text:
Can the Paladin be summoned mid battle?
In Dungeon Lords, there is a spell that forces you to pay your monster(s) cost or withdraw it from combat. If you have a vampire and are just below the evil-o-meter level needed for the paladin to show up, but no one had breached the level yet, will he show up mid combat if you pay the cost to keep your vampire from withdrawing? What about if someone else had already summoned the paladin, and you became more evil than them, would doing this bring him to your dungeon?

Yes
See this paragraph on p19 of the rulebook:

Order is important. During battle, your rating on the Evilometer can
  change. This might make the paladin choose a different dungeon (as
  explained in the Paladin section above). The paladin will move
  immediately (along with any Damage Counters that are on him) so it
  is possible that the paladin will fight in multiple dungeons in the
  same round. Once the paladin is eliminated, however, he will move no
  more, regardless of the Evilometer.

The Paladin's justice is swift - if you become the most evil player at
any point, he will swoop down to punish you at once!  I believe I read
the game designer saying somewhere that you know you've gotten really good
at the game of Dungeon Lords when you are deliberately manipulating the
Paladin's movements - e.g. sending him to trash another player's Dungeon,
but then having him come back to yours with a few damage counters on him,
so he's easier to defeat.  I think it's very hard to pull off stuff like that,
though!
EDIT: Regarding whether the Paladin can enter play when  a player crosses
the "evil threshold" for the first time in the year during a battle, I see
no reason why not.  Here's the rules from the Paladin section:

If your Evil Counter lands on or rises above the paladin space on the
  Evilometer, the paladin sets out to attack your dungeon. Take the
  Paladin Tile from the Central Board and put it in the large space near
  the entrance to the dungeon. The paladin will always be at the front
  of the party. Any new warrior will push ahead of everyone but the
  paladin. The paladin himself is a mighty warrior. And a priest. And a
  wizard. And even a bit of a thief. For the purposes of the rules, he
  does not count as any of these, but anyone who faces the paladin will
  realize that he is an adventuring party all by himself. If you cross
  the line, you attract the paladin immediately.

Yes, it's true that these rules normally entail the Paladin joining the
adventuring party while they're still outside the dungeon, preparing for
their attack.  But crucially, there's no contradiction between the above rules and the Paladin joining mid-battle.  During battle the adventurer tiles are still in the spaces near the entrance, and it's easy for the Paladin to join them.  Just because in some sense the party have left the entrance and are now several tiles deep into the dungeon, doesn't mean that it's hard for the Paladin to find them.
Fundamentally, attracting the attention of the Paladin happens instantly at any point that a player becomes evil (or more evil) enough.  The rules are quite clear what happens whenever this occurs, and there's no reason to suppose there should be any exceptions.

Not to forget that it works in the opposite direction as well: If the Paladin is fighting in one dungeon (taking heavy damage but barely surviving) and through the conquest of the current tile the Lord of that dungeon loses a step on the evilometer and is now less evil than another Lord (who is above evil threshold) the terminally wounded Paladin will stagger to that other dungeon to draw his terminal breath over there :-)


text:
Can Demons "eat" ghosts?
I'm reasonably sure the answer is no, but at Monster Payday I (or when hiring) can you sacrifice a ghost to the demon? Or not, since it's not a monster, and the icon is a monster icon and ghosts aren't monsters?

No, you can't sacrifice a ghost to a demon. From the final page (24) of the rules, under the description of ghosts:

Ghosts can not be used to pay the cost
  for a demon.

And then later, under the description of demons:

Heh, heh. That's me. I'm always happy
  to help you reduce your overhead. But
  don't think you can get away with
  feeding me ghosts. They just go right
  through me.

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text:
How do the Flames work?
I'm a little unclear on the wording of the Flames. What does "Empty" mean? Does it ignore mountains? Shields? I'm fairly certain it ignores troops.
Side question (maybe this should be a separate question?!) can Flames travel through the Great Brass Pipe?

Empty does not mean "needs 2 critters to conquer" it means without monster or race tokens.
From the rules, bottom of page 9

A Region is deemed non-empty if, and only if, it contains at
  least one Monster or Race token (Active or In Decline). A Region
  that contains a Black Mountain marker, a Popular Place or a
  Righteous Relic but no Monster or enemy Race token is
  considered empty.

The Great Brass Pipe considers spaces adjacent for the purposes of the owning race, so Flames should be continuous through it.  This is confirmed in the FAQ.

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text:
How does Fisher work?
Say I have four territories in a row along the river and the Fisher Special power. Are they worth 2 bonus coins or 3? If I have two territories that skirt the river but are non contiguous are they worth anything?
We were playing that their bonus is (# of river adjacent territories/2) but I suspect that each unique pair of adjacent territories that are both adjacent to the river counts. The terminology in the rules isn't clear enough for me to be sure either way.

Four territories in a row are worth 2 bonus coins.  Adjacency doesn't matter.
Per the FAQ:

Q. If a Fisher Race occupies 4 regions in a row that borders the river, does that count as 3 pairs (AB, BC, CD) ?
A. No. That would count as 2 pairs, AB and CD. Note that these regions do not need to be adjacent to each other.


text:
What is the highest achievable score in Catan
The game ends as soon as you get 10 or more points, so even if you can build multiple things, the one that gets you to 10 is it.
I'm fairly certain that the highest score possible in Catan is 12 points. Assuming you are at 9 points, and are in second place for longest road, if you were able to build a settlement that broke up longest road that would give you three points at once.
Is there a way to end with a higher score?

The game ends when you reach 10 points on your turn, so if you are playing with 5 or 6 players you could easily get high then 10 on the special build phases so it would be closer to the maximum number of points possible with the amount of building you have.
5 point for settlements
8 points for cities
4 for longest road and largest army
5 in hidden victory points
So in theory you could get to 22 points if you are extremely lucky.
taken from the rule book on ending the game:
"If you have—or reach—10 victory points on your turn, the game ends immediately and you win! You can only win during your turn. If somehow you find you have 10 victory points during another player’s turn, you must wait until your next turn to claim victory"

Did some calculation and assuming you had 3 cities, 1 settlement, largest army and you could take longest road by building a settlement.  You would need 36 cards to pull this off and to only pull victory points from development cards.

What is the date on your rule book? I don't remember that requirement from older copies.

If you have for example 3 cities, that makes 6 points in the eyes of the other players. You could have also 3 hidden points and 2 army cards, and in the end of your turn get another army card (which would give you the extra 1 point - 2 indeed - needed) you still have to wait one turn to unfold it. In the meantime, someone could break longest road and inmediately make yours the longest. So, in the start of your next turn, you unfold the army and you get a total of 13 points (6 for cities, 3 for hidden points, 2 for biggest army and 2 for longest road)

@DIe rules state you can't play a card you buy until the next turn unless this would win you the game....

@fireshark519 isn't that only with "victory point cards"? If not, I've been "a whole life" playing mistakenly my favourite game

If you look at the rules for victory point cards it is the exception to the rule.
Text from the rule book:
"You must keep Victory Point Cards hidden. You may only
reveal them during your turn and when you are sure that you
have 10 victory points—that is, to win the game. Of course,
you can reveal them after the end of the game when someone
else wins. You may play any number of Victory Point Cards
during your turn, even during the turn you purchase them."
Link to rule book i have used: https://www.catan.com/en/download/?SoC_rv_Rules_091907.pdf

Although the maximum is 22 points, this is not possible in a real game, because the game stops as soon as one player has 10 or more points. So we need to find the maxium number of points that can be met in a single action.

Building a road, can give you at most 2 points, if you get the longest road.
With a development card, can give you at most 2 points:

You can play a knight, and getting the largest army (2 points)
You can play two roads and get the longest road (2 points)
You can buy a victory point (only 1 point).

While building a settlement or city, you can get 1 point. But there is a case where you can get 3 points:

You build a settlement (1 point)
The settlement disrupts the longest road of an other player
You now have the longest road (2 additional points).

So if you have 9 points, you build a settlement that disrupts the longest road and you have the next longest road, you get 3 points for a total of 12 points.
With expansions, you can get more points, but this is for the basic game.

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text:
If my walker is in base with a vehicle can it shoot AND attack?
My opponent rams my walker with his tank. No significant damage is incurred on either side, but my walker is immobilized and my walker fails to scratch the tank. What are my options on my turn:

Can't shoot since technically I'm in combat, but can attack during my combat phase.
Can shoot at the tank, and can attack in my combat phase.
Can shoot at anything (in LOS) and can attack the tank in my combat phase.
Can shoot at anything, but if I don't shoot the tank, I can't attack it in my combat phase.
Something else?

If my walker isn't immobilized, what changes?

After much rules reading when encountering a similar situation w/ a drop pod I'm pretty sure that the most permissive answer is the correct one, specifically:

My unit being in base with an immobilized vehicle does not prevent that vehicle from shooting on it's turn (or firing Overwatch if it can).
My unit that is still in base with a vehicle can attack it in the combat phase.
On my turn, if my unit does not move (likely because it's immobilized), it can fire at another target and still attack the vehicle in the combat phase.

Why the downvote?

6th edition
An immobilized walker cannot pivot (p.74)--so while overwatch is still allowed (p.84)--you are limited precisely moving targets within the 45 degree horizontal and vertical arc present at the time of immobilization.
Despite the base contact, the tank is not locked-in combat (p.76). This means the tank is a valid target during the shooting phase on your turn (from both the walker and other shooters), also provided that your immobilized walker can target the tank by being in it's current, unchangable 45 degree shooting arc.
The walker can engage in the assault phase with the tank right after being rammed (p.84). However, because it is immobilized, it would have one less attack to a minimum of one attack (p.84). This reduction will apply to the subsequent assault if you remain btb.
7th edition
7th edition seems to keep almost identical text regarding walkers, ramming, and overwatch.

If my walker isn't immobilized, what changes?

Lots would change if your enemy wasn't a tank, but since it is a tank, the differences are fewer: if you were not immobilized, you could 1) walk away, 2) overwatch in all directions, 3) have all available assault attacks and 4) pivot and shoot at anybody within range.


text:
What are my odds of drawing the rest of my deck
Do to the deterministic nature of the game, if I have a decent memory I can easily know what cards are left in my deck, if not their order. I have two cards in my hand that let me draw a card (1 each) and I know there are 4 cards left in my deck, two of which will also let me draw a card. What are the chances I'll be able to draw my entire remaining deck?

This is a fairly simple probability problem... if I knew the rules of Star Realms. What are the card drawing rules?

Some cards will allow you to draw a card under certain conditions, for this question, you can take it as read that the condition is filled. Simply, you an draw 2 of the 4 cards remaining, and if any of the drawn cards let you draw a card you can continue to do so.

50%
Symbolizing the cards that give you a draw a D, and the cards that do not as N, there are 6 possible permutations of draw vs no-draw.
In each permutation, the second N card represents the farthest you can get through your deck on this turn.  I have bolded it for easier visibility.
DDNN
DNDN
DNND
NDDN
NDND
NNDD

This could also be explained by defining any permutation that ends with a Draw card last as the fail condition.


text:
How long does a bonus last?
In core worlds, there are several ways to give bonus ground strength to Infantry. For example there is a Cyborg who gives +1 Ground strength to each Infantry that attacks with him.
If I use my Medi-bot to save my now 2 strength grunt, how long does that +1 strength last? Until the end of the invasion? Until the end of the round? End of the game?

Till the end of the current invasion. Cyborg reads:

During an invasion involving the Cyborg, you may spend 1 Energy to add +1 Ground Strength to every Infantry Unit in that invasion.

The rule book defines an Invasion as:

Invasion: In order to add new worlds to his Empire, a player must launch Invasions. A player performs an Invasion by discarding enough cards from his Warzone to match the Fleet Strength and Ground Strength of the World he is invading.

So, the saved Ground Unit will only get the +1 bonus during the current invasion (cyborg's rules text). The Med-bot can save the troop from being discarded, but the bonus ends immediately after the current Invasion that Cyborg is participating in.


text:
Double Double, toil and trouble
I'm playing a Magic race AND I have picked up The Scepter of Avarice. If I put them both (and use the Magic Token as a second Scepter) in the same region do I get 4 coins? If I am the Shrooms and I put them both in a Mushroom Forest do I get 8? What if I control the Diamond Mines and they are in a Mushroom Forest as well? Is that 16?

There is no possibility of using 2 Scepter's of Avarice in the same area.
From the FAQ:

Q. May I use the Bag o'Many Things to duplicate the power of a Relic in a region where that Relic already is? For example, may I use the Bag on the Scepter of Avarice to quadruple my region's income?
A. No. The power of a Relic cannot be duplicated in a region where that power already applies.


text:
How does Terraforming work in Eminent Domain?
Terraforming says you attach it to a planet, and if it would be enough to satisfy the printed colonization cost, settle the planet. How does this work? Does this count colonization reductions from settled planets or Fertile Ground? If not can it only settle starter planets?

The Terraforming action states:

Add this card to a planet as 2 colonies. If that fulfills the printed Colonize cost, Settle that planet.
  Note: Ignore Colonize discounts in your Empire.

As far as I understand, the following occurs:
Firstly, you can play it onto an unsettled planet to count as two colonies (much like playing a Colonize counts as one).
In addition, if once you've played it the planet has sufficient colonies to settle, you can settle it immediately (discarding the Terraforming and any other Colonizes and flipping the planet).
e.g. If you have an unsettled planet with a Colonize cost of 3 and one Colonize card already on it, you can play Terraforming to double-Colonize and then immediately settle that planet.
For Terraforming, all discounts are ignored, mostly for game-balance.
i.e. In the same example as above, if you had an unsettled planet with a Colonize cost of 3 and NO Colonize cards on it (but a discount to Colonize from, say, another planet) then you could double-Colonize, but you would NOT be able to immediately settle, since you do not reach the requirements while ignoring discounts. You COULD however settle it later without further Colonizes required, since the action remains on the planet and still counts as two colonies.

Hmm, I must have an older edition, my copy doesn't have the note.

Ah, you're quite right. It seems like there may not be a clarification on the card, but in this BGG thread (http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/708915/terraforming-questions), which is also where I got the description, the designer says: "In play testing I found that I did not like how Terraforming worked with that discount - too strong. Hence I decided on the restriction." So it may have been a late change, or only clarified in the rulebook somewhere (which I don't have in front of me to confirm).


text:
Recommended strategies for the MTGO Cube
MTGO Cube Drafts were offered online a few weeks ago, and they'll be appearing again later this week. I didn't play any cube drafts the first time, largely because I was intimidated: I've never drafted any kind of cube before, a large portion of the cards are unknown to me, and there was no way I was going to be able to read through the 720 cards in the list and find a strategy on my own.
However, I'd really like to play the cube this time around, so I'm wondering: what strategies are recommended? How should I approach cube drafting in general, and the MTGO cube in particular?
Here is the current cube list. Have at it.

Not sure how the answer to this question will be any different than this one. It seems to me the cube is large and varied enough not to have any overarching "standard" archetypes… Just draft with a strategy in mind (Aggro, Control, Combo, some hybrid) and draft cards that fit that strategy.

@ghoppe I believe the answer will be a lot different, specially because the card pool is known. It's different to ask for general draft strategies or INN draft strategies, for example: in INN draft we can actually talk about decks like self-mill with spider spawning. In cube it's the same: there's the general archetypes like aggro, control, etc, but you can also build something a lot more specific like reanimator, burn, wildfire, ramp, white weenie, etc.

@ghoppe, aside from what rahzark said, the fact is that in a cube you might open a pack with 8 cards that are first-pick bombs in any other format. This makes BREAD a little less useful as a guide.

What is unclear to me from the link, is this a Rotisserie draft (all cards face up, pick the card you want, choice rotates to the person to your left 8-player draft), or are these cards just the ones that make up 15 card packs?

@user1873 : it's a standard draft other than the cardpool; 15-card 'packs' are built at random from the cube pool (ideally without duplicating any cards, i.e. 'singleton' style, but the MTGO cube had a minor bug in its first go-round) and then distributed to the players in usual draft fashion.

To provide a different perspective on thesunneversets' answer: the most important concept in cube drafting isn't power level, it's synergy.  It's easy to look at your deck after you've drafted - or while you're drafting - and say 'this is chock-full of great cards, it should be awesome.'  The problem is that everyone's deck is chock-full of great cards; to put yourself above the pack, you need to have more than just great cards.  And that's where synergy comes into play.
It's impossible to provide a full list (or even a reasonable partial list) of the synergies in the MTGO cube just because there are so many there; instead, just look for potential little synergies and combos when you're drafting.  Already snagged Channel?  Keep an eye out for high-cost artifacts and colorless cards that you can run out in the first few turns - surprisingly few decks can beat a turn-2 Ulamog or Karn.  Picked up Recurring Nightmare?  Maybe you want that Myr Battlesphere a little more; maybe Entomb or Buried Alive or even just Careful Consideration bump a bit higher up your pick order.  These sorts of synergies are what you want to be looking for.
This strategy extends to your first few picks, too - there you want to keep an eye out for cards that can synergize with a number of different cards.  I'd cheerfully pick Survival of the Fittest over many other cards in the format, for instance, simply because I know I'm likely to pick something up to go with it: maybe it'll be Vengevine for a green aggro deck (and boo on Wizards for skipping Basking Rootwalla!); maybe it'll be Recurring Nightmare or just Animate Dead for a reanimator deck; maybe it'll even be Myr Battlesphere and Goblin Welder for different sorts of reanimator shenanigans.  Maybe it'll just be a collections of walls, Acidic Slime and its kin, and Birthing Pod up to Elesh Norn for a toolbox-style deck.  But any way it shakes out, I've got good chances of finding something that'll work with Survival.
As far as specific card advice, there are a few things that come to mind:

Artifact acceleration is sparse, and key for the high-end control and board control decks - maybe even moreso than plain fixing is.  Early on cards like Prismatic Lens were being overlooked and you even had a reasonable chance of tabling them, but at this point they've moved much higher up peoples' pick orders and need (and deserve) to be picked highly: I've gladly first-picked Grim Monolith - and then used it to cast a turn-3 Grave Titan in multiple games.  The non-accelerating mana fixing (duals, fetchlands, etc.) is important especially for many-color decks, but I've tried to avoid splashing beyond 2 as much as feasible, so it's been less crucial for me.
Similarly, being able to delay color commitment for a bit is a useful thing - cards like Wurmcoil Engine and Myr Battlesphere are high picks in part on raw power, but even more because they're universally applicable, and I'd gladly snag either with my first few picks.
Artifact removal has some value, but most people leave enchantment removal (unless it's something universally versatile like Acidic Slime) in their boards, and many decks don't even have access to that sort of effect.  Because of this (and of course the general power level of the creatures), the control enchantments - Control Magic and Treachery - are even more powerful than they might appear at first glance.
The red deck is strong and it is the clock of the format, but it doesn't seem like quite the beast that people are making it out to be.  If one person is drafting it then they get all the goods, but there isn't enough redundancy in the MTGO cube for it to comfortably support multiple drafters; if you don't have Goblin Guide or Keldon Marauders, for instance, then you probably won't be nearly fast enough to keep up with the accelerated high-end decks.  Mind you, I have a mild allergy to red aggro so I can't speak from the other side of the table, but in the few drafts I've played against it I've had quite a bit of success - it's something you have to keep in mind and it does force a reasonable curve, but it's not something to actively fear.

One thing I'm noticing from watching lots of Cube drafts is that red burn is pretty much a benchmark deck for the format.
With a pool filled with so many "power cards" the temptation is always going to be to pack your deck full of flashy plays at the top end of the curve.  But just because this is Cube, it doesn't mean that good deckbuilding can go out of the window!  The red deck takes advantage of quality burn and efficient cheap creatures to win the game before clunkier decks have even managed to deploy more than a couple of their 5++ casting cost threats.
Cube is an interesting one, because it always seems to me that there are ready-made decks just sitting there in the pool waiting for someone to draft them.  If no one else drafts red aggro, and you get every card you need for the archetype, you are going to do very well indeed.  On the other hand, you are going to do much less well if you're competing for these resources with several other players.  I guess this is the story behind all Magic drafting really, but it's more obvious in Cube because you know what decks are in there for the making.  As such, watching for archetypes being passed to you, and trying not to hand them to the player on your left on a plate, is extra important.
I guess to cut a long answer short, in ordinary drafting you would slam a power rare first pick every time and be glad for it.  In Cube, more of the cards are good or great, so it's less necessary to jump on bombs.  Having a good deck archetype will serve you a lot better than a random pile of overpowered (in isolation) cards...

Ok, but what are the ready-made archetypes in the MTGO cube?

I'm also a beginner at cube draft, but I would recommend watching a few cube drafts by good drafters, e.g. at http://www.channelfireball.com. I feel they give a good feeling for what kind of decks can be drafted.

Channel Fireball's Cube coverage has been amazing over the past week or two. +1!


text:
Interactions between Brainstorm and Miracles
Suppose I'm playing UW Miracles in Legacy. During my opponent's turn, I cast Brainstorm,  and the first card that I draw is Entreat the Angels. If I choose to cast the card for its miracle cost, what order do the triggers resolve in?
Does the Miracle trigger go on the stack immediately, before Brainstorm finishes resolving (ie. before I draw my other cards and then put cards back on my library)? Am I then able to pay the cost and create my angels in the middle of the Brainstorm? Or does the trigger wait until Brainstorm has finished resolving? What if I chose to put Entreat back on top of my library?

You must reveal the card as you draw it in order to claim the miracle trigger.
The trigger will go on the stack when Brainstorm finishes resolving.
You can only cast the miracle card if it never left your hand before the trigger resolves.

Here's how and why it works this way:

You draw cards one at a time.

120.2. Cards may only be drawn one at a time. If a player is instructed to draw multiple cards, that player performs that many individual card draws.

You reveal your first card "as you draw it," before putting it in your hand (if it's a miracle card).

702.93. Miracle
702.93a Miracle is a static ability linked to a triggered ability (see rule 603.10). “Miracle [cost]” means “You may reveal this card from your hand as you draw it if it’s the first card you’ve drawn this turn. When you reveal this card this way, you may cast it by paying [cost] rather than its mana cost.”
702.93b If a player chooses to reveal a card using its miracle ability, he or she plays with that card revealed until that card leaves his or her hand, that ability resolves, or that ability otherwise leaves the stack.

Nothing else happens yet. Just keep the card revealed in your hand.

603.2. Whenever a game event or game state matches a triggered ability’s trigger event, that ability automatically triggers. The ability doesn’t do anything at this point.

Then you draw the rest of your cards and put some card from your hand back, as Brainstorm tells you to do.

Once you're done with the Brainstorm actions, the miracle trigger actually goes on the stack.

603.3. Once an ability has triggered, its controller puts it on the stack as an object that’s not a card the next time a player would receive priority...

Now you wait for the trigger to resolve. Players pass priority.

After the miracle trigger resolves, you may cast the miracle card. If it has left your hand at all, you can't cast it for its miracle cost (even if you manage to put it back somehow).

400.7. An object that moves from one zone to another becomes a new object with no memory of, or relation to, its previous existence. There are seven exceptions to this rule [none of which apply.]

So, in short:

Draw card 1
Reveal miracle
Draw card 2
Draw card 3
Put back two cards
Brainstorm finishes resolving (and is in the graveyard now)
Stack miracle trigger
Players get priority and can do stuff
Miracle trigger resolves: now you get to decide whether to cast the spell

Here's the same interpretation from a level 2 judge.

So much extraneous information! And then you never actually explain the answer to his last question (object ceased to exist).

This might need to be a separate question, but could you choose to put the miracle on top of your deck and then play it for it's miracle cost next next?

@Discord Next time you draw it? Yes.

The ability triggers while Brainstorm is resolving, but it will only go on the stack after Brainstorm finishes resolving.

603.2. Whenever a game event or game state matches a triggered ability’s trigger event, that ability automatically triggers. The ability doesn’t do anything at this point.
603.3. Once an ability has triggered, its controller puts it on the stack as an object that’s not a card the next time a player would receive priority. [...]

If you chose to put Entreat back on top of your library, you won't be able to cast it. The object the Miracle ability tries to cast ceased to exist when it left your hand.

400.7. An object that moves from one zone to another becomes a new object with no memory of, or relation to, its previous existence. There are seven exceptions to this rule:

This is confirmed by the Avacyn Restored FAQ.

If the card with miracle leaves your hand before the triggered ability resolves, you won't be able to cast it using its miracle ability.

The miracle trigger goes on the stack after the brain storm resolves but you have to reveal the card as soon as you draw it.
After brain storm resolves, the miracle trigger would resolve giving you the opportunity to cast the spell revealed when the trigger happened for it's miracle cost.
if you put it back on the top of your library you get the chance to use the miracle on your following turn if it is the first card you draw.
Just because it triggered and you revealed it, does not mean it can not be put back.
See rule 702.93 all parts but most in particular this part:

702.93b If a player chooses to reveal a card using its miracle ability, he or she plays with that card revealed until that card
  leaves his or her hand, that ability resolves, or that ability
  otherwise leaves the stack.

He said that he casts Brainstorm on his opponent's turn, so the upkeep stuff is not relevant.

yeah I totally missed that. Thanks for the heads up.

Why couldn't this happen during another player's turn?

It could, I simply missed that part.


text:
What's a cantrip?
In discussions of Magic cards, I've heard a card called a cantrip on several occasions, but I haven't been able to find a definition of what that term means for MtG. Is a cantrip a particular card, a card with a particular mechanism, or what?

A cantrip is any spell that allows you to draw a card in addition to it's regular effect (e.g. Peek).  It is typically of low casting cost, and the drawing is a secondary effect.

The original cantrips were in Ice Age, and typically read "draw a card at the beginning of next turn's upkeep".  Eventually Wizards decided that was too much faff and changed the card-draw to be an immediate effect.  Some people call the Ice Age cards "slowtrips" as a result!


text:
Oblivion Ring targeting an Aura
Suppose I cast Oblivion Ring and have it target the Pacifism which is encumbering one of my creatures. What happens if the Oblivion Ring is subsequently destroyed?

Pacifism re-enters play enchanting the same creature as before
Pacifism chooses a new target when it re-enters play
Nothing -- Auras can only exist while enchanting a creature, so Pacifism disappears in a poof of smoke when it's exiled, similar to what tokens do.

According to the rulings on this card's gatherer entry

01/10/2008 If the exiled card is an Aura, that card's owner chooses what it will enchant as it comes back onto the battlefield. An Aura put onto the battlefield this way doesn't target anything, but the Aura's enchant ability restricts what it can be attached to. If the Aura can't legally be attached to anything, it remains exiled forever.

It would appear that option 2 in your question is the correct interpretation.

I didn't notice that there was a ruling on exactly this question :). Two interesting points: the Aura "doesn't target anything" when it re-enters the battlefield, meaning that you could attach it to a creature with prot white or hexproof, and if it can't legally attach to anything it remains exiled rather than simply going to the graveyard.

@JSBᾶngs Yes, "doesn't target anything" when it re-enters has an interesting implication, but I believe that protection from white prevents it from being attached ... there's a hair to split there on hexproof, that would require looking at the comprehensive rules regarding "attach" :)

I think you're right about prot white. My reasoning is that a creature that gains protection immediately sheds any relevant auras that it has, so protection is a state-based effect that doesn't just affect targeting. I'm looking through the comprehensive rules now, though.

Ok, here's the rule: 702.15c  A permanent or player with protection can't be enchanted by Auras that have the stated quality. Such Auras attached to the permanent or player with protection will be put into their owners' graveyards as a state-based action. (See rule 704, "State-Based Actions."). So you could attach it to a creature with prot white, but it would immediately go into the graveyard as a state-based effect.

@Stephen: attaching isn't inherently targeted, I'm pretty sure, so you could attach it to a creature with hexproof or shroud.

You cannot bring it in and attach it to a pro white creature to make it fall off and go to your GY.  (perhaps so you can get it back with Auramancer.)  If the only creature(s) on the field when the O-ring leaves have pro-white, the Pacifism will remain in exile.  See rule 303.4g


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How many Diabolic Tutors is too many?
Everyone loves the Diabolic Tutor:

But how many tutors is too many? If I'm running a mono-black or black-heavy deck, is there any reason to not just put in four Tutors? What are the possible downsides?

Diabolic Tutor is a classic example of a weeder card: a card that seems really good to a beginner, but much much less appealing to an experienced player.

Five. Five is too many. /s

There are two basic reasons to use a tutor:
1) You have a card that you want more than 4 of, but there is no similar substitute available.
2) To be able to have a 'toolbox' of 1-of answers to different types of threats.
So what is the card in your deck that you wish you could have more than 4 of?  What are possible substitutes for it in the format you're building for?  Is using a turn and extra mana to get at it preferable to the substitute card?  The primary reason not to put in a tutor is if your deck can reliably deliver on its designed win condition without needing access to more than 4 of a particular card.
Toolbox decks are usually meta-game haterators, so it's tough to talk about them in the abstract.  Mono-black isn't usually known for it though.  Toolbox tutors are more often things like Birthing Pod searching up creatures with desirable enters-the-battlefield effects.
--
Diabolic Tutor specifically, your biggest challenge on that one is how it impacts your mana curve.  What are the 5-drop cards in your deck you're tutoring for that you must hit on T5 in order to win?  What 4-drop card are you giving up the opportunity to play on curve in order to tutor for something that comes out next turn?
Turn 4 is not a good time to be making a play that doesn't impact the board state.  Turn 4 is the kill turn for aggro decks in Standard/Modern that got a half-decent starting hand.  Tapping out for a tutor also communicates a lot of information to your opponent.  e.g., The only reason you tapped out for 4 in mono-black standard and played a tutor instead of an Obliterator, was to go tutor for an Obliterator.  They will do everything they can to be ready for it next turn!
--
In decks for big multiplayer games, go for it, play all the tutors you can.  When games regularly go over 10 turns, getting what you need late is more important than playing on-curve early.

100% agree for your last line. I don't have a black Commander deck that doesn't have both Demonic and Diabolic tutor. There's no reason not to.

300 card deck + battle of wits + all the tutors you can get your hands on.

Because the black tutors do not reveal what you searched for (they have no restrictions on what you can find) these particular tutors do not reveal much to your opponent. While tapping 4 mana to search for something is a lot, it doesn't guarantee your opponent knows what it will be, depending on meta and your colors.

This question is almost too broad.  It depends entirely on your deck, doesn't it?  If your deck is a fast black aggro that plans to overwhelm with creatures by turn 5 then obviously taking time out to tutor up a card is an unacceptable loss of tempo.  If on the other hand you're running a combo where you can't afford not to have drawn all your pieces by turn 5, then some kind of tutoring will be a necessity.
I do think Diabolic Tutor is a well-costed card: 4 mana and a card is a sizeable investment to make, to the point where it may very well not be worth it in any fast environment of finely tuned decks.  It's more likely to be worth it in slow formats like Limited (where you plan to win by drawing your bombs) or possibly, as mentioned, Multiplayer - though I would caution that alerting your opponents that you just drew the best card in your deck may increase your chances of them viewing you as a threat!

I'd say it's the other way around. When is it worth wasting 4 mana worth of tempo for the gain of exchanging one card in your hand for one from your deck? I think you need a good reason even to run Demonic Tutor.
But as always in MtG it's situational. What do you want to accomplish? How have you planned to win/not lose? We can give the best suggestions if you provide a decklist.

Definitely disagree about demonic tutor. The fact that diabolic exists shows that demonic tutor is a broken card, which means you should probably be playing it if allowed.

@corsiKa You can't argue like that. Do you think Garruks companion is an auto include because it's better than Grizzly Bears? I've hardly ever seen any tier 1 constructed decks Diabolic Tutors, and almost all of them was in Block. There's a huuuuuge difference between demonic and diabolic since when you hit 3-4 mana you can play tutor for a cheap spell and cast it the same turn.
Say you play a fast aggressive proactive deck. You goal is to disrupt your opponent and threat him with fast guys. Something in the lines of Suicide black or Team america...

Against slow decks you'll have to win fast (before they manage to take control) and against fast(er) decks you need to stop them fast or race them for the win. This means it's a huge deal to spend a whole turn not doing anything affecting the board (or your opponent). Since it's constructed and you're only playing quality cards it's often more important that you do something right now, and something next turn, than only doing something better next turn.

We'll just have to agree to disagree then. Just because you draw him doesn't mean you -have- to play him. But it does give you 4 copies of whatever you need in your deck, for very very cheap.

Efficiency
Diabolic Tutor is simply inefficient.  2-mana tutors of limited selection like Eladamri's Call and Merchant Scroll are moderately playable, but not automatic inclusions.  3-mana tutors of limited selection like Fabricate rarely get played, but might under extreme circumstances.  Diabolic Tutor gives you broader selection than these cards, but it is ultimately 4 mana to get 1 card (with nearly the greatest possible card selection), and there is very little precedent for playable 4-mana 1-for-1 card drawing / tutoring.  I personally think, for Diabolic Tutor's effect to be playable in standard most of the time, it should be priced at about 3.2 mana (e.g. 3 mana with some downside like lose 2 life, or 4 mana with some upside like gain 3 life); so I would say it is overpriced by about 0.8 mana.  Usually a card's efficiency, i.e. whether it is over/underpriced and by how much, is one of the first criteria you consider when determining what is good enough to play.
Correlates With Inclusion
Diabolic Tutor has seen plenty of standard and block constructed play in Mono-Black Control during the 2001 - 2003 era.  This deck features a lot of the criteria that you would look for in order to play Diabolic Tutor.  However, Diabolic Tutor got passed-up in later formats where some of these criteria were not as accessible.
 - Mana Ramp.  This deck played Cabal Coffers, which netted one mana once you had 3 Swamps in play, and netted > 1 mana after that.  Diabolic Tutor is essentially adding 4 mana to the cost of whatever card you search for.  Since Diabolic Tutor is already so expensive, and since it tutors-up a likely expensive card, you basically have to spend quite a lot of mana to make whatever play you had in mind.  To further confirm that theory, it usually isn't worth tutoring-up a simply efficient card like Lightning Bolt, because then you'd basically be spending 5 mana to deal 3 damage.  Instead, you are almost obligated to tutor-up a very devastating, sweeping play; examples of the time may include Mutilate, Mind Sludge, Haunting Echoes, Corrupt, Skeletal Scrying, or Riptide Replicator.  Since these plays are so mana-intensive, you will want to pay for them using big mana rampers like Cabal Coffers or Gilded Lotus.  Because Diabolic Tutor is SO expensive, mana ramp is by far the most crucial variable that will make or break Diabolic Tutor.
 - Board Sweepers.  In Mono-Black Control, the go-to board sweeper of the time was Mutilate.  If it had access to Damnation or Toxic Sludge, it might have used those.  Since Diabolic Tutor is so mana-intensive and it does not impact the board, you need the ability to dramatically catch-up on your board position after falling behind by wasting a lot of mana not affecting the board.  To do this, you should use board sweepers.  This is also a combo of sorts; because if board sweepers present the possibility of achieving extreme card advantage, then you will want tutors to be able to get them.  Doing nothing to control the board on turn 4 also increases the possibility that a turn 5 board sweeper will have more creatures to kill.
 - Life Gain.  If your plan is to waste turn 4 doing nothing but tutoring, then you will probably take significant damage.  Even if you then play a board sweeper to catch way up on the board, your life total will probably be low.  At this point, you will probably want to play a card like Corrupt to catch way back up on life.  Usually life gain doesn't do a lot of work in Magic, but Corrupt has the potential to remove another threat from the board, or to function as part of a win condition.
 - Silver Bullets and Splashy Plays.  Tutors give you the ability to tutor-up silver bullets like Boil that have situationally devastating impacts.  If your deck offers multiple 1-of silver bullets, then you will want to combine tutoring power with it to consistently make devastating plays without drawing the situationally dead cards too often.  Splashy plays, i.e. devastating or sweeping impactful cards like Damnation, Mind Sludge, Mirari, Riptide Replicator, and Haunting Echoes serve a role very similar to silver bullets; they are just as devastating, but less situational.  These are the type of cards you would definitely want available in your toolbox to search for.  Especially if their effects shut down varying zones of the game, causing each of them to be differently important in different situations (not color-specific situations like destroying Islands, but zone-specific situations like destroying the opponent's hand).
 - Combo Pieces.  Of course, the ability to search-up a combo piece to complete a combo and win the game is a powerful play.  Since tutors can flexibly fetch whichever piece of the combo you are missing, they can be better than simply playing more copies of each half of the combo piece.
How Many Should You Play?
Usually 0.  However, if all of the right pieces are in place to justify playing Diabolic Tutor (including if the format / cardpool is slow / weak enough), you should usually play 4.  Assuming you have access to mana ramp especially, not to mention all of the other correlates with inclusion stated above, the power of tutoring can't be denied.  Once you've unlocked A LOT of mana, and the post-tutor plays you make are devastating, there's minimal reason to play less than 4 Diabolic Tutors.  This is not to mention that with fewer than 4 tutors, your deck will probably be inconsistent, since you are playing so many expensive splashy cards, so many silver bullets, and so many cards of niche roles like board sweepers.  If your deck was a ton of cheap spot removal, then your draws would always play-out similarly.  But if your deck was a few board sweepers and minimal spot removal, then you can have very swingy draws where you control the board very well or very poorly.  The best argument to play exactly 3 Diabolic Tutors would be if it had stiff competition at the 4-mana slots against very strong cards like Phyrexian Obliterator.

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House rules to fix LotR Risk endgame
I've been playing Lord of the Rings Risk, in the variant where the Ring moves one territory per turn, requiring a roll of 4 or higher to leave certain territories, and the game ends when the Ring reaches Mt. Doom and is destroyed. At the game's end, victory points are allotted for:

Territories owned
Complete regions (="continents") controlled
Strongholds owned
Adventure cards played throughout the game

The problem is that once the Ring reaches Mt. Doom, the next player to go has a strong incentive to abandon strategic position and defensibility and just expand as much as he possibly can in order to maximize his points. If the Ring isn't destroyed, then the next player to go does the same thing. If this happens several times, the endgame has a tendency to become a series of ridiculous expansions and contractions that obliterates whatever strategic shape the board had beforehand.
What house rules have others used to avoid these problems?

I hold the opposite opinion, I rather like the random element in the end of the game. And there are cards you can play to change the odds of the game ending, allowing you to punish someone who overextends on the last round. If you think about the books/films you have the crazy last-ditch assault which is doomed to failure, except the ring is destroyed just in time. If you stockpile the cards to alter the probability of the fellowship moving on then you can either do the risky last push yourself, or punish others for doing so.

I find that when considering house rules, its best to think about why something is happening and attack the cause of the behavior.
The root problem as I see it, is that once the ring is one die roll away from destruction the game has a 50% chance of ending before the current player can lose any newly acquired gains.  Conversely, any reserves not spent that turn are increasingly unlikely to be used productively for each additional player in the game.
Consider adding one last "round" of play after the ring would be destroyed at Mt. Doom.  Essentially, when the player who "destroyed" the ring finishes his next turn the game ends.
By adding an extra round, you remove the random element of the game ending, allowing everyone to plan ahead and try and defend their territory rationally.

I considered this, but doesn't that just make the problem worse? Now the last player to go knows absolutely that they won't lose any acquired gains.

@JSBangs - yes, but every player before knows that too and can plan accordingly.  The problem as is is that its in everyone's best interest to spend all their resources on their turn, defending just doesn't make sense for anyone.

The variant that we've experimented with is to give no victory points for territories owned, only for adventure cards, regions, and strongholds. Most of the point swing comes from the masses of undefended junk territories that you can acquire on your last turn, while getting entire regions and strongholds requires more effort. Strongholds in particular are hard to take and easy to defend, meaning they're less likely to change hands en masse.

I haven't played my copy of LotR: Risk enough to have developed house-rules, however, I do have a couple ideas that might help in this area.
You could state that only territories with # armies on them score points at the end of the round.  That would force the last player to leave behind armies and would think out the attacking force.  Of course the player would likely choose to attack enemy territories until they were below the threshold to take points away from them.
Another idea that I like better because it is somewhat in keeping with the story (stretching a bit perhaps) would be to declare that as the ring reaches Mt. Doom the player turns end as normal then the armies of Mt. Doom make one final push to take over the land.  Each territory would be attacked 1 time by 3 attacking armies (3 dice). Only surviving territories would be counted in the player scores.  From a story standpoint think  "cleansing of the shire".  I think this has the advantage of making all players be careful about how thinly they spread their armies.  You could adjust the number of Mt. Doom armies that attack (# of dice) or the number of times they attack to make it harder to finish with territories.
Like I said, I haven't played LotR Risk much so maybe this is a horrible idea.  I suppose I should pull it out of the closet and playtest my idea.

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Who should I try to kill? Chandra or opponent?
Here's a board state I faced today in a casual Constructed game:

In case it's not clear from the picture, I have 1x Mausoleum Guard, 1x Doomed Traveler, and 2x Intangible Virtue, while he has 1x Stormblood Beserker (enchanted with Pacifism) and Chandra the Firebrand.
What's the play? Should I send my guys after Chandra or hit my opponent directly? And why?
What actually happened is this (spoilered for the curious):

 1. I reason that, all else being equal, I'll grind him down on the ground before he can ping me to death with Chandra's +1 ability. I
 attack him, and he goes to 12.
 2. He plays a Stormblood Beserker, pings me for one with Chandra's +1 ability, and passes the turn to me. I am now at 8 life.
 3. I pass the turn back without attacking, planning on using men to block and upgrade them into flying tokens.
 4. On his turn, he uses Chandra's -2 ability to double a spell. He then casts Incinerate targeting me, which gets doubled and hits for 6.
 Then he casts another Incinerate from his hand, and I lose.
 Should I have seen this coming? Should I have attacked Chandra to remove the threat of her -2 ability?

Note: this question could arguably be closed as "too localized", as it's about a specific situation in a specific game. However, I submit that lots of people can learn from questions like this, in much the way that we allow specific chess puzzles, etc.

Do both decks have empty hands in this picture?

@AlexP : No; the hand size is on the fanned-cards icon, just above the graveyard-size icon (which is, itself, just above the graveyard).

@JSBᾶngs: Concur; being about a specific game-situation doesn't inherently make a question "localized", unless that game situation can only happen in a certain time or place.  Also, in this case, the situation illustrates a general principal.

Generally when a planeswalker gets played, unless it's not an immediate threat, I do my best to kill it off quick.  Their abilities are just too strong to let them be.

Depends on what's in the rest of your decks, really.
Just generally speaking, a five-turn clock is too slow to justify sacrificing board position.
I thought about ways to explain this in terms of drawing "outs", "control vs. beatdown" theory, &c., but I think it's actually simpler than that... Look at Chandra's -6 ability. 6 damage! If you race and both draw blanks, he will still win. With Chandra on the board, he actually has a faster clock than yours.
Consider also why he played her. What did your opponent do last turn? Looks like he played Blackcleave Cliffs tapped, tapped all his basics for Chandra, then +1ed her up to 4 loyalty counters. He did all that stuff based on the same board state as you're seeing now: two creatures and two Intangible Virtues. He had two other cards in hand; these represent alternative options. So, why'd he choose to make this play? Presumably he played Chandra because the best line of play available to him includes Chandra; therefore, you should kill her to cut it off.
It might be a fake-out to buy time, but...

He's clearly not stalling for mana. He's already got six mana available to him: if he had something big hiding in his hand, he could've just played it already. It's safe to assume Chandra is part of his strongest line of play.
It's possible that -- and this is highly unlikely with a red deck -- both cards in his hand are dead and he's stalling to try to draw some kind of "out" (a card that'll turn the board state in his favor or win the game outright so he doesn't have to care about board state anymore). However, having access to Chandra's copy effect makes many more of his potential topdecks into legitimate outs (e.g. the exact way he burned you out next turn). In this unlikely scenario, your best line of play is still to cripple his board and grind out a win.

Since I did just end up mentioning "outs" anyway, I might as well throw in "control vs. beatdown" theory. Assuming you're playing Township Tokens and his deck isn't heavy with big stuff like Inferno Titan, you've got a stronger endgame. In this situation, you've also got the ability to claim a stronger board position, by killing Chandra. So, be the control deck! Don't let him keep a planeswalker around just because ignoring her makes your super-slow clock a little bit faster.

Is "Township Tokens" what they're calling this archetype? I'm running Gavony Township, Intangible Virtue, Parallel Lives, and a whole bunch of token cards. This was a homebrew deck, not based on any listing I've seen online, but I clearly wasn't the only person to have the idea.

@JSBᾶngs Yeah. Elspeth Tirel is usually the main finisher/control card. Her one-sided sweeper is a massive blowout. IIRC, the original tournament versions ran Mikaeus but now have replaced him with Mirran Crusader (blocks Dungrove Elder all day; double benefit from counters) and Hero of Bladehold (effectively swings for 10 the turn after you summon it, if you activate Township on your attack step).

I'm running w/o any Planeswalkers, mostly because I'm a cheapskate.

@JSBᾶngs Always a good reason! Although, I must say, the two Lilianas in my Flare deck have proven so entertaining as to be worth the price of admission.

Playing agonist Red, there is always a chance that they can top deck a burn spell so your life total is never really safe.  I would go for the planeswalker because it damage will add up quicker then you think.  A 5 turn clock is not quick enough to allow it to stay on the board

I don't think it's even as complicated as the other two (perfectly correct) answers have suggested.  You have no cards in hand and a mediocre board position.  A five turn clock is a far, far cry from a one or two turn clock.  Your opponent's burn deck has two cards in hand and a card that can potentially double up those cards - and with you on a tenuous 9 life no less!  You are in real imminent danger of death at the hands of the planeswalker and there is no possibility that you should leave it unanswered, on the very slim chance that your opponent has nothing in hand and won't draw anything for five turns straight.
Seriously, this isn't even a close one.  You are way behind in this game position and your only chance of regaining parity is to eliminate Chandra.  Planeswalkers are generally must-answer cards and you need a really good reason not to worry about answering them.  You have no  such reason in the situation given.

I would absolutely have attacked Chandra.  Here's the reasoning: You're correct that you will kill your opponent on the ground before he can ping you to death with Chandra, but Chandra's ping isn't the true threat you face here (otherwise, it wouldn't be any better than Curse of the Pierced Heart).  Chandra is an enabler in the deck - in the board state you specify she can already double up on any spell your opponent might have in hand (and he has two cards in hand to your none), and the ping itself is an enabler for creatures like Stormblood Berserker (which you've already seen out of your opponent's deck at this point).
Most importantly, though, you're a long way from killing your opponent and you're in eminent danger yourself.  Five turns (your current clock, at three damage per turn) might as well be forever, and that's assuming that your opponent draws no relevant spells.  The short version is that despite having the seemingly-better board presence, you're actually behind in the board state as it stands (and arguably far behind) and Chandra is the most tangible threat you face at the moment; eliminating her is both much easier and more pressing than eliminating your opponent (which admittedly has to happen soon).  As things stand, I suspect it's irrelevant, because I suspect you would have lost regardless (your opponent could still have pinged you with Chandra next turn, doubled-up on an Incinerate the turn after and just killed you with multiple burn spells), but I absolutely would have swung at Chandra and it's not very close.

I disagree about the board state. They've both got a bunch of mana and their deck's big enabler permanents out, but the red/black deck's planeswalker is easily removed by creatures. Being at 9 life to 15 (or 7 life to 14-15, by the time Chandra is killed, assuming no new draws) is troublesome against a red deck, but it's not the end of the world as far as board state. You're 100% right about Chandra being the big threat on the board, though.

Perhaps 'board state' is the wrong word for it - 'game state' is probably better.  But I would argue that the red deck's two cards in hand to go with Chandra puts it well ahead in the current game; the two Intangible Virtues are certainly relevant in that they 'blank' some of the red deck's cards and mean that it can't really try to directly remove the creatures (barring some sort of followup sweeper, of course), but they don't make up for being multiple cards down and facing a planeswalker.

On second thought, actually, I think you're right. The Tokens deck has the ability to grab control by killing Chandara, but the board states right now aren't decisively in his favor like I made it sound.


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Do great Scrabble players ever turn in their tiles?
Presumably you would trade in tiles if you thought you would get in one turn, after trading, more than what you'll get in the next two turns without trading.
But then, maybe you should make defensive plays even in some of those situations?

Yes, most definitely.  A good write up on exchange strategy can be found in Joe Edley's book Everything Scrabble, pg. 89 and following.  Tournament players do exchange significantly less than they did when Everything Scrabble was first written, since the recent (well, not that recent any more, 2006) addition of QI and ZA to the official Scrabble lexicon have made moves like exchanging only Q less favorable statistically.  However, good players will also know when it is right to "fish," that is, make a nearly worthless play to get rid of certain tiles in order to greatly increase their probability of bingoing on the next turn.
A great way to get some idea of the frequency with which championship players exchange is to look at some of the games from board 1 of the most recent National Scrabble Championships; all of the games are online in turn by turn form here.  Many of the words in these games will be unfamiliar, but if you want an idea of what great Scrabble players do, that would be the best place to start.
Also, you should note that the best frequency with which players should exchange is going to depend on how large Scrabble word knowledge is (which is almost completely unrelated to your vocabulary).  In other words, based on the words that you know, how soon will you be able to turn your rack into a bingo rack?  If you can't see yourself doing that in the next two or three turns assuming average draws, then you should probably exchange.
The other time to exchange is if any legal play would make your rack worse.  For instance, if your opening rack is AEINQST, your best play by far is exch Q.  Doing so will give you a 95.7% chance of having a bingo on your rack the next turn, and probably even greater than that of bingoing, depending on what your opponent plays.

The link is dead. Well, it's a list of links to games' individual pages, but those pages are all 403 Forbidden.

Would that be the infamous G.I. Joe?

@glenviewjeff No, G.I. Joel (Sherman) is a different person from Joe Edley.

According to simulations done by Quackle, 8G QI 22 has a 66.5% chance of winning; exch Q only 60.5%. Even 8G QAT 24 has a 63.8% chance of winning.
However, one rack where Quackle considers the best play (on an empty board) to be a fishing play is AEIILNT, where Quackle's best is exch I.

It's definitely situational, and I wouldn't call myself "great", but I have traded in tiles before, for a number of reasons --

I'm behind, and I have a hand full of either all vowels or all consonants (usually all consonants)
I'm one letter away from a bingo, and I've calculated that I have a good chance of drawing that letter.

For me, using or blocking a triple-word-score tile trumps swapping in tiles, but if I have a really bad hand, swapping tiles is always an option, especially if I can't block the triple-word or worse, even use low-point tiles on it.
From the tournament reports I have read (or the article "830! How a carpenter got the highest Scrabble score ever", trading in tiles is a not-uncommon occurrence if you think you can get a better word out of it, especially a bingo.  In fact, according to the article:

Cresta then traded in all seven of his tiles in the hope of getting more-playable letters, not an unusual move.

It should be noted that neither player in this game that you've referenced has a NASPA rating above 900.  While most living-room Scrabble players would consider these two to be "good," they are certainly not great by the standards of Scrabble tournament play. (The game even included a phony 3 letter word, which is generally a major indicator of mediocre Scrabble play).   Also, many of the examples of exchanges in this game are not very good ones.  The full NASPA write up of the 830 game can be found here

@David Hollman -- true; I mostly included the article because it was the first article I had bookmarked that mentioned swapping tiles.  I'll admit, the game referenced, while interesting, is certainly an anomaly.

Something that no other answer seems to have touched upon, that I feel like is worth mentioning, is that playing tiles moves the game closer to its conclusion, whereas swapping tiles slows down the progress of the game.  Playing a six-letter word like EUOUAE for fewer than 10 points may just be inferior than swapping them, if your opponent is ahead and you need to catch up.
An additional thought that arises naturally from this, is that if you're worried about your opponent scoring a bingo against you and gaining an unassailable lead, it may be better to leave a tightly-locked-up board as it is while you sculpt your hand. Opening things up with a mediocre move that doesn't do much for your score, but gives your opponent room to play out his rank, could prove a serious tactical error.

An important thing to consider in Scrabble, and one not often thought of in beginner play, is the value of the tiles left in your hand. Playing one letter and getting 4 points, while leaving TISANE in your hand is worth much more than playing neat for 12 points and leaving a random tile, and IS. That is because the leave value of TISANE (which leads to the most number of bingo draws) is enormous.
Similarly, and getting to your question, if you could play one tile for 10 points, but get stuck with QKGHLV, the proper play would be to trade out most, if not all of your tiles. (If you have a vowel, keeping the L or the H might be fine). So if the value of your play is less than the negative value of your hand, then trading is a better option than playing.

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Are there disadvantages to the house rule that you always end before the starting player?
Once an end condition is reached, I like the house rule where you play until just before the starting player.  It seems more fair to me.
Are there any counterarguments?  It seems like the game designers have had ample opportunity to amend the rules or suggest this alternative in one of the expansions, and haven't.

The only balance to this issue of having some players play one more turn than others, is that in case of equality of points when the game end, the player that has played the least number of turns has won.

This would really even up two player games

The game with all the expansions has 3 ending conditions, all of which require you to keep an eye on the number of cards remaining.
Those endings are:

All Provinces have been bought.
Any 3 (2-4 players) or 4 (5-6 players) piles have been bought.
(New in Prosperity) All Colonies have been bought.

Short version:
It would discourage players from buying the last card to end the game if it's not a Colony or Province.
Long version:
The idea is that you watch the piles as they go down and adjust your strategy to compensate.  For example, if I think my score is good enough to win, it's to my advantage to buy out the last pile needed to end the game, even if it's something I don't want.
Requiring the game to keep going around the table after that would likely discourage me from buying said card; I would rather buy more higher-point cards, hoping that someone else will end the game.


text:
Does playing a "Double Rent" card in Monopoly Deal count against your card play total on a turn?
According to the Action Card directions on a Double Rent card, it can only be played with a Rent card.
Given that it is the only card that cannot be played alone, does it count against your total cards played count for a given turn (which cannot exceed 3)?

It counts as two cards out of your three for that turn. Taken from the FAQ monopoly-game.net:

Q - IF I USE A ‘DOUBLE THE RENT’ CARD WITH A STANDARD RENT CARD, DOES
  THIS COUNT AS ‘PLAYING’ 2 CARDS, OR 1? A - This would count as 2 out
  of the possible 3 cards you can play per turn.

Additional sources that confirm this:

MonopolyDealRules.com on rules for Rent cards

that really needs to be in the rules supplied with the game :)

perhaps, then, it just needs to be written explicitly. Especially given you cannot use it on its own.


text:
More conveniently randomizing the cardboard tokens
Since BSG takes up quite a bit of real estate on the table I found it to be difficult at times to a good random pick among the damage or ship tokens.
I've thought about using the dice. Put them in a straight line and pick according to the dice roll. Now this should work easily enough for the damage tokens since there are never more than there are sides on the dice.
However there are 10 ships and only a d8 (assuming I don't have a d10 around). I'm thinking about splitting the pile in half and doing 2 rolls. First roll picks the pile (even/odd or low/high) and the second roll simply takes the n-th ship with rerolls if the dice shows too much.
Now to my question: Does anyone have a better solution or experience with a solution like this?

We just put the tokens on the table, face down, move them around a bit, and then pick them up at a random order. We never felt as if the result is not random enough, and it doesn't take a lot of time and effort.

Maybe I'll just have to play on a bigger table... ;-)

@Kempeth - yes, BSG is one of those games that require a big table. :)

A coffee mug works well. Put the tokens in the mug and they won't take up much space on the table. You can even shake the mug to randomize the tokens, which prevents people from possibly remembering where a token is on the table.


text:
Is it common to have too few resources for most cards in Age 3 of "7 Wonders"?
I've only played one game so far and it was with 7 players so that might not have been a normal experience...
I got the feeling that most cards in Age 3 are simply not affordable because they need so many resources.

Is that a common thing, i.e., you'd have to deliberately focus on resource cards if you want to build a lot in Age 3?
Is it just bad playing on the part of me (and others)?
Maybe it's even an effect of having so many players?

EDIT to elaborate on my experience: I actually won the game so there's no complaint there. I had around 4 brown/gray buildings and my neighbors had roughly the same amount. I don't think I had one of those yellow free resources cards though. When Age 3 came I realized that about half my hand was impossible to build because neither me nor my neighbors had the necessary resources. I eventually relied on the few cards I could build and a lot of freebies from previous cards (I think I placed about 5 buildings for free). IIRC I never trashed a card in the last age but I did build my last two wonder stages...

Certainly if your game has gone badly this can happen. If your neighbours don't have enough resources... then maybe you should be the one building the browns/greys.

First off, Seven Wonders is meant to be a 7-player game!  You got the "normal experience".  It's not as if resources are much less scarce in the 3-player game - you do remove more than half the cards from the mix in that game, after all...
I've never found the Age 3 cards to be "unaffordable", so yes, I would suggest that if you find yourself unable to take actions other than "discard for 3 coins" in Age 3, you're probably playing suboptimally to some degree.
Having said that, when I say I can "afford" an Age III card, I don't usually mean "pay the exact resources for" it.  I mean one of the following:

be able to pay for most of it, but have a big stockpile of cash to buy the extra resources I need from my neighbours.
use yellow cards providing "one free resource of any kind" to plug the gaps in my production.
use my Wonder's special power to get free resources or builds, if applicable.
keep a close eye on "upgrade chains" of cards from Age I that get me free cards from Age II that then get me free cards from Age III.

So in many cases I'm shortcutting cards into play instead of actually paying for them.  But I definitely think that if, more than once or twice in Age III, you're looking at your hand and thinking "there's nothing here I can play, at all", something has gone badly wrong with your strategy!

A good answer, but I would make one qualification to your final comment. As you get down to the last few cards of Age III, it's not uncommon to be unable to play any of the cards you're given, especially if your opponents are deliberately trying to give you cards they know you can't play.


text:
In Monopoly Deal, does the rent apply to a whole group or each card individually?
If a property specifies 2, 4 and 7 millions for 1, 2 and 3 properties respectively - do I calculate the rent owed once per property group (ie. 4 millions for 2 properties) or individually for each property (ie. 2x4 millions for 2 properties)?
I would say it's the former but I'm not a 100% sure.

Once per property group.
Looking at the rules, there are two columns, "No of properties owned in set" and "Rent".  That can't be parsed to allow you to collect twice if you have 2 of a color, sorry!


text:
Playing "Executive Orders" on self
I just played my first game of BSG (solo using the official fully cooperative rules). I've got the german edition so my card names might be a bit off...
The green skill cards 1 and 2 say something like:
Action: Choose 1 player. This player may move his character and do 1 action OR may keep his character where it is and do 2 actions
Now if it is my turn. Can I move to a location in my move phase, play that card in my action phase, choose myself and do the location's action 2 times? It seems a bit overpowered but I've not seen anything in the rules that forbid this use...

The English version of this card specifies OTHER players:

So, no, you cannot play this card on yourself.

Also remember to check the Errata and FAQ.  Only one executive orders per turn, so no chaining them.

Arghh, translations... Thanks for clearing that up.


text:
Using weapons control on raiders
I just played my first game of BSG (solo using the official fully cooperative rules). I've got the german edition so my card names might be a bit off...
In my version the "weapons control" locations says something like:
Action: Attack a cylon ship using the Galactica.
Is it possible to attack a raider or heavy raider with Galactica's guns? It doesn't say it has to be a basestar and in the show the Galactica is seen doing this IIRC...
I conceed that vipers are usually better suited for this job but what if:

I'm out of vipers
Raiders are about to attack a civilian ship an there's no viper to intercept them in time
Or if I simply want to get a head start on those heavy raiders

That's right.  Just because the attack chart doesn't say what happens when Galactica attacks a raider or heavy raider, it doesn't mean galactica can't do it, just that the roll to hit is not different.  Blast away!

In the rules only galactica and the basestar specify who is shooting them on the attack chart. All others are assumed to be attacked the same way. If Galactica couldn't shoot them they would list with the vipers.


text:
Reuse Quorum cards with "Give this card to another player"
Many quorum cards feature an effect that says "give this card to another player". That player then receives some kind of passive privilege (does not require an action) like determining the next FTL jump destination.
My question is: Can the receiving player use that card's action too (and pass it on to yet another player) or is it only to remind people of the passive privilege?
My instinct tells me that it's only a reminder but I couldn't find a clarification for either alternative.

Even if this were allowed, how would the other person play it?  It's not creating a new hand of cards and new delegated political powers.
There's no precedent in-game for cards to be 'read' twice.
And if this worked this way it would be deeply weird.
For those reasons I say no "pass[ing] it on to yet another player".

"I say no passing" in your answer is a little misleading.  The cards DO say to give them to the other player.  It's just that they are not playable by that second player - they don't have a Quorum hand, they just have an effect placed on them by the Quorum card.  Technically you still pass the card to them though.

Well, there are plenty of games (some CCG's for example) where it is common for a card to be controlled by different players over the course of a game.

@Kempeth yes, but this is not a CCG. The intent of these cards is that the passive effect applies if you've been "given" the card, but having it in your hand allows you to take the action. No additional passing of the card.


text:
Quorum cards like "Inspirational Speech" - Difference between results
I just played my first game of BSG (solo using the official fully cooperative rules). I've got the german edition so my card names might be a bit off...
The card "Inspirational Speech" says something like:
Action: Roll dice. If you roll 6 or higher you get +1 Morale and this card is put out of play. Otherwise it has no effect and is discarded.
Now apart from gaining the 1 Morale, what is the difference of what happens with the card?

There are other cards that follow the same pattern: If you're lucky you gain something and put the card out of play. otherwise discard it. I can recall "Food Rationing" to work like this too.

I figured it out. Under "Component Limitations" it says that if the Quorum cards deck runs out you shuffle all discarded Quorum cards into a new deck.
Which means that if you fail the check you have a chance of getting the card again IF you manage to burn through the whole Quorum deck. If you succeed then the card won't come again.
Until now I just never considered that you might actually get to draw all the Quorum cards...

I can't find a shot of the English version of the card that I've played with, but I think I remember the card you mean, and the Morale is the only difference.
The fact that the card is taken out of play means you only have a limited number of opportunities to gain back Morale in this way, so you have to hope you roll well.

Yes.  This is a way to use presidential powers to gain morale.  That is all, but that's still powerful.


text:
Are there any published games of Bobby Fischer as world champion?
Between the World Championship Match against Spassky in 1972 and his rematch against Spassky in 1992, Bobby Fischer played no tournament games, not even to defend his title.
Are there any published games in existence played by Fischer during this period?

Chessgames.com has three games Fischer played against the Greenblatt computer program.
Those seems to be the only games of Fischer available online during this time period. There don't appear to be any copies online of Fischer's five minute 1981 games with Peter Biyiasas.

People don't normally annotate their moves in blitz :\


text:
Is chest loot in "real gold" or "gold tokens"?
I looted a chest and looked up the reward in the back to find "10 gold". Does that mean that I add 10 gold to my character right away, or do I get 10 "gold tokens" which are multiplied based on the difficulty level at the end of the scenario?

The rulebook refers to "money tokens" and "gold" separately, with the former being converted to the latter at the end of the scenario. My reading would be that finding "X gold" during a scenario is simply that amount of gold and would not be further converted.

user30903 is correct that the rules are consistent in referring to the tokens as "money tokens", so it seems safe to assume that the gold amount for looting a chest is fixed, and does not get multiplied based on the difficulty level of the scenario.

This is the assumption we've made, but haven't been able to find anything to actually support that.


text:
Does it count as me landing the killing blow if a monster dies to a Wound that I inflicted?
Some of the personal quests involve killing a certain number of monsters. The official FAQ has clarified that the character must be the one to land the killing blow in order for it to count towards the quest. What happens if I perform an attack that inflicts Wound on the monster, and they later die as a result of that Wound. Do I still get credit for killing that monster? We ruled that it did just because it seemed reasonable to give the character credit in that way, but I'm curious if there is an official ruling on this.

My question: When a monster dies due to the wound I've inflicted, does it count as my kill?
The answer Isaac Childres emailed me:

if a monster dies from wound, no one would get credit.

Isaac has now repeated this answer on BGG.

Could you please explain why this is the case?

Please update this answer to give some context about where/what you asked. e.g. "I asked the designer on BGG [link to the post]; he said _." It may be the right answer but we have no way of seeing that from what you've provided.

@Chenmunka: The reason is probably that there's enough stuff to track in the game without having to track who inflicted every wound in the game, and tracking would also require extra components. The rules as written has to be a compromise between detail and streamline. There's no reason you can't houserule additional detail though, if that's what your group prefers.


text:
How does a firefighter "recover" after being knocked down?
In the Experienced rules, it says that a firefighter that is Knocked Down (by fire advancing to their location) is placed on the nearest ambulance parking spot.  It also says that they must "visit the ambulance to recover".
Is this just adding the "story" behind why they end up in that spot?  Or is it meant to be literal, that they cannot take other actions until they (or someone else) radio the ambulance to that location?  We decided to take it literally, since it seemed to add a bit more "cost" to being knocked down (otherwise it can actually be advantageous at times), but I couldn't find anything concrete one way or the other.

This seems to be pretty explicit in the version of the rules I have, found here. Under Knocked Down in the Experienced Rules, it very specifically states:

When a Firefighter is Knocked Down, the Firefighter is placed in one of the two spaces of the Ambulance's current Parking Spot.

My interpretation of this is that the Firefighter has to go to where the Ambulance is parked, since the Ambulance can only have one current Parking Spot when a Firefighter is knocked down. So you shouldn't have to get the Ambulance moved to where the Firefighter goes because the Firefighter should already be going right to the Ambulance.

Ah, looks like I was accidentally reading the Family Rules version of Knocked Down.  Definitely clear, though it still seems like a pretty light penalty (that might even help in some cases).


text:
Do you get a gold when playing Trading Post?
The symbols for Trading Post show a one gold symbol above the symbols for the resources.  Does this indicate that playing the card gives you a gold (in addition to getting a discount from it), or is it just supposed to remind you that you now only have to pay one gold for the resources shown?  We've always played that you get a gold for playing it, but the rules don't seem conclusive either way.

No, you do not receive any coins. It is indicating a discount. You only pay {1} Coin instead of the normal {2} from the neighbor in the direction to which the arrow points. You can contrast this with the Tavern card.
7-Wonder's rule book (page 12).

Tavern Icon - the card is worth the amount of coins pictured, the coins are taken from the bank only once, when the card is played.
Trading Post Icon - starting on the turn following the one in which this building was constructed, the player purchases raw materials from the neighboring city indicated by the arrow for 1 coin instead of 2.
Clarification for the Eastern Trading Post, the Western Trading Post and the Marketplace: arrows show to which neighboring city or cities to which the discount applies.

We always looked at that and thought that since the 1 resembled the 5, and it says "the amount of coins pictured" (implying that it could be something other than 5) that it applied to both cards.  Guess that isn't the case.

It took me WAY too long to realize that this question (and answer, obviously) is about 7 Wonders, and not Dominion!

No, you don't receive any money for playing Trading Post.  It's just a reminder that one gold is your new cost for resources purchased from your neighbors.


text:
When using the Research role, does the symbol on the role card count towards meeting the cost?
If I select Research during the role phase, does the symbol on the role card count towards the requirements for the technology I acquire or not?  In other words, if I want to acquire "Improved Survey", do I need 3 Research cards in my hand, or just 2 (assuming I have no other research symbols)?

YES
As per the Rulebook:

You may Boost the chosen role by playing any number of cards from your hand with symbols matching that role. Symbols on face up planets in your Empire may also be used to Boost the Role. Cards played during the Action Phase do not contribute to Boosting the Role.

All the role cards have one symbol on the card which counts towards the effect of the role.
Therefore, if you take a Research Role, you need only two more research symbols on either the face-up planets in your empire and/or cards in hand in order to acquire Improved Survey.


text:
Are there any bridge systems where cards played convey deeper information in a manner similar to bidding systems?
Such a system might be too complex for a human to consistently/safely implement, but I am curious if they exist. I am imagining a system where your choice of suit or rank to lead or follow with could convey additional information mid-hand.

Isn't that the very definition of illegal communication?  Or do I misunderstand the question?  Not a bridge expert.

@Affe no more illegal than communicating through weird bidding, I would expect.

@Affe: With some exceptions, any partnership agreement on the meaning of a legal bid made or card played, or sequence of such, that is well explained in advance of the round/match to the opponents is legal. The exceptions generally cover methods deemed too complex, in the context of the competition being held, for the opponents to defend and understand. Generally there are few restrictions in 10-day World Team Championships, and very many in 3 hours novice match-point games.

For a starter, it is obvious that such signalling only applies on defence - Declarer has no need to communicate with his partner (Dummy), and such communication is anyways illegal. Let's start with the basic defensive systems and progress from there.
 All of these are perfectly legal when fully explained to the opponents (except some of the more complex techniques are restricted in limited-master-point events).

Basic Signals:

Lead highest of touching honours (except King from Ace-King) either at the top of a suit or from an interior broken sequence; fourth-best from length; highest of a doubleton; low to show interest in having the suit lead back and high to deny interest in having the suit lead back; Lead high for partner to rough asking for a higher-ranked side-suit lead back an low to ask for a lower-ranked side-suit lead back.
Follow in trumps high-low on first two rounds to show a 3rd trump and interest in a rough; follow high-low to partner's lead suit to express interest in continuation, low-high to ask for a switch; follow high-low in other suits lead by Declarer to show an even number, low-high to show an odd number; Follow high-low as suit preference for a higher-ranked side-suit and low-high as suit preference for a lower-ranked side-suit.

You will of course notice that many of these are contradictory or ambiguous - that is the cost of asking a very restricted language to convey a rich amount of information. Established partnerships discuss the priority of these signals at great length, but the general gist is (usually): Attitude first; Count once attitude is known; Suit-preference once count is known, or when obligatory. Deciphering that consistently with your partner is one of the most highly rewarded skills in Bridge, as most of your opponents are so very bad at it.
;-)
More complex signals involve adding a mixture of these variations to the basic scheme:

Second-highest from touching honours. Sometimes only at the top; sometimes only from interior sequence (Coded 9's & 10's); sometimes both.
Upside-Down signals - reversing the meaning of high-low and low-high sequences;
Odd-Even signaling - replacing high-low and low-high combinations with the play of either an odd-spot or an even-spot, sometimes combining attitude with suit-preference so that an odd-spot encourages; a low-even spot asks for a lower side-suit switch; and a high-even spot asks for a higher side-suit switch.
Round-the-corner suit preference in place of absolute suit-preference.

That's all I can recall off the top of my head, but I have seen attempts to play even more unusual combinations. Myself, I don't think the benefit is worth the risk of a disaster from misunderstanding.
Update:
With some exceptions, any partnership agreement on the meaning of a legal call made or card played, or sequence of such, that is well explained in advance of the round/match to the opponents is legal. The exceptions generally cover methods deemed too complex, in the context of the competition being held, for the opponents to defend and understand. Generally there are few restrictions in 10-day World Team Championships, and very many in 3 hours novice match-point games.
The section on Carding on each chart of current ACBL Convention Charts explains the defensive carding systems allowed or disallowed for the corresponding class of competitions held under the aegis of the American Contract Bridge League.
Update #2 - Partnership Agreements:

re Duplicate Bridge: see Law 40 in Section 6, pages 48-52 of Laws of Duplicate Bridge
re Contract Bridge: see Laws 16 (page 10) and 40 (page 20); Proprieties Points 2 (page 45) and 4 (page 47) of Laws of Contract Bridge

Update #3: A sample Convention Card (pdf) as approved for ACBL sanctioned events.

I have never heard the "explained to the opponents" requirement for bidding, or other, systems. Are there any resources on this rule, or other Stackexchange questions on the subject?

@Sparr: Please see Update #2 above.

Wow, thanks! That actually makes me a lot less wary of the sketchiness of bridge bidding systems in general.

In addition there is PRISM signals which with some bidding understanding can give  the shape of your partner's hand from his plays. Its somewhat complicated.
http://prismsignals.com/PrismSignals.pdf

Bridge is after all a timed game. A neat little system that, but can anyone play it and understand it in tempo. If not, it remains a wholly theoretical construct.

@PieterGeerkens It seems simple enough to give in tempo and to note what the signal was in tempo--in this respect, it's superior to e.g. odd-even or Lavinthal discards. At the point of time that you have a problem (i.e. when you need to decide which lead to make), you're allowed to pause to solve your problem, and in fact your pause in this situation gives no unauthorized information to partner (again, as opposed to the pause taken when deciding which discard to make when using Lavinthal or odd-even discards).

@ruds: Surely you jest! One cannot pause to make an odd-even or Lavinthal discard, one must make the play in the same tempo as for a meaningless or standard-usage discard. Besides which making the play is the easy part - reading it is the harder half.

@PieterGeerkens I agree, yet many do pause before making a discard. In fact, I am aware of players who consider these discarding agreements unethical by design, because they practically beg for the discarder to pause to consider a discard.

@ruds: I can play and read odd-even in tempo, but I do not care to attempt anything fancier. I want my partner enabled to take a view when the opponents show a tell, not hamstrung because I hesitated.

@PieterGeerkens I don't think we disagree. I only mentioned odd-even because so many intermediate players tend to play it without being able to give it in tempo. PRISM has an advantage over those systems because it is possible to know how to signal in the trump suit before dummy hits the table, and to use it partner must only pause when a defensive problem based on declarer's shape arises. Since these kinds of problems generally require thought in any case, partner gives no UI by pausing for thought.

Cards played constitute signals, and there are several basic types. For the partner of the leader, they include the following.
Attitude signals refer to playing a high spot card on a lead to show that you like the suit.
Count signals were better discussed in Pieter's post. Briefly, one example is playing high-low in a no trump contract to show an even number of cards, and low-high to show an odd number.
Suit preference signals are made when leading back a suit that is not a trump suit. Besides the main suit and the trump suit, there are two side suits. A high preference lead means "I have an entry in the higher side suit." A low lead for preference means, "I have an entry in the lower side suit." One expert suggested using an intermediate card to signal neither a preference in the high or low side suit, meaning that trumps should be led.
For the leader, there are several "conventions." The most common ones are "top of a sequence" if you have a sequence of at least three, or three out of four, and "fourth best," from a long suit in which you have no sequence. "Top of nothing" is a common "passive" lead when the leader is "playing not to lose" (tricks).


text:
What errata or house rules help balance occasionally-broken scenarios?
Many of the haunt scenarios can be exceptionally unbalanced depending on precisely where all the players are standing (particularly the revealer and/or traitor) when the haunt is revealed. When my group was playing this game on a regular basis we simply opted to never play certain haunts (that list has since been lost). Are there any better solutions? Perhaps a large list of errata or special cases that fix some or all of these sorts of problems?

That's pretty much how the game is designed. It is a catch-22; sure, it's completely "random" and new every time, but that also means it's impossible to predict and balance accordingly.
Something me and my friends do when these "broken" haunts happen is tweak the conditions around a bit. An example would be haunts that require exorcisms: If we are all high sanity/knowledge characters, we may add 1 or 2 to the number of successes needed, or subtract them if we are dumb/insane. It helps to create an even playing field at the start of the haunt, but still leaves opportunity for game-changers as the game goes on.

Plenty of haunts have conditions on arrangement to make sure the traitor isn't within N tiles of their goal, or immediately adjacent to another player, etc. What I'm looking for are addendums like that to fix other randomly-unbalanced haunts.

could you give me an example of one so i have an idea of what you mean?


text:
What games have plan-moves-in-advance mechanics like Robo Rally?
I'm looking for games with pieces on a board that move and interact according to actions taken previously in the game. In Robo Rally you give your piece instructions in advance. I recall a similar game where you alter parts of the board before your piece reaches them. Any other games with similar mechanics to these would be welcome answers here.

Unfortunately, open-ended questions that request recommendations don't suit our Q&A format well (see the discussion here) so I've voted to close your question. Try our chat-room or boardgamegeek.com for an active community that will definitely be able to help you with a recommendation. (This thread may be of interest to you, perhaps)

Would Diplomacy meet the requirements?

@CrazyJugglerDrummer no. multiple players planning at once is cool, but what I'm really looking for is each player queuing up multiple moves in advance.

Wings of War does this, a dogfighting game.

Space Alert is a cooperative game in which you plan out your entire sequence of moves while trying to communicate with other players about the moves that you are making and the moves that they should make.  It uses very similar parts of your brain as RoboRally, with the exception that you're communicating about what each other are doing rather than trying to guess.

Boardgamegeek has got a list on this topic.
I do however not know which game you are referring to.


text:
Can Breaker Bay Grid be used to reduce cost of other Regions?
Breaker Bay Grid states:

The rez cost of cards in this server is lowered by 5.
Limit 1 region per server.

Can this be used to lower the cost of rezzing another Region (and then trashing Breaker Bay Grid to satisfy "Limit 1 region per server") like SanSan City Grid, or must I trash the first Region before rezzing the second?

You cannot because upgrades are always installed un-rezzed from your hand.
In order to put SanSan City Grid onto a server you first have to discard Breaker Bay Grid. Therefore by the time you can rez SanSan City Grid you no longer have the effect of Breaker Bay Grid.
Also note the reason is because you aren't allowed to have two regions installed and the time to discard the other one is before the new one is played per the rules.

Exactly correct. Just because you are installing the cards face down doesn't change the fact that they are both "regions" - as soon as you install the second region, the first is trashed, just as if you installed over an asset or agenda.

Yep, as clarified here: There may be a maximum of one region installed per server (per the text on region cards) and having two or more in a server simultaneously (rezzed or unrezzed) would constitute maintaining an illegal game state.