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Does resolving a single fight round in A Touch of Evil also trigger "The Horseman Rides Tonight!" event?
When playing against the Spectral Horseman, if something in the game triggers a single fight round with the Villain, does the Spectral Horseman's "The Horseman Rides Tonight!" event take effect?
For example, here's the wording on the Deadly Encounter mystery card:

Every Hero must immediately roll a D6. Whoever rolls the lowest (roll off if tied), must resolve a single Fight Round with the Villain. Instead of causing Wounds, each Hit done to the Villain gains 1 investigation for the Hero.

... and the text for "The Horseman Rides Tonight!" event:

The Villain attacks! The Hero must immediately resolve a single Fight Round with the Villain. Instead of causing Wounds, each Hit done to the Villain gains 1 Investigation for the Hero. This does NOT cause a Showdown.
...
After an Fight here (or even if there is no Fight), the Spectral Horseman moves along the shortest path to the Town Hall, Fighting every Hero along the way as normal for his Relentless Charge ability.

Is it just coincidence that the first part of the event reads almost exactly the same as the deadly encounter or should the Spectral Horseman make his ride to the Town Hall and attack all other Heroes along the way in the event of a card that triggers a single fight round?

Yes, (according to the rules) the Deadly Encounter mystery card will cause the Spectral Horseman to move along the shortest path to the Town Hall, Fighting every Hero along the way as normal for his Relentless Charge ability. The card "The Horseman Rides Tonight!" specifically tells you to do so, and Deadly Encounter causes a Fight. (emphasis mine)

Relentless Charge - At the end of any fight with the Spectral Horseman, he will ride the shortest route directly to the Town Hall, engaging in one fight round against any Hero moved over.

Unless it is canceled, **The Horseman Rides Tonight" event will take place.

Many times a card will allow you to cancel another card as it is played or that Remains in Play.  As noted earlier, an Event Card may not be canceled after it has already caused dice to be rolled or rerolled.  Mystery Cards may always be canceled.

(Note: You actual ask, can the Mystery Card cancel the event, but that Mystery Phase  would happen after the event "The Horseman Rides Tonight" is played. So it would make more sense to ask, can The Horseman Rides Tonight" Event Card, cancel the Mystery Card Deadly Encounter.)

Events are played as fast effect style cards and, unless noted otherwise, may be played at any time.
In each Game Round, every player (starting with the First Player) takes their Hero
Turn in order, moving clockwise around the table. Once each Hero has finished, there is a Mystery Phase in which the Villain gets to unleash some evil on the Heroes in the form of drawing a Mystery Card and reading it aloud.


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What are some great 2-player games for a couple to play?

Possible Duplicate:
Board games for two players

I was a serious game player (years ago - 80's & 90's) even playtested games for a friend's father who was a game designer at Mayfair Games and explored patenting my own game. I am a serious chess player (roughly Expert level) and was a semi-pro Magic the Gathering player back in the 1990's.
However I haven't played a lot of board games since the 1990's, so I missed out on the whole Settlers of Catan craze and the rise of Eurogames. I own a bunch of the newer classic games - Puerto Rico, Catan (just the base set and the Catan card game), just bought the base set of Dominion but haven't yet played it and have a bunch of others.
What we are looking for are good, fun games my girlfriend and I can play together. She is highly competitive but not quite as serious a game player (in the past at least) as I have been. We've been playing a bunch of various games - but have found ourselves frequently playing Uno for the retro fun but frankly we'd like some better games.
I have played Carcassonne on my iPhone and frankly don't really like it much. Catan I kinda enjoy but don't love the trading aspects. Puerto Rico frankly intimidates me a bit with how intense many people are about the game. I want to play Dominion (though the setup time & hassle seems slightly high - I suspect we'll enjoy it especially with the variability between games).
I'm open to suggestions that cover a range of game styles - but ideally are relatively quick, have some degree of luck/randomness so while skill is important it isn't the only factor (i.e. while I enjoy Chess playing chess with my gf isn't likely to be a lot of fun for her though we may play sometime I've been studying chess since for literally 30+ years). We do tend to like card games - have enjoyed games like Fluxx (in small doses - though more so with larger groups) but are certainly open to non-card game suggestions.
While I might enjoy games with a lot of parts and long play times (I've really enjoyed playing Descent in the past and want to get the new Wizards of Coast D&D board games) when it is just the two of us a game with a lengthy setup time and complex rules is less likely to get played after a long day of work, dinner & household tasks. But a game with nearly no setup time and quick gameplay is far more likely to be played (i.e. hence our falling back on Uno so often)

Also see http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/9/what-cooperative-board-games-are-there-that-i-could-safely-play-with-my-wife

This question is so Beavis-and-Butthead ("huhhuh...  huhhuh...")

Lost Cities
I bought this game for my wife for Valentine's Day and totally got away with it - she loves it!
It's not to be confused with the Lost Cities boardgame - I'm talking about the 2 player card game.  Essentially players are archaeologists setting out to discover the Lost Cities of the title.  There are 5 different Lost Cities (each of a different colour), and the deck contains cards from 2-10 in each colour, and three multiplier cards.  You can play a card to an "expedition" or discard one to a central pile, and then pick one up from the deck or from a central pile; the problem is, once you play a numeric card to an expedition you can no longer play a multiplier, and you can never play a lower number onto a higher one.  At the end you total the value of each expedition, subtract 20, and times by the number of multiplier cards plus one (plus there's a bonus for an impressive 8-cards+ expedition).
Obviously you can lose mad points as well as gain them from starting an expedition you can't follow through with!  There's a lot of strategy for a simple game, deciding when you can afford to play, when you can afford to discard, and when you just have to cling onto cards for dear life in your hand!  A game takes only 5 minutes, and a match is meant to be best of three games.  It's got a colourful theme, attractive (oversized) cards, and quite a lot of depth for a game that's so simple to get started with: it's a real couples game in my opinion.
The only thing I don't like about the game is that there's allegedly a 4 player variant - but to play it you're encouraged to buy a second copy of the base game just so you can add it about 20 duplicate cards to your deck.  Yeah, right.  This fact is not a problem if you just want a game to play as a couple though, thank goodness!

I thought the replayability was low, but then I found this: "My wife & I decided at one point to start a continuing game of Lost Cities, and the end goal was to see who would get to 10k points first"

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Please recommend a good shuffling machine
The shuffling question What is a safe and accurate technique for shuffling cards? reminded me of a recent game of Munchkin with many expansions that taxed our shuffling endurance to the limit.  My wife picked up a cheap shuffler locally but it has several problems:  The left side doesn't draw cards as effectively as the right, so it always has remaining cards.  It also deposits the cards into an annoying tray which is difficult to remove and prone to spilling the cards.  It actually takes far longer to rotate a normal deck through the machine than to riffle it by hand.  We had hoped it would speed up Cribbage games (with many short hands) but we went right back to alternating between two decks.
Can anyone recommend an effective, fast card shuffling machine?

Do you want answers about machines people have experience with that they would NOT recommend for your particular application? I have one I love, but would never use for shuffling one deck, nor would I use it for game cards that couldn't be replaced, as it's hard on cards.

Any information is useful.  Perhaps there's not one machine suitable for Munchkin and single-deck applications.

Elsewhere I saw an interesting idea:  If you have a lot of Munchkin expansions you will have such huge door/treasure piles that you could treat them like the question cards in Trivial Pursuit.  Just use them sequentially for a while and only shuffle infrequently.

I own this 6-deck shuffling machine. I can highly recommend it for the specific circumstances we purchased it for: shuffling lots (4 decks) of expendable (i.e. cheap to replace) cards. We just run the decks through, cut a few times, and repeat. Say 3 or 4 times. It fed evenly from each side for us, but I could see an identical model not not working as well; it's not like its precision machinery.
We like it because the only real way to shuffle that many cards by hand is to split the deck up into multiple piles to be shuffled by humans and then combined, re-parsed out, and reshuffled. This way is much faster.
Reasons I would not recommend this machine for your purposes:

it's not worth the trouble to load it for a single deck (although for Munchkin with expansions perhaps it would work)
it also has a tray, although we didn't have problems with it
it's murder on cards (they're technically riffled, but get slammed together so hard the edges start to break down) we replaced the decks fairly frequently
you still have to strip, since this machine only riffles

It looks like there are professional models that riffle and strip, but they're expensive, like $500 instead of the $15 we paid.

That looks like the exact machine we tried (in a 2 deck size) that I referred to in my question.

So perhaps my review is no surprise then. I think a machine for shuffling less than four decks just doesn't make sense. Even Vegas hand shuffles single-deck blackjack.

So this model would not be very effective for something like Magic the Gathering, due to wear on the cards.

This machine is extremely loud in my opinion. After looking for a while, I gave up on finding a shuffler for home games. The only one I thought could be good cost hundreds of dollars. (by Shuffletech or something)

@anton1980 Yes, I can confirm it’s crazy loud.

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Good travel games for two players, especially for playing on trains?
I would be interested to hear if anyone had recommendations for 2-player games that are particularly suitable for playing while travelling on trains.  (I ask this as someone who mostly enjoys games like Carcassonne, Power Grid, Agricola, Pandemic, etc. around the table at home.)  To be specific, the things that I think are important properties for these games are:

Needing minimal table space.  Most trains have a small table you could use, but not much more.
Being quiet to play, so that other passengers won't be disturbed.  For example, I imagine that games that involve repeatedly rolling dice wouldn't be appreciated.
Packing down small, so that they don't take up much luggage space.
Not requiring batteries or a power socket.  (I appreciate that an iPhone or a Nintendo DS for each player might be a good solution more generally, but it's not what I'm after in this case.)
Not being so delicate to arrange that motion from the train will unduly disrupt the play.

I think it would be best to recommend one game (or class of games) per answer, if that's appropriate, and explain why you think it's particularly suitable.  (Incidentally, I've read the guidance on good questions about game recommendations and hope this question meets the criteria.)
Update: Thanks for so many excellent suggestions - we certainly won't be short of games for our next long train journey :)
Update 2: Unfortunately, I can't really playtest this many great games in any reasonable time period, so I'm going to accept the top-voted answer (Cribbage) and try out the others as soon as I can.  Thanks again...

Do you enjoy card games at all or are you just interested in boardgames?

@Scott Mitchell: sure, I'd be interested in suggestions for card games, it's just that we just don't play them much at home (except sometimes Bohnanza, which really needs more than 2).  I wondered if someone might suggest San Juan, for example, or Haggis, which both sound interesting.

Thanks for the clarification. I updated my answer to include card game suggestions - http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/2211/good-travel-games-for-two-players-especially-for-playing-on-trains/2247#2247

I would suggest Cribbage. Not much space is required, it is quick to set up and put away, involves no more noise than any game between two players, and is a very good game. It is also best enjoyed with a glass of something in the other hand, increasing its suitability for a train journey.
If you don't know how to play (and it isn't terribly complicated, although rather different from other card games), have a look here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cribbage

Thanks for the suggestion - I haven't tried cribbage before, but it sounds fun.  Perhaps I should have added "leaves one hand free for a glass of something" to the list of requirements :)

Another thing to make Cribbage even more portable is instead of keeping score on a board, keep score on two stop watches.  1 point = 1 second.  First person to 2:01 wins.

Ticket to Ride: The Card Game
My family took this on our trip to Europe expressly to play on trains, and we successfully conducted several three-player games that way. You get a solid variant of the award-winning TtR in a very small space. We packed it into a box meant to hold a deck of Magic cards and thought the space it took was well worth it.

Upvoted because, what better game to play on a train journey than Ticket to Ride?

@thesunneversets - I know, right? We loved the self-referential nature of it as well.

Ingenious: Travel Edition
Ingenious is a very solid abstract game in its own right - a Knizia design. This travel edition looks like exactly what you're looking for. The board holds the pieces and score markers firmly in place, and it's made for two.

blokus
I haven't been on a ton of trains, but blokus should meet your requirements pretty well. The pieces stay well enough on the board you should be fine even with a bumpier ride.

Thanks for the suggestion.  I didn't realise before that there's a variant called "Blokus Duo", which is 2-player only and uses a smaller board.

@Mark The normal version is awesome with 2 players as well. You just each pick 2 colors and play on the normal sized board.

How about any of the myriad "travel-size" games, such as chess, checkers, othello, scrabble, etc?

Good if they have magnetic pieces.

@Andy - or if they have those pocket boards like travel scrabble and othello do (or the peg-based boards)

Very true. How did I forget about those?

set
The noise is minimal and the cards don't slip around very much.

This game really makes you think hard. However, I've found that I can't play it more than twice in a row without getting a headache.

Maybe so, but its still to play on a train. :)

Hive is a very nice travel game:

It is compact, fitting in a bag of say the size of two fists.
It requires only little table space (40cm x 40cm is enough).
I has rock solid components you won't loose.
No set up time.
It is a short game, so you can play it whenever you've got a spare moment.

The only drawback however is it weight. My carbon edition weighs 550g, which is quite heavy (650g with the ladybug and the mosquito included). In comparison: Blokus To Go weighs only 320g.

Another simple game would be the pen-and-paper "Dots", or similar.

I enjoy games that need no special equipment, those that can be played with just paper and pens. Examples are Bulls and cows and TwixT.

For Twixt, you may need an eraser, too, as the rules specify you can delete some of your connections before adding a new one.

Alternatively, play Twixt PP, which is Twixt with removal of links banned. In either case, Twixt's board is so big that, practically, you need pre-printed sheets or squared paper.

Boggle is one of my favorite games and can be enjoyably played alone or with two, three, or four players. It's got a small form factor and requires little space in your suitcase. The only potential downside is shaking the tiles can be a bit noisy if you're not careful, but it is possible to shake them with only minimal noise.
There are also a variety of boardgames that offer travel-sized versions, from Chess to Go to Checkers. These are usually considerably smaller and have magnetic pieces to ensure there isn't slippage when going around a bend or coming to a stop and are more suitable for car rides, but I imagine they'd work for a train ride.
Perhaps the most portable gaming system is a deck of playing cards. Unfortunately, there aren't nearly as many card games for two players as there are for three or more, but there are still some gems. As Brian Hooper noted, Cribbage is a great two player card game and can be played without a board, keeping score on a piece of paper. Here are some other two player card games that you might give a try:

Honeymoon bridge - if you enjoy bridge this is an entertaining variation for two. Not as much strategy as with four, but still fun and a great way to pass the time.
Gin rummy - played this a lot as a kid and, from what I remember, it was a lot of fun (at least for a kid!).
Speed - this might not be the most suitable game for a train ride since it involves each player "discarding" as quick as they can, which can make it a bit boisterous, but it is worth exploring and is especially fun after a cup (or two) of coffee.
Crazy 8s - fun and easy.

Most two player card games I've encountered are usually quite simple with straightforward rules and little to no strategy. They serve more as an outlet to pass the time. If you are looking for more of a thinking man's two player game, consider a classic like Chess or Go.

Can't Stop
I built my own travel version out of Lego, but you might not be that keen. It is a dice game, so that might be a down side for you. I used some tiny little dice in a clear plastic container, so that was quieter and avoided losing the dice. You could also use a Deck of Dice to reduce dice hassles. It might even have some interesting effects on the game since you can't roll four of a kind with two cards from a single deck of dice. If you're feeling crafty, you could mount four spinners from thrift-store games onto a piece of cardboard and write the numbers 1-6 around each spinner.

Fluxx
Fluxx and all the variants definitely meet all the requirements. However, if you want a strategy game its definitely not a good choice, so I expect this to get voted down just for that. Its a different game with two players, and fairly quiet if you ignore the zombie fluxx card that requires you to groan whenever a zombie creeper shows up. :)

:) I've played Fluxx, and found it too chaotic for my tastes, but I can quite see it would fit the bill for many people.

Blokus To Go is a great travel game for two players:

It is compact (19cm x 19cm x 3cm).
It requires only little table space (19cm x 19cm is enough). You could even play it without a table.
Short set up time, say half a minute.
It is a short game, so you can play it whenever you've got a spare moment. You might even interrupt a gameby closing the box.
Last but not least it is a very enjoyable game without a luck factor, quite addicting really.

One drawback is that (in my copy) some of the blocks come off the board too easily. Because the box cannot be closed very tightly, it is easy to loose some components when traveling. Luckily this can be fixed by wrapping a elastic band around it.

I know you suggest avoiding dice games, but I strongly suspect that Roll Through The Ages: The Late Bronze Age would fit the bill quite nicely.
Reasons:
1) The box it comes in acts as a nice sound-dampening dice-rolling tray, making it far less disruptive than your average dice game. I can imagine playing it on a train without disturbing other passengers.
2) Packs small, plays small, resistant to jostling.
3) Plays two players just fine, and scales to three or four (just in case).
4) On that note: It's relatively quick to teach (to gamers).

In fact, "Roll Through The Ages" was exactly the game I was thinking of :) I haven't tried it, but remember reading somewhere that the dice rolling made it noisy.  Thanks for the comment about dampening the noise, etc. though - another excuse to get a copy is very welcome.

The base version of Carcassonne can be played on a very compact space, if you get an alternative scoring track.
I have a cloth scoring track, plus the draw bag that comes with B&T (I think) that I can carry in a mini-expansion box.
There is also a travel version of Carcassonne.
The iPad version of Caracassonne and Small World are also very nice. You only need one iPad, and the battery lasts ages.

I'm really surprised by this suggestion - the tiles from the base set of Carcassonne takes up more space that I've ever had on a train table. I've considered the travel version, but I think even that version requires too much table space.

Not sure how big your train tables are, but I've played in some really compact spaces. Try laying out the tiles and see how much room they take :D
You can also only take 2 sets of meeples with you if you want to reduce size even further.


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What's the highest score that can be achieved by pegging?
Nearly every cribbage player knows that 29 is the highest-scoring hand that one can achieve, and that 19 and some others are impossible to score.
However, I'm curious to know what is the highest score one can achieve during the play of the cards (also known as "pegging"?  What cards would need to be played, in what order, and what would your opponent's pegged score be?  This question is meant to exclude the final count of points in one's hand.
I'm sure the answer probably differs between 2, 3, and 4-player games because there are more cards available when there are more players.  My question is focused on the two player game.  If anyone happens to have answers for the others as well though, those would be interesting to know.

This question can be improved.

@The Chaz - can you elaborate?

"The question does not show [enough] research effort" ... sure, it's subjective.

Finally realized where I went wrong in the wording of this question.  Updated.

If you scroll down to "Pegging Maximal Score", they outline how the dealer can peg 30 points.
I found that page from an answer to the question that you linked above... not sure how you missed that!

Added:

Joe O'Brien showed, that dealer can score 30 points (not 26 points as we stated before with a dealer's hand 4,4,4,7, pone's hand 4,8,10,K, and the jack as a starter).
In Joe's example Dealer hand 7,7,4,4 ; Pone hand 7,7,4,4. Sequence of play is as follows:
Pone 7 7 4 4
Dealer 7 7 4 4
Dealer Points 2 13 2 13
Dealer Totals 2 15 17 30
This example of dealer maximal cribbage hands is in the article based on the letter of Joe O'Brien.
Update - Joe O'Brien showed that there is a hand that will give the
pone a total of 24 in pegging. The Pone holding 5 5 4 4, and the
Dealer holding 5 4 4 (na/). The Pone hits both the fifteen and the
thirty-one, picking up a triple at the 15 mark and a pair and four of
a kind on the way to the thirty-one mark. Kyle Graham showed, that
pone can score 22 points (in opposite to other articles, that states
max pone score is 18 points). Pone's hand: A, A, 3, 3; Dealer's hand
A, 3, 3, NA. The sequence of play is A, A, A, 3, 3, 3, 3, NA; Pone
gets 6+2+14 = 22 points. Later our player Kenneth Anderson showed,
that the maximum cribbage scoring for Pone pegging is 23. Pone's hand:
5 (or 6) 4 4 4; Dealer's hand: 5 (or 6) 4 9 9 (9 9 could be any cards
worth 9 or above). Total Pone points: 5+6+12 = 23 . More examples of
pone maximal cribbage hands are in the article based on the letters of
Joe O'Brien, Kyle Graham and Kenneth Anderson.

Could you please flesh this out with a bit more detail, as requested in the question?  Particularly, since the question explicitly asks for it, the answer should include at least one example of how the pegged score would be achieved and what the opponent's hand would look like - the data shouldn't just reside behind a link.

The Cribbage Statistics page answers this question, 78 for the dealer (hand + pegged + crib)

The maximum number of points that can be scored in a single deal by the dealer in a two player game is 78 (pegging + hand + crib):
Non-dealer is dealt 3 3 4 4 5 J and Dealer is dealt 3 3 4 4 5 5.
Non-dealer discards J 5 to the crib (as ill-advised as this may be).
Dealer discards 5 5 to the crib. Note that the J is suited to the remaining 5. The remaining 5 is cut.
Play is 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 go. The dealer scores 29 total peg points.
The dealer's hand is 3 3 4 4 5 = 20
The dealer's crib is J(nobs) 5 5 5 5 = 29
The total score for the dealer is 29 + 20 + 29 = 78.
The maximum number of points that can be scored in a single deal by the non-dealer in a two player game is 48 (pegging + hand), with the following example :
Non-dealer is dealt 5 5 4 4 crib crib and Dealer is dealt 4 4 5 9 crib crib. Cut card is a 6.
Play is 5 5 5 4 4 4 4, with the Non-dealer pegging 24. The Non-dealer scores 24 in the hand for a total of 48 points.
Combining this hand with the highest dealer hand, a standard 121 point game can be completed in just two deals.

I'm only looking for "pegged", but thanks.  Could you please flesh this out with a bit more detail, as requested in the question?  Particularly, since the question explicitly asks for it, the answer should include at least one example of how the pegged score would be achieved and what the opponent's hand would look like - the data shouldn't just reside behind a link.

@Iszi,if you were only interested in pegged then that is what you should have asked. the way the questioned is worded, you are asking about MAX total score per single deal. it would be weid if you were asking about winning the game 121-1 plus max score per deal.

The question could also be interpreted to be the highest possible score in a game, rather than a hand, which is 173 (peg to 120, St:5x H:Jx555=29, C:4466=24), or the highest one can get without counting one's hand (135... at 120, and score a double pair royal 15 on last card, for 12+2+1=15...)

@aramis, fair enough. My point was the question was badly worded, and I don't believe that the OP's interpretation can be arrived at from the way it is currently worded.

I've given this some more thought, and I'm not sure that this answer is necessarily accurate.  The section in the Wiki article is addressing the highest score a dealer can achieve between hand, pegging, and crib.  However, it is conceivable (possible or not, I don't know) that higher pegging scores can be achieved if one is not limiting themselves to a hand that reaches the highest score possible in one deal.

Another possibility for 32 points is if both players hold 6 6 7 7 and you are the dealer. First player plays 7, you play 7 for 2, they play 7 for 6, you play 7 for 12 and a go. 15. Then all the 6s get played for another 15 points. The extra 2 points being if a jack is flipped.

The jack flip is not scored during play (pegging), but rather scored before play when it is flipped.

I pegged 26 points in a three hand game.  I kept ace ace 2 2.  I led ace, then ace, ace, ace, for 12, then king, 9, I played 2, then 2, 2, 2 for 14.

Answer is thirty two. Each player is dealt two sevens and two sixes. Any jack is turned over. First card played is a seven. You can figure it out from there.

This answer just duplicates information that already exists in other answers.

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What happens if I set up for a "29 hand" and miss?
Inspired by an answer to "Why does a run of 4 in Cribbage score only 4?".

The best possible hand in cribbage is 29, which involves the Jack that counts for nobs and all of the 5s. Now although hands with lots of fives are always good, often retaining just one or two will only result in a mediocre score where you count a few 15s, a pair, and are done.
  ...
  For example if you're drawing for the best possible hand failing to get that last 5 as the up card will cost you 14 points, as you'll only score 15-8, a pair royal for 6 and 1 for his nobs for 15.

Note: I think the count given is a bit off, or assumes something not explicitly stated - 555J on its own, with the J not matching any of the 5s - scores 14. Four 15s (8), plus trips (6). So, any up-card that doesn't add to that score in any way costs you 15.

As stated above, the best possible hand in cribbage is an extremely rare case. It first requires a player to be set up with a hand that happens rarely on its own (555J, all different suits). Then, it requires the up-card to be one specific card - the 5 matching the in-hand J.
Playing for this scenario, when dealt the proper hand, could be a very risky proposition. There's about 15 points of difference between the minimum and maximum possible values of this hand, depending on the up-card. Though the minimum score of 14 is still a fairly decent hand, there's many ways that the opponent could easily out-score this hand.
Additionally, keeping this hand sets the player up to have points pegged against him which might be more easily avoided with a different hand selection. If the player is forced to play a 5 when the count is zero, there's a very strong possibility their opponent has something to make 15 with.
Of course, the risk/reward scenario isn't just a matter of "I might score 14 or I might score 29". There's still a number of possibilities in between. So, what are the general odds that the final hand score might still be favorable? What possibilities exist between 14 and 29 here, and which are most likely?

Indeed, playing for 29 can be a very risky proposition - especially if you're in a late stage of the game and stand a good chance of losing if your hand scores no more than 14.
To simplify, I'm setting aside any human influence here. Yes, there are two other cards known to the player, as well as six cards known and controlled by the opponent. However, none of these are going back into the deck and no further cards are being drawn.
At best, a player might be able to use the two other cards in his hand to adjust his expectations of what the up-card could be. Of course, there's no chance at nailing 29 if you have all four 5s dealt to you along with a J and something else. But if your extra two cards each have a face value of 9 or lower, the odds that the up-card will substantially improve your score just went up a notch.
Still, setting aside all factors except the 4 mandatory cards in the starter hand simplifies calculations and gives a relatively solid baseline for our expectations.
Once you take out the rainbow hand of three 5s and a J, you have 48 cards left in the deck. Of these, the possible up-card scenarios are:

The 5 that matches the in-hand J (29 points, 2%) - This is the only way to score 29 and maximize this hand. And there's only one card that can do it.
Any remaining J (22 points, 6.25%) - This adds three more 15s and a pair to your base, for an 8-point boost. Counting out just the given base hand, there's three of these left in the deck.
T/Q/K matching the in-hand J (21 points, 6.25%) - Again, giving you three more 15s. Add on the knob and it's a 7-point total boost. Also, like the Jacks, there's only three ways to do this.
Any other T/Q/K (20 points, 18.75%) - Not matching the in-hand J, but still having face value of 10, means we lose the knob/pair points but keep the 15s. There's nine ways to do this though, so our odds here are relatively favorable in comparison to the previous scenarios.

Totaling the above gives us a one-in-three chance of scoring 20 or better. With a minimum possible score of 14, that's still a very nice hand!
However, as you'll see below, two-thirds of the possible scenarios will only bump your score by one point at most - and the majority of those don't add to it at all. If scoring 16 or more is absolutely crucial in the round where you get this hand, you might want to put off your dreams of hitting 29 for another day.

Any other card matching the in-hand J (15 points, 16.67%) - Anything other than 5/T/Q/K, which matches the in-hand J, only gives us one additional point for knobs. No extra 15s or pairs. This is where things start looking relatively bleak, since there's eight ways to do it.
Any card not categorized above (14 points, 50.00%) - This is the bare-minimum possible score with a hand that might otherwise score 29. We've got the three 15s for pairing each 5 with the J (6), the one 15 by adding all the 5s (+2), and a three-card match between the 5s (+6). Any up-card that's not a T/J/Q/K, and doesn't match the in-hand J, will not add to this. Having 24 ways to do this, out of 48 possible up-cards, gives us coin-flip odds of being stuck with the minimum score for this hand.

The thing that I'm missing in this whole discussion (both question and answer) is, what two cards are you cribbing such that your overall EV is somehow worse keeping 555J than keeping something else?  Unless you were on something like 45556J and it's your crib, it's really hard to imagine any 6 cards that have higher expectation on something else than on 555J...

I agree with Steven.  There's really no "risk" unless you could somehow end up with a better hand by holding something different, and that seems very unlikely.

Sometimes it's better to play for pegs than the hand. Though it's true I've also got a hard time imagining situations where breaking up a hand that has a minimum score of 14 would be advantageous. Perhaps the critical scenario would be when your opponent is very near to conclusion but you're >14 away. Playing for 29 then could be a mistake as you stand a very good chance of not making the points that you need, while setting yourself up to give your opponent easy pegging opportunities.

Though perhaps some re-phrasing could be done to more accurately reflect the actual value of turning down a shot at 29, I'm not sure a down-vote is really warranted. Unless you're expecting a broad answer that fully covers all situations - including accounting for the other two cards one gets dealt - there's nothing wrong with the raw data provided here that I'm aware of.

The "any other card matching the in-hand J" calculation seems to be off. There are only 8 cards that fit this, not 9. (It can't be the J, because that's already in your hand! That leaves A/2/3/4/6/7/8/9.)

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


text:
In Broadside, what methods are most effective for probing and/or circumventing the fixed defenses?
I asked a question about strategies for deploying the fixed defenses in Broadside. As the attacker, how do you deal with the cannons and mines?
The cannons can't be defeated. The best you can do is try and probe the setup to determine where the decoys are, but how do you do this?

What class of ship do you use?
Do you pick a channel to send the fleet through and hope both guns aren't located there, or do you send scout ships ahead and then move the rest of the fleet based on what you find?

The mines are single use so once they're revealed they're cleared from the board.

Do you move around the mines or do you try and clear them out?
What class of ship do you use to clear them with?
Do you ever just try and completely avoid them?

As I remember, the British had several ships with a "mast" of 1. These ships are the best for. first, scouting the cannon, and if they survive, hitting a mine, because you lose the least sail.
The British have something like 25 sail to 20 for the Americans. Basically, the task of the British is to "figure out" the American defenses while losing less than 5 sail.
(I last played the game over 40 years ago, yes, I'm that old.)


text:
What set of attributes can be used to describe, compare and contrast various board games?
A recent question about a good mix of board games got me thinking about how one could even objectively define "a good mix".
My idea is to try and define a set of attributes that could describe, compare, and contrast various board games. I hope this exercise will help me discover some attributes unrepresented by my gaming experience and achieve better insight into the common elements of my favorite games.
An example attribute might be inter-player cooperation, which would slide along a continuum from fully co-operative to team-based to free-for-all, with arkham-horror axis-and-allies and risk being examples of each type, respectively.
I think answers could either work as one-per-attribute (with votes for ones that make sense) or as a comprehensive set of attributes (with votes for the most thorough and complete answers). Comments seems like a good place to flush out the pros and cons of each approach.

It's such a good question but we don't see more answers. I wonder why? Did I put too many points? Do we need to polish the question? I wish more people participated.

@eipipuz: I'm not sure, I was also hoping for more answers. If you have any ideas for polishing the question, by all means go for it (or send me a note if you can't edit it yourself yet and I'll do it).

@AdamWuerl What exactly is the question here? Are you just asking for lists of board game attributes? It seems like an interesting area of thinking, but I don't know how to answer this.

Apparently neither did anyone else. :)

Attributes that I use to evaluate games:

Replay value (Over time how much do you enjoy it)
Randomness (how much it's out of your hand)
Learning curve
What kind of skill does it require (strategy, resource management, deductions, spatial orientation, etc)
Time required to set it up
Expected time to have a game
Time-ness (is it per turn? all at the same time? you bid for who to be first?)
Degree of interaction (it's similar to what you say but it includes more things. Games like Bingo are outside of your scale)
Handicap-aware (How does it react to players with different levels. Is it easy for a newbie to give by accident the game to another player?)

That is a pretty good list. I'm excited too see what ideas others have too.

Some random additional axes:

Theme
Aesthetics
Quality of construction/bits
Shape of the luck/skill curve
Accessibility
Concrete vs. Abstract
Time/difficulty to master
Coop vs competitive
Experience/immersion factor
Cost
Expandability
Customizability/variations
Compactness for travel
Table-space required for play
Number of players
Age level suitability
Rarity
Appeal to non-gamers
Creativity required by players/ group
Ability to objectively evaluate relative victory status
Turn/off-turn engagement
How much attention need be paid (can you play while watching tv)
Emotional attachment to avatars

Want more?


text:
Has Candyland always had a lose-a-turn square?
I just played a brand new version of Candyland and noticed several squares that cause a player to lose a turn if they land on them. The squares are decorated with licorice to associate them with the nefarious Lord Licorice, who was added as a character in the 1980s.
Has Candyland always had lose-a-turn spaces, and if so, how were they decorated in the pre Lord Licorice era?

No.  The version I played didn't have those; it had three spaces with "sticky" dots (largish, round, and black).

Before the 2004 version, there were three colored spaces marked with a dot. A player who lands on such a space is stuck (all cards are ignored) until a card is drawn of the same color as the square. In the 2004 version, dot spaces were replaced with licorice spaces that prompt the player landing on it to simply lose his or her next turn. If you land on a piece of gum, you go back to the start.


text:
How does tournament-level Puerto Rico deal with seat-order disparities?
It is well-known that there are disparities between the strength of various seats in Puerto Rico. How do tournaments deal with this?
Please give details. I know that some competitions use bidding systems, but I haven't seen any specifics on how they work.

Here's how they did it at the 2010 World Boardgaming Championships and at EuroQuest:
BIDDING FOR SEAT POSITION, STARTING WITH THE QUARTER-FINALS: Starting with the quarter-final round games and continuing in the semi-finals and Final game, we will use mandatory bidding for all four seats. It will work as follows: Each player will randomly draw a random plantation tile (using the trading house values) to determine who bids first. For bidding in the semi-final round games, anyone advancing with a second place finish in the quarterfinals must pick last at his/her table (and hence will be assigned the lowest valued plantation). Similarly, anyone advancing to the quarterfinal round games with fewer wins will be assigned lower valued plantations than those with more wins, who shall be assigned higher valued plantations and therefore be among the first to bid.
Going around in plantation order value (coffee goes first), each player will place a matching plantation tile on a bid value ranging from 0 to 5.0 VP (in increments of 0.5 VP) on a chart to be furnished by the GM. Bids may be zero but in all instances must be higher than any previous bids for a particular seat. Any player who has been outbid will have his/her marker removed and will, when his or her turn comes, bid again--either a higher value for the same seat or a different amount for another seat. A player whose bid is not topped by another bid does not get another bid -- instead the bidding goes around to the next player without a bid marker in play. The process continues until all players' bid markers are on a different seat, with the resulting bid representing the VP handicap to be assigned for that particular game. These VP handicaps will be noted at the top of the particular seat position (1, 2, 3 or 4) on the scoresheet above the player's name and will be subtracted from that player's VP total at the end of the game.

Thanks! Do you know if this is used in other tournaments as well?

@warbaker, no I don't know.


text:
What Is The Optimal Innistrad Sealed Deck From This Card Pool?
This weekend I participated in a very casual Innistrad Sealed Deck event with four of my friends.  Opening my packs I discovered the following pool:
White
Selfless Cathar
Avacynian Priest
Elder Cathar
Village Bell-Ringer
Chapel Geist
Fiend Hunter
Abbey Griffin
Thraben Militia
Gallows Warden
Moment of Heroism
Paraselene
Rally the Peasants
2x Rebuke

Blue
Stitcher's Apprentice
Fortress Crab
Battleground Geist
Dream Twist
Memory's Journey
Think Twice
Curse of the Bloody Tome
Forbidden Alchemy
Claustrophobia
Lost in the Mist

Black
2x Typhoid Rats
Screeching Bat
Village Cannibals
Abattoir Ghoul
Bloodline Keeper
Stromkirk Patrol
Ghoulcaller's Chant
2x Gruesome Deformity
Altar's Reap
Skeletal Grimace
2x Night Terrors
Sever the Bloodline
Maw of the Mire
Curse of Death's Hold

Red
2x Night Revelers
Village Ironsmith
Feral Ridgewolf
Rakish Heir
Pitchburn Devils
Scourge of Geier Reach
Rage Thrower
2x Harvest Pyre
2x Nightbird's Clutches
Curse of the Pierced Heart
Burning Vengeance
Traitorous Blood
Blasphemous Act

Green
Ambush Viper
Boneyard Wurm
Villagers of Estwald
2x Orchard Priest
Woodland Sleuth
2x Festerhide Boar
Grizzled Outcasts
Somberwald Spider
Wreath of Geists
Moonmist
Travel Preparations
2x Spidery Grasp
Bramblecrush

Artifact
Evil Twin
One-Eyed Scarecrow
Creepy Doll
Ghoulcaller's Bell
2x Silver-Inlaid Dagger
Wooden Stake
Cellar Door
Grimoire of the Dead

Lands
Ghost Quarter
Isolated Chapel

And what I built:
Creatures
------
1x Avacynian Priest
1x Selfless Cathar
1x Elder Cathar
1x Village Bell-Ringer
1x Chapel Geist
1x Fiend Hunter
1x Gallow's Warden
1x Thraben Militia
1x Abbey Griffen
2x Typhoid Rats
1x Screeching Bat
1x Village Cannibals
1x Abattoir Ghoul
1x Bloodline Keeper
1x Stromkirk Patrol

Artifacts
2x Silver-Inlaid Dagger
2x Rebuke
1x Sever the Bloodline
1x Grimoire of the Dead
1x Curse of Death's Hold

Lands
8x Plains
8x Swamp
1x Isolated Chapel

My deck performed fine, going 3-1 against my friends, losing 1-2 against an aggressive Werewolf deck when I experienced major land flood in one game, and got blown out by the unexpected appearance of Cobbled Wings in another, which were attached to a 7/7 Werewolf to kill me in two painful swings.  Apart from that I only lost one other game all day, to a rival Bloodline Keeper (that card is just stupid in Sealed).
Could I have done anything better with my pool?  I felt that Black was an obvious conclusion, with three excellent rares to play with.  The blue cards were nearly nonexistent (though I did consider splashing for Forbidden Alchemy and Evil Twin), and Green seemed fine but very boring.  In the end I thought white provided the best contributions to my curve, especially given that a lot of Humans should work well with my Village Cannibals and especially a pair of Silver-Inlaid Daggers!
One choice that created much discussion on the day was my decision not to maindeck Creepy Doll.  I sided it in (generally for Grimoire of the Dead) in pretty much every match, but that's partially because every one of my opponents was playing green and I wanted an answer to big ground-pounders.  My friend Dom Camus (of minor mtgsalvation.com celebrity) suggested that it should go into basically any deck, but I personally am very reluctant to play a 5 mana 1/1, even one as robust as the doll, in a format that I think is quicker and more aggressive than people are currently giving it credit for.  Was I badly wrong?

"One choice that created much discussion [..]" Doesn't that mean your question is kinda in the wrong place here, since discussion and opinion is what we want to avoid?

I hope not, which is why my actual question doesn't ask for discussion.  I just want to know if there was a more optimal build from my Sealed pool, which admittedly has no "objective right answer" (at least not a short one), but then lots of good questions on this site don't.

Then break it down into choices of one card over another - let's start with Grimoire vs. Doll - you acknowledged that the format is aggressive, so you shouldn't rely on a card that takes effect no sooner than turn 8 (witout accel) and takes 3 of your hand cards until then, and you better hope there is no odd artifact removal across the table. The doll, OTOH, greatly benefits from your multiple equipments, and indestructible creatures with reasonable costs are a killer in Limited. The book does nothing until it's ready to fire, but the doll is immediate defense and eventual offense.

I really don't want to ask 30 individual questions about one sealed card pool - that seems insane.  There is discussion to be had between Grimoire and Doll but it's not a great SE question (IMO) because it's just one person's preference over another.  (I agree the Doll gets a significant boost from the Daggers, but the Grimoire was there to give me a late game back-up plan in the event that aggressive tactics fail.  I trade Rats and Rebukes for creatures and later win.  Doll is bad early defense and a bad late beater, even equipped!)

(I do agree that Grimoire is the least useful card in the deck, but as 23rd cards go, I wasn't unhappy with it.  It won one of my games in awesome blowout style, which is more than Creepy Doll was ever likely to do, surely?)

So you say you sided the Doll in, every game, usually for the Grimoire, and yet you maintain that the Grimoire was the better decision for the main deck. My understanding? Theoretically, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is. This question won't lead anywhere and should be closed IMHO.

Only because every game I played against fat green werewolves.  I could have played against white/blue flyer based decks.  It's possible of course that Innistrad 6-pack sealed will invariably be dominated by big ground creatures, in which case I did probably did make an error of judgement.  But it's a different question. Anyway, this is a side issue to the question in my title and should have been in chat.  It may be that the main question should be closed too, but if it is I'll see you in meta!

"Only because every game I played against fat green werewolves", which is MtG in a nutshell: You cannot construct a perfect deck for all circumstances, so a question as broad as this must inevitably remain unanswerable. And please no High Noon drama in Meta, I haven't been there and am not going to, and I won't suffer if this question remains open. I just want to share my knowledge where I can, and I simply believe that this question does not fit the Q&A format.

And I think any good Magic player could offer an informed, objective view on how best to build from the above pool.  Though it's very possible that sealed deck build questions are not what we want to encourage on this site; but if so I definitely think there's an interesting Meta discussion about that!

I'll try to answer this when I get home tonight.  I wish Stack Exchange provided a method for 'hovering' over a card name so that we could see the image (a la other MTG sites).

This is too localized.  This question would almost never help anyone besides the op.

@DForck, I do kind of agree, in that this question relates to a very specific and unrepeatable situation that will never arise again.  The meta-question, I suppose, is whether all SE questions have to be about situations that future readers may find themselves in.  I'd possibly argue that Magic is a special case, because it changes so much more rapidly than other games, and because it may be generally useful to see advice about a specific Sealed pool, even if that pool will never arise again.  But I agree it's a debatable issue.

@thesunneversets You do have to admit that this one is a bit more specific than even most MTG questions, given that it's about an entire card pool. I tried to generalize my answer by devoting about half of it to general Innistrad-block Limited strategy, but I worry my conclusion is still awfully specific to this particular scenario. I guess all I can really say is "aggressive commons are stronger than fiddly rares"?

As I say we're having a long discussion here that really belongs in chat or on meta but... supposing we were on Stack Overflow and I gave a long description of a programming problem I was having, with reference to my OS, personal setup and excerpts from my code.  Is that an invalid question because it's very personal?  Or is it a legitimate problem that deserves to be solved, with an answer that may help future coders to solve similar, though not exactly the same, problems?  I think it's a fair analogy and this type of BG:SE question is not obviously bad and wrong, accordingly.

@thesunneversets Your argument has convinced me.

In general, I think the strongest decks in Innistrad Limited are aggro or aggro-control. The format has been described as "slow", but "slow" doesn't mean that decks that can't get off the ground before turn 4 aren't massively disadvantaging themselves. A lot of players are going to be drawn to werewolves and frankensteins in Limited, and end up with decks that are basically midrange; a decent aggro build with the right support cards can roll them pretty easily.
Black/red aggro is probably the fastest deck you can reasonable expect to put together in Innistrad draft or sealed. Your particular pool had Bloodline Keeper and Rakish Heir, but not nearly enough vampires to make vampires tribal viable, nor enough removal and fast attackers to justify generic black/red. In your case, white had the most depth in both removal and weenies, making it a superior choice to red.
The black part of the pool has two very strong control cards: Bloodline Keeper and Curse of Death's Hold. Short of Reaper from the Abyss or Olivia Voldaren, there's not much else I'd rather have. These should naturally push you towards a controlling strategy.
2x Typhoid Rats, 2x Rebuke, and 1x Avacynian Priest really seal the deal: you have a lot of ability to shut down big threats. This is exactly what you need to stall the field long enough to win with either a swarm strategy or evasive vampire tokens.
In short, playing a controlling white/black deck was entirely the right move.
As for Creepy Doll and Grimoire of the Dead... I don't think either is a prime pick for this deck, really. Creepy Doll is fairly good except against black (the color of Dead Weight, Morkut Banshee, Curse of Death's Hold), but expensive for something that just forces a board stall. I don't think you had the right equipment to really make it worthwhile. I'm wary of Grimoire in a format where Ancient Grudge is common and many of your opponents are going to be playing cards that get better whenever you pass a turn without making a play.
I would play Rally the Peasants above either of these cards. You have the creature volume for it. It's not as powerful as Vampiric Fury and Hysterical Blindness, but it's still got serious blowout potential. With Isolated Chapel, you can safely splash Mountains to pay the flashbacks.
Remember, though, that in Sealed you don't have to return your deck to a "main deck" configuration for each game 1. If you find you don't like a card (say, Grimoire), you can side it out and never bring it back in.

+1 for suggesting a different 23rd card than either the controversial Doll or Grimoire, seems like a good idea!  I'm not sure that I was beating down quite enough to make Rally the Peasants worthwhile without adding Mountains, but maybe 2 wouldn't have hurt?  Then again perhaps if I'm making a really small splash Forbidden Alchemy, Evil Twin and a few islands might have paid off.  I did quite enjoy keeping down to 2 colours though.  The decks that performed best in our little event were the ones that didn't get greedy with a third colour splash, which may or may not have been a coincidence!

I think splashing to pay late-game flashbacks is safer than most other forms of splash (in Innistrad Limited, I also think splashing blue for Skaab Goliath is reasonable). That said, you'll see a lot of pro sealed decks go hyper-aggressive and basically take the lowest-cost stuff they can manage in exactly 2 colors, with apparently little thought given to the late game because the plan is to never see it to begin with.

Interesting, I always thought you had to return your deck to its original configuration at the start of each round, in any format... but you're right, it's not required in tournaments without decklists. (I'm too used to playing online, I suppose, where your deck is automatically reset at the beginning of each round)


text:
Can I sacrifice a creature that I lost control of after activating its ability?
My opponent controls a Rootwater Hunter enchanted with Charisma and I control a Tar Pitcher.
I tap Tar Pitcher to sacrifice it to deal 2 damage to my opponent. In response, my opponent taps Rootwater Hunter to deal one damage to Tar Pitcher.
My opponent's ability resolves first, he gains control of my Tar Pitcher. Tar Pitcher's ability is still on the stack. I referenced this question so I know it tries to resolve but I am no longer in control of that creature to sacrifice it. Is Tar Pitcher successfully sacrificed and 2 damage dealt?

If you tag cards like [mtg:Charisma] then it will automatically link to the card for you (with a few exceptions).

This isn't relevant to your exact scenario, but: you aren't allowed to sacrifice a permanent that you don't control. This doesn't usually come up, because sacrificing as part of a cost can't be interrupted by your opponent. But if an effect causes a sacrifice rather than a cost, your opponent can gain control of your creature before the effect resolves. Ex. If he stole your [mtg:Haunted Cadaver] after you dealt combat damage with it, you wouldn't be able to sacrifice it.

You don't tap Tar Pitcher to sacrifice it, you tap it and sacrifice it to deal damage. If that helps at all.

This doesn't work as described because by the time your opponent has priority to activate the Rootwater Hunter the Tar Pitcher is already in the graveyard. This is because in order to put an ability on the stack you need to pay all of the costs associated with it before your opponent gets priority, in this case that involves sacrificing the Tar Pitcher.
The rules for activating abilities share the same rules as casting spells, excerpts of the relevant rules are

601.2e The player determines the total cost of the spell. Usually this is just the mana cost. Some spells have additional or alternative costs.
601.2g The player pays the total cost in any order. Partial payments are not allowed. Unpayable costs can't be paid.
601.2h Once the steps described in 601.2a–g are completed, the spell becomes cast.

Just substitute ability for spell and you can see that you pay all of the costs before the ability is actually counted as played by the game.

Rule 602.1 should probably be mentioned as well: "602.1. Activated abilities have a cost and an effect. They are written as "[Cost]: [Effect.] [Activation instructions (if any).]". Thus anything before the colon will be a cost and must be done in order to place the ability the stack.


text:
Can I "hide" a Vesuvan Shapeshifter?
Suppose I control a Vesuvan Shapeshifter and a face-down morph creature, and I then choose to turn the Vesuvan Shapeshifter face-down. My opponent definitely should still be able to tell which of the two face-down creatures is the Shapeshifter (I'm not allowed to shuffle them around). But that can get a bit tricky, as I may move them around in the course of the game, perhaps rearranging for attacking and blocking or anything else.
It seems that there is a mix of private and public information here: which permanent is which is public, but the identity of a face-down creature, even if it was previously revealed, is private. Does my opponent simply have to keep track and never forget which is which? Do I have to answer questions like "which one of those is the Shapeshifter?", "which one of those is the one you turned face down a minute ago?", or any other related questions, or can I refuse to answer or even lie in response to those questions?
(Note: I'm asking out of curiosity about tournament rules, i.e. what a rules lawyering player could get away with if their opponent forgets to mark the face-down card. Personally I'd happily answer the questions, same way I'd play with a revealed hand to save my opponent from having to write it down, but I know that's not required.)

Sorry, I don't know. "What card is that?" is definitely out, but what about "I target the Shapeshifter"? Your best bet is to insist on a clear marker. Remember, you are allowed to takes notes (e.g. "red VS" if a red dice is used to mark a Vesuvan Shapeshifter).

As per the rules reference in the answer you linked (i'll change emphasis to make this clear) :

707.6. If you control multiple face-down spells or face-down permanents, you must ensure at all times that your face-down spells and permanents can be easily differentiated from each other. This includes, but is not limited to, knowing the order spells were cast, the order that face-down permanents entered the battlefield, which creature attacked last turn, and any other differences between face-down spells or permanents. Common methods for distinguishing between face-down objects include using counters or dice to mark the different objects, or clearly placing those objects in order on the table.

If the opponent doesn't remember that the third face-down creature was the one revealed as the shapeshifter, that's not on you. However, you must be honest about a question such as "Which is the third face-down creature you cast this game?"
CR 707.6 also seems to make explicit that you must answer such questions as "which creature attacked last turn" or the order they entered the battlefield.

But that can get a bit tricky, as I may move them around in the course of the game, perhaps rearranging for attacking and blocking or anything else.

If you're not using counters or dice to mark the face-down creatures, you must at least keep them always in the same order after combat manipulation, obviously, whether it's "tricky" or not to do so… in a tournament setting you could get in trouble if you don't.
I think, in the spirit of CR707.6, which says "this includes, but is not limited to…" if you're asked "which creature did you turn face down last turn?" – you should answer truthfully. I know this is basically the same as saying "which creature is the Shapeshifter?" but you made the information public.
I'm not sure how this situation is handled in a tournament, but once a creature has been turned face down, as your opponent I would immediately request some sort of die or counter be placed on it so I can keep track of which one is the Shapeshifter.

So to be clear, if your opponent remembers they saw it but forgets what it was and starts asking these questions, all you have to tell them is that it's the one you flipped last turn, not what it is, right? (Even though if you know the history of the game, the two questions are equivalent.)

@Jefromi I'm not a tournament judge, by any means, but yes that's how I read the situation. (You would also have to tell them which one you flipped last turn.) It would be like if someone played a spell that let them look at one card in your hand… if they forget what that card was, that's their problem.

@Jefromi that would be another reason to mark the face-down permanents with dice or counters or something, because any time your opponent starts asking which one is which you can just respond with "#3". It's your opponent's obligation to remember that permanent #3 is the Shapeshifter, if that is revealed.


text:
Pre-drawing cards or tiles
This goes for many games where players take turns to draw cards, but I specifically wondered about Carcassonne:
Do you allow players to pre-draw tiles and look at those tiles before it's their turn? So they don't have to wait until it's their turn, but somewhere between their last turn and their new turn, they can draw?
I myself don't like this tactic too much, as the players now possess information which the game rules did not intend them to possess yet. Especially if you allow "discussion" or "persuasion" (no, lay your road there and take it - aha, now I got the perfect hole for my cloister!).
Pro's

Players can think ahead
Game advances faster

Con's

Unintended possession of early information
(only if the original order of drawing is broken:) less drawing choice for other players

"less drawing choice for other players" <-- this is plain wrong, since the draws are all totally random.

@Lo'oris, I think the OP means that if you draw tiles out of order, a key tile could be drawn by someone else when it would've otherwise been available to you.

@Lo'oris: offcourse you are right when totally random. But when out-of-order drawing, 2 factors come in to play here: 1/ People are superstitious and believe that "their drawing choice" has an influence "whoah, look at that stack always giving me cloisters" and 2/ Unless the shuffle was perfect, tiles might not be entirely random (influenced by previous games). But it's mostly about the perceived drawing choice for the other players.

@Kristo: yes, what you say is just plain wrong, please study a bit of probability. @Konerak: if they are superstitious it's their problem, and it's a problem you should ignore anyway if you talk about game fairness; same goes with imperfect shuffling: you must assume it was shuffled fine.

@Lo'oris, please be nice.  I have studied probability.  Suppose you have 6 tiles remaining and one particular tile can win you the game.  If a player draws out of order, there's a 5/6 chance he won't get it, leaving you a 1/5 chance to get it.  But in the 1/6 case he does get it, you have a 0 chance to get it.  So the overall probability of getting your winning tile is 5/6 * 1/5 + 1/6 * 0 = 1/6, just like if you didn't draw out of order.  The problem is that most people will perceive the 1/6 * 0 case as unfair because you "lost" the chance to draw the winning tile.

Wrong. Most people won't percieve anything, they'll just play. Any who mis-percieves something like that is wrong anyway so you shouldn't care about that. You keep on planning based on a wrong assumption, knowing it is wrong!

We allow the early tile pulls, but the drawer can't look at the tile until it's his turn.

I'm voting to close this as primarily opinion based, as it fits completely under the format of one of our questions to avoid asking: "your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use [blank] for [blank], what do you use?”"

We've played it slightly different than tttppp; we allow pre-drawing of tiles, as long as the drawing order remains unchanged, and there is no discussion of the tile you have pulled.
For example, if we have players 1, 2 and 3, and it is player one's turn, player 3 can draw their next tile as long as player 2 has already drawn their next tile.  Yes, tile drawing is random, but we prefer that the tiles are still drawn in order.
The no-discussion portion keeps the spirit of the game I think, because normally you wouldn't have pre-drawn a tile, and you wouldn't have that extra information from the pre-drawn tile.
Pre-drawing makes the game go much faster, since your decision making can be done in advance, as long as a player before you doesn't take the space you wanted, and our groups have no problem with it.

Only allowing early drawing if the previous player has drawn also avoids some of the confusion I've found occurs when some people draw early and others don't and either people forget who's turn it is, or at the end of the game when someone picks up a tile early when they shouldn't have another turn.

The only difficulty with this I find is when the 'Builder' meeples are in play from 'Traders & Builders'. It allows a 2nd tile to be drawn if extending something the builder is on.

I would say that this is similar in nature to the question I raised about taking back turns / forgotten privileges
Taking back turns, and forgotten privileges
The excellent answer given was

If no new information has been disclosed since a decision, then a player is allowed to take back any action or inaction where this is practical.

So, in this context, I would say it is fine to take tiles early, as long as it does not give a player any unfair advantage. I think this situation is fairly reflected across all games, and not just carcassonne.

Agreed.  See also: shuffling before your turn in Dominion to help speed up play (specifically, when you will be playing a card to draw and your draw pile is empty)

I have done this in the past.
The rule I put in, is that anyone who looks at their tile in advance of their turn cannot speak about the game.  You don't want that person trying to influence the play of other folks tiles.
Once a person has looked at the tile, they have advance knowledge and it would unfair to allow them to exploit it.

Allow it?  We require it.  In vanilla Carcassonne, that is.  In versions where you could make material use of that information (e.g. The City, once walls come into play) we disallow it.  We just assume that a person giving you advice is using the information on his tie to slant it to his benefit.

You've pretty much summed up nicely in your question, but I thought I'd answer anyway.  We've played three different ways with different groups of people.
Usually we play the original rules - that is tiles must be drawn at the start of a turn.  This works well with smaller groups of players who don't insist on studying all the options.
With a large group of friends we have played that players are allowed to pre-draw and discuss.  This leads to faster play and advice based on tiles that are seen early.  It also causes a small amount of suspicion (are they recommending based on what they've got in their hand?), which can also be fun if not over analysed.
The third way is how we play with some of our friends more prone to analysis paralysis.  We allow pre-drawing, but once a player has seen their tile they may not give advice on where to place the current tile.  This is less fun as there is less conversation, but tends to speed games up.
One more thing to consider is pre-drawing near the end of the game.  For example if a player has their builder in play (Builders and Traders), then they may use two tiles in their turn, instead of one.

We allow pre-drawing of the next tile, but the drawer can't even look at it.  He just speeds things up by having it in his hand ready to go.

When I play with a larger group, we usually have the face-down tiles in a bag instead of on the table.  It's often simpler to draw your next tile right after you've played your turn.  In effect, the bag follows the turn order around the table.  You just need to be careful that you don't accidentally draw a tile when you already have one.  Also, you'll want to avoid pre-drawing when you're close to running out of tiles.  It's important that endgame tile draws happen in the correct order.
If your group has a lot of "aggressive negotiation" over tile placement, I would discourage drawing your tile until it really is your turn.  Otherwise you risk changing the outcome of the game.

2 problems I see with it:

In standard Carcassonne play, you have choice of stack. this reduces the choices ever so slightly
If you do not also limit kibitzing, you are allowing negotiation to improve playability of your next play as well as their current. It's a subtle but powerful change with a strong personality. One should also note that kibitzing is in fact part of the game by the rules.


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Resolving Diplomatic actions in a RISK-style board game
I'm working on a board game called Farlanthia: Lords of War. And I need some help with resolving diplomacy during play.
My original idea was to have Diplomacy be a form of "attack" like in RISK.  This would force another player to perform an action (like a trade, or peace treaty, etc.)  The idea is that each "season" you would send a diplomat to court, and politics would play out.  Sometimes things go your way, sometimes they don't.  This would allow me to use modifier cards (say, you have as prisoner a general from the other player, this would give you +2 in diplomacy with them).
However, as was pointed out on BoardGameGeek this isn't optimal for everyone.  So I'm considering adding in a voluntary portion where if both parties agree to the treaty at hand, it goes into place without die rolling.
Thoughts?  I'm just not sure how to arbitrate the rules of diplomacy during an otherwise concrete game if the diplomatic actions aren't just as concrete.
Thanks,

[EDIT]
(Cross-posted to GameDev in case it isn't appropriate for here.)

The question is definitely on-topic here, see for instance the definition on Area51 http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/5220?phase=commitment or the thread on meta http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/236/are-game-design-questions-on-topic

Why does this have the carcassonne tag?

If you read the pdf, the game board is built in a similar manner to carcassone, where players take turns placing terrain tiles.  I admit it doesn't relate to the question, however, so I'll remove it.  Thanks for pointing it out.

removed other game-specific tags. I don't care it is similar to them: if it's not about them, then it shouldn't have the tag.

A question to consider is whether diplomacy should even be something that is directly handled by the game mechanics, or something that happens purely through negotiation between players with game mechanics that encourage negotiation.
A great example of this is, of course, Diplomacy. There are no mechanics directly related to diplomacy (nothing that says you're in a treaty, or that diplomacy was successful or not), but the fact that moves are submitted simultaneously, and that you generally need support from multiple armies in order to take territory, means that you need to ally with other players in order to get ahead, and you need to place a certain amount of trust in them that they will do what they say; and those facts means that there are complex, shifting alliances throughtout the game, backstabbing, and negotiated two or three way wins at the end.
Another good example of this style of encouraging diplomacy and backstabbing is A Game of Thrones.
Beyond simultaneous movement mechanics, another way to encourage diplomacy without adding it explicitly to the game it through trading. If people are able to trade resources at some point in their turn, like in Settlers of Catan, then they may be able to negotiate a non-aggression pact and/or trade some resources, giving the players who negotiate such a pact an advantage over the other players in the game.
I would be wary of making diplomacy be something you roll for. It's very easy to add too much rolling for action resolution to the game. People will wonder when playing "why can't I just negotiate directly, why do I have to roll randomly to negotiate, even when what I'm proposing is directly to the advantage of both players involved?" Try to make the diplomatic aspect more of an emergent property of your game, which comes about not because of explicit rules, but because it's the most sensible way to play the game, and I think your players will enjoy it much more.

ok.  So in terms of emergent diplomacy, I could give players resources that other players want to have.  for example: "Green Player Culture Artifact" Treasure card does nothing for the red player, but the red player wants the green player to not attack him next turn.  For emergent diplomacy, should I let the players decide how to handle that situation instead of dictating it in the rules?  This idea feels very settler's of Catan-ish.

@Stephen Yes, that's what I'm suggesting. It is a bit Catan-ish. I wouldn't make the explicitly only valuable to one player, but instead something that players may or may not need depending on the circumstances. "I need to build more ships to cross this ocean, so I need steel, while you need more artillery for a land attack, so you need gunpowder."

ok so there's actually opportunities for players to earn meta-resources (not wood/stone/gold) by adventuring.  I can wrap this up in there.  This is a great Idea, thanks!!!

Diplomacy is probably still my all-time favorite strategy board game.  Great, nuanced answer!

One game I have played in the recent past that had an "attack via diplomacy" mechanic was Cosmic Encounters.  In that game, any "main" player (i.e., attacker or defender) can play either an "attack" card or a "negotiate" card.  If both players play attack, then they resolve using the relative value of the cards.  If they both play negotiate, then they have 60 seconds to conclude a peace deal on terms acceptable to both, or they suffer the consequences for failure (ship loss).  Finally, if only player plays attack and the other plays negotiate, the attack player automatically 'wins', but the negotiate player is entitled to draw "compensation" from his attacker, taking from his hand a card for each of his ships that was lost as a result.
I'm not suggesting that you rip off their mechanism wholesale, but it may serve as good inspiration to flip through the rules of that section, as they do lay out the terms for successful negotiations and the like.


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Arkham Horror: dominant personality issue?
I recently experienced the problem mentioned here, with myself being one of the enthusiasts pushing other party members around. It wasn't intentional, it's just that the structure of the game lends itself to giving each other lots of advice.
I'm interested in Arkham Horror, but want to know whether people have experienced the same problem with it. If you have experienced the problem, how? If not, and you think it's related to game mechanics, how so?

Not strictly Arkham Horror related, but I have never been tempted to play (the very popular cooperative game) Pandemic after my first time - spending an hour having the person most familiar with the game tell every other player what to do, in order for the group to stand the best chance of winning, just wasn't my idea of fun :-/  I think a co-op game works better if it enforces some level of autonomy for each of the individual players, myself.

@thesun -- I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who had the same Pandemic experience

Update: I just played Space Hulk: Death Angel (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/71721/space-hulk-death-angel-the-card-game) with my wife for the first time, and it seems not to have this problem (my expert analysis after one game). The Instinct features on event cards help, as do the relatively fast gameplay and simple rules.

@thesunneversets One of my friends and I play pandemic a lot. Once when we played with a new player we noticed we were giving too much advice. Now when we play we put only 4 epidemic cards in the deck and try to give almost no advice. It has worked quite well. (we also never play with the hidden hand rule as it needlessly complicates planning future actions, but using it could also potentially help this problem)

That's just the nature of the beast, from what I have seen.
I was frankly shocked that Arkham Horror got so many votes in that question -- there's no way in this lifetime or the next that my wife, any of her friends, or any of my friends' wives would play that game more than once, partly for the reason you've listed.
I have found that Arkham Horror plays the best when everyone knows the game equally well, or very close to equal.  It's hard to measure, but everyone at a minimum should understand all the core rules, and there's probably going to be one or two people who have memorized the contents of each deck, and have read up on strategies for certain characters to help with decision-making.
For new players, I would do two things:

Try to go over as many of the rules and concepts as possible before starting.  I know that's a lot to ask, but if people don't understand the overall goal, the game can be extremely intimidating.  Try to explain what's in each deck so people have an idea of where to go for things.
Ask new players up front if they want to be coached and advised, or if they want to just feel things out for themselves.  Some people take advise better than others, and some just want to learn by doing.

The first time I ever played, we played a six player game where only one of the guys had played with any regularity, so he acted as the GM for the session (managing the state of the game, reading the cards, moving monsters, enforcing rules, etc.).  However, the rules weren't thoroughly explained beforehand, so we just stumbled around the first four or five turns trying to figure out what to do.
I would have loved to have been given advice instead of stupidly stumbling through a portal with no way of closing it after returning.  The whole "what the heck are we even trying to do here?" feeling from just stumbling around left a bad impression on me about the game for a long time afterwards.
We ended up sending out a PDF copy of the rules to everyone to read as "homework" so we could be better prepared next time we played.

I disagree with forcing everyone to read the rule book -- only one person really needs to understand the rules completely to keep the game running.  Everyone else just needs to understand basic concepts.

@David Fullerton -- "forcing" is a strong word -- we all agreed reading the rulebook was a good idea.  Your mileage may vary, but I guess we'll just disagree.

I've successfully played Arkham Horror several times with non-gamers (and myself being the kind who tends to push others around). My tips:

Think of yourself as the GM.  You'll be the one who keeps the game moving, and your primary job is making sure everyone is having fun.  As much as possible, give your character the supporting jobs and let them play the game.
Simplify the game for them by focusing on the concepts, not the rules.  My super-simple explanation of the game to get someone started:

We win the game by sealing gates.  You need 5 clue tokens to seal a gate, but sealing a gate is dangerous so make sure you're ready.  You'll need 4+ stamina/sanity, and a weapon or two.  You can get weapons in a bunch of ways, but the easiest way is to go get some cash.

Yes, this is a gross over-simplification, but it gives them a roadmap for their character and a sense of progression, instead of random wandering around.
Let them play selfishly, even if it's not an optimal strategy.  Nothing ruins a new player's fun like having to give up a Tommy Gun because someone else could use it more effectively.  Each turn, they should have something to do to try and make their character more awesome: get an item, get a monster or gate trophy so they can trade it in, etc.
Give options, not orders: "You could go to the Newspaper and try to get some money, or you could go kill this monster, or go over here and help someone else" etc.  If they make what seems like a bad choice, oh well, the game can still be fun even if you lose.
Don't be afraid to bend the rules in the first game.  An early monster or rumor draw can really make a game impossible.  I'll often quietly redraw in those cases if I'm playing with inexperienced players to give them a chance.

Overall, Arkham has been a great cooperative game for everyone I've played it with.

Point #1 is well made.  In fact I've played the game before where few people knew how to play and the games owner sat out and "ran" the game, ensuring everything was kept track of and done in order, and offering everyone advice.  Everyone picked it up quite quickly and had a good time.


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Does mixing decks in Agricola reduce the chance of synergies?
This is in some ways a followup to Is the Complex deck in Agricola strictly better?.
In Agricola, are there many synergies between cards across decks, or do cards which work towards a certain theme tend to be grouped into the same deck?
I kind of like the idea of mixing the E, I, K (and, when FedEx arrives, G) decks, but does doing so reduce the chance of getting strong combos? If so, would it be better to increase the cards drawn (but still discard or draft down to 7) when combining decks?

In response to the first answer received: I can see that a larger deck reduces the risk of "negative synergy", where some cards are specifically meant to balance other powerful ones by the possibility that an opponent has that card. (Chief and Chief's Daughter, for example.) In fact, that's obviously the case with any card which mentions a specific other card, so, what if we set those cards aside and just consider the rest? Is there a greater or worse chance of getting a set of cards which happens to work together nicely without explicitly saying so?

I'm going to go with my gut response here (again) and say that mixing the decks does dilute the game, but not so much by "reducing the chance of getting strong combos"... more by increasing the chance of being dealt a powerful hand!
The key deck to examine here is the I-deck.  The other two (core set) decks are ostensibly just two piles of assorted cards, one of which contains some allegedly more difficult concepts than the other.  The Interactive Deck though is specifically designed for, well, interactivity.  If you play with just the I-deck the cards in your hand are more likely to interact with the cards in your opponents' hands than if you just mix everything together.
Let's consider the Wood, Clay and Stone Paths in the I-deck.  The Wood Path is a superb card in isolation, giving you 2 Victory Points for the low, low cost of 1 Wood.  And if you've mixed all the decks together into one mega-deck, chances are you can consider it in isolation.  The chance that someone has the Clay Path, or the difficult-to-play Stone Path, is probably small enough to discount.
Whereas if you're playing just the I-deck, chances are high that someone else does have the Clay Path, which makes the Wood Path a much less attractive proposition.  If you use it early as part of a starting player grab, you run the serious risk that someone will take it upon themselves to out-Path you later in the game.  Which forces you to think very hard about the best time to use your Wood Path - as late in the game as possible is probably good.  Which makes the Wood Path a much more interesting card, but obviously a less powerful one...

On the other hand, the Harrow and Juggler probably have more chance of interacting with another card when all three decks are mixed together.

Well, the Juggler is a bit of an odd one, whether it's good or not is more dependent on how hotly-sought-after the Travelling Players square is than on what Occupations the other players have.  Having said that, it's a really good point that, considering it's an Interactive Deck card, a lot of the things it interacts interestingly with are not actually in the I-Deck!


text:
Is the Complex deck in Agricola strictly better?
I've played half a dozen games of Agricola — enough to get a feel for it, but not enough to know all of the cards or really weigh their balance.
It's my impression that the Basic and Interactive decks are roughly the same in power, just with (as expected!) more player interaction in the latter.
Ignoring any particular cards that might be outliers, is the Complex deck simply more involved to use, or are the cards in it generally more powerful?

My initial, gut reaction to this question is "no, the Complex deck is not intrinsically more powerful".
Sure, it has some truly standout cards in it - Wet Nurse, I'm looking at you - but for every one of those it has a card with little to no good applications, e.g. Smallholder.  There are some strong Minor Improvements, but again, as well as all the excellent cards there are near-last-picks-in-draft like Yoke.
Are the E and I decks weak?  I'd say not, not really.  Occupations like Clay Mixer or Field Watchman, used well, can be just as powerful as anything in the K-deck.  A Plough is pretty much a Plough, and I'm always happy to have access to one, whichever deck it comes out of.  Some of my favourite Minor Improvements of all are to be found in the E-deck: Private Forest, or the potentially completely insane Clay Supports.
I often draft all the sets mixed together and I'm pretty sure I've never observed any kind of phenomenon of K-cards being snapped up quickly and E- and I-cards being left till later.  If anything, because what you want is cards that have simple positive effects and work well together, too many K-cards with lots of complicated text are liable to be counterproductive.  Yes, you'll first pick Wet Nurse if you see her.  But you'll spend the rest of the draft trying to pick up straightforward utility Improvements and Occupations that back up the strategy suggested by your first pick.  As such, my intuition is that I probably favour Basic and Interactive cards over Complex ones at most stages in a draft.
tl;dr: Complexity can be very powerful, when it does things that are not normally permitted in a game of Agricola.  But synergy is almost certainly more important.  And it tends to be easier to find synergies between simple cards than involved ones.  Therefore I strongly suspect the K-deck of being no more powerful, or just a little bit more powerful, than the others.
It'd be a really interesting experiment to play some games of Agricola between evenly matched players, giving them cards from different decks to play with, though, I must say!  Would kind of defeat the main point of the I-deck, mind you...

we have recently played a few games with only K cards - and they actually seem weaker! (with a few exceptions, of course.) gameplay need be more precise to take advantage of the relatively feeble improvements they offer.
also, we got the impression of the deck intentionally making it harder for all players by focusing on wood as a prerequisite for nearly all Minor Improvements. therefore, we tend to use the K deck when we feel extra competitive.

Our gaming group had the best experience with the K deck when combining it with the other decks.  And drafting the cards of course.


text:
What is a good resource to discover new games?
On this site recomendation questions are banned.  You are not allowed to ask:

I often play risk and Axis & Allies.  I don't like Settlers of Catan because bla bla bla ... What other games would I like?

See meta pages:

Game Recommendation questions are banned
Should we ban game recommendation questions? - Done

I was just wondering where/how members of this community discover new games.  I have played a number of games including:

Chess
Monopoly
Multiple Risk type games
Ticket to Ride
Axis and Allies
Settlers of Catan

Suppose I want to find more games like this.  Where/how should I look?  What is a good way to discover new games?

With respect to this site, I discussed this in a meta answer here. Have you tried our chatroom?

Does the chat room have persistent posts and upvoting so that it is easy to identify the ones that were most recommended and one can look over recommendations that interest you, but you hadn't thought to ask (e.g. the dominion-lite question)?

More to the point, is the chatroom anything other than a wasteland?

Online, I think BoardGameGeek is a great resource. It's kind of to board games what IMDb is to movies - tremendous repository with lots of rulebooks, user reviews, and more. It can be a bit hard to know where to start, but they also have a dedicated recommendations forum, and most people are happy to help.
If you live in an area with a hobby game store or a Meetup group, they're also a great resource for information, and more importantly, the ability to try things out before you buy them (as @shujaa points out).

When VolcanoLotus first gave this answer, that was my first introduction to BGG. While it is indeed a tremendous repository of game information, and has many different ways games can be recommended, there are a couple of things newbies should be aware of. (1) Very complex interface and steep initial learning curve. (2) Game rankings reflect a bias for a certain sort of gamer that is most attracted to a site like this. To get the most out of the site in terms of recommendations, read next comment:

There are 2 sections of reviews at BGG. The section that has thousands of reviews are generally a numerical ranking combined with just a few words which may be more of a personal note than a real review. However, there is another much better review section where I have found terrific information. To get there: Go to an individual game page. Scroll down to the Forums panel. Click on Reviews. Click on one of the reviews that has a high number by it. If you want to read more reviews after this one, don't hit back key on your browser - click "Reviews" link right about the Subject line.

I've personally found that the user comments (the numerical ranking/terse impressions) can sometimes be more helpful than the full written reviews. Particularly those of people rating in the 4-6 range on a 10 scale; often people who love the game will just say "great game!" and people who hate it will just say "terrible game!", but the people who were lukewarm on it will often write the things they liked and disliked about it - both valuable pieces of information, and the full reviews tend to skew positive since it's all ameteur.
I agree the UI is pretty terrible, though.

Agree that it's possible to find interesting comments intermixed among the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of reviews for a given game, especially ranks between 4-7. I've found it time consuming to tease out the better comments. For more popular games (anything in top 300 on BGG), there are usually many lengthy reviews from a variety of perspectives. Where it falls short is for unpopular games that have less than 5 reviews, possibly all from the same perspective of the typical "I own > 100 games including the latest shiny ones" BGG gamer.

By far my best source of recommendations for games that are new to me are my gaming friends. In the past decade, I also find myself using funagain.com for recommendations, as follows:
I start with the All Time Best Sellers list to see what has been popular with gamers over time. If I'm looking for a certain type of game, I choose one of the filters from the drop down menu, which are (various combinations of):

Board Games (Kids)
Board Games (Family)
Board Games (Strategy)
Card Games
Puzzles (Jigsaw)
Puzzles (Logic)
Toys

If you click on a certain game, in addition to the description and reviews you also see suggestions for similar games.
For example, clicking on all time best seller Carcassonne shows under the picture various classifications you can click on such as theme and genre, but most importantly "other" which shows things like "games for older children."
Whether or not you choose to buy your game from Funagain Games, you may as well use them as the great resource they are for game recommendations.

Staff in game stores (or other customers) are often very helpful. In my experience, small, independent game stores are staffed by people who love games and play lots of them, and they're happy to talk to you about it. Also, many game stores keep store copies so you can try it out before buying.

I don't know about where you live, but over here, there are many board game clubs that welcome people once a week or so. The one near my place has more than two hundred games, and players to play with.
They also organize some events several times a year, where some clubs and shops come together and put their games in common. In these, you have more than 500 games and 100 people to play with. I think it's the best way to discover a new game.
Try and check in your area if you have such a thing.

The BoardGameGeek has a fun annual convention in the Dallas area in the Fall where you could get hands on experience with a wide range of games in a very flexible atmosphere.  Getting tickets is hard unless you get them at the exact right time in the spring though.  Their site is a must-visit for anyone interested in games in my view and I agree with the first answer on that.
Several other conventions might be a good place to attend and see many other games as well.

I found that site that has good price and a vast inventory : http://www.fungamescafe.com/fgcIndex.php. With BoardGameGeek they are our two major provider of idea for new games.