text:
What are good strategies against counterspell decks?
I'm currently honing a white-green tokens deck for Standard tournament play. I feel like I have a good handle on my game-plan for most of the other common archetypes, but I'm really stymied playing against the counterspell-heavy blue decks.
It's not hard for a blue deck to run 4x Mana Leak, 4x Dissipate, 4x Vapor Snag, and 4x Snapcaster Mage, giving him plenty of options to counterspell or bounce literally every single spell that I try to cast. I've tried two basic options:

Go aggro. Cast spells as quickly as you can, try to exhaust his supply of counterspells, and hope that one of your plays will eventually stick. (This usually doesn't work.)
Play the waiting game. Wait for him to tap out on my end step and then sneak in a Midnight Haunting, or, more rarely, hope that he eventually taps out or runs out of cards on his turn and gives me a chance to play some creatures. (This works a little better, but is very inconsistent. It depends on Villain eventually giving me an opening, and every turn I wait is another turn where he gets a chance to draw his finishers.)

Is there another way to play against this deck?

It's not worth an entire answer, but the two things that come to mind are Surgical Extraction and Thrun.  Another key here is recognizing the win condition of these decks - are they just countering until they get a Titan or something big out?  If so, are you running some destruction/control (Beast Within, O-Ring, Rebuke, etc.) to take care of that?

The deck I played last night which prompted this question had Chandra's Phoenix and Delver of Secrets/Insectile Abomination as its win conditions. Not terribly impressive on their own, but effective when all of my answers get counterspelled. But Surgical Extraction looks very interesting.

I think option (2) is surely a terrible route to go down?  The blue deck by definition is delighted for you to "play the waiting game"... sitting around doing as little as possible, sculpting the perfect hand to win with, is the blue counter deck's dream situation.

Tactics in Play
Counterspells are powerful because they're a broad-brush answer to a lot of spells. Whatever spell type is central to your opponent's game plan, you can stop it on the stack. This versatility comes at a price, though: timing. If you've got a threat on the board, I can use Doom Blade to deal with it whenever is most convenient for me; with a Mana Leak, though, I have to cast my spell while yours is on the stack -- meaning I have to have the card in hand then and there, and the mana open to use my counter. Exploiting this weakness is the foundation of anti-counter tactics.
(Note that I'm assuming you're playing in a more "conventional" environment like Limited or Standard here. The dynamics of Legacy or Vintage are pretty different, but would require long digressions about a couple of particular cards.)

Play an aggressive early game. Most 1-drop counters are very situational, meaning they likely won't see widespread play in a control deck. So, right off the bat, you have 1-2 turns to establish an early board presence. Rush out permanents that will help you build board position or pressure your opponent's life total.

When you do this, be mindful of sweepers (like Wrath of God). A typical control-deck strategy against aggressive starts is to use just enough counters or spot removal to survive to drop a sweeper, and then clear the board and try to "take over" with raw power and card advantage. Generally speaking, early pressure is good, but disgorging your entire hand ASAP is not necessarily an optimal plan.

Exploit your opponent's limited mana in the mid-game. In the mid-game, your opponent will have enough land for counterspell mana, but you can still exploit the limitations of her mana base. Playing 1-drops and 2-drops straight into counters can put you at a mana advantage over your opponent. If you're both at 4 lands and she Dissipates a 1-drop, you still have 3 mana to pay for other spells. It helps if you have a key card that your opponent can't easily answer once it's on the battlefield: just holding enough mana open to cast your big threat creates pressure on your opponent to let your other stuff through.

Another trick is to save your instant-speed plays for your opponent's end step. This puts your opponent in a double bind: if she counters your current play, then she'll be tapped out on your turn, and you'll get to play a thing; if she doesn't, hey, you just got to play a thing!

Plan for the end-game. Your opponent has to play threats of her own to win. They're likely at the top of her curve (for a pure control deck) or at the bottom (for an aggro-control deck).

Against control or combo-control: Your opponent is using counterspells to slow down your development while she plays out lands to pay for her big stuff. Eventually she'll drop some big finisher or set up an engine that gives her ever-increasing advantage. Having an answer for it will help you avoid defeat (or at least force your opponent to wait a few more turns to play it, so she can have counter backup), but fundamentally you'll still want to win on speed.

Against aggro-control: Your opponent is trying to win on tempo. This involves setting up an early clock and then using counters and bounce spells to keep it going. Her undercosted threats become less and less powerful as the game wears on, though. Unless you can straight-up out-race her, you need to focus your efforts on stopping her clock. If you can do this, you can often grind out a win once her deck runs out of steam.

Deckbuilding Strategy
You can make deckbuilding decisions to beat counterspell-heavy decks, too.

Include counter-proof lines of attack. Even though they're highly versatile, counterspells still can't counter everything. So, just play offensive cards that are impervious to counters. Thrun, the Last Troll is a popular sideboard card for this reason, being immune to counterspells and most removal (as a regenerating 4/4 for 4, he's also awesome enough to maindeck). Cavern of Souls can make any of your creatures uncounterable. Cards like Inkmoth Nexus and Moorland Haunt allow you to play offense with your land drops even if all your spell cards are getting zapped with counters. This is probably the easiest way to deal with permission-heavy decks without spreading your deck too thin (though watch your color density).

Sideboard specific hosers. When all else fails, if you're having lots of trouble with any particular matchup, it's sensible to devote some space to it in your sideboard. Cards like Defense Grid or Vexing Shusher can restrict counterspells. Cards like Summoning Trap can punish them. Note that your hosers don't have to be focused on the counterspells themselves — if your opponent's deck is light on threats, you can disrupt them with cards like Slaughter Games; if they require lots of mana, try land destruction like Molten Rain to delay them.

Don't play midrange without disruption. "Midrange" is a term for archetypes that try to straddle the line between aggro and control. They try to beat aggro decks by being "a little bigger" and control decks by being "a little faster". The problem is that "a little faster" doesn't work all that well. Oftentimes you do beat aggro (by going "a little bigger"), but counterspells clobber your deck because you're playing most of your stuff in the midgame (when your opponent has mana for counters) but the spells in your deck generally aren't big enough that you can win the game just by getting one of them to stick. The most successful midrange-style decks typically use focused hand disruption (e.g. Thoughtseize) to clear an opponent's counters and removal.

Also, I want to add some more ideas. Over tax their counter spells:  Make the person run out of counter spells before you run out of resources by playing as many must counter threats as possible (i.e. play powerful spells every turn and eventually you'll run them out of counter spells). For example, have a lot of similarly costed creatures that will end the game if unchecked or play as many different threats as possible if the opponent has conditional counter spells (i.e. play both powerful creatures and planeswalkers and force the opponent to deal with the diverse threats)

Another strategy is to force the control player to play/spend mana on their turn as much a possible. You do this by playing instant speed threats such as Restoration Angel on their turn and then they won't have the mana to disrupt/counter on your turn.

I'm a little surprised your "aggro" strategy isn't working for you. I thought that's the way a WG token deck was supposed to play… overwhelm the opponent with cheap and efficient spells.
I have a couple thoughts:

You do have 4x Autumn's Veil in the sideboard, right? That's a key spell to play against denial necks that can help force through a key creature. Remember that it's an instant — so you can save it to respond to a counterspell or bounce. It's your green counterspell for one mana.
You might want to add some hexproof creatures, or equipment and enchantments hexproof to mitigate the bounce issue.
Consider Creeping Renaissance. Denial decks are playing the long game. Hopefully as the game grinds on and your graveyard fills with countered spells you'll be able to play a Creeping Renaissance when you have plenty of mana and regain card advantage. If it is countered, flashback it.

I don't have Autumn's Veil. I think I'll need to address this oversight shortly.

Also looking at this list of hexproof stuff, I'm seeing the Swiftfoot Boots as potentially playable. Its equip cost is 1, and the cheapness is more relevant than the pump effects of Mask of Avacyn for my deck. (My tokens deck is thick with ways to pump creatures, and it doesn't need one that costs 3 to pump one creature at sorcery speed.)

On the subject of flashback, Dissipate exiles the spell if it is successfully countered.  Autumn's Veil is an excellent addition which I forgot entirely.  On the subject of hexproof, @JSBᾶngs, I can't stress Thrun enough (4/4 uncounterable hexproof = screw you, blue).

@Ian, I'm reluctant to go with Thrun, because it's a) expensive and b) has no synergy with the rest of the deck.

@JSBᾶngs I certainly see the reason not to run it, but as a sideboard anti-control card, it's hard to beat.  Things like Grand Abolisher or Thrun here and (or, for example, Melira against infect when it was seeing some play in standard) may not synergize well, but if means winning instead of losing, they're still worth playing.

@JSBᾶngs Yes, Swiftfoot Boots is a potentially good addition not only for hexproof, but also because hasty Kessig Cagebreakers would be quite a sight to behold.

Since I've mentioned some cards in comments that @ghoppe hasn't, I'll go ahead and mention them here:

Thrun, the Last Troll gives you that uncounterable hexproof big creature you'll need to punish a control deck
Grand Abolisher ruins their day pretty badly (and can be very useful against some non-blue control decks as well)
Surgical Extraction is pretty efficient at getting rid of those pesky counterspells, and lets you see their hand (but beware it being countered once they know you're playing it)

I'd also advise some destruction for taking care of their bombs - a Beast Within or Rebuke can really turn the tide if they've invested in just the one creature (via bouncing and countering).  Maybe even something like Plummet if you're concerned about flyers specifically, but general removal is going to be more useful.

Try Extirpate for an uncounterable version of Surgical Extraction

There is some really amazing land that can help against it.
Cavern of souls.
Just remember what creature you picked (works well with one or two types of creature.
Boseiju, Who Shelters All.
As long as you like losing a little bit of health for a sorcery spell or an instant your fine. Just remember you can only have one of these on the field at a time...
Lastly Grand Abolisher.
Even though this isn't a land its great against counter spells since they will never be able to do anything on your turn. The bad is if they can kill it on their turn by dealing two damage to it.
These are really nice when versing counter spells but there is other stuff too!

Throw some Grand Abolishers in your deck! 2drop white creatures that disallows your opponents from playing spells on your turn, meaning, all their counterspells become useless to your enchantment/ creature drops. Add in a privileged possition to prevent them from trying to remove things, and then you're only susceptible to board whipes, which can even be counter themselves by making your creatures indestructable with something like Ajani's presence.

Dosan the Falling Leaf stops all other players from meddling during your turn.

That is dependent on the other player not dealing with that card on their turn (or them being able to remove it with non casted abilities on your turn) and you being able to get a copy of it in play. Personally I wouldn't want to have a deck dependent on 4 cards in a deck of which only 1 can be in play at once


text:
How can I improve my deck building skills?
I've been playing M:tG for nearly a decade now. I understand the rules very well, I've participated in a few draft tournaments, and I've built a few decks that I'm very proud of.
Nonetheless, I seem to have hit a wall in my MtG deck-building ability. In draft tournaments I rarely finish in the top half. I see other players pulling cards that I've discounted as low-power or junk, then I'm astounded at how effective they make them. (I rarely read MtG sites, so I'm not often aware of what the "buzz" around the best cards is.) When I look at the deck listings for top tournament decks, I often can't understand how they're supposed to play or why they're so powerful. I realize that the better players are able to see interactions between cards and identify sources of power that are effectively invisible to me.
How can I get past this block? I realize that this is a broad question, but I'm wondering if there's a blog, a book, or a series of articles that can help a middling, mostly casual player up his level of play.
Details on my play style, which may help focus answers:
I'm definitely a Johnny. I strongly prefer the black/green/white side of the spectrum. I almost never play red/blue. I find that I'm naturally drawn to the following mechanics, and tend to build decks that contain lots of:

Life gain
Creature buffs, +1 tokens, regeneration, etc.
Creature destruction, -1 tokens, etc.
Mid-size creatures (neither 1/1 weenies nor 8/8 monsters)
Enchantments of all kinds
Non-land mana generation

Whereas I consistently underestimate the effectiveness and fall prey to decks that contain:

Direct damage
Creature control
Artifacts
"Draw a card" spells and abilities

Even when I've tried to stretch myself and build a deck using these mechanics, what I built was much weaker than what a friend of mine built starting from the same card pool. Furthermore, I have a hard time building decks that can successfully resist a deck that's heavy in creature control or direct damage.

Step 1. build a deck entirely of variants of Counterspell. Step 2. counter everything. Step 3. eventually lose, but laugh like a maniac.

@Samthere - there's a good point hidden in that comment, which is that just "negating your opponent's threats" is never enough to win a game of Magic.  You always need to have a clear idea of what you're going to do to actually win the game.  People who are initially attracted to lifegain cards often haven't considered that side of things enough.

@thesunneversets Yes, that was definitely the point I was trying to make and definitely not my deck-building strategy... honest! :P

@Samthere - I had a friend who claimed his idea of fun was to build an all-basic-land Magic deck, and just play a land every turn until his inevitable defeat.  Just to drive the opponents wild with not knowing what his deck was meant to be doing.  You get the strangest people sitting down to play MtG sometimes!

I also strongly suggest that you read strategy articles. Starcitygames has a great diversity in articles even if some of them require a subscription. They are other sites such as channelfireball or mtgsalvation. Sealed and draft are a great way to improve deckbuilding, you can also practise online with magic online software.

Deckbuilding in constructed formats (standard, modern, legacy) is a bit different. There is a little less emphasis on mana curve and removal a more on synergies (for instance, tribal decks) or even combos (exarch/twin, storm decks ...) so the power level is much higher. I suggest you discuss the decks you build with other people, you can also post them here to get feedback.

It does seem, from your description of your play style, that you do have a problem in consistently misinterpreting what things help people win Magic games.  Let's have a look at some of the things you say you like, and that you underestimate:
LIKES

Lifegain - with a few rare exceptions, lifegain cards are TERRIBLE - they do nothing to help you win the game, just slow down the rate at which you lose it.
Creature buffs - if you spend a card putting +1/+1 counters on a creature, and your opponent Terrors it, you've just 2-for-1'd yourself.  Not good.
Creature destruction - okay, your instincts are correct on this one.  Removal is and always will be king.
Mid-sized creatures - these tend to be the least efficient choice.  Either you want highly efficient "weenies" who can win the game for you fast, or you want massive monsters who can end the game in a couple of swings.
Enchantments of all kinds - I assume you include Auras in this.  See the 2-for-1 problem I mentioned under Creature Buffs, above.
Mana generation - it would be fair to say that mana ramp strategies can play a part in successful Tier One decks; but you need a definite game plan and a strong likelihood of consistently using all your mana every turn.  Just having more mana than your opponent, while he's swarming you with creatures, seems like a really bad place to be!

UNDERESTIMATES

Direct damage - this is obviously amazing, because it can act as 1-for-1 removal early on to keep you in the game; but then go straight to the opponent's dome later, when you're only a few life points away from victory.  Look at Fireball and it shouldn't be hard to understand why this is a top pick in almost any draft format.
Creature control - Mind Control is also a #1 draft pick.  By casting it you not only gain a creature, you also steal the opponent's best creature, making it a sort of automatic 2-for-1.
Artifacts - well, these vary from good to bad, but one of the great things about artifacts is that they don't require a complicated manabase to pilot.  Artifact decks never get mana screwed, so you shouldn't underestimate them!
Card draw - something like Divination may not look impressive, but you need to get your head around the idea that getting 2 cards return for an outlay of 1 card is the cornerstone of winning games of Magic...

It seems to me that you would do well to learn more about the principle of card advantage.  If your opponent plays a card and you remove it with a card, you're level pegging.  If you play two creature cards and he removes them with one card, he's a card up.  If you play a card that gives you 7 life, he's also a card up.  Whoever is the most cards up at the end of the game often wins!  The alternative, of course, is blazing speed: kill your opponent before he can get too many cards up on you...
I could talk about this stuff forever but this answer is already getting long; hopefully there are plenty of things for you to think about here already!  Feel free to ask about anything that is unclear in the comments though.

Lots to chew on here. Your statement that life gain just makes you lose slower is a revelation. Additionally, I'm surprised to hear that creature buffing is considered inefficient. It's intuitively appealing to me to take a cheap 2/2 and turn it into a 6/6, even for one turn, but the fact that this can set me back in terms of card advantage is an interesting way of looking at it. Are equipments a superior form of creature buffing, then?

Direct damage - I've learned some grudging respect for Fireball and its ilk, but the problem for me here is that most direct damage spells or abilities deal only 1-3 points of damage. My brain looks at that and says, "Small change, no big deal." The same thing goes for drawing a card, which always seems like too small of an advantage to matter.

Wow, I was going to answer this but thesunneversets has pretty much said it all. What wins most competative Magic games is card advantage. Drawing a card is usually a small advantage, unless the card also does something else (a "cantrip")! Any card that replaces itself is generally good.

Equipment (efficient, good equipment anyway) is generally the best form of creature buffing since it tends to get stronger as the game goes on. When you have lots of mana you can use it to buff an attacker then beef up a defender after combat. So in a way you are getting two cards for one.

@JSBangs: 1-3 points of damage is a big deal. Out of the 116 creatures in Magic 2012, 71 of them have 2 or less toughness. That's 61% of the creatures that you'll encounter in the format, and they all die to a Shock. 70% of them will die to an Incinerate. None of those numbers are taking into account rarity, and as commons skew towards lower P/T, those numbers are going to be even higher (except that these numbers don't take hexproof into account, which would foil a Doom Blade anyway.)

@JSBangs: Also, not only can you 1-for-1 your opponent's threats with Shocks/Incinerates, but you can also generate more card advantage by burning creatures out with an Aura targeting them on the stack (they lose two cards for your one card), or force them to waste mana by burning while they have an Equip trigger on the stack. Most players respect Incinerate as a very high pick in M12 draft, and Shock a lower but still fairly high pick for a good reason.

@JSBangs: I would recommend reading this classic article on the subject of card advantage: Forgotten Lore: Taking Card Advantage. The cards are outdated but the concepts remain the same.

I still love me a goldenglow moth (although it's not in m12 apparently...)

Goldenglow Moth is a classic example of a card that seems cute but which no pro, I'm 99% sure I'm right in saying this, would ever put in a deck. It simply doesn't do as much for your game as a basic land would!  The best you can hope for is to irritate your opponent by repeatedly casting Fog/Holy Day when they attack into it, but see above comments about the difference between "winning" and "losing more slowly"!

@thesunneversets probably, but i still like it

@DForck42: Okaaaay, but I thought we were trying to help the OP win more games, and Goldenglow Moth (lovable though it truly is!) is a one-way ticket to winning less. Not trying to rain on your parade, but there are very few cards in recent Magic that are less competitive than the Moth...

@adamjford, thanks for posting the link to that article. It was extremely educational, and got me rethinking some things. The most successful deck I ever built, for example, was a black/white deck that keyed off of Pestilence and Soul Link. I had previously attributed this to the fact that I could turn Pestilence into a life gain for me, but on reflection the card advantage may be more important. Pestilence can create a persistent card advantage by wiping away small creatures repeatedly, while Soul Link neutralizes the opponent's big creatures. Food for thought.

Here is an updated link to the 2009 article Forgotten Lore: Taking Card Advantage

Start listening to the excellent Limited Resources podcast, found here or by finding it in iTunes.
Marshall Sutcliffe and the various guests he brings on have played a TON of Limited Magic and are very good at explaining concepts and strategies to help you improve your game. In fact, BOTH of the former co-hosts of the podcast, Ryan Spain and Jon Loucks, got hired by Wizards of the Coast!
This episode, "Card Evaluation Revisited" sounds like it exactly deals with the problem you're having right now.

I subscribed to the podcast and am enjoying it immensely. Thanks for the tip.

@JSBangs: Good to hear. I always look forward to it. :)

My technique was to build a new deck every week.  I would focus on one card and try to build a deck around it.  It was always a card that I deemed worthless.   I tried to build the deck with out any of my favorite cards to avoid falling into relying on them instead of trying new things.  I would play that deck all week (Yeah blew far too many nights at the game shop instead of out chasing women) until I had it tweaked and I learned how to use it.
This exposed me to different defenses against these cards as well.  All of this made me a better player all around and helped me to develop my favorite decks.

Yes, practice is key. But a big part of practice is feedback: it's as important to play with your deck as it is to design it in the first place. Playing and iterating continuously really helps. Magic Online is perfect for this, because you can easily find both the cards you need and different opponents to test against.

two things:
1- to add on to @thesunneversets answer, evasion is also a good factor for winning a game in limited, and coming up with ways to block evasion.  it's hard to block flying if you don't have fliers yourself, or something that can block them.
2- wizard's website for magic has weekly columns on a lot of different topic.  i suggest reading the ones that interest you the most.  Wizards Columns

Evasion is an interesting one because it is clearly amazing in limited environments (i.e. draft, sealed)... and hardly a factor at all in constructed environments.  In constructed, games are over too quickly for it to be worth paying extra mana for the privilege of flying; if your creatures are mostly blocking rather than dealing damage, you're probably doing something wrong.  If blocking lots isn't a good strategy, then I can't see paying for evasion being a good strategy either.  But if you're talking about sealed/draft, you're 100% right!

@thesunneversets, i meant limited, forgot to mention that.  updated my answer.

Not a magic player but I am a card games player.  I feel some of the advice given has been a bit too specific for a complete answer so I will go for a more generic one.  Obviously some may not be relevant to you as I don't know your exact mistakes when deck building.

Playtesting: Not just your own deck but also the top deck lists you would like to be able to emulate.  Some cards are expensive so agree to use proxies with friends.  I get some hate them but they help no end.  Much of this learning process can be difficult without them unless you have access to the top cards.
It is much easier to see how a deck works while you are playing it and seeing all the options come alive in front of you.  If you can find some tips from the designers themselves so much the better.  Then you can start thinking of cards that don't quite do it for you and start to modify them.  Second of all playing against top decks is more helpful for you or your friends to prepare to face top decks so they are great in that regard as well.  Obviously you won't be able to play these decks competitively unless you acquire the cards but if you start to understand the reasons that these cards are in the decks then you can replace them effectively from your own card pool.  After a while you should be able to go card by card and explain how it fits into the deck and how it helps you win.  Even force in situations where you can use certain cards to see why they work in those scenarios. Top decks will have a reason for each card (not always a good one but generally).  They don't tend to have dead cards.
Deck focus.  You have a plan to win and your deck executes it.  Cards in your deck that don't directly help that plan need to be very good and generally be in small quantities.  I have seen decks playing cards that are at the lower end of the balance scale but advanced the win condition (this was generally at a point when the overall card pool was limited).  Keeping your cards in the game that advance your win condition also count here.  Pure delaying tactics like just extra health or something similar does not count, if you keep the numbers low and there are some excellent cards of this type they can go in. Purety of focus is the key to a good consistent deck and sometimes good cards need to be left out if their benefit is perpendicular to what the deck is trying to do. This is an interesting take on how to look at a deck and its focus.  http://www.starcitygames.com/article/3688_Clear-The-Land-And-The-Fundamental-Turn.html  (helpfully suggested by Rainbolt).
Avoid win more cards.  Win more cards are cards that only really help if you are winning and simply turn a win into destruction but won't save a losing effort.  Frequently they key off situations where you are already winning such as no opponents on the board or similar.  Or things like if you have more power at a battle than your opponent.  They have their uses and can be included in a deck but you need to weigh up their usefulness with their limitations in crisis scenarios.  Frequently they look incredibly powerful and I have seen many players get sucked in by them.  These fit into the 3rd quadrant here https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/li/quadrant-theory-2014-08-20 (again article suggested by Rainbolt which fits well).

3a. Situational cards.  Kind of an offshoot.  Powerful cards frequently have conditions attached.  Top decks that use them ensure that they satisfy these conditions a large proportion of the time (or can get rid of them easily for something better, i.e. only useful late cards can go with the mulligan, or they have ways of using them to satisfy costs for other abilities they want to use).  Else they don't get played.  A card you can't play in a given game acts as negative card draw for that game.  Given the premium of card draw that can be expensive. Be brutal with cards you hate drawing in games and get rid of them.

Learn and apply to general situations. When was the card draw function on a card utilised, who exactly was hit with the creature control and what did it cost you.   When building, say a direct damage, deck and yours ends up weaker than your friends then why was it weaker and what were the issues with the direct damage cards you selected (and why were the ones you did not better choices), how many non direct damage cards were in each deck and what was used to augment the main strategy.
Realise that there are exceptions.  If you are sure your deck can win in X turns than delaying your opponent is your win condition so a health boost is suddenly a card that helps your win condition (be sure not to water down your deck to the point where it no longer wins in X turns though).  Sometimes there is a terror combo or card that beats your deck and you need a silver bullet as meta.  Sometimes a deck needs a bit more win more cards if the deck naturally struggles to drive home an advantage.  The key concepts remain the same but what is a win more card in one deck or meta environment can end up as a key card that helps the deck focus in another.

As others have said there is a lot more that can be said on the subject (and I am certainly no master at it).

This is a great answer to a very broad question. I have two suggestions. First, the paragraph about proxies focuses on the importance of playtesting. I would make playtesting the headline of that paragraph, and only mention proxies as a means to that end. Second, I would link to other articles. The paragraphs on deck focus and delaying your opponent touch on some of the same points in Zvi Mowshowitz's article on the fundamental turn. (cont)

The points about "win more" cards are expanded upon in Quadrant Theory by Marshal Sutcliffe.

Interesting.  Will look forward to reading those articles later.  My own knowledge is largely based on word of mouth and experience (with some exceptions that were already linked or extrapolated from articles far too specific on a different game) so I did have any to link but some would add to the answer.  Will update with your suggestions when I have read them.  I will take a look at the Proxies point as well.  I started off with the point of proxies as playtesting has been mentioned already but the paragraph may have gotten away from me.

Proper mana curve, proper land/spell count, synergy, tempo, card advantage, removal, having a game plan, proper card evaluation, having a sufficiently high creature count, avoid double colored problems (e.g. a card that costs WW in a primarily black, secondarily white deck), prioritizing offense over defense.  Most of these would take a paragraph or more than a page to explain, so in the interest of brevity, just be mindful of these aspects of deck construction and try to improve at them by paying attention to what the meta tells you is best (e.g. look at Grand Prix top 8 decklists and pay attention to how many lands and creatures they play, what their mana curves are, etc.).
As an additional shortcut to success, look for authorities on card evaluation.  For instance, some Pro Tour event coverages will have Draft Viewers, in which you can see how each player in a pod drafted their deck.  So you can think about the decision and contemplate what their reasoning was behind their pick.  Doing this also gives you some insight to the average professional's card evaluations.  Also, you can watch the twitch streams of professionals to watch them draft as they talk through their decision-making process.  Sometimes there are Drafting With articles in which a pro drafts a deck and discusses their picks.  Although it is not a great resource, you can also go to draft simulators and look and their pick orders.  There are also instructional strategy books such as Next Level Magic.
For card evaluation skills, there are a few levels to evaluating a card.  The first is to do a basic efficiency calculation; e.g. add-up what you believe the power, toughness, and abilities should be worth, come to an estimated fair cost, and compare it to the real cost to determine how undercosted / overcosted it is.  Next, connect it to frames of reference; e.g. if you knew that Wind Drake was decent in the past, and the card you are evaluating is essentially Wind Drake, then it might be decent.  Then look at in holistically in-context, i.e. think about how it actually plays in a real game.  Finally, think about how the card does or doesn't fit into the synergies of the color combination.

This answer does not seem to explain a lot of the areas it talks about and needs top be greatly expanded. For example it is mentioned that a proper mana curve is needed but does nothing to explain what a proper mana curve should be.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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

sort: votes


text:
What are some alternatives to using dice in Settlers of Catan?
In Settlers of Catan, there's a variant where instead of rolling the dice, you use a stack of 36 cards with each combination. This reduces the luck component, but has as disadvantage that you can predict future rolls to some extent.
The iPhone Catan game also allows this rule variant.
Have you tried this and do you think it's an improvement?
EDIT: Have you tried other methods of reducing the importance of luck?

My method of reducing luck is to play Go. If I want a game with no luck, I play an abstract strategy game. Luck is an essential feature in Catan for me; it means that weaker players can get a little boost sometimes, and that you need to be flexible and adapt to anything when playing.

Part of the point of the game is reducing dependency on luck, by adding more settlements, converting to cities, colonizing seaports...

Alternatively the OP could play any one of the civilization building games out there that don't rely on dice.

The card system that you describe is not just a variant, it is an official expansion, Catan: Event Cards, which includes not only the rolls (in the form of the totals with the appropriate distribution) but also red dice for Cities and Knights and a selection of minor game events.

Note: everyone I play with hates this expansion since everyone just starts card-counting.

@YetAnotherUser are you shuffling before reaching the bottom of the deck, as instructed by the rules that come with the deck? if people are still counting, you can move the New Year card up higher in the stack, incrementally increasing the randomness.

I played a diceless variant where every village has a worker, we use glass beads to represent them.

When you create the village, place the worker in an empty tile next to it
At the beginning of your turn

you get one resource for each worker based on the tile it is on
Or you may skip acquisition to remove another player's worker (he'll be able to re-assign it at the end of his next turn)

At the end of your turn, you may re-assign your workers (still into empty tiles next to their village)
Cities have two workers

The game is very different from the original version, and very interesting.

I haven't tried this variation, and to be honest, I don't think I would want to either.
Randomness in games can bother me, but Settlers of Catan is one of those games where I don't mind the randomness.  With the deck-of-cards variation, you know at some point in the next 36 cards that, for example, a 2 and a 12 will come up at some point, and if you can count cards, you can most certainly predict what the next results will be.
Me, I rather be amused when we spend six turns in a row rolling a 3.  That's just part of the game.

Some games are simply spoiled by the dice, that can be pretty frustrating. There's also a variant where you remove 5 random cards from the 36 possibilities, so that you can't be quite sure what the last cards in the deck will be.

the 2 and 12 are not certain to appear.  the expansion comes with a card called 'new year' which is shuffled into the last few cards (sorry cant remember how many).  when this card appears the deck is reshuffled, so you very rarely go through the deck in entirety.

The large majority of my games of Settlers, or more recently Cities and Knights, were done using a computer program to simulate the deck of 36 dice. It would randomly reshuffle at some point between 34 and 36 cards through, so you can't count rolls precisely, but it was a blissful solution to the frustration of the "Settlers probability distortion field". I much prefer Settlers played with "enforced probabilities" like this: there's still plenty of randomness in what order the rolls come up, but you at least know that building on a 6 and an 9 you will get more resources than the person who built on 4 and 11, where in the dice version the opposite seems to happen frustratingly often.
The program we were using also provides for the Cities and Knights dice by colouring one number red, and giving a background colour of black (3 in 6) / yellow (1 in 6) / green (1 in 6) / blue (1 in 6).
You can download it from http://members.lycos.co.uk/qqzm/downloads/Projects/Other/SettlersDice.zip.

I bought the deck of cards, but everyone I play with just wants to roll dice.
So I bought precision dice.

I use an iPod/iPhone Settlers Dice App.  The benefits I see are:
1.)  They're quiet,
2.)  They're fast,
3.)  They don't make a mess and get hung up on piles of cards or the edge of the board, and
4.)  The probabilities are assured by the programming.
The probabilities exactly match the theoretical probability of each dice roll, which is not the case with physical dice.
I have used two iPod Touch/iPhone apps: "Settlers' Stats" and "Dice of Catan".  "Stats" has a so called feature that allows you to track point changes of the various players.  This turns out to be more trouble than counting again when you wonder.  This app stinks.  "Dice of Catan" is a different story.
"Dice of Catan" (On the App Store) costs $0.99.  It is a very pleasant and simple app to use, and it takes the physical dice out of the game, which I think is a big plus.  You tap the dice, and they display a pseudo-random (probability driven) Settlers of Catan roll.
Features:
Cities and Knights (C&K) support (has a die for barbarian movement/progress card.)
Safe mode for early rounds, which allows no sevens (and no barbarian movement in C&K).
Multicolored dice (one red, one green, see below.)
Tracks barbarian movement and has a pop-up reminder for the Robber/Bandit and when the Barbarian strikes.

I wrote a Mathematica script to handle the dice rolling. It keeps track of all previous dice rolls, and weights the next dice roll probabilities according to the difference
(expected # times rolled) - (actual # times rolled),
so that the actual distribution converges faster to the expected. (And dice rolls on different turns are not independent.)
Though with this method, people could predict things like "a 7 just came up, so it probably won't come up for several more turns", so there's also an option to effectively ``increase randomness''. With probability p, the dice roll will actually just be random according to correct distribution for 2 dice, and with probability 1-p, the weighted history will be used to roll the dice. This makes it much harder to predict things while still making sure the distribution converges pretty quickly. You can of course still predict things like "a 5 hasn't come up for a long time, so now it's due to come up".
link to Mathematica cdf
Note: Eventually I may end up writing it in python or javascript (the code to just roll the dice is quite simple), but for now I only have it in mathematica. You can use the cdf file with the free Wolfram CDF player though.

Can you relink this? Link is broken would appreciate it

I've got (but don't use) and Android App called steady roller.  It auto-adjusts the probabilities to even out the randomness, but in a less predictable way than the event deck / dice deck.  I don't know its exact algorithm.
You can also set it to reduce the chances of 7s, if you like that sort of thing.
It's a freebie on the app market.

We tried a variant where the amount of resources are produced according to the probability of the dice roll that would produce this resource.
Say you've got an "8" and "3" on ore and a "12" on wood. Each players turn, after the dice roll (for bandit, barbarians and C&K) resources are produced in this way:
to roll an "8" with two dice the probability is: 5/36, for a "3" it's 2/36 and for a "12" it is 1/36.
So in each players turn you would receive 5 + 2 ore and 1 wood marker. If you reach 36 you immediately discard 36 markers and gain one card. This needs a lot of administration, but makes the resource management more planable and cuts off a litte from the importance of settlement/city placement.
If a bandit enters a resource field, all players with a city or settlement adjacent to that field loose all their markers for that resource. Other bandit rules still apply.
You can do a similar version with development cards, where you have to gather development points according to your progress in this area of development (two for the first, one for each one after the first), but this leads to very fast or very slow developments, depending on the number of players. You would have to set the necessary development points to 36 to have the same average in developments as with dice.
With barbarians and the bandit this works too.
However we found that especially with development, barbarians and bandit, the randomness makes the game more exciting than annoying. So we roll the dice as usual, ignore resource production and carry out just the events development, barbarians and bandit.
If you cut out all randomness (exept for the player influence) some strong players did manage to think ahead a number of turns and act accordingly, which left weaker or inexperienced players no chance.

The problem with such variants is that randomness is one core part of the game.  Yet, I'd agree that Catan depends too much on randomness.
...but isn't finding the "right degree of randomness" something extremely subjective ?
I would suggest the 'dice results cards' system, but with variations to keep uncertainty.

The official expansion already features a "new year" card, just move it earlier in the deck (like after 18/36 cards, instead of 31/36)
This way, you'll just "soften" randomness, but keep the game away from an ugly a boring fully equitable distribution.
Reducing/preventing "absurdity" like getting 4 ou 5 of a same result in a row, but keeping uncertainty and giving no guarantees looks like a decent compromise to me.

---

I suspect the "Cities and knights" expansion might be another way of reducing randomness, since the games seems to require more dice rolls.
Well, I personally HATE C&K, which looks slow & burdened to me, so this is not what I would recommend... but this is a question of taste :)

As @panavia pointed out, a weighted dice which re-weights the probabilities every turn based on the historical outcome is the best choice.
The problem as I see it is that since one game is not long enough, the true distribution is never reached and events such as 3 5's in a row can have fatal consequences for the game.
I wrote a post (click here) on the topic in cross validated with R-code for simulation.

Similar to the Event Cards and Deck of Dice, there's also Dice Cards:
https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/dice-cards

just use a 12 sided die.its so easy

All this does is shift the odds more toward low and high numbers. It doesn't prevent it from having a big luck component where, say, you might get unlucky and get very few resources from an 8 while an opponent gets more from an 11 - in fact it makes that particular thing more likely.

Also, in the future it's probably worth writing a longer answer, including why you think this is a good solution to the problem.

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

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


text:
Would Pillar of Flames get rid of a Blightsteel Colossus?
Blightsteel Colossus is indestructible. The rules for indestructable says:

700.4. If a permanent is indestructible, rules and effects can’t destroy it. (See rule 701.6, “Destroy.”) Such permanents are not
destroyed by lethal damage, and they ignore the lethal-damage
state-based action (see rule 704.5g). Rules or effects may cause an
indestructible permanent to be sacrificed, put into a graveyard, or
exiled."

The rules for destroy says:

701.6. Destroy
701.6a To destroy a permanent, move it from the battlefield to its owner’s graveyard.
701.6b The only ways a permanent can be destroyed are as a result of an effect that uses the word “destroy” or as a result of the
state-based actions that check for lethal damage (see rule 704.5g) or
damage from a source with deathtouch (see rule 704.5h). If a permanent
is put into its owner’s graveyard for any other reason, it hasn’t been
“destroyed.”

Now, the crux of the matter. Pillar of Flame reads:

If a creature dealt damage this way would die this turn, exile it
instead

Now, from my understanding of these rules, since the Colossus wouldn't die since it's indestructable, if they got enough lethal damage on it with Pillar of Flames being used on it, the colossus wouldn't be exiled since it would not die.  Is my understanding correct?

You are correct. The answer to the problem is no, the Colossus would survive.
The reason is within the Pillar of Flames' text:
If a creature dealt damage this way would die this turn, exile it instead

This works as a replacement effect that places the card in exile instead of the graveyard.
Blightsteel Colossus is indestructible, so it would not be destroyed by damage to begin with and never trigger the replacement effect.

To expand upon Hyppy's answer, it would be helpful to know the definition of "die".

700.6. The term dies means “is put into a graveyard from the battlefield.” It is used only when referring to creatures.

As Hyppy points out, the rules text for Pillar of Flame is a replacement effect.

If a creature dealt damage this way would die this turn, exile it instead.

It modifies what happens if the creature is destroyed, moving the creature to exile instead of the graveyard. Since Blightsteel Colossus isn't destroyed by lethal damage rules, or any other rules for that matter, there is no "dies" event to replace.

Ha, a downvote. Care to elaborate?

Interestingly enough, even if Blightsteel Colossus wasn't indestructible, it probably still wouldn't get exiled by Pillar of Flame.
According to 616.1: If two or more replacement and/or prevention effects are attempting to modify the way an event affects an object or player, the affected object's controller (or its owner if it has no controller) or the affected player chooses one to apply, following the steps listed below. If two or more players have to make these choices at the same time, choices are made in APNAP order (see rule 101.4).
An non-indestructible Blightsteel destroyed by (or one sacrificed after taking damage from) Pillar of Flame has two replacement effects, the one on the Colossus stating to shuffle it into the library instead of placing it in the graveyard, and the exile effect on Pillar of Flame. The controller of the Colossus must choose one of these to apply, and it seems pretty likely that they would choose the shuffle option.

Given that the Colossus is indestructible, as has been stated, if you use Pillar of Flames, it will still take that 2 damage. If you could then somehow get the toughness to 0 or below (a morbid Tragic Slip, for instance), in the same turn, it would indeed be exiled.
EDIT
As has been pointed out, you'd still have to deal with the double replacement effects. As WLPhoenix, the controller would get to decide what happens, and honestly, why would he exile it?

You bring up a good point about getting it to 'die'. But are you sure it would be exiled? The answer provided by WLPhoenix contradicts this one.

Tragic Slip doesn't put any counters on the creature it targets. And even if you did use a Tragic Slip with morbid on a Blightsteel Colossus, you'd still have the issue WLPhoenix brought up, that there are two competing replacement effects, so the Colossus' controller would get to choose whether it gets exiled or shuffled into its owner's library.

@DavidZaslavsky: Good points guys. I edited my answer.


text:
How do you calculate the likelihood of drawing certain cards in your opening hand?
In Magic, at the start of the game, you draw 7 cards. How would you calculate the likelihood of drawing a specific card in your opening hand?
For example, let's say I have a 60 card deck, and I'm running 4 Birds of Paradise. What is the percent chance that I will have at least one Bird in my opening hand?

The calculation you are looking for is called a Hypergeometric Distribution. This calculated your chances of drawing a particular number of "successes" from a population, without replacement.

Population Size: 60 cards
Successes in Population: 4 Birds of Paradise
Sample Size: 7 cards
Successes in Sample: 1 (the minimum number we want to draw)
Results: 39% chance of drawing at least 1 Birds of Paradise.

In the Hypergeometric Distribution calculator linked above, that result is represented in the Cumulative Probability: P(X ≥ 1) field: the chance of drawing greater than or equal to 1.
The online calculator will also give you the odds of drawing greater than that many successes in the sample (6%, the P(X > 1) result), and exactly that number (33%, the Hypergeometric Probability: P(X = 1) result).
You can see the calculation on the Wikipedia page, or searching math.stackexchange.com for Hypergeometric Distribution. Unfortunately, this site doesn't support math formatting. (Note: You will also need to know how to calculate binomial coefficients (and factorials).

Interesting program, but i was looking for the formula so that i could figure it out on my own.

That program calculates the odds of getting at least one BoP at 40% if you are going first. Remember, since you draw when you go second the odds rise to 44%.

@DForck42 why would you want to do it by hand? :) Anyway, I think the full answer would fall out of scope for this stack exchange. The answer to your question: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/24211/what-is-the-probability-of-n-people-from-a-list-of-m-people-being-in-a-random-se

Why WOULDN'T you want to do it by hand!? :P

Question is looking for "At least one," yet answer provides "exactly one."

@DrunkCynic, yes my answer is for exactly a certain number of successes, but using that, you can calculate it for exactly 1, exactly 2, exactly 3, etc. successes and then add them all together.

@user1873 I understand the inter-workings of the hypergeometric distribution, and took no other issue with the answer. Using the calculator you linked, the at least one is just the "X >= 1" result, ~40%.

@DrunkCynic Isn't that what user1873 said in the sentence directly following his bullet points?

@ghoppe, well bollocks for tunnel vision.

The odds of drawing a particular card in a 60-card deck are obviously 1/60. If there are four such cards, the odds are 4/60. The odds of NOT drawing one of those cards in the first draw is 1 - 4/60 = 56/60.
To calculate the odds of the entire first hand, we can do it backwards:
The odds of not having any of the four cards in the first card is 56/60 (as I said above). The second card has odds of 55/59 (i.e. one of the remaining non-Bird cards after a non-Bird card was drawn to start), and then 54/58 and so on:

Card 1: 56/60 chance of not being the card you targeted
Card 2: 55/59
Card 3: 54/58
Card 4: 53/57
Card 5: 52/56
Card 6: 51/55
Card 7: 50/54

The odds of ALL of these happening (i.e. none of the four cards being in your hand) is the result of multiplying all these odds together:
(56*55*54*53*52*51*50) / (60*59*58*57*56*55*54) = ~0.6005 or ~60%
To calculate the odds of at least one of these cards being the one you're looking for, you can subtract this result from 1 (or 100%) to get a ~40% chance that (at least) one of your four cards will occur in a 7-card draw from a 60-card deck.

user1873 had the correct answer, but I've written out the working to answer the comments to that first answer.

Magic Workstation besides many other tools for collection management, deck building, and online play has a very powerful probability calculator.  It will go beyond opening hand and will let you see by what turn are you likely to have drawn the combo that you need.

Magic Workstation appears to be offline/gone, but I found this alternative (which seems pretty easy to use): https://www.mtgnexus.com/tools/drawodds


text:
What are mistakes beginners should avoid in Dominion?
I am going to play my first round of Dominion (+ Intrigue Expansion) this weekend with 4 other players who have played Dominion before. I have read the rules and now I want to avoid the typical traps a beginner might fall into.
What are the big and tempting mistakes that you see new players make in Dominion? Is there any other advise for the first steps in this game?

The bottom line is victory points. Period. Nothing else matters. If something is not actively helping you get more or your opponents get less, don't do it. It seems obvious that I'm telling you to remember how to win, but its very easy to go super-heavy on kingdom cards until you realize its too late...
Most of the time, the way to get victory points is with $$$. When I was learning I loved to pull of the 10 card action combos that took me 14+ turns to build, but when I realized I still had only made 7$ by the end of it I started looking at things differently. Solution: Make sure you have enough powerful treasures and actions that give +coins. Gold is king!
Keep an eye on end-game. How many provinces are left? Which piles are low? What are your predictions for what people are about to buy? If you know you have the most victory points, sometimes you just want to make the game end as fast as possible. If you can use a Coppersmith to get 1 or 2 provinces early, and then use plenty of +buys cards to buy up 3 piles of cost 2 and 3 cards before your opponents decks really get rolling, go for it. Its so funny when your opponents have just built these gold stocked decks to nail provinces and they realize you just ended the game and won with 10 victory points.
Know what cards will maximize your average $ per card ratio. If you have plenty of treasures in your deck, a smithy is often even better than a gold. Likewise, if you have plenty of actions that give you +cards, make sure you have treasures to back them up.
Know the difference between early game cards, mid-game cards, and late game cards.
Watch your terminal actions. There's nothing that sucks more than drawing 5 terminal actions and having to just pick one of them to play. Try to balance your terminals with you chain actions. On the other hand, don't overload on +actions if you have very few terminals. A few of my friends love the 'village idiot' strategy: get 6 or more villages and have giant chains of them every turn. If you're not using the extra action from a village, its completely and utterly useless as all it does is replace itself.
Know the basic strategies, like drawing lots of cards, big money, attack cards, and trashing your bad cards as early as possible. These are covered very thoroughly here, so I'll just leave it at that.
Know how to evaluate a kingdom set to see what strategies will be strongest. Note how each attack card will change things, and how you need to adjust your strategy. I cover this more in the linked post.

Great stuff here; not just for beginners, either. It's good to see the lessons I've learned said explicitly.

+1 nice answer. I see that its included in #7, but I think trashing bad cards should get more emphasis. A lot of beginners I've played with are very slow to pick up on how important it is, and that Chapel is one of the best cards in the game.

The village idiot should try to become a festival idiot instead. Festival does offer nice benefits (but no +1 card).

Buy money and provinces instead of actions.
The number 1 problem I've seen beginners make in Dominion is not buying treasures and provinces.

If your hand generates 3 coins you should buy a silver
If your hand generates 6 coins you should buy a gold
If your hand generates 8 coins you should buy a province

Every time you go against the above plan, make sure you know why.  There are definitely reasons not to buy a silver or gold.  However, does your deck really need a possession?  Or are you just buying it because it is cool?
Once you learn those simple rules (known as the "Big Money" deck) you will start to see good reasons for buying a couple additional cards to help move your deck along faster.
A second tip would be to trash copper whenever given a chance.  Thinning your deck is almost always a good idea.

All the other answers are really great, so I just want to add:
Don't buy the Copper.
Copper cost 0 to buy; if you draw a dead hand (all victory points, for example), there's absolutely no shame in skipping your turn.  It will ultimately end up bloating your deck and make it more likely you draw a $1 card instead of something more useful.
Also, I've seen people with multiple buys for the turn spent all their money on their first buy, and then take a free Copper.
Unless you happen to be playing with Gardens ($4 card, worth 1 VP for each 10 cards in your deck) and want to artificially bloat your deck for the chance at an extra VP, don't buy the Copper.

While I do concur, a Copper in the late game may be a decent addition, with a spare buy, to dilute the greening. Especially when one has grabbed their fair share of provinces and the game has devolved to "Duchy dancing", Copper helps you to get to $5, which is the magic number to get a Duchy. Nevertheless, "don't buy copper" is a sound all-time-round strategy tip for beginners, as most of the times it is the right move (not) to make.

Biggest noob mistake is watering down your deck early.
Consider buying silver and gold as "Great" moves. Don't be tempted by all the shiny action cards.
If you get a chance, get something that allows you to discard or upgrade an existing card so you can get rid of those crappy starting cards.  Don't be afraid to throw away copper!  Getting rid of cheap cards is often a fantastic strategy.
If you decide to go "Pro" and take some action cards, be wary of "Dead-end" cards that don't have at least +1 action.  Get a few of these in your hand and your hand will be next to useless.

Diluting your hand has been mentioned, but I would like to add its sister vice:
Not paying attention to the rate at which you can move through your deck.
or put differently
Not making sure that your next pass through your deck will only take a few turns, particularly during early and midgame play
Failing to do this can make it nearly impossible to really adjust to the different phases of the game. What those phases are depends on your strategy for the setup, but you almost always have stages you move your deck through. If you build a giant deck with multiple buys that takes 10 turns to get through, making such transitions can become almost impossible.
Failing to do this also slows the rate at which new cards actually provide additional advantage to you.
So if you are acquiring cards rapidly, make sure you are also acquiring cards that move you through your deck rapidly as well.

A lot of good points made above. In general, I'd emphasize a couple of things not yet mentioned:
Generally, in a random setup, only a few cards matter a great deal. In every game with Witch, for example, you ought to come up with a plan for playing or dealing with it. Not true for most other cards.
Generally, as a noob, you might not realize a) how important trashing is for many kinds of decks and setups...and why Chapel is so important and useful among base set cards and b) how devastating Curses are to receive for most decks.
For context, I played hundreds of two-er games back in the day, and lots of 3, 4, 5 player.

Don't be afraid to copy other players, if they know what they're doing. Don't buy coppers, don't buy coppers, don't buy estates until it's the end of the game, same for duchies in most cases.

Be sure to know the combo decks. I have played several games of dominion and dominion online, and there is nothing more fun, and more crushingly victorious, than when you drop a turn 13-ish combo that buys out the provinces in one fell swoop. It is relatively rare that these combos will come up in a kingdom set, but in order to not be a "noob," you need to be aware of them and how to beat them or they will blindside you.
A good wiki for researching these combos and anything else about dominion is wiki.dominionstrategy.com.

What are the big and tempting mistakes that you see new players make in Dominion?
A lot of great answers have already been given to this question. One thing I would add is to take several moments to really study the 10 available kingdom cards before the game starts. Look at any possible combos that you could work toward building, look for any attack cards and how they may impact your strategy, look to see if there are any trashing cards, look to see if there are any +action cards, look if there are any +cards cards, and pay close attention to any victory point cards. All of this information is very important to process before your first turn, as it will influence what strategies you should work on in pursuit of victory.
Is there any other advise for the first steps in this game?
Have fun. Winning is nice, but remember to have fun. Games are fun. Other than that, if you are up against experienced players, pay attention to what they are doing, and ask them why they are doing it. They might not tell you, but I think most people will, especially if they are your friends. As an experienced player, I want you the new player to get good so we can have more exciting games, so do not be afraid to ask questions.


text:
What cards can be used to cheat Eldrazi creatures onto the table?
I'm constructing an Eldrazi based deck and I'm thinking about possible ways of getting one onto the table. What I already considered:

Summoning Trap
Polymorph

Do you know any other cards like these?
Edit:
I'm talking about the "big three" Legendary Eldrazi -- Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, and Kozilek, Butcher of Truth.

I'm assuming you mean the "big three" Legendary Eldrazi -- Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, and Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. If you want any Eldrazi, like a Pathrazer of Ulamog, you can always use reanimation spells. These three, however, have the persnickety clause:

When {card name} is put into a graveyard from anywhere, its owner shuffles his or her graveyard into his or her library.

Thus, you have to use instant-speed reanimation, cheat on costs, or hardcast them normally using obscene mana acceleration (which is basically "cheating them out" for most intents and purposes).
The proven competitive decks that do this are:

Legacy "Sneak and Show," using Show and Tell and Sneak Attack.
Modern "Tron" decks, using the power of the UrzaTron (Urza's Mine, Urza's Tower, and Urza's Power-Plant, which produce 7 mana from three lands) to hardcast Eldrazi. Basically you use lots of cards like Sylvan Scrying, Expedition Map, or Gifts Ungiven to set up the Tron, and then go crazy with Eldrazi, Karn Liberated, and Wurmcoil Engine. Some of these decks also run Through the Breach as a backup plan.
Before banning, Modern had "Twelvepost," which used Cloudpost, Glimmerpost, Vesuva, like a faster and more consistent Tron.
Before banning, Modern also had "Hypergenesis," using cascade tricks to set up a super-fast Hypergenesis.
Legacy "Elves" is an occasionally-successful but easy-to-hate deck that chains a ton of mana dorks, usually with Glimpse of Nature, to hardcast Emrakul.
Vintage has "Oath," which uses Oath of Druids (banned in Legacy) to cheat out Eldrazi.
You can take inspiration from a variety of other decks that access huge amounts of mana, such as "High Tide," "Amulet of Vigor," "Enchantress" (via Serra's Sanctum, mainly), and "MUD" (via Metalworker and Cloudpost). Many of these don't actually need a card like Emrakul to win but sometimes play it anyway because it goes "over the top" of many other strategies.

Other approaches I've seen used (ranked in approximate order of jankiness):

Windbrisk Heights and a lot of weenies.
Summoning Trap (works well as Plan B in the Windbrisk Heights deck).
Polymorph and a bunch of token-generating cards like Lingering Souls (which make creatures on the battlefield but aren't creature cards themselves).
Instant-speed reanimation with Goryo's Vengeance or Shallow Grave. The classic reanimator spells like Exhume or Unburial Rites don't work because the big three shuffle themselves back into your library, but you can still use Goryo's Vengeance in response to the trigger.
Fist of Suns in a five-color deck, to make them all cost WUBRG.
Elvish Piper or Quicksilver Amulet.

If you're looking for a top-tier tournament deck, I recommend:

Sneak and Show for Legacy: it was totally the top deck for a while. Main down side is that it was totally the top deck for a while, of course, so many players know how to play against it.
G/R Tron for Modern. Faster and more consistent than the other Tron decks, and pretty cheap to put together, especially if you already own the Eldrazi. The main down side is that it is pretty weak against some of the other combo decks (like Storm) and hyper-aggressive decks.

If you're looking for a deck to play at "casual" tables, my recommendation is a Windbrisk Heights + Summoning Trap deck. It's still very powerful but not as obviously "unfair" as the tournament combo decks — some players vehemently dislike seeing turn-3 Karn every other game — and the aggressive/midrange creatures give you a decent fallback plan even if the whole table is dedicated to hating out your combo.

Downvoter: Why the downvote? Anything I can fix?

+1 Nice extensive answer. For casual, don't forget [mtg:Mana Echoes] the token generating drones, and the Eldrazi that gets copies you own from outside the game

I'm just a casual player I just checked out the Eldrazi cards and I wanted to put together a nice deck.

Only other major competitive deck I think you missed is Doomsday + Shelldock Isle, although that deck is possibly one of the hardest to play in existence.

a little nit picky - but I don't believe there was ever a point where hypergenesis wasn't banned. I think it was on the banlist for the community cup which was the first test of modern, and has been ever since

@AlexP "why the downvote" WELCOME TO STACK EXCHANGE

Here's a non-comprehensive list of additional ideas:

Braids, Conjurer Adept
Call of the Wild
Defense of the Heart
Dream Halls (with Painter's Servant)*
Djinn of Wishes*
Elvish Piper
Eureka
Hypergenesis
Impromptu Raid
Jhoira of the Ghitu*
Killer Instinct
Lurking Predators
Myojin of Life's Web
Oath of Druids
Pattern of Rebirth
Primal Surge
Proteus Staff
Show and Tell
Sneak Attack
Tooth and Nail
Triassic Egg

* — The creature card is cast, so you get a free turn from Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.

You need to cut down your list of graveyard revival, unless you include ways to instantly play most of those cards or Stifle the Eldrazi trigger. Vishidian Orrey

Ahh, yeah. Forgot about the whole graveyard trigger thing. editing to remove graveyard revival.

Also, how does Dream Halls work with colorless creatures?

@AlexP: Painter's Servant comes to mind.

@Hyppy Good call!

I just found a "Tooth and Nail" in the local club before reading you answer but its owner did not sell it to me sadly. Thanks for the extensive list. I'll do some more research

There's also Jhoira. Using Jhoira is not particularly fast, but since you cast the card (for free), you get Emrakul's free turn!

Add: Gamekeeper

The link for Painter's Servant goes to a search page with no results

@Faults, Because although they are colorless, the legendary Eldrazi are not artifacts, and thus not legal choices for Tinker. (Tinker is also banned in all official formats except Vintage and MTGO's "Classic" -- and it's restricted to 1/deck in both of those!)

Quicksilver Amulet.

Get Skittering Invasion on the board to spawn off 5 tokens and then play.
Cryptic Gateway to tap 2 of the tokens to play any Eldrazi from your hand.

The harder way: Urza lands like Urza Incubator, as well as the Urza land combo.

12 post the crap out of it!

All of these ways are how my deck works, and I have been able to Emrakul, the Aeons Torn on turn 4 multiple times; as well as being able to play Eldrazi left and right by turn 6 and quickly take control of the game.

Welcome to the site! I have made some grammatical and formatting updates to your post; please note that as a Q&A site, as opposed to a standard forum; such things are more important. Your answers will be much better received, and you will receive more reputation, if you take a little care with your posts.

He literally never came back after that day. Guess it was too much to handle.

I have a deck that uses Deathrender, which says:

Whenever equipped creature dies, you may put a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield and attach Deathrender to it.

Hows a 17/17 with annihilator 6 sound? xD

Like something I want to snap kill.

Won't happen with Emrakul.

I might suggest trying Possibility Storm. Use it to find Emrakul and play him for free on turn 5. Or use Quicksilver Amulet to play him on turn 4-5.

I would recommend Belbe's Portal. 5 mana to play it, pick a creature type, then 3 and tap to put a creature of that type from your hand onto the battlefield.

You can make an Eldrazi + Cloudpost because Cloudpost will only double every time you lay one down. With all 8 locus lands on the field equals to 36 colorless land total.

Decks like Eldrazi Spawn rely on swarming the field with Eldrazi Spawn tokens that you can sacrifice for colorless mana. If you manage to get Growth Spasm in play, it becomes really easy to spam the field with tokens and play the big three.


text:
If I buy a Mint, do I still get to use the coins from the treasures I played that turn to buy a Grand Market?
In the  Prosperity rules it says "if you have 11 coppers in play and 2 Buys, you could buy a Mint, trash all of your played Treasures, and then buy a Grand Market." My question is: What are you going to buy the Grand Market with if you have trashed all your treasures?

Just because you trashed the coppers doesn't mean you haven't earned the coins for that turn (and can spend them).  Their value to you is accrued when you play them.
Per the Prosperity rules you must play all treasures you want to use, before you buy cards.  The rules for Mint state:

If you buy multiple cards in a turn, trash your Treasures right when
  you buy Mint; you still have any leftover coins they produced for spending
  on something else.

So the order would be:

Play 11 coppers
Have 11 coins to spend and 2 buys
Purchase a Mint (have 6 coins left to spend and 1 buy)
Resolve the Mint card and trash all coppers (still have 6 coins and 1 buy to spend)
Purchase Grand Market (valid because no coppers are in play).

Okay, thanks, I was just under the impression if you trash a card it could no longer be used.

It can't be used on future turns, but in fact on this turn it was ALREADY used to add coins to your "account" for use this turn.

Very interesting. Not a combination I'd considered for getting an early Grand Market. (Although I suppose there's still a lot of legwork because you need +Buys and a bunch of money.)

The other answer here is incorrect. All your coppers are gone when you buy the Mint; you spent $11 to buy the $5 Mint card and the remaining $6 is squandered.
However, you still can buy a Grand Market if you have +$ from the actions you've played. For example, if you've played 3 Festivals for +$6, then you can buy a Grand Market after you buy the Mint and trash all the Coppers.

Hi, welcome to the site! The other answer (and the orginal question) quote from the Prosperity rulebook. Do you have any sources to support contradicting it?

I'm sorry, but the Prosperity rulebook as well as the online implementations on Isotropic and Goko (which have been vetted by Donald X., the game creator) all disagree with you.


text:
Baker's Dozen: rule about kings
I've seen various versions of the rules of "Baker's Dozen" (e.g. on about.com, Wikipedia) stating that the rule for kings is simply that they are placed to the bottom of the column they end up in.
But in the version given by Sheila Anne Barry in Great Card Games for One, it is stated that "If a King is lying on another card of the same suit, place it underneath that card".
Does anybody know of another source for that rule, and/or have any notion of which variant is most popular?

Given the game limitations caused by Barry's variant, and the vast number of resources that can be found contradicting her, I would think that the common rule is to place Kings at the bottom of columns.
You could do an exhaustive internet search for Baker's Dozen rules and never see the variant that Barry describes in her book. Other books, such as Hoyles, also follow the rule that Kings go to the bottom of a column. It seems that Barry is alone in her variation, and I think that's because it makes a more difficult game.
For the common rules of Baker's Dozen, "once all cards are taken out of a column, the column can never be filled." The reason you move all Kings to the bottom of columns is to ensure that the game is potentially solvable. If you don't move Kings to the bottom, they'll likely sit on top of differently suited cards and you'll have to clear the entire suit of that King before being able to start on the suit or suits it's covering.
For example, if you deal a tableau and it has a column (bottom to top) {2D} {7H} {9C} {KC}, under the common rules you'd rearrange to {KC} {2D} {7H} {9C}. In this case, you'll have a fairly easy time building up your columns and foundation piles. But in Barry's variant, you'd rearrange to {2D} {7H} {KC} {9C}. Before you can even move the two of diamonds and seven of hearts, you have to clear the entire club suit to the foundation piles. This gives you far less maneuverability over the course of the game.
It's possible you can get into a similar situation using the common rules, although the implications aren't as severe; you could have a pile that looks like {2S} {6D} {JC} {QS}, so you need to move the Queen and Jack in order to get to the lower cards. But with the common rules, there will be a King somewhere to move those cards to. If Kings aren't at the bottom of columns, and there is never anywhere to move them because columns can't be reused once depleted, then cards can get stuck beneath them until that King's suit is cleared.

I haven't found a copy of Barry's book, but there is the possibility that she allows cards to be moved into empty tableau spaces, like in Spanish Patience. If that's the case, then her description would seem to fall somewhere between the two games. It would also negate the difficulties caused by allowing Kings to sit above other cards.


text:
How can I elegantly increase the difficulty of Elder Sign?
I think there's consensus that Elder Sign is not satisfyingly difficult. The variants I've seen suggested are either too long for my taste, or don't look play-tested.
Has anyone found a satisfying (read: you've played it at least once and liked it) way to tweak the difficulty up without adding more than, say, half an hour to the base game or ramping up the complexity and housekeeping?
I would love for the change to meet most of these conditions:

Add no new mechanic or a very simple one
Add more decision making rather than more chance
Add no more than half an hour to the game
Tweak the win rate down to somewhere between 50% and 80%

That said, if you have something you love, post it regardless.

One that is simple to implement, doesn't add any time, and seems to up the difficulty without making it overpowering is to ignore the word "unless" and everything after it on mythos cards.
So, for example, "Add a Doom token to the Doom track unless at least 1 investigator has a Spell." would become "Add a Doom token to the Doom track."
Particularly if you're playing with 4 players, these cards never seem to add doom tokens by the base rules. Another alternative would be to change "unless at least 1 investigator" to "unless ALL investigators".
That same thread has some simple rules for making the final battle harder, but I haven't tried that one. Definitely seems in line with your goal of being simple and not adding time to the game, though.

We've tried to solve this in the past by advancing the clock by 30 minutes instead of 15, to bring out more Mythos cards and cause more "At Midnight" effects. The only time we lost the game was when using this variant.

I use this simple rule:
There can not be two successive midnights without a doom token.
So, if one midnight came without a doom token, the next midnight MUST have doom token and all 'unless' things are ignored.
This makes a game a lot harder, basically in all games I played boss needs maybe 1 token to awake and often it leads entire game. It is tested with basic game.
It shotrents the game as the doom tokens progress more rapidly.

The game seems a bit too easy both before and after the Elder God awakens.  My two house rules to solve this are as followings...

At Midnight, roll one green die for each monster in play and each terror result adds a doom token.
Once the Elder God is awakened, his "Midnight" effect happens at both 6 and 12 o'clock.

I stole these ideas from another site's post and modified them slightly, but they seem to work well to up the difficulty and actually shorten the game in the case that you lose.  Of course if you think this is too hard, then go with rolling 1 die for every 2 monsters in play for number 1 above.


text:
Can I draw something on my card and play tournaments with it?
Just out of curiosity, what can I do to the card, so it's still legal to play it in official tournaments?

Can I draw something over ruling texts?
Can I draw something over artwork?
Can I draw something over mana cost?
Can I draw something over its name?

I'll be glad to see some official rulings about it. :)

You may not change or make illegible a card's name or mana cost. Other restrictions also apply. A tournament's head judge is the final authority on anything that happens in that tournament, including what card modifications are acceptable.

Yes you can obscure and remove the rules text.
You cannot completely replace the art work, the card must still be recognisable by its art.
The manacost must still be legible.
The name must still be legible.

The relevant rules for this question can be found in the MtG tournament rules (pdf):
http://wpn.wizards.com/sites/wpn/files/attachements/mtg_mtr_22jan16_en.pdf

3.3 Authorized Cards
Players may use any Authorized Game Cards from Magic: The Gathering expansions, core sets, special sets, supplements, and promotional printings. Authorized Game Cards are cards that, unaltered, meet the following conditions:

The card is genuine and published by Wizards of the Coast
The card has a standard Magic back or is a double-faced card.
The card does not have squared corners.
The card has black or white borders.
The card is not a token card.
The card is not damaged or modified in a way that might make it marked.
The card is otherwise legal for the tournament as defined by the format.

The Head Judge of an event may issue a proxy (see section 3.4) for a card that has become worn or damaged during the tournament.
Any other cards that are not Authorized Game Cards are prohibited in all sanctioned tournaments.
Unglued and Unhinged basic land cards are allowed in sanctioned Magic tournaments.
Players may use cards from the Alpha printing only if the deck is in opaque sleeves.
Players may use otherwise-legal non-English and/or misprinted cards provided they are not using them to create an advantage by using misleading text or pictures. Official promotional textless spells are allowed in sanctioned
  Magic tournaments in which they would otherwise be legal.
Artistic modifications are acceptable in sanctioned tournaments, provided that the modifications do not make the card art unrecognizable, contain substantial strategic advice, or contain offensive images. Artistic modifications also may not obstruct or change the mana cost or name of the card.
The Head Judge is the final authority on acceptable cards for a tournament

What constitutes "substantial strategic advice" is covered by 2.11:

2.11 Taking Notes
Players are allowed to take written notes during a match and may refer to those notes while that match is in progress. At the beginning of a match, each player’s note sheet must be empty and must remain visible throughout the match. Players do not have to explain or reveal notes to other players. Judges may ask to see a player’s notes and/or request that the player explain his or her notes.
Players may not refer to other notes, including notes from previous matches, during games.
Between games, players may refer to a brief set of notes made before the match. They are not required to reveal these notes to their opponents. These notes must be removed from the play area before the beginning of the next game. Excessive quantities of notes (more than a sheet or two) are not allowed and may be penalized as slow play.
The use of electronic devices to take and refer to notes is permitted at Regular Rules Enforcement Level (see section 2.12 – Electronic Devices).
Players and spectators (exception: authorized press) may not make notes while drafting. Players may not reference any outside notes during drafting, card pool registration, or deckbuilding.
Players may refer to Oracle text at any time. They must do so publicly and in a format which contains no other strategic information. Consulting online sources, such as gatherer.wizards.com, is allowed at Regular Rules Enforcement Level. If a player wishes to view Oracle text in private, he or she must ask a judge.
Artistic modifications to cards that indirectly provide minor strategic information are acceptable. The Head Judge
  is the final arbiter on what cards and notes are acceptable for a tournament.

So I guess drawing something over artwork isn't allowed (or at least drawing too much, cuz it makes art unrecognizable). What does it mean "contain strategic advice"? It's prohibited to write something like "it comboes with XXX" on card?

And using this rulings, it comes down that you can draw whatever you want over official rules (but not art, mana and name)? Am I right?

@desudesudesu I expanded my answer regarding notes,it contains some hints as to what constitutes "substantial" strategic advice, such as draft information or info about previous games. Regarding drawing over card text: It doesn't mention card text explicitly, but I suspect altering or obscuring card text would not go over well with the Head Judge, should he or she notice the modification.

In any case when you're not sure, check with the head judge at the beginning of the event, he's the final authority in this matter.

@Hackworth  card text should not really matter much if modified. if you have the oracle text available (card text may be out of date anyway) you should be fine.

@ColinD Theoretically, yes. In practice, it's not very efficient to black out all card text and have your opponent consult Oracle for every single card. And that's not even mentioning modifications of the card text with the intention to cheat.

If you black out all card text, I might play the card with the text that reads "play cards as written"; you have no text.

@Joshua That card is from a joke set and is not legal in any official tournament, and is therefore irrelevant.

@desudesudesu You can definitely get away with some amount of art altering. "not unrecognizable" isn't the same as "unmodified". Of course, as has been pointed out, the final authority on exactly what constitutes unrecognizable is the head judge.

"The Head Judge is the final authority on acceptable cards for a tournament" - this is worth emphasizing. In practice, as long as the name is unaltered and the art is recognizable, you are fine, but in theory you should still check with the head judge about each altered card before the tournament starts.


text:
Researcher with the coworker relationship (spoilers)
The coworker relationship sticker states:

Co workers: you may share knowledge as long as one if you is in the
  correct city. (The researcher may give any card to their co worker for
  one action)

My question is in regard to the researcher: If the researcher is given coworker status with another character, can the researcher give any card to their coworker from any city?
For example, if the scientist and the researcher are coworkers, and the researcher is currently in Milan and the scientist is in another city, can the researcher give the scientist the Tokyo card as an action on their turn? Could the researcher do this multiple times on their turn?

Please be careful with any spoiler content for a game like this - avoid putting it in the title and then label the title with "Spoiler" and/or use spoiler tags (>!) within your answer for any content from a packet.

Yes,
Since the only restriction on the researcher giving cards is that they are in the same city if they get that relationship sticker they can give cards to the person they share it with at any time. This is a really useful combination that can be very powerful for the players.
In your example the researcher could to that and they can trade as many cards as they have actions with the co-worker.

In the example, when it is the scientists turn, can the scientist take ANY card from the researcher?

@Brainmaniac No, the card says the researcher may give for one action which does not include another person taking an action to take a card.

No it says pass

@Brainmaniac Look at what the text in the question says. It says for an action the researcher may give any card not that the coworker can take any card which leads me to read that part of the action can only take place on the researchers turn.

Aa kk see what u mean. I think the text is wrongly written in the post here. In our version of the game the text says: You may Share Knowledge with a co-worker as long as one of you is in the city of the card that is being passed. (The Researcher can pass any card)

@Brainmaniac I see, with that wording it does change my opinion as it does not appear at all to be dependent on the researcher taking action. As I don't have a copy I was not able to verify the wording on the card.

Ok tnx i Think so too.