text:
Condensing Carcassonne & expansions into a single box
I've got a large collection of boxes piling up for Carcassonne, both the little ones that fit in the palm or your hand (like River and The Count) and the medium size ones like (like Inns & Cathedrals and The Princess and the Dragon)--currently three of each size.
Is there an elegant way to store the pieces all in the main box for easier storage and transportation?  The little boxes fit just as they are, but the bigger ones are little trickier. It seems there should be a good way to make use of all these cardboard inserts, but their shapes are all pretty generic and they waste a lot of space. Is there a good way to cut then up and reuse them?
Space-wise, all the pieces from the expansions fit easily into the main box, but they are really loose. I also want to keep the tiles from each expansion grouped together and easy to pull out one at a time.

A great solution to this struck me as I was falling asleep a few nights ago (strange how the brain works): I won't need the expansion boxes anymore, so I could cannibalize those into smaller boxes.
After a lot of careful measuring, I took the expansion box lids and scored them across the top in three places with a pair of scissors and a ruler, creating straight fold-lines.  Then I trimmed off the bottom edge and a portion of each side, and folded on my scored lines.  I made my boxes a few eights of an inch taller than they are wide, but I think an even square (i.e. three equally spaced score marks on the lid) would be just fine, maybe even better, since a couple of mine turned out to be a tighter fit than I intended.
I kept the two corners in the upper portion of the lid intact, so it could serve as a lid on my smaller box, hinging at one of my folds.  I folded the whole thing up and, after some final trimming, I taped the corners together.  I also supported each folds with a strip of tape, to make sure they don't wear out and fall apart later.
The new box with hinged lid closed:

The box holds tiles and a baggie with game pieces.  The lid is the intact portion from the top of the original box lid.  The front, bottom, and back are all from the top of the original lid, all rolled up along my score marks.  I kept a square from the sides of the original lid for the end pieces of the box.

I trimmed the original cardboard insert and just kept the long narrow part that holds the tiles (bottom of last photo, below).  This left room for my three re-sized expansion boxes (Princess, Traders, and Inns), plus my small expansions (The Count, King & Scout, River II, and River (rubberbanded)) and my meeples in a bag.
I'm not sure if all Carcassonne expansions would fit using this method, but I own most of them, and it fit nicely for me.

Edit
My attempt at a diagram.  This is the expansion box lid in original form, with cuts and folds marked.  Create a mock-up with a piece of scratch paper first, if that helps.

Use scissors to score the three dashed lines across the top of the box (equally spaced).
Cut out the X'd portions - the entire bottom edge and the center portion of each side edge.
Fold the three scored marks to transform the large surface of the original lid into the front, back, bottom, and top of the new box.  The top edge of the original lid will now be the front flap of the new box.
The new lid will be just a little too tall for your new box, so trim it to match.
Tape up the corners.  You can also tape the folded edges for durability.

+1 Really neat. I would love to see a net of the smaller boxes you've made - it's quite hard to visualise what you've done.

Yeah, I really should have taken some photos while I was constructing them... I'll have to see if I can draw up a diagram or something.

Rubber bands, bags and boxes.
I put all the tiles from the base game, minus the starting tile, in the cloth bag from Traders & Builders, and the tiles from each major expansion (T & B; Inns & Cathedrals; Bridges, Castles & Bazaars) in piles wrapped with a rubber band each. All my followers, builders and the like are in one ziplock bag, all my bridges in another, and my castles, along with resource chits, in a third. I keep the tiles from the mini-expansions I own in the boxes in which they came. All this fits nicely in my box from the base game since I removed the folded cardboard from the inside.

I built two custom boxes for Carcassonne tiles using some check boxes from the bank and some spare cardboard.  I glued dividers into the boxes and labeled each section with the expansion title and number of tiles.  It's a little bit of work, but you get custom boxes that are sized perfectly for the tiles you have.  I then put the meeples and scoring tiles into their own zip-lock bags.  The tiles, meeples, scoring track, and rules all fit nicely within a small cloth bag.  It's much more compact and easier to transport than the massive Big Box 2.

I don't think we have "check boxes from the bank" in the UK.  I've tried googling, but I get lots about check boxes of another kind.  Could you describe the dimensions of these?

@tttppp, When you order cheques from the bank here in the US, they come in a box that's approximately 3.5 inches wide and 6.5 inches long.  But most importantly, the boxes I have are 1.75 inches deep, just large enough to nicely hold Carcassonne tiles.  I can fit around 110 tiles in a box.

This might sound a little silly, but why not just put them into medium or small zip-lock bags? Even if all the bags get tossed around inside the box, they'll be easy to paw through and find.
Then again, I just tossed everything I had into the cloth bag that came with the Builders & Trader expansion, and put each set of meepls into their own ziplock bag, and called it a day.
You know, you can construct very sturdy, custom boxes from chipboard or foam-core board. It's lots of fun, and lets you get exactly the type of box you always wanted.

Yeah, I'm a little too OCD for the loose bags.

No worries, I know the feeling :-)

I store all my tiles in the assembled Tower, tower in the draw bag, and first thing put back in the box. All the meeples in snack sized ziplocks, nestled around it, and the odd bits (Count's castle, River/River II) in ziplocks as well.


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How does Intrigue change your general Dominion strategy?
I've seen a lot of discussions about the basic strategies newcomers to Dominion develop:

First you buy as many action cards as you can get you hands on.
After several games, someone discovers Big Money and wins over the clogged decks of strategy #1
You realize that selective purchase of just a few action cards augments Big Money enough to give winning strategy.

In general, I feel like the base set stops there.  I bought the base set several months ago, and soon after my friend bought Intrigue and Seaside.  My general strategy evolved into something a lot like #3 above, where his became huge on action chaining (and annoyingly long turns with some card setups).  When Prosperity came out, we both bought it, but for me, it just seemed to take my general strategy a little further with bigger money cards.
Obviously, owning the base set affected my key strategy a lot differently than owning Intrigue did for my friend.  He and I seem to be pretty equally paired when we play, however, when I go over to isotropic and play online, I find I get slaughtered especially when Intrigue (and sometimes Seaside) cards make up most of the 10 kingdom cards.
So here's my question: Most players went through stages 1 through 3 above when they get the base set.  What follows those after picking up Intrigue?  I feel like I'm really missing something when it comes to the Intrigue cards; a lot more cards work together in a lot more combinations in a way the base set doesn't, so how do you learn to capitalize on that better?

Intrigue generally has nastier attack cards than Base does, and you really need to avoid getting hit by them or at least learn how to deal with their fallout.  The three major attacks are:
Saboteur:

This is the only card in the game that can force you to trash a Colony or Province (and not get one back).
Swindler:

This allows your opponent to force you to trash a card and give you one of the same cost.  Essentially, they can dilute your deck, and even give you Curses if you trashed a Copper.
Luckily, for Colony and Province, this just wears down their respective piles, as the cost has to be the same.  Note: For any card, if there is no card of the same cost left, you just lose that card.
Very late Edit: There is one other card that costs 8... Peddler.  I suggest not playing a game with both Peddler and Swindler in play.
Torturer:

A nasty card, particularly when used with Base's Throne Room or Prosperity's King's Court.  Unlike Militia, Ghost Ship, or Goons, Torturer does not stop when you only have three cards.  Also of note is that the Curse goes into your hand should you choose to take it, so you can use it with things like Chapel when your turn rolls around... or if it's King's Courted, take two curses then discard them for the third.
There is one more attack card (Minion) and two pseudo-attack cards (Masquerade and Tribute; they're not attack cards, so you can't block them)... you really should look through all the Intrigue cards to see what they do.

Great answer!  I do find that Torturer is easier to deal with if you steel yourself mentally to remember that taking a Curse isn't THAT bad.  People tend to destroy their hand to avoid a curse - remember, if you take the Curse it's exactly what would have happened if you were playing with Witch.  The discard-2 case is actually a free gimmie if you happened to draw 2 lousy cards, that's all.

@lilserf: My favorite is when I only have one action in my hand at the time, and it's either a Chapel or Trading Post.  Sure, I'll take that curse!  Well, more the Trading Post if I was going to do something like trash a Silver and Copper to ditch the Copper.

Also, you can think of Saboteur as an inverted Remodel.

I think Minion deserves more than the footnote you gave it, but I think you are right: it's the attack cards that kind of turn the game upside down in Intrigue.

@keithjgrant: As I was writing this post. I changed it around to shorten it.  One of the things I pulled was a larger section on Minion.

Of all the combinations of cards to avoid, [Peddler] + [Swindler] isn't in my top 100!

This is really an answer to a broader question, but I think a fair way to break down the various Dominion boxes would be:
Base:
Build a powerful deck. Stack actions, and build up to buying Provinces.
Intrigue:
Change the rules of the game. Swap cards. Make cards cost less than normal. Make Coppers worth more. Victory cards double as actions or treasures. Play the same card with results of your choosing.
Seaside:
Actions that affect the game beyond the turn on which they're played. Duration cards are a clear example of this, but Island, Pirate Ship and Native Village follow the same pattern. Treasure Map also forces you to plan a bit, and Smugglers even look back a turn. Treasury introduces the idea of putting a card you played back on top of your deck.
Alchemy:
Actions! Six of the ten action cards introduced have +actions, and Golem also leads to more action stacking. Of course the dependence on the Potion treasure card is significant, and Possession is arguably one of the most powerful and confusing cards in the game. I'd say Alchemy also focuses a bit on general manipulation of your deck, with plenty of opportunity to trash bad cards, and return good ones to the top of your deck.
Prosperity:
Amplification, treasures that do stuff and Victory tokens. If you count Colony and Platinum, seven (The others I counted were Expand, King's Court, Grand Market, Worker's Village and Goons) of the 27 new cards are basically bigger, better versions of cards from the base set. Eight of the new cards are Treasures with fine print. Forge helps you turn lesser cards into more powerful ones. Even the reaction card costs more than two.

I feel like the biggest difference between the Base set and Intrigue is that Intrigue focuses a lot more on action combos instead of big money with action augmentation.
In the Base game, action chaining is a great way to get the most out of your turn because it allows you to stack money and buys from action cards, as well as gets you a lot of draws to see a large percentage of your deck in a single turn.
However, in Intrigue, although action chaining still works, a lot of times you're better off using specific card combos instead of just Village, Laboratory, Festival, Smithy, etc...
For example, Scout by itself is an okay card, but when you use it with the Dual-Type cards (Nobles, Harem, Great Hall) it becomes a great card.  The same goes for Scout + Wishing Well.  Wishing Well is a shot in the dark usually, but if you use it in tandem with Scry cards (Scout or Secret Chamber), it becomes a Laboratory that only costs 3 Treasure.
Obviously there are a lot of other notable combos, and of course there are some usable combos in the Base set, but I feel that Intrigue really focused on using specific cards in tandem much more than the Base set did.

You allude to this, but I think a key in Intrigue is knowing which cards interact with each other.  There are a lot of ways this is important:

Identifying which Kingdom cards can mitigate the effects of the Attack cards your opponent bought
Finding ways to use two terminal actions in the same turn by supplementing them with +Action cards (for example, playing two copies of Bridge is fantastic)

The Intrigue cards, like all the expansions, have a lot more 'complex' cards that go beyond the +X +Y +Z pattern on a lot of the base cards.  All I can say is that the more you play with Intrigue (ideally with more than 2 people, also) the more you'll see and learn interesting interactions between the cards in the set.
In my opinion, nothing helps you in Dominion more than knowing the cards.  If you've played with every one of the 10 cards out there, you're not guaranteed a win or anything, but you will just be more familiar with the different pros and cons of each and you'll be able to come up with a strategy faster.

Basic Dominion has a few things that if you can master them, the additional complexity of Intrigue becomes easier to handle.
First: Three Basic Strategys
1) Big Money: Get Silver when you can, then get gold. When the saturation of money in your deck is 1.6, you can regularly buy Provinces. If you have a province majority, try to remove as many as possible. If you and your opponent are close, start buying duchys when there are about 6-4 provinces left. Do not take the second to last province unless you know they cannot win if they take the last one.
2) Terminal Action Combo: Some cards get you +1 action. No matter how many of these you have, even if you get through your entire deck, you will only be able to play 1 card that does not have +1 action. However, with a card like Labratory, you create an engine that can run through most of your deck in a turn. Buy one terminal action (like witch), and run through your deck each turn, buying whatever is best (usually gold or a province), and you will get your terminal action out almost every turn. One witch goes a long way.
3) Multi-Action Engines: With cards that give +2 action, or duplicate actions etc you can get a deck where you can do many things at once. In basic Dominion Village is a perfect example of this. A Deck with a few villages, a few labs, and some attacks etc can get a lot done on one turn (give them two curses, mine some silvers into gold, and remodel a gold into a province). These decks take a while to set up an efficient engine, but once they get started, they quickly gain enough points to win.
In basic Dominion, just figuring out which of these strategies is best for the 10 cards you have is the first step. Then figure out how the different cards augment or threaten your strategy. Big money can benefit from cards like smithy or council room. Marketplace can add a few crucial extra buys in a competition of action decks etc. Each game turns into a two step contest: BM/Terminal Draw/Multi-Action, and then once you have decided, how to optimize your choice to win.
The next step is realizing that some cards completely change the game.
1) Witch. This slows down every single deck you can be facing. If one player ignores Witches, they will have no chance of winning. There terminal drawing engine will draw into Witches and sputter. The Combo engine even more. Even BM will be slowed enough (hard to get to 1.6 saturation when you have extra non-money cards in your deck). Any game with Witches must include getting Witches as part of the strategy.
2) Gardens/Workshop Combo. This will win before any traditional BM/Engine deck. You workshop gardens, buy workshops, and then try to run out something like estates, which is about the only card you will be able to reliably get. Even witches do not do much to stop this deck, given that every card has the possibility of pushing the gardens to the next point level.
3) Chapel. While commonly seen as the anti-witch, it is actually just a way of beating people very quickly. If you only have 12 cards in your deck (gold and provinces) You will be getting a province every turn. This makes all combo decks run faster, and BM gets to the critical money saturation much faster. If one player uses chapels and the other does not, the game is over.
After this step, of identifying the game-changing cards, you can even go another level. Thief kills Chapel BM decks. You cannot afford to lose one of 4 gold at any point. Chapel does cancel out witches. Etc.
What does this have to do with intrigue? Intrigue just expands the possiblities, but does not add very many additional whole-game strategies.
1) Dukes/Duchies. This can beat a BM Province deck point wise.
2) Torturer is bad enough as a single action, but doubled up becomes horrible.
3) Minion is like witch. If one player is getting minions and the other is not, the minion player will win. it is two free money, and it does not really even take up deck space. You gain the money from as many as you can, use the last to draw 4, and continue on. Having a minion string is awesome.
Simply consider how the new cards fit in with the old. What new combos can you build a multi action deck around (torturer, saboteur, bridge)?
What cards are more effective in a big money deck?
If you had to pick only one or two terminal actions, which ones would they be? What cards help build a chain of actions (Great Hall, Minion, Ironworks sort of).
If you can consider these changes, then you should be fine!

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authors: Евгений Иванков

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When is the Bureaucrat worth buying?
When I first started playing Dominion, I saw the Bureaucrat and thought, cool, free silver and an attack!  I bought one almost every time it was available.  The more I played, though, I began to realize I didn't seem to do very well in the end when I used it heavily.
As I thought about it, I realized there is one big detriment to Bureaucrat: it adds to your draw pile, and thus slows down how quickly you can rotate through your deck.  It may help your next hand, but that Gold you just bought will take longer to come back around.
So my question is this: Are there key strategies that make excellent use of the Bureaucrat's abilities, and if so, what are they?  How do you capitalize on this card, and when are you best to ignore it?

Intro: What does Bureaucrat really do?
Bureaucrat does three things:

It slows down your opponent
It gives you a Silver on your next turn
It makes your deck bigger, and increases the money-to-other-cards ratio

In my experience, for Bureaucrat to be shine your game plan has to account for and benefit from all three of the above elements.
Analysis: slowing down the opponent
This only happens if the opponent will be drawing victory cards. At game start this will happen very often, but you have to foresee what course the game will take later on as well. Some factors that will help you decide are:

If there are good trashing cards in the pool (e.g. Chapel, Remodel, Upgrade) that will be seeing use (you can judge this yourself taking into account the number of non-terminal action cards and the pool composition in general) then the opponent will trash their victory cards and Bureaucrat's attack will be neutralized.
If the pool does not suit itself to chaining combos and there aren't many worthwhile game plans involving action cards (e.g. when all action cards are terminal, especially if there is no card that gives +2 actions), then going the money/victory route is tempting. Bureaucrat's attack will remain relevant in the late game if this happens.
If the pool contains victory cards that will be very desirable to both players (Nobles is the most prominent, but also consider Great Hall, Harem, Island) then Bureaucrat will be hindering the opponent quite heavily throughout the game.
The presence of cards that will let your opponent skip the victory cards they put on top of the deck also matters. There are cards (e.g. Library, Watchtower, Farming Village, Menagerie) that can nullify or even benefit from the fact that your opponent puts a useless card on top of their deck. If the opponent's game plan might go this way, Bureaucrat will usually not be a good choice.

Analysis: Getting more money
Although getting more money in your deck is usually the way to go, you also don't want to get too many money cards, and those that you do get should preferably be Gold (or even Platinum, if it's in the pool). This, in turn, limits the number of times you 'd ideally want to play Bureaucrat. On the other hand, getting free Silver in the beginning can be a pretty significant advantage. These two factors can be harmoniously combined if you take the other available cards into account:

If you plan on a heavy trashing strategy (Chapel, anyone?), one of the problems to be solved is how to transition from Copper/Estate to more desirable cards without gutting yourself in the process by leaving too little money in the deck (I believe I 'm not the only one who has drawn all their deck and realized that all their money is just 3 or 4 coppers). Bureaucrat can help with this by giving you the Silver that you need to trash all Coppers on sight with impunity. After the deck has been cut down to taste, you can also trash the Bureaucrat (even better, Remodel or Upgrade it).

Analysis: Making the deck grow
Making your deck larger is a disadvantage because you get to draw your expensive and powerful cards less often. This is not relevant in the beginning, when Silver will actually be one of your most powerful cards, but as long as the game progresses it will become more and more apparent. Also, playing Bureaucrat will increase the number of money cards in the deck. This can also be detrimental if you are planning on an action-heavy strategy.
However, both of the above effects can become irrelevant or even beneficial under certain circumstances, thereby increasing Bureaucrat's usefulness:

If the pool includes cards like Remodel or Upgrade, then you can plan on exchanging the Silver for more desirable cards (usually actions that help you combo). If you carefully balance the amount of Bureaucrats with your trashing-and-exchanging capacity (so that you don't drown yourself in Silver) then you can begin to look at Bureaucrat's effect as indirectly giving you a 4 or 5 cost action card for free, which is a very powerful effect. This is especially good if there are no +Buy cards in the pool, when a combo like Bureaucrat/Upgrade gives you a free buy in addition to the card you get to buy normally. Later on you will have the opportunity of exchanging this Silver for a 4, 5, or even 6 cost one.
If the pool is such that you plan on or foresee the possibility of going into turbo-Victory-buy mode (this might easily happen if one or both players goes for Big Money, or piles start running out and it becomes a race for the most Duchies and Provinces), adding money and victory cards in your deck is more beneficial than adding just victory cards. Sure, it's "just" a Silver, but the extra money in the deck might be just enough to offset the dilution you suffer due to buying victory cards. If these Silver make the difference between buying a Duchy and a Provice, or nothing and a Duchy, Bureaucrat can really shine. For maximum utilizations, consider the synergy with cards like Cellar or Warehouse that let you discard useless cards (victory cards most probably) and give you a chance of replacing them with more money to score a touchdown.
If the pool includes cards with a variable effect magnitude dependent on the size of your deck (e.g. Gardens, Philosopher's Stone), and the strongest strategy revolves around utilizing these cards to maximum effect, then adding more cards to your deck faster than the opponent can do the same should give you a sizable advantage.

Conclusion
J.R. Capablanca once said:

The weaker the player the more terrible the Knight is to him, but as a
  player increases in strength the value of the Bishop becomes more
  evident to him, and of course there is, or should be, a corresponding
  decrease in his estimation of the value of the Knight as compared to
  the bishop.

I would connect this to Bureaucrat by saying that the weaker a player is in Dominion, the better cards like Bureaucrat seem to him; as the player grows stronger, the power of other cards becomes evident (Chapel is a good example) and thus the relative value of Bureaucrat decreases even more.
However, Bureaucrat can be put to good use under favorable circumstances as long as you keep the balance regarding your deck's composition. It's very useful to be able to recognize card pools where multiple of the above scenarios are applicable, thereby allowing Bureaucrat to operate at full power; and when it manages to do so, it can make the difference between two otherwise evenly matched players.

Under getting more money, I would also add that having lots of +card actions (Smithy, Wharf, etc.) make Bureaucrat more valuable, since a larger hand can make use of treasure even without additional actions. While in general too much Silver slows you down in the endgame because Silver-value cards usually need Gold as well to buy Provinces, if you are regularly working with a 7+ card hand then Silver is less problematic.

I want to emphasize what I think is the most important thing you said, which is that the relative value of Bureaucrat decreases as you get better at Dominion. Compared to the other attacks out there, Bureaucrat is extremely weak, and even compared to other non-attack cards, it is often going to be a card that you're better off avoiding. I wouldn't say it's as bad as Woodcutter, but it's definitely in that range.

A couple Bureaucrat's are generally a good investment.
You need to limit the total number of Action cards in your deck that do not give +Actions.  They are all dead ends.  If there are several cards that give +Actions, maybe you can get a few extra Bureaucrat's.
Silver is a pretty good turn early in the game, but you need to progress to gold and Provinces.  If there is a way that you can trash Bureaucrats in the mid to late game, that would be advantageous.

Putting Silver on top of your deck is generally better than putting it in your discard pile. Later on you might not want to use the Bureaucrat every chance you get - particularly if your opponents have trashed their Estates - but early game, guaranteeing a Silver in your next hand is likely better than getting to your other purchases quicker.

Bureaucrat is also a strong buy if you are planning a Gardens strategy as it further increases your deck size.  It also doesn't require Treasure to make the purchase, which can be even more useful as your expanding Gardens deck gets clogged with victory points and copper.

Also good at slowing down other people buying Gardens or other victory cards on the early side.

You have to balance it out with other cards that will give you buying power for the current turn.  It is especially powerful if you have multiple actions, and can use a later play to draw cards immediately getting that Silver into play.

It's worth mentioning that the Bureaucrat is also effective when combined with other Attack cards. Of course, you'll need extra (+) actions to play both Bureaucrat and one of the following:

Swindler
Saboteur
Jester

It can also be very frustrating to have [Nobles, Throne Room, three treasures] in hand when a Bureaucrat is played...

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text:
When is Loan worth buying?
When would you ever want to buy this instead of just buying a Silver for the same price?

I see two benefits to this:
First, it's helping you cycle through your deck quickly, which is almost always a good thing.  Theoretically, your discard pile should contain new cards that make your deck stronger, so you want to get to shuffling them in as soon as possible.
Second, though you don't mention it, Loan gives you the option of trashing the revealed treasure instead of just discarding it.  If the treasure is a Copper (especially likely early in the game), you will probably want to trash it instead of discarding it, since this can hone down your deck.  But since Loan itself is worth a coin, it always has some value, so it won't be clogging your deck with a useless card late in the game.
Whether this is worth more than a Silver probably depends on your strategy and the other cards available.  If this were the only trashing card available, I would be tempted to buy it.
Read this blog post (and the comments) for a discussion of the statistics concerning Loan. The short version is this: If the Loan does not pull a Treasure you want to trash, it statistically does no harm to your deck, unless your deck is very small.

Beginners in Dominion suffer from the same cognitive problem that beginners in Magic the Gathering do: they only see how much a card costs in terms of what they spent on it.  They don't notice another cost, that it takes up space in their deck.
When people start playing Magic they think "Wow!  An Ornithopters costs 0 mana to cast?  I'll put 4 in my deck!".  And then keep drawing 0/2 flyers instead of something that actually does anything.  Likewise, those starting out in Dominion tend to always use a spare Buy to obtain more Copper coins.  Stuff is good, they think - not realizing that mediocre stuff can actually be worse than no stuff at all.
I don't own Prosperity yet but: it looks to me as if Loan would be a great way of removing Coppers from your deck, until all you have are Silvers and Golds, which are what you really want to be drawing every turn!  I think the key to thinking about this card is understanding that it doesn't do anything bad to your game even if you hit treasure cards you don't want to discard - it's cycled through your deck for you, which is a good thing.  At worst it's an expensive Copper that gets you to the good stuff in your deck faster.  At best, it efficiently kills off the Copper cards that are clogging up your deck, once you reach the stage where you have better treasure cards that you want to draw.
If one player just buys Loans and another just buys Silvers, obviously Loans start to look hugely inferior.  But if one player buys only Silvers and the other buys Silvers but also 1 or 2 Loans... pretty soon the second player's Copper-light draws will start to be more efficient!

Since this thread was bumped through an edit, and I never responded to this... "At worst it's an expensive Copper that gets you to the good stuff in your deck faster." That's assuming your "good stuff" is all money.  If you have good Actions, Loan will cycle right past them.  And if you good stuff is money, then you have to discard the one you flip over.  Which is really bad if you flip a Bank or Platinum.

Although I have not played prosperity yet, I am not entirely sold on this card. You have to go through your deck twice and play it hitting Copper before it increases your deck's efficiency at all. If you hit anything else with it early that can be very disadvantageous. Just think if you went Loan/Silver then on turn three played the Loan and hit the Silver. Obviously opening Loan/Silver is not good at all, but then you have just lowered your buying power to the point that you cannot get a 6cost on turn 3/4 unless you get a +2$ action. Early it actually hurts you if it hits anything other than Copper. Also at some point you might want a Platinum, and it is entirely possible, especially after removing a few Coppers with Loan earlier, that you might hit the Platinum with it.
I would say the optimal scenario to buy Loan is if there are some good action cards that give +$, allowing you to forgo buying treasures, at least for the early part of the game, there is no quick way to trash cards (Chapel), and there are cards that allow you to get rid of it (Remodel) or cycle it(Vault/Cellar) once it has served its purpose. That isn't to say that is the only time to get it, but I would say that is the best case scenario.
One scenario where I would consider getting it would be to go something like Loan/Monument for the first two turns, then collect a few Festivals while your Loan trashes some Coppers, then later buy a Remodel and turn it into a Festival.
I think if you open with loan + a non +$action , then your buying power just isn't increased enough and your deck starts to lag behind from the very beginning.
-EDIT-1/22/11
The reasons not to get Loan/Silver are
A) It decreases your chance of removing a copper. This is especially painful given that Loan removes them so slow to begin with.
B) If it does not remove a copper, it will reduce your maximum hand value back to $5/$3 or $4/$4 for turns 3/4. You lost the most valuable card in your deck for that shuffle.
C) You waste $1 by purchasing 2 $3 costs rather than a $3 and a $4. This of course only means anything if you assume that $4 cards are better than $3 cards which I believe is a reasonable assumption in the majority of cases.
The conclusion of my post is that the best thing to pair with a Loan at the beginning is a +$action, so if none are available that you want in your deck, you may want to forgo getting Loan.

You can always ding good strategy by citing the worst possible outcomes which is what I think you've done here. Choosing a card in Dominion should increase your odds of good things happening.  Sometimes it just doesn't work out.  That doesn't mean the original strategy was sub-optimal.

Hmm. I think the fact that any card that you would reasonably buy will increase the odds of good things happening goes without saying. I was pointing out that for several reasons, going Loan/Silver first is not optimal, yet if you get Loan, you damn well better get a +$2 Action or you have 0 chance of getting $6 on turn 3/4 and will have a maximum of either a $5/$3 or $4/$4 split.

This post seems to be missing the point that trashing is optional, and is focused too much on the (many and very real) drawbacks of opening Loan / Silver.

I will usually buy one or two Loans in my first three turns to help thin out the coppers. If my opponents are using something that can make me gain treasure cards I might not want (Mountebank or Jester come to mind.) then I might buy more to head off those effects. In both cases, if there are other options for trashing, I will probably go with those instead.

The only time the loan is really worthwhile is if there no other means of trashing cards or upgrading them. If there is a Steward, Upgrade, Mine, Forge, Bishop, etc. in play, don't bother buying a loan...
I really feel the Loan should have been Discard or Trash it. If you trash it +1 {money}.


text:
Watchtower when someone uses a Masquerade
As a reaction card, Watchtower can be revealed whenever you gain a card.

Does this apply to the card you receive from other players during a Masquerade?

No.  A passed card is not considered a gained card.
From the Intrigue rulebook:

“Pass” – when a player passes a card to another player, he places that card face down on the table between himself and the other player. The receiving player then takes the card from the table and puts it in his hand. A passed card is not revealed to the other players. A passed card is not considered to be trashed or discarded by the player passing it and it is not considered to be gained by the player receiving it.

I looked in the rulebook, but apparently not at the right section.  Whoops.

The only way you gain a card is if the card specifically says the word "gain" or when you spend money to buy it off of a supply pile. Anything else that results in you having a new card in your deck is not a "gain".
Edit: Total brain fart, thanks commenters!

This is not true.  Many other cards let you "gain" a card without buying it (like Workshop or Mine), but they always use the word "gain" in the card text.  Masquerade specifically does not use the word "gain", which is why Watchtower doesn't work against it.

That would be wrong.  I can think of more than a dozen cards that specify you gain cards: Feast, Mine, Remodel, Thief, Witch, Workshop, Baron, Bureaucrat, Ironworks, Saboteur, Swindler, Torturer, Trading Post, Upgrade... and that's just from Base and Intrigue!

On the plus side, the rare "Peer Pressure" badge is now yours to claim!


text:
What are good standard tactics for Dominion?
Googling reveals several sites listing standard tactics for Dominion. Let's collect ideas here, and discuss and judge them using the voting system.
One tactic per post please.

http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/392/should-the-community-wiki-police-be-shut-down/7183#7183. I think the hope was that people would reconsider posting questions they thought should be CW, but it appears to have backfired a bit

Okay, then let's do it in non-cw mode. So we should post only good tactics. =)

As discussed on meta, this question may be too broad: http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/86/should-we-close-question-that-are-just-what-are-good-strategy-tips-for-such-and The strategy for an entire game can probably be better discussed elsewhere (blogs, wikis, discussion boards, books, etc). A question on a more specific strategic topic is probably better suited for SO.

Yup, I was the same way so I figured I'd try to populate it a little.

I have to say I'm liking how this question has evolved so far.

This is a great question: it makes me want to buy Dominion.

Voting to close as too broad based on this meta discussion: http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/q/86/5573

Excellent question with a lot of excellent responses.

Remove Your Bad Cards
This involves slimming your deck down as small as possible by trashing or otherwise removing your starting Estates and Coppers (as well as any Curses you have ended up with).
Common cards that can enable this strategy (with set in parantheses):
Multiple Card Trash:

Chapel (B) - 4 cards
Forge (P) - Any number of cards from your hand
Steward (I) - 2 cards

Single Card Trash:

Apprentice (A)
Bishop (P)
Expand (P)
Loan (P)
Lookout (S)
Masquerade (I)
Moneylender (B)
Mine (B)
Remodel (B)
Salvager (S)
Trade Route (P)
Trading Post (I)
Transmute (A)
Upgrade (I)

Remove Cards From Play:

Island (S)
Native Village (S)

Removing your starting Copper and Estates will let you draw your more powerful cards that you've bought more often.

The most successful decks I have seen employing this strategy use Chapel and use it ruthlessly. If you draw Chapel, 3 Copper, and 1 Estate on turn 3, Trash them all and buy nothing rather than getting the Silver. So long as you don't drop below 3-4 coins in your deck, you should be fine.

Other cards that can do this include Island and Native Village.

The problem with Native Village is that you often don't know what card it's going to put in there in advance.  Other cards that let you trash cards are Trading Post, Mine (money only), Salvager, Apprentice, Upgrade, Remodel, and Expand.

Yup, Native Village is not the BEST type of card for this... but sometimes it's all you've got :)

Native Village can work when combined with things like Spy and Pearl Diver. Certainly, it's not as good as Island, or Chapel, or Mine, but hey getting rid of 2-3 copper or victory cards can really help a deck.

As pointed out to me in another question, the Loan Treasure card can be used to trash money cards.  The catch is that you don't have a choice as to which money card without using Spy or another such card to set it up, as it's the next treasure from the top of your deck.  Of course, you can choose to discard it instead...

Since this is community wiki, I decided to update it with some cards I mentioned earlier and some other cards I thought of since, breaking down which cards let you trash multiple cards and which trash single cards and what set each card is from.

Sorry if I edited this too many times... missed Transmute, which turns Victory cards into Gold and Treasure cards into Transmutes (or nothing if Transmute pile is gone), and Curses into nothing.

Having played a bunch of Ascension now as well, I'm pretty convinced this is the most important strategy in any deck building game. Well-deserved place as top answer. :)

Mint is a powerful but curious trasher. It's generally used to trash 4-5 coppers in one go, but it's a oneshot on-buy trigger: once it's in your deck it doesn't have a trashing effect any more.

Big Money
This involves just buying Silver and Gold, skipping any Action cards in favor of building up your Treasure as quickly as possible.  Once you've built up a deck full of Gold, you buy Provinces.
This strategy can be quite successful, especially against beginners, but a good strategy using combos of Action cards can beat it.

This is also a great watermark to judge other strategies against.  If a particular approach generally does not beat Big Money, then it's not worth playing that approach.

Note that Big Money itself can be beaten with good success by a slight modification that still uses no Action cards: after a few Provinces are gone (around 3 or 4), favor buying Duchies/Estates over Treasure.

Big Money has its vulnerabilities, as discussed in another question.

My impression is that Big Money usually works well with the basic game, but later expansions can set up combos that beat it rather easily, although they almost always require careful deck construction before they start engulfing Province + Duchy every turn.

Draw  A Lot Of Cards
This involves chaining actions together to draw as much of your deck as possible every turn, letting you use your good cards more often.
Common cards that can enable this strategy:

Alchemist (A)
Caravan (S)
City (P)
Laboratory (B)
Library (B)
Market (I)
Smithy (B)
Village (B)
Wharf (S)

Any card with +Cards and +Actions on it can be chained with other such cards to keep searching your deck until you find your high-value Treasure.  Cards like Laboratory (+2 Cards, +1 Action) are even better.
Other cards that combo into this strategy are things like Scout that will clear out upcoming Victory cards so that everything you draw is playable.

Nobles is my favorite card for this strategy. If you can get enough of them, you get to chain them together to get lots of cards in your hands with actions left over. When they end up in the same game as Throne Room or Golem this strategy can get pretty powerful.

Yes, Throne Room should be added to the list.  I've just had an interesting game based entirely on Market / Laboratory / Throne Room, drawing the entire deck each turn.

Throne Room by itself doesn't draw you cards.  It can combo with draw to give you more draw... but it can also combo with Bridge to give you more discounts.  It's kind of its own crazy animal.  But fun.

Village-type cards that "fork" one action into two actions are very, very useful (arguably essential) for this - especially if you're running cards that do not replace the action you spent to play them (Smithy, I'm looking at you.).

@AndrewVandever: Nobles are weak for chaining by themselves. Two nobles (one for cards, one for actions) is pretty much equivalent to one Laboratory. To work you need other cards to provide the actions

Good point. As an Action card Lab certainly beats Nobles, but I like having the points sitting there as well, and it's not too frequently that I have to choose between the two.

Identify the combo
There are two kinds of Dominion decks: Combo decks, and non-combo decks. The line is definitely fuzzy, but in general, it comes down to whether you are aiming to win through a particular set of powerful interactions, or just by having a lot of good cards.
Neither kind of deck is inherently better, but combo is much scarier. If you go into a game with +Actions, +Cards, and Bridge, and you just kinda meander around buying various good cards until you can buy a Province every turn, you're going to suddenly lose from your 3-province lead when your opponent hits critical mass and combos out, making provinces cost $2 and buying the last five at once.
Therefore, it's important at the very beginning of a game to identify any available combos, and decide whether you'll be going for them or whether you think you can beat them by building for pure value.
If you decide to go for a combo, your card valuations have to change -- if you're trying to assemble Torturer/Native Village (and you really, really should be if those cards both show up) you're going to have to pass up that nice-looking $4 for a measly $2 NV a bunch of the time. Caravan is a fabulous card, and maybe your deck should have a couple, but it doesn't help you play three torturers in one turn, and that's where your value is really coming from in this deck. If you already have four torturers and only 2 Native Villages, you need to spend your $5 on another NV.
Some common combos to be on the lookout for:
Bridge -- The mere presence of this card isn't enough, but it's enabled by too many things to list. You need a way to play four-six of them in a turn, which means plenty of card draw, and either plenty of actions or Throne Room/King's Court. It can be hard to get going, but when it does, maybe the most explosive interaction in the game. See this example game from Isotropic.
Torturer and +Actions -- If this is present, it's almost always too powerful to ignore. Forcing your opponent to choose between multiple curses or a 1 or 0 card hand every turn is just disgusting. Example game.
Warehouse/Treasure Map -- Normally a bit too unreliable to be really good, Treasure Map becomes amazing in the presence of fast deck cycling that leaves you with an action. Cellar is also great for this.
Venture and good trashing -- A deck whose only treasure is five ventures and a gold is pretty unstoppable.
Remodel/Gold and Expand/$5s -- Spam lots of remodels, remodel some of them into Golds, then remodel the Golds into Provinces... and then remodel the Provinces into Provinces to end the game once you've gotten ahead and no longer have any buying power.
King's Court/Throne Room chains -- There are openings to a turn scarier than King's Courting a King's Court. The best part of chaining these action duplicators is that you don't need +2 Actions cards to go off -- you can either net Actions by duplication Great Hall, etc, or you can just forgo +Actions altogether: if you can consistently KC+KC+Smithy, you'll draw 9 cards and get to triplicate two of them (and hopefully at least one was another KC...)
Figure out what you're going to do with all those green cards
Having a plan for how to keep your deck quality from degrading drastically after you start buying Provinces can make a huge difference. Just because you draw 8 two times in a row doesn't mean you ever will again, now that you've reshuffled with those provinces, and if you stall out and feel the need to grab duchies to keep up, it just gets worse.
Island, Bishop, Salvager, Remodel, Apprentice, Native Village + top of deck manipulation, Vault, Cellar, Warehouse, Minion, and Venture are all cards that can help with this in different ways.
Figure out if it's possible to get multiple VP sources in one turn
In a spread with no +buys, no +VP chips, and no card gain, (and to a lesser degree, no cursing and no Outpost), it's almost impossible to catch up from behind. In these games, you want to consistently get to 8 in a turn AND NOT MORE and start buying Provinces more or less as soon as possible. Be sure you identify this feature of the spread right away, so you know whether it's safe to try and build up resources to the point where you can get 2 Provinces per turn.

Welcome to the site!  Great comprehensive answer.

Strategic deck building
At the beginning of the game, you need to plan your deck.  Find cards that will work together well.  But choosing cards isn't all there is to it, it's very important to learn when to purchase certain cards.  There is no reason in the world to purchase a Village in your first few turns.  Likewise, you'll rarely want to buy a Chapel in the later stages of the game.
In most games, you can break the game down into three phases.  Some kingdom cards can change this approach, but in general, this is how I think about the game:
Early Game:
Look at the ten kingdom cards available and learn to distinguish which are key "jump start" cards: cards that help you get to bigger purchases as fast as possible.  These cards are key for your first three or four times through your deck.
Since your deck is still small, you will cycle through it quickly in the beginning, and they will come up frequently.  You generally only want one or two of these jump start cards, then fill out the rest of your purchases with Silver.  Occasionally, a good jump start card will also work as a strong mid-game card (such as Bridge).
Your goal in the early game is to get to your mid game strategy as quickly as possible.  Often, but not always, this means getting enough coin in your deck to enable you to purchase cards that cost 5 or more in nearly every turn.
These cards can (and should!) be purchased in your first two turns.  These cards generally cost 3 or 4 coin and give you a fast way to afford the out-of-reach 5-cost cards: Moneylender, Smithy, Bridge, Chancellor, etc.
Low-cost Attack cards serve a similar function, by slowing down your opponents before they reach their mid-game.
Mid Game
This is when you build the strategic deck you've planned from the available 10 Kingdom cards.  If you played your early game correctly, you should now consistently have the buying power needed to do so.  With the exception of terminal actions, you will probably want several of these powerful cards.  This means Golds & Platinums (first and foremost), Festivals, Grand Market, Tribute, Peddler, etc.
By the end of mid-game, your deck should be the powerhouse you envisioned at the beginning.  You have cards that synergize well and you can purchase at least a Province on most turns.  When you have that, pull the trigger on your late game.
Late Game
Buy victory points!  Now that you've build your dream deck, use it for its key purpose: grabbing up Provinces.  You can mostly forget about your deck-building here, and just focus on the green cards.  On turns where you can't afford a Province, perform deck maintenance: buy another Gold or other mid-game action card so you don't lose too much power after you shuffle in the victory cards you've been buying.  As the supply piles dwindle, don't be afraid to cannibalize your deck by Remodeling Golds into Provinces or Forging your powerful cards into Colonies.
A note on trashing cards
Some cards (Chapel especially) let you focus on narrowing down your deck by trashing unwanted cards.  Often, your best bet is to start with this immediately, prior to your "early game" strategy.  All the cards you want to trash are right there in your deck at the beginning of the game: Coppers and Estates.  Before you add too many "good" cards to your deck, get rid of these while you are more likely to draw them along with your Chapel or other trashing card. (This same approach works well with Treasure Map: buy two or three treasure maps right off the bat and then buy nothing until you can cash them in.)
This may seem counter-productive, as you spend several turns without progressing through early- and mid-game, but once you have concentrated your deck, you should be able to get through them to your late-game much faster.
Cards that don't fit these definitions
There are also plenty of cards that don't fit into any of the above categories.  Village, Great Hall, Pawn, etc.  These don't hurt your deck (since they often have +1 Card & +1 Action), but they do little to help you progress through the phases of the game.  Buy these only when you can't afford any truly strategic purchases: when you think your deck is on its way to the next phase but you just got a bad shuffle, and yet another Silver would just dilute the Golds you are starting to buy.

Thank you for this detailed answer. To be honest, this seems more like a general advice for the beginner than like a particular tactic.

General rule that applies to any specific strategy of play:
Plan your first four turns in advance.
Once you have your opening hand ready, you should plan your first two purchases.  Then you have a decent chance of planning turns three and four based on them.
Use these key early turns to mark a clear path to your first Gold and/or powerful 5-cost card.

Watch what other players buy
Particularly attack cards when defense cards are in the game.
Also be aware of how close to running out the piles are.  Remember, the game ends when any 3 piles are gone from Supply (non-Supply piles like Cornucopia's Prizes or Dark Ages's Spoils do not affect this), when all the Provinces are gone, or when all the Colonies are gone.
Buy piles other players want
This is related to the above.  In particular, don't let one player buy down a single pile, particularly if said pile has plus actions.

Along with this, learn to identify when your opponent is playing a fast-paced strategy or a longer, slower one, so you can bend your strategy accordingly.

I think this is an important aspect of any strategy, but in itself it's very reactive. It's much better to be the one setting the tone for the game.

Why don't curses end the game? They are a supply pile just like all the others.

@Guvante It was my understanding at the time that they didn't.  Which has since been shown to me that it's wrong; Curses do count as a standard pile.

As is often the case with a good game, there are multiple ways to win it. So one player may settle for Workshops + Gardens, and another one, for Big Money, and a third one, to Curse them with the Witch every turn. While looking at what other players are buying is certainly necessary, you don't need to copy what they do, just to be aware of what's going on.

Since I'm not yet allowed to edit even CW posts, I'll just point out that Steward is one of the best options for the "trash your cards" strategy: it's most of a Chapel that can also be a Silver once you don't need to trash any more. A friend of mine who loves Chapel-style decks argues cogently that it's the best card in the whole game so far for this kind of strategy.

Added it!  It's slower overall than Chapel but more useful in the endgame, yup.

Small Deck
Similar to "Remove Your Bad Cards", the small deck approach is not just about bad cards.
It's about keeping the deck size as small as possible to cycle through your deck as soon and often as possible (ideally, getting those trusty golds/actions in play more often).
With the small deck approach, I will typically buy fewer actions, build out a solid set of golds, and then start hammering on the provinces.

I'm not an expert but to me this seems to sound nice but hardly work after all.

I recently had a killer game with one each of Golem, Festival, Council Room and a handful of Silver and Gold. I cycled through my deck almost every turn, and was able to buy a Province and a Silver a couple of turns. I think I ended with about 20 cards and a huge lead.

The downside to this strategy comes once you do start adding Provinces, in that it's easier for them to slow down a small deck than a medium or large one.

@Rasmus. Like most strategies, it's not a guarantee (depends heavily on the available kingdom cards). But when you can pull it off... it's a beautiful thing.

@Liggy. Agreed. For me, the reason this strategy is so rewarding is because a well-built 10-15 card deck can remove the element of luck entirely from the end portion of the game. Two great cards I use for this strategy are Sentry and Salvager. A huge lead and an ending card count of 14-18 feels fantastic. But, like you said, it's not always the best option on the table - or even an option at all.

Damage your opponents' decks and hands.
Use attacks like the Witch, Spy, Bureaucrat, Ghost Ship, Swindler, Militia, etc. to make sure the other players are always playing with fewer and worse cards than they would like. Especially with the Witch, getting an early start at haranguing the other players can ensure you get a significant lead right off the bat. On the flipside, the Witch is a terrible card once the Curses run out. It's really nice when Upgrade is also in play so you can flip your Witches for Golds once this happens.

This is a great strategy. I find that once you start handing out curses to others, they begin to waste actions/buys to support getting rid of those curse cards.

Sometimes there are better ways to spend your coins. For example, if you can buy Saboteur (Intrigue) in the first two hands you can do some serious damage with it in the next few hands, and given the spread you can prevent other players from having any cards over value 2 for the entire game. However, then you won't have many +Actions and this will slow down your own progress greatly. All attack cards are like this: there are caveats and if you're using it on the wrong spread (Native Village counters Saboteur well) you will fall behind and lose, as most attack cards cost a lot of coins.

@Sadly Not I agree with you, and I suspect that's why there are other strategies in here with higher votes.

Properly manage your reshuffling frequency
An advanced strategy is in certain situations to take cards like shanty town or lookout on turns 1/2 in order to increase your rate of reshuffles, and therefore give more value to each card you gain because you will draw this card sooner than you otherwise would, and you also get to use it more times throughout the course of the entire game.
Another very important thing to consider is during your turn if you run out of cards, to decide whether it's good to reshuffle your discard pile into a new library or not.  Sometimes it's can be really good because this will set up your next few turns in a good way, something like all money for two turns and then youll have all your actions from this turn stacked together after the money.  Most of the time however it's a lot better to get your library to zero cards and leave it there, that way you don't get any clumps that will hurt you later on.
Check out this post of mine from BGG for some more detail on this point.

You cannot just reshuffle at will when your draw pile us empty.  You must wait until you have to draw, so unless you play a +Card action with an empty draw pile, your current hand will be included in your next shuffle.

i was implying that you have such a card, obviously! =)

Ah, you mean like deciding whether to use a card with +Card when your draw pile is empty?  It's an important decision. The ability to force a reshuffle early with the.Chancellor is especially nice, and it makes that a particularly powerful card.

Buy a small set of different cards
This does not necessarily mean you need a small deck. What I mean is pick roughly 3-4 cards to buy and only buy those.
If you only buy from a small set of cards then those cards will more frequently pop when you draw and you will have consistent gameplay from one hand to the next. If you have 8 different cards in your deck then you will find each hand will have random cards, which is almost never a good thing given synergies don't exist between every pair of cards.
For example, in one game I only bought Torturer, Festival, and Throne Room. I got consistent play from one hand to the next (Festival for actions, apply Throne Room to Torturer for draw, repeat). To accommodate filling my deck with Provinces I simply bought more of those 3 cards to increase the size of my deck, and thus reduce the number of Provinces I get with each hand while maintaining consistent gameplay.

Get lots of victory cards
Buy lots of victory cards, such as a Duke(I)/Duchy(B) combination, or Gardens(B).
Since this heavily dilutes your deck, it only works with action cards that allow you to get cards without having many useful cards, such as Ironworks(I) or Remodel(B) or Workshop(B).

Don't buy too many of the smaller Victory cards, particularly if you add Prosperity to the mix.  Prosperity has added a lot of Treasure cards (including Platinum, a 5-coin Treasure that costs 9 to buy), money-related Action cards, and Action cards that give you Victory Tokens (in 1-point and 5-point tokens).  The increase in money also means that Provinces and Colonies (10-point Victory card that costs 11 to buy) are considerably more useful.

Although the Prosperity instructions encourage you not to play every game with the Colonies and Platinum.  Even with them, it may work in certain setups if you can end the game before people get going.

We tend to use them whenever we have Prosperity cards in play, simply because of how much money you'll have.  Venture, Bank, and Hoard almost require you to have Colony just so you don't waste money.

@Powerlord Still, one of the funnest things to do while your opponent is playing a Colonies strategy is to start pulling all the Provinces out from under them. This can end the game before they realize what's happening. If there are +buys in play with Prosperity cards, this can end up being pretty easy to do.


text:
How can I compete against the unit armies tactic in Risk?
How to I avoid one player getting too strong by playing just to defend a small area or continent and only gaining territories just to obtain Risk cards to trade in for more armies.

Box him in and attack him elsewhere.
If he's boxed in, he can't gain territories around his base except by suffering heavy losses. Now he has to gain his Risk Card Territory elsewhere, where he's vulnerable. Whittle down the number of his territories, and soon he'll have to place some of his new armies outside his base to have a good chance of gaining a territory, which means those armies are not strengthening his base.

Often not practical.

Convince the other players of the power of his tactics and the need to 'break his continent' before he 'runs away with the game'.  Lead the coalition against his evil ways.  Use this coalition to mask your own strategy, as you set yourself up to emerge most powerful from the ashes.
Risk is all about controlling the perceptions of the rest of the table.

Play with the rules variant (which is in the manual in at least some versions of RISK) that tones down the trade-ins for armies.  Instead of the trade-ins escalating by 5 in the endgame, they simply go up by two every time (4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16...).
This makes the other ways of obtaining armies more relatively important and downplays the importance of the cards.

I don't see any reason why this should tend to disfavour a player who's turtling in a small continent. Indeed, I'd think that it just makes their continent bonus relatively more valuable, and so favours them.

Force him to come towards you and leave the safety of his base.  Then he's either forced to attack territory outside of his base if he hopes to continue to gain Risk Cards and grow his armies, or stop collecting risk cards altogether.  Also, if you can gain and hold choke points on the map against him, you force him to seek those cards in other parts of the map.  If he continues to become to powerful, seek an alliance with the other players to cut him down to size.

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


text:
Is there a Risk World Championship?
Is there any national or world level governing body that holds an annual Championship?

The Risk Tournament of Champions celebrated their 20th championship in 2008, the 2009 championship was cancelled.  The web page @ risktoc.org is defunct. You can view the old web pages via The Internet Archive Wayback machine.
The replacement is the new Annual Risk Classic.  The 1st championship will be decided November 6-7, 2010.


text:
How to Maintain the Balance of Power on Risk?
How can I stay strong enough to avoid being eliminated while at the same time avoid being too strong and making myself a target?

Hold a medium-to-small sized continent (like South America or Africa) and avoid aggression while you build up.  Attempting to take Asia, Europe, or North America will raise a lot of red flags, and Australia's defensibility makes it suspicious too.
RISK is defined in the later game by the ridiculous armies you get when trading in cards, so your main task is to be in the position to trade in for a lot, then bust out of your home and take another continent.

Don't underestimate the importance of visual cues or psychological warfare;  in games like Risk and Diplomacy, these are the very underpinnings of your negotiation platform.  For example, if you are playing one of the game sets that features little men and cannons, then arrange them on your spaces facing away from one enemy, and massed on the 'border' with another enemy.  It has no in-game effect whatsoever, but sends a very definite visual message, which is interpreted on a subconscious level.  When it comes to your turn to attack, mull over your options, or pretend to be doing some dice-math in your head, while staring down intently at a given enemy.  Even if you don't actually attack, you've conveyed to the rest of the table that you WOULD attack that enemy, if only you COULD, which leads to the "He must be doing too well" syndrome from everyone else.

I enjoyed reading the answers to this quintessential question that defines the game of Risk. I find Risk to be a game of balance of power & playing your position is important.  What you do when you are the dominating player is different than when you are the mid-player or the week player.  When playing on line in real time you must also consider who are the reliable players in relation to connectivity as to who will drop next.  In addition to the other answers posted here I would add the isolating method.  If your opponent controls Australia or South America early on, you choose as position on the map far from theses continents & eliminate all soldiers of that player that are near yours thus forcing the incremental strength of that player to attack your opponents as opposed to you.


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What's the name of the move where the player swaps King and Rook/Castle in Chess? Why is this move important?
I'm a chess beginner, and I was wondering: why was this movement introduced to chess, and why is it important to the game?

@down voter, please justify your vote. On private beta is very very important to know why a question isn't good.

He might be referring to the fact that the piece isn't called the Castle, it's called the rook (regardless of whether Ron Weasley called it that, it's not correct)

@McKay: In that case he should learn to post a comment about the problem or edit when he have enough rep to do. Down vote is to bad question.

I concur.

The question is somewhat general-reference; a Google search for "swap king and rook" brings up the Wikipedia article on "Castling" as the first result, which would tell bigown all he'd need to know about the move and more. Stack Exchange is not supposed to be a substitution for Google; in fact the point is to supplement Google search results for similar queries to the questions asked.

It's called castling. It's important because it gets your king out of danger (the centre is not safe), while simultaneously moving your 'tower' (also called a Castle, or a Rook) into the centre, where it is much more useful.
See this related question: Is castling still done in the openings in modern chess?

I'm certainly not a chess expert, but I think that "Castle" nowadays refers exclusively to the move, not the piece.

@Andrew Vandever - you're certainly right that it's an outdated name, but it's still common to hear it used informally. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rook_%28chess%29.

@andrew in english maybe. In other languages it's still roughly the name. In Dutch and German for example the piece is called (translated to English) the "Tower".

"Castle" isn't a proper name for the piece, but isn't unheard of, especially when teaching the game to children or people totally unfamiliar with the pieces, because it just looks like a castle. Some people also call the Knight the "Horse".

This is called "castling".  The Wikipedia article has information about the origins of the move.
The move is important to build a fortress for your king, and to free the rook for attacking the enemy king.

The name of the move is castling.
The history of the move is explained well on the wikipedia page.

The main advantage is that you move 2 at the same time. It's important to note that the 2 castlings are not the same. The long one is more aggressive and if you do it right, you get your rook in line with your queen.
Traditionally, taking the center should be an objective. Castling enables this.
I don't consider myself a strong player, but in my experience, Castling is best used for positioning rather as a defense for your King. Remember, you need to have the Initiative...

About the importance of the move:

(Usually) Helps to get your king to safety. Very often, center line is not safe in a battlefield.
Brings the rook closer to the center line. Oftentimes, the fight will be around those lines. You could read on "importance of center" if you are interested.
Only move that lets you move two pieces helping in tempo
Only move that lets you move your king two squares
Allows one to connect the rooks. We say rooks are connected when they protect each other.

Of these, the first two are the most important. King safety is essential by the very nature of the game. Getting the rook out in the game is also important. For example, in many queen side castling moves, players intend to bring the rook for the attack.
Many people use this move in almost all their games.
And when was it included in chess? Obviously, it was not in the early versions of the game. It is an addition to the fast European chess for sure. 14th or 15th century is an estimated time. The wikipedia entry for castling looks nice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castling
This related question is on the history of castling. It is a nice read.
https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/486/how-did-castling-originate
Happy Castling.

The main purpose of castling is to "develop" the king, not the rook. The king is easier to defend towards the end squares but can be in danger anywhere.
However around the e-file the king also gets in the way of the other pieces, in particular blocking the rook in. Thus the castling move "swaps" the positions of the king and rook simultaneously.
The normal sequence of opening moves is to first get minor pieces out and a few pawns, castle, get the queen out and that leaves the two rooks alone in the back-rank aside from the king near the end where they can move around freely between the files.
In highly "attacking" chess games, the two players may castle on opposite sides, i.e. one does the king-side and the other the queen-side. You then launch an attack on the side where the other play has his king by moving the pawns forward. However you also need to defend your own side from the opponents attack.
Such games often suit white better. I therefore once had a rule that if I was black I would wait for my opponent to castle first. I'm not sure about the general validity of that rule, but something to consider.


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What are some good tactics for the early game in Risk?
In general what do you recommend at the beginning of the game?

I always hole myself up in South America, and then move into Africa or North America; whichever seems easiest at the time.  I've never seen Australia strategies be successfull.  Then again, I've only ever played 5 games of risk in my life

@SamIam - it's hard to hold up in SA if you have no starting countries nearby :)

Voting to close as too broad. This is a list question, and a strategy tips question (which have been discussed on Meta and determined to be too broad)

If you are an offensive player, Craig Reade wrote a good strategy page discussing starting in South America, which is a continent I like to start in, if I can.  The basic elements of the strategy are:

Don't play defensively.  You'll get boxed in and die.
You don't want to gain the continent, but lose the game because it cost you too much to take it.  That said, if you are not holding onto the entire continent early, you'll find yourself in an indefensible position, surrounded by foes and your turns will be numbered.
Grab some North American territories during initial placement - especially Central America.  North America is likely to be the next area you'll be heading into, so any territories you can grab now, go for it.  Plus Central America makes a great early buffer against attack.
Don't play defensively.
Ideally, plan on having gained a second continent before your Australian opponent starts their offensive push.
Don't allow yourself to get trapped.

If you can hold both of the Americas, you're in excellent position: 2 continents with 13 territories and only 3 access points.  Sweet.
Not sure if I mentioned this, but you don't want to play defensively ;-)

related - How would you "study" Risk

I'd warn against the common tactic of trying to take Australia.  Frequently, its seen as an overly defensible position, leading to an 'early-leader', situation, which itself spawns a coalition effort to break you down or at worst, lock you in Australia.  If you're going to shoot for an early continent, I recommend South America or Africa;  and don't do it turn 1, do it turn 2 or 3.  The reason for that being that the first person to take any continent is going to attract hate; don't let it be you.

I absolutely agree -- I have a disease where I have to go for Australia every game, and I get beat down every time.  I'm going for South America next time.

Nice.  Plus I'm allergic to Australia, myself.  My favorite is South America.  Relatively easy to hold and a modest bump.

I agree, it's too "suspicious".  South America has more options when you're ready to expand, too.

My tactic is to start a base in North America. Other players will fight you for control of Australia or South America, but if you control only 3 entry points to North America and can clear it our relatively quickly with minimal losses, your game is set. From there, you move to South America and just continue to grow. I have used this for years and I have never lost a game IF I have taken N. America in a quick and timely manner.

Beginners usually concentrate on the continent bonuses, but they're actually not all that important.  A few key tactical points to remeber:

always make an attack every turn to gain a card.  Other than that, you don't want to attack unless there's a good reason
always strive to NOT be the strongest player, or the weakest.  They're the targets.
THE key tactic is wiping out another player to gain their cards giving you 5+ to immediately turn in for a set and keep going.  Always keep track of how many cards everyone has.
Turn order is very important.  You want to try to arrange things so that the player that moves before you can't wipe out the weakest player and needs to attack the strongest player instead.  Note that who is weak and who is strong can shift rapidly.

Beyond this, everything depends on the play style of your opponents.  If someone has a preference for a particular continent, use that in your negotiations -- get something from them in return for 'allowing' them to have their pet area, while convincing the other players to attack the player with the continent bonus as they're winning.

If you can grab a continent, go for it. But don't forget about the other parts of the map. Too often players focus on the easy continents and ignore the harder ones, allowing an easy win for another player.

Also, preventing other people getting a continent, eg by holding Mexico when you have South America to stop anyone else getting North America.

I highly recommend taking a strong area that you intend to make yours, and a number of satellite areas that are either easy to defend by themselves (eg: Australia), or that are relatively proximal to your strong area.
For example, starting with South America, grab a few locations in North America, Africa and Europe. This will make it more difficult for your opponents to capture those continents, and will give you some support when you go to take them yourself.

This is an interesting tactic.  I've always avoided spreading my power, but I will give this advice a try and test it's success.

If you have 12 territories you get +1 unit.  You can achieve in Asia without taking a continent.

I have always played against the same circle of friends and family in the past, and I normally win.  My experience is limited to their playing styles, though.
I start in Australia (against popular advice, it seems), and then progress from there conservatively.  I will never weaken my front by going for that extra territory at all cost.
Breach out to Japan, and then north.  Strengthen the access point to North America, and then head for Africa.
Don't forget the power of diplomacy!  Don't anger the guy who controls or is trying to control North America - leave that till later.  My experience is that the game ends in a big war between East and West, me being East (for no other reason that the game plays to my liking that way).

If you look at the continents and compare the number of borders vs reward, Australia is the easiest, but the next step from there is Asia, which is one of the hardest continents to hold. The next best is North America. With a reward of 5, but only 3 borders to defend, this is - in my opinion - always the best option. It's easy to expand into South America, and with Asia and Europe usually fragmented, it's relatively easy to attack one country to gain a card while you consolidate.
One last piece of advice, leave 2 armies on Central America, even after taking South America. If someone happens to break into one border, this is usually enough to prevent them from breaking your continent bonuses.

We have found some interesting stats at Arms Race - http://armsrace.co
Even though people here seem to disregard the tactics of taking a continent and trying to hold it, here are the stats that we have seen, out of the thousand of 4-people games played:
The first person to hold a continent has 35% chances of winning the game. And it goes up to 40% if that continent is Australia
And indeed, people tend to go after Australia most of the time (break down of first continent held):

Australia: 53%
South America: 37%
Africa: 8%
Europe: 2%

In addition to sharing these stats summaries, is there any way I could dig through the raw data myself?

Giving access to a database is always something tricky, to say the least :) But I'd be more than happy to help if you have specific questions that you'd like to see answered! You can us support@plynd.com in that regard. Cheers

I'd go for one of the larger continents (Europe or Asia), myself. I won't take it early, because there will be one or two or three holdouts. But it's easy to be forgotten in the mix as attention is focused elsewhere (on the smaller continents). But once I'm ready to "blitz" and wipe out the last holdouts, I'll have a LARGE continent, and will be hard to stop.

Probably the most important advice for early on in the game, as well as later, is be flexible.  Depending on the number of players, initial layout and what other players do, it may be advantages to seek a small continent, a large continent or just sit on the wall and wait it out, only collecting +3.
For example, if there are several players of equal strength, likely leading a long game (even with increasing cards), you will likely need a continent.  Or, if there are five or more players, you will likely do better without defending a continent but focusing on positioning to attack a weak players when the card bonuses get high enough.
Some specifics:
Europe is rarely a good idea - even if you start out strong there initially - it is just too exposed.  North America on the other hand can work, but only if you take your time to clear it out.
Create conditions where other players will have an incentive to attack each other.
In games of increasing card values, make sure you always have a line of attack in all directions.  This is also one of the problems of defending large continents - can force you to spread your armies, making a quick strike difficult.

Personnaly, I think Europe is a lot underestimate, but it's a great continent to start with if you can win it early, 3-4 turn. Why?

the bonus for unit pretty high
at the start, people tend to forget about you and will elave you in peace, that can gain you 1 or even 2 turn to get control of the continent if you play it right
the number of territories is interesting, you don't need a lot more to get the 12 teritories bonus
4 border to defend seems high but 3 are connected, meaning you can easily move 1 unit from one to the other at the fortify phase
and finally, one of the thing people tend to forget, is that you have access to 3 more continents, huge one. Meaning you can control yours and prevent others from controlling big continents.

I try to control the south, as in africa, australlia, and always South America. South America Allows expansion into North, and Africa is the only other way to access it. Africa is expandable into Europe and Asia as well. Austraillia is just good for the bonus.


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Where I can buy good resources to build games?
Where I can buy boards, cards, dice, fake money, figures, and any sort of pieces? It would be nice if the store sells on the internet.
Another good reason is to buy replacements for damaged or lost pieces.

You might want to accept an answer for this question, if there's an answer that meets your needs. If not, I'd recommend asking for clarification in comments, or editing your question to be more specific, so people can edit their answers or write new ones that will better answer your question.

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about shopping recommendations and it is attracting spam.

Here's a list from BoardGameGeek:
Industry Sources
It should get you started on the path to finding everything you need.

Just go to The Game Crafter

What makes this a good site to visit? Without at least a basic description, it's hard to separate this from the other answers.

Some game stores do sell a number of game creation items.  I would check with your friendly local game store and see if they carry the Fantasy Flight Game Supply line which currently includes card sleeves, game tokens, and plastic stands.  Dice should be relatively easy to come by at your game store as well, and I know Chessex carries a full line of white or creme blank dice in 4,6,8,10,12 or 20 sided varieties.
My local gamestore also carries pawns and blank playing cards, but I know that isn't necessarily the norm.  For any items you can't find locally, the internet is always worth a search.

Teacher supply stores frequently carry blank pieces and other resources, too.

If you're looking for one-off pieces, for play testing purposes and such (rather than having custom pieces made for final production of something), I'd hit up yard sales and thrift stores.
I typically wouldn't recommend them, as you can't be sure most games are complete, but in this case, getting a bunch of partial games cheaply might be an advantage.

bargain hunting, I like it!  I've picked up a lot of complete boardgames over the years for $1 at garage sales.  Probably 75% of what I've bought ends up being complete.

I know which of my local thrift stores count pieces before taping game boxes shut. The others, I either open them and count myself, or just assume pieces are missing when making the purchasing decision.
Either way, you can get money, dice, counters, minuteglasses, spinners, tokens, and all sorts of other stuff for pennies on the dollar.

Dice will probably be the least of your problems since you can buy them at any game store. As for other elements I'd look on eBay. You could probably buy some cheap board games and combine them to make your dream game.

If you are looking to go straight to the manufacturer, Tom Jolly has another current and good list of sources at http://beach.silcom.com/~tomjolly/design2.htm

At board game expositions like Spiel Essen, they sell game pieces.

I've used http://www.SpielMaterial.de in Germany and Plastics for Games (http://www.p4g.co.uk/) in the UK before and been happy with both. Plastics for Games are definitely a buy in bulk sort of place though, from what I remember.


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Differences between Steam and Age of Steam?
What are the key differences between the Steam and Age of Steam games?

Assuming you're referring to the "standard" version of Steam, the two major differences from Age of Steam are:

Split income and VP tracks. When delivering goods, you must choose where your points go, either to an income track (that goes from -10 to +10) or to your victory point track. Early in the game, you'd usually concentrate on income to grow your business, then at some point switch to VPs.
There is no board with randomized upcoming goods for each city and therefore no "production" action. Instead, 12 sets of 3 goods are available for use with the new "city growth" action or when you place down a new city tile while "urbanizing". A startup city can only get one new set of goods with city growth, and urbanized cities cannot get another set after being placed.

Smaller rule changes include tile costs, tile distribution, no income reduction, loco is not allowed if you're on 6 already, final scoring for tracks is 1 VP per link, and when shipping you can't give more points to any other player.
This great review contains a more detailed list of differences.

In my opinion, different #2 cannot be overstated, as it creates the most radical (and chaotic) departure of Steam from Age of Steam, IMHO.  While it gives the urbanizing/city growth player more control over where and which goods cubes will show up, it severely damages long term planning for the players.  In Age of Steam, most of the cubes will be produced over the course of the game and the location is known, it is only a question of when.   In Steam, most of the cubes will be produced but the timing AND location are unknown.


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In backgammon, can you resign, and how can you tell when you should?
In backgammon, there comes a time when all pieces have passed each other; there is no more interaction, you are simply rolling it out until you can bear off all of your pieces. If one player is well ahead of the other at getting their pieces into their home board and bearing them off, then it might seem pointless to keep rolling it out; it may well be impossible, or at least extremely improbably, for the other player to make up the difference.
May the player who is behind resign in such a situation, or do they need to play it out in case of a gammon?
And if they are allowed to resign, are there any good rules of thumb to decide when it's worthwhile to do so, and when it's worthwhile to keep playing? For instance, has anyone calculated out the possibilities such that you can say "if player 1 has started bearing off, and player 2 has x pieces outside of their home board, there is no possible way for player 2 to win." Or, has anyone calculated out the probabilities, such that you can determine based on the position that there's only a one in a million chance of winning, and it's probably not worth hoping for that, while in another situation, you might have 10 to 1 odds and it's worth seeing if you make it.
edit to add: According to a thread on Backgammon Galore, along with their glossary, you can offer to resign with any outcome (backgammon, gammon, or a simple win). If you offer one of the lower outcomes (gammon or simple win), your opponent can refuse in order to take the chance at getting the higher outcome. Of course, this only applies if you're playing in a tournament, a rating system, or for money where the value of the win matters.
So, I've answered the first half of my question, but I'm still interested in the second half; when should you resign? Are there any good rules of thumb, or has anyone done a statistical analysis, of what points in the game one player can be guaranteed to lose, or have such a low probability of winning that it's worth it to just resign? Are there any good ways to tell when you should offer to resign with a gammon?

Since the edit, there are two parts to the remaining question: "When have you definitely lost?" and "How can you tell when you've probably lost?".  The first is easier to answer than the second, so I'll start with that.
The minimum you can roll on a go is a two and a one (note that a double one would give you four moves).  The maximum is double six.  So (assuming all pieces have passed each other) you can determine if you have definitely lost by assuming you will roll double sixes for the rest of the game, and assuming your opponent will roll two/ones.
It would be really nice to include a formula here that takes pip count, piece count and whose turn it is, and computes if you've definitely lost, but such a formula escapes me.  There are some situations that depend on more than these three variables - for example:
|24  23  22    |24  23  22
+---+---+---   +---+---+---
| O   O        | O       O
| O   O        | O
|              | O

In both these finishing positions the pip count and piece count are the same.  However the maximum number of rolls to finish is two in the left hand picture, but three in the right hand picture.
There are two main metrics of backgammon positions (other than pip count).  These are the Thorp count and the Kleinman ratio.
The Thorp count is calculated for each player as:

Start with the pip count.
Add 2 for each checker still on the board.
Add 1 for each checker on the 1 point.
Subtract 1 for each occupied home board point.
If the player on roll's count is greater than 30, multiply by 1.1.

There is an article here explaining how the Thorp count can be used to estimate the game winning probability.
The Kleinman ratio is calculated as:
(D * D) / S

where D is the pip count difference of the two players, plus 4 to compensate for the player on roll's additional pips; and S is the pip count sum, minus 4 to compensate for the player on roll.
There is an article here explaining how the Kleinman ratio can be used to estimate the game winning probability.
Finally there is an article here which overlaps the previous two, but which recommends using the Kleinman ratio over the Thorp count assuming you are able to learn a large table of logarithms!

Two good rules of thumb are, never resign in a position with contact, and resign if the result is "obvious". If you need to stop and think to work it out then it's probably quicker to just play on to a position of certainty anyway - certainly so online where forced moves (and optionally, greedy bearoffs) can be played automatically.
It's generally not considered polite to resign a single game if a gammon is still possible, however unlikely - some players will interpret it as a way to trick them out of the gammon possibility.

You resign when it is mathematically impossible for you to win, and also, if it is mathematically impossible for your opponent to get a gammon or backgammon. This occurs after contact has been broken off between the two teams (no possibility of further hits).
"Mathematically" impossible to win means, give yourself 6-6 the rest of the way, give your opponent 2-1, and you still lose. That happens only at the very end of the game.
A gammon (and backgammon) is ruled out when you have borne off one piece, or will do so with the worst rolls for you, and the best rolls for your opponent.

authors: Γιαννης Γιαννοκωστας


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When is the Richest Settler evaluated?
I've run into what I believe might be an edge case for the rules of the Traders and Barbarians expansion to The Settlers of Catan. I'm hoping someone might be able to clarify (preferably with reference to rules I might have missed), or at least give me some solid opinions!
Let's say we have two players, and player 1 has 15 gold while player 2 has 14 gold. So, at the start of this scenario, player 1 has the 'richest settler' card. Let's also assume that both players are one victory point from winning.
At the end of his turn, player 1 needs to move his caravan in such a way that he will traverse player 2's roads and thereby give player 2 some gold. This means that player 2 will - temporarily - become the richest settler. At the end of the turn, though, player 1 will collect 5 gold from delivering goods, which would give him back the richest settler card. He will also get a victory point for delivering goods.
My question is - at what point is the richest settler evaluated?

The latest core Settlers of Catan (link to PDF) rules state:

If you have 10 or more victory points during your turn the game ends and you are the  winner! If you reach 10 points when it is not your turn, the game continues until any player (including you) has 10 points on his turn.

And the Traders and Barbarians (link to PDF) scenarios state:

The normal rules for The Settlers of Catan apply. The changes are described below.

Therefore, we can infer that the rules for determining the winner apply here too, and while the amount of victory points required may change, when the winner is calculated is unaffected.
Even though Player 2 will have more victory points, it is NOT their turn, so Player 1 will win as soon as he/she has the necessary points.


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Domaine - Can you expand into an opponent's domain if your domain and his have no knights?
According to the Domaine rules, you must have more knights in your domain than your opponent's domain to expand into his.
If both domains have no knights, does it mean that neither domain can expand into each other?

Yes, that is correct.
If your domain has no knights it can only expand into territory that is not part of any domain.  In this case you should get some knights into your domain and take advantage of your neighbor before he does the same to you!


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House rules for Crokinole?
Any recommendations or variants for playing Crokinole? We say that you have to stay seated in your chair with at least one cheek touching to make your shot.

The rules around chair movement and contact with your chair during play are explained in the National Crokinole Association (NCA) rules (emphasis mine):

7) Shooting

...

h) Neither the board, nor the chair, of any player may be moved while the game is in progress, excep that a player may move his chair, if necessary, to pick up a disc that has fallen out of reach.
i) When a player is shooting, at least one portion of his/her posterior must be in contact with the seat of his/her chair.
j) Each leg of a player's chair must be in contact with the floor. (no leaning of the chair)
k) No part of a player's body except the feet, may touch the floor. No other means of support may be utilized

While interesting to note that the rule mentioned in the question is actually an official rule as opposed to a house rule, this answer doesn't answer the question; which is asking for variants or house rules that can be used.

I just checked the standard rules on Wikipedia

If there are any enemy discs on the board, a player must make contact, directly or indirectly, with an enemy disc during the shot. If unsuccessful, the shot disc is 'fouled' and removed from the board, along with any of the player's other discs that were moved during the shot.

We always played with this rule : If there are any enemy discs on the board, a player must make contact with an enemy disc directly and before making contact with any friendly disk  during the shot (bumpers use is tolerated). If he miss, only the disk shoot by the player is fooled.

National Crokinole Association (NCA) rules disagree with this:
3) Valid Shot
a) Definition
i) lf any opposing discs are in play, at least one of the shooter's discs must strike an opposing disc either directly, or by bumping one of his/her discs already in play into an opposing disc.
b) lf on any turn, a valid shot is not made, then the shooting disc and all of the other discs that were struck, including any 20's made, shall be removed, considered out-of-play, and shall not score.

@3N1GM4 The answer is about a house rule suggestion; it is intended to differ from the official rules.


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Largest Army in Settlers of Catan: Cities and Knights
We were playing Cities and Knights at the weekend and halfway through the game realised that no one had earned the largest army card.  The reason behind this was that no one knew what it was earned for.  A couple of us scanned through the rule book in search of the answer, but to no avail.
Having since looked at the Wikipedia page (linked above) I see that it's the player with the most knight points, but do the knights have to be active, and is there a minimum requirement?

The Largest Army card is not used in Cities and Knights.
See the rulebook p2, under "What you need from your Settlers game"

Set aside  ...

The Largest Army card

Hmm!  The depressing thing is that we played the game correctly then - it took a g e s :-)  We'll have to play with the suggestions from here next time: http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/2565/settlers-of-catan-play-takes-hours

I find playing with new players nearly doubles the time to play Cities and Knights (two and a bit hours instead of one and a bit). Your next game is likely to be much quicker.

As Pat indicates in his answer, the Largest Army card is not used.
The second part of this question hints at the Defender of Catan points that are awarded, which sort of take the place of Largest Army. When the barbarians reach Catan, if the total strength of active knights equals or exceeds the total number of cities, the player with the most total strength in active knights receives one permanent VP. (If the total strength of active knights is not enough, the player with the least strength has a city sacked, downgrading it to a settlement.) See p. 11 of the rulebook.