text:
When does Adam choose and install Directives?
Adam's ID ability is, "You start the game with 3 different directive cards installed (these cards are not considered part of your deck)." Now (since Escalation) that there are more than 3 options for Directives to install, when does the Runner choose which ones to use, especially in a tournament situation? Must it be consistent between games? Can it be done after seeing the Corp ID?

I would also like an official ruling on this, but my interpretation is that you can choose directives any time up until you "start the game," which would likely mean after you've seen the corp ID, although I'm not familiar with this aspect of tournament etiquette. There's nothing in the card that says to me that the directives must be consistent between games, in fact the "not part of your deck" clause suggests that these cards are not subject to normal deck construction rules.

That interpretation would seem consistent with the way a rebirth works.

Android: Netrunner lead designer Damon Stone has confirmed on Twitter that Adam's directives are chosen and revealed after players' IDs are revealed.


text:
Why overlines do not count on Gomoku?
I understand that in Gomoku the overlines (lines of 6 or more) do not count for a victory in most tournament ruleset, but may count in casual play. Fine.
WHY in Gomoku there is the rule of "overlines do not count"?
Is this a purely historical reason, like "this is the way", or it actually brings in some benefit to the game?

Because the goal of the game is to place exactly 5 stones in a row. Having it limited to exactly 5 pieces means there is more strategy involved in also making sure you don't make a chain to long.
https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Gomoku.html

In standard gomoku, rows of exactly five piece are required for a win, so if a row longer than five pieces (called an overline) is created, it does not count as a win. In free-style gomoku, overlines also count as wins.

Yeah but this is simply restating the rules, basically. Does requiring exactly 5 stones improve the game, over not doing it?

Your question just appears to ask why this is required and that is because the rules require it. As for the reason they decided to go with this that could be very much opinion based. However a quick answer could be because of the strategy involved is different when you have to get exactly 5 in a row. It would be possible to force your opponent to make a play in order to block them from winning that also blocks one of your possible win choices later by making the chain longer than 5 stones when it is complete.

Actually asked why that rule exists.

@o0'. You could ask that about any rule in any game and it can be a very hard question to answer unless the designers come out and say why,

like wolfram is the Oracle of truth.. they just copied some text from the internet... apart from that, even the text you copied states 2 rulesets, freestyle and standard, which are just names, standard does not mean it is A and freestyle is B... if you deeply know the game, 99,99% of "strategy" has nothing to do with overlines, it can be seen as elegant or an annoyance... combinations, planning, trapping, patterns, feelings, intuitions... you never have an intuition whether the opponent can play a deep (!) win combination north/south etc. based on overline rule because humans are not computers

@rj Not sure why you are talking about strategy when all I posted was about the goal of the game.

this is just a circular argument, it doesn't seem to answer the actually interesting question of what benefit (if any) that requirement brings to the game

@ilkkachu how exactly is it a circular argument? I think it answers the question

Because saying "the goal is to get five in a row" is the same as saying "longer then five doesn't count". Why doesn't it count? Because it doesn't count.

@ilkkachu No that isn't correct, in a game of connect 4, if you get 4, 5, 6, or 7 in a row you still win and it doesn't matter if you connect more then needed. In this game you need to connect exactly 5.

@JoeW, meaning that the goal of "connect 4" is to connect at least four. But how does that explain why longer than X is accepted in one but not the other? I'm sorry, but all I'm seeing here is repeats of "because it's so because it's so", but that doesn't answer the "why".

@ilkkachu Because the rules and goal of each game is different, I am not sure what more there is to explain besides that is what the rules say.,

Both rules exist. Freestyle-standard.
It is totally preference and how people like to play.
The game is very slightly different (check out Allis paper and the complexity is practically the same).
Some are used to disallowing overlines and see it ugly and find it cool to take it into account, others see it as an annoyance and see it ugly that if you play 6-7 stones you dont win.
The AI competition has both freestyle and standard competition, but the fastgame is freestyle:
https://gomocup.org/results/gomocup-result-2023/
There might be a scene where they like to play swap2+standard rules but I dont think it is most tournaments. Playok is freestyle, how do Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese play? Just add up their population numbers against Eastern Europe :)
So the answer is: no established rule for one or the other, probably never was. No deeper reasons to choose one over the other other than preference (which I guess if you are forced to play 100-1000 games with one rule you begin to prefer that rule over the other because you are more accustomed to it.
Of course if on "world championships" some people who always played one rule and created databases and swap2 openings accordingly, will prefer that rule. But Gomoku is not yet like chess with FIDE and established rules.
It is not even like should a pawn start with 2 square jump? Because you could say well, the game is more dynamic with that rule. No such explanations is here with Gomoku freestyle vs. standard. I bet most people actually find freestyle more intuitive.
Explain a child why 5 counts but 6 not :)

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text:
Does "Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth" work on lands in libraries?

Legendary Land
Each land is a Swamp in addition to its other land types.

Does Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth work on lands in libraries?
I.e., does it allow me to fetch any land using a Swamp-fetcher?

No. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth only affects lands on the battlefield, not in any other zone.
Rule 109.2 says

If a spell or ability uses a description of an object that includes a card type or subtype, but doesn't include the word "card," "spell," "source," or "scheme," it means a permanent of that card type or subtype on the battlefield.

Urborg affects objects with the type "Land". Since it doesn't use any of the mentioned words, that means that it affects permanents of type "Land" on the battlefield.

A good example is http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=painter%27s+servant which explicitly says it affects cards not on the battlefield.

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text:
Consequences of killing a blocking creature
I've not been playing for years, so I'm a bit rusty.
A creature attacks, it is blocked, and the blocked creature gets shocked. What happens now?

As far as I know, the attacking creature is now blocked anyway and despite being there no blocking creatures anymore, it won't deal any damage to the attacked player.
As far as I know, if for some reason the attacker gets the chance to kill the blocker "somewhat before" the block is "finalized" (not that such a concept exists), then this mean that the blockers aren't really declared yet, and the defender can still assign other creatures to block the attacking creature.
In no (normal) occasion the attacking player gets to kill a declared blocker and still deal damage to the defending player (unless the attacking creature has trample or specific abilities).

Is this correct?

What is the actual question here? If you simply want to know the proper sequence of events, then this is a duplicate of Where can I find a chart or diagram explaining Magic's turn structure?

I think he's asking what happens when a creature is blocked but has no blockers.

What you say is basically correct. Once a creature becomes blocked, it stays blocked, even if it no longer has any blockers.
Your second point doesn't really make sense, though. There is no time at which some creatures are blocked, and the defending player can declare more blockers.
For more detail, combat proceeds like this:

The declare attackers step starts. The active player can declare creatures they control as attacking, as long as they follow any applicable requirements and restrictions.
The active player gains priority. Any abilities that trigger when creatures attack trigger now, and players have the opportunity to cast spells and activate abilities. It is possible for those abilities to put creatures onto the battlefield attacking.
The declare blockers step starts. The defending player(s) can declare creatures they control as blocking, again following applicable requirements and restrictions.
The attacking player chooses the order in which their attacking creatures deal damage to blocking creatures. The defending player chooses the order in which their blocking creatures deal damage to attacking creatures.
The active player gains priority. Any abilities that trigger when creatures block or become blocked trigger now, and players have the opportunity to cast spells and activate abilities. It is possible for those abilities to put creatures onto the battlefield blocking, but such abilities always say which creature they are blocking.
The combat damage step starts. Each player chooses how the damage their creatures deal is distributed, with the restriction that it must deal lethal damage to each attacking/blocking creature before dealing any to the next in order (as chosen in step 4). Note that if an attacking creature does not have trample, any damage not dealt to a creature is simply not dealt. This has the consequence that a blocked creature without any blockers deals no damage

The thing that's sort of like the second point is that you could kill a potential blocker during the declare attackers step, before your opponent has had a chance to declare any blockers at all.

It is simple.
-A blocked creature deals no damage to the defender player. (trample overrides this rule).
-A creature is considered blocked if a blocker for it was declared in the declare blockers step. (it does not matter if the blocker creature is still in the battlefield or not).
-All blockers are declared at same time. (There is no way the attacker knows a blocker and the defender player can still declare another blocker.) The active player could declare attackers and then kill a creature, but that's before declare blockers step.
(note: I'm not calling rules because I think this kind of questions are made by casual players and they need short, clear answers).

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text:
What happens in Android: Netrunner when your deck runs out and you need to draw a card?
Do you lose as in magic? Do you reshuffle your discard pile?

If the Corporation player attempts to draw from his empty R&D deck, he loses the game. From the rules PDF, page 3:

...the Runner wins if the Corporation must draw a card from his empty draw deck

The Runner simply loses the ability to draw more cards if his Stack is empty, but it's not a game-ender. You don't reshuffle.


text:
Does anyone else use The Little Girl in Werewolf?
The group I play with uses a character called The Little Girl.  She can peek each night at everyone else and see who the werewolves are, but if the werewolves spot her she's dead.  It seems that in the right hands, this could be a hugely overpowered position.  Anyone else use it?

How does the "spotting" part work? Can't the wolves just point at a different person each turn, no matter if they were peeking, until they eventually find the Little Girl and have her killed? Or is pointing out the peeker possible only once?

We've played a lot of Werewolf, both with and without the Little Girl. One thing we've done to make sure the Little Girl works properly is adjusting lines of sight. Before even handing out the roles, we make sure that everyone can easily look at everyone else's face. It sounds simple, but we've found that it makes the Little Girl much more cautious - and the Werewolves more attentive.

I have mostly played the game with this character, almost never without, so I can't really compare. That being said, from our experience as a group, and from my personal experience of having been The Little Girl myself quite often, this character actually isn't all that powerful, and certainly not "hugely overpowered". Whether I have seen the wolves or not, I still have just one vote, and I still have to defend it against others' views (with 10-15 people, our group is rather large).
Of course, I can always say "listen up, people, I am the Little Girl, so follow my advice", but a) people don't have to believe me, since b) I might actually be lying, and most importantly, c) the wolves will pay special attention to me from then on, and I'll probably get killed the very next night.
Of course, The Little Girl does become quite powerful when she's also the Village Chief, but then again, so does pretty much any character. Besides, from our experience, a Village Chief is even more likely to get killed quickly. I would say the game is pretty well-balanced, actually.

What is the Village Chief?  I've never heard of that role!

I think it would be cool, perhaps, to create a community wiki of all the possible werewolf roles :)

Perhaps you are referring to him as the Mayor or something else. Anyhow, it's the player with this card. It's a "meta" role that simply gets you a second vote on top of your normal role (whatever that may be). The Village Chief gets elected at the beginning; if he's killed, a different person gets elected, and so forth. See here.

Just noticed that in this answer to a related question, he's referred to as the Sheriff.

Our box set has the Little Girl, and it works fine.
Advantages:
The Little Girl (with a little skill/luck) can find most (if not all) of the Warewolves. How many depends on where they're sitting relative to the wolves.
Disadvantages:
If you get caught, you're dead - and since everyone else is sitting still, your ability to look around is limited.
You still need to convince people. And the more you let on that you know they're the Wolf, the more likely you are to get eaten the next night. (I suppose the Wolves could just look at you really closely, but my experience is they just get eaten in retaliation).

To add to the other answers, one more variant involving the little girl, that can potentially be a lot of fun:
Sometimes, in order to make things more interesting for the villagers, we keep the number of werewolves secret to the players (only the game master knows how many werewolf cards are in the deck). Thus, the village never really knows how close they are to winning (we agree on a specific range before the game, for example "there will be between 3 and 5 werewolves"). In this situation, we have house-ruled that the Little Girl is allowed to full-on open their eyes and look around, thus pretending to be a werewolf. They are, however, not allowed to explicitly vote for killing someone. This requires some acting from the Little Girl and, also, it requires a little trust in the group.
It creates uncertainty for the werewolves, and is just generally a more interesting game.

We do use the card Little Girl, but with different role.

She is "Half-wolf". She is a villager from the beginning (villager team). When she is bitten, she becomes a werewolf (werewolf team).

I agree it’s powerful, to the point of game-breaking. One good peek and the Girl can know who all the werewolves are.
I use a modified version. Once per game, the player can just plain look at one person’s card.

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text:
Score book to keep track of games
I've seen multiple questions/answers about keeping track of all the games you and your friends play via websites and apps. However, I haven't seen any around a physical book that enables recording scores. I understand the book wouldn't have the flexibility of a website, but in my case the physical nature of the book is more appropriate. I'm currently using a regular old notebook and it works find but isn't fun or interesting to look at. Is there anything that is a little more fun and appropriate for keeping a history of game played, score, date, players involved, etc.


text:
Arkham Horror: Is there any thematic introductory text out there for first time players?
I'm going to play Arkham tonight with a couple of friends which they don't have any previous Lovecraft experience.
Is there any short text which I could use to introduce them to the Cthulhu Mythos and to what they're about to experience?
Thanks!

Each of the investigators has some flavour on the back of their investigator card. I've found using that gives the player some insight in to the strange going ons in Arkham, but leaves them just enough in the dark for it to remain mysterious.
Make sure you read out all the encounter cards and not just get to the business end of things in order to roll dice. Without all the flavour text from the encounters, things can get rather...maddening

There's also a "Welcome to Arkham!" section at the beginning of the rules, if you feel you need something more general. (Also with reading encounter cards: read them to each other.)

Never thought of the reading to each other part - that will certainly keep people engaged!


text:
In Monopoly, Can I mortgage the property I land on in order raise sufficient funds for its purchase?
While discussing What happens if the auction winner cannot pay his/her bid? I concluded that the winning bidder cannot use the mortgage value of the property being auctioned to fund his bid.
Does the person landing on a property have the right to mortgage this property in order to buy it?
The official rules state

Buying Property Whenever a player lands on an
  unowned property, the player may buy that property from
  the Bank at its printed price. The player receives the Title
  Deed card showing ownership and places it face up in
  front of him/her. If he/she does not wish to buy the
  property, it is sold at auction by the Banker to the highest
  bidder. The buyer pays to the Bank the amount of the bid
  in cash and receives the Title Deed card for that property.
  Any player, including the one who declined the option of
  buying it at the printed price, may bid. Bidding may start
  at any price.

The "face up" terminology seems to indicate that the property will not be in a mortgaged state at time of purchase.

Excellent! I see you are a quick study.

Note this question arose while discussing the related question: https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/39455/in-monopoly-what-happens-if-the-auction-winner-cannot-pay-his-her-bid

From the rules you posted link to.

The player who mortgages property
  retains possession of it and no other player may secure it
  by lifting the mortgage from the Bank.

If a player retains possession, they must have possession of it in first place.  So it can't be mortgaged before purchase.


text:
When moving an Agent from a non-local Faction, what is the correct orientation?
This came up in a three player game, but I think it'd be even worse in 4 or 5.  One of the Free Agents ("The Interloper" maybe?) has the power "Move one Agent from any Faction into a neighboring Faction."  I think it was neighboring, it might have been to any other one.
Since you could (and probably would) be moving from a non-adjacent faction, how would you preserve the orientation?  If the command faces a player on one side and you move it to a neighboring faction, the command still has to face that player, yes?
What if the card did say move from "any faction to any faction?"  How would orientation be preserved then?

Yes, the command would still face the same player
The rules state the following on the very last page, FAQ section:

When swapping two Agents, their orientation must remain the same! I.e. players cannot turn Agents when swapping them. For example, if an Agent‘s command was facing you before the swap, it must still be facing you after the swap.

Cards only have two orientations, Commands towards you or data-token halves towards you.

Each Agent card features a command giving the player a special ability. When placing an Agent onto a Faction, you choose whether to face the command towards yourself or towards another player. [...] The other end of the card features data-token halves (either black or white). When these halves are joined together, they award intel points to whomever their arrows are facing. Your decision when placing a card on a Faction, therefore, is in which direction to place the card - whether to keep the command for yourself, or try to give yourself intel points by completing data tokens.

There is no way to preserve orientation if you move an agent to a non-adjacent faction, since a non-adjacent faction would not be shared by player it was being moved into. The only way for such a card to exist would likely be if you were allowed to turn the agents orientation to whichever way you wished after moving it.

The Interloper states "MOVE an agent from any faction to any neighboring faction" and the limitation of "neighboring" was very deliberate since you can still maintain the orientation of the card facing for the player that is sitting between those two neighboring factions.
There is no card that allows moving of a card from any faction to any faction.


text:
How is the "Moral High Ground" Mission Card intended to work?
The text of "Moral High Ground" goes something like "For each Free Agent revealed in your hand", and is worth 1 IP per reveal.  This brought up some debate on exactly what and WHEN the reveal was qualified.  The first player to use it played his Free Agents, then tried to claim the points. I argued that because he had played them, when the mission was evaluated at his turn's end, he no longer hand the Agent "in hand."  Also, with a name like "Moral High Ground" actually playing the Agent seemed against the spirit of the card.
Later on, another player got this Mission and tried the tactic of revealing a Free Agent, then playing it.  His argument was that when evaluating the Mission, he had revealed the Agent during his turn, so it should apply.  That seems like splitting hairs to me though.
So what is the correct interpretation of this Mission Card?

Missions score at the end of your turn, after taking actions such as playing agents.
Although reveal isn't defined in the rule book, they do use it in the context of revealing cards from your hand. You cannot reveal an agent unless it is in your hand.

Moral High Ground: {1} for each killing or turning agent you reveal from your hand.

The Turn Sequence section states:

Turn Sequence - On each player’s turn, they have to perform 2 actions. Players can select from any combination of the following (including performing the same action twice);

Playing an Agent [...]

Re-activating a Command [...]

Buying an Agent or Mission: [...]

Trade in a Mission [...]

At the end of their turn, the player whose turn it is collects their intel points from their Factions and Missions. Players collect intel points from their Factions and Missions each turn as long as the data-tokens remain complete on their Factions and the conditions of the Missions remain fulfilled.

Although the conditions of the mission don't say when they must be fulfilled, I would argue that all the other mission conditions require checking at the end of the turn, so should this one. (You might also argue that to fulfill the conditions, you must continue to reveal the killing/turning agents until the end of turn, or you stop fulfilling the conditions. I.e. You are no longer revealing them.) Scoring of Missions also repeats the conditions must be fulfilled at the end of turn:

Scoring Intel Points - Intel points are awarded:

to players who have completed arrows facing them in their Factions at the end of their turn,

when the condition of a Mission is fulfilled at the end of their turn,

to players towards whom the points are directed when a Free Agent is played.

Although the interpretation is unchanged, this card must have been changed in the official print version from the PnP. The version of Moral High Ground I have awards points for every "Free Agent" revealed.


text:
When does the game end when the last player pushes the first player over the 40-point limit?
In a three-player game, the first player had about 38 points.  It is the last player's turn, and he uses a Free Agent which gives the first player (whose turn will normally be next) 41 points, triggering the game ending condition.  The last player then ends his turn and collects points, which also pushes the last player over 40.  Does the game end immediately, or does it go for one more round?
We played one further round, under the logic that: 1) the first player went over 40 first, off-turn. 2) the rules state that "When a player reaches 40 points at the end of their turn..." and 3) since he was first player, everyone else gets a turn to act so that everyone would get the same number of points.
On the other hand, the argument for the game ending immediately is: the last player went over 40 at the end of his turn (his turn ended on 40 first), and since everyone had played the same number of turns, the game ends.
Which is correct?

I don't understand the question; you're saying the first and last players both have over 40 points. Why would the game go for another round?

The game ends immediately after someone has 40+ intel points. You must have a different version of the rulebook. The copy on the playtheagents website states twice:

The Goal - Your goal is simple - to be the first player to reach 40 intel points.
Reminder: the first person to reach 40 intel points, wins.

There is no mention of ending the game only on a players turn when they have 40+ intel points, nor requiring all players to have the same number of turns.

Yes, I was looking at the Kickstarter First Edition rulebook. Under "Winning," that book states, "Once a player has collected 40 or more IPs, that player finishes their turn. Play continues until all players have had an equal number of turns. Once all players finish their last turn, the player with the most IPs is the winner."

@CodexArcanum, you can choose to play it as written, but usually i assume that updates to the rules (later editions) or online rules are the official rules.


text:
Horror Tests with Multiple Monsters and Multiple Investigators
Can't find this clearly in the rules. Do I need to take a second horror test when a new monster enters the room, even if the investigators have already taken a horror test?
I can see this leading to a large number of horror tests in succession if Call of the Night is used on multiple monsters at once, all of which move into the same room, containing multiple investigators. (e.g. 3 zombies and a Mi-Go enter the room containing 2 investigators => 8 horror tests)

Yes, you will make a total of 8 horror tests. One for each monster that enters an investigator's room, and for each investigator.
Rule book (page 13), within the section covering Horror Tests.

Whenever a monster enters (or is placed in) an investigator’s room (or vice versa), the investigator must immediately make an attribute test called a HORROR TEST. He does so by making a Willpower test modified by the monster’s horror rating (the blue number at the top of its monster token). If he fails this test, he takes one horror (see “Damage and Horror”
  on page 24).
If multiple investigators are in the room, they must each make a horror test (the keeper chooses the order).
If the investigator leaves the monster’s room and then re-enters the room, he must make a another horror test. He must make a horror test every time he enters the monster’s room (and every time the monster enters his). In this way, a monster that is chasing an investigator will trigger a horror test each time the monster enters the investigator’s room.
If, at the start of an investigator’s turn, a monster is in the same room as him, the investigator does not need to make a horror test. If a monster leaves an investigators room and then re-enters it on the same turn, he does not need to make a horror test against it.
An investigator only makes a maximum of one horror test per monster per turn.
Horror tests always interrupt the current step of the player’s turn


text:
If I Find the "Objective Clue" with Gloria's Psychic Sensitivity, Does That Reveal the Objective
I used Gloria Goldberg's Psychic Sensitivity to reveal the cards in the Ceremony Room, which contained Clue 1, which also says "Reveal Objective".
As I have to return the cards face down, does that mean the objective isn't revealed till I actually properly explore the room?

No Gloria only looks at the cards, they are not revealed. Additionally, clue 1 is always the final clue to be discovered.
The wording on Gloria's Psychic Sensitivity Ability is:

"Action: Once per game, look at all Exploration cards in the room of your choice (you must then return them in the same order)."

The rulebook states (page 9):

Explore Action - The most common action that investigators perform on their turn is Exploring a Room. During setup, the keeper places face-down exploration cards in every room on the game board. Investigators may reveal these cards by performing an explore action in the room.
Clues: These are the cards the investigators a ultimately attempting to discover. These cards have no artwork and are clearly labeled with a large number and a letter in the upper left corner. The number represents the level of the clue (clue 1 is always the final clue to be discovered), while the letter only matters during setup.


text:
What's the hexagon symbol under the Sanctuary?
In Terra Mystica, under most structures, you find the income that building generates. But, the Sanctuary also has a weird hexagon:

The gold outline looks just like those used on the town tokens. I couldn't find anything about it in the rules, looking under anything I could find related to the Sanctuary or towns (based on the shape). I don't see the image anywhere either.
It looks important. What am I missing?

This seems to be a common enough question that there's a link directly to a thread about it on the game's boardgamegeek page.
Short answer, quoted from one of those threads:
"It means you only need a minimum of 3 connected buildings instead of 4 when forming a town if the sanctuary is part of these structures."

And from that thread, this actually is in the rulebook, on page 14, in the "founding a town" section. It's even in a little highlighted box, with the icon and everything. Seems obvious in retrospect, but the rules are so full of boxes and notes and special sections that I'm not surprised I'm the only one who missed it.

Er, not surprised I'm not the only one. Whatever. :)

I actually got to use this answer last night, the first time I'd actually played TM in months, when another new player asked the precise question :)


text:
Can I terraform outside of my turn, or during my turn in some other action?
I'm trying to figure out Terra Mystica by myself. One thing I'm having trouble with is the spades used for terraforming. The rules seem very clear that these need to be used immediately — they can't be saved for future actions. (And that's backed up by the simple fact that there's no tokens or other representation.) But, there are number of ways you can earn spades during actions other than Transform and Build — and even outside of actions, as in the Cult of Earth spade bonus.
Is terraforming / terrain transformation just a thing you can do whenever you get spades?

Yes, if you ever get a spade you must use it immediately, or forfeit it. The only way to get a spade outside of taking an action on your turn though is the end-of-round cult bonuses that give them.
From the rulebook:

You may not save Spades for future Actions. Spades need to be
  used immediately.

Note that the spades that you get for the cult bonuses must be used by themselves; you cannot also spend workers to terraform more, nor can you build a Dwelling at that time. Those are things you can do in addition to getting spades when you choose the terraform and build action or a power action that gives you spades.

So, just to be clear, by "Yes, if you ever get a spade you must use it immediately", you mean "Yes, if you ever get a spade you must and may use it immediately"?

@mattdm I am pretty sure that's correct, but not completely sure. Trying to see if I can find a rule about that now.

@mattdm I've updated my answer with a rules quote and added clarification. I can't find a specific rule saying that using spades is optional, but that seems to be what people think. Also, it would be extremely rare that you wouldn't be able to get any benefit out of using a spade you get. So rare that I would be surprised if you ever encounter it.


text:
How bad would it to be to allow partial house renovation in Agricola?
In explaining this game to people over Christmas, several people independently balked at the idea that the whole house must be upgraded at once.
Is there a strong reason to enforce this rule? After a few games, it seems like it'd be pretty harmless to allow renovation one room at a time. (New rooms would always be of the highest type, and cards requiring a clay or stone house would only function after complete conversion.) The scoring already supports this easily, and I think the major consequence would be increased availability of expansion-after-renovation. Because each upgrade costs a reed in addition to the materials for the rooms, and because actions are always the most precious resource, it'd still be much more efficient to upgrade all at once.
So, given that people felt strongly that a piecemeal construction should be allowed, how problematic of a house rule would this be?
As a bonus, what about allowing individual rooms to be constructed of any material at any time? (With this, unless all of your rooms are converted to clay, new clay rooms would also cost some amount of wood, and similarly going straight to stone would cost additional wood and clay.) This idea adds some complication for not much real gameplay gain, but for some reason people found the arbitrary rules of home construction more jarring to the immersive game story than, oh, say, the idea that only one person in a community can sow a field on the same day.

I think the house rule will be harmless, and also that after playing a few games, no one will take advantage of partial renovation - because it's a terrible idea. It also introduces unnecessary complexity.

Balance: The only balance consequence I see is that the Renovation action can be taken much more often than in standard Agricola. In principle, you could use this to deny the action to other players. In practice though, I doubt it would be worth it - there are plenty more valuable things to do than renovate, in most games.
Strategy: You simply do not have time to upgrade individual rooms. As you point out, that's expensive in reed, but critically, it's using an action each time. And what for? Renovating a single room to Clay gets you a measly one point. If you also require that subsequent rooms must be built of the more expensive material, and that the house doesn't count as Clay until all rooms are completed, then partial renovation is clearly a terrible idea.
Complexity: There is already a mechanism for handling surplus goods - purchasing of Improvements. The idea of Renovation is that it's a major action, that takes careful preparation and timing, and may or may not be a good idea, depending on your resources, whether you can buy a Major Improvement at the same time, and whether you need a better house for your Minors or Occupations. In gameplay terms, partial renovation serves no useful purpose.

The second rule, about building houses from arbitrary building resources, has the potential for greater impact, but again is complex. It makes it easier to build rooms, while removing the resource niche effect that players get by Renovating. For example, one reason to Renovate to clay might be to make use of clay resources, while everyone else fights it out for wood for their rooms. This house rule would remove that tactical possibility, which is a shame. This is important because rooms are required to have children, and your workers drive the economic engine of the game (this is the reason that cards like Wet Nurse are so powerful). So messing with the room mechanic is not a great idea.
Overall, I think this is a solution in search of a problem. Bear in mind that the many, many Occupations and Minor Improvements allow all sorts of interesting game adjustments, including building options and alternatives. For example the Conservator lets you Renovate to stone in a single action. My advice is to tell your players to deal with the rules as they are, get them more experienced, and move them on to the full game as quickly as possible. With 14 different cards to manage each game, they'll have more than enough to worry about without needing to take issue with odd questions of building realism.

The problem is not so much that partial Renovation would be broken in and of itself - ire_and_curses' answer has given a good account why such a move would usually be a bit of a waste of an action - as that it interacts really terribly with other important aspects of the game.
I immediately thought of the (excellent, well-worth-getting-hold-of) Farmers of the Moor expansion.  If your players are used to a partial Renovation house rule and then get hold of this, they'll have to get unused to the house rule pretty quick.  A Stone House costs 1 Fuel less to heat than a Clay House costs 1 Fuel less to heat than a Wood House.  I don't think you want to start working in fractions of Fuel for partially upgraded homes...
Fine, you say, but you think you have no interest in ever getting the expansion.  Even so, tampering with the Renovation rule disrupts the intrinsic balance of the core game too.  What do you do about the many, many cards that have being in a Clay House or a Stone House as a prerequisite?  If a player claims that having 1 Stone Room should entitle them to play the Manservant Occupation, then Houston, we have a problem.  You could say that only a fully-renovated home should ever count for the purposes of such cards, but now your house rule is starting to seem pretty complex.  Even if you are careful not to let it break cards by making some of them too powerful, you'll then inevitably do the opposite - breaking cards by making them too weak.  How good are Occupation/Minor Improvement cards that make it easier to renovate in a game with a house rule that makes it easier for everyone to renovate?  Maybe not quite useless, but less good, that's for sure.
Meddling with the ruleset of a finely balanced game such as Agricola is definitely a dangerous course of action.  "After Renovation, also Fences" does not become available as an action space in Round 14 purely by accident, it does so to encourage players to plan ahead to get the maximum bang for the buck of a single action at the very end of the game.  But you have to plan ahead so carefully to achieve that: you have to hoard wood, stone and reed all the way to the end of the game... and you have to be absolutely certain that other players won't go before you and take the squares you need, leaving you with a ton of useless resources in your supply! Allowing partial renovation makes this space considerably less difficult to decide to use, and I think that's a really, really dangerous thing for the game.  There are few games as delicately weighted as Agricola, and almost everything in the core rules is the way it is for a pretty good reason.  Tamper with that balance at your peril!


text:
When does a special (non-green) die leave your die pool?
I just started playing Elder Sign, and the wording in the rule book made me think maybe there was some way to keep using the yellow/red die beyond the current turn, if it was unused. Is this the case?

The updated rules state:

Unless dice are locked or secured by a spell, the player returns any
  dice granted by common or unique items to the supply at the end of the
  Resolution phase.


text:
May dice used to complete a task be secured?
The rules state:

the player places the card faceup in front of him after rolling dice
  during his turn. Then he chooses one die from that roll. Without
  changing its result, he places the die on the Spell card’s securing
  icon.

The rules do not say, "and before completing any tasks" or, "and before resolving the Adventure", so is it possible to secure a die after using it to complete a task?

The timing for Spells that secure dice has been updated to make it clear that you can choose to use the Spells that allow you to hold dice, after you roll. The FAQ agrees with this as well, but in any case all versions of the rules make it clear that held dice only remain on the spell card until they are used to complete a task.

Spells that hold dice are cast after a player’s roll, not before. The player looks at the roll, then, if he wishes to save a particular die, casts the spell and places the die on the spell. The ‘held’ die remains on the spell card until used to complete a task or until removed (as described below).

The revised rules say:

To cast such a spell, the player places the card faceup in front of him after rolling dice during his turn. Then he chooses one die from that roll. Without changing its result, he places the die on the Spell card’s securing icon.
  When a die is secured on a Spell card, it remains there until any player chooses to use it to complete a task, removes it from the spell to roll it (see “Removing Secured Dice” on page 14), or until another effect locks that die (see “Locked Dice” on page 12).
For spells that secure multiple dice, the player may remove dice from it one at a time or all at once.

The original rules say:

Spell: Most Spells allow a player to place the spell card next to the play area immediately before any roll of the dice. Then, after the player rolls, he chooses one of the dice and, without changing the die’s result, places it on the Spell card on the following icon:
While a die is on the Spell card, it is not re-rolled when the active player tries to complete a task, but the die’s result may be used to meet a task’s requirement. Only one die may be placed on a Spell card (unless otherwise indicated on the card) and a die on this card remains on it until it is used
  to complete a task.

No. The example in the rulebook on page 13 ("Casting a Securing Spell Example") shows an investigator secure a die result not being used for the task. While this still doesn't explicitly forbid securing a die result used to complete a task, it seems like it should've been explicitly allowed if that is what was intended.


text:
If an effect destroys multiple creatures, in what order are they destroyed?
If I use a card like Gateway to Dis to destroy multiple creatures, how do we decide in which order they are destroyed, what effects can be applied, and in what order they land in the discard pile?

If an effect destroys multiple creatures, they are destroyed simultaneously, so any effects on the creatures being destroyed are not eligible to be applied on the other creatures (e.g. Tolas would not gain you anyone any aember, since it is also destroyed). For an effect to be applied, it needs to still be in play after the destruction is finished. The cards also all hit the discard pile at the same time, but the active player does get to choose the order in which they go in.
Reference video.


text:
If Bad Penny is destroyed by Yxilo Bolter's Fight/Reap effect, where does it go?
When Bad Penny is destroyed, it goes back into my (its owner's) hand. But if Yxilo Bolter destroys it due to its Fight/Reap effect, it is purged. In this case, which effect "wins"?

Destroyed effects actually trigger just before the creature leaves play, so in this case Bad Penny is safely returned to its owner's hand just before the purge would be applied. At that point, Yxilo Bolter's effect tries to purge Bad Penny, but it is considered a new object, and so the purge does not take effect. By contrast, a card like Oubliette would purge Bad Penny because it simply purges without going through the destroy flow.
Reference video.


text:
Can Pawn Sacrifice deal 6 damage to a single creature?
If my opponent plays Pawn Sacrifice while he and I each have one creature, mine being power 5, first he sacrifices his creature, then he deals 3 damage to mine. Does the second instance of damage also go to my creature, or does it fizzle because "each" implies 2 different targets?

No, it cannot deal 6 damage to a single creature. Here's the response from Brad Andres (developer at FFG):

The second instance of damage does indeed “fizzle” because pawn
  sacrifice indicates with the “each to 2 creatures” phrase that you
  must choose 2 creatures and not the same creature twice. Hope that
  helps!


text:
Does Neutron Shark cause me to discard, even after destroying itself?
If Neutron Shark destroys itself due to its own Play/Fight/Reap effect, how much more of its effect resolves? Does it just stop? Does it discard, then stop? Or can it even repeat after it’s destroyed?

You discard, but don’t repeat.
From Brad Andres (developer at FFG), via email:
“The effect will continue to resolve and the top card of their deck will be discarded, but no matter what card it hits the effect will not be able to resolve again because the card is no longer in play. Hope that helps.”

I have no idea why this was downvoted, but it would help if you specified why we should listen to Brad.

Can you please provide the source of your quote? Knowing where it is from will improve the quality of your answer.

Edited. If i notice it in a future FAQ entry, i’ll try to remember to come back and reference that instead.


text:
If I have only one creature in play, is it on a flank?
Many cards (e.g. Valdr, Hand of Dis) reference creatures that are, or are not, on a/the flank. If I only have one creature in play, is it considered to be on a flank?

Yes. I'm including a screenshot of an e-mail reply from the developer on this topic.

Flank simply means if its at the end of a battleline. If there is only
  one creature in a battleline it is on both ends of a battleline and is
  on both flanks.


text:
Othello on a non-square board?
Many games - such as Othello, Checkers, Chess1, and Go - are played on highly-regular, square boards.
How would the game mechanic change if you played an Othello-like game on, say, a Chinese Checkers board?
All other rules being equal - ie you can only flip in direct vectors from the piece played - would this be likely to be a viable game-play mechanic?

1 excluding variants such as Chess4

on a chinese checker board the starting positions would be wierd. There is usually 1 center point on the board where in othello the board length and width are even, causing the center to be shared amongst the 4 starting positions.

@ColinD - I agree that particular example would be 'weird' .. it was just the first non-regular board I could think of :)

I had a feeling someone already thought of this.

There is a fairly famous othello variation called octagon othello. it's basically played on a 10x10 board with the corner regions cut out.
   ....
  ......
 ........
..........
....ox....
....xo....
..........
 ........
  ......
   ....

You suddenly not only have 4 corners but 8. The basic game play is still fine (even with the standard start position). But yeah pretty much any rule change is noticeable to othello. a 6x6 vs. the standard 8x8 is filled with much more stoner traps, you play more x squares that are less dangerous and the edges are even more important, you also have less of mobility control (not enough moves to actually get there and not many moves to make use of it). 10x10 vs. 8x8, the 10x10 is still a lot about mobility control, but edges became more complicated but also less important. you have more frequently both players sharing an edge (wedges).

As long as the grid is even, Othello should play just fine, provided you change the staring cluster.
 . . . .
. . B W .
 . B W B .
. . W B .

should do, with white moving first...


text:
Running a MTG draft without actually having to buy new boosters for each player every single time?
MTG drafting sounds like a really awesome way to play the game. I'd love to try it with some of my friends, but having to spent >5$ for each player every single time you want to play seems unnecessarily prohibitive.
How can I make MTG drafting work with cards I already have? The big issue I see is with the random selection of the starting cards. Do the boosters that are meant to used with drafting really contain completely random cards? How can I simulate their distribution? Should I have each starting set of 15 cards contain only cards from 1 set? How can I make sure there's a variety of cards (enough creatures, instant, and sorceries to keep things interesting) being used without destroying the randomness of selection?
I know not using boosters will take away a small part of the game, mostly the total randomness of what all the packs contain. I'm not looking for a perfect draft simulator, but as I have 3000+ cards I don't see why my group can't have >95% of the fun of drafting without having to buy new boosters every time.

Friend and I was bought a box of boosters, carefully opened the tops, and used those as envelopes to draft and re-draft.

There's a popular fan-made format called Cube where you create a set of cards and people pick them for their decks, either by assembling virtual "packs" by grabbing random sets of cards or (more rarely) picking them one-at-a-time from the whole set kinda like how teams draft rookie players in professional sports. Because you tailor the card pool to your group's needs, it's easy to create Cubes for unconventional formats like Commander (individual collection permitting).

If you're interested in having pack-based drafts that strongly resemble normal MTG Limited and Sealed, you can assemble your own packs from your personal collection, basically like Cube draft but with rarity. Here's a rough guide...
To my knowledge, the only thing that's truly fixed about boosters is rarity distribution (although you can get extra rares in a pack due to foils, or specialty stuff like double-faced cards or "hidden treasures"). There are some other correlations that arise due to how sheets are cut, but they're mostly at the box level rather than individual-pack level.
If you start with a fairly representative sample of a set and then construct cards with the same rarity distribution as regular MTG boosters, the laws of probability should ensure that you get a reasonable distribution of colors and card types in the vast majority of your packs (a few really skewed ones is acceptable or even desirable, just like you sometimes get really skewed "official" boosters). The easiest way to do this is just to create three big piles for commons, uncommons, and rares (/mythics) and make packs from them sight-unseen in the normal 1:3:10 ratio; you don't have to do anything special for the individual packs as long as your starting piles are at fair (e.g. if you collect certain colors much more heavily than others, make sure that bias doesn't filter into the big giant piles you've created). Ideally your big piles should be significantly bigger than the number of cards in any given draft; that way there's no guarantee that a particular card is bound to be in one of the packs.
The easiest way to create a coherent environment is to stay within a given block (set of 3-4 expansions). Playing a familiar block format will make it easier for players to evaluate cards. I don't think the extra effort that would be required to make sure your packs exactly match individual sets (like they do in "real" Limited) is really worthwhile -- if anything, I think you can have a more fun block draft if cards from the various expansions are mixed together across all three packs.
Of course, you can also vary (or just abolish) the rarity mix in order to create a very different play experience. I'm assuming other ways to alter the experience will come to you once you've tried this a few times. If you find yourselves wanting to fine-tune what goes into your card pool, look for articles on Cube drafting: the same principles folks apply to creating a Cube can be used to analyze what you're putting into the pool you draw packs from.

+1 for mentioning Cube at the end there - surely a perfectly good answer to the question on its own, giving that it's a way lots of people enjoy drafting that doesn't entail buying new cards each time. Really there's no reason at all why draft should entail great expense all the time - apart from convenience, and the fact that people enjoy the novelty of playing with the newest set...

For what it's worth, print runs do lead to some predictability at the pack level, but you have to have a really good memory to use it, and in any case I can't imagine how losing that predictability would have a negative impact on the draft environment.

Building a cube around a certain set has since been become established as a "set cube", and there are a number of good guides on how to build one out there, such as this video or this report. CubeCobra, the de-facto hub page for MtG cubes at the time of writing, has a number of set cubes in their database to check out.

If you want to mirror official drafting as closely as possible - either because you are practising for a tournament or you are interested in experiencing the format as designed - Then here are the things that you should be aware of.
1. Magic drafts are booster driven
When a draft starts, you get 3 boosters, each of which has 1 rare, 3 uncommons and 10 commons. They also have 1 basic land which is sometimes replaced by a foil. High level tournament drafts remove the basic land or foil. For self built packs this should probably be done also (so 14 card packs)
2. Magic boosters all come from the same set
As you get 3 packs, each of those packs should be built entirely of cards from the same set. I.e. no pack should contain cards from more than 1 set.
3. Magic drafts use specific packs
Depending on the format you want to replicate, there are specific distributions of packs to be used. For example, if you want to replicate the first drafting format of a new block, it would be 3 packs of the first set of the block (e.g. 3 packs of Khans of Tarkir). Other formats exist that may be 2 packs of the first set and 1 of the second, or 1 pack for each set in a 3 set block. Some blocks have special sets which are drafted fresh (e.g. Rise of the Eldrazi was a 3rd set which was drafted as 3 packs of rise)
as long as you know what draft format you want to replicate and follow these rules, your draft should be pretty close to the intended distribution of cards. The reason for following these is that sets are created specifically with drafting in mind, and have comparitive power levels between colours and rarities which differ for different sets

There is an antiquated format for drafting Magic called 'Rochester Draft', from the days when starter decks were much more common than boosters. It involved laying out ~123 cards (2 starters) and players taking turns picking individual cards.

I think the boosters created by wotc aren't really 100% random, but for draft purpuse you could easaly get away with putting 15 random cards together, it would make not much of a difference. But!
Do remember, most packs have rarety distribution, like most packs have 1 rare, 3 uncommons, 9 commons, 1 land, 1 token, and you have a chance of getting a mithic rare (some %, i don't know exactly), and offcourse there can be foils in the pack to that messes things all up. but if you stick to 1 rare, 3 uncommons, 9 commons and slide in some mythics here and there you will be alright.

Not the same as paper, but you can draft and play online for free using the open-source program, XMage: http://xmage.today/
You would each need a computer to play though.

If you go on Amazon, you can find a box set of 1000 random cards for around $20, as well as a box of 500 basic lands (100 of each color) for around $15. Later this year (around Fall Break) I plan to host a Random Card Draft using these.
Basically, I will shuffle them, separate them all by rarity, and dole them out into "packs" with each pack containing 1 rare, 3 uncommons, and 11 commons (I realize I've got an extra common in here, but we have the cards for it). I will then have a draft using these packs.
By getting the cards in bulk, without caring for which set they are in, you can have a full 8 person draft with some pretty nice prizes for only about $5 per player.
My Prize Distribution (Using a Single Elimination Tournament):
1st Place: 256 Cards
2nd Place: 128 Cards
3rd + 4th Place: 64 Cards Each
5th + 6th + 7th + 8th: 32 Cards Each
1000 Card Link
http://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Cards-Bonus-Rares/dp/B0017H86GA
500 Land Link
http://www.amazon.com/500-Magic-Gathering-Islands-Mountains/dp/B00SG3PJGS/ref=sr_1_1?&s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1439325701&sr=1-1&keywords=500+basic+lands+magic
Note: I haven't actually tried this before, so I don't know how it will work. If you are concerned about the cards lacking synergy, you can create a few extra packs with 4 uncommons and 11 commons, and draft those with the 3 standard packs you created.

Did you read the comments on that 1000 card link?  I'd be very hesitant to buy, even if it is only $20.

Don't do this, you almost certainly won't be able to split the cards by rarity defined in the answer. Bulk cards are almost always going to be disappointing. While a bulk 'cube' could work in theory, getting a playable distribution of cards in practice is going to be difficult or require as substantial amount of work.

I can all but guarantee you that none of the rares pictured in that big pile of cards will ever end up as "bonus rares." You will get 100+ copies of Netter en-Dal, though.

Your concern about lack of synergy is definitely valid. Cubes work because they're put together with some attention to what themes are going in, and also because they tend to include a lot of fairly good cards so even without synergy there's cool stuff going on. If you have random cards from across sets with close to the normal distribution of commons, it's not going to work well.


text:
If my creature has shadow and flying, can it only be blocked by creatures with shadow AND flying?
My understanding is that creatures with shadow can only block or be blocked by creatures with shadow, and creatures with flying can only be blocked by creatures with flying. If I have a creature with shadow and cast a spell that gives it flying (say, Jump), can it now only be blocked by nothing but a creature that also has both those abilities?

In a general sense, you are correct. Both abilities impose a restriction that's tracked individually. A creature must satisfy all the restrictions in order to block your super-evasive attacker.
My one niggle is that there are non-flyers that can block fliers, such as creatures with reach. And there are a few creatures, like Wall of Diffusion, that don't have shadow but have "~ can block creatures with shadow as though ~ had shadow" as an ability, which allows them to block shadow creatures (and non-shadow creatures as well, since they don't actually have shadow).
Here's some comp rules for ya, with this exact example:

509.1b The defending player checks each creature he or she controls to see whether it’s affected by    any restrictions (effects that say a
creature can’t block, or that it can’t block unless some    condition
is met). If any restrictions are being disobeyed, the declaration of
blockers is illegal.
A restriction may be created by an evasion ability (a static ability an attacking creature has    that restricts what can block
it). If an attacking creature gains or loses an evasion ability after
a    legal block has been declared, it doesn’t affect that block.
Different evasion abilities are    cumulative.
Example: An attacking creature with flying and shadow can’t be blocked by a creature with flying but without shadow.

Trivia: Stronghold Overseer has both flying and shadow natively. On a 5/5 body to boot!

Adding Intimidate to the mix would be another way of making a Flying/Shadow creature that another Flying/Shadow creature would not necessarily be able to block...

Check out the Oracle text of Wall of Diffusion. It's more clear as it says may block as though it had shadow as in fulfills the shadow requirement. Compared to the old can block creatures with shadow which sounds as something absolute.

@thesunneversets Now all it needs is horsemanship. ;)

Oh yeah, Horsemanship!  Fair in Portal: Three Kingdoms;  undercosted total unblockability in Eternal formats...

Why not throw fear in the mix as well? Or we could just give the guy some kind of landwalk or protection from creatures and be done with it. :)

@AndSoYouCode I'm a fan of WotC's recent decision to cut out the middleman entirely and just write "unblockable" on a couple of cards. In small doses, it lets new players focus on thinking about how to get the most out of their free attacks rather than how to set up the right conditions for their evasion abilities. (In larger doses it'd be as poor of a choice as the "trample is too hard so let's have 'assign damage as if it weren't blocked' instead" era.)

Yeah I agree! I must admit that I still really miss combat damage using the stack. Maybe it wasn't logical and a bit complicated, but it made soooo many cool moves available. Instant sacrifice abilities were such a blast...

Yes you need both to fulfill both requirements to be able to block a creature with both shadow and flying. You can fulfill these requirements either by having shadow and flying or through other abilities such as reach.


text:
Why is Bazaar of Baghdad supposedly such a good card?
I've been looking at the card Bazaar of Baghdad:

(Land) Tap: Draw two cards, then discard three cards.

Almost everywhere I've seen has it as over 200$, and most of the Arabian Nights set is much cheaper than that, so I assume its ability is extremely powerful. However, I can't really figure out why. It gives you a net loss of 1 card no matter what, and I suppose its ability could be compared to having the ability to mulligan later in the game but have a wider choice of cards to pick as your new hand. It would help you find a specific card in your deck if you're running a strategy based on that card (and I notice its most popular in vintage, where this is more prominent) I could see it being a decent card, I can't see where it might otherwise be valuable.
Is Bazaar of Baghdad an extremely good card? What decks would it work best in? How would I know when to use its ability in a game?

A general comment: in my limited experience, draw+discard is often a powerful and initially underrated action in any game involving playing cards from a limited hand. Magic makes this even more true, by pretty much always having a card somewhere that'll soften (or nullify or invert) the negative or take advantage of the positive.

While all of these answers get at some measure of Bazaar's popularity, I should note (as Ian does somewhat in passing) that virtually all of Bazaar's value at this point comes from it being the key card in the Vintage Dredge deck; Madness and Flashback are both effectively moot, but in Vintage Dredge is an immensely powerful strategy.  Note that in the Dredge decks, Bazaar is all upside; drawing 2 cards means you have two opportunities to dredge, and the discard 3 puts cards in your graveyard where you want them - Dredge would rather not have cards in its hand!  See, for instance, the first decklist at http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/22161_New_Phyrexia_In_Vintage_Dredge.html - this is a pretty good example of Bazaar at its most powerful.

+1: When I read this question, I thought "well, obviously it's because the card is a key player in the Dredge deck"... and this is the first answer that really stresses this.

The rule when playing Vintage Dredge is "Mull until Bazaar." I've seen players win with only that card in their hand at the start of the game.

it was worth a bunch of money before that, I think I remember it being at least $200+ in '98

most of the Arabian Nights set is much cheaper than that, so I assume its ability is extremely powerful.

Bazaar of Baghdad is from one of the first MtG expansions with a relatively small print run and is on the Reserved List (won't be reprinted), so that's going to make it more expensive regardless of utility.

It would help you find a specific card in your deck if you're running a strategy based on that card (and I notice its most popular in vintage, where this is more prominent) I could see it being a decent card, I can't see where it might otherwise be valuable.

Here you answer your own question. Many Vintage decks are based on broken combos. Many broken combos like to have certain cards, or many cards, in the graveyard. Important point you may be missing: it's a land, so it can't be countered. Its effect costs zero mana and is repeatable. With that in mind, any card that basically says "pay zero mana. draw two cards. put three in the graveyard" is going to be very very desirable.

Is Bazaar of Baghdad an extremely good card?

Yes.

What decks would it work best in?

Combo decks. Reanimator decks. Graveyard decks. It's not legendary, so you can have multiples. It can be untapped by, say, a Candelabra of Tawnos and reused. It can enable crazy graveyard strategies like a Golgari Grave-Troll. Play it with flashback spells to turn the card disadvantage into an advantage. If you don't want to lose your cards to the graveyard, it combos nicely with Library of Leng. Play it with draw spells or Howling Mines.

How would I know when to use its ability in a game?

When you have card advantage, are looking for a game-winning combo piece, or need an answer now. Any deck built to rely on it is probably going to use it as soon as possible, as often as possible.

A draw-and-discard card is more powerful than just a late-game mulligan.  The key is that in an open format (especially Vintage), an extra card discarded is not necessarily a 'loss'.  One obvious use, for example, is in discard-and-resurrect decks, planning to discard powerful creatures and flashback spells early, then resurrect them into play for less than their casting cost.
The cost is increased disproportionately by age, however. Arabian Nights / Antiquities came out before magic really took off, and hence there were quite a low absolute number of cards printed compared to later expansions.  Short form: it's very rare now, and useful.  Hence expensive.

Yeah, there's a smaller print run, and that's compounded by the fact that it hasn't been reprinted and won't be reprinted.

Bazaar of Baghdad is a very good card.  A good description of its usages can be found in this SCG article.  From that article:

One of the most powerful effects in Magic the Gathering history is the interaction between Squee, Goblin Nabob and Bazaar of Baghdad. These two cards have the power to create card advantage like very few things can. Once operating, this combo creates a virtual Ancestral Recall, for free each turn, which cannot be countered by conventional means.

It is a reusable non-counterable draw-discard engine.  This means it's incredibly useful with graveyard and discard mechanics; namely, Dredge, Madness, and Flashback.  It essentially lets you filter through your library piece by piece, with the only real cost being one less land usable for mana and the loss of a card from your hand.  This is offset by its usability in winning games quickly.

The more information you have on where your cards are the more powerful position you are in and the more options you will get.
There are plenty of game mechanics that like to have cards in the graveyard the most simple is a reanimation deck which will love the chance to draw the key spells it runs on, while also getting some of its high cost targets into the graveyard


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Why is 20 the starting life total for Magic the Gathering? How would the game be different if this number was changed?
To my knowledge, each player starts with 20 life in nearly every MTG game ever played. But why exactly was the number 20 chosen? How would the game be different if we started with more or less life? If my friends and I started playing with a higher or lower starting life total, how would that affect our deck construction decisions? Which colors, types of cards, or general strategies would become more or less powerful?

The part about the origin of 20 is interesting, but the rest of your question sounds to me like a "house rules that I haven't tested" question.

@Dave The question "How would changing X affect the game?" isn't just a question about house rules, its an inquiry into the nature of the game itself. I personally will never change the starting life total in my games, but knowing how the extremes would affect the game lets me investigate the nature of how the balance works and how I can use it to my advantage. Inquiring deeply into the rules and the consequences of changing them is an in-depth strategy analysis more than it is a question about house-rules. :D

I like shuuja and thesunneversets' answers very much.
There's a theory of Magic that says every matchup is two roles: "beatdown" and "control". The thinking is that, regardless of your actual deck types, one deck's going to have a stronger endgame (putting it in the "control" role), so the other deck has to hurry up and win the game before it's too late (putting it in the "beatdown" role). Raising the life total would naturally make it harder for any deck in the "beatdown" role that wins on damage, however obliquely.
Any deck can conceivably end up in the beatdown role, so don't think that this lets slow decks off the hook entirely. The most obvious disadvantage is to fast aggro decks, because they're more or less playing the beatdown role in every match, and their win condition is, almost universally, dealing 20 damage to the opponent (a few are poison-based instead). Modern-day sets are often balanced under the assumption that a Red-Deck-Wins-style deck should be reasonably competitive but not dominating; this means that the deck's creatures should be able to reliably kill a "goldfish" in around 4 turns (at which point an opponent can drop Day of Judgment to reset the field).
The ability of archetypes like Zoo, Red Deck Wins, and Tempered Steel to deliver fast beatdown sets the pace for the whole environment: other decks play low-cost disruption because not doing so means you get blown out by aggro before you actually get to do your thing. Remove that pressure and you create room for much slower decks. Commander is a great example. With 40 life, you can safely focus on playing high-cost powerful cards and devote your first few turns to hand-sculpting and mana ramp. Mid-priced cards -- strong three-drops and four-drops -- are still very important, but you're likely to see many decks that don't play anything but ramp cards and cheap removal in their low slots. It's possible to build a successful aggro-style Commander deck, but you have to either heavily disrupt the other players' early build-up (so that your dudes have enough time to finish them off while their decks are still in stage 1) or play combo-style elements (e.g. Heartless Hidetsugu) to seal the deal.
In regular 20-life Magic, Skittles is a control finisher. In 40-life EDH, he's an aggro general. That's how much life totals matter!
Similarly, imagine a 10-life game. You go first, play a Goblin Guide, swing for 2. Before I even play my first land I've lost 20% of my life total and I'm facing a four-turn clock. Do you have two Lightning Bolts in your hand? Goblin Grenade and Gut Shot? Fling and Mutagenic Growth? Practically any two or three fast cards will be enough to make me scoop my one land and go home. I have to have some very strong plays on turn 1 (or on your turn 2) in order to even see my own turn 2. What must my deck look like, then, if I'm playing combo and control?
So, in effect, futzing with starting life not only affects the pacing of the game and the relative strength of different decks but also completely changes the window of what's viable in a competitive deck.

+1 for a really good essay on the Beatdown vs Control paradigm.  Shifting players' starting life totals completely alters the sort of decks (and cards) that can possibly be competitive.  Do so at your peril!

Agreed! That's the cleanest description of Beatdown vs. Control I've read. +1

Point of order: all sorts of officially endorsed Magic games begin with different starting life totals than 20.  Excerpting from the Comprehensive Rules:

118.1. Each player begins the game with a life total of 20.
118.1a In a Two-Headed Giant game, each team begins the game with a shared life total of 30 instead; see rule 810, "Two-Headed Giant
  Variant."
118.1b In a Vanguard game, each player begins the game with a starting life total of 20, as modified by his or her vanguard card's life
  modifier. See rule 902, "Vanguard."
118.1c In a Commander game, each player begins the game with a starting life total of 40 instead; see rule 903, "Commander."
118.1d In an Archenemy game, the archenemy begins the game with a starting life total of 40 instead; see rule 904, "Archenemy."

Each of these variants accommodates different number of players, supports different sorts of politics and allegiances, and generally lasts a differing length of time.
I'm unwilling to engage in random speculation about what would happen if you tinker with the life totals in a standard 2-player duel: generally speaking this is a bad idea, because the power level of the cards is balanced quite nicely for 20 point life totals.  Lava Axe is a card that is well costed for the fact that it takes away one-quarter of a player's starting life total.  If players started with 100 life each, then Lava Axe becomes a considerably more awful card.
Conveniently enough, 20-point life totals usually allow for "best of 3 matches" to be comfortably played inside of an hour in tournament conditions.  If you have no time constraints and just want to play Magic all day, there is no reason why you shouldn't bump up the life totals as a house rule.  Just be aware that it will completely change the game balance, rendering some cards much better and some cards much, much worse.  Working out which is which could be a fun intellectual exercise for the jaded Magic player, but personally I like the fact that a lot of very smart people at Wizards have spent 20 years perfecting the game balance for 20-life-point games... why mess with that?

Wow, you're right. It IS possible for Lava Axe to be a worse card. :)

20 is a convenient number, as it's the largest number on a 20-sided die, and the largest number comfortably placed around a small spinner; spindown dice have been available since the early days, and I've read that they were part of the original idea. Further, 20 is also the low end of the number of stones in a tube of gaming stones (the high end is about 40), and under half the number of mini-poker-chips in a tube of mini-poker-chips (which is typically 50).
Having played games with 10 LP, it doesn't cut the typical 45-60 minute time in half; it cuts it by about 10-20 minutes, as it takes a bit of time to get damage causing cards into play.
I've not played 30 point, but friends have, and it doesn't really lengthen the game that much, either; they say it adds another 15 minutes or so to the typical 45-60 minute game.

Not an expert here, but I the obvious change is that it makes it takes more damage to kill a player by damage, making decks that rely on that win condition slower. Then the question is, what sort of decks benefit from this? Clearly not aggro or direct damage, but combo decks would have more time to get their combo out vs one of the more damage-y decks, and control decks would have more time to lock down the board and implement their own win condition.
I think, within the categories of combo and control decks, those deck that win by means other than reducing life total (such as milling decks) will have their speed unaffected, whereas decks that rely on dealing 20 damage will now have to deal 40 damage, so they will be slowed.
As @thesunneversets points out, many individual cards will shift in value, e.g. cards that damage you or have you pay life will have a smaller relative effect on you and thus get better. However cards that deal direct damage to an opponent get relatively worse.
I would oppose your own comment and some of the comments in the other answer: do try it out in a two-player duel! Also try starting with less than 20 life. Find out how to adjust your strategy to these situations. Obviously you shouldn't play a standard game (or build a standard deck) in the same way as you would when starting with 40 or 10 life, but learning those differences will help you understand the game.

Most mill decks I'm aware of don't really "race". They either use milling as part of an infinite combo (e.g. Mindcrank / Bloodchief Ascension or Grindstone / Painter's Servant) or grind you down slowly after locking down the board (like the original Millstone deck, if I remember correctly).

Your comment made me think a little more about what I mean. I do think mill decks race, whether it's a race to get the infinite combo out or lock down the board before dying (or your opponents' combo).

True! I guess it's more accurate to say I don't think the milling itself is usually a race, but they "race" in the other ways that prison decks and combo decks do.


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How do Dominion tournaments compensate for the luck that's always present in the game?
Dominion is definitely NOT a game of luck. I'd wager it's at least 90% strategy. But at the higher levels I'm sure the luck comes out as players get better at finding the best strategies available to them. In Bridge tournaments, pairs have to play the same hand and see who does better at it. Obviously in Dominion tournaments you'd have everyone play the same kingdom sets, but how do you compensate for bad shuffles? If there's a Mountebank/Witch/Treasury or any other awesome opening cost-5 card and no good opening cost-4 cards, any player who starts 5-2 is going to have a substantially better odds of winning already. Likewise if you have a lot of villages and terminal actions, but virtually never get them together, you're also at a substantial disadvantage.
How do Dominion tournaments compensate for this? Is it possible to play Dominion in a form where it's 98+% strategy and <2% luck, or is luck of the draw just an essential part of the game? How often does luck determine the winner of a game of Dominion?

Luck is inherent in most gaming/sporting endeavors to one extent or another.  In some ways, it seems its traditional for the losers to blame "bad luck".  If you follow any sporting team, I'm sure there is one particular moment you remember when your team was "robbed" of a deserving win or title.

@Pat yes, there's always some luck present, but the level definitely varies. In Go or Chess there will almost always be less luck, whereas in Dominion and Poker there's usually more. The games with more luck have a higher chance of a match's outcome misrepresenting the players' skill.

I don't think Dominion is alone in being a game with a significant amount of luck.  Magic the Gathering has a massive amount of variance, but the pros rise to the top time and again, because they are experts at keeping the role that luck plays in their game down to the very minimum.  Even with that being the case, I'd say that if you win 75% of your Magic matches at a pro level, your skill level is pretty godlike.  If you can consistently win even 60% of the time, you're doing more than fine.
As such, I don't think that it's a sensible question "how can we keep luck in Dominion to being a <2% factor".  There's always going to be games of Dominion where you repeatedly draw exactly what you don't need and your opponent draws exactly what he does.  But if you don't let those games faze you, and just concentrate on outplaying your opponents, your win percentage should creep up comfortably above 50% as you become an expert at the finer point of the game.  And that's all it takes to be a great Dominion player.  Not 100% win rates against "lesser opponents" and the total elimination of luck, just the ability to maximise your game, whatever the game throws at you, and even though sometimes it won't be enough.

Okay, so the the tournaments just rely on luck averaging out over time. In chess a world champion might win 97% of their games, whereas in Dominion a world champion might win 75% of their games. You just have to play more to get an accurate measure of the players' true skill. :D

A lot of games have luck -- the poster was asking how tournament organizers reduce it.

The poster was asking how to reduce it almost to nothing, which I think is silly.  Tournament organisers reduce it by running tournaments - in which by definition you play a lot of games, so that the luck averages out.

The standard tournament rule for Dominion is allowing players to pick their initial hand (so they can choose whether they want a 5/2 or a 4/3 split).  That reduces a lot of the luck if there's a particularly good 5/2 combo out there.

How does this work with Nocturne cards like Den of Sins which allows you to draw 2 cards on your next turn?

The WBC compensates for first player advantage by playing 2 game rounds, and reversing turn order by round.
It doesn't really do anything about luck though.  I think the only reasonable way to mitigate luck is to play a lot of games.


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When is it a good idea to pick the Craftsman in Puerto Rico?
At first, Craftsman seems like a great pick because it's what actually lets you actually produce goods, and if you're the one to pick it you can often produce more than everyone else. However, producing goods isn't the goal of the game, and what matters is what you can do with them. If you pick craftsman, you are nearly guaranteed to be the last player to USE your goods, even if you have more.
That said, when would picking craftsman actually be the best choice if you're just letting your left hand opponent ship/trade his goods first? Obviously if there's a nice stack of money on it you'd probably want to grab it, and if you have the right combination of goods that you are still guaranteed to trade or ship what you want to then it'd probably be fine.
When is it okay to pick Craftsman? How can I explain to beginners when they should and shouldn't do so?

I do not agree with the other answers that say Craftsman should be rarely taken.  By carefully consider seat order implications, if a player can answer the below questions in the affirmative then Craftsman should be the choice if no better options present themselves.  First a review of what Craftsman does.
Why take Craftsman?

Craftsman generate barrels which turn into victory points.  As this is the obvious way to generate victory points many players deemphasize this after playing a few games, leaving this route to the newbies. I feel this is a mistake and leaves an opportunity that can be exploited.
You get an extra barrel.  Note that this barrel comes last so you cannot use this to deny others.  However early game, an extra Corn will get you a quick extra VP.  Mid game an extra Coffee or Tobacco may allow you to trade multiple times off of one Craftsman for extra $$.

When to take Craftsman
There are two primary things to consider in the general case when deciding whether to take Craftsman.
Has Captain been taken in this round yet?
This is the big issue with Craftsman.  It is much better to take it in a round when Captain has already been chosen.  This limits the number of opportunities other folks will have to take Captain and deny you any benefit of your extra barrels.
Will you benefit the next time Captain is taken?
You need to put some thought into your seat order.  For example, in a 5 player game, you are seated second.  Player 1 goes first and takes Captain.  You can now craft freely knowing that you will have the first shot at taking Captain next round.  If you are seated third and take Craftsman you will get the second shot at Captain.  If player 2 takes Captain you are probably still going to get preferential loading of your barrels onto the ships.
As you get farther away from the current starting player, Craftsman becomes less attractive.
If you badly need money, you can consider the same two steps but in regard to Trader instead of Captain.  Sometimes you really need the money that trading a Coffee or Tobacco will give you.  A well chosen Trader can net you $5+ while potentially denying everyone else any benefit (if 3 spots are already filled for example).  While doing this you also need to give some though to the Captain.  You don't want to be forced to load your potential $7 barrel of Coffee on a ship right before you would get to pick Trader!
Other reasons to take Craftsman?

You are producing corn early in the game.  Get an extra barrel, it will likely turn into an extra VP
To make sure you produce the maximum possible.  If there are only 3 Tobacco left in stock, then Craft to make sure you get them.
Because you have a wharf.  With a wharf you don't have to worry about being denied the opportunity to ship your goods.
Because you have a warehouse.  A warehouse will enable you to store your goods through the next Captain phase (assuming it will be chosen at a bad time for you).  Then you can ship them later on.
To deny other people!  If it is obvious that that a later player will benefit greatly from Craftsman, taking it early can deny them a lot of barrels.
To force someone to take Captain.  This is related to the previous one.  If you are going first in a round, and you know that a later player (4th or 5th) will definitely take Captain, you can often convince player 2 or 3 to Captain if you take Craftsman in front of them.
There is money on it.  An extra $ or two can make all the difference!
You are winning and not able to end the game.  Crafting is the engine that drives the game along.  If you are confident that you have a good lead then Crafting can occasionally help things along even if you don't directly benefit from the Crafting yourself.

No one has mentioned the Factory in their answer.  The Factory is an obvious reason to choose Craftsman.  On the surface you think that if you have the Factory it makes sense.  It might also make sense if someone else has a Factory.  You can sometimes Craftsman and exhaust one or two goods so that someone with a Factory is unable to produce any of those goods and therefore doesn't get the financial benefit of that production.
It has been mentioned but should be highlighted that Craftsman is good if you have a Warehouse, particularly a large one.  Let the other players fill the ships in the current round of Captaining.  Then, next round when they have one or two goods left you Captain with your full warehouse and take your pick of ships as well as pick up the extra Victory Point for being Captain.  There can also be an advantage if you have a Wharf and or a Harbor.  The Harbor/Wharf combination is especially powerful if you can have enough of a good to put a portion on one regular ship (esp. if blocking an opponents loading it) and then having some left to Wharf it.  That move just earned you an extra Harbor Victory Point on the regular ship and an extra Victory Point on the Wharf shipment.  So if you chose the Captain on that move you got an extra Victory Point for Captaining, for regular shipment and for Wharf.  Three extra Victory Points in one move and it could all come from enough of a single type of good.  Couple that as a follow up to a previous turns Craftsman where you denied an opponent with a Factory production of a good and you have a huge move centered on Craftsman.
The main lesson is that every game is different.  Add to that different opponents, different number of players and different strategies and you begin to see that there are no consistently more or less desirable role choices.  Each new game unfurls it's pluses and minuses around each role.  If you aren't worried about losing individual games you can experiment with different strategies emphasizing different roles and start to see possibilities that will bring an 'Ah-ha!' to your mind.

Here's a couple of good links:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2322068_use-craftsman-role-puerto-rico.html
http://boardgames.about.com/od/puertorico/a/Craftsman-Strategy-Guide.htm
It's a bit of an essay question that you've set here, but hopefully the above will provide a useful starting point both for your enlightenment, and to act as a springboard for the answers of others!

Craftsman is one of the less favorite choices in Puerto Rico, because while you can do yourself quite a bit of good, it often doesn't put you ahead on the CURVE versus your opponents (who share most of your privileges), especially if you are the LAST player to use your goods.
Settler, builder, or mayor are usually preferred early picks. Craftsman is toward the bottom with captain. (I won't go into other roles such as trader or prospector for now.) The advantage of captaining is that he helps determine what gets shipped; the disadvantage is that he is less "productive," than a craftsman or many other roles. So the "first-pass" choice is between the productive craftsman, and the strategically placed captain. In many game situations, you might prefer to "captain."
That said, you choose craftsman if it gives you UNUSUAL productivity, and/or your opponents don't benefit from your choice as much as usual. This can happen if you alone own buildings that increase your productivity. IF you can produce LOTS of goods AND sell them at favorable prices (relative to a "normal" game), then you choose craftsman for this reason. Also, choose craftsman if the doubloon bonus is unusually large. Unfortunately, it takes experience to understand when you have an unusual advantage in this regard compared to a "normal" game situation.
In advising beginners, I'd say, don't choose craftsman unless you have no other choice, or else... and then define what that "or else" is, in terms of extra productivity or profitability compared to normal (e.g., unless there is a THREE doubloon bonus).


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When will playing Rubber Bridge vs. Duplicate Bridge affect your decisions?
In Rubber Bridge, you are trying to get more points than your opponents. In Duplicate Bridge, you are trying to get more points than the other people playing the same hand later on do. For a while I thought this wouldn't make a difference, but then I've noticed bridge columns occasionally offering different suggestions depending on which is being played, and couldn't make sense of it, because in either situation you're goal is to get as many points as possible.
When would you make a different decision based on if you were playing Rubber vs. Duplicate Bridge? How are the strategies different for them? After looking at a complete record of the decisions players made in a bridge hand, how can I tell if it was played at Duplicate or Rubber? What does it take to be good at Duplicate after you've become pretty good at Rubber?

I wholly agree with thesun's answer, particularly "you must squeeze every ounce of potential out of your cards".  But since you've posed particular queries at the end of your question:
Part-scores are the most obvious difference.  If you have strong Hearts, but not strong enough for slam, a Rubber player looks at the scoresheet; with 60 points below the line, there is no point going above 2H unless forced (overtricks score the same as bid tricks, and there is no risk of failure).  A Duplicate player knows there is no line: bid to 4H if you can make it.  Similarly with honours: a marginal hand with KQJT, worth bidding at Rubber because of the cushion 100 honours will give, is not worth bidding at Duplicate.
Strategy: again, Rubber bridge is about making the best of your situation, while Duplicate is about making the best of your cards, Take sacrifices: a Duplicate player knows that if he goes one down doubled but stops opponents making a game, he has done well out of that hand.  At Rubber bridge, you have saved the rubber for now, but if the opponents win a few hands later, all your sacrifice achieved was to cost you a few hundred points.  More generally, if by strategy you mean scoring as many points as possible (as I think you should), any change in the scoring method will affect your strategy.
Usually, you can't tell under which system a particular hand was played; obviously, if one side started with 30 below the line it was at Rubber, and if two declarers took different routes it was Duplicate.
And if you are really a good Rubber bridge player, you will be (or are) a good Duplicate player.  'Good', of course, is compared to 20 or 30 others, rather than 3, and you may find that your system is too ill-defined to be acceptable without work: but it's the same game, and just as enjoyable if not more so.

This is a pretty large topic and you could easily write an essay, or indeed a book, on the subject!  As a starting point I would recommend the Duplicate Bridge wikipedia page, with particular reference to the "Scoring and tactics" session. Take especial note of the differences that arise if you're playing Matchpoint or IMP scoring.
Really, Duplicate and Rubber bridge are the same game - it's just that different results are weighted differently for scoring purposes.  In rubber bridge, you can get away with bidding quite conservatively - slow and steady can usually win the race.  In duplicate, you must squeeze every last ounce of potential out of your cards, making it a more rigorous, competitive, high-stakes form of the game.  And some would say more fun, if your heart can take the strain!

In the bidding: in rubber bridge you should be more aggressive bidding games, as the 300 or 500 bonus makes a good bet bidding games making 30-40% of the time. Playing MPs you shouldn't settle for games making less that 50% (frequency is the name of the game).
In the card play: playing duplicate, overtricks are specially relevant when you are playing a normal contract (3NT+2 vs 3NT+1 may be the difference between an 80% and a 20% in a given board), in rubber bridge the converse is true: making the contract is the main goal. So its not rare to see a good player making a safety play in rubber bridge, but ignoring it (for the chance of an overtric(s)) in MPs.

This is incorrect. Playing IMPS one should be more aggressive bidding vulnerable games and less aggressive bidding non-vulnerable games than in MPs, which roughly matches appropriate Rubber Bridge strategy. In Slam auctions one should less aggressively to vulnerable small slams and more aggressively to non-vulnerable small slams than in MPs, which again roughly matches appropriate Rubber Bridge Strategy. 2NT and 3NT are bid much more aggressively, compared to alternative contracts,  in all forms of Duplicate bridge than in Rubber Bridge.

For the most part rubber bridge plays the same as IMPS, so let us instead distinguish between matchpoints on one side, and IMPS/Rubber on the other.
The most important distinction is the basis for measuring risk and reward. As a general rule (see below for when this does not apply):

In matchpoints, any play that stands to gain more often than not is advantageous.
In IMPS/rubber, one must weight the risk and reward according to the stakes of each, and decide on the expected value of the point gain/loss.

As an example, it is foolishness of the highest order in IMPS/rubber to risk a contract for a 60% chance of an overtrick; in matchpoints NOT doing so is foolishness of the highest order. Likewise, safety plays are made use of much more often in IMPS/rubber than in matchpoints.
The exceptions to this rule are when:

In matchpoints if from other information obtained, the contract is already believed to be a good one. For example: if an advanced play is required to make the contract; or an unusually favourable lead was obtained; or the contract is fortuitously played reversed due to one's bidding system; when in a hard-to-bid slam; etc.

In rubber bridge, you should try to get a partscore on. After getting the partscore on, slam bidding is much easier. The only time you want to sacrafise is if you have am extremely good fit against a slam, or if the opponents are taking a vulnerable rubber. Your goal is to make your contract. In IMPS, it is very similiar, trying to make your contract, but you have the game bonus and try to bid a game more often. Slam bidding isn't as easy. Sacrifices can be made if both are nonvulnerable. Your goal is to bid the safest contract and try to make it. In matchpoints, your goal is to try to take as many tricks as you can. You should avoid five of a minor games,and try for 3NT instead. 4 of a major should be bid if either of you are not 4-3-3-3. Bid level bonuses if there is at least 50 percent chance of making-be conservative at level bonuses. Stretch to compete, sacrifice often, and don't always try to make your contract. If making the contract is less than 50 percent, and if it fails means going down am extra trick, then settle for the lowest number of undertricks.