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Rummikub joker clarification
I have laid my initial meld.
On my next turn , I notice a joker in play that I can replace with a tile I have to form a run with 2 tiles that I am holding.
I am unable to lay anything without the joker being in my possession.
Can the initial 'move' of my turn be to swap the joker tile?
It seems logical to me that, if I can't lay anything, then I can't go and should  therefore just pick up a tile.
Thoughts?

I don't have the rules in front of me but yes that seem like a valid play

Once you've played your initial meld, retrieving and replaying the joker is only limited by the requirement to play it within the same turn it was retrieved.
This ensures the player has a play to make, and could be thought of as analogous to removing a fourth tile from a set to make a new set.

There are two jokers in the game. Each joker can be used as any tile in a set, and its number and color are that of the tile needed to complete the set. On future turns, a joker can be retrieved from a set on the table by a player who can replace it during his/her turn with any tiles that can keep the set legitimate. This tile can come from the table or from a player’s rack. In the case of a group of three tiles, the joker can be replaced by a tile of either of the missing colors. When a player retrieves a joker, the joker will once again have any value or color. However, a player who retrieves a joker must play the joker on his/her current turn to make a new set, and must also use at least one tile from his/her rack on that turn (just as on any other turn). A player cannot retrieve a joker before s/he has played his/her initial meld.


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Can I split doublets to get home in parcheesi?
Can I split a doublets to get a man home? If I have two men out, throw double 4s, can I go 8 to get home and 6 with other man?

If I have two men out, throw double 4s, can I go 8 to get home and 6 with other man?

Yes.
When you roll doubles, it's as if you have four dice (instead of two) to use. In your example, rolling double 4 results in getting 3-3-4-4 as your options. You are allowed to split them however you wish, so your proposal to move one piece (to home) with 4+4 and the other piece with 3+3 is legal.

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Can 1 or 2 of the three of a kind cards be a clone card?
In three of a kind rule, can I play for example 1 cat card and 2 clone cards to make a three of a kind card ?
or 2 nope cards and a clone card to make a three of a kind card and so on ...
so the ultimate question is : can clone card be used in two of a kind and three of a kind combos ?

Yes this works, there's a little explainer in the rules for the Zombie expansion underneath the base clone instructions (emphasis mine):

You can play a Cat Card with a Clone to create a pair and steal
a card (because the Clone becomes the same card as the Cat
Card you put beneath it). This only works if you are the player who
played both the Cat Card AND the Clone―you could not play a
Clone on top of a Cat Card played by another player!

The game doesn't specifically mention the 3 of a kind triplet combo, just the two of a kind pair combo, but since they both work in the same way, just with more cards played together, it's probably safe to assume the 3 of a kind combo works the same way.

I assumed the same.Thanks for your reply. So 1 cat card and 2 clone cards CAN make a three of a kind  interesting.

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Transformers and double strike
If I was attacking with a Transformers card that, on combat damage to a player transforms but said creature has double strike, will the creature deal first strike damage, convert and then deal regular damage with its converted side?

Please include the exact card you're referring to; you can use the [mtg:CARDNAME] syntax to link to Gatherer. (It won't show up in the preview, don't worry about that)

Yes, the creature would Convert (or Transform) before dealing the double-strike damage in the regular damage step.
From a ruling on Blitzwing, Cruel Tormentor:

After Blitzwing, Adaptive Assailant converts into Blitzwing, Cruel Tormentor, it's still an attacking creature in combat. It will still have any gained abilities, including the ability it gained at the beginning of combat. Notably, if it has somehow gained double strike, it will convert before dealing combat damage in the regular combat damage step.

This is because first strike damage and regular damage are separate combat damage steps, with triggered abilities being resolved between them.

The answer is "Probably, it depends" There are three possible cases here, in order of increasing likelihood:

The creature blinks (exile and return transformed) when it transforms.
The creature transformed in place but no longer has double strike.
The creature transformed in place and what was giving it double strike is still there.

The first case here here isn't likely. While there are many cards that exile and return transformed, none of them trigger on combat damage, and only those that meld are creatures on both sides. Assuming you mean the Transformers card (BOT set) that convert, none of them including the 8 that can do so on combat damage exile to transform. If this did happen, the newly entered creature wouldn't even be attacking, and would not be part of combat.
The second is a bit of an edge case, but possible. If double strike was printed only on the front face (like Enduring Angel or the effect that gave double strike ended (say a soulbond with Silverblade Paladin who died when it was blocked), then the creature would no longer have double strike, losing double strike after the first combat damage step means the creature will not do damage in the second combat damage step, per the Comprehensive Rules (emphasis mine):

702.4b If at least one attacking or blocking creature has first strike (see rule 702.7) or double strike as the combat damage step begins, the only creatures that assign combat damage in that step are those with first strike or double strike. After that step, instead of proceeding to the end of combat step, the phase gets a second combat damage step. The only creatures that assign combat damage in that step are the remaining attackers and blockers that had neither first strike nor double strike as the first combat damage step began, as well as the remaining attackers and blockers that currently have double strike. After that step, the phase proceeds to the end of combat step.

The first case is by far the most likely, most transforming creatures don't blink when they transform, and effects granting abilities are tied to the object, not the specific form or face of that object, so if it had double strike from any ongoing effect like Duelist's Heritage, Fireshrieker or Boros Charm will still have double strike and still deal combat damage.

I feel like the second case listed is pretty irrelevant to the question; transforming doesn't play into the rules in any way there; it's just explaining that a creature that loses double strike after the first combat damage step will not deal its damage in the second combat damage step. It didn't lose double strike as a result of transforming. In other words, if you include that, why not also include the situation where the transformed creature is killed by an instant after the first combat damage step, or any other number of things that could prevent it from dealing the double-strike damage?

@GendoIkari The question being asked at all implies that the card is still in play during the second combat damage step. While you are correct there are a lot of things that could otherwise prevent the creature from doing damage, most of them are ruled out by context, these are the only possibilities left ambiguous by the question asked.

Sure, but the creature could just as easily lose double-strike due to Humble, etc.I think the important thing to note is that transforming does not make the creature lose double-strike, and there's no edge case where it does. The core of the question was "does transforming make a creature lose double-strike or remove it from combat". Feels like it complicates the issue to mention that other unrelated things could cause it to lose double strike.

The card [mtg:Enduring Angel] has double strike printed on its front face but not its back face, and it could transform after damage is dealt in the first strike combat damage step. So, that is a situation that is practically equivalent to the second bullet point here, where the transformation is directly relevant. You could reword it as "The creature transformed in place but it no longer has double strike."


text:
What makes a good alternative to flipping a coin for 50/50 randomness?
I'm building a coin-flip themed Commander deck, and I realise I'm going to be flipping potentially dozens of coins every turn deeper into a match.
What would be a good alternative to flipping an actual, physical coin that fits the following criteria?

Can be done many times quickly.
Serial, not parallel (not doing many at once, but many in order).
Requires minimal maths/mental effort.
Isn't "messy"; flipping a coin risks losing it across the room or under a table. I'd like to avoid similar issues.
Is a truly random 50/50 proposition.

Bonus points for fun and aesthetically pleasing answers.

Is "parallel" okay if there is a way of telling the order of heads/tails? For example, a d8 and a lookup table can give you 3 ordered 50/50 results.

I think while that's an interesting idea it violates the "minimum mental effort" part. It should be readily understood not just by me but by everyone at the table. Cool idea though!

I'm not really sure that you can get anything simpler than "oh, rolled a 5, handy laminated card says thats HTT". Although you can get d16s :)

Flipping a coin is of course not truly 50/50 random but can be made perfectly fair. That would definitely be overkill.

Reading the entrails of a chicken?

What's controlling this, please? Is it some kind of hardware spring, or some software or what?

Use this algorithm

Most of the answers seem to be focussed on 50/50 randomness, and OP doesn't yet like any of them. Is true 50/50 randomness more important than the other requirements?

"True" 50/50 is of course a slightly philosophical question, but yeah, I want to use this in games with people, so it has to be fair of course :)

Use a coinflip app, or physical 4- or 6-sided dice (calling odd/even or above/below half instead of heads/tails).
Both solutions fulfill all your criteria. You can further secure dice against falling off with a dice bowl or cup. Dice have the additional advantage of parallel flips, should the need arise despite your stipulation.

Yep, just roll a bunch of dice, calling evens as "heads" and odds as "tails" (or vice-versa). They don't even all have to be the same kind, as long as they are have an even number of sides (all standard 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, or 20-sided dice would work).

You can have simultanously rolled sequential results with a couple of dice of different colors. E.g. take a red, green and a blue die, and roll all at once, reading the results in this order (RGB should be easy to remember). You can't use that for cases where you make decisions between the rolls, but if you know you're going to, say, roll until you get tails and just need to count, then a result of H-T-H would count as rolling one heads, one tails and stopping there (with the last die ignored). Not to say that would be accepted in all settings, but it should work in principle.

The dice method is what really got my upvote here, as I would call the dice-rolling app both non-random (seeing as best case, it uses a PRNG, and worst case, it isn't even designed to be random, or the developer made an error leading to it not being random), and messy (you have to start the app, leave the phone somewhere, keep the screen on or unlock the device again, and maybe players won't all be able to see what's on the screen at the same time - it's a not very elegant solution to an easy-to-solve-nondigitally issue)

@TheThirdMan A PRNG is significantly more random than physically rolling dice, especially if they aren't casino quality. And either is far more random than actually needed for the purpose.

@TheThirdMan modern PRNGs are practically indistinguishable from true RNGs. They are good enough for cryptography and regulated online gambling, so they're good enough for mtg coin flipping.

@Hackworth: the PRNGs likely to be used in an app are very unlikely to be the same RNGs used for cryptography, and gambling sites will be doing things the app won't. That said, a properly developed app should be more than good enough although I wouldn't trust a random app from the app store to be handling its random numbers properly. Bad PRNGs and/or badly used PRNGs are very common in the programming world

Of course you can, in theory. When more than 50 years ago my maths class tried to prove that, by having 30-odd kids flip 50 dice each, it was very obvious that faces 2 and 5 came up more than any other

@TheThirdMan modern phone processors actually have proper actual sources of randomness built into the hardware, and even if they didn't, the operating system can synthesize seemingly random bits from external events (read latencies, sensors, RF data,…) to produce excellent randomness. So, unless a dice roll app does something stupid (like not using the operating system-supplied random device to seed a PRNG, or to draw a number for the dice every time, because, well, human dice-requesting speed is quite slow and there's enough entropy in that system), consider a phone dice app a true RNG.

I'm not saying PRNG are inadequate by design, I'm saying there's always the possibility they're improperly or not at all used by any app. I'm very much with Jack Aidley in this regard, and therefore will not trust randomness until proven otherwise, but the other way round. Whether it makes a practical difference to the task at hand is a different story, I'll leave that to the reader - but not mentioning this, or claiming apps are trustworthy by default, is in my mind not fulfilling the "random 50/50 proposition" requirement in the question, even when interpreting the word "truly" loosely.

@JackAidley Even the most basic PRNG built into any language down to Basic are significantly superior to physical dice in randomness. Using them is easy, randomize(); x=random(); is all it takes. They might not have enough entropy to withstand a cryptanalysis attack, but more than enough for a game.

@Therac If you think you can do that and get decent results in every language, then you are very much mistaken. Also the way you turn random () into a coin-flip or dice roll matters. Yet alone shuffling a deck of cards.

Either there's no interest in discourse here, or I haven't made myself clear that some PRNGs (perhaps most) might be alright. Somehow still, between poorly made /intentionally rigged dice apps, or the question asking for "truly 50/50", apparently still literally every kind of app is trustworthy enough. Of course die rolls don't produce perfectly random rolls either, but assuming from the question that a sensibly similar method to coin tossing would be acceptable seems logical. What makes coins/dice work for games is eliminating the possibility of predictability, which an app cannot (easily) do

@JackAidley Every mainstream language. Obviously you won't get a good result in Brainfuck. No one's writing coin-flipping apps in Brainfuck. It is that easy. I'm a developer. All mainstream languages' PRNG are good enough for a card game. They might not stand up to a hacker attack involving planted spyware or distributed decryption, but are far above the ability of an unaided human to fool or predict.

@Therac You're wrong. Go and study. There is no more to say about it.

@JackAidley I have advised theses on random number generation. You're being a bit grandiose towards Therac there; defaults actually are more than good enough: C++ (std::random, Mersenne Twister on 2¹⁹⁹³⁷-1), Java (java.util.random: L32X64MixRandom), JavaScript (Xoroshiro128+, which is so good while compact that we implemented it in hardware during one thesis), Python (Cpython:same MT19937 as C++), Swift (pre-4.2, people used arc4random, after which things got even better), rust (rand::rng, ChaCha 20 or 12).... Could you explain to me which language you're specifically referring to?

FWIW, the C language makes no guarantees whatsoever about the quality of the rand() function in the standard library and and some stdc libraries had really bad implementations.

@nwellnhof Define "bad implementation". Bad as in something tangential as "slow performance", or bad as in "noticably non-uniform distribution over tiny sample sizes"? Just to keep this discussion on topic a little.

@Hackworth Bad in this case usually means significant bias, but small samples are largely pointless for checking a PRNG, because even a perfect PRNG will return runs of the same number from time to time, and even truly terrible PRNGs (say, IBM’s RANDU for example, which actually passes a handful of the standard diehard tests and doesn’t ‘look’ biased to most people) can show little to no visible bias or nonuniformity even with very large sample sizes if you don’t do the right type of testing.

If you have a phone which has a sufficiently accurate stopwatch (probably hundredths of a second is good enough, thousandths would be better) such that you can't reliably stop the stopwatch on any single digit, you could just start and stop the stopwatch repeatedly and use the parity of the final digit (i.e. odd/even where odd=heads, even=tails).

Not sure why this is being downvoted. It's a valid method and probably less easy to bias than a coin flip: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2789164/

I mean, if you have a phone, you have a device with a true random number generator built in.

@MarcusMüller - I don't quite follow your argument in your first comment. The advantage of this method is that it only requires a 'vanilla' phone - i.e. there is no need to install any additional software.

Ah! I see your point; thanks for clarifying.

@MarcusMüller Some theorists would object to the notion that any phone has a "true" random number generator in it. I’m no expert on randomness, although I’m not totally naive either, and I’m not able to follow your reasoning of why you think the stopwatch method is "less random" than another method. It seems like you’re saying it might be less random and since we’re not sure that it’s random means it’s not as good an answer? If so, I’d counter that the uncertainty about its randomness is part of its randomness and that seems like more than enough randomness for a game. It’s not crypto.

@NeilTarrant I looked up the source code of the current AOSP/Android UI stopwatch. I'm not too versed in Android UI programming and the APIs, but assuming users will not install a worse stopwatch app, it seems to be quite safe to assume that last digits will be quite random. I removed my comments to that end, because while I think the concern is valid, I have been overstating it. My apologies.

@ToddWilcox due to a cleanup, my comment there got lost: I don't think theorists have significant problems with saying that a quantum-phenomena observing component in a modern CPU is truly random! There might be implementation issues, but in theory, things should be quite truly random. (the implementation deficiencies: at least intel's implementation for x86, RDRAND, got FIPS approval, so it does seem to be on all things that you can test and that you can read from a description of the device, the randomness is true.)

Prologue: Why Randomness Is (Not) Hard in Real Life
Disclaimer: I might have designed too many probability theory basics exam questions in my life; whether this left permanent damage is up to you to judge.

What I really like is finding mechanical apparatus that behave randomly: That's slightly surprisingly a bit of a challenge: Our reality is full of true randomness, and unless you restrict yourself to (often rather artificially-feeling) experiments where that is really not the case (like drawing colored marbles from an urn without putting them back, or cards from a deck), you can model extremely many phenomena as truly 50/50.
Small problem is that these really random effects tend to happen on a microscopic or very weak level – you need some amplification to see them! That's why the computer (or phone) based answers are excellent: These devices both include true random number sources1,2: because they're anyways based on electronic logic dealing with very small phenomena, it's inherently possible to measure these small random effects and translate them into values observable by software. (People like to say that "randomness on a deterministic machine like a computer is hard", but that's not really the case. Millions are spent keeping the random behaviour out of a computer processor, each time one is designed, because the effects that make your computer work are really only a bit stronger than what noise you can expect. And that noise is random.)
Building a Good Tosser
Good: Truly fair, truly uncorrelated, and most of all: fast and easy to use
Now, I think computers are cool; I really think that a neat little box with a small half-spherical dome on top where a small "coin" disk is spun on a horizontal axis by  a motor, controlled by a 1€ microcontroller that takes a bit of truly random external input to compute nearly arbitrarily many random throws would be the nicest solution in terms of usability. Put a little momentary switch on the bottom of the box to trigger the "toss" with a satisfying *smack* on the top.
It will be quite hard to beat that in terms of fairness and uncorrelatedness, in addition of the ease-of-use³.
Building a  Beautiful Randomification Device
But the hardcore usability and probability side ignored, what mechanical ways are there to amplify a small random effect in a way that stays really random.
Two devices that already exist come to mind:
Magnetic Pendulum
Just like the actual coin toss, this isn't actually random: toss a coin twice in exactly the same way, it will land the same way. There's a deterministic input/output relationship. The thing is that humans just aren't great tossers, so that basically never happens in amateurs (whether someone could train to throw a coin reliably, I guess they could! Have you seen olympic archers?).
The main thing why "throwing a coin" seems fair is that the movement it makes for the methods we usually use when throwing seems chaotic, i.e., tiny changes in input conditions lead to very drastic changes in output.
Here's a picture of one possible implementation of a magnetic pendulum:

Source: Chalk Dust Magazine, Authors James Christian and Holly Middleton-Spencer, Link
You can build one with an even number of magnets, as well. It's very hard to predict from the initial position at which magnet the pendulum will end up; I found the simulation on this website very beautiful.
Galton Board
Now, this is Fancy (capital F) and overkill, because in the form that you usually see it it's used to demonstrate what happens when you chain a lot of identical, but independent, random decisions:

Source User Matemateca (IME USP); CC-BY SA 4.0
The loads of balls are dropped through the narrow channel on top, each of them hits various pegs on the way down, and each time takes a random left or right. See the device in action here.
Of course, instead of throwing hundreds of balls at once, you could throw one down the chute (that ends up being a game quite similar to Pachinko), and base your head/tails decision on whether it comes out left or right.
Because you don't care to see the beautiful Gaussian distribution, just the half it comes out in, you could omit the outer pegs on the lower rows, where a deflection can no longer change the side the ball comes out.
Technically, of course, you would need but a single peg and a very precise chute for your ball, but keeping tolerances and sizes in check, at least a few pegs which stand a fair chance of cancelling bias is probably a good idea; also, more clang = more fun.

¹ on x86 (i.e.,  your laptop/desktop): RDRAND
² on ARM application processors (i.e., in your phone, your TV or your smart camera), you typically find peripherals that offer true physical random numbers at some address in memory space
³ I might be crazy enough that if someone funded me for that product development, I might be willing to undertake that engineering effort.

Galton Board? PACHINKO!

Using either Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, the formula =RANDBETWEEN(0,1) will give you 50/50 odds of a 0 or 1.  On a PC, hit the delete key on an empty cell to re-roll (or F9 works in Excel too). I'm sure there's a Mac equivalent. Copy the cell to as many cells as you want if you want to see several re-rolls in order.
p.s., as others have stated with other answers, this answer is also PRNG, but it's practical and more than sufficient for your use case.

You are right that pseudorandom generator is much better than a coin flip and probably takes less effort to defeat (depending on how terrible your PRNG is): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2789164/

A wonderfully horrible solution for RNG is an old-fashioned dice popper. They make for a literal pushbutton solution to RNG, with no dice falling off tables. They also make a sound that is either mildly annoying or just the right amount of kitsch, depending on your personality.

Use a spinner, like the one that comes with the popular "Game of Life" board game, except each of the numbers alternates with "heads" or "tails" (or whatever 2 categories you prefer). From personal experience, this is faster and less messy than flipping coins or rolling dice. And it's fun!

Those spinners (especially the ones in Life game boards) were terrible.  When I was a kid, ours had the wheel bearing far enough off center that about 1/3 of the wheel didn't even click on the tab, so the wheel couldn't stop at those numbers.  If you want to use something that spins, find a well made dreidel.

@ZeissIkon It's totally feasible to make a not-bad spinner though. A dreidel is not a bad idea, but IMO the downsides are similar to dice--except it trades messiness for time it takes to get a result.

A very simple low-tech solution:
Use one or more decks of cards

Shuffle the cards and lay face down.

Turn the top card for a random 50/50 decision: red or black.

Place in a discarded pile.

Shuffle and restart when they run out.

Two suggestions to make the last card unpredicatable:

Keep the Jokers in the pack and reshuffle when one is turned.

Cut the pack after each shuffle and put one part out of play.

Probably better to re-shuffle before it runs out. The closer you get to the end, the more predictable it gets, to the point that the last one is always 100% predictable (if somebody's willing to keep count of what's come up previously).

@JerryCoffin yes, you would only need to track the parity to know the last card. I've added a solution.

This is going to frequently violate OP's 5th condition. Whenever there's an odd number of cards remaining, you no longer have 50/50. And even when there's an even number remaining, you still might not have 50/50 depending on the previous draws

@anjama your proposal is false, because the previous draws may not have had an exact number of each. It's a random shuffle, so there may have been twice as many reds as blacks drawn up till that point. Anyway the deck is randomly split (the cut), or randomly shuffled (the Joker).

@WeatherVane Your solutions don't fix the issue. Anytime you draw and reveal a card, you have new information to calculate new probabilities. Splitting the deck or shuffling early is irrelevant to this; all they do is limit how far you get before you start over. In other words, they stop you from reaching a point of 100% certainty most of the time. Here's actually a topic that illustrates this: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/569562/what-is-the-probability-of-picking-a-card-from-a-deck-of-cards-that-was-split-in You can update the equations there for colors instead of a specific card

@WeatherVane And as an extreme example, let's say you shuffle and split the deck, and your pile just so happens to have 25 red cards on top of one or more black cards. After 25 draws, you've seen every red card, and now every draw after that until the shuffle you have 100% probability of black. A true solution should not have failures like this

@anjama it's a game, not betting. Although it's not strictly 50/50, the other requirements are met: quick, serial, effortless and tidy. To improve the 50/50, after each draw cut the pack and replace the card in between. Shuffle when a joker is turned. Of course, you could replace and shuffle the pack after every draw, but then it would not be so quick.

@WeatherVane the question was what a good alternative is. This is about as bad as it gets – highly correlated results.

@MarcusMüller it's a quick and easy solution that fully meets 4 out of 5 of the OP's requirements, and for a game isn't far off the fifth. There was no requirement to ban cheating. Which of those four is "as bad as it gets"? Do you really want to sit there consulting a perfect randomness on a laptop? Which is actually quite hard too.

4 out of 5 requirements fulfilled, or as we engineers would say: requirements not fulfilled. Also, if "many" times is > 52, then your method also fails requirement 1.

Yeah right, it takes one second to shuffle a pack. The question is about much more than obtaining true 50/50 randomness anyway.

@WeatherVane I'm not of a regular card player to do that. I doubt anyone is; I've know croupiers, and they would take longer, because otherwise you just risk long streaks of exactly the same sequence as last time.

@Marcus, this is a parlour game FFS. Please post your answer.

@WeatherVane um, I'm allowed to comment on your answer without posting one of my own; please don't act as if it's not allowed to remark when something fails to meet requirements.

@Marcus, this method requires no preparation but you've been banging on about how this can be done on a phone. Please post your answer that satisfies all the contitions.

@WeatherVane "no preparation" is not a requirement. "Truly 50/50" is.

Requires minimal maths/mental effort. 5. was the last/least requirement.

There's no "least requirements": there's requirements, properties that are required of a solution. And "minimal maths/mental effort" is very distinctiively not the same as "no preparation".

OK, so how long does it take Joe Bloggs to set up a truly random 50/50 generator on their phone? Write an app? Install one from the app store? I get out a deck of cards. I'm out of here, just downvote please if you think this is such a bad answer as you make out.

I will have to search for a deck of cards, but on my phone, I need about 10s to install a dice app (I just tried). Anyways, complaining about a solution that I like is not excusing your bad not-solution.

I don't have a phone, and nor does my Grandma.

I don't understand how badmouthing the phone proposition changes the fact that your proposed method doesn't fulfill what you throw a coin for, namely, for a 50/50 chance? Is your whole argument "yeah but you mentioned a phone app and I think that's dumb?", because in that case I think you might be trying to apply a whataboutism, and badly so.

I am not badmouthing anything, and never mentioned 'dumb'. If you have a better solution: post it instead of banging on everywhere about how good that would be. Like "use a dice app." But this is my solution even if you don't approve.

@WeatherVane you're deflecting. Your answer is bad. I can observe and state that without having my own answer.

After the first draw, the distribution of the deck is 26:25, and no amount of cutting or reshuffling will change that, the second card (already) isn't 50-50. You'd have to shuffle the drawn card pack, or search through the deck for another of the opposite color also remove (and then shuffle anyway) to balance it. Or, if you don't want to do that, you should at least admit that it's biased. Even with a perfect shuffle (which could be taken as similar to a perfectly symmetrical shape, which is something we implicitly assume of dice anyway).

Start an AC motor
When started, AC motors will rotate in a random direction (unless they're specifically designed to run in one direction).
Possibly the most obvious example of this is microwave turntables. Start a microwave (put a cup of water in it first), and if it's turning clockwise it's heads; anticlockwise tails.
If you can get your hands on such a motor without the surrounding microwave, you can probably come up with all sorts of fun embellishments for it.

I have no idea how needing a motor with an AC source is somehow better than a coin flip.

@Nelson Well, it meets all the criteria in the OP. Portability isn't one of them.

You mean it completely doesn't fit 1 and 4? 1) Can be done many times quickly. 4) Isn't "messy"...

My microwave reliably starts the turntable opposite the way it ran last (unless it's been unplugged or power was off); I think the internal controller is programmed for this.  Most if not all of those use a stepper motor for that anyway.

[Adapted from WeatherVane's answer, but sufficiently different to write up separately]
Use one or more decks of cards for a precise 50% outcome

Define a set of rules so that given two cards one always "beats" the other (this could be a simple ordering or paper-scissors-rock-style non-transitive ordering to guarantee at least some suspense if the cards are revealed one at a time)

Shuffle the cards and lay face down.

Turn the top two cards (maybe one at a time to create more suspense!), and note whether first card beats second (outcome 1) or second beats first (outcome 2).

Note that each outcome has exactly 50% probability, and this is easily observed / proved.

Put BOTH cards in a discard pile.

Keep taking pairs of cards for further 50% chances.

Reshuffle when the cards run out.

Unlike the one-card solution, probabilities remain 50% until the end of the deck - someone counting cards will know what the last two cards are, and thus the outcome after only the first card is revealed, but not what order they're in.
For extra fun and/or aesthetic pleasure:

rather than regular playing cards, use appropriately-themed cards with rules that make sense for the cards' theme about what beats what. There could even be multiple ways to compare the cards, with the player choosing which before revealing the cards (e.g. "highest strength stat wins").
where outcomes are to be in favour of one player or another, split into two randomised decks instead of one, and each player draws from "their" deck to see who wins.

While I agree this produces a 50% chance, I'm unconvinced this is actually going to be less hassle than flipping a bunch of coins, particularly as you're going to have to explain it to your opponents before every game.

EDIT: use cryptographically secure os.urandom for true randomness
Python one-liner
You could install python and run the following command in your terminal
python3 -c 'import os; print(f"{int.from_bytes(os.urandom(1)):08b}")'

Here you get 8 coin flips at once.
Python file
For a bit more flexibility you can also save the following code as the file coinflips.py
#!/usr/bin/env python3

import os, sys

def flip_coins_n_times(n:int):
    nbytes = n//8 + bool(n%8)
    # get random bytes, convert to bits (including leading zeros)
    # finally remove excess and print
    print(f"{int.from_bytes(os.urandom(nbytes), 'big'):0{8*nbytes}b}"[0:n])

if __name__ == '__main__':
    # file is run from commandline
    flip_coins_n_times(int(sys.argv[1]))

and run it from the command line as
$ python3 coinflips.py 20
11100100011100100111
$

Here you can replace 20 by the number of coinflips you want

This one.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eduk8-Worldwide-Dice-Dome-Large/dp/B0751L83WS
odds=Heads
even=Tails

Link only answers are a bit problematic.  Consider adding some context to your answer so that folks don't need to click through to understand your answer.  Thanks!  FAQ - How To Answer


text:
Why do some MTG cards specify "land and/or Gate"?
I've been toying with building a Maze's End Commander deck for a while now.
Digging around for cards for such a deck, I came across Navigation Orb and some other similar cards.
Why does these cards specify "and/or Gate" so often, when there are no Gate cards that aren't also Lands?

If you read Navigation Orb, and probably most of those other cards, carefully, they actually specify "basic land and/or Gate", i.e. you can search for any Gate (which are indeed all lands), or any basic Island, Mountain, Forest, etc.

Indeed, I can only find 5 instances of any variation of "land and/or gate", and in all 5, the word "land" is preceded by "basic".

AHAH, gotcha! So they preclude searching for say, Command Tower or another non-basic, but Gates are fine. Nice.

@MilesBudnek I wish Gatherer supported some simple regex. It's so much easier to search for many related phrasings at once, and that should really be the default search engine for anything other than market value.

@Arthur It does: https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Help.aspx#regex

@m90 Why haven't I seen this before? That's awesome, thanks!


text:
Monopoly cheaters edition
So basically I was playing it with my boyfriend and his mum. I was doing property swap cheat and I took his park lane and swapped it for old Kent road but before someone else rolled I landed on park lane. I didn’t know wether to pay the money for the rent or say I had the card so I said I had the card. My boyfriend said that I got caught and had to give the card back because I got caught but I don’t think I did. There’s no rule about wether you pay or don’t pay and say you have it so I didn’t know what to do and he says I was wrong but I admitted before he caught me plus what else was I supposed to do. My boyfriends mum agreed with me

KMR’s answer looks correct. I will add that your mistake was announcing that you had the card. It’s not your job to make sure you pay rent, it’s up to the person who is owed money to ask for it. You could have just not said anything and hoped that the next person continued on.
If the owner did notice that you landed on Park Lane and asked you for the rent; you could have just given them the rent and not said anything. You can’t argue that you don’t owe rent because you took the deed when your goal is to not let anyone find out that you took the deed. You haven’t successfully completed the cheat until your turn is over. The rules aren’t clear on who the legitimate owner of Park Lane was for the remainder of your turn.

Well he didn’t notice but I had landed on park lane and he said to give his rent but I didn’t know wether to pay or tell him I had to I told him I had it. He didn’t catch me cheating I admitted to cheating cause I didn’t know what to do. I had already done the cheat before my go

As long as someone called out "Cheat", and explained what you did, you were caught.
This is covered on the first page of the rules:

When you’re ready to cheat:

Secretly do what’s on the Cheat card. Then you must wait until the next player rolls the dice. If no one catches you before then, you got away with the cheat!
After the next player rolls the dice, let everyone know that you cheated, and how.
Collect the reward described on the back of the card.
Return the card to the bottom of the Cheat deck, and place a new one face up on the board.

How do I catch a cheater?
When you think that someone’s cheated, call out, ‘CHEAT!’, and explain how they cheated before the next player rolls the dice.
If the accused cheat is guilty, they must take the penalty on the back of the Cheat card.
Then return the card to the bottom of the Cheat deck, and place a new one face up on the board.

There is potentially one saving grace here, which is this bit:

If you can’t prove that you’re innocent, the other players must decide if you cheated, and who deserves a penalty.

So, in the case of a dispute who receives the penalty is up to the other players.

I don’t think the saving grace helps here. That’s part of the section about being falsely accused, and she wasn’t falsely accused in this case.

@GendoIkari, it certainly doesn't help if she was being honest, but it is the cheaters edition.

Well he didn’t notice but I had landed on park lane and he said to give his rent but I didn’t know wether to pay or tell him I had to I told him I had it. He didn’t catch me cheating I admitted to cheating cause I didn’t know what to do

The rules make no mention of how the person needs to find out you cheated, only that they need to find out before the next turn. Whatever circumstances led to it, the only point that really matters is that he called you out on cheating before the next turn.

Well he didn’t call me out

If he did not call out, ‘CHEAT!’ as the rules describe, then he did not follow the rules as written, and you technically were not caught. However, as with many "Family" games, the rules are a little loose, and one could reasonably expect that if a cheat became obvious the formalities could be skipped.


text:
Can you steal a complete color set from a player that uses a wild card with the deal breaker action card? - Monopoly Deal
Lets say you have 2 red property cards and one of the wild property cards that can be used as part of any property set to make a complete color set. If another player uses the Deal Breaker action card to steal a color set, are they able to steal the color set that has that wild property card? And if so, after they steal it, does that wild card have to remain part of that color set they stole? Or can they now use that wild card however they please?

A wild card can be used to make a full set. The Deal Breaker card can be used to steal a full set. There is no restriction that Deal Breaker cards can't be used to steal full sets that contain wild cards. Finally, you can reorganize your own sets on your turn, and the rules explicitly state that wild cards can be swapped between different sets. There is no restriction that wild cards become locked into a particular set once played.
Note that the wild card in question must actually be part of the full set. You can't use the Deal Breaker card to take two red properties plus a wild card that's in a different set or in no set at all. All the properties must be organized into a full set to be a target for Deal Breaker. It can actually be advantageous to not form full sets even when you can, to avoid having it stolen by a Deal Breaker (although you run the risk of being targeted by cards that can steal from non-full sets).

Exactly the answer I needed, much appreciation for clearing that up!

I believe the wild card DOES become locked to a set stolen using a Deal Breaker. I can't confirm a source (yet), but we've been playing the game a long time, and that is how we ruled

@bensvenssohn Why would it? You can rearrange any of your properties on your turn, and there is no distinction whatsoever between cards you played yourself and cards you get from other people. Of property wildcards, the rules just say this: "You can swap these around amongst different sets on your turn". There is no exception mentioned of scenarios where you can't do that.

@nuclear-hoagie If we were discussing the official rules, there wouldn't be any conversation about it... I suppose the rule would be decided by whether you would prefer a more changeable game with wild cards being able to be transferred all over the place which would require more strategic thinking, as mentioned in the answer, or whether a more limited gameplay is preferred,  where dramatic upheaval of this sort is avoided- Deal Breakers to us  wreak enough havoc as is.... My take.

@bensvenssohn I don't think it makes much sense to discuss house rules, as the answer in that case just becomes "the rule is whatever you decide". That said, I also use some house rules to nerf Deal Breakers, usually by playing to 4 full sets instead of 3, and not allowing a Deal Breaker to be played for the win.


text:
How does Prince Thorald works when fighting together?
From page 7 of the rulebook:

When Prince Thorald is standing on the same space as a creature, he adds 4 extra strength points to the hero’s points in a battle.

I can interpret this in two different ways if several heroes fight together:

The Prince adds 4 extra strength to the group as a whole.
The Prince adds 4 extra strength to each hero in the fight. So if 3 heroes are in the fight, the Prince adds 12 extra strenght in total.

Which one is correct? I would assume it's the first, but the French version of the rulebook is even more ambiguous.

From Page 2 of the Reference Rulebook

If an ally occupies the same space as a monster, it adds four to the
final battle value against that monster.

So your option 1 is correct.

The Prince adds 4 extra strength to the group as a whole.

I do agree the language is ambiguous and I would have tended towards option 2 from reading just of that rule.

Thanks a lot, this was driving me crazy! This is indeed less ambiguous than the French version which could easily be interpreted both ways.

@Eldy The French translation is riddled with ambiguous wordings that are outright wrong if read literally. When in doubt, I advise you to choose the more natural / logical / thematic interpretation.


text:
Creating copies of lands that are animated by Jolrael, Voice of Zhalfir
I have 5 cards in my hand and control Jolrael, Voice of Zhalfir.
At the beginning of combat, I make a land into a 5/5 Bird with flying and haste.
In second main phase I cast a Cackling Counterpart on the animated land.
Do I get a copy that is a 5/5 Bird with flying and haste ? Or do I get a land instead ?
Will my copy keep the stats (5/5 green blue bird, flying, haste) and won't revert to a land when my turn ends ?

You will just get a land.

707.2. When copying an object, the copy acquires the copiable values of the original object’s characteristics and, for an object on the stack, choices made when casting or activating it (mode, targets, the value of X, whether it was kicked, how it will affect multiple targets, and so on). The copiable values are the values derived from the text printed on the object (that text being name, mana cost, color indicator, card type, subtype, supertype, rules text, power, toughness, and/or loyalty), as modified by other copy effects, by its face-down status, and by “as . . . enters the battlefield” and “as . . . is turned face up” abilities that set power and toughness (and may also set additional characteristics). Other effects (including type-changing and text-changing effects), status, counters, and stickers are not copied.

So basically the land becoming a creature isn't one of the things that can be copied.


text:
Can Ticket to Ride First Journey be used as the base game for expansion games?
I have never played any Ticket to Ride games before. I did, however, acquire two used games recently: Ticket to Ride First Journey and Ticket to Ride Japan.
I see that Ticket to Ride First Journey comes with trains and train cards. Ticket to Ride Japan says the following:

To play with this expansion, you need 20 Trains per player, the matching Scoring Markers and the Train Car cards taken from Ticket to Ride or Ticket to Ride Europe (the base game), along with the new components described below.

Does anyone know if Ticket to Ride First Journey can be used to play the Ticket to Ride Japan expansion game? Or do I have to have the original Ticket to Ride USA or Europe base game?
Thanks so much.

No, the First Journey box does not contain the pieces required to play with an expansion.
The base Ticket to Ride game contains:

1 Board map of North American train routes
225 Colored Train Cars
142 Illustrated cards (110 Train Card cards, 30 Destination Ticket cards, 1 summary and 1 Longest Route card)
5 Wooden Scoring Markers
1 Rules booklet

Of which the 225 Train Cars, 110 Train Car cards and 5 Scoring Markers are required to play with expansions.
By comparison, First Journey contains:

1 Game Board
80 Plastic Trains
72 Train Cards
32 Ticket Cards
4 Bonus Ticket Cards & 1 “Golden Ticket” Card
1 Rulesheet

You would have enough Trains to play the Japan map, but you would be missing about half the required number of Train cards which is likely to cause issues. And since most other expansion maps require the full set of Train Cars, you'd be missing those too. And you also have no score markers, although those could potentially be replaced by something else in a pinch.

Thank you for the detailed explanation!

The train cars in first journey are quite a bit bigger than those in the main sets too. You would probably struggle to fit the pieces onto the Japan board.


text:
Do you see the top card of your deck when you play Mickey Mouse - Detective?
When Mickey Mouse Detective1 is played, do you get to look at the top card of your deck and decide whether to ink it or not? Or do you just decide whether you want to ink it or not without knowing the card?
1. Card text: Get a clue:  When you play this character, you may put the top card of your deck into your inkwell facedown and exerted.

I won't post as an actual answer since I don't have an official ruling, but in these kinds of games the general rule is "if it doesn't say you can, you can't" so I'm guessing the answer is no.

You do not get to look at it.
A message on X from the DisneyLorcana account:

Apr 21, 2023
if an ability (Like one jump ahead) puts the top card of your deck facedown into your inkwell, you don't get to see what card that was.


text:
Can one change their mind before playing marker or if wrong card played?
While playing Sequence and a player places his card down that he intends to play and then changes his mind before placing his chip down is that allowed? or does he have to play the card he showed? Also, what if he places his chip down in the right spot but plays the wrong card. Does that count? Does he get to switch out the card or place the chip on the spot of the card he played by mistake?

Your question is "is the card played played?" and the answer is yes (by definition). How you handle take-backs for misplays is up to you.

The vast majority of games - including, as far as I know, Sequence - do not include this level of detail in the game rules themselves; if you are playing in a competitive tournament, you should refer to the tournament organisers. If you're a friendly game (particularly as I note you've tagged the question house-rules), you should do whatever causes people to have the most fun.


text:
Playing casually MTG: cheapest way to build decks
I've recently started playing MTG. It's me and a friend of mine. We play casually, we don't care if cards are old or rare, we are just looking to purchase some cards to build a few decks (ideally 4-6) that make at least a bit of sense, meaning containing some 4 to 5 rare in each. Something like starter deck kit, that we already bought (2017 and 2020). I was thinking to buy in Cardmarket, either lots of common/uncommon/rares and out together whatever we get or by singles, but I don't know which list to use. The lists I found are too expensive for me. Ideally each deck should costs around 5-6 bucks. What do you suggest? What do you think about buying a couple of jumpstart booster packs each?

Go to your local games store and ask for their "bulk commons". Going rate is a few bucks for 1000 cards.

I think that jumpstart boosters are actually a good option if you don't care about what colors/mechanics you are using. I've played with jumpstart a lot and still really like the idea and execution.

WOTC sells pre-constructed standard format decks.

@CWallach those decks cost a whole load more than $6 though.

Approach 1: Buy cards for cheap, for example from eBay or whatever the  most popular used items market is nowadays. You will always find someone giving up their hobby and selling their collection in bulk. Ask in your local game store if they offer cards in bulk. In either case, while the used card collections usually contain rares, don't expect high-value cards to show up, so optimise for price per card.
Approach 2: To start with, play Pauper or Artisan in which the maximum legal rarity of cards is common or uncommon, respectively. This allows you to focus on your existing card pool; you don't have to focus building around probably sub-optimal rares and saves you from having to hunt for stronger and thus more expensive rares until you know that Magic is the game for you.

This is the answer. My son was fortunate to receive a few hundred old cards from a family friend when he first picked up the game almost twenty years ago now. That was quite adequate to start playing with his friends (and me, of course) as he slowly extended with more recent cards.

I didn't know about these formats, that's definitely a good starting point

If you're just playing against each other then as long as your cards come from the same pool it doesn't really matter the specific format anyway.

I can recommend Card Kingdom's Rookie decks.
Also, you can find top list for the pauper format here. It is a eternal format that does not rotate and is unaffected by the reserve list. It has been compared to a legacy light format.
#NOTASPONSOR #NOTAFFILIATEDWITHCARDKINGDOM


text:
Ethical issue about duplicate bridge
I am returning to bridge after playing online for a few years (covid).  I am an intermediate beginner. I play with a robot (bridge solitaire).  I tried to find a pro bridge player to sit with me while I play the robots and instruct me per hand.  If my choices are good.
They called this unethical.  Please advise.  Thanks

It's not only unethical, as noted below by Alexander Woo, but will cripple your bridge. You will just be developing an addictive dependence on the advisor for an activity in which learning how to make non-losing and non-disastrous decisions, independently and in tempo, is one of the most challenging learning curves. If you really want to improve: suck it up.

When you play against the robots, a complete record of your play is kept.  You can look it over afterwards, and ask anyone else to.
It would indeed be unethical to have someone advise you as you are playing.  At that point, you're not playing - your advisor is, and you're falsely claiming the results are yours.  What you can do instead is ask someone to look over your play afterwards and help you figure out what you might have done differently.

A genuine question: who is being harmed by playing with an advisor, and if the answer is "no human", how is this unethical? I accept that if the OP later goes and states "this is me playing", that is unethical but in that case it is the false claim that is unethical, not the accepting advice in the first place.

@PhilipKendall: I'm assuming play in the context of some competition, even if the competition is for no stakes.

I'm not convinced that assumption is justified given the information in the question, but agree with you that it is certainly unethical in a competitive scenario. My assumption what that this was purely a learning exercise!

It would depend on the circumstances that he playing against robots. In competive play such as tournaments that would be cheating. However in open table- who is he cheating. No should care about open or training table results.


text:
Since the active player controls planes in the Planechase variant, does protection from a player protect a creature from planes too?
Alice and Bob play a game of Planechase. Bob controls a True-Name Nemesis and has chosen Alice as it entered the battlefield; the current plane is Mount Keralia with one pressure counter on it.
It is Alice's turn and she rolls the planer die, rolling the Planswalker symbol. When she planswalks Mount Keralia's first triggered ability triggers.
If I understand rule 901.6 correctly Alice controls Mount Keralia and True-Name Nemesis' protection ability will prevent the damage it would deal to it.
Is that correct?

This is correct. Because it is Alice's turn, she controls Mount Keralia:

901.6 The owner of a plane or phenomenon card is the player who started the game with it in their planar deck. The controller of a face-up plane or phenomenon card is the player designated as the planar controller. Normally, the planar controller is whoever the active player is.

And protection from [player] will prevent damage from objects that the player controls:

702.16k “Protection from [a player]” is a variant of the protection ability. A permanent or player with protection from a specific player has protection from each object that player controls and protection from each object that player owns not controlled by another player, regardless of that object’s characteristic values. Such a permanent or player can’t be targeted by spells or abilities the specified player controls and can’t be enchanted by Auras that player controls. Such a permanent can’t be equipped by Equipment that player controls, fortified by Fortifications that player controls, or blocked by creatures that player controls. All damage that would be dealt to such a permanent or player by sources controlled by the specified player or owned by that player but not controlled by another player is prevented.

Finally, a Plane does count as an "object":

Planes

311.1. Plane is a card type seen only on nontraditional Magic cards. Only the Planechase casual variant uses plane cards. See rule 901, “Planechase.”

Objects
109.1. An object is an ability on the stack, a card, a copy of a card, a token, a spell, a permanent, or an emblem.


text:
Are there any Pokemon cards banned in unlimited format?
The Pokemon website says that no cards are banned in unlimited format. Is this true? Are cards such as _____’s Pikachu or Ancient Mew banned? What about jumbo cards?

Unlimited format has no official tournaments, so it doesn't get much attention from Pokémon.  However, the general statement that no cards are banned is correct, though with some caveats as below.
Jumbo cards are banned in tournaments per a ruling in the Compendium:

No, you cannot. You may only use cards that have been released for TCG play in the standard size. Jumbo cards are artistic representations of the legal card's art.

___'s Pikachu is legal to play in the Unlimited format.
Ancient Mew would be illegal due to the different card back.

Are the only banned cards ones with different backs or different sizes?

Where the ruling about a different card back being illegal? Bulbagarden says Ancient Mew is banned because of the unreadable Runic, and also says that _____'s Pikachu is banned, and says: "Both Japanese prints have the clause '(This card cannot be used at official tournaments)' to the right of the illustrator name". I would post an answer, but I don't have more official references.

Same back is more of a common sense thing - it is referenced in some rulings, but not explicitly in the rules.  (Again, this is really a "tournament" ruling, which ... may or may not make sense for the context of this question, but there's nothing better really.) ___'s Pikachu doesn't have that text in English, and so I don't see why it wouldn't be legal in Unlimited formats here (but again there are no official Unlimited tournaments).

I'd also note that Bulbapedia seems to be referencing Wizards rulings, which are not necessarily valid any longer (Wizards hasn't controlled the game for twenty years now.). In fact, Ancient Mew was legal in Standard in Japan for a while (but never in the TPCi regions.)

@Joe For what it's worth, and it's probably not worth much, since what applies to one game obviously doesn't say much about what applies to others, but Magic The Gathering has tournament-legal double-faced and meld cards that don't have card "backs" (requiring sleeves or helper cards if you want to play with them). Although they haven't otherwise changed their card backs (apart from contraptions and attractions, which don't go in your regular deck and are part of non-tournament-legal sets in any case).

Yeah, this actually changes when TPC took over Pokémon TCG from Wizards, the first publisher of the Pokémon TCG!


text:
Are there official scrabble dictionaries in other languages?
In English Scrabble there is a official list of words that are allowed to be played. Are there official lists for other languages that have officially licensed versions of scrabble?
All languages would be helpful for what I’m doing but the most important ones I would need are:

Bulgarian
Danish
Faroese
Greek
Icelandic
Norwegian
Russian
Spanish
Ukrainian

There are some shown in ScrabbleMania but I don't know if they are 'official'.

Most versions of the Scrabble rules distributed with the game reference either a "Standard Dictionary" of whatever language the game is published in, or indicate that the players should agree on which dictionary is to be used before play starts.
The most recent Hasbro update has changed the US English rules to indicate the Merriam-Webster Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary (OSPD) should be used, but there is still a proviso that other dictionaries could be chosen:

You can play any word listed in The Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary (or the dictionary of your choice)

That said each competitive Scrabble organisation has rules that define a lexicon to be used for determining the legality of a word during play.
These range from simple lists of words, to sets of rules for languages with more compounding.
Here's a selection of some of the more established Scrabble bodies and their official word sources

Organization
Region
** Lexicon **

WESPA (World English-Language Scrabble Players Association)
Global
Collins Scrabble Words (CSW)

NASPA (North American Scrabble Players Association)
United States, Canada
NASPA Word List (NWL)

WGPO (Word Game Players' Organization)
North America
NASPA Word List (NWL)

Fédération Française de Scrabble
France
L'Officiel du jeu Scrabble (ODS)

Federazione Italiana Gioco Scrabble
Italy
Zingarelli dizionari of the current year

Panhellenic Scrabble Association
Greece
ΟΡΟΙ ΑΠΟΔΟΧΗΣ ΛΕΞΕΩΝ

Federación Internacional de Scrabble en Español
Spain
FISE 2 Lexicon (uses a set of rules, not a list)

Polska Federacja Scrabble
Poland
Oficjalny słownik polskiego scrabblisty

Asociación Argentina de Scrabble
Argentina
Selected by the Comisión Directiva for each tournament (can have multiple sources)

Malaysian Scrabble Association
Malaysia
CSW

Association des Joueurs de Scrabble de Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire
L'Officiel du jeu Scrabble (ODS)

Nigerian Scrabble Federation (NSF)
Nigeria
CSW

Yes.
For example: French. The official dictionary is made by la FÉDÉRATION INTERNATIONALE de SCRABBLE® FRANCOPHONE.
The Amazon site for France has it for sale:
https://www.amazon.fr/LOfficiel-Scrabble%C2%AE-F%C3%A9d%C3%A9ration-Internationale-Scrabble/dp/2035962463
Similarly, the Federacion Internacional de Scrabble en Espanol has put out an official Spanish-language one.
There may be others for other languages, for sure.


text:
Can a mono white with the option to use green mana or life to be transformed be used in a mono white deck?
I don't know the best way to word it in the title, but I have a mono white card that has the option to use green mana or life to transform the card. Now since the card color is white is it good to use in a mono white deck?

Are you talking about the card Tarkir Duneshaper?

Are you asking about the rules ("can it be used") or strategy suggestions ("is it a good idea")? The title of the question doesn't match the body there.

If you're talking about Commander or a close variant (Oathbreaker, Brawl, etc) note that those formats care about color identity, not color.

As murgatroid99 said, I'll assume you are referring to Tarkir Duneshaper. (To link to a card, type [mtg:CardName].) But "is it good to use" isn't clear enough for a single answer.
If your question is "can I legally put the card into my mono-white deck":

If you're playing any format but Commander, the answer is yes. In contrast to some card games like Hearthstone, Magic lets you put any card you want in a deck, even if your deck can't produce the colors of mana necessary to cast or activate it.
If you're playing Commander, the answer is no. In Commander, all cards must have a color identity that is a subset of your commander's color identity (see rule 903.4). If your commander is mono-white, then the Phyrexian green mana symbol in Tarkir Duneshaper is a symbol not in the commander's identity, so you can't include it.

If your question is "will I be able to transform the card in a mono-white deck", the answer is yes. The Phyrexian green mana symbol on Tarkir Duneshaper can be paid with {G} or 2 life. You can choose to pay 2 life and pay the remaining {4} with white mana.

Or there are all sorts of ways to generate green mana in a mono-white deck anyway.


text:
Dominion Hinterlands 2nd Edition Update Pack
Can I play Dominion Hinterlands 2nd Edition Update Pack without the original hinterlands expansion pack?
I know I need the full version of dominion for any of the expansions (and have that!)

Yes you can. The Update Pack will contain a complete set of kingdom cards for each of the 9 cards being added to Hinterlands 2nd Edition, and since Hinterlands did not include any additional components (like tokens or mats) you can combine these with any existing collection. In fact, if you have a full set of base cards and one other set of kingdom cards then you have everything you need for a single full game of Dominion.
This will not be true for all of the Update Packs - two of the cards in the Prosperity pack reference Victory Point tokens (which you could proxy), and a hypothetical future Alchemy Update Pack would presumably require you to have Potion cards.


text:
Finding a 90s mystery/haunted house game
I’ve been trying to remember the name of a game I used to play as a kid that would have come out in the 90s. Unfortunately my memory is hazy but here are the details I remember:

Portrait oriented board
The art on the board was a mansion
I want to say it was halloween or mystery themed
You would navigate through the house, using things like trapdoors and such

I have seen these in my search and confirmed they aren’t it:

Which Witch
Haunted House
Haunted Mansion
Ghost Castle
Clue
Creepy Towers

Hi. Could you clarify what you mean by "portrait oriented board"?

Is this 13 DeadEnd Drive?
The art is mansion based, the traps are interactive.
If my memory serves, I think the gameplay revolves around a group of party invitees squabbling over an inheritance. . .

Note that "13 dead-end drive" and "1313 dead-end drive" are actually slightly different games. Your first picture is "13 dead-end drive". "1313 dead-end drive" has more cartoony artwork, doesn't have the "portrait" mechanism, and instead has a character flowchart with flowing money.

Good catch. . . It looks like 1313 was a spinoff version. If the OP played it in the 90's, it's likely "13", not "1313".

I am probably shooting far off mark here, but I had a similar quest not long ago, my memory wasn't 100% but same idea: game I played in the 90's -- 96' or so. I eventually found my goal: Goosebumps Terror in the graveyard board game by Milton Bradley.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/813/goosebumps-terror-graveyard-game
I know it's not to your specifications but I'm trying to be helpful in crossing off alternative possibilities.
Cheers.


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Lord of the Ring LCG - Doubt on "Feint" (Core Set) functioning
Feint says
Combat Action: Choose an enemy engaged with a player. That enemy cannot attack that player this phase.
By playing this card, I'm creating a "can't"-type effect which prevents an enemy from attacking.
How this interact with shadow cards? Specifically:

Should I still deal the shadow card to the enemy or not?
If the answer to the previous question is "yes", should I reveal and eventually resolve the shadow card?

My doubt arise from the fact that I'm just preventing the "attack" of the enemy, and is not clear to me if the shadow card management is to be considered as an inner step of the entire (prevented) attack action OR is to be considered as a separate thing from the prevented attack action.
Thank you so much.

Yes, you should still deal the shadow card to the enemy even if you play Feint. Dealing shadow cards is a separate step from the enemy's attack, and it happens before you have a chance to play Feint. So, even if you prevent the enemy from attacking, they will still have a shadow card in play.
No, you should not reveal and eventually resolve the shadow card. The shadow card is only resolved if the enemy makes an attack. Since Feint prevents the enemy from attacking, the shadow card will remain unresolved and will be discarded at the end of the combat phase.
Here is the specific rule that covers this situation:
At the end of the combat phase, discard each unresolved shadow card in play.
The shadow card is unresolved; so, it will be discarded at the end of the combat phase.


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If 2 triggered abilities occur at the same time, can I play an instant before the 2nd trigger resolves?
I have a Derevi Blink deck...
I had Spark Double copy Derevi and have Skyward Eye Prophets on the field.
The when nothing as summoning sickness, I tap Skyward to have my draw or play a land. When I go to combat and attack with both Derevis will their triggers go on the stack to be resolved one at a time? If so can I resolve the 1st to untap Skyward, then in response to the 2nd Derevi trigger tap Skyward again, then let the 2nd Derevi trigger resolve to use Skyward effect for a 3rd and final time?

Note that if you connect with both Deveris, you will get four triggers, not just two. Each of them sees two creatures deal combat damage to a player, so each of them triggers twice. You can interleave activating the Prophet in between each of these untaps, as GendoIkari says.

Yes, you can do this. After a spell or ability on the stack resolves, each player gets priority again before the next thing on the stack resolves, so you will have the chance to activate abilities or cast instants after the first trigger resolves.
Do note that you have to choose targets when putting the triggered abilities on the stack, so you will have to choose to target Skyward Eye Prophets with both of the triggered abilities as you put them on the stack.


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Does "This replacement effect may apply more than once to the same event" ever matter?
There are two instances in the Magic: The Gathering comprehensive rules that say that a replacement effect may apply more than one time to the same event:

717.6. If a card with an Astrotorium card back would be put into a zone other than the battlefield, exile, or the command zone from anywhere, instead its owner puts it into the command zone. This replacement effect may apply more than once to the same event. This is an exception to rule 614.5.

903.9b If a commander would be put into its owner’s hand or library from anywhere, its owner may put it into the command zone instead. This replacement effect may apply more than once to the same event. This is an exception to rule 614.5.

Before the rule change that caused commander death to be handled as a state-based action rather than a replacement effect, this could clearly change the way in which cards that say "exile it instead of putting it anywhere else" interact with commanders. But that can't happen now that commanders can actually go to exile.
With the current version of the rules, are there any situations in which the rule "This replacement effect may apply more than once to the same event" actually has an impact?

No, there is currently no such interaction. The rule serves as a catch-all to prevent any such interaction in the future, so that a commander/Astrotorium card can never change zones without its owner getting the choice to move it to the command zone instead.
Rule 903.9b creates a replacement effect that moves the commander to the command zone. Its purpose is to guard against other replacement effects that could replace that movement event. For example, consider the following scenario:

My opponent casts Unsummon on my commander, returning it to my hand.
Rule 903.9b allows me to replace that effect with a move to the command zone. I choose to do so.
A hypothetical replacement effect reads as "if a card would move to the command zone, shuffle it into its owner's library instead". It applies to the event created by 903.9b.
Normally, my commander would now be shuffled into my library without me being able to prevent it, because 903.9b has already applied to that event. However, because of the exception it can apply multiple times, and I may again choose to put my commander into the command zone. I do so.
The hypothetical replacement effect cannot apply again because of 614.5, and my commander is finally put into the command zone.

To my knowledge, there is no replacement effect or chain of replacement effects that replaces moving a card to the command zone with moving to hand or library instead, and so step 3 of the above scenario can't happen, making the exception to 614.5 currently unnecessary.

Yep, I think the likeliest kind of possible effect would be "if this creature would leave the battlefield, put in in hand/library" akin to unearth style effects for exile.

"To my knowledge, there is no replacement effect or chain of replacement effects that replaces moving a card to the command zone" To further explain my edit to this sentence, Whip of Erebos is a card that does exactly that. Whip can replace an event that was already replaced by 903.9b. However, Whip sends the creature to exile, not hand or library, and so Whip has no further interaction with rule 903.9b.


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Playing a "lawful" card after the mah jong wish that does not fulfill the wish
just getting into tichu and i'm confused about one thing. when someone plays the mah jong card and creates a wish for a 5 for example, and the next person does not have a 5, the rules say even if that next person does not have a 5 that they can play a lawful card or pass. does that mean if they don't have a 5, they can play a 6? then it goes on to say that the wish remains until someone plays a 5. so after that person plays a 6, can someone play a 5? or no, since that's not of a higher rank than 6?
thank you.

For your first question: yes, if you do not have a 5, then you cannot fulfill the wish and you can play any legal play instead, including a 6.
For your second question: no, a player cannot play a 5 after a 6 has been played.
The wish does not exempt players from making only legal plays.
If you're currently playing single cards and a single 6 has been played, then no one can legally play a 5 (except in a bomb), because you can only play cards higher than 6.
The wish will remain in effect until someone can legally fulfill it.

When a player plays the Mah Jong, he is allowed to wish for
a certain rank (for example an 8 or an Ace, but not a special
card). The next player who has a card of the desired rank,
and can lawfully play it, must play it (possibly in a bomb! or
rarely in a sequence). A player who does not hold or cannot
play a card of the desired rank can play any lawfull card or
pass.
The wish remains in force until someone fulfils it.

Source


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Can Safeguard and Mysterious Shield protect from attack effects?
Alright so abilities Safeguard and Mysterious Shield definitions are both
Prevent all damage done to this Pokémon by attacks from your opponent's Pokémon ex and Pokémon V
So I just am just wondering if this can  stop the effects of a move that the Ex Pokémon does? I have some examples if we need them.

Damage is the number on the card the attacker is doing, or sometimes a number inside the attack text that includes the word "damage" but not "counters".  Effects that stop Damage do not stop other attack effects (including damage counters being placed).
See for instance this compendium article:

Q: I've noticed that some cards say "Does 10 damage to the Defending Pokémon", whereas others say "Put 1 damage counter on the defending Pokémon". Is there any reason for the different wording? I've spoken to someone who says that you do not apply weakness or resistance for attacks where it specifies Damage Counters; is this the case?

A: There is a difference. As you mention, weakness and resistance are not applied when placing counters. Also, things like Defender and Metal Energy will not block Placing Damage Counters. It will not trigger things like Base Set Machamp's Strike Back. In the steps of resolving an Attack, "placing Damage Counters" counts as an Effect of the attack, it is not part of "doing damage".


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Can Big Parasol Item card stop Regidrago VStar's one attack?
I feel like my awnser was in this post but just wanna check.
Should A Big Parasol on a Decidueye Protect me from Dragapult VMAX Shred
Me and a friend have been discussing that if the opponent's active pokemon has a big parasol tool card on it Regidrago VStar's Apex Dragon move just does nothing now.
And for context Big Parasol
As long as the Pokémon this card is attached to is in the Active Spot, prevent all effects of attacks from your opponent's Pokémon done to all of your Pokémon (Existing effects are not removed. Damage is not an effect.)
Then Apex Dragon for Regidrago VStar
Choose an attack from a Dragon Pokémon in your discard pile and use it as this attack.
I think it should still be able to work just if the move it uses does any other effect other then damage it does it doesn't do those effects just does the damage. But maybe I am wrong. I feel the one answer I skimmed over form the other post the best way to think of big parasol is a shield for effects for you Pokemon.

Correct.  Big Parasol protects the Pokémon it is attached to from the effects of attacks, like a shield; it does not affect the attacking Pokemon at all. Regidrago VStar’s attack Apex Dragon’s text doesn’t pass through that shield - it only impacts Regidrago VStar until the attack starts actually doing something to the opponent (after the attack to use is selected).


text:
151 Mew's using Regidrago VStar's attack
Ok so me and a friend where discussing this but can Mew use Regidrago VStar's Apex Dragon as it's move?
Mew's attack
Genome Hacking: Choose 1 of your opponent's Active Pokémon's attacks and use it as this attack.
Regidrago VStar's attack
Apex Dragon: Choose an attack from a Dragon Pokémon in your discard pile and use it as this attack.
I feel it should not work unless my opponent has a Dragon Pokémon in there discard pile. But my friend has been using my own discard pile.

Correct, Mew may use the attack but the text applies to the player using the attack (so the player using Genome Hacking may only use their own discarded dragon Pokémon’s attacks). Similarly, if you use Lost Mine (sableye) you would need ten in the lost zone yourself to be able to carry out the attack.


text:
Could Regidrago VStar use Haxorus' Dragon Dance?
So I was just reading my cards and realized maybe I messed up but could Regidrago VStar use a Haxorus Dragon Dance to its advantage or did I miss read it?
For context
Regidrago VStar's Apex Dragon
Choose an attack from a Dragon Pokémon in your discard pile and use it as this attack.
Haxorus's Dragon Dance
As long as this Haxorus is your active Pokémon, each of its attacks does 100 more damage (before applying Weakness and Resistance). You can't add more than 100 damage this way.
I now realize I was reading the Serebii page (https://serebii.net/card/breakthrough/111.shtml) and on there it says Pokémon and not Haxorus but just curious if this work or not.

Per this compendium entry:

Prior to the "Black & White" series, when a Pokemon refers to itself by name, interpret that card as though the text reads "this Pokemon". This has the practical effect of not including other Pokemon of the same name; if a Pokemon copies that text, it refers to itself, not the original Pokemon. Beginning with "Black & White", when a Pokemon refers to itself by name, this extends to other Pokemon of the same name; if a Pokemon copies that text, it refers to other Pokemon of the same name. Also, when a Pokemon refers to "this Pokemon", this has the practical effect of not including other Pokemon of the same name; if a Pokemon copies that text it refers to itself, not the original Pokemon.

(Bolding added).
So no, it would not increase Regidrago VStar’s subsequent attacks.

Interaction between Haxorus's Dragon Dance and an attack that copies another attack has received an official ruling that applies here:

Q: What happens if Zoroark uses its "Foul Play" attack to copy Haxorus' "Dragon Dance" attack? Would it apply to Zoroark or not (because its name is not Haxorus)?
A: Zoroark's Foul Play can choose Dragon Dance, but since its name is not "Haxorus" the attack will basically have no effect. Dragon Dance specifically refers to Haxorus, so any Pokemon not named Haxorus cannot receive the damage boost.
Source: TPCi Rules Team (2015-10-29)


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Can you evolve a Basic pokemon to its stage 2 with the TM Evolution?
So pretty much how the title says but can you use the Item tool card Technical Machine: Evolution to evolve a Basic bench Pokémon to its stage 2?
Technical Machine: Evolution
Choose up to 2 of your Benched Pokémon. For each of those Pokémon, search your deck for a card that evolves from that Pokémon and put it onto that Pokémon to evolve it. Then, shuffle your deck.
Why I am asking is because a friendship told you could. So just wanted a professional awnser.

@Allure Basic -> stage 2 is two evolutions. I think they are asking if you can pick the stage 1 evolved pokemon that they searched for as the second pokemon

You can't.
Unless a card says otherwise, you follow the usual evolution rules. A card that evolves from X is a card that has Evolves from X printed on it.
From Pokémon TCG Rulebook, chapter Turn Actions, part Evolve Pokémon:

If you have a card in your hand that says "Evolves from X," and X is the name of a Pokémon you had in play at the beginning of your turn, you may play that card in your hand on top of Pokémon X. This is called "evolving" a Pokémon.
You may evolve a Basic Pokémon to a Stage 1 Pokémon or a Stage 1 Pokémon to a Stage 2 Pokémon. (…)

I think the point of the question is that the card says "Choose up to 2 of your Benched Pokémon" and the asker wanted to know if you can choose the same Benched Pokémon twice to evolve it twice.

To clarify I was asking if you could skip stage one in general not just do the same one as the 2 pokemon. But I imagine that wouldn't be legal or allowed.

That's what this answer answers.


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Cribbage Tournament play
Two player competition. Player one miscounted her hand points, and moved her peg. As player two was counting her hand points, player one realized her error and wanted to add the discovered points. Was it too late? Did player two have a valid objection ? ( No muggins)

Quoting from the American Cribbage Congress Official Rules:

8.3 Pegging Incorrectly to the Player's Disadvantage
If the wrong number of points is pegged to the pegger's disadvantage (ie underpegging a forward score or overpegging a backward penalty), a correction is not permitted after the player's fingers are removed from the peg.

However, these are tournament rules. If you are choosing to not play Muggins, I recommend that all irregularities be treated more generously than in these rules. A good guideline for this might be:
If it is reasonably possible to restore the correct game state,
then such corrections are allowed. Usually this means "before the
next hand has been commenced by initiating the deal for it; and
before the game has ended by a correct peg into the final hole."

Either agree to play cut-throat, with muggins; or play generously all round.
Finally - you claim this to be "Tournament Play". If so, why are there no judges appointed to adjudicate according to the official tournament rules? Your claim there seems dubious.


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Barbarian Attack : Catan Cities & Knights
4 of us are playing
P1: 2 cities and 3 activated knights
P2: 2 cities and 1 activated knight
P3: 2 cities and 0 activated knight
P4: 2 cities and 0 activated knight
When barbarian attack, would player P2 also lose a city?

No, only the player(s) who contributed the least will lose a city. Players 3 and 4 are tied for the least, so they each lose one.

If the barbarians are stronger, they are victorious! If the barbarians win the battle, they pillage one or more cities.
Pillaged cities are reduced to settlements (replace the city piece with a settlement). The barbarians pillage one city belonging to the player who had the lowest total strength of active knights when the barbarians attacked. Any player who contributed no knights are automatically considered to have the lowest total strength of active knights. If various players tie for having the lowest total strength of active knights, each of those players loses 1 of their own cities.

https://www.catan.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/catan_c_k_2020_rule_book_200708.pdf


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Some Rummikub rules say melds with jokers can be split, but can the joker be split off?
I'm not "picking up" or replacing the joker. I'm using it as its assigned value, and not claiming it as a wild card.
So if there's a sequence on the board of
567J
And I have two eights, so I split to above sequence to make
567 J88
Is that legal? Picture attached.

Yes, this is legal.
From 2019 Rummikub rules:

Sets can be manipulated in many
ways (examples follow) as long as at the end of each round only legitimate sets remain and no loose tiles
are left over.

There are 4 ways to clear a joker from a meld:


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Seafaring and coastal deployments
Tonight we have seafaring skeletons who controlled the north sea on the 5 player board. There are 6 regions that are coastal. In normal play you can enter a new race from the coast. Does the seafarers prevent access to these regions?

No, players can still deploy into lands adjacent to the sea whether the sea is occupied or not. From the rules:

First Conquest

A player's race deploying on the map for the first time must enter it by conquering one of its border Regions (i.e. a Region adjacent to the edge of the board or one whose shore is on a Sea adjacent to the edge of the board, even if the sea is occupied by a Seafaring Race).


text:
Monopoly Deal question
I used a Forced Deal to exchange my Wildcard for a Green property. I placed my Wildcard on my opponents Boardwalk and then used my Deal Breaker to take that set. Was that a legal move?

You don't get to choose which set their property goes in.

Exactly! So how is the wildcard placement decided then?

Why would you expect anybody except the owner of the property to place it?

I would guess that the rules say the owner chooses the placement in order to prevent someone from playing that card, making a set and stealing it with another card like you did.

No, this was not legal,unless your opponent willingly chose to place the Wildcard on their Boardwalk. From the official FAQ:

Can you move Property Wildcards already on the table around to different Monopoly property sets?

Yes, a player can move wild cards around as many times as they want as long as it is done during their turn. Once their turn is over, they cannot move their cards around. The only exception is when a player plays a Force Deal card and swaps one of your properties, then you can arrange the new property in your property section accordingly.

So your opponent would get to choose where they wanted the wild card, not you.

I guess that answers the question. So even if it was not my opponents turn, they get to decide where the Wildcard gets placed, thus defeating my Deal Breaker gambit. Thanks!


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How should the final round be carried out in Ticket To Ride?
The rules state that when a player ends their turn with two wagons or less, the final turn begins and that all players will be entitled to their last turn.
In this case there are 5 players, the first to move is player 1, the last player is player 5.
If player 3 ends his turn with 2 wagons, what is the correct ending of the game?

Player 4 takes his last turn and so on until player 3 closes the game
Player 4 and Player 5 complete the round and then there will be one last turn for all 5 players
Player 4 and Player 5 complete the turn, and the game ends

In the first case, player 4 and 5 would play one turn less.
In the second case, everyone would play the same number of turns, but player 3 may not have any further moves available.
In the third case, players 1 and 2 would be unaware that this was their last hand, while 3, 4 and 5 would know.

There are many variants of TTR, please be specific about exactly which one you are asking about.

@PhilipKendall whilst that is true, certain core mechanics (e.g. exchanging train cards for basic routes) are consistent. I'd have guessed that this would be one of those that doesn't vary

@PhilipKendall while the series is referred to as Ticket To Ride, that is also the name of the original version and variant, so it is possible they were being specific here.

Meta question here :) https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2115/what-should-the-ticket-to-ride-tag-represent

1. Player 4 takes his last turn and so on until player 3 closes the game
The manual for Ticket to Ride says this:

Game End

When one player’s stock of colored plastic trains gets down to only 0,1 or 2 trains left at the end of his turn, each player, including that player, gets
one final turn. The game then ends and players calculate their final scores.

This seems pretty clear, it doesn't matter which player started the game, only which player gets down to two or less trains for where the final round starts. Every player will know that it is their final turn and every player will get a turn in the final round.


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Help me find the name of this collectible card game with unusual mechanics
I remember watching a video a while back about a (I think it is a collectible) card game that had some really strange and interesting mechanics. I can't find the video anymore so I was wondering if somebody knows what the game is called. In the video, some MTG or Yu-gi-oh player - can't remember which one - that hasn't played the game was shown cards and had to take a guess how good they are. Here's what I remember about the cards shown:

One of the cards was called something like 'christmas gift', or at least that was the theme of the card, and I remember it getting a bonus effect if you play the card in december. Something like 'Draw an extra card if it is currently december.'
For another card you could choose to do an evil laugh while playing it, and if you do, it also gains some bonus effect.

There isn't much more I remember, just that it had some really odd mechanics that you wouldn't see in other games. Does anybody know what it's called?

About 15 years ago, a friend of mine had a Magic the Gathering deck with a James Bond parody theme. It seems like it could fit your description. Also, completely different, the children's game "Elixir" could fit your description.

Munchkin is known for having additional accessories with different abilities.

Is it possible you were looking at silver-bordered Magic the Gathering cards?  These non-tournament-legal cards often included mechanics that wouldn't be used in normal sets.
Your example #1 sounds like the holiday promo card Some Disassembly Required.  I couldn't find a good match for example #2, but it sounds like the sort of thing that might have been printed in an Un- set.

Could this be Holiday Fluxx? Those kind of things sound like the wacky rules modification cards that exist in Fluxx games.

That's not quite it. The game I am thinking about is much closer to the usual collectible card games like MTG, Yu-gi-oh or Hearthstone. There are spells and creatures like in those games. The christmas card is a bit odd, but the game still had a fantasy setting similar to the other ones

Fluxx games can be combined to some degree, so maybe a mix?

It might be Sentinels of the Multiverse, specifically the Guise deck.  Sentinels has cards which stay in play and function a bit like enchantments, artifacts, and creatures, but also things that resolve and go to the discard pile when played (one-shot) like an instant/sorcery.  So that might be where the familiarity with magic comes in.
Now, Guise is the Sentinels equivalent of Deadpool, so he does weird 4th wall breaking things.  One of his cards says:

If you throw your hands in the air and yell, "Woo!" you may play a card.

Which might be what you were thinking of when you remembered an evil laugh.  In other words, some out of game action allows you to do an additional thing in game.
The Christmas theme could be because of the "Santa Guise" character variant, which allows you to put people's cards face down on the field, and flip them up later (like opening presents).