text:
Twilight Struggle, Longer game
My friend and I play a lot of Twilight Struggle and we have a lot of fun with it. The thing is we only reach the late war 1 in 5 times so far.
Is this how it is supposed to go or are we doing something wrong?
After an answer:
USSR and USA both win equal amount of times.
Every ending of the game is because of victory points

Asking "Is this how it is supposed to go or are we doing something wrong?" is a good question that can be answered definitively by anyone with a good understanding of how Twilight Struggle normally plays.  Asking "does someone have ideas..." is a poor fit for Stack Exchange.

How should i rephrase that?

I would just drop the last sentence.  Everything before it makes for a good question.  Then, once you get an answer, you could ask a separate question about how to ensure Twilight Struggle makes it to the endgame.

@Joe done :) thx for the feedback

1 in 5 getting to the Late War isn't much of a sample size, but it does appear to be on the low side. Do you have more details on why it ended early? DEFCON, Europe Control or 20 VPs? Is it USSR or USA that's winning early? Is one of you always winning early?
I found this spreadsheet from this link depicting stats for a pair of players, and they get to the Late War about half the time. My own experience is 17 of 44 games decided in the Late War, which is on the low side because my opponents were newer and overmatched (I was 36-8). Games reach the Late War more often if both players are evenly matched.

edited my question :)

Hmm best way would be to play against an experienced player or let one spectate to point out rules or strategies you're missing (combats groupthink). With wins at 20 VPs, one side simply ends up dominating nearly every scoring region? That should not be easy unless the cards really come out unluckily. Be sure to scrape out 1-2 VPs with cards if you're close to losing via 20 VPs. Most importantly, keep exploring on your own terms and thinking of new ways to exploit your opponent, and see if this improves after another 5 games.

But me and my friend are both equally experienced and we both win equal amount of times, score so far is 7-6 in my favor

In TS, this is fairly normal and the game can end quickly at any time. Better equally matched players would have a higher chance of getting to the end. Going to the end is not necessary, and ending the game early is part of the tension.

Okay but how would you prolong a game?

You would do well to read some of the strategy on http://twilightstrategy.com. Without seeing you play it is impossible to tell, but there are some general techniques for prolonging a game.
One thing which might be preventing your games from reaching the end-game is if you are not doing much to sabotage your opponent's plans, resulting in sudden large victory point gains. As a general rule, as well as trying to dominate/control regions yourself, you should be looking to prevent your opponent from dominating and controlling regions as well. This way victory point gains will normally be in the 1-4 range rather than the 5-8 range or even higher. This will prolong the game since, if you are evenly matched, the main way one of you is likely to win early by points is to suddenly score 2-3 high-scoring regions in a row; if the victory point gains are lower then scoring 3 in a row will not end the game and will be offset when the other player's regions are scored.
Another factor which may be ending the game early is if you are not keeping track of which cards (especially scoring cards) are still to come before the next reshuffle. If there are only 2 or 3 regions left before the next reshuffle, and you are behind on points, you should be playing heavily into those regions to make sure you get what points you can and prevent yourself losing (of course if you are not immediately threatened with losing then this sort of short-term strategy would not necessarily be best).


text:
Fury of dracula: skipping your turn as the hunters
Apparently in the game (Fury of dracula, third edition) you, as a hunter, can skip your turn and do nothing. Personally I think this defeats the purpose of supplying at night. I think a lot of people will skip their night turn in later turns because they have a big disadvantage supplying as that could be there only action left.
From the rules reference book:

During the hunter phase, each hunter performs one action during the
  day and one action during the night.

During each day and each night, hunters perform actions in activation    order.
Hunters can only perform move actions during the day.
If a hunter is in a sea zone during the day, he must move by    sea—he cannot    pass.
If a hunter is in a sea zone during the night, he must pass—he       cannot perform an action.
If a hunter is delayed, he must stand his    figure upright instead    of performing an action.
A hunter can forfeit his action by passing.

Related Topics: Movement, Reserve a Ticket, Search, Supply, Trade

You can find the pdf here.
Isn't this a big disadvantage for dracula?
This way he will never/almost never get any dracula event cards late in the game and will be on his own with the cards he has.
Is there a way to forego this rule or would that make it to difficult for the hunters?

Which version of the game and where in the rule book do you find this?

@NathanHase I'll edit the question and add that in

It would still be good to specify which version you're playing. There are three versions of this game. The original from 1987, 2nd ed from 2006 and 3rd ed from 2015.

@NathanHase It's in the description

While passing a Hunter turn has the potential to deny Dracula a card, it will surely make the Hunter turn non-productive. I would consider this to be a wash, generally speaking.
Only one situation forces the player to pass:

If a hunter is in a sea zone during the night, he must pass.

The benefits/detriments of passing will be situation specific. Perhaps during the late game as the Hunters close in on Dracula it would be beneficial for one Hunter to pass in order to get to the next Hunter. There are many potential scenarios to consider.
That said, passing is generally unlikely. It is in the rules as a realistic option that may occasionally be useful as well as legitimizing the forced pass by making passing an action that can be taken deliberately.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
In case of same card in both player
Suppose two players in a game of poker (assume Texas Hold'em) have cards with the same values. For example, Player A and Player B have the cards 4 & 9.
The board shows a 2,3,4,7, and 8 face up.
Who would be the winner, Player A or Player B?

This question is already answered on Poker Stack Exchange.

It is also already answered here.

... But to avoid sending people who found this question around to others, the short answer is that the two players tie and split the pot down the middle (any indivisible fraction remaining in the pot for the next hand).

That is incorrect.  The remaining dollar (or fraction of a dollar, if you're playing microstakes) is awarded to the player in worst position.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Can a player get the second place points with no Maki Rolls in Sushi Go?
In a two player game of Sushi Go!, if only one player has Maki Rolls they would get the 6 points since they have the most of that type of card. Does the second player get the 3 points since they technically have the second most amount, or do they have to have at least one Maki Roll card to be able to get the 3 points?

You have to have at least one Maki Roll to score. This clarification is missing from the Gamewright English rules, but some other versions (including this German one) include it.


text:
Can I Mindslaver my opponent and then cast his Panglacial Wurm and have it come under my control?
If I Mindslaver my opponent and I play one of his rampant growths can I cast one of his Panglacial Wurms and have it come under my control?

No.
You seem to misunderstand what controlling another player does. It doesn't allow you to take their turn, or use their cards. It instead allows you to make all decisions they would make. This means that if they have a Rampant Growth, you can force them to play it. You do not actually get to play it; you would not get the land. They would still be the controller of Rampant Growth.
Similarly, any creature they cast (because you forced them to) would be under their control just like normal. Panglacial Wurms is no different. Its ability lets your opponent cast it at a time other than normal, from a place other than normal, but it still is just like any other creature spell once cast, and would enter the battlefield under the control of the player who cast it (which would be your opponent, even if your opponent is controlled by you).

Controlling Another Player

714.3. Only control of the player changes. All objects are controlled by their normal controllers. A player who’s being controlled during his or her turn is still the active player.
714.5. While controlling another player, a player makes all choices and decisions the controlled player is allowed to make or is told to make by the rules or by any objects. This includes choices and decisions about what to play, and choices and decisions called for by spells and abilities.

And from the rulings on Mindslaver:

You don’t control any of the other player’s permanents, spells, or abilities.

and

You choose which spells the other player casts, and make all decisions as those spells are cast and when they resolve. For example, you choose the target for that player’s Shock, and what card that player gets with Diabolic Tutor.

From a strategic point of view, the reason you want to control a player isn't that you get to steal any permanent spells that they could afford to cast. It's that you could do things such as attack with creatures that will easily die, cast harmful instants and sorceries targeting themselves instead of you, maybe sacrifice all of their good creatures if they have an ability that allows them to do so, etc. So you can still do a lot of powerful things with the ability, but you can't just take their creature spells as your own.

Nothing sweeter than using mindslaver to make your opponent fling their big creature at themselves.

@corsiKa Especially if you happen to have It That Betrays in play!


text:
Trying to find the name of this patience-style game
I was taught this two-pack version of patience a few years ago and want to know if it has an official name or not.
Two packs are shuffled together. 8 columns of 8 rows of cards are layed out face up on the table- 64 cards in total. The rest of the cards are faced down to the side of the table and turned over one at a time.
Any card may be placed on any other card with a value one above it (ie. Any 3 can be played on any 4 etc) but only if they are the same suit can cards be moved in groups. The only cards that can be placed on an empty column is one of the kings.
The aim is to clear the table into 8 stacks from ace to king above the table like in 'traditional' solitaire games.
Does anyone know if it has an official name?

This sounds like a 2-deck variation of the game, 'Golf'. The wikipedia page lists it as a starting with a 7 x 5 card layout. This website has a 2-deck version, which starts with a 9 x 7 card layout.
More rules or game play example might help to narrow it down.

No, it's not the game Golf, since the movement of card don't work like described.

Looking through my copy of "The complete patience book" - an old tome indeed, the nearest I can see is "Persian", sometimes called "Bezique" which plays as you've said but using a deck without 6s,5s,4s,3s and 2s.

"tomb" or "tome"? The former is where one buries rich people; the latter an old large book.

Spider Solitaire? It's a pre-loaded game on Windows.... I could be wrong but it sounds exactly the same. Check your PC games and try it.
Note that in the PC version you can select whether to play with all 4 suits or just one or two.

Spider is not on a 8 x 8 grid...

Well, it's not the Spider Solitaire game, since it's not dealt with all cards faced up. It normally also uses more the 8 columns of cards.

This game is named Martin in our game BVS Solitaire Collection: https://www.bvssolitaire.com/rules/martin.htm

Please read our guidance on self promotion, consider editing this and raise a moderator flag and this can be undeleted.  It appears to be the right answer.  Thanks!

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


text:
How could I prototype a board game with a variety of units using abstract icons?
I'm pretty fuzzy in terms of what board game I want to create, and I often find myself using normal dice for the units, which is often messy and confusing (were 1s or 2s archers? Whose mage was die 5?).
I saw some Story cubes having arrows and fireballs and skulls on them, so they could prove useful as multifunctional tokens for generating ideas and interactions.
Could you recommend me a particular set or an alternative to them?

Any reason for story cubes specifically? For prototyping they are probaly very expensive, especially compared to just using cardboard tokens or something.

Not an answer (as they are not story cubes) but you could grab some wooden cubes a la https://www.walmart.com/ip/75-Wood-Craft-Blocks-Natural-Wooden-Unfinished-Hardwood-Blocks-Square-0-6-Cubes/383569558 and put whatever you want on them

@J.Fox I think that might be the best solution, it solves the underlying issue (clearly identifying what a die's side means for prototyping). Might be worth a full answer.

@Malco If you think it's worth a full answer I'll write something up.

@J.Fox I have recommended the Asker edit the question to make it a bit more clear what their underlying issue is. Your answer will probably become more relevant if they make the edit, but it might be something to keep an eye on

Rather than using story cubes (which as noted are probably going to run you a fair chunk in bulk and aren't necessarily customizable), you might be better off just picking up some blank wooden cubes such as the ones found here or here.

Probably a lot cheaper, and you can put whatever you'd like on them instead of having to settle for what's on the story cubes. You could also have some stickers printed, for example at Game Crafter you can upload designs and have them printed onto half-inch stickers: see here.
Note that I personally have not used Game Crafter's stickers so I can't vouch for the quality, but I've gotten the cubes from Amazon before and they are pretty nice.

Yeah, this'd work for me. I see how what I asked was an XY problem-thing.

Just as a continuation - Lords of Waterdeep uses orange cubes like the ones in the image to represent warriors, white cubes to represent priests, etc.

You can get a pack of 500 colored, 1cm cubes for like $12 on Amazon.  You get 10 colors, 50 cubes of each.... looks like the price is currently up to $17, still much cheaper than the wood cubes.


text:
Handling multiple "timers" on the board and player mat
The game I'm working on might feature a number of "timed" events, such as:

a big ability requiring a cooldown before it can be used again
a summoned or undead unit decaying over time
a bomb timing down until explosion
mines and factories generating resources over time (presumably up to a cap)

For ease of use, one's timers only tick at the beginning of one's turn, which is also when they get action points.
What could be some intuitive mechanisms to model these, preferrably in a unified way, that's not easy to forget or tedious? Bonus points if it blends in with an action point pool of varying size.
Edit:
I plan on using timers around the 1-10 range, but they could be found in all sorts of areas, as I've said.

There are several ways to implement timers in board games

Tokens. Games like Paper Tales or Pixel Tactics (starting from 2nd set) use addition/removal of tokens from game components to track passage of time. Like this:

this option works well for cards (or other components you can easily store tokens upon) with relatively small number of simultaneous timers per player (up to 3 in Pixel Tactics and up to 4 in Paper Tales) and small number of ticks.
Dice. Pretty much anywhere you would use token counters, you can substitute them with dice.Example:

In this case instead of
adding/removing tokens you just increment/decrement a die.
Difference here is mostly personal preference, but if you operate
big number of ticks, managing d20 or couple of d6 is much easier and
clearer than pile of tokens.
Time track. Your purposed solution falls into this category, but usually games like Bestiary of Sigillum move track itself rather than items on it. In game it looks like this (on the right):

and this video(russian language) shows how it operates. Basically, each ability has its own token. When ability is used, that token is placed on appropriate number on time track, say, 4. Time track moves one tick each turn and cooldown number for that token changes. When it passes 1, token is returned back and it means that ability is ready for next use.
Another game Tavarua uses similar mechanic, but with segmented
linear track: video example. Both this systems are best for tracking a
lot of timers simultaneously, since they update all of them  with single operation.
I remember an example of time track on which objects are moved rather than track itself. Star Wars: Rebellion uses it as production queue

+1. Lords of Waterdeep uses option 1, with tokens being placed on cards at the beginning of each round. This could easily be extended to place tokens at the beginning of each player's turn (or just one player), as well as having some effect happen when a specified number of tokens are accumulated on a particular card.

Not sure if this is the right way to offer a suggestion I have thought of myself for feedback, but...
A time bar
Labelled 0-5 or so, various items are put on the time bar, and everything is brought one step down at the beginning of my turn. Normally, most of my action points are just set at "1" when used, to be regained next turn. However...

In this case, the player has taken some more complex actions and placed tagged (#3, #5) duplicate time-tokens on the bar.
He has summoned a decaying zombie (a duplicate of which is placed on the timebar, the original being on the board), which took two AP and one "ultimate" point to cooldown 3 (thus locking in both ability power and acting power to buy some temporary forces). The zombie being on cooldown 3 means it will die upon reaching 0. The player will also regain the powerful special token upon the spell's cooldown.
The player has also dropped a bomb (somewhere on the board. A duplicate is on the timebar) which will explode in 2 turns. This costed him just one action point. Bomb #3 will explode on the board upon its time-token reaching 0.
The player has one more AP this turn, which can be used to move, attack or throw another bomb.
Edit:
I've developed a full engine out of this, and essentially you only need numbered tokens on the bar to represent situations to handle on the board.

I would recommend building your own timer out of something like card stock with spinning wheel, something similar to the design below (pardon the MSPaint):

The Bottom layer:
The base of the Timer, it holds everything else.
The Middle Layer:
It has four support posts in the corners and a central wheel that can spin freely. The wheel has been subdivided into 8 sections with the number 8-0 printed on, you can subdivide it further if you wish.
The Top layer:
It has a small notch in the bottom to allow you to easily spin the wheel. It has also been subdivided into 8 sections, each section has a little window cut into it so that you can see the numerals on the wheel beneath.
How to use the wheel:
Say you want something to happen in three turns, the player would simply place a token or marker on the wheel where the three currently is. At the beginning of each turn simply turn the wheel one mark clockwise, when the marker is next to the number 0, 3 turns have passed and the effect will happen. This has the advantage of letting the player keep track of multiple different cooldowns, without having to move a whole bunch of tokens on a timeline each turn.

For a similar "wheel" or "clock-face" idea, see how it's done in Ora et Labora. Its tokens increase with time; but to implement OP's decrease-with-time mechanic, you just spin the wheel's "clock-hand" counter-arrowwise.

@Quuxplusone I like the little sweep hand on the counter you linked, makes it easier to turn the counter, and forces the tokens off the board as it turns to 0.

Building on the timeline answer:  If you have a board already, put a timeline around the edges - a strip of squares/hexagons/triangles representing turns. Each box that can hold tokens that indicate that certain events will happen which this turn is reached. (Any actions that occur every n-turns, regardless of game play, can be directly printed on the board.)
Another token shows which turn it is now, and is progressed by one each turn, sweeping up the tokens as it goes. When it gets to the end of the board, it can wrap around [which means there is a limit to how far in the future you can plan, but no limit to how long the game can last]
This has the benefits of:

only requiring one token to move one square, each turn, rather than moving all the tokens.
no moving parts that spin and cause tokens to shift.
still intuitive.

Oh, yeah, you reminded me of Red November system. Although it doesn't have single time marker, but separate time marker for each player. https://boardgamegeek.com/image/643298/red-november?size=medium


text:
Does this mining mechanic add genuine choice to my game?
To be concise, I am designing a game based on resource/risk/conflict management. Units will be carrying around several piles of resources, which also power and boost actions like movement, attacking and mining.
I want the resource acquisition to be tactical/exciting as well. My current idea is going up to a resource node, setting its difficulty to a 2-6 number, and expending resources to roll as many dice as resources expended. Dice that come up greater than or equal to the difficulty yield difficulty resources each.
As such, a roll of [6 5 2 2] against a node of diff 5 yields 2*5=10 resources, with 4 expended to roll. A net gain of 6.
My question: Does resetting a node's difficulty provide a genuine "steady stream vs risky motherlode" choice?
I've modelled this process, and the means vary less than expected while the maximums and deviations burst up as difficulty goes up. Does this mean there is genuine choice?
The modelled process

This right away makes me think Stoneage. I think the sum/difficulty is a much less chaotic mechanic

Instead of modeling you can compute these results exactly. If you roll n dice at difficulty d, the variance will be [d * n * (d-1)/6 * (7-d)/6], and the mean net gain will be [d * n * (7-d)/6 - 1]. Both scale linearly with n, so here are the mean (measured in Net Gain Per Die) and variance for each value of d:
-----------------------
| d | Mean | Variance |
-----------------------
| 1 | 0    | 0        |
-----------------------
| 2 | 0.7  | 0.3      |
-----------------------
| 3 | 1    | 0.7      |
-----------------------
| 4 | 1    | 1.0      |
-----------------------
| 5 | 0.7  | 1.1      |
-----------------------
| 6 | 0    | 0.8      |
-----------------------

As you can see, there's definitely some actual choice here. 6 looks pretty useless (and 1 is entirely pointless - even if you didn't explicitly disallow it in the rules, no one would have reason to pick it), but the others are all somewhat reasonable and come in pairs - e.g. assuming you want the maximum average output (1 resource), do you want the lower variance that 3 offers or the higher one of 4? And are you willing to pay a little in expected output (down to 0.7) to get the extreme consistency of 2 or the extreme variance of 5? I'm not sure how much practical difference this will make to your game though; I'd have to know more about the game first and it'll also be a matter of opinion.


text:
Does die unfairness visibly influence real-world games?
I'm thinking about designing some custom dice, and the easiest way to prototype would just be to put stickers/paint on wooden cubes.
Does their fairness (clearly imperfect, especially so with artisanal dice) actually come up in real life, or is die fairness more of a theoretical problem? How can I roll dice so that their "unfairness" is dampened?
How often have you noticed a die being unfair in real life?

One thing to remember about dice is the way you roll them can have a big impact on how fair or unfair they are so it is not just on the quality of the dice to determine fairness.

Related: Using cowrie shells as dice.

Loaded dice have a venerable history in gambling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice#Loaded_dice

Can I recommend a trip to ebay for blank dice and printable sticker sheets?  I've done this in the past for prototyping and it's a very cheap way of having basically fair dice.

Rolling dice in a way to dampen unfairness (if possible, it really isn't since modifying the way you roll just introduces a different unfairness) would only compensate for the player compensating for the dice. Not to mention dice made from unbalanced material would end up with different unfairnesses, no way to deal with them all the same way.

@xorsyst is right. Amazon has 50 blank dice for under $10 as my first result there, ebay has 25 for $3 right now. stickers on these are your best bet for fairness of the dice in prototyping, though your production model will need some care as to how you intend to handle the balance, unless you go with stickers in production (not really recomended) without knowing the specifics of the faces, there's not much more we can suggest.

It sounds to me like the question really is: is the margin of error for the physical dice great enough to meaningfully skew the results in play testing.  You are much better at statistics than I, but my feeling is, if the margin of error is not slim, you might need to use an algorithm for rolling until you can get balanced, physical dice...  But, Andrew's suggestion seems quite sound, b/c magic marker on blank dice won't affect the rolls.

@DukeZhou Just handle every possible roll combination, be aware of how things combine, depending on the way your dice work (hard to get more specific without knowledge of the faces) and treat each possible combination as an equal result for testing mechanics. This won't work for test games, but it does give you the results needed for evaluating the effects of individual rolls.

I think all it's really possible to say here is that yes, it's a real potential problem. Dice can be unfair, and if they are, you can't really avoid it with rolling technique, and it will skew your game.
I think it's fairly uncommon with commercial games, but I'm not sure how that's relevant to your homemade dice. For what it's worth, my copy of Small World has a wooden die that I eventually found to be slightly unfair (based on test rolls, it has a statistically significant bias), so if it can happen with commercially manufactured wooden dice, I wouldn't be optimistic about homemade ones.
For your actual problem, initial playtesting with custom dice, I would personally just use regular dice with a mapping from numbers to your custom dice faces. If that bothers you too much, or you're to the point where you really need to be prototyping the actual design, I'd put stickers on real dice (preferably blank - it's easier, and they're likely more fair), rather than wooden cubes, so you know they started out as fair as possible, and if the stickers are the same size and placed the same on all the faces, you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

Don't use real dice, they are actually unfair (as laid out in my answer below) but their unfairness is handled by the numbers in the dice, if your faces are custom you could deal with it but it is better to get blank balanced cubes and sticker on them, this handles the pip fairness issue.

@Andrew Properly made real dice are fair, and are certainly more fair than homemade wooden cube dice.

While I agree that they are more fair than any wooden dice, the blank cube starts out fair and balanced, then 1 and 6 are placed opposite each other, with 1 having 1/6 the amount drilled out, the same with 2 and 5 (2/5) and 3 and 4 (3/4). This creates a weight imbalance in the cubes.

I understand the issue you're describing, but not all dice have it.

I've edited slightly. I still don't think that "don't use real dice" is a helpful thing to say, though. They're all better than the OP's proposal, and if you want to be careful about fairness among the choices for real dice, I would say "use the blank kind". Those are still real dice.

Fair point, I wasn't meaning to say use something other than dice, and technically yes they are dice still, I was meaning to say to not use traditional dice if you are looking to make it truly balanced. With OP's custom facing, the balance issues in a pip faced d6 will show differently then they do on an actual d6, particularly if different dice have stickers on different sides.

Dice fairness is a real issue, not only in imperfections in the material, which would be more common in wood or any natural material, but also the way the faces are designed, 6 is opposite 1 on a traditional dice, the weight of the 1 side is higher on the traditional die as more is drilled out to make the 6.
There have been many ways attempted to handle this issue in the past, sometimes holes for pips on a die are larger if there are less of them, removing the same material for each size, other times the sides have numerals not pips, allowing for a more equal removal of material, the other largely suggested option is printing or stickers, adding the same amount to each face to show the difference. Some games handle the unfairness of dice by changing the target as time goes on and using a combined score between multiple dice (though multiple dice introduces it's own unfairness as the edge combinations are rarer than the average, there are many more ways to hit a 7 on 2 traditional dice than a 2 or 12), Craps for instance does both of these.

Great answer re: holes for pips  (Just had to say it!)   However, I might rethink categorizing "edge rarity" as unfairness, as opposed to a distinct probability distribution, because Catan players seem to love that effect: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/nick/settlers/DiceOddsSettlers.html

@DukeZhou true, that he rarity of edge values when more and more dice are added is probability distribution, the unfairness for that potentially comes into play from game design, more than the probability of the role itself.

I guess my main point was that such distributions can be useful.  I'm been thinking a bit about mixed dice, like a white d6 for + and a black d6 for -.  Caps the max at +5/-5.  Or a d6 with [1,1,1,2,2,3], where you want the integers small, but still want a varied distribution.  The possibilities are endless.  But you make a good point that these probability distribution must to be analyzed, and harnessed by the designer in a conscious manner to be useful.

It's also worth pointing out that the unfairness of dice is fair... if everyone uses the same dice. Since every player experiences the same unfairness equally, if may be unfair in the roll results but it is fair between the players of the game. This is also true of different traditional dice, the size of pips, as long as they are the same across the die, would have the same effect on the fairness of each die, assuming no balance issues in the cube the die was made from.

It's definitely not just theoretical - if say in Settlers of Catan one of your dice was unfair, it would skew the probabilities of the number coming up and thus screwing up the strategy.
Fair dice also makes it easier to properly balance the game. I would suggest using website such a http://anydice.com/ to verify your game is properly balanced.

Nice reference to http://anydice.com/ for testing.  It's bewildering that this answer was downvoted!  (The OP was asking about validating his system through testing, so this is the most practical answer, from a game design standpoint.)

(I didn't downvote) - yes, anydice is a great resource. But this answer is rather incoherent. "Fair dice also makes it easier to properly balance the game..." - yes, and cards that are all cut the same size makes it easier to shuffle. These truisms don't really cut to the heart of the matter. It's absolutely paramount to have dice be as "fair" as possible. This question is almost better suited for a physics forum.

@TheChaz2.0 Fair points.  And I know for a fact, the OP uses anydice extensively.  Nevertheless, I still feel this short post will be useful for those not aware of the resource.  Also worth pointing out that loaded dice in Catan would only be unfair if they were intentionally introduced by a player who knows the imbalance.  If all players are unaware of the flaw, the game is still fair, just won't be as predictable.  But for the OP's question, related to testing, unbalanced dice will skew the evaluation of the mechanics.

Hi. Thank you for the feedback, I admit my answer could have been better structured and more informative. My point was simply if the dice aren't fair in a significant way, all bets are off. You can't rely on "special" rolling techniques and even if all players are unaware of the unfairness, if in game of Catan 6 is more likely than an 8 then whoever chooses the former has unfair an advantage.

@DukeZhou I'm not sure "easier to shuffle cards" is analogous to "easier to balance game probabilities", as the latter could be game-breaking. I do agree though that I did not actually answer the OP's question. Would be interesting to see a physical study of dice probabilities and to what degree they have affected various games.

True.  The shuffle of the cards would definitely be different from the action of dice, and affect distribution. (Thanks for bringing that up--I was in the realm of "Platonic ideals" when I proposed it;)  However, you might find this of interest re: dice https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/339984/152803

@DukeZhou cheers for that! Lots of interesting thoughts and related links


text:
When to leave the 20 point?
I'm relatively new to backgammon, and something I often struggle with is deciding when to leave the 20 point once I've made it. Furthermore, I also sometimes struggle with whether or not to leave the 13 point before or after the 20 point. Are there any rules of thumb which can help guide my decision when it isn't immediately obvious?

Are you ahead or behind? When you are ahead clear the 20 point first; when behind clear the 13 point first as you must often slow yourself down to setup a back-game.

That makes sense, and now that you mention it I realize that I have been instinctively doing something similar so I can begin the race while ahead, or prolonging the start of the race while behind. I think your comment is the start to a good answer...

I assume you are talking about leaving the 20 with one checker. In such case, Try to leave when ahead in race AND when your opponents home board and/or outfield attackers are on decline. You need to grasp the gravity of the situation from all these aspects before you make such drastic decision. "Is my home board going to be weaker on the next roll then it is now", "is my opponent's home board going to be weaker or stronger the next roll", "is my opponent's outfield attacking checkers/points going to be more or less on the next roll" - these are the questions you need to ask yourself.

@Skytten - actually, by "once I've made it" I meant when I have two checkers on it. But good points for when it's just one.

The question is more generally about when to leave pieces in your opponents home board.  If those pieces are safe, you can theoretically leave them there until all of your other pieces are in your home board.  The question is, should you?  The advantage of leaving these pieces is threefold.

It forces your opponent to play safe when bringing pieces towards or into their home board, as you have a credible counterattack sitting there.  Without that, they can take a much looser approach to their home board and you can only punish them if they hit one of your pieces.
It prevents them from completely blocking their home board, meaning you can always (theoretically) bear on.
It delays the beginning of the pure race.

The disadvantages are:

Those pieces can be much harder to get to your home board.  This is much more of a consideration if the pieces are sitting on the 24 point rather than the 20 point, as it's very easy for pieces on the 24 point to get stuck.
You can be forced to make a disadvantageous move if those are the only pieces not in your home board.
It delays the beginning of the pure race (this is a downside if you are ahead as it gives your opponent more chances to turn the game around).

In the case where you have already moved both pieces to the 20 point, disadvantage #1 is less of a concern.  Consequently, whether you want to move these pieces as opposed to others mostly boils down to whether you are ahead or behind: move them if you are ahead so that you can start the pure race earlier (which solidifies your lead) and leave them if you are behind to try to disrupt/hit your opponent and gain an advantage.
Necessary caveat: all of this depends on both the rolls you make and the situation on the board.  If you have a roll that lets you safely advance pieces from one of these positions but not the other, this can force your hand.  Additionally, if you can hit a piece in your opponents home or outer board, that should take extremely high strategic priority.


text:
Why is the Warhammer Fantasy species "Cold One" named as such?
The Warhammer Fantasy universe has a raptor like species called "Cold one", used as mounts by Lizardmen and Dark Elves. Why are the creatures called "Cold one"?

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this is unrelated to board game expertise, and should instead be asked on [scifi.se].

Hum? Isn't Warhammer is a tabletop miniature game rather than sci-fi media?

Could it be a reference to cold-bloodness?

Warhammer is a multimedia franchise based on a miniatures wargame. It has since spun off into novels, video games, and other media, just like Magic: The Gathering has. While this question would also be appropriate on SciFi/Fantasy SE, I think that it, and other lore questions about tabletop games, are on topic and should remain open.

Its a question of "fluff", which for many roleplay gamers is an important part.
And yes, this is about fantasy and not about sci-fi in any way at all. Cold Ones are found in Warhammer Fantasy, not in Warhammer 40k.

I wish there was  a "vote not to close" option.. I've often wondered the answer to this question myself.

@aslum A preemptive "vote not to close" button doesn't exist, although you can sort of do that with the review queue. The difficulty of this is by design. The best thing you can do if you want this to stay open is to cast a reopen vote if this gets closed.

2 reasons that I could find:

It is a reference to the people that use them. Only cold-blooded people can   ride them without a problem
They see all warm-blooded things as prey, so they are the cold ones and the enemy the warm ones

Source: http://warhammerfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Cold_Ones


text:
How do I prevent cheating on my token based card game?
I have created a card game in which one of the mechanics relies a lot on trust, and would be very easily cheated.
The game is played in 5 rounds, and has a total of 15 tokens to spread as you wish through these rounds. The amount of tokens selected needs to be private until both players reveal them at the same time.
Knowing how many tokens your opponent uses would allow you to either let them waste their tokens, or make you win the round.
What would be the best method to prevent cheating?

I'm pretty sure, but you never said it explicitly: each round, everyone is simultaneously choosing a number of tokens to use?

That is correct.  The tokens are decided at the same time.

You should assume that people are going to be mature because they probably will be.

How are people going to cheat? Can you provide examples given how much of the design you've completed? We can guess what you mean, but better if you simply show us how someone might cheat by telling us more about the points that could be exploited. At first glance, giving each a set of cards numbered 0 through max-bet would see the obvious first pass.

@Dalling- I thought about that, but i've seen people cheat at everything.

@Joey - I think i have given enough information. what i am wanting is a method to keep the numbers secret until both players are ready to display.

I don't understand why holding fists out with x tokens like in any other game, will not work here

@audrey nothing has been ruled out.

It's gotten a little confusing what you're asking. There are sort of two questions you've rolled into one: whether you should bother letting players keep this secret, and what the best mechanism for keeping it secret is. Maybe focus on the latter, since it's what you started out with and what the existing answer is about, and post a new question if you want to ask about whether it's worth the trouble? Also, editing answers into the question is a bit odd; the usual structure is to have answers as answers, and you're always free to post answers to your own question if you like.

@jefromi - I have edited out the answers and reverted back to my original title. I'm not 100% familiar with how format my questions. thanks for pointing it out.

You simply need a mechanic that makes it impossible for a player to see the other players' token counts until they are all simultaneously revealed.  There are quite a few ways to do this, so you have the freedom to choose something that fits with the theme of your game.

Many games (ex: Robo Rally, The Resistance) use cards for this mechanic.  It is one of the simpler methods.  Each player puts a card face down in front of them, and removes his or her hand from the card to show that the decision is final.  All players then reveal their cards simultaneously.  The cards can either be discarded or returned to hand based on the rules of your game.
A single token or tokens that can represent multiple values could be used.  For example, in Pizza Theory, each player has a 6-sided die that is use to signify their decision.  The players cup their hands over the dice until they are revealed.  This may not be practical for your game if each value from 0 to 15 must be possible; while you could use multiple or larger dice, it does increase the chance of a player accidentally bumping them on reveal and changing the values.
In games where multiple pieces of information are revealed simultaneously (rice counts in Shogun) or the pieces are impractical to hold in hand (Puzzle Strike), each player has a screen which can be used to hide their secret information until the reveal.

Thanks for your answer; I will go look at our examples and check if they are suitable for my game.

@terry If you're using actual tokens you could put them in a bag and have the player hand the bag to the other person.  Then when everyone's "done" the other person opens the bag and counts.  I've also seen (with dice) a opaque container over the dice like a cup then the dice are revealed.  +1 to this answer as it covers the concept I had in mind tho.

Rather than a die to show the number of tokens, how about a dial? For example, the X-Wing miniatures game has players simultaneously selecting their moves by rotating a dial for each ship to the chosen move, then placing the dial face-down on the table until it's time to reveal.

@Con - Fantastic idea.

@ConMan the dial idea is pretty cool.

This mechanic sounds like "Blind Bid auction"
In a blind bid auction all players select how much they will pay, and then find out the bids.  Usually the highest bid wins and pays, but sometimes there are other rules
The way most games do this is using the shield and fist method.
Money is kept behind a shield so other players don't know how much money each player has, and is not in the bid.  Sometimes if there is not too much money, it is just kept in a hand.
When it is time to bid players place a certain amount on coins, including zero and hold their fist out.  Once everyone has their fist out the bids are locked.  At this time everyone opens their hand and shows how many coins they have in their hand.
This system works in most cases, and leaves no wiggle room for people to add coins to their closed fist.

Fantastic answer,  helped me a lot,  but I have chosen the other answer add it fits much better with my cards.


text:
Additional Turns and Emrakul, the Promised End
When the round time expires in a sanctioned event, the current turn plus 5 additional turns are completed before a game still in progress is a draw.
Emrakul, the Promised End has the text:

When you cast Emrakul, you gain control of target opponent during that player's next turn. After that turn, that player takes an extra turn.

If Emrakul, the Promised End was cast in the additional turns, how would the controlled turn and extra turn be counted?
Example for clarity: Player A casts Emrakul, the Promised End targeting Player B on turn 1 in additional turns. Is turn 2 Player B being controlled and turn 3 Player B's extra turn?

The match is only a draw if players are tied for games at the end of the five additional turns. If a player is ahead in games, that player wins the match. Also, I would keep the terminology "additional turn" and "extra turn" separate. The MTR was updated with the release of Medomai, Ageless Ascetic to clarify that the additional turns at the end of the round are not "extra turns".

@Rainbolt, I think you mean [mtg:Medomai the Ageless].

@John Hah, you're right. I guess I combined Oloro, Ageless Ascetic and Medomai, the Ageless.

It doesn't matter who controls the turns or if there are extra turns, five additional turns are taken in total (assuming nobody wins before that).
So if the Andy casts Emrakul on the first extra turn targeting Nathan the turns will end up being like this:

Andy (casts Emrakul)
Nathan (controlled by Andy)
Nathan (controlled by himself)
Andy
Nathan

From the Magic Tournament Policy:

2.5. End-of-Match Procedure
If the match time limit is reached before a winner is determined, the player whose turn it is finishes his or her turn and five additional turns are played in total. This usually means that one player takes three turns and the other two, but a player taking extra turns may affect this. (...)


text:
What to do with "Antarctic Guide" and "Dog Sled" while playing against an Ancient One from the base game?
The unique asset deck in Mountains of Madness expansion features two cards which only have an effect if you are on the Antarctica Side Board. What if I am playing against an Ancient One from the base game? Should these components be returned to the box in that case?

As long as you are playing with the Antarctica side board, those cards are usable.
From the expansion rules, page 2:

When playing with the Mountains of Madness expansion, add
  all expansion components to their respective decks or pools
  of Eldritch Horror components except for the components
  described below.
[unrelated items skipped]
Shuffle all Unique Assets to create the Unique Asset deck.
  Place this deck faceup near the Asset deck.

Should these components be returned to the box in that case?

By the rules: No.
By convenience: Yes.
There are absolutely no effects that would allow you to gain either of these cards without the Antarctica board. Whether you leave these in or take them out, it changes absolutely nothing.
(This is not necessarily the case for some other Antarctica-related cards.)

The rules only strictly state to return the side board when not playing Rise of the Elder Things or the Doomsayer from Antarctica prelude. This is probably why the question was posed as, literally followed, there would never be a side board but for these cases (and campaigns against Ithaqua would often render those assets useless). This answer seems more on point.


text:
Achievette: move token? (Imaginarium expansion Chimera)
Overview
I have a rules question in the Imaginarium expansion "Chimera".
There are two parts of the rules which I think I understand how they combine, but I'm not 100% sure.
Rules for Chimera found here
Rules
Part 1: Rules for 'daydreaming' (pages 7-8). This is the only place in the rulebook I found which explicitly says I can move my token down the dream track. It is step 2 of daydream action.

Move forward on the dream track

Each dream fragment thus placed moves you one space forward on the dream track. You move an additional space for each fragment of the same color as the last placed, if they follow directly (see example below).
When you pass or stop first on a space containing resources, charcoalium or victory points, take them and place them behind your screen. The other players, who pass this space after you, will only receive one charcoalium (even if this space contains something other than charcoalium during setup). Different paths are possible, choose well!

Part 2: Rules for 'Achievette' (page 15 bottom).

The Achievette (S4) allows you each turn, during the phase of using the machines, to add a dream fragment from behind your screen to your dream. If you don’t have a dream fragment to place, the Achievette has no effect.
A single Achievette enables you to place 1 dream fragment per turn.
Two combined Achievette enable you to place up to 3 dream fragments of
different colors per turn.
Combinable with: Achievette.

Interpretation
I assume that means that when I start my turn (Implementation phase), I can place a dream fragment, but I do not get to move my token on the dream track. However, it's still helpful to get an extra placement in the same turn, because then I can

make sure my last fragment is not a nightmare anymore (if someone played nightmare on me). Thus, I effectively negate that penalty

It allows me to chain multiple fragments of the same color on the same turn.

Question
Is that really the intent of the creator of the game do we think? Should I assume that the achievette actually lets me move my token an additional time that turn too?

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


text:
Do artifacts have a value?
Ashcan Pete is allowed to gain assets.  Do artifacts, and unique assets for that matter, have values like normal assets?  He can only gain less than his observation skill, so it can be useful to know.  No rule book seems to have the answer.

Hi @Jamie this is the third question you've asked, but you've yet to accept an answer for the previous two questions. You should know that being willing to accept answers will give incentive for others to make the effort to answer your questions. Please become an active member and accept answers you deem correct.

Oh, right.  Sorry.  This site is less user-friendly than others, so I only use it if I have to.  I forgot that was necessary here.  Done.

Thanks for coming back and doing that, you've asked some interesting questions which I've enjoyed answering!

I also was unable to find a definitive answer in the rule books, reference guide and FAQ. So let's look at it thematically.
Look first at Pete's character card.

After you perform an Acquire Assets action, you may gain 1 Item or Trinket Asset with value less than your Observation from the discard pile.

So after looking at the shops, you can scrounge around the garbage for anything that has been discarded but might be useful for you. Notice that it says "the discard pile", as you discard into specific card type piles, it seems appropriate to limit this to the common assets discard pile.
If we were to ignore that, and deem it appropriate to delve through the unique item discard pile or artifact discard pile, what value do we assign to those items and trinkets? Well those items are priceless, not able to be purchased by anyone through normal means.
Instead blood, sweat and tears (and probably sanity) must be spent to bring these items into your possession. It would be reasonable to say they have a value greater than any mere common item, and would always exceed Pete's observation skill.
This also fits into the general concept for the game of "if you're uncertain about the rules, choose the interpretation that makes it more difficult for the players". You're fighting against unmentionable evils, ancient things, and it shouldn't be as easy as picking up an artifact of immeasurable power from the trash heap.
Summary: Pete's skill is limited to the related discard pile, not the others. Ignoring that, unique items and artifacts are of unknown wealth and can not be purchased, so have no known value, but it should be assumed they are all valued well above Pete's observation skill.

There is no need to guess the rule from the theme. "Assets" are only the cards from the Asset deck, not from the Unique Asset deck, not from the Artifact deck. These three concepts are distinct and separate. The one thing they have in common is that they are all "possessions", along with clues, spells, and resources.

Artifacts and Unique Assets don't have values.
But this doesn't matter in your case as Pete's skill only allows him to gain Assets from the discard pile and Artifacts aren't Assets.
As for Unique Assets those count as Assets but they can only be gained when an effect specifically calls for a Unique Asset and Pete's ability doesn't do this. Besides, Unique Assets don't have a discard pile.


text:
Bonus troops from controlling continents and trading cards for troops in Risk
I have a few questions on the lovely game :-

In my current turn I've conquered a continent and keep it conquered for the following 3 turns. Do I get bonus troops in every turn that I have conquered it in ?
If I am trading cards for troops, and I have a territory on the face of the card too. Do I still get my base troops that we get ( the whole count and divide by 3 ones )

Per the rules

You gain bonus troops for each of your turns you start while in control of the continent

In  addition,  at  the  beginning  of  your  turn  you  will  receive
  armies  for  each  continent  you  control.

Yes, you get the base count, plus any continent bonus, plus the value of the cards you trade in, plus 2 bonus troops for trading in a territory card you occupy.

At the
  beginning of each turn, calculate how many new armies you’ll add to your territories based on ...

The  number  of  territories  you  occupy;
The  value  of  the  continents  you  control;
The value of the matched sets of RISK cards you trade in;
The  specific  territory  pictured  on  a  traded-in  card.


text:
Does ending an encounter phase on a street trigger sky monster movement?
If I have an encounter with an investigator that results in moving said investigator to a street and there are monsters waiting in the sky, do they move to that street and encounter that investigator?
I would say they don't move straight away but since after the encounter phase you resolve the mythos phase they would move to the investigator then.
Is that so?

The edit is not the best, the game changed a lot between the second and third edition

The rules for flying monsters are as following:

When a flying monster moves during the Mythos Phase, it obeys the
following rules

and

B) If the flying monster is in a location or street area with no
investigators and there are one or more investigators in a connected
street area, it moves into that street area. If there is more than one
connected street area containing investigators, it moves towards the
investigator in those street areas with the lowest current Sneak skill
(including any relevant equipment and skills; if there is a tie, the
first player chooses which investigator the monster moves towards)

The sky is just another location

The Sky is a holding area considered to be a street area that is
connected to every street area in Arkham. Flying monsters in the Sky
can swoop down on investigators anywhere in the streets of Arkham.
Note that monsters in the Sky count against the monster limit

Therefore your reading of the rules is right, it would not move right away, only when the next mythos phase starts.


text:
Arkham Horror 2nd Edition: Can I sneak past a monster that moved to my investigator's location?
If my investigator is stationary and a monster moves to his/her location through some random effect can I still try to evade it or do I go to the horror check immediately?

I think that answered it perfectly. Can you post as an answer so I can accept it?

The rules for Phase III: Arkham Encounters states:

Note that the card may indicate that “a monster appears,” in which
case the investigator must either evade the monster (see “Evading
Monsters,” page 14) or fight it (see “Combat,” pages 14-16).

Since you have the option to evade it, you don't do have to do the horror check immediately.
Under the Other rules area, you have this about the evade option

Sometimes monsters appear as the result of a location or gate
encounter. An investigator can evade these monsters just like any
others. However, these monsters never remain on the board after the
encounter is resolved. If an investigator evades such a monster,
immediately return the marker to the monster cup.


text:
Are tasks and missions considered items?
If I draw a task or a mission from a Common Item or Unique Item deck respectively, are they considered "items" when face up? For instance, if I draw the "Join the Winning Team" mission and am later required to discard items, can I discard that?
I ask because the list of locations for me to visit isn't really a "thing" and so I'm not sure how it thematically could fit as an item to discard.
Similarly, if I get an encounter that says someone hands me a Common Item and I get a task, do I keep it since it's not really a thing that they can hand over to me. Is that an item too?

Tasks and missions are considered "items" as per the Dunwich rulebook (Page 5):

Tasks are a type of item found in the Common Item deck, while Missions are items found in the Unique Item deck.

If you receive an effect that requires you to discard items you can discard a task or mission as part of that, noting in the base rules (page 16):

Important: When adding up items before discarding them, count all Common Items, Unique Items, and Spells. In addition, the Deputy’s Revolver and the Patrol Wagon both count as items. Allies, Skills, and other cards do not count towards this total

As tasks and missions are explicitly described as items in the Dunwich rules, they do not fall under the Allies, Skills, and other cards
Spells are also not a "thing" but for ease of playing the game it's easier to consider it an item, hence the same application for tasks and missions.
Someone can ask you to complete a task, that's a completely normal thing. It could be something like a person saying "Yea, I know I said I had a thing to give you, but it's at a secure place, so you'll have to..."


text:
What happens if you go insane as a result of casting a spell during the final battle?
The rules state that being reduced to zero sanity as a result of the ancient one's attack results in being devoured, but what if you are reduced to zero sanity as a result of casting a spell?

TLDR - You are devoured immediately after casting the spell.
Reasoning:
So you can spend all your sanity to cast a spell (provided it matches the exact cost and does not exceed it, but there's some caveats
In the official FAQ:

Q: When an investigator casts a spell, can he spend all of his Sanity to pay the spell’s Sanity cost?

A: Yes. If he does so, once the Sanity cost has been paid the investigator makes his Spell check and, if he passes, the spell takes effect. Whether the check is passed or not, the investigator then goes insane. Note that if an investigator were to cast a spell to gain combat bonuses, he would go insane before having a chance to get into combat.

Note the restriction on not going into combat, so you can not cast a spell to give a bonus to an attack that would drive you insane. You're immediately going insane after casting the spell.
As you say, the rules state:

Any investigator reduced to 0 Sanity or Stamina by the Ancient One’s attack is devoured.

This should probably be more general and be read as

Any investigator reduced to 0 Sanity or Stamina is devoured.

This is the only reference to Sanity or Stamina loss during the battle against the Ancient Ones, so it's reasonable that it should apply to any form of Sanity or Stamina reduction to 0.
Thematically this makes sense, you're in the battle for the world, it's a succeed at all costs deal. You either save the world, or you die trying - there's no in-between. You can't go and recuperate at the Asylum, and there's no time for a new investigator to come in and save the day.
This also fits in with the general guidance for Arkham Horror of "when in doubt, do what's worse for the player(s)". It's a supposed to be a brutal, difficult game. You're trying to save the world but shit happens, the world doesn't want to be saved.


text:
Pandemic: Field Operative plays New Assignment
If the Field Operative has a block on their card from their special ability, what happens to that block if they were to play New Assignment?

The blocks are returned the supply.
It's a niche scenario that's not really covered in the rules
The rules do say

The Field Operative may return sample cubes from his role card
back to the supply at any time

Which is beneficial if the supply is about to run out and you can prevent a loss by returning cubes to the supply. In the case for this question it does allow the return of the cubes.
There's no advantage for the players to the cubes being put back into the supply - the action to gather the cube has already been spent, and is equivalent to a "Treat" action for any other role. You lose out on getting the potentially easier cure though.

Much appreciated!


text:
In Arkham Horror 3rd edition can you use the evade action vs "shrouded" creatures?
Can you use the evade action vs "shrouded" creatures? If so how since you can't look the side of the card with its statistics.

From the rules reference

You can perform the evade action only if you are engaged with one or more monsters.

And from Secrets of the Order Expansion Rules the example given says

During the monster phase, the Raging Poltergeist moves into Agatha’s space and engages her (2). The monster card flips to the engaged side and becomes a Confounding Specter, revealing that its health is two.

You can't use evade without being engaged to a creature, but once they are engaged you reveal the side of the card with the statistics. Once an investigator is engaged to a creature, they can use the evade action.


text:
Can I share lab with allied player?
In Breaking Bad Board Game if I and another faction player have an alliance, how can we share our labs? Can we share not only labs but the chemists also? And what other advantages of making an alliance?


text:
Ancient One Yig's reckoning Effect Spawning 1 cultist
Part of Ancient One Yig's's setup is to set aside 6 cultist monsters. Yig's reckoning effect is Spawn 1 cultist monster on the active expedition space.
My question is what happened if I ran out of the set aside 6 cultist monsters? Meaning all of the 6 cultist monster is still on the board.

Simply put, they don't spawn. From the rules reference, page 3, Component Limitations (which did take me a fair amount of digging to find the actual rule!)

Monsters cannot be spawned from the Monster cup if the Monster
cup is empty. Set aside Monsters cannot be spawned if all set aside
Monsters of the named type are on the game board.


text:
Looking for a card game about auerochs
I remember playing a card game I'd like to find and buy, but I don't remember the exact name.
It is a game which we played with its own special-design deck. The cards have numbers going up to a bit above 100 (maybe 111?) and points represented by a few auerochs heads. A few special cards have unusually many auerochs heads.
I don't remember the exact rules, but I know that there are three piles laid on the table. The players have to discard cards from their hand onto the piles, with the number of the card played (and maybe also the pile size?) Constraining the cards which can be played, determining on which pile the card must land, and also whether a player has to take a pile as a kind of trick. At the end, the player with the fewest auerochs in his tricks wins. I think there might have been drawing of cards from a face down pile too, but not sure about that.
I remember it as a very dynamic game with simple rules and little wiggle room (once you choose a card to play, many events follow automatically) but at the same time lots of fun. There is no obvious winning strategy, and the ranking can change up to the very end.
I can't say if the game absolutely required the special deck, or If it could have been a modern redesign of a traditional 104 + some jokers card game, but it looked more like an independent design (no obvious relation to sous or traditional card values). It was in German, I can't say if originally produced in Germany. Search for additions card games only returns references to magic cards.
Can anybody help me identify it?

I think you're talking about one of the following:

Take 5
Take 10
6 Nimmt!
11 Nimmt!
Category 5
Hornochsen

All are variations on the same theme, so take your pick.

Yes, it was Take 5. In an amusing twist of fate, it is called Hornochsen ("horned bulls", a slang for "idiots") in German, which my mind bowdlerized to Auerochsen (the animal aurochs in German) and this is why I haven't been able to find it by my auerochs search.

Reading the rules in depth, what I played was the original "6 nimmt" (translated as Category 5 in the USA) and not the derivation "Hornochsen" (translated as "Take 5"). But the original game still talks about Hornochsen even if it's not in the name. Thank you, this is definitely the same game.

I thought Take 5 and 6 Nimmt are the same game. As in, if you play the 6th card onto a stack, you take the 5 cards that were already on the table.

I looked it up in a German game database. Take 5/Hornochsen is a minor variation of Category 5/6 nimmt. It is quite possible that both use the "take the 5 cards" rule, there are some differences in other rules though, and maybe some differences in the cards themselves (e.g. additional cards), I don't remember all details.


text:
Additional/Made up roles in Resistance or Resistance avalon
My friends and I have started making up new roles for resistance when we get tired of using the basics like Merlin, Percival Mordred, Morgana and Oberon.
I know Mordred can hide from Merlin, Merlin knows who is evil(except Mordred), Morgana appears as Merlin, Percival know who is Merlin (and who is Morgana, but not which one is which), and Oberon is evil but he doesn't know who else is evil and they don't know who he is.
So far one variation we've played with is where Oberon knows who his evil team mates are, or they know who he is. He is evil, but knows nothing about who else is good and evil but his evil team mates will know who he is. Or he knows who all of them are, but they don't know who he is.
We've also played with "Nice Friends" (The name is a work in progress). Where two Loyal Servants know the identity of each other but nothing else, they don't know who any of the evil people are. And at the end of the game if the evil team can correctly guess both Nice Friends they win. Usually if we play with nice friends at least Percival is removed.
Has anyone made up their own roles, used any other variations or are there any that already exist that aren't in the traditional version of Avalon?

This question is about being creative, so I don't think it can ever avoid being opinion based. To close questions like this is closing out creativeness, which I don't think helps the community. Could we re-open this, maybe with the game-design tag added?

We have quite an avid group (one player logged his thousandth game last month) and have experimented with quite a few alternative roles. Some are well known on BGG, some we've created or tweaked. I forget which are which now.
Guinevere
Played with Good and Bad Lancelots. She sees them both, not knowing which is which, and can be chosen to assassinate instead of Merlin win the game, but it must be specified you are assassinating the player as Guinevere, or as Merlin.

Call: Good and Bad Lancelot keeping your eyes closed, raise your thumbs. Guinevere open your eyes to see the 2 Lancelots. Guinevere close your eyes. Lancelots thumbs down.

Recommend doing this at the start of the call, just before the bad guys. Therefore the call ends with "Good Lancelot lower your thumb. Bad Lancelot stay as you are."
Lovers
Similar idea to some of the suggestions in the answer by @Cain. Two good players who see each other. If used well, they can confuse the bad guys by coming off as a Merlin/Percival pairing. We use a male and female generic good card for these, which can be important during the call if you play the Love Triangle.

Call: Lovers, raise your thumb, open your eyes, and blow a kiss at
your lover. Lovers close your eyes and lower your thumbs.

Love Triangle
An extension on the Lovers idea with a complicated call. Another character is added who is bad, Mark. Both lovers see their lover and Mark, so aren’t sure which is the one they trust. Much like Percival or Guinevere.

Call: Lovers and Mark keeping your eyes closed raise your thumbs.
Female lover open your eyes. Female lover close your eyes. Male lover
open your eyes. Male lover close your eyes. Everybody thumbs down.

Puck
An essentially good player, who wants a bit of chaos. Puck only wins with the Good team if they make it to, and win, the 5th round. Puck cannot out himself at any point. Makes for interesting logic when you get to the later rounds, as bad players can convince the good that previous fails were Puck, but Puck would now play a Success.

Here's a few we like to play with. Names are a work in progress, and you do have to think through how you combine these roles, some combinations can be unbalanced. Also, for some reason most of these are Good Characters.
Oracle (Nimueh)
Ability: Once per round, (or once at the start of the game), can look at a single characters card.
Best In: Large games, where 5 cards isn't enough to know everything.
Options:

If Evil kills Nimueh instead of Merlin, it's a draw.
Instead of looking at a card, can look at one token a player in a mission has put.
Could be an Evil player as well. Note: This requires some balancing, because otherwise seeing Merlin's card is an instant win. Best is Oracle has separate win conditions: Wins by Failing Enough Missions, but Loses if Merlin dies.

King Arthur
Ability: At the start of the game, reveals his card. Is a Good player.
Best In: Smaller games, where his help in winning missions is cancelled out by making it easier to guess who Merlin is.
Options:

Limited number of missions he can take part in. (One or Two is best)
If he is on a losing mission, can no longer join missions. (Or, Good loses)

Witch
Ability: Once per game, can change a Fail token to Success. However, the next turn, one Success Token is changed to Fail
Best In: Any game, but can be a bit OP in combo with Arthur.
Options:

Sees tokens first, then changes.
Can also change a Success to Fail first, and then change a Fail to Success at any later turn.
Is an extra assigned role, meaning may be a Good or Evil character, or and one with another Role.

Cupid
Ability: At the start of the game, chooses two people to be lovers. Lovers see each others Character Cards. If Good falls in love with Evil, then the Good player wins if Evil does.
Best In: Any game
Options:

Instead of a Cupid character, start with a random pairing.
Evil converts to Good because of love.

Sir Robin
Ability: Is a Good Player, but can only play Fail Tokens.
Best In: Random Roles, i.e there may or may not be a Sir Robin in the game.
The Rat
Ability: Is an Evil Player. When included in a mission, after all tokens have been played, the rat can look at the tokens and change his if he wants.
Best In: Medium to Large games, where he won't be able to use his ability too many times.

Couple of quick points,

Oberon: Does not reveal as evil and does not know who evil is

You are playing it exactly as it is set up in the rules

Percival: Knows who Merlin is

While Merlin may not know who Percival is he does know who all good are and Percival knows who he is.
You should check out the rules for the optional characters for some other new roles
http://www.redmeeple.com/site/images/Rules/The_Resistance_Avalon_Rules(EN).pdf

Sorry I should have been more clear I know about Merlin, Percival, Mordred, Morgana, and Oberon (Although you are correct I was playing with Oberon wrong). I was wondering about characters or roles above and beyond these, or variations that aren't in the normal rules. I'll update the question.


text:
Does "lose 1 Sanity" count as "taking mental damage"?
So I happened to be in possession of those 3 items:

The Idol : once during your turn, you can add 2 dice to your roll, but lose 1 Sanity in the process
The Skull : anytime you should take mental damage, you can take the same amount of physical damage instead
The Armor : Anytime you take physical damage, take 1 damage less of it

You can guess what I'm getting to: with this combination, I was able to use the idol on each turn without losing Sanity or any trait points whatsoever.
The only problem is that this interpretation of the rules implies that "lose X [Mental trait]" equates to "take X mental damage". In a way it is true, because technically, by losing 1 point of Sanity, you are "taking damage to one your mental traits". In other words, if you lose enough of said trait, you'll die. So you are being "damaged".
But on the other hand, "take (X) mental damage" is an explicit request mentioned on cards and rules ; and precise naming conventions are fairly important in a game like Betrayal. (such as the difference between players, heroes and explorers)
What is your opinion on that matter?

I'm inclined to say that using the Idol costs 1 sanity, not that you take 1 sanity damage. Similarly in MtG paying health as a cost doesn't count as taking damage. This interpretation fits thematically with the cards, too, I think. It doesn't make sense that you get to Idol for free all the time. The Skull / Armor combo is a good one, though, especially for the tougher characters.

"Lose one sanity" instructs you to reduce one specific stat, which is quite different from taking one point of mental damage, and so are the situations were both occur. While taking damage results in stat loss, I don't think stat loss is damage. The existence of a difference between the two is supported by the game using both "lose 1 from a mental trait" and "take 1 point of mental damage" in different circumstances.

Where could I find occurrence of "lose 1 from a mental trait"?

Scenario 44 mentions both "lose 1 point in a mental trait" and "take 1 point of mental damage". In the same table of effecst, even!

You've got your causality reversed.  Taking 1 mental damage causes you to lose 1 from a mental trait.  Losing 1 from a mental trait does not cause you to take 1 mental damage.  (Similar to how in MtG, damage causes loss of life, but loss of life is not damage.)


text:
Do I decide {X} for cards in my library for effects and abilities asking for a particular CMC?
Suppose I have Yisan, the Wanderer Bard on the battleground with 5 verse counters.

And then suppose I have something in my library with an {X} in the mana cost, like a Genesis Hydra.

Do I get to play Genesis Hydra as though it were cast using {3}{G}{G}?
I'm aware of rule 107.3.g, which reads:

107.3g If an effect instructs a player to pay an object’s mana cost that includes {X}, the value of X is treated as 0 unless the object is
  a spell on the stack. In that case, the value of X is the value chosen
  or determined for it as the spell was cast.

It's my understanding that Yisan's ability goes onto the stack. Does Genesis Hydra also go onto the stack, allowing me to choose {X}? Or ... ?

107.3g is completely irrelevant here. Nothing on the two cards mentioned instructs you to pay a mana cost.

The irony of this, of course, is that I totally overlooked the rulings listed on the page I linked, which remove all doubt about the proper interpretation of ... If you’re playing a spell that has {X} in its mana cost and an effect lets you play it without paying any cost that includes {X}, the only legal choice for {X} is 0. This does not apply to effects that only reduce a cost, even if they reduce it to zero.

@murgatroid99 Ah. Touche.

That ruling is also irrelevant. You're not casting the card either. You're just putting it onto the battlefield.

@murgatroid99 Well don't I just feel silly now.

There are two relevant (overlapping) rules for this situation:

107.3f If a card in any zone other than the stack has an {X} in its mana cost, the value of {X} is treated as 0, even if the value of X is defined somewhere within its text.
202.3c When calculating the converted mana cost of an object with an {X} in its mana cost, X is treated as 0 while the object is not on the stack, and X is treated as the number chosen for it while the object is on the stack.

So, in this case, Genesis Hydra's CMC is always 2 when it is in your library, so you can only search for it if Yisan has exactly two verse counters. Then, if you do search for it and have it enter the battlefield, X is still considered to be 0, so it has no +1/+1 counters and dies immediately.

Does the same hold true for Genesis Hydra's ability? If I pay {5}{G}{G} for him, reveal 5 cards, and there happens to be another Genesis Hydra (or similar), does the revealed card avoid the stack and therefore force {X} to be 0?

It works exactly the same way for exactly the same reason. Genesis Hydra says that you put the card on the battlefield, so it goes to the battlefield, not the stack.


text:
Munchkin vs Munchkin Deluxe
I'm debating between the two versions as it is only a few dollars difference. Would any of you who own the Deluxe version say this is worth it? The board piece sounds appealing but I hear the packaging box takes up a lot of space. I can't seem to find Deluxe copies in my area to compare the size and will have to order online.
My friends do have other packs such as Munchkin Cthulhu and its expansions, if that's helpful at all.

Hi, and welcome to Board & Card Games SE! In its current form, your question is rather open and subjective. StackExchange focuses on questions that can be answered, preferrably with a single answer. Do you think you could rephrase your question so it focuses more on what the differences are (objective) and which consequences each difference has (probably objective), instead of whether or not those differences are worth it (subjective)?

In my experience, table games that can be played without a gameboard tend to be played without the gameboard. In our group, we have Bang and Dixit for example, both came with nicely decorated boards that are now sitting in the "leftover parts" stack. The games can be played just as well without them, the required area to play is a bit smaller and more flexible. Oh, and the boxes are also lighter and smaller if we carry the games to another place to play there.
In my opinion you should go for the normal edition, except maybe if you only ever plan to play at home, on your huge table.

In my experience all parts of the game are used and boards in games like Dixit are always used as they help keep track of things and are smaller than the other parts of the game.

Somewhat related: in our games of Fluxx, we always leave the basic rules in the box, which saves us 7 and 133/256 square inches of table space.

I own the deluxe addition and am very glad I bought it. The board gives a nice way to track the game and can easily be converted if you are going to use the optional Supermuchkin rules (advance to level 20 to win). Yes it can be done with paper and dice but I have kids and the board makes it easier for everyone to use.


text:
When is the hydra considered a player with the "Face the Hydra" deck?
Face the Hydra is a special game with special rules which can be found here.
I know that a spell that deals direct damage to a player cast on the hydra will deal the damage to one of its head. The same applies to trample damage, and so ons, for damages.
But is the hydra considered a player?
For instance, I have a creature that gets +1/+1 counters each time it deals damage to a player. Would that ever be triggered since you attack its heads directly?
What if that creature was unblockable?

is the hydra considered a player?

Yes, there is a player as normal.

For instance, I have a creature that gets +1/+1 counters each time it deals damage to a player. Would that ever be triggered since you attack its heads directly?

Creatures attacking heads directly deal damages to the heads they attack.
Creatures not attacking heads directly attack the player as normal. However, damage that would be dealt to the player is dealt to a head instead. As such, you never actually deal any damage to the player.
In both cases, the attackers deal damage to the heads. The heads are creatures, not players. The ability in question would not trigger.

What if that creature was unblockable?

It doesn't make any difference.

Thanks for the answer, but the rules say "You can attack Heads directly with your creatures. Any number of creatures can attack a single Head"

Sorry, I missed that one. Updated.


text:
Two Headed Giant Sealed Events Card Trading
Origins is being released soon, and I plan on going to the THG prerelease for the first time. Me and my partner have been running pull simulations to see what deck strats come up often. We are noticing that we often get cards necessary for the other's strategy.
Is it legal to trade them cards before the rounds start?

The title of the question asks about sealed. The body of the question asks about draft. Which one do you mean to ask about?

Prerelease is what I'm referring to, I think that's considered sealed. I'm not exactly an expert :P.

@Falcondance where are you running pull simulations? I'd love to try that out haha I've never heard of that before but I'd love to get some practice in for this weekend.

@RobertWertz http://mtgen.net/ori/#

Not only are you allowed to share cards, you are as a team considered to have a single card pool that you build your decks from. Section 9.6 of the Tournament rules says

Two-Headed Giant Limited Rules
All the rules for Limited Tournaments (Section 7) apply, except as described below.
The DCI recommends that each team receive eight boosters per team for Two-Headed Giant Sealed Deck tournaments and six boosters per team for Two-Headed Giant Booster Draft tournaments. For the recommended product mix for the current block, refer to Appendix D.
Cards not used in a team’s starting decks are considered a shared sideboard by the two players that both players can access.

I don't think the number of packs part applies to prereleases, though - I think you just get two entire prerelease packs. That'd mean a total of 12 normal boosters plus the two seeded ones! (see http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/magic-origins-prerelease-primer-2015-07-06)

^ This thing is true.


text:
Do blocking creatures heal back to full between phases?
I am new to MTG and this has been bothering me. Say I use any spell on my 1st main phase to deal 1 damage to my opponenent's 2/5 creature.
If I attack him during the combat phase of the same turn with a 4/3 creature and he blocks me using that 2/5 I previously did 1 damage to, will my 4/3 creature kill it, or his creature would have "healed" up between phases?

Phases? No. Turns? Yes. Creatures heal at the end of every turn (regardless of whose turn it is).

@Corsika I would avoid answering questions in comments.

I'd rather avoid a drawn out comment thread here. If you want to discuss that position, I made a room for us to do so.

In this situation, I would recommend attacking first, and then if your opponent blocks, you can use your spell in the second main to finish off the blocker. Otherwise, if your opponent doesn't block, you may have just wasted the spell.

It will be destroyed. All damage done to the creature in most cases stays until the very end of the turn (cleanup step).

119.6. Damage marked on a creature remains until the cleanup step, even if that permanent stops being a creature. If the total damage marked on a creature is greater than or equal to its toughness, that creature has been dealt lethal damage and is destroyed as a state-based action (see rule 704). All damage marked on a permanent is removed when it regenerates (see rule 701.12, “Regenerate”) and during the cleanup step (see rule 514.2).


text:
Supreme King Gate Zero's role/s in a Dark Magician deck?
Update (to old question: Does Supreme King Gate Zero's negation apply to Dark Magician the Dragon Knight after the latter has left the field?): Wait I think I get it now. The reason why I couldn't special summon DMTDK was because DMTDK was not special summoned properly, that is, fusion summoned.
If right, please skip next part.

With a Dark Magician deck, I was playing against a Blue-Eyes White Dragon deck. I couldn't use Eternal Soul to revive DMTDK, and it may have been due to DMTDK being special summoned with SKGZ.
Could Blue-Eyes Spirit Dragon have had something to do with it? I don't think it was on the field.
Deck: I used ver2.0 here but Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring instead of Maxx "C".
Programme: I used an experimental "Ygoproes" which I had foolishly tampered with for an unspeakable amount of hours to try to get the program to play an exodia quasar deck instead of a frog deck. I didn't want to say this out of looking like one of those n00bs who think that there's a bug in the programme instead of thinking there may be a ruling issue.

So, SKGZ is mainly for Rank 7 summoning as described here rather than using its ability? What other roles could it serve? I guess it can be used for Allure of Darkness.

Mind giving some more detail to your scenario? Describe exactly what cards where involved and how

Please Ctrl + L your cards with links from yugioh.wikia.com

As your answer indicates that you suspect:
To Improve The Chance That Dark Magician Is Summoned On Turn 1
In the deck/article you've linked, the purpose of Gate Zero is to be used in tandem with Supreme King Dragon Darkwurm and Destrudo the Lost Dragon's Frisson to summon Odd-Eyes Meteorburst Dragon, and subsequently Ebon Illusion Magician. This inclusion of Darkwurm/Gate Zero exists solely to achieve this opening move, so that Dark Magician can more consistently exist on the field on Turn 1.
As the name sort of implies, the "Dark Magician" deck tends to prefer having "Dark Magician" in play; so it is quite desirable to optimize the likelihood of him entering play as early as possible. Gate Zero is a means to this end.
The other capabilities (although, certainly not the intended purpose) of Gate Zero are to summon Dark Magician the Dragon Knight and destroy it in a seldom-occurring pinch, or to set up a pendulum scale from 0 to 5 with Darkwurm, allowing the player to Pendulum Summon any of Maxx "C", Magician's Rod, and/or Flamvell Guard. And as you've noted, of course, it is a legal card to banish via Allure of Darkness.

Supreme king gate zero pops it’s self and another card with it in order to get its effect: special summon 1 fusion dragon-type monster or synchro monster from your extra deck but it’s effect are negated. But let’s say you got enternal souls on the field every “dark magician” in your monster zone is unaffected by your opponents card effects. Ect. Leaving the dragon knight easy to summon. but it be a 0ATK/DEF dark magician vanilla. 0 effects. you would rather pop it at your end turn. Then Special summon it again with ethereal souls to get dark magician the dragon knight full effect. To protect your back row. And field zone.

Please refrain from using yugioh slang terms such as pop and vanilla


text:
Why isn't Pot of Greed, or any banned card, instead errata-ed?
They/Konami/Whoever errata-ed Dark Magician of Chaos, four times in fact.
Dumb question: Why not to Pot of Greed or any of the Match Winners?
Guesses:

T/K/W expect that the card may be unbanned with the introduction of new cards like Thousand-Eyes Restrict where, afaik, it became unlimited without errata (Edit: Oh ok so it was actually errata-ed 5 times. Wait, so what's the difference between original and current?) after previously being banned (for way too long considering Honor Ark).
OCG vs TCG: But come on, Pot of Greed will inherently never be unbanned by the ontology/philosophy/nature/idk of trading card games.
Pot of Greed I guess could come back if the 40 card minimum is increased. Idk.
Pot of Greed could be kept banned an un-errata-ed for the traditional players.
Money that comes from making new cards instead of letting players use their old Pot of Greed cards to represent the errata-ed Pot of Greed
There may not necessarily be a way to change the Pot of Greed effect that is not to a radical* extent.

*I use 'radical' s.t. Dark Magician of Chaos did not undergo a 'radical' change. For a better word/phrasing, please suggest.
Related:
Why is Pot of Greed banned?

This Q is asking for developer intent, thing that only Trollnami knows for sure... will attempt to answer when I get to PC

@DarkCygnus Answer attempt means not off-topic please and thanks? :D

The cards only text is to draw 2 cards, what are you going to eratta it to? Even if you add something like discarding cards it is still pretty powerful.

@JoeW I was thinking something like the exact Pot of Desires effect but change the Pot of Greed picture. I rather like the Pot of Desires picture though.

Sounds like the didn’t eratta it because they replaced it with a different card.

You don't use errata to turn one card into a different card, you just ban the first and print more of the second. No silliness with old editions or updates involved.

Simple answer: Because there would be way too many cards out there

@Nij Right but why exactly? Edited question for clarification.

@VortexYT Too many new cards means too much money? Eg Creating Pot of Desires means more money for Konami. Or too many errata-ed cards means too much choices in deck building? Eg Errata-ed Pot of Greed means more decisions to make in deck building.

Why not to Pot of Greed or any of the Match Winners?

First, the "Match Winner" cards cannot be used in an official event, so no point in changing their text. They are "just" prize cards given to World Champions. If you want refer to a previous answer of mine regarding such cards.
Also, there have been banned cards that had their effects errata'd, one example that comes to mind is Ring of Destruction. They did the errata just before they un-banned that card, so it is more balanced and has less abuse potential.
Now, as you correctly point out, I also think there is virtually no way Pot of Greed is coming back. As explained in the Q's you linked, it is basically a "draw 2 cards for NO COST at all", something that is extremely unbalanced.
My guess is that if they ever errata Pot of Greed, is because they may be thinking of un-banning it, but surely it's effect will no longer be the same as before.

DarkCygnus, thanks. 1. about match winners, i was thinking something like 'if this card is xyz summoned, if your opponent surrenders, your opponent loses the match'. idk. 2. about unbanned, so why not for others? 3. Pot of Greed: oh you mean, errata-ing Pot of Greed is indeed possibly on Konami's to do list? I mean, what makes you say that? Have they ever indicated such a plan to errata all cards s.t. none are banned? Or does it/does it not make sense for some reason to do such? also, i edited question for clarification.

(bump 4 years later) DarkCygnus, thanks. 1. about match winners, i was thinking something like 'if this card is xyz summoned, if your opponent surrenders, your opponent loses the match'. idk. 2. about unbanned, so why not for others? 3. Pot of Greed: oh you mean, errata-ing Pot of Greed is indeed possibly on Konami's to do list? I mean, what makes you say that? Have they ever indicated such a plan to errata all cards s.t. none are banned? Or does it/does it not make sense for some reason to do such? also, i edited question for clarification.

The key part in my answer regarding the errata is the "My guess is that...". I'm not saying that it will be unbanned nor erratae'd. I'm saying that if they someday make an errata, then it could mean they may be thinking of un-banning it... regarding your other questions those are more fit for chat I guess :) as they are open for discussion


text:
Live statistics chess960 from chess.com?
Both lichess and chess.com have the feature to play the variant chess960 live. However, only lichess has a graph showing how your live chess960 rating has changed over time. Lichess also shows other statistics like highest, lowest, best wins, worst losses, average opponent rating, etc. (chess.com does have this for correspondence chess960 though.)
I could create my own graph and statistics in Excel/Google Sheets by manually recording each game's date and my rating afterwards indicated beside my username, but...
Question: Is there a way to obtain, or what in general is the way to go about obtaining, ratings after each chess960 game using some kind of script that sees a player's public profile and then extracts the data?
I have a feeling this kind of script has been done before even if this was not specifically done for chess.com's live chess960. The script doesn't have to graph (pretty easy to do once you have to the data: just use excel/google sheets). I just need the script to collect all the dates and rating numbers for each line of the user's games.

Update 2: Fixed now. see the 'json' vs the 'preformed'. WOW.
Update 1: It appears Mike Steelson has an answer here, where the code is given as
=arrayformula( regexextract(split( substitute(substitute(substitute(getDataJSON(A1;"/games";"/pgn");"[";"");"]";"");"""";"") ;char(10));"\s.*") )

with an example given here
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MX1o5qdy0K3gTMzbimUV3SmFf-0XPCSJ8Vz4IjI-8Ak/copy
It appears there's a problem when it gets to the case of chess960 only. Consider for example this player: Replacing 'gmwso' with the player's username will yield a weird output. i imagine the output will be messier for mixed chess960 and chess.

Cross-posted: https://superuser.com/q/1645900/93541, https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/q/54692/8191, https://chess.stackexchange.com/q/34842/12996, https://stackoverflow.com/q/67159513/781723.  Please do not post the same question on multiple sites.

I’m voting to close this question because cross posted at https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/34842/live-statistics-chess960-from-chess-com

Update 2: Fixed now. see the 'json' vs the 'preformed'. WOW.
Update 1: It appears Mike Steelson has an answer here, where the code is given as
=arrayformula( regexextract(split( substitute(substitute(substitute(getDataJSON(A1;"/games";"/pgn");"[";"");"]";"");"""";"") ;char(10));"\s.*") )

with an example given here
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MX1o5qdy0K3gTMzbimUV3SmFf-0XPCSJ8Vz4IjI-8Ak/copy
It appears there's a problem when it gets to the case of chess960 only. Consider for example this player: Replacing 'gmwso' with the player's username will yield a weird output. i imagine the output will be messier for mixed chess960 and chess.


text:
Is there a 2 player variation of any of Sevens/Fan Tan/Domino?
And in particular, when you play with 2 players do you deal out all the cards the from the deck? Or is there some undealt part that players draw from during the game? I mean, if you deal them all then you'll just know what's in your opponent's hand?
This is going to sound trivial, but actually it's part of this theory/hypothesis I have for this anime/manga series The Quintessential Quintuplets, where I think the game Sevens(/Fan Tan/Domino) is symbolic of something in the series (namely something to do with the number 7). My thought is that the card game Sevens (and thus the number 7) is so important that it even leads to a mistake like this. So if this were a mistake, then it's possible that Sevens is really important. Or something.
From S02E12:

The 2 kids pictured above are playing

in the English dub version: 'Sevens'. (This is also in the English subtitles for the Japanese version.)

in the original Japanese version: 'Shichi Narabe (7並べ)', which is what Wikipedia calls a(/the?) Japanese variation of Sevens. In the upper right part of the Wikipedia page, you can see that it says 3-8 players, so I guess that includes the Japanese Sevens.

You can even see how the cards are laid out that they really are playing (some variation of) Sevens.
Other notes:

I've read only a bit of the manga, but I'm pretty sure no other kids were playing with the 2.

Additionally, Sevens has been played earlier in the series (S01E09 where it's still Shichi Narabe [7並べ], but it's translated as 'Fan Tan' instead of 'Sevens', again by both the English dub and the subtitles for the original Japanese), but there were at least 3 players then.

You should split this out into questions for each game as a question should be limited to one thing.

@JoeW There's only 1 game here...just several variants. Any 2-player variant of any variant of Sevens is an answer. Does that make sense?

If there is only one game you should only have a single game tag and not tags for what appear to be 5 different games. Please remove any tags but what the game is largely known as.

@JoeW ok done. thanks. How do I make fan-tan, domino, etc as synonyms of sevens?

There is no reason to make them one unless those tags start getting used elsewhere

Cross-posted from Anime.SE: https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/66802/are-there-japanese-2-player-variations-of-sevens-fan-tan-domino-shichi-narabe-7