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How to reduce slow starts at the beginning of the game?
We recently played a game of Settlers of Catan where for the first 3 rounds none of us got any brick at all, so there was no road construction at all and it dragged a little. I'm not looking to reduce the randomness, but a slight alteration of the game setup could probably do the trick.
Here's what I've thought of:

Give players more starting resources. If everyone began with 2 of everything things could get going faster.
give everyone an extra free road at the beginning.

Are there any other good ways to give Catan a bit more of a jump start? I find if one player gets a slow start in the beginning (like no brick) they can get screwed for most of the game. Different players being strong in different resources is core to the entire game, but a tiny early lack of wood can make one player suffer through the entire thing.

Rules to check that you're playing correctly:  (1) Initial settlement selection goes 1st player, 2nd player, 3rd player, 3rd player, 2nd players 1st player.  (2) Second settlement chosen gets all three resources it touches before play begins.  (3) you can trade in 4 of one resource for any other.  In the scenario your describe it would be very unlikely for a player to not be able to make a trade (with players, then the bank) to get his brick.

Yeah, the game can be slow when brick isn't forthcoming, but I think that can be a good opportunity to test out a development card strategy. It's also a good incentive for everyone to make placement by brick a priority next game. :)

I would like to point out, that it is a dangerous road you are thinking of - some starting positions look weaker at the beginning, but are much stronger at the end (and the opposite), so if you give extra boost at the beginning to someone, who will have a strong end game, his chances of winning will not grow at the same pace as the chances of others with the same amount of help but much more rapidly.
Also, I agree that lack of any resource can be offset by good production of others, and even more - the type of resources produced is many times less important than the quantity.

I would also be very careful about giving every player all the resources or even their choice of resources.  Many games start with two players "racing" to build (a road segment on the same edge or a third settlement at a location) and this would give a much larger edge to the player who plays earlier.  If you want to give extra resources, for our end of year "championship" game, we give advantage to top players based on rank, allowing them to "roll" for bonus starting resources, 1=brick/2=grain/3=ore/4=sheep/5=wood/6=nothing.

A variant on your, "give players more starting resources" idea:  After each player gets his or her starting resources, let each player take one (or two) resource(s) of his or her choice.  That way, each player can assess what he or she is "short" in and fill that gap (albeit temporarily).
Another option that you can use with, or instead of, the above: Start with the robber off the board entirely.  The first time a seven is rolled, put the robber in the desert.  From that point on, sevens have their normal effect.  This will give players more of a chance to shrink their hands of resources before getting zapped by the robber, and will keep the robber off the board longer, enabling the towns and cities to produce more resources.

Similar to your second option; I always play that for the first 2 rounds (until each player has had 2 turns), 7's are just rerolled. At that point in the game there is no good way to choose whom to screw over yet, and it's quite unfair to get screwed over that early.

The problem with getting one resource of there choice is that I could easily use that to grab a resource I don't produce which can really change the game because I don't have to trade for them.  I would limit it to what you can produce with your starting settlements.

Don't forget, you get a resource card for each resource you touch when you place your second settlement.
If you're still finding things going slow, here's some random ideas you can use:

For each player, remove a Year of Plenty or Road Building card from the deck, shuffle them up, and deal one to each player.  That should get things really going.
Give each player one extra road as suggested.
Let each player pick one extra resource when starting.
NEW - The first time any player rolls a 7 (i.e. this will only happen once), after placing the thief the player has the option of taking a resource from the pile matching the tile they just played the thief on instead of taking a resource from a player (yes, it rewards a little bit of luck, but it also softens the blow of the first thief a little).
NEW - The first time each player rolls the dice in the game, if they get any resources, they may take one extra of a resource they just received.

I would limit the extra resource to one that player can produce.  Otherwise I could see a player taking the resource that they don't produce in there first 2 settlements

I agree with warren, I would suggest that faster turns in the first few rounds will solve your problem as each turn is only as slow as the people playing.
Lack of resources is likely due to one of the following reasons:

Map setup: Make sure the map is based on one of the balanced examples provided. There are examples of balanced maps available online, use these until you get more experience playing.
Poor starting position selection: This comes down to experience, but having at least one square of brick in your starting 5/6 tiles is almost a necessity for new players.
Crappy dice results: The only thing to do about this is just hurry up and take your turn and don't spend ages scanning the board.

I like to play Catan online as it's a good adaption and here are some things that I found help speed up a game:

Plan your turn when other people are playing theirs and try so you are ready to go when it's your turn. Try and pay attention to what resources other people have and where they are moving.
Make the trading section ultra fast. Don't stare at your cards and think of the 100+ combinations you could possibly make if you just got that one card. Think about what you need and make your offer. If people don't have what you need or don't want to swap move on quickly.
Get to know which numbers come up frequently, so don't place your villages next to brick with 10 or 12, if you can't get 6 or 8 move near to 5 or 9.

And finally, one common rule is the friendly robber. Which means you can't place the robber on a tile next to the village of a player with less than 3 points. This will give players some breathing space, especially those who are struggling to start.

Another thing I just thought of... If you can't get next to a decent brick square at the beginning, another tactic is to try and get next to two good squares of another resource and head to a port. e.g. 6 and 8 of wheat and then head to wheat port or a 3:1 port. This may put you in a better position later in the game.

One thing we like to do is eliminate sevens from the first two rounds.  If a player rolls a seven then the dice are thrown again.  This has several consequences:

No one worries about losing half their cards when a seven is rolled
No one worries about having a card stolen
Key resources are not blocked

The end result is that very little building happens on the first round because everyone would rather wait for their second turn when they have more resources and information.  So the first round goes quicker and initial expansion is faster as everyone builds on the second round.

we usually just skip the first 7 that is rolled in the game. This tends to work really well as an early 7 can easily add 5 minutes to the game-time alone. :D

We also implement the "robber delay" house rule for the first 2-6 rounds of play, depending on number of players. In addition to the reasons mentioned in this answer, the biggest reason we do it is to prevent starts where a 7 gets rolled early and one person is nearly knocked out of the game if another 7 is not rolled for a few rounds. Every group I've played with that has been introduced to the robber delay house rule thinks it improves the game so much that they adopt some version of it.

I've seen it in tournaments in a few ways:

give a third round of placing an additional road (WBC)
give an extra settlement
give a city instead of one of the settlements

There is a technique that I've found works great, borrowed from Starfarers of Catan...
At start of game, make a deck of 10 each of all 5 resource types. Shuffle. Each player-turn, anyone below 6 VP who doesn't get a resource by the roll gets a card off the deck. When it's emptied, restock it with 5 each.

In addition to any of the other variations mentioned, one of the variations we have used to speed up games is to provide each player a number of "trade tokens."  We keep this low as we don't want to diminish the value of having ports, so typically 1-3.
These trade tokens can be used to trade two resources (same type) for any one resource. When the token is used, it is removed from the game.  If you try this with C&K, I would suggest limiting this to only resources (no commodities).
Limiting the tokens means players want to preserve them for when they really need them, so they still try to trade with other players first, but it gives you an option if no one is getting a certain resource or one is just not available when you need it.
If they are held to the end game, it also helps to speed the game as it can sometimes slow down when players get close to winning and no one will trade with them.
P.S. Sorry for resurrecting an old Q/A, but thought this was worth throwing into the mix.

There's a badge for resurrecting an old question with a good answer. We don't like duplicate questions, so we like thread necromancy here!

Another thing that I've done in the past is to cap time per turn (no, this doesn't help with the resources issue) to, say, 180 seconds (ie 3 minutes). Most players (other than stark newbies) will be thinking on the other players' time, so limiting them to 3 minutes should help a lot.

I would suggest to kept the rule as they are, but speeding up the play at the beginning.  For the first turns, just play the dice, collect your resources and pass the dice to your neighbor.   After a few games, distributing resources should take 10 seconds.  Even if the game take five turn to start, it's not an issue when those five turn are played in about a minute each.
Just set the example by doing it yourself and explain to the other players that there is no point discussing about trade when everybody want resources nobody have.

You could make the start a little more even for everyone, where they know they are going to get some resources at the start.  If you have extra markers lying around, do the following:

Get enough markers for 1 or 2 rounds of play depending on the number of players.

Favor 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 and 11 over 2, 6, 8 and 12
Tailor for the map setup, ensure 1 of each resource type will be produced by the set of numbers chosen
3 players (2 rounds): 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11
4 players (2 rounds): 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11
5 players (2 round): 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
5 players (1 round): 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11 (throw last one away)
6 players (1 round): 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11

Shuffle and place in a stack (or a line) face down.
Instead of rolling dice, players draw the next marker, until the stack is exhausted.
For Cities & Knights, you can opt not to include the event die until the stack is gone.

Everyone can be ensured a card at some time in the beginning if they build next to a number in the stack.  I consider the selection of numbers as part of the board setup phase, so do this before the initial starting points are selected.
This method still has randomness, although the expected payouts of the numbers start out even and move toward normal as the game continues.
This will naturally give you the friendly robber variant, as there is no 7 marker.

One house rule we typically use is to reroll when a seven is rolled and no one has yet gained an extra point.

Catan Event Cards (optionally played without using the events themselves) or even the more generic Deck of Dice can reduce the randomness of the game significantly, which would include evening out the early game resource distribution. I very much prefer to play this way, being relatively certain that my "10" will produce 2-3 times during the first 31-36 turns.

In the Traders and Barbarians expansion there are 2 rules that would help for this situation ( and it also helps when playing with kids ):

A set of 36 cards that represent the distribution of rolls. Draw from the cards until 5 or so remain. This makes it quite likely that even the 12 or 2 hex produces.
The robber is not allowed to steal from or affect a player with 2 or fewer victory points. ( i.e. everyone at the beginning of the game. )

The cards from Traders and Barbarians are available as a standalone expansion, http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20038/catan-event-cards


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What changes or improvement will the Puerto Rico expansion offer me?
Puerto Rico Expansion
My family really liked Puerto Rico, and I'm curious what the expansion is like. The only thing it adds are new buildings and some weird rules for drafting buildings at the beginning that some reviews say are pretty bad. I assume the buildings don't really make the game much more complicated, but do they change the game drastically or just add to it? When would you recommend getting the expansion? Does anyone who has it have any other comments on it?

The first expansion is difficult to find by itself; the original print was only available for a limited time, and its now bundled in the Treasure Chest set along with Puerto Rico Expansion 2, a San Juan expansion, and a bunch of expansions for other games I've never heard of.

Short answer:  I don't like the first expansion ("The Buildings" expansion in the Treasure Chest [BGG] set), as there are only a few good buildings; I do, however, enjoy the second expansion ("The Nobles" expansion in the aforementioned Treasure Chest).  If you are a completist and want some variety, go for it, but I don't feel the first expansion adds much to the game.
Long answer: I feel that the Nobles expansion is the better expansion, as the buildings have good synergy, the Nobles colonists put a much larger emphasis on Mayoring (you replace one colonist on the ship each phase with a red Noble piece; each Noble is worth 1 VP at the end of the game and some buildings function differently if it is occupied by a Noble) and the expansion as a whole seems to try and put more emphasis on roles that might not have been taken as much in the core game.  The Nobles expansion does have a few arguably degenerate combos, though.
The Buildings expansion to me just has some random buildings with weird rules for the sake of being "different", like the Forest House and the Black Market.  There are a couple of bright spots in the first expansion, though, such as the Storehouse, Library and Statue.
The drafting rule: very much slows down the start of the game, and while I could be judging harshly, I think the drafting is a major turn-off and slows down the start of the game pretty severely.  I don't want to pick buildings, I just want to play!
I do like the Variant 2 suggestion in the link you provided to speed up the drafting process, but I find it simply easier to say "We're playing with all of Expansion 1", "We're playing with all of Expansion 2"), or "We're playing the core game".
I'm going to cover both expansions, just for the sake of thoroughness, so you can decide if the expansion is right for you.
Cost 1
Small Market vs. Aqueduct (Expansion 1)
The Aqueduct will give you one more barrel of indigo or sugar for a large plant when crafting, but the Small Market is practically the de facto opening move and a fantastic buy; other than trying something new, I can't see why you would want to take the Aqueduct over Small Market.
Verdict:  Small Market, hands down.
Cost 2
Construction Hut and Hacienda vs. Forest House and Black Market (Expansion 1) vs. Land Office (Expansion 2)

Construction Hut is nice for getting a quarry when someone else Settles.
Hacienda is nice for getting a random extra plantation, when you're going for the Residence or want to get plantations as quick as possible and don't particularly care what you pull.
The Forest House allows you to take a plantation from the stack, place it face-down on your plantation area and call it a Forest; for every two Forests you have in the plantation area, you get a 1 doubloon discount (in addition to any Builder privileges and/or quarry discounts).
The Black Market allows you to reduce a building's cost; you may discard one colonist, VP or good back to the supply and get a 1 doubloon discount, but you cannot discard more than one of each type, and you cannot have any doubloons left after using the Black Market.
A colonist-occupied Land Office lets you buy the topmost face-down plantation in any of the plantation stacks for 1 doubloon during the trader phase.  A noble-occupied Land Office lets you discard a plantation tile from the plantation to earn 1 doubloon.

The Forest House does give you a discount above and beyond a quarry at the cost of spending 2 turns doing nothing but getting a forest; I rather just have a Construction Hut for the guaranteed Quarry.  I don't like the Black Market because you can almost always do something with the discarded good (sell it or ship it), and who wants to discard VPs?  The noble-occupied Land Office is amusing if you get stuck pulling a plantation you'll simply never use, but the colonist-occupied Land Office is a Hacienda that you have to spend an extra doubloon for.
Verdict:  The Expansion 1 buildings are the worst of the bunch.  Construction Hut and Hacienda still probably win, although Construction Hut and Land Office isn't bad.
Cost 3
Small Warehouse vs. Storehouse (Expansion 1) vs. Chapel (Expansion 2)
Now we're getting to some actual decisions!  Small Warehouse is great when you and someone else are producing the same good, but he gets the drop on you and captains first and fills a ship up.  In addition to your one barrel kept after captaining, a Storehouse allows you to get 3 more goods (of any type), so you effectively get to keep up to four barrels after captaining.  The Chapel, during the craftsman phase, gives you 1 doubloon if occupied by a colonist, and 1 VP if occupied by a Noble.
Verdict:  All three are great.  If you have diverse plantations, I think Storehouse is actually better.  If you want a free doubloon or VP almost every turn, the Chapel is pretty tempting.
Cost 4
Hospice vs. Guesthouse (Expansion 1) vs. Hunting Lodge (Expansion 2)

Hospice is nice because your plantations are automatically occupied when you Settle.
Guesthouse is extremely interesting.  During the Mayor phase, you may place up to two of your colonists in the Guesthouse.  Then, during any other phase, at any point, you may move people from the Guesthouse onto any other space on your board, where they immediately take effect.  Great for getting a Big Purple building occupied at the end of the game when no one is going to Mayor again, or when you just bought that Coffee Roaster but haven't had a chance to occupy it yet.
Hunting Lodge is such a Johnny combo-riffic building.  During each Settler phase, if the Hunting Lodge is colonist-occupied, you may discard a plantation from your island.  If the Hunting Lodge is noble-occupied, and you have the fewest plantations on the board (not tied for fewest), you earn 2 VP.

Verdict:  All three are great again.  Hospice is very straight-forward and good at what it does, but Guesthouse is a really versatile building, and Hunting Lodge is really hilarious if you can stay behind in plantations, especially early in the game.
Cost 5
Office and Large Market vs. Trading Post and Church (Expansion 1) vs. Zoning Office (Expansion 2)
Wow, still reading?

Trading Post gives you your own Trading House, but you can't use Small Market or Large Market with it.
With the Church, you get 1 VP when you buy anything in the 2nd or 3rd column, 2 VP if you buy anything in the 4th column.
A colonist-occupied Zoning Office lets you pay 1 less doubloon when buying anything in the first 3 columns, and a noble-occupied Zoning Office lets you pay 2 less doubloons when buying anything in the 4th column.

Verdict:  Office and Large Market all the way.  Trading Post suffers because you don't get Small or Large Market bonuses, and Church and Zoning Office really don't give great returns.  Selling Coffee over and over again, and at a possible +2 doubloons is fantastic.
Cost 6
Large Warehouse vs. Small Wharf (Expansion 1) vs. Royal Supplier (Expansion 2)

Small Wharf lets you ship straight to the supply, as many or as few barrels as you want, but you only get 1 VP for each two barrels you ship.
Royal Supplier lets you ship straight to the supply, and you get 1 VP for each barrel, but you can only ship 1 of each good, and you can only ship up to X barrels, where X is the number of nobles on your board.

Verdict:  Large Warehouse or Royal Supplier.  Small Wharf is reasonably costed, and if you miss out on a Wharf, it's not bad, but I think the Royal Supplier does it better, because you're going to want Nobles anyways; it only takes 5 barrels to get 5 VP with the Royal Supplier, whereas it takes 10 barrels with the Small Wharf.  Large Warehouse is great simply for how much it can hold.
Cost 7
Factory vs. Lighthouse (Expansion 1) vs. Villa (Expansion 2)
My wrist is cramping.  The Lighthouse gives 1 doubloon for each shipment (much like the Harbor, but with doubloons instead of VP).  If you have a Lighthouse and you select Captain, you get another doubloon just for being awesome.  During the Mayor phase, an occupied Villa lets you take a Noble from the supply.
Verdict:  They're all fantastic picks.  If your opponents will allow it, the Villa.  The Villa may just be the single most broken building in the game, as an early Villa can fuel Jeweler and Chapel, plus you're getting a free guy worth 1 VP.
Cost 8
University and Harbor vs. Specialty Factory and Library (Expansion 1) vs. Jeweler (Expansion 2)

Specialty Factory gives you X-1 doubloons when crafting, where X is the number of goods of a single kind you produced.  Produced 5 corn?  You just got 4 doubloons.
The Library is awesome.  When you take a role, double the privilege.  It's just that simple.  Think about it.
During the Craftsman phase, the Jewler gives you a doubloon for each Noble on your board.  It also counts as a large production building.

Verdict:  Library and (Jeweler if playing with Nobles, Harbor without Nobles).  I hate the University; it is way too expensive for what it does.  The Specialty Factory is nice, but I think there is more money-making opportunities with the Jeweler.
Cost 9
Wharf vs. Union Hall (Expansion 1)
During the Captain phase, before captaining, you get 1 VP for every two of the same good you have.
Verdict:  The Wharf is just better.  If you have a Large Market and the Union Hall, and you somehow keep being unable to ship anything, I could see some big decent VP bonuses there, but I much rather just be able to ship everything at 1 VP per barrel.
Cost 10
I'm just going to cover the new ones here.

Statue -- it's worth 8 VP, period.  No occupation necessary, just fork over the 10 doubloons and collect 8 VP.  Fantastic.
Cloister -- you get VP depending on how many triplets of plantations you have on your island; 1 VP for 1 set, 3 VP for 2 sets, 6 VP for 3 sets and 10 VP for 4 sets.  Tricky to use.
Royal Garden -- all your nobles are worth 2 VP instead of 1 VP.  Absolutely brutal with the Villa.

Boy, I sure hope this helps!

LBT, your long answer wasn't quite long enough... :) seriously though, nice analysis.

I think the first expansion works very well, with most buildings being useful except for maybe the forest house.  I always play with random choice on buildings, and found that it really keeps the game interesting to have things changed around.

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How Does The "Franz" L-Deck Occupation Work?
We played with Agricola: The Goodies for the first time last night, and while it was very silly, it didn't have the negative impact on gameplay that I'd feared.  However, the Occupation cards from the L-deck created all sorts of rules questions for us that we weren't quite equipped to answer.  But that's where this site comes in!
The text of the "Franz" occupation reads:

At any time, you can give this card to
  a player who has spent too long
  thinking about their turn, and place
  one of your family members instead.
  (This player misses a turn, but can use the Franz card later.) If you
  played Franz during the game and
  passed him to another player, you can
  say "I am not Franz!" and receive 1
  Bonus point.

What happened in our first-ever-time-playing-the-Goodies Agricola game last night was this.  I (to my shame!) was taking way too long over my turn.  One of the other players called me on it and passed me Franz from his hand. I was the last player, and he didn't have a family member to place instead.  To make matters even more crazy, the Simplifier was in play: "Occupations with more than 4 lines of text have no effect for the remainder of the game."
I queried multiple things about this play.  One, can you pass me Franz directly from your hand? Don't you have to actually play an Occupation before you use it? Two, even if Franz breaks the rules and can be played from hand, can he played with the Simplifier effect in play? Three, can you play Franz if you don't have a family member to place instead?  (The Franz-playing player argued that the card wouldn't do anything anyway because of the Simplifier being in play, but that he was still entitled to pass it to me.)
Four, what on earth does the last line on the card mean?  I keep reading and re-reading it and can't parse its meaning. Does it imply that if you actually spent an action playing the Franz occupation (as opposed to just passing it on after getting it from someone else), you get 1 Bonus point every time you Franz someone?  That's the interpretation I'm leaning towards having thought about it for a while, but it seemed very ambiguous last night.
Can someone spell out how Franz works, in a way that will clear up all of the above confusion?

The last sentence on the German card is a bit clearer:
Wenn du Franz ausgespielt hast und bei Spielende nicht mehr hast, kannst du "Ich bin nicht Franz!" sagen und erhaelst 1 Sonderpunkt.
That is: "If you played Franz and don't have it any more at the game's end...".
Which says that you only receive the bonus point at the end of the game. The condition here is slightly different from the one on the English card. If you play the card, pass it, get it back, and play it again, you do not receive the bonus point. The German card is not clear about what happens if you play it, pass it, get it back, and keep it in your hand.
As for your other questions: I think you're right. The card has to be played first before it has any effect, just like any other occupation. In combination with the Simplifier, Franz has no effect: it cannot be passed to another player, and gives no bonus point.

Excellent work on getting (and translating) the German text.  I often think Agricola would be a lot less confusing in its original language!

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The Simplifier vs The Snitch
We played with Agricola: The Goodies for the first time last night, and while it was very silly, it didn't have the negative impact on gameplay that I'd feared.  However, the Occupation cards from the L-deck created all sorts of rules questions for us that we weren't quite equipped to answer.  But that's where this site comes in!
The Simplifier occupation reads:

Occupations with more than 4 lines of
  text have no effect for the remainder
  of the game.

The Snitch has about 9 lines of text in total, but begins:

Immediately flip 1 Occupation that you
  have played face down.

In last night's rather crazy all-Goodies game of Agricola, one of the players played the Simplifier, to switch off the damn Bean Farmer for a while, but then played the Snitch to flip her own Simplifer, and reinstate the Bean Farmer.  (I never played an Occupation or Minor Improvement in the whole game because of all these shenanigans!)
The $1 million dollar question is of course, can you really flip the Simplifier with the Snitch, or is he unSnitchable?  (It seemed more fun to allow it at the time, but this type of thing is what keeps me awake at night!)

Snitch would have to be valid to undo Simplifier...and the Simplifier card text states that it has no effect for the rest of the game...
So...no Snitching for the Simpleton!

I would agree that this is the most sensible reading of the cards.  On the other hand, when you're playing with Goodies the word "sensible" doesn't necessarily apply any more! :D


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Accepting Queen's Gambit
Why is it considered a disadvantage to accept Queen's Gambit? How should I play to take advantage of an accepted Queen's Gambit?
(All online guides I've seen simply state not to do it, but don't explain why it's bad or how to take advantage of it.)

White has a slight advantage in the Accepted line, but it will depend what level you play at.  Even at the higher levels both Anand and Kasparov have played it.
You give up the center in the QGA as black, but white has an isolated Queen's pawn to deal with.  There are too many alternatives for the QGA to go over them all here.
In general, white is taking the center, and hopes that his advantage will compensate for the pawn.  A very logical move then is 3. e4, grabbing the center with a pawn duo, though 3. Nf3 has been more popular.
If Black tries to hard to keep the pawn, he'll only hurt himself.

On 3.e4, black can counter-gambit to good effect with 3...e5

The reason it's discouraged for lower-rated players is that black gives up a center pawn and allows white to develop his bishop with a gain of tempo - two things we are trying to teach the players not to do.
However, in higher levels it's considered ok, since the half-open d-file gives black control of d5, and in many lines white's d-pawn becomes isolated.
Of course, in the end, at lower-level play the opening doesn't really matter.

I'm not sure it is a disadvantage. Here's a quote on the QGA entry on Wikipedia:

At the end of the 1990s, a number of players among the world elite included the Queen's Gambit Accepted in their repertoires, and the line is presently considered sound.

It has gone in and out of favor over time, but apparently it's in vogue now. Maybe it's discouraged for beginning players?

Generally, the Queen's gambit it's not considered a true gambit, because white comes out ahead with an accepted queen's gambit. White is offering a wing pawn in exchange for a center pawn.
Theoretical disadvantage of an accepted Queen's Gambit:

d4 d5
c4 dxc4
Qa4+ c6 (or Qd7, or Bd7, or Nd7)
Qxc4

Now white has a commanding control of the center of the field, and is not down any pieces. (though the queen is out and exposed very early)
At least that's how it was explained to me 20+ years ago.
Not that this is the way it's usually played, but white players consider that other things they can do with an accepted queen's gambit are better than this.

Accepting the queen's gambit pawn is considered disadvantageous under the old, German school of thought. In fact, Tarrasch would play, 1. d4 d5  2. c4  e6 3. Nf3 c5 as BLACK, offering a QB pawn to white.
The newer, "Russian" school of thought is that captures c4 is a fighting move that puts a thorn in White's side. Sometimes the pawn can be held if White emphasizes the king side (e.g.) 3: e4 e5; at other times, recapturing the pawn takes White out of his way and dulls the attack.

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Have I Been Misplaying France in Diplomacy?
France is considered one of the "better" countries to play in Diplomacy. That's true insofar as it a "corner" and not a "center" country like Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.
In descending order, my favorite strategies are 1) Go for the Mediterranean, 2) Ally with England vs. Germany 3) Ally with Germany Vs. England. But I've found France a tough, frustrating country to play when one can't use a Mediterranean strategy (because of what's going on elsewhere). A couple examples:
In one game, England "allied" with me against Germany, than stabbed me, leading to a Franco-German alliance (my least favorite). Meanwhile, Italy stabbed Austria, A Venice-Trieste, and got two builds in 1901, three in 1902, and had her choice of allies: with Russia vs. Turkey and Germany, with England vs. France.
In another game, I had to ward off an Anglo-German invasion. But the English army that went to Belgium marched into the Ruhr, again leading to a Franco-German alliance. But by the time we reshuffled the alliance, Austria-Hungary had stabbed Italy, overextended in a Lepanto opening, captured Venice and Rome, and dominated the Med. With Turkey, Italy, and the Balkans, Austria and Russia had the 18 centers to declare themselves co-winners.
Have I been misplaying France? Or has my inability to control the Med been due to my northern troubles, and the Austro-Italian imbalances? Can I hope for a more "fortunate" result playing France in future games, against, say, random opponents?

It sounds to me like both games you've failed to negotiate an alliance with England.  That isn't necessarily your fault, but in order to concentrate on the Med you would need to at least be able to negotiate a neutral England, if not an entirely friendly one.
Some ideas you might want to try

It sounds like in both games you stumbled into an FG alliance that was not in a strong position.  You might do better if you attempted to negotiate the FG alliance from the start.  That way you can be directing the flow of the conflict, rather than reacting to it.
England is likely worried that in an EF alliance, F usually grows faster and is in a more solid position after taking down Germany, while E ends up overextended.  So you'll likely need to give him the better side of the split, and make it clear that you are committing to the South so that E knows he isn't the next target.  You can also make things easier by making sure that England has a good path to grow after the initial attack on Germany, which generally means you want a weak Russia.  At the same time, don't make yourself too inviting of a target for E.  Many alliances are broken due to people who are too trusting and make it too easy for their partner to stab.

The more you play Diplomacy, the more you realize that none of the countries are really better than the others, so don't get frustrated that you didn't get a good result while playing a "strong" country.  Focus on where your negotiations failed to bring the results you wanted, and try to improve on that in your next game.

It's no wonder you've had so much difficulty playing France! You've been playing it wrong the whole time!
Now, to be fair, there isn't really a "correct" way to play different Powers. But some strategies are better than others.
That being said, you're focusing on the wrong front, which is why you keep getting screwed. Think about it like this . . .
The board is divided into two spheres: the West, and the East. The West encompasses England, Germany, and France. And the East encompasses Russia, Turkey, and Austria-Hungary. (Italy doesn't belong to either sphere, so don't worry about it for now.)
To win the game, your first objective is to control your sphere, unless you're Italy, in which case the story is different. But we're talking about France, so forget about Italy. Anyway . . . That's just it! You're playing as France, so your first objective is to control the West--but you're going after Italy instead. See the problem? You're not paying attention to the real issue at hand, which is resolving your relations with England and Germany. This is why nothing is working for you. You've turned your back on the two Powers that are your biggest immediate threats!
So what do you do, then? Easy. Resolve your sphere first, then go after Italy. Italy can wait, but England and Germany won't. Fight it out in the West first, establish control, then expand towards Italy. That's how it's done.
With all that in mind, you need an alliance with England or Germany--but never both at once! Choose one. After the choice is made, play against the third party in the sphere. If paired with England against Germany, try F(Bre)-Mid, A(Par)-Bur, and A(Mar) S A(Par)-Bur. And if paired with Germany against England, try F(Bre)-Mid, A(Par)-Pic, and A(Mar)-Bur, making sure that Germany bounces your army going to Burgundy.
My advice is not certain, but it's pretty good. But you'll never know how good it might be until you try it, so give it a try. Good luck!

Apparently you have been misplaying France, because your priorities are misplaced.
According to these statistics, France is the winningest country on the board, but mainly when England does not survive. If England is a factor, then France's chances of winning decline to below average. (Every other country has at least one or two "bugaboo" opponents that similarly pulls down their winning chances.) The reason is that France is in a group of three countries, along with England and Germany, and at least one of the other two needs to "disappear" for France to win.
Thus, your first priority should be to eliminate England, not Italy, (unless, of course, you have a firm alliance with England to take out Germany). In either case, you do not want to be the odd country out (and a reason your win chances are so high is that you have as good a chance of surviving the three way confrontation as any). After taking out England, you and Germany can go your separate ways (e.g. southeast to Italy for you, northeast to Russia for them). If you prefer a "stab" strategy, it is easier for you to enlist the help of Russia or Austria (occasionally Turkey or Italy) than for Germany to find allies against you.
The Anglo-French alliance should be your second choice; England gains more than you, but you should pursue this if England is a more reliable player than Germany, which was not the case in the above two scenarios. Italy should be your last concern, you need to eliminate at least one, if not both, of the other countries in the northwest part of the board before heading southeast.

Aren't you the OP?  You seem to be addressing yourself in second person.

@Zags: I am the OP. But SE policy is that if you answer your own question, you're supposed to pretend that you are not doing so, and instead use the second person.

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


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What Makes Buildings Valuable In Puerto Rico?
I'm just learning the game, so some of my comments may seem ill-informed. But it seems that strategies fall under two categories, a commodity-based strategy and a building-based strategy.
Commodities are simple enough. Produce a lucrative commodity (and take on roles that will increase production or profitability), then "cash out" for victory points at a high rate in foreign markets. This is what I call a "constructive" strategy.
Another strategy is to invest in the local economy in the form of buildings. At first blush, this seems less lucrative than selling commodities. But many winning players prefer this strategy, perhaps because it gives them some "veto" power over other players' shipments. This is what I call an "obstructive" strategy.
In a game such as backgammon, I would use a "constructive" (running) strategy if I got high rolls early in the game. With low rolls, I would use an "obstructive" strategy of building hurdles to make opponents "waste" rolls. Could an analogous dynamic support the acquisition of buildings in Puerto Rico?
It also seems that with buildings that there are hidden "synergies" or feedback effects. For instance, the "list price" may be five doubloons for a building with three victory points. But under some circumstances, the building "kicks back" two doubloons, which may be used to buy another building (and more victory points. Or it may "kick back" a colonist that may be used to upgrade another building. Meaning that the five doubloon building actually costs "less" than its "list price."
Could it be that buying buildings is a highly  "constructive" strategy, but only if you buy several of them in tandem?

related: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/3085/evaluating-tactical-situations-in-puerto-rico

"But many winning players prefer this strategy"  Really?  I've always seen people have better luck with shipping than building.  Source?

I've only played 1 real game with other people and about 5 or so online against an AI. Online I always ended up doing a build strategy and winning. Interestingly many of the AI's also chose the building route. I think the "building strategy" can be very surprising to a new player who thinks the game is only about shipping. That can make it very powerful.

@littlebobbytables: Source? Your own comment about the jeweler and villa, etc., which inspired this piece. I think what happened there were compounding, or "cross product" effects where the total value ((1+J)*(1+v))-1= J+v+ jv, where J is the value of the jeweler, v the value of the villa, and jv is the "cross product" effect. While either alone don't seem unreasonable, you may need a "house rule to suppress the Jv term.

@Tom -- one comment does not equal "many winning players".

@littlebobbytables: I did not say "all," or even "most." But I think "many" (n absolute number) win that way, and perhaps "more" win the other way.

The value of buildings comes from 2 sources

Providing a direct VP contribution to your strategy
Providing money to implement your strategy

As you have correctly determined there are 2 archetypes of strategies:

The Shippers
The Builders

Shipping Strategy
Obviously they try to win by shipping more goods than the other players. They will choose buildings that give them better yield and control over shipping.
Building Strategy
This strategy is based on filling your city with high scoring buildings a quickly as possible so to end the game before the shippers can play their advantage. They will try to go for at least one big building (depending on what gives them the best score).
Supporting the Strategy
Equally important to both strategies is money. Without a decent income you cannot develop either strategy. So early and mid game the focus will be on buildings that improve the yield of your trades or your chances for getting a trade. Another form of income are quarries. So building that support you in getting one are also good early choices.
What is generally not a good choice is to buy something another player wants but you don't need. Aside from the fact that most buildings exist at least twice and you can only have one, even if you can buy a coveted building from under the nose of an opponent you'll be set back just as much by that buy. The other players will thank you for it. As such, "obstructive building" is not recommended.
Generally speaking the question is not what buildings have good synergies with each other. The question is what buildings have good synergies with your particular strategy.
I suggest you browse the forums over at BoardGameGeek for more strategy on Puerto Rico. There is at least one very in-depth strategy guide there that explains the mechanics far better than I could here.

Some buildings help you win by ending the game before the shippers can get full value for their goods. Obstructive, but enough of a reason to use buildings.

@Tom Au: I wouldn't call that "obstructive" since your goal is not to take a building away from an opponent. Your goal is to end the game by filling your city space - which is indeed what builders usually do.

Fair enough about "obstructive." But the idea seems to be to get "first past the post" (mahjong style), before others can come away with a higher score.


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In Chess, Why Does Black Sometimes Play "Cramped" Openings?
I'm referring to openings such as d6 (Pirc Defense) or e6 (French Defense) in answer to say, e4. These openings often make it more difficult to develop pieces than say, c5 or e5. In particular, the black squared bishop needs to be fianchettoed after d5, and the white squared bishop is locked behind a wall of pawns after e6 (and d5). For these reasons, White (almost) never begins a game with d3 or e3. A certain chess master had the opinion that "Cramped positions carry within them the germ of defeat," and would play c5 as black, whenever possible.
Do such openings (French and Pirc defenses) represent a desire for a "closed" game style of play? Could black be trying to get white to overreach? Or is it that these are among the better choices available to black, given that s/he moves second, with the other openings offering problems of their own?

"Cramped" openings are generally used by players who are good at piling up strong defenses for the opening and who hope to encourage overextension on White's part, in order to take advantage of it; or to fend it off till it has passed, and then muster an attack of their own.  After 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5, which is the common continuation of the French Defense, Black main drawback is, as you mentioned, his Queen Bishop, which cannot usually enter the play until the endgame.  However, after ... c5, attacking the newborn White Pawn chain, Black's Pawn center may become threatening, and can grow into a major defensive asset, either forcing White to give up the center, or tying down White's pieces to defense of the center.  The point is that Black has many attacking chances as well, and while his first moves appear conservative, even "cramping", he is merely being more patient than in the alternative openings.  He uses more moves to get where he wants, but the extra moves can reap dividends when White comes to attack.
So a closed opening which is handled by a patient player holds much potential defensive advantage, and it is often played with a definite view toward strong reactions after White has burnt himself out trying to effect a successful attack.
Naturally, not all closed openings are effective.  More than one kind of cramped opening exists: the kind that looks cramped, but is in reality compact and smooth (closed), and then there is also the kind that is really unworkable and impossible to manipulate (cramped).  The latter turn into big mistakes, even worse than they look, especially when played by one who is more used to aggressive technique than the patient biding of time.  It wouldn't be recommended to play these unless you are the patient type, or unless you can force yourself to play quietly and defensibly until it's time to strike.
Edited later to say that there are closed openings for White, as well.

(((My first attempt at an answer on board games. :-O! )))

@drm65: Your first attempt. An upvote on that basis. And thanks for the the "congrats" for 1000. Looking forward to yours someday soon. Apparently, congrats are already in order for your 100.

@Tom, you get 100 on a StackExchange site for linking a profile with 200 or more on another site ... so you can create a profile on any other site now and start with 101 there yourself. Not that this isn't a quality answer, but we don't all start from the same place. :)

@Dave: Actually, this site is the one in which I have the highest reputation.  So I didn't start off with 101.  I only started with stack exchange five days ago.

Ah, so at this rate, in a day or so you'll be getting a rep boost on all those other sites. (Sorry to detract from your answer; this is becoming more chatty and less informative and would be better done in chat ... comments should be about the answer itself.)

@TomAu: I found ELU shortly after this answer (incidentally my first answer ever on SE), so I've kinda fallen off of this site, but I am creepin' up to 1K here!

Obviously the french defense is not a cramped defense (or else Mihail Botvinnik would not have been a world champion). The french defense is one of the most solid defenses.
About the black squared bishop it is a great piece for black in many cases, a great piece as black's pawns are in white squares with great movility from the start.
The white squared bishop can be very useful also if you know how to use it. Anyways if you dont like it, it can almost allways be exchanged for white's bishop simply by doing b6 and Ba6 (very simple, isnt it?).
I also want to say these defenses are not always quiet. You can take a look at the winawer system (as complex and aggresive or even more than the sicilian) that derivates from the french defense: 1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 Bb4 4 e5 c5 5 a3 Bxc3+ 6 bxc3. Very dangerous for both sides.

Adopting a 'cramped' positions has some things in favor for it, usually, you will get positions you are more likely familiar with.
A quote from David Bronstein's Zurich 1953 book (P.19)
"The text is thought to give Black a cramped game, but if a player likes precisely that sort of "cramped game", then he will get better results with it than with a "freer" game.  Generally speaking, such evaluations, even though they may sway the opinions of the theoreticians, have far less of an influence on practical tournament games than is commonly supposed."


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In Axis and Allies, When (and How) Would You Adjust Your Opening Strategy?
Most AA players have a preferred strategy. But not every player gets to go first. Meaning that the later going players may have to adjust their strategies, based on what has gone on before. Or do they?
Germany: If Russia doesn't get to attack on the first turn, you (effectively) go first, and have your choice of Russia, Africa, or both. But suppose Russia gets aggressive (if allowed a first turn attack).  How would that affect your choice of target?
UK: Germany can either go after you (in Africa) or Russia, or both. How, if at all, would those choices affect your opening moves?
Japan: The UK and Russia can go east (India, Sinkiang, Yakut etc.) or west (Africa, Norway). Does this affect your posture vis-a-vis the U.S. in the Pacific?
US: You have your choice of Atlantic or Pacific strategies. Is this choice affected by foregoing moves, caliber of players, or other considerations? Or do you just use an Atlantic "shuck-shuck?"
Russia: You're "last" if you can't attack on the first move. Is Germany or Japan the more dangerous enemy? Under what cirumstances?

As Germany, my preference is to invade (UK's) soft African "underbelly" first, then take on Russia second. But if Russia gets aggressive and possibly overextends herself with a first turn attack, I'd go after Russia first. (I would not play allowing a Russian first turn attack unless I got some compensation under house rules.) Can We Find a Middle Ground on the Russia First Turn Attack Rule In Allies and Axis? In Axis and Allies, could a house rule upgrading the German navy finally "balance" the 1942 game?
Basically, I'm "renting" Africa for an attack on Russia, but my real object is the latter. Russia has 24 of the 27 IPCs needed for an economic victory. Sacrifice my two African IPCs, and the bar rises to 29. Japan has probably captured China and Sinkiang for 4 IPCs, which, added to Russia, is 28. ANYTHING else gives us victory.
As the UK, it would largely depend on what my ALLIES wanted to do. In descending order of preference, the strategies are 1) a North Atlantic "shuck, shuck," (withe U.S.) 2) a rescue Africa strategy, if Germany concentrates on building naval power instead of occupying Africa and 3) a Far Eastern strategy beginning with a "Kwabang" attack, but only if Russia and the U.S will back me up.
As Japan, I really want to head west. In the Pacific, I may make a spoiling attack against Pearl Harbor, but that's all. My preference is to fight the UK (India, Australia, and later Africa). But if Russia gets aggressive, or Germany prefers this, I will go against Russia (reluctantly), instead.
As the US, again my preferences would depend my allies, and my choices (in order of preference) are similar to the U.K.'s
As Russia, I prefer a Germany-first defensive strategy. If allowed, my preference is for a live and let live policy vis-a-vis Japan.

Effectively, these decisions depend upon variable inital starting conditions. In my case, If I am playing any power save Russia, My first move will depend on the actions of the other combatants. Russia is pretty well thrown on the defensive from the start. The correlation of forces on the Eastern Front suggest to the mind of the eager and bloodthirsty young Wermacht officer, that an all out attack will wipe the bolsheviks from the face of the Earth. And it CAN be done. All out attack purchasing only armor, the Germans can indeed drive an armored column through the streets of Moscow; at the price of the remaining Allies disecting your war machine with sugical precision at their leisure.  This is the big (nearly pathological from what I infer) fear that drives Russia to commit to total defense from the start. All the strategic thinking I have encountered seems to be based on the idea that all the players actions will be scripted for at least the first 3-4 turns, and that any deviation from the program leads to irrecovocable and ignominius defeat. I would suggest that if my opponents actions are known to me in advance, I will immediately look for a way to twist that to my advantage.

Suppose you are Britain. You've been playing for a while and feel pretty comfortable. Every body knows what's going to happen, so they are looking for that moment when the dice go to crap, or someone makes a mistake.  Along comes a spider...   Britain makes her stardard first buy, I.C. save the rest. You move your troops from Africa and the middle east, and fort up expecting help from America. By transferring every piece of readily available mililtary gear to India, I will end the turn with 3 inf/1 ftr/1 trns. I am expecting Japan to Pearl. That's the plan, right?
     The problem lie in the willingness of your opponent to cooperate. As the Japanese player faced with this scenario I experience several emotions. The first is a kind of avaricious lust to possess that factory. This leads to moment of calculation, a judging of the balance of power, if you will, followed by joyous realization. The final stage is a tactical tunnel vision. The only thing I can see is India. All my military goes there. After combat movement (assuming no battle) Japan can have poised to attack on turn 2; 10 inf, 5 ftr, 1 bmbr, plus naval support.I submit no amount of effort on the part of the Allies will prevent the fall of the complex, unless the Allies are willing to surrender the rest of the war. India can be a strategic pivot in the Pacific war, but only achieves critical status if the Allies build the factory. Approached as a delaying tactic to support Russia, it can be minimally effective. But after due consideration, the Indian factory can only be employed as a gambit nad not a strategy.


text:
Is there an API to find Warhammer 40K model pictures by name?
I'm writing a roster editor and it would be very helpful if there's something like Magic the Gathering's Gatherer but for Warhammer 40,000 models.
Something like: http://www.site.com/?model=Ork+Boyz

I sincerely doubt there is, at least not officially.  I've been playing Games Workshop games for the past 15 years, and their protection of intellectual property has gotten pretty severe in the past couple of years.  Just do a Google search for "Games Workshop sues" and see all the fun that auto-complete brings up.
From their Legal Page, Bandwidth Theft and Mirroring Resources section:

We do not tolerate deep linking to the pictures, images, PDFs or other downloads on our website. Such activity is bandwidth theft. Also, do not mirror the resources that we have on our websites. So, if you want other people to see the materials that we have produced, please use a simple HTML link to the relevant web page.

And from the Online Auctions:

Do not use our trademarks in relation to products that are not owned by or originate from Games Workshop (see Making Terrain above).

Now, I am not a lawyer, but between Privateer Press, Chapterhouse Studios, the TalkFantasyFootball forums, etc., etc., I would be very careful in what you do.

Linking to images - welcome to Web 1.0. I'd settle for any catalogue of models, whether the fascist images are on games-workshop.com or some other website.


text:
What do you do about contradictory rules of Pit?
The rules of Pit are oddly contradictory. For n players choose n commonities, add in the Bull and Bear, shuffle and deal out the cards. The rules state that everyone gets 9 cards. Doh! With the Bull and the Bear added in that doesn't work.
The way we reconcile this is two people have 10 cards which gives them a significant advantage, e.g. they can simply hold a single card of a commodity to effectively eliminate whoever ends up going for that commodity.
Are there better solutions to this?

The rules in my copy of the game note that two people get 10 cards. Generally these will be the two people left of the dealer.
You cannot call pit with the Bear in hand; you can call Pit with a Bull and 8 copies of a commodity. If you call Pit with a Bull and all 9 copies you get double points for that commodity.
Of note, it is courteous to remind people that they have 10 cards in hand but only need 9 of a commodity. New players often end up holding all 9 of a commodity while desperately looking for a phantom 10th because they are used to seeing their entire hand match.

It's gone through a lot of runs. I know my rules are contradictory. :) We've had kids do exactly what you described (I just need one more but I can't find it anywhere!). lol

Yeah every time I see a box of Pit it is always another printing. The commodity types and scores change from version to version as well.

Deal 9 cards to each player, leaving the last two face down. (These leftovers are called the "widow" in some games.) That means that a complete set of 9 can't be completed for two of the sets in the game. A player can call a corner while holding 8 cards if he willing to gamble that the 9th is out of play. After corner is called, check to see if the 9th is in the widow. If it is, the score is as normal. If it's not, the person holding it gets a bonus (+20) and the person calling the false corner gets a penalty (-20).
We always played with spoons. In the middle of the table, one fewer spoons than the number of players. Once somebody gets a corner he quietly picks up one spoon. As they notice, other players pick one up until there are none left, leaving one player out. Everyone with a spoon gets 20 points. Note that it's excellent form to continue to pretend to trade after you've picked up your spoon, leaving the unobservant desperately trying to improve his hand while everyone else snickers behind their cards. Double hilarity if two players continue to trade with one spoon left on the table.

In the group where I've often played Pit, we discarded the Bull and Bear cards before shuffling. It makes the game simpler and better, in my humble opinion.
That being said, we can still debate which is the best solution if you do want to keep those cards. MrHen's solution may well win that honour. A different option would be to discard two cards at random every time you deal. The advantage is that the playing field is level; however, there are up to two commodities that cannot be completed. But in this version, all players are equally likely to be affected.
I could see a few variants of this variant:

Make the discarded cards secret. At the end of every round people are going to be frustrated that their chosen commodity was unwinnable.
Make the discarded cards public. Now all commodities of the discarded type are effectively Bear cards.
Start a timer for (say) 30 seconds when the round starts. At the end, if no one has won yet, play is interrupted and one of the discarded cards is made public. Players try not to give away that they were close to finalizing a "doomed" commodity. Play continues for another 30 seconds and is interrupted again to make the last card public. Chaos ensues.

I personally like the Bull and Bear cards. We usually play at least one round per player at the table and count up the scores at the end so 2 people having 10 cards each round evens out.

(Unrelated from my other comment) Discarding a few cards secretly may be worse than adding extra cards from unused commodities to even out the hand totals again.

Another option (for BULL & BEAR) -
Include both the Bull and Bear cards - AND 7 random cards of one complete commodity set of 9.   Thus two cards which are two different commodities would be discarded when using the Bull & Bear card. Thus no one will know which other commodities have an extra card.
All players will have TEN cards at all times.   But you just need a set of 9 to win/corner the market.  And the normal Bull and Bear point rules apply.  So having Bull card the player gains bonus points.  Having the Bear card the player minus points.  And having both Bull & Bear loose double points.   And obvious there are two commodities that could not be finished unless you had the BULL card.

Have the Bull and the Bear cards constantly being passed faced down (clockwise) as you trade the other cards/commodities with all players.  Bull & Bear cards go around like ring a round the rosy.  You are NOT allowed to have both BULL & BEAR at the same time.  If you have the Bull or Bear card, you can briefly hold it, but you must immediately pass it to the player on your left (clockwise) when the player to your right passes the other Bull or Bear card to you.  Thus the Bear & Bull cards are being passed continually in a circular motion..  - You could choose to glance at these cards as they pass through you with which to remember where they are.  ---- Then when any player corners the market with a set of all 9 of one, the game stops, and the player holding the Bull card receives an automatic point bonus (of 25), and the player holding the Bear card gets a automatic subtraction of points (for example minus 10).  Note:  if you are passed the Bear card but you are still holding the Bull card when someone corners the market (rings the bell/end of the round) then you receive a penalty of minus 50 points for having both Bear & Bull cards.

This doesn't seem to answer the question.


text:
Which castling method is superior?
Chess has two types of castling: kingside and queenside.
Which one is more advantageous near the beginning of the game?

I upvoted it. It could have been better worded, "what are the advantages and disadvantages of each." But there is a clear (if simple) fork in the road, that gets to some subtle points. One way is associated with an earlier style of play and the other with a different (more modern) style.

Wasn't this question already closed?

Neither method of castling is superior to the other.  They are completely position-dependent.  Neither method is advantageous at the beginning of the game relative to each other.
One of the major factors in Chess is position, so you have to choose where to castle based on the opening you're using.
There are two purposes for castling:

Protect the King
Develop the Rook

Some details:

Castling queenside will put your rook on a center file.
Castling queenside will leave your King open to a diagonal threat.
Castling kingside will have tend to have your King protected even from the diagonal
Castling kingside will usually mean that you have to move your Rook again.
Castling kingside can generally be done sooner since there are less pieces to move out of the way.

Of course, you can see, it all depends on your opening.  If you're moving a lot of queenside pieces then it may do you well to castle queenside, but it depends on your pawn structure.  If you're doing a King's pawn opening, then you'll probably end up castling kingside.

In the "old" days, people preferred kingside castling. It was faster (only two pieces in the way instead of three). It also meant that you could use your pawns on the "long" (queen) side for maneuvering, without worrying about leaving your king unprotected. One obvious advantage of kingside castling was that it protected the rook pawn, castling on the other side, you need an extra move to do this. In an era when openings were "short" (about ten moves), this was an advantage.
Currently, people are beginning to pay more attention to queen side castling. That's partly because the methods of attacking on the kingside have mostly been worked out, but they are less familiar on the queenside. Another reason is that the rook lands on a center (queen) file instead of a bishop file, which could be more useful for in controlling the center.
Nowadays, the tendency is for longer openings. If you don't mind taking an extra move to move out the queen (and maybe a second extra move to allow the king to protect the rook pawn), the advantages mentioned in the last paragraph could argue in favor of queenside castling.


text:
What are the legal tournament formats for MtG?
What are the current legal tournament formats for Magic: The Gathering?  What are the differences/definitions of each format?  At what point do sets rotate in/out of a format?

You can visit the Banned / Restricted Lists for DCI-Sanctioned Magic: The Gathering Tournaments page to see a list of formats, plus deck construction rules and a list of banned/restricted cards for each format.
With the exception of prerelease Limited, new sets enter their appropriate formats on the day of their official release. The specific dates for upcoming sets are spelled out in the "New Releases" section of the most current Magic Tournament Rules (PDF link).
As for a description of each format, plus differences and defining characteristics, is probably overly broad as a question.

Note: While it's not a tournament format, Commander does have rules listed in the CR. Cards are legal in Commander as of their set's prerelease.


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What chess-opening does this cat play
I just saw this funny cat video where the cat gets beaten in chess by a trick opening. It is not the well known fool's mate, but I guess it is a famous opening too. Can anyone identify the opening that is played here?

The board appears to be mirrored.  The f-row is not to the right when playing black.

That appears to be the Scholar's Mate, the four-move game that ends with 4. Qxf7#.

In chess, Scholar's Mate is the checkmate achieved by the moves 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6? 4. Qxf7#. The moves might be played in a different order or in slight variation, but the basic idea is the same – the queen and bishop combine in a simple mating attack on f7 (or f2 if Black is performing the mate). Sometimes Scholar's Mate is referred to as the Four-Move Checkmate, though there are other ways to checkmate in four moves.

Obviously this is a fake video. I've never met a cat who would fall for this move.

+1: The result looks similar, I guess the cat just plays some strange moves that are even weaker than the moves in the classic Scholar's Mate. I'll accept the answer tomorrow if no one comes up with a better variation.

the cat is clearly not concentrating!


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Which effect triggers first in MTG: Mage Slayer or Mystifying Maze
Yesterday I played a deck with the card Mage Slayer against a deck with Mystifying Maze. I equipped a creature with Mage Slayer and attacked. My opponent reacted by exiling the equipped creature with his Mystifying Maze.
The ability of Mage Slayer triggers and resolves in the declare attackers step. Can Mystifying Maze prevent this? It can only target attacking creatures, therefor it can only be used once the attackers are declared.
What's the correct ruling in this situation?

Mystifying Maze can't prevent the Mage Slayer ability from resolving.
It helps to visualise the stack.  As you declare your attack, the Mage Slayer ability triggers and is put on the stack.  In response, your opponent activates his Mystifying Maze and puts this ability on the stack.  Everyone passes, Mystifying Maze's ability at the top of the stack resolves, the creature is exiled.  Now we get to Mage Slayer's ability, still on the stack.  The creature may currently be exiled, but the ability still resolves (and uses last known information to determine the creature's power and toughness).
There is no window to use the Mystifying Maze's ability before Mage Slayer can trigger; at any point before the trigger the creature is not yet an attacker, and is therefore an invalid target.

+1: Thanks for the answer, that makes it much clearer! I'll accept the answer on Monday if no contradicting replies appear until then. Thx!


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When should you avoid a third bean field in Bohnanza?
I've played Bohnanza(BGG|Publisher) a few times, and it seems that most players will buy a third bean field card as soon as possible. A third bean field card costs 3 gold, but through the course of the game, it feels like the extra flexibility from owning a third bean field will more than pay for itself, as you can save up more beans of a given type in order to sell them for more.
Is it ever worthwhile not to buy the third bean field? Has anyone calculated how much a third bean field is worth (on average) over the course of the game? Should you buy a third bean field as soon as possible, or wait only until it's necessary?

It's been ages since I played Bohnanza - I'm going to have to put it on the stack for the upcoming holiday break! Under Chaos in the Old World, Dominant Species, and Dungeon Lords, of course. It might get a little smooshed under there...

I would never, ever buy the third bean field in Bohnanza except as a last resort (and yes, I win at least my fair share of games and consider myself a good player).  Look at the final scoring margins of your games: is the winner usually ahead by half a dozen points or more?  In my experience, this is not the case, it's usually much closer than that, and as such, those 3 coins you spent on a third bean field could be the difference between first place and a much less auspicious final position.
Of course, the question really is, does a third field usually pay for itself, or not?  Obviously it can pay for itself.  But shrewd bargaining, good timing, and paying attention to what cards have been cashed in for gold do too, and I think working hard at improving those skills is way more important than getting a third field at the earliest opportunity.  The third field makes the game feel a lot easier - once you have one, you will very rarely be at risk of losing a crop before you have a chance to make some gold out of it.  In my experience that leads to complacency and complacency leads to less profitable bean farming!
In short, either you regularly find yourself with not enough fields to make money with, or you don't.  If you don't, you don't need a third bean field.  If you do, I feel like you could probably benefit from tightening up your game a little - the bean field is an easy but expensive way out of your problems.  In one of Uwe Rosenberg's other fine games, At The Gates of Loyang, there's the option to increase the size of your storage barn for a small cost, at which point you can keep 4 vegetables from one turn to the next instead of 1.  And I feel that it's a trap in that game too: if you are regularly producing more vegetables than you can use, you're doing something wrong.  Unless you've exhausted all the other possibilities for fixing your supply/demand imbalance, you want to be VERY wary of spending your valuable coins!

Yes, this is my experience. In all the games of Bohnanza I've played, the first place was almost never more than 3 coins ahead of the second place, and I've pretty much never seen someone who bought a third field win.

Another thing to consider is that Uwe Rosenberg is a pretty smart game designer.  If a third beanfield was an obvious bargain and "no-brainer", why not just give it to all players to begin with?

That means also: If the third field is always of no use, why include it at all?

@Mnementh: Good point!  My comment arose more from reading some people's suggestions that you should grab the third field as soon as possible, as if it's necessary to win.  Obviously having a third field is nice and will give you some number of extra coins: in some cases more than 3 extra.  I maintain that it won't usually be worth it, but it does depend on your play group.  If you are in a play group where players vindictively refuse to trade with someone with only 2 fields, clearly it is worth buying one!

It depends on how good you are at trading, how long you hold out for rare cards, and how the other players behave (e.g., would the other players refuse a donation they need so they can force you to harvest earlier? do the other players always buy third bean fields immediately?). It also depends on the number of players, but the game has you take out different beans for different numbers of players, so having fewer players doesn't always mean you're better off buying a third bean field.
I've actually found that buying a third bean field (rather than getting one from a Field Bean) is rarely worth it in the base game. The winner of the games I've played has usually been determined by less than three thalers. I rarely find myself wishing I had bought a third bean field in the base game. (In the High Bohn(original BGG|Plus version BGG|Publisher) version, however, I will almost always obtain a third bean field.)
In short: In the base game, I would only recommend a third bean field when it's necessary (you are confident you will make more than 3 coins) or when a large majority of your opponents are also buying third bean fields.

I've gotten one answer that says you don't usually need a third field (and it's not worth the cost) and one that says that people always buy the third field as soon as possible. Can you provide any more detailed reasoning or analysis to support your position?

@Brian - looks like the voting may favor fewer third fields as well.

@Brian, I wish I had more concrete details to support my argument. Is there, perhaps, a specific point you'd like me to expound on?

As in every good designed game, any option may be two-sided. It depends on game-situation and your personal strategy, if it is right to buy the third field.
First you should observe your own games and evaluate it after the play. Did you buy a third field and thereafter one nearly all the time one of your fields was empty or the game came to an fast end? Buying the third field was wrong. Continued the game on the other hand a long time and all your fields were filled nearly all the time. Good decision! If you didn't bought a field and you had often to clear a field early, because you needed the space? A third field would have been good.
So, in what cases is a third field useful or not? Here some cases:

Do you prefer collecting rare or common beans? In the case of the rare beans a third field is useful.
Do you cash in early or try to get max-coins from a field? If you keep your beans longer on a field you might need the third.
Do you play with many people? Many players have two effects. First the game is faster (not really faster, but everyone plays fewer turns). And it is easier to trade away unwanted beans and get wanted beans. Both things reduce the usefulness of the third field.
Do you play generally with rule-variations, that makes the game faster like drawing  more cards? Faster games reduce the usefulness of the third field.
Do you play with contracts from the first extension? The contracts can be solved with first/second or second/third field. So the third field makes that easier.
Do you play with extensions, that introduce new sorts of beans? More different sort of beans makes the third field more useful. More players may cancel this effect, because you can trade the unwanted beans.

Ahh Bohnanza. We play this quite often and we always buy the 3rd fields. I usually win with a lead of about 3-6 coins. In our family we are all fairly accommodating when it comes to trades and (at least I myself) don't think too much about what kind of beans will be coming up. If you play in a more competitive environment then my personal strategy (buy asap) might not be suitable to you.
To be honest we've never explored the option of not buying the third field. We always buy them the first chance we get. I don't have any hard data but only a feel that in the end the field pays off.
I admit that both firefeather and thesunneversets make good arguments against buying the field. Your ability to trade well and read the table will reduce the need for the field. I guess it is possible that the usefulness of the field depends largely on how good of a player you are (probably compared to your opponents).
In my opinion you should go for it as soon as possible instead of waiting until you absolutely need it. It will cost the same amount of coins but the timespan in which you can profit from the increased possibilities will be longer. So you should evaluate your situation in the beginning and make a guess on whether or not you'll eventually need it and plan with that decision from the start.
Indications that you need the third field:

It is difficult for your to get good trades (hostile environment or bad trading abilities)
There are more kinds of beans per player
There are additional constraints on your growing like "Contracts" from the expansion.
Many or all of your opponents have the third field
Which all leads to you having to prematurely harvest your fields often

Indications that you don't need the third field:

You can get good trades (cooperative environment or good trading skills)
You can predict the future beans with a good reliability and plan for it
None of your opponents has the third field
Resulting in you rarely having to harvest a field prematurely

I've gotten one answer that says you don't usually need a third field (and it's not worth the cost) and one that says that people always buy the third field as soon as possible. Can you provide any more detailed reasoning or analysis to support your position?

I think that every single new player has asked this in our group. The best we can come up with is:
If you haven't bought one by the time of the 2nd run through the deck, don't.

Don't buy one after the first round, or in a game with more than 4 players. You don't have enough time to make it worth it.

That is not always true, depending on what you have in your hand to be planted and what you have currently awaiting to be harvested you can get a net gain from buying the third field.


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Differences between Clue/Cluedo and Clue: Discover the Secrets
I noticed that Hasbro released a new version of Clue last year named Clue: Discover the Secrets.
Do you need to use a different strategy in this game, or is it similar to the earlier Clue games?
I've played both the original Clue and its Master Detective variation.
I want to know because I was thinking of getting it, but wanted to know if it was different enough from the original to warrant a purchase.

Not exactly an answer to your question, but Clue: the card game is another variation; it has a bit more randomness than the original game, but provides nice variation.


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What variables should a Zendo game contain if it's being played with new players?
The game Zendo is an icehouse game of inductive logic. There are many different variables possible in the game (size, shape, orientation, pointing, etc...). One way of limiting rule difficulty is to limit the number of variables allowed in the rule.
What is your favourite set of variables when playing with new players? What's the best way to introduce new variables to escalate difficulty? What variables have caused more problems then they're worth?

The first game I played of Zendo, the master picked "Opaqueness" as the variable.  It took a very long time to identify.  :S.

The most basic, and easily visible, attributes are best for beginning players are the most obvious and easy to see. Color, size, basic orientation, number of pieces.
Rules that involve simple combinations of these attributes are good (a koan has the Buddha nature if it has a small red piece). Rules that have too many relations going on (touching, pointing) at once are somewhat more difficult (a koan has the Buddha nature if it has a small red piece touching a large green piece). Rules that involve pip count arithmetic can be quite difficult for beginning players. Rules with an "and" in them (a koan has the Buddha nature if it has a red piece and a flat piece) are OK for beginning players, as long as they aren't too complicated; an "or" (a koan has the Buddha nature if it has a red piece or a flat piece) are more difficult and should probably be avoided at first.
There are a few features that can be fairly non-obvious or hard to express for beginners (groundedness, weird orientation) and so should probably be avoided at first and introduced slowly. Also, introducing non-standard relationships (corner pointing, nesting without touching) should be avoided until people have a little more familiarity with the game.
Another way to simplify the game for beginners is to remove one color. With only three colors, it becomes much easier to figure out and test rules that involve colors.
One thing to remember with Zendo is that it's almost always better to err on the side of a rule that's too easy rather than a rule that's too hard. It's frustrating when no one figures out the rule in Zendo. It's very easy to come up with a rule that's too hard, especially if you're trying to be "clever" about it (one of the more frustrating rules I've played with was "the sum of yellow and blue pips must be a fibonacci number"; that was especially bad, because 0, 1, 2, 3, and 5 are all fibonacci numbers, and you run out of pieces quickly when trying to test higher numbers to figure out the pattern).

When I suspect a rule that requires large arrangements, I make guesses that force the Master to build a larger arrangement than mine. Then I beat him about the head with the list of sample rules that comes with the game.

This.  Rules with "or" are to be avoided at any cost with new players, because they make wrong guesses harder to eliminate.  ("And" is OK.)  When you want the game to be harder for new players, pick a simple rule but give more-ambiguous examples. I've seen a master keep 'must contain a blue piece' going for 45 minutes... by choosing his counterexamples carefully.

If all the players are new, then I think the game includes some sample rules on cards. That doesn't work if some of the players remember the sample rules.
My rule of thumb for creating rules in this kind of game is to either combine two dead simple rules (No blue pieces and more than three pieces), or to have one slightly sophisticated rule that always applies (the top of each piece must be at the same height or above the tops of all pieces with fewer pips).
Of course new players have to be reminded that their rules are always harder than they think they are.


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Name of the game where you are a monk collecting scriptures and could become pope?
I trying to recall the title of a game. I remember its gameplay and mechanics rather well, however its name eludes me.

The premise has you as monks who travel around Italy during the
medieval period, reconstructing holy books. There's a pretty detailed map drawn in the Medieval style which serves as the game board. Edit: Actually the premise is that you are monks trying to construct a common language from analyzing dialects from different part of Italy to come up with a common form of the language.
It uses Action Points system, when you spend 1 AP to move to one
neighboring province,  3 AP to move two. You can also use AP to
gather money. The AP tokens are big purple tokens. You can spend some
AP to unlock more AP.
You are supposed to go to different part of the maps to reconstruct
books from the different pieces.
Towards the end of the game, the Pope will die and one of the players
could become Pope depending on certain conditions.
Name of the game is in Latin

As a videogamer, I am amazed by the game mechanic and disappointed that this question is not on Arqade.

Which is why I love board games, because there's such an amazing variety of interesting premises.

After hunting through various BoardGameGeek lists, I had the idea of looking for games set in Italy (there's actually a list for that!). The game in question is De Vulgari Eloquentia.


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Do you need to be in the same region to attack Collossus?
In Tiny Epic Defenders 2nd Edition the text on the Epic Foe Collossus says:

When a Defender's card is drawn, that Defender is immediately placed inside the Collossus's mouth (only if no Defender is currently inside the Collossus's mouth). A Defender in the mouth on their Turn can only Fight, spending ❤ instead of .

Does the defender need to be in the same region as the Collossus to be eaten? I interpreted it as no. But when we played, we defeated Collossus relatively easily in one round because we all got eaten and had enough health to do 3 damage in one go.
Also, if you are not eaten, can you still attack Collossus using actions when you are in the same region?

You could be eaten only if no defender is currently inside the Colossus's mouth tho

@lamadelray yes but if you all have 3 hp, you do the damage and get spit out immediately.

That seems kinda weird that it let you hit after beeing eaten

@LamaDelRay How so? Would you expect the defender to have to skip a turn? It doesn't say that you have to. It does say that while eaten you spent health instead of actions to do damage.

I checked and yes it does not say skip a turn, but it would make sense thematically hence my surprise !

As I understand it, the Defender can be anywhere. It is placed in the Collossus mouth when its card is drawn, if there is no other Defender in the Collossus mouth.
There are no restrictions on attacking the Collossus with other Defenders, the restriction is only on the Defender which is being swallowed.

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


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Multiplayer version of Quizl
I recently started playing David Parlett's Quizl. It's a word game that is something like a cross between a word search and Battleship, and I really enjoy it. It's a two-player game, but I was wondering if anyone has adapted it for more players, along the same lines as multiplayer Battleship or Salvo.

An update to the website in October 2014 added rules for a multiplayer version of Quizl:

Quizl for three or more
Quizl works perfectly well for three or more, apart from the hassle of having to draw a check-grid for each opponent, so it's best to have them pre-printed. Each player in turn calls out a grid reference, as before, but you have to get used to the fact that when you call one, you do not reveal the letter you have placed in that cell of your own grid. If somebody wants to know what you have in it, they will have to make the same call, even though they will learn nothing new about the others in that turn.

I've not seen any multiplayer versions before, but why couldn't you play this the same way that you play multiplayer battleships?
I've played a few variations of multiplayer battleships. One where you select a square in a single opponent's grid, another where all shots hit all grids.  I've even played a version where your shots hit all opponent's grids, but not your own (which made it very tempting to shoot at your own ships).
Players would score for guessing a password as in the original game.  You could implement a score penalty for an incorrect guess, otherwise there would be significantly less benefit in revealing an opponent's square.
If you want to enlarge the search space (for example, if playing that all shots hit all grids) then each player could create several 5x5 grids, only one of which contains a five letter word.

There is a single-player version available here.  However, I do not believe it's available in a multiplayer version anywhere.


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Hello World game for many game systems
Ron Hale-Evans mused about creating a benchmark game that could be ported to many different game systems as a design exercise. Do you think that would be a useful tool, and can you suggest a game that would be simple enough and flexible enough to fit in many game systems, such as piecepack, Stonehenge, Icehouse, standard playing cards, or even Decktet?
I think the benefit of the exercise would be that someone could compare several game systems by seeing how their differing components were used to implement similar mechanics.
Porting Games
Porting a game to a game system means to take an existing game and modify its rules so that it can be played with a multi-purpose game system. Some examples of game systems are piecepack, Stonehenge, and the others I mentioned above. Some games are trivial to port, such as Nim. (It just involves piles of objects and removing objects from one pile at a time.) But many games are quite a challenge, and can require elegance to bring the essence of the game without all the original equipment.
You can see some examples of porting games to the piecepack in the Good Portsmanship contest, and further discussion of porting games in the contest announcement.

Could you elaborate and maybe give an example of what porting a game to another game system means? I'm having a hard time envisioning how that would work.

@Todd, I added a section that describes porting a game.

Ah, so you're looking for games which are non-trivial to port? Zendo is a trivial port; you don't need to do anything, just make sure you have enough pieces with some duplicates and enough variation.

@Don Thanks that helps. I'm not familiar with any of those systems, so this is a new concept to me.

@Brian, I think non-trivial would be more interesting. In programming, the code for Hello World is trivial, but you use it to test that you can successfully compile and run something. I can't see what the equivalent benefit would be of a trivial port to several game systems. I've added a note in the question describing what I think the benefit of this exercise would be.

@Don Having read Ron's answer, and the thread that inspired this, I would be inclined to say that this is not actually a question; it's more of a topic to inspire discussion, with some of the discussion already started in another forum. StackExchange isn't really suited for open-ended discussion; it's good for questions that can be answered objectively, or at least subjectively in a way that can be backed up with solid evidence or experience. This question is asking simply for an open-ended discussion of design ideas or game inspirations.

While I think that the topic is interesting, I don't think that it will work out very well here; we have discussion that's all out of order, and some of it copied in from another forum, with people trying to respond to each other but not really able to because the discussion isn't linear.

@Brian, I knew this was pushing the bounds of this platform, but I thought I would experiment. Thanks for playing along.

( abstracted from http://www.google.com/buzz/ludism/FCQD89cPwBr/rwhe-It-would-be-interesting-to-create-a-benchgame )
My initial answer for best benchgame was "The Lady or the Tiger?", which is the "benchfic" used by these folks, who inspired the benchgame idea in the first place. They probably use it because (a) it's in the public domain, (b) it's about a highly significant choice in a simple game, and (c) it's a ripping good story:
http://writerresponsetheory.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Benchmark_DAC_proposal
The Frank Richard Stockton story itself:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/396
As far as I know, there is no existing "The Lady or the Tiger"-themed game in BoardGameGeek, which is weird, but very good for this project. The field is clear.
If we treat LoT as the benchgame, we can retain compatibility with the benchfic project and still have plenty of flexibility for individual style in ports to various game systems, as well as room for more direct ports among them.
A port of this story should be non-trivial, more fleshed out than Hello, World, and probably more so than Cloak of Darkness ( http://www.firthworks.com/roger/cloak/ ), but still very short, like the story itself. The story is readable and fun, so a board or card game port should be playable and fun. I envision certain versions of LoT -- say for the piecepack -- as a social game, possibly a couples' game. Maybe an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma kind of thing.
By the way, I suggested a pan-game-system design competition a while back.
https://twitter.com/#!/rwhe/status/27115198293
https://twitter.com/#!/rwhe/status/27158778288
Don had the idea that all games in this contest would have to be ports of "The Lady or the Tiger?". I think that's a great idea. Anyone game? I've run two previous contests, including Good Portsmanship, and I'd like to be involved in this one, but I don't have the time to run it by myself right now.

Apologies for the broken hyperlinks. StackExchange's antispam would only let me have one active link.

Now that you've received a couple of votes, it will let you use as many links as you like. Welcome to Stack Exchange.

Not to belabor a point, but while Zendo is a fine game, IMHO "The Lady or the Tiger?" works better because it's just too darn easy to port Zendo. It might as well be Tic Tac Toe for our purposes -- you can play TTT with Go stones, Chess pieces, playing cards, Icehouse, piecepack, a Monopoly set, etc. without any imagination or ingenuity at all.

I agree with Brian Campbell's analysis above. StackExchange seems well-suited for answering technical and factual questions, such as computer programming brain burners, but maybe not for answering creative questions. Oh, well. Thanks, people.

Zendo is an Icehouse game which can be ported to different game systems; none of the fundamental rules refer to any sort of specific pieces, you just need pieces that can be combined together into structures such that there can be some rule that distinguishes two classes of structures built out of the pieces; or if you're familiar with Zendo terminology, you need to be able to build koans out of the pieces, and come up with a rule that distinguishes which koans have the Buddha nature.
I've played Zendo with playing cards before (rules can be things like "a koan has the buddha nature if the red cards add up to 10"), and it could just as well be played with Piecepack ("a koan has the buddha nature if it has at least one sun square and one moon coin"), or likely could be adapted to most any game system.
The nice thing about porting Zendo to other game systems is that the rules you make up will adapt to the attributes of the game system in question; the mechanics don't rely on things you could do with any pieces whatsoever, like count them or put them in piles.
For some other game systems than Icehouse, it might help to have more than one copy, as you need to be able to use identical pieces in different koans to test out theories. An Icehouse set is almost ideally suited, as you have 5 copies of every piece, with just enough attributes different between the pieces (4 colors, 3 sizes, a few different orientations you can place them in, a few ways to stack them) that rules are relatively easy to judge and not too hard to guess; but you can use pretty much any game system you want.

I consider Zendo to be a port of Eleusis, and as I said in my answer, Eleusis seems too different from most games to be helpful for this exercise. Just my opinion, of course. I still appreciate the suggestion.

@Don Sorry, I missed the reference to Eleusis in your original post. I think that Zendo ports better than Eleusis (you play pretty much the same game, with no "porting" work). If it's too different from what you're looking for, could you clarify in the question the types of games that you are looking for?

My first thought is that games are too delicate to be ported between many systems. I almost regard successful ports as accidental - the game just happened to fit both systems reasonably well. You might argue that a poem is equally delicate, yet Hofstadter and friends made many translations of the same French poem in Le Ton beau de Marot. However, I think the comparison is unfair because natural languages have so many more options than a typical game system.
That being said, I'm still up to experiment. Nim seems too simple and dry; it wouldn't use any interesting features of each system. Eleusis seems too different from most games to be helpful.
Mancala? The sowing mechanic seems flexible enough to fit in many different environments. Am I being too abstract? It seems like trying to port a theme as well as the mechanics just makes it even harder.

This is only slightly related in that none of these games would work as a benchmark, but Puerto Rico, San Juan and Race for the Galaxy more or less fit the "ported" description. The latter two were created as card game "ports" of Puerto Rico.
The main reason I mention this is that the game system itself is often the greatest factor in what makes the game playable or fun. I do not have personal experience with any of the systems you mentioned but it seems that any benchmark game that crosses game systems is going to have a rough time being complicated enough to be interesting while simple enough to port recognizably. In the case of Puerto Rico and Race for the Galaxy, the core mechanics are similar enough to see a connection but I really don't see them as similar games. (I have not played San Juan.)
Other games have certainly been ported -- generally they convert from board game to card game (Monopoly, Settlers of Catan). Conversions from computer games to board games has happened (World of Warcraft; WoW TCG). Spin-offs may also offer some insight toward successful translations of mechanics (Carcassonne and its kin). The numerous requests and fan variants for solitaire rules for board games is another place to look for altered systems and mechanics.