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What can I use as a gateway game for crayon rail games?
I like the crayon rail games.  I've played a lot of Iron Dragon, some EuroRails, and a smattering of others.  I'd like to introduce  acquaintances who aren't already experienced gamers to them (doing some boardgame evangelism here).  But these games are rather longer than most gateway games.  At an hour per player (on average, in my group) and not working very well with fewer than four players, these games don't fit neatly in a weeknight after-dinner gathering, even considering How to speed up a game of Empire Builder?.  (The techniques there work better for experienced players, and they don't make the large difference I'm looking for.)
Is there either a faster member of this category of game or a tested set of rules variants that produces a satisfying game in the two-hour range for four or more players?  I think a smaller map + a recalculated end-game trigger would do it; a smaller map means fewer options, more route contention, and quicker deliveries.  But you still want the game to progress through all the stages (initial build, expansion, money engine), so I don't know if blocking off regions on an existing map (and doing something to be determined with affected route cards) can work.
What can I use for a shorter gateway to crayon rail games?

I see an off-topic ("not about board games") close vote and am confused.  Could somebody explain?  From the on-topic help and a look at the other questions on this tag, it looks on-topic to me.  But I'm not super-active here and am not up on meta discussions.

British Rails looks as if it might have a smaller map than Empire Builder. I've never played it. Unfortunately Empire Builder appears to be the gateway game. It's certainly faster than either Iron Dragon or Martian Rails. Have you considered switching your allegiance to Ticket to Ride? :)

The poor reception is because this looks like a game recommendation question (I guess you can only see the generic off-topic "This question does not appear to be about board or card games" rather than the specific "Questions asking for game recommendations are off-topic." reason that the close-voters actually selected). See https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1307/1926

@Monica Cellio I just learned of the existence of Empire Express, which came out in 2012, and which you should have stumbled across when scouring the internet.

Thanks @SteveB; didn't know about that one.  (I somehow wrote Empire Builder in my question when I really meant EuroRails.  I've only played EB once and didn't think to start a search there.)

Thanks @goldPseudo.  I thought a question aimed at introducing people to a narrowly-scoped class of games would be welcome.  (An open-ended "what should I play?" opinion survey would obviously be a bad fit, and seems to be what that meta post is worried about, but the problem to solve here is pretty specific.)  I got my answer in a comment, so I'm not going to try to figure out how to do the wordsmithing dance to get this reopened now.

I'm pretty disappointed by how we handled this. Yeah, we've deemed recommendation questions off-topic, but the goal of that was to put a stop to really broad, opinion-based questions. This sort of well-defined, well-written question is the collateral damage of that policy. The least we could do is try to help the OP edit, rather than simply closing.

The point of closing is to prevent low-quality answers being posted while such edits are made. However, you allowed comments which are really answers to remain, which have led to MonicaCellio declining to make further effort to get the question reopened, instead of removing them. Is it any wonder people don't bother following process and help edit or "ask for more information or suggest improvements" when that's the reaction of a moderator? @Cascabel

@Nij All but one of the close votes were before that comment, and they were all before I could've possibly deleted it. Moreover, a single comment left standing (in this case because I valued preserving context more than I valued absolute enforcement) is absolutely not a justification for our community to make zero effort to improve questions rather than closing. We expect better of ourselves than that.

@Nij can you describe what a low-quality answer that actually answers this question would look like? The problem is pretty constrained, after all; if the issue is that it's "syntactically" a forbidden rec question & the actual problem I described doesn't matter, that probably would have been a simple edit. But according to the meta answer this question seems ok, which means there's more that isn't clearly articulated there and I don't know what else you want. Is it thus any wonder that I'm reluctant to climb your learning curve when I have a solution & nobody offered help before I asked?

"Here's a type of game, which of them can be played really quickly?" and "here's a group of games, how can I make any/all of them faster?" are still very broad, even with the implicit requirement that they support newbie players, and you're asking both. It wouldn't matter whether low-quality answers were relevant or helpful, the very fact that they'd be posted in the first place is the problem. So, until such time as the question itself can define narrowly what a good answer looks like, so one above any possible other could be reasonably picked as best, it should remain closed.

I understand the term "gateway game" to mean "a representative member of its class that plays well and entices new gamers to play more games of that type". Is that not the common understanding on this site @Nij? But eh, I'm not going to argue w/you about it; you see a broad unanswerable question & I don't. The way this question played out was disappointing and didn't leave me inclined to guess my way to something that would comply with your expectations. I just came here to solve a problem; I didn't get the reception I expected, but I did get an answer and y'all don't want my question, so meh.

If this were just about the house rules (i.e. no existing policy against the question), I would fight pretty hard against a "too broad" closure. It's a well-defined problem. We really need to not get stuck in this mindset that anything other than a single obviously correct answer is too broad. For the recommendation part, I don't see it as much more broad, and the only issue is that it's against an established policy - one which throws out good questions like this one along with bad questions like many we used to see. So... if y'all wanna meta, go for it, but let's not exaggerate the issues.

And: I am not going to delete any comments here; I'll migrate to chat if it gets too long, but this is hardly the most egregious answer-in-comments I've ever seen, and every comment contains parts that are relevant to the meta/scope discussion, so I couldn't really snip out an answer without having to edit others' comments, which is a can of worms. (And I don't think insisting on strict rules adherence is really going to get us anywhere on this specific case anyway.)


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How can we play a shorter but satisfying game of Arkham Horror?
I've only played about half a dozen games of Arkham Horror, and they ranged in length from about 3 hours to aborting after 8.  These were all games with 5-6 players, with just the base game (no expansions).  I'm not an experienced enough player to know what factors caused that amount of variability.  (It wasn't the players or analysis paralysis.)
What can we do to complete a satisfying game in about 3-4 hours?  Are certain investigators (or combinations) better?  Are there house rules that would help?

I would reexamine your assertion that it wasn't the players or analysis paralysis. If you're really moving along, making decisions and taking actions reasonably quickly, there's pretty much no way a game can go on for 8 hours. You should either have won or all be dead long before then.

@Jefromi, thanks.  I assumed that since the same group of players has won games in 3 hours and bailed at 8 that it wasn't the players per se but some characteristic of the game (bad mix of characters, unfortunate early monster placements, whatever).  That said, we must have had some role in the long games too -- just trying to figure out what the relevant factors are.

3-4 hours is good.  8 is way too long!
Without seeing you play it's hard to say with precision where your time is being spent inefficiently, I do have a couple suggestions though.
Setup efficiently
Setup can be done in 5-10 minutes but can easily drag on for half an hour.
Setting up is a job for several people.  The most experienced person should be handing out tasks like:

Shuffle the Mythos deck
Get clue tokens on every space with this red diamond on it
Hand out character cards to everyone, figure out what fixed items are needed and search for them.
etc

Play Cooperatively
My group got a lot more efficient when we started talking before we moved.  A simple 30 second discussion of what each player's plans are for that turn can end up saving a lot of time.  For example: I found that big stalls happened when the 2nd player to move took the clue tokens I was aiming for.  With a brief chat, that sort of conflict can be hammered out.
This also allows an opportunity for someone to mention that they really can't do much unless someone else kills that pesky Dark Young hanging out in the streets.
Upkeep as well as Encounters (Arkham or Offworld) can generally be done simultaneously.  However my group prefers that all encounter cards be read aloud so the whole group can enjoy them.  The shuffling and drawing is done ahead of time so there isn't much waiting though.
Job 1 - Closing Gates
Arkham Horror is a great game, dripping in style.  It is a lot of fun to have encounters, kill monsters and collect a lot of items and spells.
The game plays a lot faster if you keep closing gates as job 1.  With 5 players several people should be tasked with collecting clues and hopping off world as quickly as possible to close the first couple gates.
Injury and Madness
The Dunwich Horror expansion added Injury and Madness cards.  These cards greatly change what happens when an investigator loses all of her sanity or stamina.
Under the original rules losing all of your sanity or stamina causes

loss of half your items
loss of half your clue tokens
reset the sanity or stamina to 1

With the Injury and Madness rules

No loss of items
No loss of clue tokens
reset sanity/stamina to maximum
Gain an injury or madness card

Either way you move to Saint Mary's Hospital or the Arkham Asylum as appropriate.
Whether or not you own Dunwich Horror, I would encourage you to use these rules.  The original rules are too harsh and potentially cost the player many turns to regain the lost items/clues/stamina/sanity and results in a slower game while the player recoups.
If you don't have the cards, just ignore them.  Or pick a couple that sound cool off of the Arkham Horror Wiki and make your own custom chart and roll a die to get a result.
The Great Old One equals Game Over
If our game is running long, we declare that we have lost if the Great Old One shows up.  In the first edition of the game (late 80's) this was the rule.  Fantasy Flight adjusted it when they remade the game.
This can depend a lot on the GOO as well.  Some of them, particularly in the base set, make for long combats.  They neither kill the investigators very fast or have the decency to die quickly themselves.
You can easily just skip all that and stay true to the the Chthulu Mythos by admitting that the world is lost when the GOO shows up.
Note - if you follow Job 1(noted above), you'll be seeing a lot less of the Great Old Ones!

Great advice, thanks!  We do pretty well on distributed setup, but group planning of turns would make a big difference.  Because the cost of injury and madness are so high we probably play too conservatively, so the Dunwich changes would make a big difference.

2-4 hours is definitely the standard length for a game. That said, sometimes games run for 6+ hours just due to luck of the draw. The "Big 4" locations in the base set are the Woods, the Unvisited Isle, the Witch House, and Independence Square. Each of these locations has 10 cards in the Mythos deck which open a gate in their location. Concievably, you could seal off those four locations after the first 8 turns and just keep pulling mythos cards that try to open on those locations that don't do anything. Turn after turn after turn.
When that happens to my gaming group generally we'll all just sit on various locations, skip movements and breeze through encounters until something interesting happens.
But maybe that's not what you're talking about. Maybe you're talking about how you're doing a pretty good job of holding off the slow inexorable approach of Lovecraftian horror and you want to get better at it.
General Suggestions
So like I said, sealing off the Big 4 is a good way to get things under control pretty quickly. After those, the Black Cave, Unnamable, and the Graveyard has six cards each. All the others only have two. If you're in a pinch, generally you can close gates in the lower tier locations rather than sealing with without repercussions. Sometimes you'll just have to close a gate to get it off the board. If you find the game is going too slow, going gung-ho on just closing gates is a good way to speed up the doom track.
Getting at least one investigator decked out with weapons is very helpful. People generally want something to protect themselves, but I find that having 1 strong combat character can get more done successfully then 2 or 3 OK characters.
Madness/Injury cards from Dunwich Horror decrease the amount players need to run to the Asylum/Hospital for healing, allowing a larger number of productive turns.
Player Count
A 5 investigator game is also one of the more difficult configurations for Arkham. Gate limit is one lower than the 4 player game, moster limit on the board is +1, but you'll have twice as many monsters to deal with. 4 player games and 8 player games are the sweet spots mechanically, 4 player games are the sweet spot logistically (Less downtime in between turns keeps players more involved with the game, prevents slowdown, less inter-investigator coordination required, etc.)
Game Flow
Having one player that knows the rules decently well is pretty important. You'll be tempted to pull out the rulebook and try to find specific answers to scenarios, but it's generally a bad idea. Make a ruling, remember to look it up after the game is done, and keep playing. Stopping the flow of the game to look up rules can really extend game time and kill enthusiasm.
Try not to take breaks during the game! Maintain focus! 3-4 hours is pretty long time to play a board game for some people and if they're fiddling with a smartphone, playing on a DS, watching a TV that's on in the background, taking a break to get food, talking with another group of people, knitting, etc. it takes them time to catch up with what happened in the game when they weren't paying attention, people have to wait for them, etc. I've had 8 player games done in 2 hours just because everyone was really paying attention to what was going on in the game.
That all said, even experience groups can find themselves in a slogfest (or a shogfest har har) and you may find that taking a collective break and coming back does wonders for everyone's morale. Group morale is a pretty big part of the game interestingly enough and when it starts going down game speed starts going with it. Have a decent grip on the rule basics, maintain group cohesion, and have fun; soon enough most of your games will land in the 2-4 hour window!

Thanks!  Analyzing the card frequencies hadn't occurred to me (duh!); we've probably been wasting a lot of effort on low-probability recurrences.  And it does sound like we're playing with with the wrong number of people.

Good advice.  I agree with everything except for 5 players.  Per the Arkham Horror Statistics report, 5-8 players win at about the same percentage, 69% +/-1%.  With lesser number of players your odds decrease, 4p is 64%, 3p is 60%

With experienced players, more investigators is generally always better. With players that are looking to tone down on the game length, I'd argue heavily for keeping it at or under four players. Looking at individual submissions in the statistics report that submitted a game length in time, 4 player games generally ranged from 2-5 hours centered on 4 hours. 5-8 player games generally ranged from 3-6 hours centered on 5 hours. And there's a considerably smaller sample size for the larger groups than there is for 4 investigator games.

+1 for maintaining focus. This is a problem that a lot of people don't even realize they have. It sometimes helps to have a taskmaster, to say "you, it's your encounter, go" - I've played in groups where without that, people would sit around for a few minutes talking without realizing it was their turn. You can only do so much to win faster, but you can often be much more efficient about the amount of gameplay per real time.

Both this answer and this one were very helpful and I've been dithering too long because I can't accept both.  I've accepted the other but I greatly appreciate your advice too (particularly about player count and the big 4).

In addition to the already excellent answers presented here (upvotes all around!), I'd like to add very specific things my family and friends do to keep the game flowing at a good pace.
Appoint a Game Master
This guy/gal's job is to keep the game flowing nicely.  They remind everyone what the current phase is, and they handle the weird rule questions.  If you have an experienced group, the game master is simply the current first player.  Concretely, what they do is:

Announce the current phase.  This is important.  Some people take longer in their phase than others (upkeep, planning, etc), and others may drift a bit in their mind.  Announcing the new phase not only gives them a cue to tune in, but also forces a certain pace.

Guard the pace and proper sequence.  In line with announcing the current phase, the game master keeps an eye on what's the current hold-up, and that people don't get ahead of themselves.  Even experienced players tend to treat Movement and Encounters in one fell sweep.

Read and resolve Mythos cards.  (If they're the first player, they do this anyway.)  These cards have specific and sometimes confusing orders and side-effects: doom tokens, monster movement, new gates or monster surges...  Having some experience with the game will help you roll through them much quicker.

Distribute Responsibilities
Arkham Horror has a lot of cards, especially if you start adding in the expansions.  Distributing card stacks among players is a good way to keep them involved in the game even when it's not currently their turn.

Put decks near each player.  Encounter cards, item cards, blessings, and so on, can be spread over the players per full stack.

Read each other's encounters aloud.  Hand your encounter card to the player to your left or right for them to read aloud.  (If people have the ability to draw several and pick one, first let them pick.)

Spread out the tokens.  Have a stack on each side of the board, consisting of: clue tokens, dollars, stamina, sanity.  This will help enormously during Mythos phases (placing clue tokens) and upkeep (stamina, sanity, dollars).

Spread out Mythos and Other World Encounter cards. (Only if you have many expansions.)  These decks become tall and unwieldy; spread them out so people can draw from a smaller one nearby.  In casu encounters outside of Arkham, have everyone look for a card of the proper colour.

Keep the Focus
This was mentioned in the other answers.  Focus is important; having to catch up with the game complicates things and slows down the pace.  A lot of the suggestions above are primarily aimed at flow, but also help people stay involved in the game when it's not their move.
Other tips that we use to good effect:

Have some atmospheric background music.  The music should be simple, not loud, and not have intelligible voices.  We use a laptop with music from old games like Hexen, Dungeon Keeper, and so on--don't use a radio or something that will have people talking.

Address people by name.  May be silly, but it helps with focus.  Arkham Horror is a long and involved game and, at some point, someone will tune out to other thoughts or worries.  Don't fuss about it; just address them by name when you need something; keeping the above tips in mind, this will be regularly.

Don't tell people what to do.  Should go without saying.  It's tempting for experienced players to do this.  Discussing is great, advice is great, but in the end it's down to everyone to play their part.  Little drains your fire more than simply not feeling like you're the one playing.

Do take a break, but do so at a clear checkpoint: after a Mythos or upkeep phase.  People will need to use the bathroom, check their messages, stretch their legs.  It's a good moment to get some snacks, recharge that laptop, or maybe even have dinner (take-out?).  Make sure people know when you start again.

Bend the rules a bit
Skipping a turn is boring.  Are you lost in time and space?  You get an other world encounter under 'Other'.  Got knocked out in upkeep or movement?  Take an encounter at the hospital or asylum anyway.
These changes may make the game harder or easier, and not every gaming group will agree with them, but the important thing is to have something to do.  Little drains focus and enthusiasm so much as knowing at the end of the previous turn that you will do nothing next turn.
Results?
Before any expansions, our AH games took one-and-a-half to two hours.  Later on, having pretty much all the expansions, they take about two to four hours for a full game, and that's with all the stuff like vortices, Innsmouth rising, heralds, institutions...
The games do still take a while, but nowhere near as long as eight hours. o_O

Great advice, thanks!  Keeping mean time between "things to do" low (for each player) is important in all games, and this is an area where we definitely bog down sometimes.

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Mistakes a beginner should avoid in Magic the Gathering with more than 2 players
I have been playing Magic the Gathering for several years now and I have a solid understanding of basic strategy and deck building. Until now I have only played against a single opponent. Magic the Gathering supports games with more than 2 players as well and I want to explore such variations.
The first thing two friends of mine and I will try is playing a free-for-all (3 players) where everybody can attack every other player. This changes the game a lot. It feels like attacking gets almost impossible and your best chance is to wall yourself in and hope for the best. Every fight between two players will usually help the third player the most. At least that's what I expect from a free-for-all.
Before I dive into this experience heads on, I want to know what the typical mistakes are, that a beginner should avoid in MTG games with more than 2 player. I am mostly concerned about deck building and game strategy.

Don't expect the game to end quickly.
In a MtG duel, there is a deck archetype called Aggro. Aggro decks use extremely low converted mana cost (CMC) cards that can efficiently deal damage to quickly reduce their opponents life from 20 to 0. This type of deck is trying to gain a tempo advantage. Aggro decks typically don't win in multiplayer free for all, because although they can quickly deal 20 damage against a single opponent before they can mount a defense, it is quite difficult to deal 40 (60, 80) damage to two (three, four) or more opponents. Duel decks need to deal with Aggro decks, so nearly all their card's have mana costs under 4, but multiplayer decks can afford to run higher CMC cards with bigger effects.
Don't pack your deck with cards that trade 1 to 1
In a duel, if you cast a card that destroys one of your opponents cards, you have a net card advantage of 0. In multiplayer on the other hand, you have a net card advantage of 0 with respect to one opponent, but you (and the opponent whose card you destroyed) are both down 1 card to the other players. When one of your cards destroys multiple cards of your opponents, you gain card advantage. In multiplayer though, the number of cards your single card must destroy grows with the number of opponents. This is because, for each card you draw on your turn, each opponent that is still alive draws a card. If your opponents believe you will win, expect that most of the cards they are drawing will be directed at you and your resources.
Learn the Animal Elements
Multiplayer decks use cards that excel in these areas impact (Gorilla), outlast (Cockroach), warning away (Rattlesnake), feeding-off (Pigeon), trapping (Spider), and helping others (Plankton). Anthony Alongi came up with the animals to make it easier to remember the concepts of what the cards do. Gorilla cards smash your opponents. They destroy boards, hands, and life totals. This typically means sweeper cards that effect multiple cards or players. Cockroach cards outlast your opponents cards. They cards tend to be reusable effects, are difficult to get rid of, or come back from the graveyard. Rattlesnakes warn your opponents to focus their attention elsewhere or suffer the consequences. These cards are usually permanents with no or low activation costs, whose power usually derives from not having to use them. Pigeon cards feed of of multiple opponents. These cards typically have words like, "each opponent", or "whenever [situation]" where [situation] is a lot more common because there are more players, creature, lands, etc. in multiplayer. Spider cards trap your opponents into making bad decisions. These cards are typically instants, because it is difficult to trick your opponents with cards that they can see in a visible zone. Plankton cards are all about sharing the fun. These cards allow your opponents to use them.
Concerning playing strategy
This is typically more important for larger multiplayer games than 3 player, because with more opponents there are fewer targets. You usually don't want to get into a feud with a single player. Don't attack someone, just because they attacked you last turn. Attack someone, because they are the biggest threat to winning the game. If your group allows table talk, freely explain why you are attacking someone or destroying some permanent. Helping everyone get better at threat assessment will make for better games.
Don't be an easy target
Sometimes players might get out an early aggressive creature (or several). Make sure your deck can survive early damage from aggressive decks. If your deck starts its mana curve to high (everything is 4 mana or higher), you probably can't survive even a couple of early creatures cast by your opponents.
The number combat steps steps you must survive is greater
In a duel, there is only one turn in which your opponent gets to untap and attack you or try to destroy your creatures. In multiplayer, you have to survive multiple combat steps, and your creatures have to survive multiple turns.
Life total is an important resource
Only the last point of life matters in Multiplayer, but how close your life total is to 0 controls how aggressive you can be. Unlike a duel, where gaining life doesn't put you any closer to victory, in multiplayer when you gain life you just might make other opponents easier targets for elimination, putting you closer to victory.

I really like this list, but I'd like to add one little niggle: 1-for-1 answers can be great if they can successfully stop an opponent's 1-for-many card, like if you counter a board wipe or remove a powerful advantage-building permanent before it can take over the game. So don't discount them entirely! Just don't expect them to win the game for you.

Cards which affect each player or each creature become much more valuable than cards which target only 1 creature or player.
Similarly global effects can become detrimental.  For example, in a multi player game it is much more likely you will face an opponent playing some of the same colour mana as you are.  Cards like Mana Flare or Gauntlet of Power can help your opponents as much as they help you.  Similarly with things like Bad Moon.  You can use these, but they also make good cards to rotate to the sideboard if you see they aren't helping you more than they're helping your opponents.
Game strategy becomes much more diplomatic because you don't want to have both opponents attacking you each turn.  Managing the diplomacy becomes critical when you decide to strike at one or the other.  Often you should try to land a crippling blow when your opponents have used their resources against one another.

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What Talisman expansions give a PvE end goal?
I picked up Talisman awhile ago and am enjoying it as are my friends. However we aren't much of ones for the "PvP" (player versus player) encounters which works fine until the end game and reaching the Crown of Command. We of course finish the game but it's just not as enjoyable for us. I tried looking up information on the expansions and possibilities of alternate non-PvP endings, where we do not have to kill each other in order to win, but descriptions on the expansions don't give many specifics on alternate endings. The only one that really seemed like it had a PvE (player versus environment) ending was the Dragon expansion. My question basically is, what Talisman expansions offer a PvE end goal and what are they?

I am going to assume that you only are considering the Fourth Edition Expansions by Fantasy Flight Games, since I assume that the Games Workshop editions are incompatible. The Dragon and Sacred Pool Expansion should fit your needs with all 3 alternate endings being PvE.

Talisman: The Reaper Expansion (2008): No alternate endings.
Talisman: The Dungeon Expansion (2009): No alternate endings.
Talisman: The Frostmarch Expansion (2009): Crown and Sceptre, Ice Queen and Warlock Quests
Talisman: The Highland Expansion (2010): Battle Royale, The Eagle King, and Hand of Doom.
Talisman: The Sacred Pool Expansion (2010): Demon Lord, Judgement Day, and Sacred Pool
Talisman: The Dragon Expansion (2011): Dragon Slayers, Dragon King, and Domain of Dragons
Talisman: The Blood Moon Expansion (2012): Horrible Black Hole, Lightbearers, and Blood Moon Werewolf.
Talisman: The City Expansion (2013): Merchant's Guild, ??? (not released)

Perhaps this answer could be updated to reflect new expansions?

I wouldn't call Crown and Sceptre or Battle Royale PvE endings because they still involve killing other players. And Horrible Black Hole is pretty much a non-ending because a new ending is drawn.

I'm excluding endings that are based around characters being killed by some means or another, whether directly (e.g. Crown of Flame, Theives' Guild) or indirectly (e.g. Judgement Day, Pandora's Box). Also, all of these are vastly oversimplified, and omit a number of rules.
"Boss Monster" endings
These endings all involve defeating a powerful non-player enemy, usually at the Crown of Command. They are usually in the format of:

A character on the Crown of Command must choose whether to attack the [Boss  Monster] using Strength or Craft. Each time he defeats the [Boss Monster], he must remove one of the [Boss Monster]’s lives and immediately attack him again.
If a character removes the [Boss Monster]’s last life, he wins the game!
If there are no characters on the Crown of Command, the [Boss Monster] heals all his lives.

There are variations on what happens if you fail to defeat the Boss Monster, ranging from teleporting to a location on the board to rolling on a table of nastiness. Many of them also have additional rules (e.g. End of Days has you place certain cards on locations during game setup).
Below are endings that follow the above format, with exceptions to the above noted:

The Blood Moon

Blood Moon Werewolf (Hidden): On their turn, every non-Lycanthrope character (including those not at the Crown of Command) attacks the Blood Moon Werewolf. (Note that Lycanthrope characters have to kill other characters, so this is not fully a PvE ending),

The Dragon

Domain of Dragons (Revealed): Defeat the Dragon King, which is represented by one of the cards from the Draconic Lord Deck
Dragon King (Standard): Defeat the Dragon King
Dragon Slayers (Revealed): Defeat each card from the Draconic Lord Deck, but they have Dragon Scales instead of lives and don't heal. The player with the most Dragon Scales when all have been taken wins the game.

The Frostmarch

The Ice Queen (Standard): Defeat the Ice Queen

The Harbinger

End of Days (Revealed): Defeat The Beast

The Highland

Eagle King (Standard): Defeat the Eagle King

The Sacred Pool

Demon Lord (Standard): Defeat the Demon Lord

The Woodland

War of Seasons (Standard): Defeat Oberon or Titania

"Race" endings
These endings are all Revealed endings, and all include a win condition in the format of

The first player to reach the Crown of Command with X wins the game!

Many of them also have additional rules, such as alternative ways to gain whatever you are trying to achieve.
Below are the endings that have this condition, and what the "X" condition is.

The Cataclysm

Lands of Wonder: 12+ facedown cards
The One Talisman: The One Talisman

The City

Assassin's Guild: 4+ facedown Wanted Posters
Merchants' Guild: 20+ gold

The Firelands

A Hero Rises: 13+ Fate

The Frostmarch

Warlock Quests: 4+ completed Warlock Quests

The Nether Realm

The Hunt: 4+ defeated enemies from the Nether Deck

The Sacred Pool

Sacred Pool: 4+ Quest Rewards

The Woodland

Wanderlust: 3+ facedown Paths

Miscellaneous PvE endings
Here are additional PvE endings that don't fit in any of the groups above:

The Blood Moon

Lightbearers (Revealed): All players are allied. If a player reaches the Crown of Command before Night falls a number of times equal to 2 * [number of players], all players win. If not, all players lose.

The Cataclysm

Cult of the Damned (Hidden): Place Denizen cards on certain locations. Each player's turn, a number of them move one space closer to the Plain of Peril. If any reach the Plain of Peril, everybody loses. If they all are defeated, everybody wins.

The Nether Realm

The Gauntlet (Revealed): Characters on the inner spaces encounter cards from the Nether Deck and must defeat them before advancing. First player to reach the Crown of Command wins.

Here's an additional Expansion that didn't make the earlier list:
Talisman: Cataclysm Expansion - Cult of the Damned, Lands of Wonder, The Eternal Crown, The One Talisman
Cataclysm Expansion, Alternative Ending Cards

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Did tactics training improve your chess significantly?
There are quite a few sites for training in chess tactics. For those having experience with using any of these, how did these affect your rating? Is there a strong correlation between e.g. http://chess.emrald.net rating and ELO? Has the use of these sites made a significant change to your ELO?

The best one I know of is http://chesstempo.com, which does a good job of rating its users.  And yes, tactics training is the best way to get better at chess.

Tactics are the most important part of the game, so training in tactics will improve your game the fastest.
Other parts (opening, endgame etc.) are helpful, but they take more effort to learn well. Tactics gives you the biggest "bang for the buck."

I haven't seen a site that offers the right kind of tactics training for beginners, including emrald.net.  While I think strong players do well on sites like emrald.net, I do not believe the converse is necessarily true: that players who only do well on sites like emrald.net do well in playing real games.   Strong players certainly have excellent tactical vision, and high ratings on emrald.net will reflect this.  But strong players also possess other qualities which make them strong, including a consistent and thorough thought process, which emrald.net does not measure.
For beginners and improving players, it's very important to start tactics study with a set (on the order of several hundred) of fairly simple tactical positions, and to go through them repeatedly, over and over, until you can instantly recognize them, spending only up to a minute or so on each position, then looking at the answer (and decreasing this time each pass through the set), and moving on to the next problem.   Recognition is the goal in the beginning, not building tactical analysis skills.
I think the best way to do this is to use randomized "flash cards" with the only instruction being "white/black to move."  One excellent source of suitable positions is John Bain's book: "Chess Tactics for Students"  (as recommended by Dan Heisman, http://danheisman.com, the top guru of beginning/improving chess instruction).   I copied, cut, and laminated all the positions in that book, making flash cards out of them, and studied them in randomized order repeatedly until I knew the entire set on sight instantly.   This gave a huge boost to my playing performance and to my further tactics studies of more involved problems.
Tactical ability is certainly right at the top of importance, but along with it is developing a proper "thought process."  One thing a proper thought process includes (among many others, this is just a simple example) is a safety check for all candidate moves (moves you're thinking about making when it's your turn to play): "will this move lose material or allow a mating attack against me?"    Without a consistent thought process, all tactics, strategy, endgames, opening knowledge is basically useless.   It takes just one bad move to lose a game!
There are many techniques to help reinforce a good thought process, but again, sites like emrald.net do not assist in that sort of training when used in the typical fashion.   When I was using emrald.net actively, I worked only for accuracy, never for speed.    Used in such a way I think the site can be useful as a training aid.

Chess is all about tactics!
Some people will argue that positional thinking is part of chess.  In fact positional play is just very advance tactic position.  So at the end it is just tactics!


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How can I play a short/small, but still satisfying round of Diplomacy?
I liked playing Diplomacy back in university, where I had almost no problem gathering seven people with a whole day (including the nights) to spend.
Nowadays however, I'd consider myself lucky to find maybe four like-minded people who have the better part of an evening to play board games, and my beloved Diplomacy set is gathering dust.
So, especially considering all the variants out there, I'm looking for ways to play and complete a satisfying round of Diplomacy in an evening's time (maybe 3h?) and with four to five players.

As I see it there are two independent questions being asked here. One is how to play a short game and the other is how to deal with having fewer than seven players. I'll discuss them separately.
First what to do when time is scarce. There are two ways I know of to deal with this. One is to play an abridged version, the other is to ensure play proceeds at a decent pace. Apart from Tom's "joint victory" suggestion already mentioned, the other workable option I know of is to agree beforehand to play a fixed number of game years. Then when these game years are completed, whoever has the most centres on the board is declared the winner. (This is quite similar to some practices on the European diplomacy tournament circuit).
Different groups of diplomacy players play the game at vastly different speeds, and this can obviously have a big influence on how much a game can progress in a limited amount of time. Experienced players can get through one game year every 30 minutes, including adjudication and build phases. Most groups of players should be able to proceed at one game year every forty minutes or so. The best way I know of to achieve this is to have everyone agree to have their orders in the box as soon as the time for diplomacy runs out each turn (no "order writing time"). You might also like to try using DipTimer (free windows download) to run your games with.
Second, what to do when you have fewer than seven players. I suspect that the main reason that there are options for fewer than seven players in the rulebook is so that they can advertise as "for 2 to 7 players" instead as "for 7 players". The rulebook versions for 6 or fewer players play poorly. Better is to find and play a map variant designed for the number of players you have. These are variants where the rules are the same, but the map is different (you'll have to print one out). There are lots of variants that have been created and many are terrible. So the best bet is to find one that has been played often. Eg Ancient Mediterranean is a 5 player variant (map downloadable  at http://www.variantbank.org/results/rules/a/ancient_med.htm) that has a good reputation.
Of course the best way to solve the fewer than 7 problem is to ensure you have 7 players in the first place! There are many other people in similar situations to you, and there are groups of players over the world who play face-to-face diplomacy and are always looking for new players. If you find such a group geographically near to you, you hopefully don't have to resort to the contortions of the previous paragraph. Your favourite search engine is good for finding such people, as is the website http://diplom.org/Face/hobby_info/

Thanks for your answer! I might have mixed several questions into one here, but that's really only to convey the right sentiment, which is this: I'd like to know about Diplomacy variants that allow regular folks with nine-to-five jobs and actual lives to enjoy the game :-)

@Jan, From my own experience, most "regular folks with nine-to-five jobs and actual lives" that enjoy playing diplomacy don't try to shoehorn the experience into a short evening (though some do). More commonly, one will block off a chunk of time on a weekend for a game, or will block off an entire weekend to attend a convention and play multiple games to get a diplomacy fix. Depending on the person, this could happen as infrequently as once a year. Of course, there is also online play.

You probably need an odd number of players, say five, to make the game flow with a majority vs. a minority dynamic.
Second, you need to choose two countries to eliminate. Italy is the obvious first choice, least fun to play. Germany is the recommended second choice by the game designers. But that has the disadvantage of separating the board into England-France, and Russia-Turkey-Austria. In a game I once played, we eliminated Turkey, instead, as not really being part of Europe. It had the advantages of keeping the countries connected, and of making Austria fun to play with two fewer enemies. The game itself goes faster with two fewer people.
You put single armies in each city of these eliminated countries, and let human players defend these "city states" by supporting them.
The other rule is that a "minority-majority" wins. That is two people (a minority of five) can declare themselves co-winners if they control 18 (a majority) of the 34 supply centers. Not needing a single winner shortens the game. Alternatively, anyone that survives the whole three hours is a "winner."
In this game, Austria and Russia won. They carved up Turkey and the Balkans, then headed west, while England, France and Germany fought among themselves. Not hard for them to get 18. And the game lasted just over three hours.

Thanks for your answer! If I remember the manual correctly, your only deviation from the original game (apart from having fewer players, but eliminating different countries than the ones suggested by the authors) would be the possibility of a minority-majority win. That change alone will bring down the game to 3 hours? That would be awesome!

@jan: You can use the "minority-majority" win rule in the seven player game also. In one game I saw, a person was a co-winner with only two supply centers, because two players with a total of 16 voted him "in." That's why I said you need an odd number.

but with seven players, I would assume you'll still be well over 3h playing time, right?

@jan: It usually takes longer with seven. But this particular game was actually short. One of the two "big" players had to leave, so he (and the other) found the first person available to make 18.

May I introduce you to Quo Vadis by Reiner Knizia? You play a family that tries to reach the senate in the ancient Rome. The only way to go up from a politic chamber to another, up to the senate, it's to negotiate with others. You must have the votes of at least half the chamber to go up. This game is made for 5 players and really works like Diplomacy. I would suggest you to try it with your friends and you will see that the game is very much like Diplomacy concerning the negotiations. About the time it takes, you can play it 2-3 times in 3 hours.
Enjoy playing!

Use cards for variable end time
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/319939/uncertain-time-limit
Take some playing cards and pull out the four aces. Add any 6 other cards and shuffle. Put the deck of 10 cards face down near the board.
Add 2 other cards to the top of the deck - or more for a longer time limit.
Each turn (spring is a turn, fall is a turn) flip over a card. After 4 aces come up, the game is ended.
This makes the game not have the artificial play style that happens with an anticipated end point, but still sets a time limit with some variability that creates tension after the 3rd ace is up.
Less players (or more players)
sourced from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/diplomacy/comments/119hxln/comment/j9ms6yi/ and written mostly by lambdaaurigae, though I trimmed it down a bit.
2 Players:  If you want to practice your tactics, the best option is probably France vs. Austria: classic map, one player takes France, the other takes Austria. Remove the other 5 players' units from the map.
3 Players: 3P variant is 1066: https://www.vdiplomacy.com/variants.php?variantID=94
Note that this is not super well-balanced: it's generally agreed that Norway>England>France
4 Players: Thttps://www.vdiplomacy.com/variants.php?variantID=7 South America map. It's a variant of a 5 player South America map.
5 Players:  South America map  https://www.vdiplomacy.com/variants.php?variantID=6 .
The most popular 5P map is probably Ancient Mediterranean: https://www.vdiplomacy.com/variants.php?variantID=9 but I don't prefer it: I think there's too many centers, making it feel a little bloated compared to classic. (Also, it's not well balanced - the central powers of Greece and Egypt struggle)
6 Players: Try using the classic map, with no Italy. Keep Italy's units on the board, acting as if they are ordered to hold each turn. If they are forced to retreat, they disband, rebuilding if the center is not occupied during the winter.
8 Players: There's this map? https://www.vdiplomacy.com/variants.php?variantID=24 Never played it, and it looks kinda finicky.
9 Players: Maybe this map? https://www.vdiplomacy.com/variants.php?variantID=113 Never played it either, but it looks ok.
10 Players: I haven't played on it, but War in the Americas https://www.playdiplomacy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=630&t=59568 is a 10P map I've seen used, and it seems functional.

I don't think that variable round time is a good idea as it is better to always know exactly how long you have. Nothing wrong with setting a short time limit for all orders to be placed.

I could easily see modifying it so you remove an ace and add another card on top, thus making it less variable (the game will definitely be at least this many turns, but have the same upper bound). The variability makes it so that hard end date doesn't make people can't plot their moves with an expected endpoint. A person's life expectancy is 76 years, but if you were told you were going to die on your 76th birthday, you'd start acting funny leading up to it. The variability keeps us all acting like we have all the time in the world, which is the goal with this unpredictable ending.

It is still an issue of being variable and likely to have a large artificial influence on the game.


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What's a good use for Chancellor?
I'm having a hard time figuring out when Chancellor is useful. Forcing a reshuffle of the deck just seems of little use to me, at least relative to the other actions I could buy with 3 coins.
I've seen a few suggestions that Chancellor is useful when paired with cards in some of the other expansions, but can you help me see how it could be useful in the base game?

+2 Gold.  You may immediately put your deck into your discard pile.  (Cost 3)

You mention other actions you could buy with 3 coins. But even if there is no other kingdom card costing exactly 3 coins, there is always silver. And if you have run out of actions it is better to have a silver on hand than a chancellor.

You just need to gain a clearer picture of the circumstances in which forcing a reshuffle of the deck is useful.  Imagine that:

You have drawn a lot of the useful cards from your deck, and few of your victory cards.  Obviously reshuffling will save you from the inevitable victory-card-heavy hands.
You have just bought a powerful card, that you want a chance to draw again immediately.  Or if you have just played one or more of your best cards, that you want a chance to draw again immediately.  Why wait to cycle through the whole rest of your deck, before you get that chance?
The Chancellor defends against the Bureaucrat, the Spy, or any other situation where you know the top card of your deck is not something you especially want to be part of your next hand.

So there are circumstances when it's better to reshuffle your deck.  (Though of course, there are equal and opposite cases where it's definitely better not to reshuffle your deck, so you have to be on the ball if you're going to play with the Chancellor, he's not a card you want to just automatically play any time!)
Obviously he has a big downside, in that he takes up an Action.  But, if you weren't going to spend that Action on anything else, he's all upside compared to a Silver.  Early in the game, before your deck is filled with good Action cards that you really want to play, and when you have a clear idea of the total composition of your deck, the Chancellor is probably just plain better than a Silver.  And never underestimate the power of getting off to a good start in the early game!

There's a cool analysis of Chancellor here: http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/01/28/guest-article-chancellor/

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Good handicaps for Descent
In certain cases in Descent, a good player (in particular with the Overlord) can destroy the other side. However, I feel that Descent is most fun when it is well balanced right up to the end.
What handicaps, with emphasis on the Overload, are good to balance the play?
Ideally, I would like handicaps that would still allow both parties to play their best and still try to win (i.e. one side going easy does not count). I realize a lot of handicaps could also be scenario/expansion specific, but for now let's just stick to the base rules; or at least only suggest such handicaps as a secondary solution.

My experience with Descent is that some maps are balanced towards the Heroes, and others towards the Overlord.
If you still find the heroes are losing a lot on most of the maps, in my opinion, your best bet is to pick up The Tomb of Ice expansion. It adds Feat cards for the heroes which are quite powerful, especially when you add them to the base maps.
If buying an expansion is not an option for you, there are many, many ways to rebalance the game. Some examples could include: Reduce the Overlord's threat by 1/turn, give the heroes more starting coins, allow the heroes to pick their starting characters or feats, use the monster cards designed for 1 fewer player etc.
Some of these are bigger balance shifts than others, but if you play around with them a little, you'll probably find something that helps.
Finally, it's possible that your hero team just isn't playing as well as the Overlord. This forum has pages of strategy for the heroes and Overlord. Why not get the hero team to have a look? http://boardgamegeek.com/forum/429/descent-journeys-in-the-dark/strategy

Descent is balanced towards the heroes, if certain conditions are met:

Played with 4 Heroes, regardless of actual player count

Descent scales terribly. The actions of all 4 heroes are necessary to counter the spawn rate of the overlord and all 4 pair of eyes are necessary to see enough of the dungeon to restrict spawning locations.

A balanced quest is selected

Quest 1 in Descent Base Game is balanced in favor of the heroes, as it introduces people to the game, while other quests are clearly very challenging for the heroes

All rules are followed

Descent has a couple of quirky rules and especially new players struggle with them. Make sure all rules are played properly, especially regarding combat, spawning and movement.

Use skills to the best of your abilities and combine skills of multiple heroes for great synergies.

Skills (hero skills as well as skills gained from cards) provide awesome abilities, which really make your life easier. Guard fragile heroes with your defensive characters (shields are a must!) and use your fragile offensive heroes with a lot of endurance to cleanse the rooms as quickly and efficiently (in terms of actions) as possible.

Additionally my impression is, that descent 1st edition benefits from the expansions, which further equals the playing field. While most quests in well of darkness or altair of despair are clearly in favor of the overlord, the feat cards from tomb of ice help in critical situations, which gives heroes a needed boost in those few critical moments.
Last but not least:
The heroes should be aware of the "runner". Fast heroes (5 movement) with high endurance (4-5) can move up to 17-19 spaces (run action (10 movement) with a endurance potion (4 endurance for movement, 1 to drink potion, again 5 endurance for movement). Frequently this means: Open a door with the 1st turn of the 1st hero and then let the runner open the unguarded chest and disappear through the glyph. This provides items for the party and 3 quest markers, to heavily boost the situation of the heroes (heroes can now die again, due more markers and are harder to kill due to better equipment).
If after all these changes, you still consider that you need a handicap, then I would consider the "official play-tested handicap" from the road to legend expansion. The Spawn Marker. Rules:

The overlord can only spawn if the spawn marker is on it's active side.
If the overlord spawns, the marker is turned to its inactive side.
The marker is activated when 1 of 2 things happen:

The overlord pays 15 threat
The overlord reveals a new area of the map.

You can simply print your own double sided spawn marker or write it down on a piece of paper. This handicap restricts the most powerful option of the overlord, while it does not completely destroys the overlord. He can spawn freely once per area and if the heroes took to long (i.e. threat piled up), but he can't "spam" the map with monster, which is most often the problem of the heroes.
I've played with this option in vanilla descent and with all 3 expansions thrown in and it worked very elegantly in all scenarios. The games are balanced and the overlord still has all options available to him. The games actually benefited from it, as more attention was paid to other interesting options of the overlord, like traps and spells. This provides more "flavor" that the overlord, instead of only being "lord of the monsters" he now feels truly evil.

Descent, unlike Doom, is balanced towards the Heroes; I find rather odd you're having trouble. Unless the heroes have very bad power combinations, they shouldn't have any problem.
Anyway, a nice help for the Heroes is to draw more powers than they would be allowed, and choose which ones to keep.


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How can we use multiple Carcassonne expansions without the game taking forever?
My wife and I were playing Carcassonne last night with several of the expansions and we found that the game was taking a ridiculously long time.  We had the base game, the River, Inns & Cathedrals, and Traders & Builders all in play at once.  I am hoping to find a way to minimize the tiles in play without sacrificing the variations created by the expansions.  Any suggestions?

The simplest way is to simply shuffle up the tiles, then pull about 60-150 of them for use. This will typically mean a 1-3 hour game, depending upon player speed and exact number of tiles. It also limits the needed table space. It does, however, also mean it is possible to not have any tiles turn up from a given expansion.
Also, don't use the River nor River II, nor the Count. The River I & 2 simply lengthen setup and increase think-time needed at start.... in addition to taking time to start, and adding 10+ tiles each. The count, by allowing reinforcement as it does, really adds to tactical think-times.
If using princess and dragon, you may want to hold out one volcano, and shuffle it into the play stack after generating the ones you're going to play with. This way, you know the dragon WILL show up, but might not be showing up twice. Same for Tower tiles from The Tower.

Or, to make sure you're getting enough of the flavorful expansion tiles, you could only mix in some proportion of base tiles.

I agree with not using the river or the count if you want a lot of interaction between players. But it may make the game a lot quicker for experienced players as it increases the legal moves on the early game and adds a new mechanic. Also, the River II is a must if you play with the dragon

Increase in legal moves increases think time.

Removing a random set of tiles kinda dumbs down the game. Part of the skill set of Carcassonne is remembering which tiles are still in the pile and which are not.

If you're into card-counting, sure... but if you are, I'll not voluntarily play with you.

I probably wouldn't use the River in a 2-player game: it acts to rapidly expand the available playing area and gives the players more "elbow room".  This may not be really what you want with just players, as it just means you may end up doing your separate things at opposite ends of the table.
I'm a big advocate of Traders & Builders and Inns & Cathedrals as adding a lot of strategic depth of the game, and I definitely wouldn't recommend removing them from the mix.  You could try trying to add a time limit to your play - obviously you're now playing with over 100 tiles total, so if you're regularly taking over a minute to choose your move then of course you'll be looking at a 2-hour game.  Or else you could agree to stop after half an hour or an hour or whatever: as long as all players got an equal number of turns then there's no real harm in calling time, right?

I feel like a time-limited game would significantly change the strategy with fields. The value of the fields grow as the game progresses. If the game is going to end early, a late-game field strategy is definitely not as useful. If nothing else, the player not winning fields could simply prolong the game.

You could just not use all of the expansions at once. Instead, pick one or two expansions, maybe at random, every game. Now there is variability, and each game will be different, but you don't have a ton of extra tiles and rules in play in any given game.
This is how collectible card games like Magic the Gathering, or deck building games like Dominion, manage to stay enjoyable, despite having tons of expansion and variability. You don't increase the size of the game, or use all expansions at once, but rather each game you play can be played with a different set of elements but still within approximately the same level of time and complexity.

If it is just two of you use a chess clock to force yourselves to play faster.  Play with the rule that if anyone runs out of time then they cannot play any more tiles.  We play with a multiplayer game timer that I wrote for my mobile phone, and we (3/4/5 of us) can get through 3 games with the basic set in an hour.  Before we had the game timer, we could drag out a game to well over an hour, and to be honest it was pretty tedious.

I looked into multiplayer timers, in particular for mobile phones.  What platform does your program run on, and is it available for download?

The best way to increase variability without impacting game length is to focus on the aspects of the expansions that do not involve tile drawing. For example, you could use the base set (with or without the River), the large followers from I&C, and the builder and pig pieces from T&B, which would add most of the options without changing the length of the game.

I can see what you're saying here. I think you're right. You don't really need all the T&B tiles out to use the Pig or Builder. That would speed up the game significantly. Some expansions, such as the Abbey and Mayor, cater to this train of thought because they come with only a few basic tiles and lots of other kinds of game pieces.

An excellent 2-player method for lots of expansions:
Use a 30-minute timer that is out of view of both players. Use all expansions you own mixed together in a big bag (The Traders and Builders bag will work). When the timer goes off, no more tiles or meeples can be placed.
My wife and I are no strangers to Carcassonne expansions. We regularly play with: The Phantom, Inns and Cathedrals, Traders and Builders, The Princess and the Dragon (without the fairy), The Flying Machine, The Messages (without the second scoring meeple), The Ferries, The Witch and the Mage, The Gold Mines, and the Cult. We use colored dice on the scoreboard instead of a meeple, because we usually “pass go” 4-5 times each in a 30-minute game. We roll a die to see who goes first, then the first player chooses how to start - selecting one of the following: the original starting tile, the River, the River II, or the City of Carcassonne. We start the timer when the setup is ready and then play our hearts out until the timer goes off. Cleanup is easy. Just take out the starting tile(s) then shuffle the rest back into the bag.
We've tried lots of different methods over the years for balancing expansions and play-time, and this is definitely the best we’ve found. Because it’s only 30 minutes, it stays fun, and we often have time to squeeze in a second board game.

I am not sure this method is that good overall. If one player takes longer for each turn then the other it can unbalance the game long term.I think a better idea is to put in a turn clock for each turn and limit the number of total turns.

Nah, with two players it doesn't make a difference. Each player puts down the same amount of tiles until the last one, and that turn ends when the timer goes off, not when the turn is "officially" over, so if you think time is about up, your turns actually start to go faster. I recognize that it's not a perfect solution, but it's the simplest and fastest - especially if you have tons of expansions.

Another method we used in our games, which also cuts down on randomness is to give each player a "hand of tiles" — three was the optimal number for us — from which they can use one each time. Theoretically, that's increasing the number of options for play, but it actually tends to focus people one one "good" move which they pick before their turn.

This is a house rule I hear of often. My wife and I tried it and really disliked it, mainly because of the Princess and the Dragon expansion. If you have three cards in your hand, the excitement of "Oh no! I drew a dragon and I'm not ready!" is eliminated completely. It changes the rest of the game as designed a great deal, too, almost changing it into an entirely different game. If you need more time to think about a good move, try getting a new tile directly after you place one instead of waiting for your turn to draw. That has less of an effect on the overall game.


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How should your strategy in Power Grid change after about 10 to 12 cities?
This episode of The Little Metal Dog Show has an interview with Friedemann Friese where he talks about the design of the Power Grid: The Robots, and mentions that the robots can do well up to about 10 to 12 cities, but after that do very poorly because that's the point in the game where typically human players have to change their strategy in order to win.  (That part of the interview begins at 20 minutes 50 seconds.)   However, he doesn't go into any detail about what this change typically involves.
I'm interested in how experienced players of Power Grid would say that their strategy changes at this point in the game?  (I'm a very inexperienced player, although I've loved the games that I've played.)

It has been a little while since I have played Power Grid, but I will take a stab at this.
In the early and mid-game the decisions that have to be made are fairly straightforward and tactical like improving power plant efficiency/capacity and expanding into reasonably priced cities.  Power plant prices are generally based on their expected monetary output for the medium length duration.
Towards the end of the game, players need to more seriously plan out the how they will get to the last turn of the game by optimizing power plants, carefully selecting which cities to expand into, and budgeting and/or hoarding resources to ensure production.  The decisions are more subtle and tend to interleave with the decisions of the other players in ways that can be difficult to model.
For example, buying a power plant in the end game usually has very little to do with how much money it will make.  Instead, making sure you can power the target number of cities in paramount and, in some cases, making sure a rival cannot power the target number of cities is also a factor.  Because of the way the power plant deck is stacked, there is a lot of information that human players can remember that a robot player cannot easily track, like the odds that the next power plant to appear will meet the needs of a player currently bidding.
Another example would be in how to expand a network in the late game.  Sometimes there is more value in spending extra money to limit the options of another player even though a cheaper city is available.
I believe these are the types of changes in focus late in the game that make a simple procedural robot difficult to create.  The economic engine building and expansion phase of the game is just straightforward, but how that engine is leveraged to create a victory is tricky.

+1 Thanks for your interesting answer.  I'll wait to see if anyone else answers before accepting one...


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How can I play Pandemic with 6 players?
I've recently bought Pandemic, and really liked the game. But since the basic game is only 2-4 players, I ordered the expansion "On the Brink", which brings it up to 5 players.
Is there a rules variant that would let me play with 6 players?

I have tried 6 player, and will confirm that a rules variant (or lowering of difficulty) is very important. With so many people, any one person is very slow to react to anything - it may well take 5 turns before the Medic can clear out that danger zone, plenty of time for horrendous epidemic timing. I don't have any suggestions though; we always play something else with 6.

@Mag Roader: Thanks - what variant rules have you tried? (I'd like to hear about those that worked, as well as those that didn't!)

Along with all the issues mentioned in the answers, keep in mind: this also just makes it a lot longer between players' turns, so it just gets a bit less interesting for everyone. (And if they stay involved by discussing with others during their turns, it slows down even more...)

I haven't seen recommendations for six-player, but I can't think of a reason it can't be done. I think the only thing that needs to be decided is the size of the players' starting hands. 4 and 5-player games start with two cards. You could either go with two or drop it to one. I'd probably stick with two. Beyond that I think you can just play. There's nothing in the game that will break by having six people.
That said, I'm not sure how well it will play. The consensus is that the game gets harder with more people, but fortunately it's very easy to tweak the difficulty in Pandemic. You can decrease the number of Epidemic cards, increase the Special Event cards, or allow players to choose their role, each of these will make the game easier to beat.
If I were going to try it, I'd probably go with two cards for the starting hands, four epidemic cards, and I'd put all 13 Special Event cards in. I'd see how that goes and then tweak it from there.

Thanks! Especially for "Harder with more people" - I was worried that it gets easier with more people, like Arkham Horror.

You might also find that the downtime between each player's turn is too long. See ire_and_curses answer to my question here: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/q/1688/159

I find that in fact it DOES get easier with more people, but only because you get more special ability combinations. With only 2 players, you have a good chance of having a useless set of specialties that don't work well together. Can you imagine winning with neither a Medic nor a Dispatcher? But the flexibility of the players is significantly offset by the increased number of infections.

The thing that makes it harder is that you burn through the cards a lot faster, hitting the epidemics more quickly, but each individual role (like Medic) still takes the same amount of time to reach and fix a problem area.

Perhaps reduce starting hand size to 1,2,1,2,1,2, cards respectively, in 6-player. Reason: otherwise it'll be 30-50% through the game before you get one cure. in a 2-player game the starting hand size is 4; in 3pl it is 3, in 4,5pl it is 2.

Pandemic is a great game with tremendously elegant mechanics.  Matt Leacock did fantastic job of using the infection deck and the draw deck as sequencer/timers.  This careful mechanical design is precisely what makes it difficult to expand the game to six players.
(thinks for a while)
Okay.  Here's an idea that should let you play with as six players (and possibly more):
• Assign roles to players at random.  Deal out cards as if playing with five players.  Also give each player an "action" token.
• When it's your turn, you can spend your action token and take a turn, or pass.  If you do not have an action token, you must pass.  If you pass, your entire turn (including the infection phase) is skipped.
• When no player has an action token, every player gets an action token.
You might need to tweak the starting hand sizes, but this little hack just might suffice.

Wow - that's a great idea, which sounds easily adaptable to other games too! Thanks!

Sounds like simply allowing the players to choose order of play. How does this address the speed of going through the deck? Or are you saying that a player who passes also turns in their action?

The new-ish "In the Lab" expansion has "team" rules which support six players as 3 teams of 2.

The problem with 6 players is that one of the losing conditions of Pandemic is running out of time (via empty Player Card Deck). With more players that deck becomes used up faster. I wouldn't try six players without somehow enlarging the player deck. Perhaps if you buy another set of player cards and then add more Infection cards.

I would recommend buying a second copy of Pandemic and just playing seperate 3-player games.

Or you could get 6 decks of cards and everyone could play solitaire.

I have been working on this 6 Player variant of Pandemic for over 2 years. After a lot of play-testing, I feel that this is now where I want it to be.
DESIGN AIMS FOR THIS VARIANT

The game should feel like Pandemic for all 6 Players.
(I felt that the 6 Player variant included with the In The Lab expansion did not feel the same).
All modifications required for this variant should be to the setup, there should be no modifications to the core gameplay.
Players should be able to contribute during their downtime, given that 5 other Players will need to take their turns.
Gameplay must have variety and replayability.
Games should feel close and balanced in the same way that the base game does.

PLAY-TESTING

I have been play-testing this variant for 2 years (the last year of which has been in its final form).
The vast majority of this play-testing has been 6-handed solo, however I have also had good feedback from the groups that I have tested this with.
The success rate stated for each difficulty is based on the final form of that difficulty as detailed below.

PANDEMIC 6-PLAYER EASY
Expansions required: On the Brink; In the Lab
Expansion modules required: Roles; Events
Success rate in play-testing: 100%

Player Deck Setup

a. Shuffle 48 City Cards and 13 random Event Cards together, and deal 2 Cards to each Player.
b. Divide the remaining 49 Cards into 4 piles of 10 Cards and 1 pile of 9 cards.
c. Shuffle 1 Epidemic Card into each of those 5 piles and stack the piles together to form the Player Deck, with the smallest pile at the bottom.

Character Setup

a. Randomly assign which player will be Player 1
b. Distribute the following roles to each player
Player 1 = Pilot
Player 2 = Dispatcher
Player 3 = Medic
Player 4 = Scientist
Player 5 = Operations Expert
Player 6 = Quarantine Specialist

Game start

Player 1 goes first
Overview:
There are a maximum of 28 turns in the game (5 turns each for Players 1-4, and 4 turns each for Players 5-6).
The Scientist (Player 4) will get the last turn if the game goes to turn 28, at the end of which there will be no Player Cards to draw.
PANDEMIC 6-PLAYER STANDARD
Expansions required: On the Brink; In the Lab; State of Emergency
Expansion modules required: Roles; Events; Emergency Events; Quarantines
Success rate in play-testing: 75%

Player Deck Setup

a. Shuffle 48 City Cards and 12 random Event Cards together, and deal 2 Cards to each Player.
b. Divide the remaining 48 Cards into 3 piles of 10 Cards and 2 piles of 9 cards.
c. Shuffle 1 Epidemic Card and 1 Emergency Event into each of those 5 piles and stack the piles together to form the Player Deck, with the two smallest piles at the bottom.

Character Setup

a. Randomly assign which player will be Player 1
b. Distribute the following roles to each player
Player 1 = Pilot
Player 2 = Dispatcher
Player 3 = Medic
Player 4 = Operations Expert
Player 5 = Quarantine Specialist
Player 6 = Scientist

Board Setup

Place 4 Quarantine tokens near the Board.

Game start

Player 1 goes first
Overview:
There are a maximum of 30 turns in the game (5 turns each).
The Scientist (Player 6) will get the last turn if the game goes to turn 30, at the end of which there will be no Player Cards to draw (unless the Time Runs Out Emergency Event comes out).
PANDEMIC 6-PLAYER HEROIC
Expansions required: On the Brink; In the Lab; State of Emergency
Expansion modules required: Roles; Events; Emergency Events; Quarantines
Success rate in play-testing: 66.7%

Player Deck Setup

a. Shuffle 48 City Cards and 12 random Event Cards together, and deal 2 Cards to each Player.
b. Divide the remaining 48 Cards into 6 piles of 8 Cards.
c. Shuffle 1 Epidemic Card and 1 Emergency Event into each of those 6 piles and stack the piles together to form the Player Deck.

Character Setup

a. Randomly assign which player will be Player 1
b. Distribute the following roles to each player
Player 1 = Pilot
Player 2 = Dispatcher
Player 3 = Medic
Player 4 = Operations Expert
Player 5 = Quarantine Specialist
Player 6 = Scientist

Board Setup

Place 4 Quarantine tokens near the Board.

Game start

Player 1 goes first
Overview:
There are a maximum of 31 turns in the game (6 turns for Player 1 and 5 turns each for Players 2-6).
The Pilot (Player 1) will get the last turn if the game goes to turn 31, at the end of which there will be no Player Cards to draw (unless the Time Runs Out Emergency Event comes out).
PANDEMIC 6-PLAYER LEGENDARY
Expansions required: On the Brink; In the Lab; State of Emergency
Expansion modules required: Roles; Events; Emergency Events; Quarantines
Success rate in play-testing: 0%

Player Deck Setup

a. Shuffle 48 City Cards and 12 random Event Cards together, and deal 2 Cards to each Player.
b. Divide the remaining 48 Cards into 6 piles of 7 Cards and 1 pile of 6 Cards.
c. Shuffle 1 Epidemic Card and 1 Emergency Event into each of those 7 piles and stack the piles together to form the Player Deck, with the smallest pile at the bottom.

Character Setup
a. Randomly assign which player will be Player 1

b. Distribute the following roles to each player
Player 1 = Pilot
Player 2 = Dispatcher
Player 3 = Medic
Player 4 = Operations Expert
Player 5 = Quarantine Specialist
Player 6 = Scientist

Board Setup

Place 4 Quarantine tokens near the Board.

Game start

Player 1 goes first
Overview:
There are a maximum of 32 turns in the game (6 turns each for Players 1-2 and 5 turns each for Players 3-6).
The Dispatcher (Player 2) will get the last turn if the game goes to turn 31, at the end of which there will be no Player Cards to draw (unless the Time Runs Out Emergency Event comes out).
IMPACT OF VARIANTS ON GAMEPLAY

The Pilot and Dispatcher going first allows immediate distribution of Players across the board. The Quarantine Specialist can be easily moved across the board in this way to become effective well before that Player’s turn.
The Scientist going later and/or last gives the best possible chance of setting up 4-card Cures.
The high number of Event cards mean that players are involved at all times.
The additional Events and Emergency Events give more time to account for the difficulties of a higher Player count, more turns for each Player, something for Players to do off-turn (playing Events), variety and replayability.
The Quarantines in the Standard, Heroic and Legendary difficulties help to offset the delay between Player turns and the problematic cube effects that can result from Emergency Events.
Despite the fixed Character roster and order, each game has a surprising amount of variety thanks to the multiple possible Events and Emergency Events that alter the game, as well as the interaction between them.

FINAL WORD
My favourite way to play of the four difficulties above is Standard. The closeness of each game and the success rate are ideal for me, and the Scientist going both last in the Player cycle and last in the game gives the best balance of Character abilities.

This answer becomes pointless and useless if the link is not included or becomes dead.

Edited to insert original content from my external post (no links required)

I just played for the first time and thought of a way to add an additional role to the game. Have someone play the actual disease.
10 card maximum in hand
Draw rate is 3 cards
"actions" or infecting is = to the infection rate.
The epidemic cards can be split 50% into infection draw pile and the other 50% into the player draw pile.
This does a few things for the game.
1. Makes the "players" more discreet of their plans.
2. Difficulty will rise with more players.
3. Allows for an additional player to be added.
4. Brings a different style of play to the game. Strategies etc.
5. Can be modified further to add more "diseases", or "players" to the game.
This is all still a thought in process as I literally played for the first time tonight.

The Bio-Terrorist component of the official expansion has an element to this: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40849/pandemic-on-the-brink   I like Pandemic a lot, but the fact that one person can plan out and dominate the game is my least favorite part. For repeated plays, it definitely needs something to make each player more independent (whether a game feature, or just everyone resisting the urge to chime in with the best option).

Ok.  Regular game.
6 players,  3 teams of two.  Each player has a role but share a hand of cards...  when it's your teams turn you may use your action on either players role identity or split between the two.  In other words, if I am the dispatch and my partner ( on my team) is the medic.... we can use the dispatch to move the researcher ( another team) across the map ( one action), move the medic to a danger spot, ( let's say two actions) then switch and use the medic to clear the danger spot ( one action).
There are natural offsets ( having to choose which role to spend actions on is a weakness, but having the option to choose from two roles is a strength.).  I plan to try this tonight and see how it goes.

It says explicitly at the end of the rule book of the in the lab extension that it gets easier with 3 teams of 2 (6 players) and that you should start at a higher infection rate.

We played with 5 once and once the deck was empty, shuffled the cards and put 10 on the pile.  We still lost by running out of cards but by one turn so worth trying again.

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


text:
In Poker is it true that "you must give action to get action"?
In your experience, do most players "fold" when someone who seldom plays enters the pot? Does this mean that it is a good idea to play in some borderline (presumably break even) situations, just to weaken perceptions of one's being tight? And how, if at all, does this vary from low to high limit games?

If you are interested in Poker please commit to the new Poker SE Currently on Area 51

Depends on if they are paying attention.   And it depends on in they have a strong hand.

I think this strongly depends on the game. In Holdem a high bid when seeing 2 cards does not guarantee a strong hand after the flop.

Like Neal says this is called Table Image. If you just draw crappy cards for a while and realize people probably see you as tight then that is great! No matter what your table image is you can use it to your advantage if you know about it.
Say they think you're really tight, then you'll have an easy time stealing pots with bad cards. Or if they think you're quite loose you probably will get more action on your great hands.
Don't bother thinking about if you need to give action to not seem too tight. Instead use your table image to your advantage and scare them out of pots you want to win fast!

Yes, if I see that my hands with high pairs are getting too much "respect," I'll raise with pairs down to 8-8. I don't mind "stealing the blinds" with 8-8, like I would with A-A.

Instead of referencing my answer, how about an edit of your answer that includes the relevant bits?  Especially since this is the accepted answer.

What you're talking about is called Table Image.
Table image is important because it represents what other players think they know about you and how you play.  If you play very tight (very few hands, only very good cards), and players see this, they're only going to stay in the pot with you, if they also have very good cards (in which case you should be a little worried).
It's not strictly true that you must LOSE hands (VPIP, or hands you voluntarily put into the pot), but you do need to play such that your opponents don't know what kind of cards you might have.  This may mean bluffing 10% of the time, or it could be more sophisticated, like always playing in position (when you're one of the last to bet), since then they won't know if you have good cards, or are just playing position.
In general though, if ALL you do is only bet when you have a tier 1 hand, then yes, people are just going to fold.

It really depends on your opponents.
If you're playing a typical low-limit online table, for example, most of your opponents are probably multi-tabling and not paying much attention to what you're doing; unless they're using stat-tracking software, it's unlikely they have any idea how often you've been playing.
Chances are, if you're stealing the blinds as often as you should, people will call


text:
How can I mana ramp in a Commander game without helping my opponents?
I'm working on a Commander deck and I'm looking at ways to ramp my mana that won't aid my opponents.  I may eventually use all the listed ramp cards, but, I'd like to keep the restriction for the early game at least (when the draw gods smile on me).  This deck will be a mono-red deck and one of the other players also plays mono-red (but not particularly effectively).
I want to avoid, where possible, handing the other mono-red player an advantage by playing cards like Gauntlet of Might or helping all the other players with something like Mana Flare.
An example of something I think will work is Extraplanar Lens with Snow Covered Mountains (SCM).  It would work since I can be the sole player using SCMs and it works by naming the land card to benefit.  I can also use Caged Sun since it's text specifically adds to my mana pool (presuming that tapping a SCM for red mana is "activating it's ability") and benefits creatures I control.
Gauntlet of Power is another obvious contender, since SCMs count as basic lands (they are, in fact of type "Basic Snow Land — Mountain" per Gatherer errata), but suffers the same problem as Gauntlet of Might with respect to aiding my red playing opponents.
If I pursue the Snow Covered strategy (they are very uncommon in this area) what other ramps can aid me without unduly aiding my opponents?
Are there other cards that might come to my aid if I dropped the snow-covered idea?

Snow covered X ARE basic lands.  Check the oracle.  The Ice Age ones have errata.

I wouldn't necessarily worry too much about ramping up your opponents' mana.  It might provide an incentive to some of them to help keep you alive!

In Commander, it's typical for decks of all colors to run "mana rocks" -- artifacts that generate mana. Some of the popular ones are: Sol Ring, Mind Stone, Thran Dynamo, Darksteel Ingot, Worn Powerstone, Dreamstone Hedron, Mana Vault, Mana Crypt. Some of these help with mana-fixing, others just produce colorless mana; the former is often helpful in a multi-color deck, but for mono-color you can just go with whatever's got the best resource yield. These cards are less sexy than straight-up mana doublers, but they'll give you a consistent edge right out the gate -- and usually draw less hate, to boot. (Spectral Searchlight is a pet card of mine I'd like to throw in here. It lets you play "friendly" by fixing someone else's mana or letting them cast some big spell a turn early, if you wish.)
Beyond mana rocks, any color deck can use Solemn Simulacrum, Pilgrim's Eye, Expedition Map (use it to tutor for cheaty lands like Coffers), and Doubling Cube. You can play mana Myrs if you seriously need the extra juice, but be ready for them to die to board wipes (Plague Myr deserves special notice -- slap some big equipment on him and he turns into a major threat).
There are colored cards that can do ramp, too. While green is known for ramping, being able to access almost the entire Vintage card pool (and getting to play higher-cost stuff because the game's not over in just a couple of turns) means every color has access to its own brand of acceleration.

Black's acceleration is surprisingly strong in the format. Cabal Coffers is very popular in black decks (or multi-color decks running Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth). Magus of the Coffers and Nirkana Revenant give you even more Coffers-like effects. Black also has fast mana with old-school ritual effects like Dark Ritual and Soldevi Adnate.
White has rather little, but you can get extra lands with cards like Land Tax, Weathered Wayfarer, and Knight of the White Orchid (get your land count lower than the rest of the table by using Ravnica bouncelands). Serra's Sanctum is strong in the right deck.
Blue's biggest asset is easy card draw. You can put a bunch of mana rocks in your deck without having to worry as much about them messing up your late-game topdecks. Drawing multiple lands per turn also combines nicely with Walking Atlas, Patron of the Moon, and Azusa (if you're blue-green).
Red has some pretty good fast-mana spells; for Commander, I like Mana Geyser and Brightstone Ritual. As far as more lasting options... Braid of Fire has already been discussed; Koth of the Hammer is solid, but will probably draw a lot of hate; Soulbright Flamekin is a quirky and underestimated dude who can buff your creatures and fix your colors at the same time. Red has something else going for it, though: plentiful land, artifact, and creature destruction spells you can use to knock out other players' key ramp component.

For a red deck, I'd look to artifacts for ramp first and foremost, just for efficiency's sake. Red's in-color rampy stuff is nifty but I find it difficult to use.
If you're looking to generate prodigious amounts of mana to power out X spells, you can also get more bang for your buck with damage doublers like Fire Servant, Quest for Pure Flame, and Furnace of Rath; and copy effects like Reverberate (copied spells have the same X values and kickers as the original).

Excellent (and very full!) answer.

@Stephen Thanks! Don't entirely write off effects that benefit everyone, either. If your deck is much more tuned to benefiting from one of those than an opponent's, they still generate a good bit of advantage. I'd totally run Mana Flare in a deck with Kaervek and Insurrection, for instance -- you want everyone to play their big stuff.

@AlexP I'm not writing it off, but if and when I do it, I want it to be deliberate to benefit more than they do.  Your tips really point to some great strategy ideas.

Grim Monolith doesn't give infinite mana with Rings; Basalt Monolith does

@Daenyth Good call. Removed.

For instants and activated abilities, Braid of Fire is great now that mana burn is gone.
This is almost the equivalent of saying "Google it," but magiccards.info has a really powerful queries. For example, the following query gets all red and colorless spells with the words "mana pool" in the game text that also have red color identity:
http://magiccards.info/query?q=o%3A%22mana+pool%22+%28c%3Ac+or+c%21r%29+ci%3Ar&v=card&s=cname

I think Braid of Fire is probably the best possible answer to this question.  Stuff like Rite of Flame, Seething Song and Skirk Prospector are typical red mana acceleration of the "sacrifice multiple cards in the hope of a quick win" variety.  That sort of placing all your eggs in one basket is hard enough to pull off in a 2-player game... even harder in multiplayer!  Braid of Fire though offers pretty good bang for mono-red's buck.

Khalni Gem can also be used to reduce your number of lands in play.

This would be a much improved answer if it explained how Khalni Gem could help you mana ramp. On the surface, it looks like a simple swap-out of two lands for an equivalent, having no net effect on the amount of mana you can produce. Is there more to it?


text:
Are there any magazines similar to InQuest Gamer in print today?
When I was young, I begged my parents for a subscription to InQuest Gamer (a magazine mostly about collectable card games). I remember reading the articles and learning about new games every month. At the time I played mostly Magic The Gathering, but I was interested in learning/playing other games. The magazine was discontinued.
Years later, I still have some back issues (my favorite being the one that came with the board game Space Station Zemo - That's right; the magazine came with a board game in it). I was wondering if there are any similar publications. I play all kinds of games (table top RPGs, card games, but mostly board games). I would like to read quality articles talking about games of the past or new games intermixed with other that games would like (InQuest had articles about the history of games, mythology, short stories, house rules, etc.). It doesn't have to be print; I read digital magazines.
So, does a magazine similar to InQuest exist today?

I still wonder WHY inquest gamer was discontinued.

I wonder if there are any websites that replicate the sort of articles and entertainment value the magazines used to provide?  Or do you have a specific reason for wanting a print magazine?

@DForck42 As a former editor of InQuest Gamer, I can answer that question: the rise of the Internet as a medium for CCG and game-related information, the crash in comic-book value and the subsequent negative effect on InQuest's parent (Wizard Entertainment), and the overall adoption of the "InQuest Style" by its competition. If DailyMTG.com is making funny cartoons with Magic cards, then the need for a magazine like InQuest is somewhat diminished, right?

@thesunneversets The OP seems to be okay with online publications, as per the last line of the second paragraph.

I'd be fine with a website for this type of content. Ars technica sometimes reviews board games (see http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2011/07/chaostle-turns-dungeon-crawling-into-a-bloody-competitive-brawl.ars).  @Jadasc You guys did an awesome job with InQuest.

@Dave Thank you; you're kind to say so. I'm still really proud of some of the work I did back then.

Looking around, I found a couple online magazines
http://www.meoplesmagazine.com/
http://www.flagshipmagazine.co.uk/index.php?a=home
I also found a list of magazines on the geek:
http://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Game_Magazines
Not exactly what I was looking for, but it's better than nothing.


text:
In Killer Bunnies can you play a Terrible Misfortune on a bunny that needs to be fed?
In Killer Bunnies when a Bunny has a "feed your bunny" card on it you have until the end of your turn to feed it. If you draw a Terrible Misfortune card (plays immediately) can you play it on the bunny that needs to be fed (assuming you can't feed it)?

Yes, you may since your turn isn't over until you replace your Bottom Run card in Step (4), which occurs after you draw back up to five cards. Under the rules for Feed Your Bunny it says:

When using a Feed The Bunny card, a player places it on any opponent’s bunny in The Bunny Circle. The opponent will need the Cabbage Units and Water Units to Feed The Bunny by the end of his next turn. [...] If the bunny is not fed by the end of the opponent’s turn, then it dies and is removed from The Bunny Circle (discarded).

and for Play Immediately cards:

If a player draws a PLAY IMMEDIATELY (Terrible Misfortune) card during play, then he must stop the game, announce that he has the card, and kill one of his own bunnies in The Bunny Circle.

So, when you play a Feed Your Bunny card on an opponents bunny, they only have until the end of their turn to feed and save it. So, when is the end of your turn? The Blue Starter Deck rules breaks down the steps of your turn as:

(1) Flip over the TOP RUN card.
(2) Slide the BOTTOM RUN card up to the TOP RUN card position.
(3) Draw a replacement card from the Draw Pile.
(4) Replace the BOTTOM RUN card with a card from your hand.

(Note: the yellow/blue bunny bits rules were very confusing since they didn't breakdown the turn into steps, "A player’s turn is over when he has flipped his TOP RUN card (or played a SPECIAL card directly from his five-card hand), and has replaced the card so that he once again has five cards in his hand and two cards down on the table.")