have undone the transaction so that you had enough money to return the extra 100. I say this because having to sell the houses punishes you as you would end up with less money and 2 fewer houses purchased with the sell back instead of just 1 fewer house with the correct rent given.
The question I would have to ask overall is why was this noticed after you had made your hotel purchases? Could this have been done to put you at a disadvantage as a result of purchasing houses that may have hurt that player? Unless your opponent was a younger player I would think that counting out the correct amount of rent isn't difficult especially when the over payment sounds like it was an extra bill added in.
In the long run there is an iron clad rule I try to stick to in games and that is if a mistake is made and not noticed until later it is allowed to stand as it can be extremely complicated unwind everything to undo it at a later time. The only time this isn't the case is when the mistake would mean forfeiting the game itself. The biggest reasoning for letting mistakes stand is it helps reinforce the need to better pay attention to the game and rules which helps improve how the game is played and make it more enjoyable for everyone.

" if a mistake is made and not noticed until later it is allowed to stand " <- this! Pretty standard policy across many games.

@RebusB  I've never played with people who wouldn't try and undo an honest mistake.  There is no way that allowing cheating is standard policy.  In this case its incredibly easy to rectify and should be done as soon as noticed.

@StartPlayer - its not cheating. It is a mistake that was missed and play continued. After another turn has been taken there may be no way to undo the previous mistake without breaking the game. Unless you are recording each play it would be easy to forget something. So the only fair thing is to accept the mistake and move on. If it was done on purpose, as a cheat, then its up to the other players to catch it in time. If they miss it that is on them, and they better pay more attention from then on.

@StartPlayer - For example in Backgammon if you see the opponent has counted wrong you can call them out on it as soon as he finishes his turn. But once you throw the dice for your turn that opportunity has passed, those are the rules...

@StartPlayer It isn't about being unwilling to undo an honest mistake but the question about what kind of impact undoing that mistake would have. In this case if undoing the mistake meant selling back houses the player that received the extra money would lose more in the long run as you only get half of the purchase price when selling them back. While it may not have been so in this case undoing a mistake could cause an unrelated player impact as well such causing them to lose or preventing a win. What I have found is it is best to learn from these mistakes and prevent them in the future.

Basically as that guy was the banker he was wondering why I had so much money to buy the houses because I had very little money at first. Then, he found out he had $100 less after counting HIS money.

Absolutely - because you were aware at the time and refused to give proper change for the amount tendered.
If this was a dispute about the facts, time has expired - but this is about attempting to correct a blatant cheat on your part, and if you will not remedy I would fully expect you to be ejected from the game as a cheat, and not invited back again.

Do I need to tell you to look at the question again? I said that "both of us were not aware" until the next turn when the guy who paid me extra knew something was wrong.


text:
Coin at the edge of the pocket
A coin was very close to falling into the pocket (let's say 70-30 over the edge). It stayed there for some time.
In one of the plays the striker hit the edge of the board so hard that the coin fell into the pocket (the striker never touched the coin or anywhere near the coin). The colour of the coin was same as the player's coin colour.
What should happen to the coin?

According to the official ICF rules:

71) If a C/m resting perilously at the mouth of the pocket and
  actually falls into the pocket for any reason, it shall be considered
  to have been properly pocketed.

source
So the coin is pocketed.


text:
What are the chances of losing Pandemic on the first turn?
I like probability questions, and it has been a while since tttpp's excellent analysis of losing in the first turn of Forbidden Island. I figured it might be interesting to calculate how likely you are to lose on the first turn in Pandemic. This was inspired by JoeGolton's question about impossible setups, and tttppp's answer referencing a BBG session report.  This question is only interested in figuring the odds of losing the game during the first players turn. To figure out the odds of losing, you will need to the following:
The rules for Pandemic.

Calculate how likely you are to lose by running out of 24 cubes of a single color.
Calculate how likely you are to lose by Outbreaking 8 times.
Calculate how likely you are to draw an Epidemic cards  on the first turn.
Calculate the odds of being able to remove 0 or more cubes from possible chain outbreak cities.
Calculate the odds of no player receiving a Special Event (linked all 5) card that will prevent a loss.
Determine the effect of each difficulty level (4-6 Epidemic cards in evenly divided piles), and for 2-4 Players on the result.

Assume the following:

The First Player character is randomly determined.
The other players out of the 5 roles are randomly determined.
Assume players do not know which Infection cards will be drawn (unless a Special Action card allows it)
Standard Rules and Characters (none from On the Brink)

This happened to us once.  It was epic!  The sheer carnage was fun to watch.

You can't draw two epidemics the first turn.

@Matt, quite right. I was thinking about two epidemics being back to back, but that only.occurs when the top epidemic is at the bottom if It's stack, and the other epidemic is at the top of its stack.

@user1873: Then please fix the question. If you have E=4..6 epidemics in your deck and N=2..4 players, you're really asking about the probability of when you hit your second epidemic, and how likely you are to have 2 or 3 adjacent cities with triples, and then to draw those cities again after the second epidemic.

"Determine the effect of each difficulty level (E=4-6 Epidemic cards in evenly divided piles)" is wrong, the rules say you shuffle each of those subdecks before combining them back. That's why the interval between epidemics is so unpredictable - they're not evenly divided.

The hardest part of computing the probability is determining the best strategy for the players.  I have used a script to simulate games where players use a few simple tactics, and estimated the probability based on these strategies. Given that the strategies I implemented are not the optimal strategy, these figures provide an upper bound on the probability of a first turn loss.
Most of this answer assumes that the players are playing on "Normal" difficulty, that is with five epidemic cards.  To find equivalent probabilities for other difficulties, see the section below entitled "The player deck".
To summarise the results, here is a table showing my estimate of the probability of a first turn loss for different strategies.
Strategy        | Probability of first turn loss at Normal difficulty
Do Nothing      | 0.0018
Drive/Treat     | 0.0013
Drive/Fly/Treat | 0.0011-0.0012

The probability of losing in the first turn, given that the players do their best to prevent it, is therefore less than 1/900.
The Player Deck
To set up the player deck, some cards are dealt to the players and then epidemic cards are distributed throughout the deck.  The number of cards dealt to the players, d, varies with the number of players.  We either have d = 8 in 2 or 4 player games, or d = 9 in 3 player games.  The remaining (53-d) cards are split into e roughly equal piles, and an epidemic is shuffled into each, before they are restacked (with any larger piles on top).
We observe that to lose in the first turn an epidemic must be drawn.  The probability of drawing an epidemic as one of the top two cards of the deck is:
P(Epidemic drawn) = 2 / (ceil((53-d)/e)+1)

where ceil is the ceiling function.  This results in the following table:
d | e | P(Epidemic drawn)
8 | 4 | 2/13 = 0.154
8 | 5 | 2/10 = 0.200
8 | 6 | 2/9  = 0.222
9 | 4 | 2/12 = 0.167
9 | 5 | 2/10 = 0.200
9 | 6 | 2/9  = 0.222

During the rest of the discussion we assume e is 5 ("Normal" difficulty), but the above table can be used to compute equivalent probabilities for other values of e and d.
The "Do Nothing" Strategy
By far the simplest strategy is for the players to do nothing.  This is also a strategy that maximises the chance of losing in the first turn.
For the calculation I employed a python script to simulate a million games, assuming that an epidemic card is drawn.  It picks nine cities to infect for the set up, and then one more to infect for the epidemic.  It repicks two cities to re-infect, and counts the outbreaks and cubes used.
This gave the probability of losing, given that an epidemic is drawn is about 0.009245.
Combining this with the probability of drawing an epidemic card we get:
P(Lose first turn on Normal | Players do nothing) ~= 0.001849

The "Drive/Treat" Strategy
As a simple improvement on doing nothing, I assumed the first player would ignore their cards, and drive to the nearest city with three cubes, removing as many as possible.  If they couldn't remove any from three cube cities, they would try for the nearest two cube city, and finally they would try for the nearest one cube city.
This gave the following probability:
P(Lose first turn on Normal | Using "Drive/Treat" Strategy) ~= 0.001343

The "Drive/Fly/Treat" Strategy
Finally, as an improvement on the "Drive/Treat" strategy I considered trying to fly to a city infected with three cubes.  If anyone has the "Airlift" or "Government Grant" special event cards, then they can be used to get the first player to any city in 0 or 1 actions respectively, meaning that three cubes can be treated.  Similarly if any other player has the Atlanta card it can be passed, and the first player can charter a flight, leaving two actions to remove cubes.
I also considered the case where the player has the card of a 3-cube city, or Atlanta, and they use that to fly and remove three cubes from a city.
There are further variations on this that I did not consider in this tactic, such as moving to Washington, chartering a flight and treating two cubes.
Using this strategy gave the following probabilities:
P(Lose first turn on Normal | 4 players using "Drive/Fly/Treat" Strategy) ~= 0.001208
P(Lose first turn on Normal | 3 players using "Drive/Fly/Treat" Strategy) ~= 0.001145
P(Lose first turn on Normal | 2 players using "Drive/Fly/Treat" Strategy) ~= 0.001167

I don't think my simulation is evidence enough to say that the deviation between these three results is significant, but I think they're good enough to give a first-turn-lose probability between 0.0011 and 0.0012.
Potential Improvements
If you have played the game then I'm sure you can think of situations in which these strategies are not optimal.  Here are a few things that could be included, that I think would make a significant improvement to the strategies:

Treat more than one city if possible.
Target infected cities that are next to each other in preference to isolated ones.
Use "One Quiet Night" or "Forecast" to prevent the first turn loss (this is a big one - it's possible about one game in three).
Use "Resilient Population" to lower the chance of a first turn loss.
Take the researcher into account for passing cards.

Very cool! One nit: I don't think you meant the researcher - they can only give cards on their turn, so it's not useful to the first player. The epidemiologist is the one (from the expansion) who can take a card from someone else. There are also other event cards which would really help (again from the expansion) - Remote Treatment and Mobile Hospital come to mind. I also wonder: surely in these losing cases there are chains of outbreaks; might the best strategy be to treat a cube in each of two adjacent cities, rather than fully treating one?

Jefromi: The researcher's ability works on other players turns too - see the bottom of page 5 in the rules (linked in the question).

I think targeting cities with 2 or 3 cubes that are separated by 0 or 1 cities would dramatically reduce the probability of a first turn loss, since a first turn loss requires a large number of cascading outbreaks.

@bwarner Jefromi - I agree - trying to stop the chain reactions would definitely be an improvement on the above strategies.  I'll have a look at simulating it when I get a chance.

@TimothyJones Oops, you're right. I couldn't remember for sure, so I checked the card, which says "you may give a player cards from your hand for 1 action per card" and interpreted that as meaning it had to be your turn, because that's the only time you have actions. (Odd that the epidemiologist doesn't parallel that.) The full rules are way clearer.


text:
Exploding kittens defuse card
We're playing 2 player exploding kittens. We had 4 attack cards in a row yielding 8 turns for player B. There is only 1 card left in the draw pile , which is the exploding kitten. When player B draws the exploding kitten and plays their defuse card, the rules state their turn is over. Should we take turn to mean a single turn? In other words does player B still need to draw 7 more times?

We had 4 attack cards in a row yielding 8 turns for player B.

For the nerfed version: The attack card does not stack in Exploding Kittens. It is not like the +1 in Uno (if you get the reference).
If you play an attack on me, I have to draw 2 cards. If I play an attack card on top of your attack card, my turns are immediately over and you have to play two turns.
For the current version, player B has to play 8 turns.

Should we take turn to mean a single turn?

Yes, a single turn, but player B has to play 2 turns (nerfed version) or 8 turns (current version).
So if I understood correctly,

player B played attack on A
player A played attack on B
player B played attack on A
player A played attack on B
player B has to play two turns or eight depending on the version you're playing. So B has to draw the last card on the deck, which is an exploding kitten. Player B draws the exploding kitten, plays a defuse and has to put the exploding kitten back on the deck. Since there is only one card left player B puts the exploding kitten back on the draw pile facing down.
Player B finishes her first turn.
It is player B turn again. Player B must draw a card from the deck which is an exploding kitten.

In your case, player B had an extra defuse? If not, player B explodes and loses the game. If player B had an extra defuse card, it can draw the EK, play its defuse, put EK back in the draw pile and it is player A's turn.
If you are playing the current version, player B won't have 8 defuse cards. So player B loses the game.
I hope that helps

I am playing the version where they do stack (I believe originally they did not). See this answer. https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/a/44309/2694

oh I see... yeah I guess I played the older version... ill update the answer

does it make sense now? Thanks for showing me that rule, I didn't know ;-)


text:
Can Expansion Combining "Break" the Game?
There are a lot of different Carcassonne expansions available and I'm curious if anyone has any insight in to telling if combining them may break game play?
Recently we've been using Inns & Cathedrals with Cult, Siege and Creativity. It seems to have drastically changed the balance so that it's very dangerous to try and build a city of any size. Most cities end up being 2-3 tiles, putting a ton of them in the field. Sieged cities make being a farmer even more attractive. Last game, every big meeple was a farmer and three players had 5 meeples each in one large field.
Is there any general advice on combining expansions? Are we just experiencing different game play thanks to different tiles?

In my opinion you can combine any of the expansions (except possible the Catapult) together to make a decent new game.  In fact we often combine different parts of different expansions if we want to avoid having too many rules.  We might play with the inns, pigs and mayors for instance.
Also we sometimes want a longer game but without too many extra rules.  For example, by playing with Traders and Builders we get a lot of extra tile shapes, which can be very satisfying if you like to fill in holes, but we might agree before the game that we won't use the resources associated with those tiles.
One expansion which we never use alone is the Princess and Dragon.  We like to play with the dragon on a large board, as this helps to encourage more long-term strategies.  For example on a small board (with the dragon) you are unlikely to risk making a large city, or placing a farmer early.  If the board is bigger then the dragon is less likely to come near your meeples, so there is a bit more margin for prospective play.
In your example it sounds like you are using a sensible number of rules.  If you're not a fan of small cities then you could maybe try playing without the siege tiles?  However at this stage it becomes a question of personal taste.

Why not the catapult?

The catapult brings physical skill into a game focused on strategy and negotiation.  It changes the game significantly, and I'm not convinced that it complements the other expansions (or even the base set).  Opinions vary on this though - have a scan through the reviews here for more: http://boardgamegeek.com/forum/4738/carcassonne-catapult/reviews

Be a little bit careful about mixing only parts of expansions. With Princess and Dragon, mixing in just the dragon and not the fairy might make the game quite a bit more destructive than you'd like.

I have played with Inns & Cathedrals, Builders & Traders, Princess & Dragon, Tower, and River all in play simultaneously.  It didn't break the game, but neither was it really more fun in any way - it got very bogged down in mechanics.
Pick your favorites and combine 'em!

My only caution is that the additional expansions begin to greatly increase the amount of time the game takes to play.  I always found part of the enjoyment of Carcassonne was that it was quick and satisfying.  When you add on two or three expansions the game begins to get really long and the interest of the parties can start to fade.

+1, simply because I've played games (mentioning no Quests for the Magic Carrot) where people seemed to think it would be a good idea to play with every available expansion; 9 hours of tedium later... Completism is a dangerous tendency when a lot of boardgames work a LOT better if you cherrypick one or two expansions per session, rather than just throwing them all in.

I find that the additional mechanics of the expansions rarely combine constructively. I will play any of the expansions alone, and many of them in pairs, but usually decline a game that uses three or more because of the sort of undesirable consequences you describe.

Each expansion give a independent set of rules. It's complete safe to combine expansions. Even fan made expansions provide an independet set of rules.

The only way it breaks the game is each expansion's impact on the score becomes less as you add more expansions. Except for king and scout that scales exponentially as more expansions are added.

There's no way to break the game by combining expansions, so feel free to combine any and all of them.
The Big Box versions (there are five total) of Carcassonne come with extra rules just to explain the interactions between each expansion contained within. There's even a popular name for combining all expansions in one game: Mega-Carcassonne.
To accommodate for all these expansions in a single Mega-game, the player base from BoardGameGeek has assembled all BigBox rules, as well as any official publications by Hans im Glueck and Rio Grande games into a single rulebook, called the Carcassonne Standard Complete Annotated Rules. Be warned, it's currently at a staggering 339 pages.

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