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Table-top Golf game with coins?
About twenty years ago I saw this game board. It was huge, the size of a table. Made of wood. And on it was an 18-hole golf course, complete with pegs and barriers for hazards.
You played with coins (or at least, when I saw it people were using coins). Using your thumb, you'd slide a quarter or penny or nickel, whatever you had presumably, and you'd bounce it off the sides of the board and the barriers and pegs, hoping to get it in the next hole. Each hole was an indented circle drilled out of the wood and was numbered.
Players took turns, and could hit each others coins out of the way.
I've been looking to find it again for ages without any luck. As big as it was, it was probably expensive and produced in a limited quantity. I've search the net for penny golf, quarter golf, coin golf, for years with no luck. Now that I see a board/card game section of stackexchange, I though I'd give it another shot.
Anyone heard of this?
Thanks!

I think I remember this, but to my understanding it had been a custom build. Maybe it wasn't, though, I was fairly young.

Hold on a second... Could you describe the background? I might actually have it!

I originally posted this question as a guest and am unable to select an answer, however, thanks to everyone who posted here, I have my answer and I'd like to share a little information with you all on the topic.
World Wide Games of Colchester originally made the game. It was indeed called "Fore Par", and it included wooden pucks with little rubber rings on the outside of them to help them bounce. It was a large, plain wooden board (the exact dimensions of which I am still trying to pin down) with pegs and recessed "holes". At one time, the game sold brand new for $158.50. Here is an archived article from the NY Times that mentions the company and the game and cost, as well as other games made by WWG:  http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/12/nyregion/from-adi-to-skittles-to-yoot-making-fun.html
In some instances, Fore Par was included in a "cabinet" set of games you could purchase from World Wide Games.

World Wide Games was eventually purchased by S&S Worldwide. Sometime later, SSW would build a similar game known as "Bumper Golf". I didn't recognize the game because of the graphics and I thought for sure they weren't the same game (since it didn't use coins), but since I found a picture of the original Fore Par, I've been corrected. In fact, looking closely at both of them side by side, you can see that the layouts are EXACTLY the same, the only difference being the starting point for the 4th hole is shifted slightly to a different position. (See photo).

I wish I knew a little more history about the original Fore Par game, and a history of the company World Wide Games. Seems they cared about making a quality product that was used by many educational institutions (schools, YMCA's, etc). It makes perfect sense that I originally played this game as a child at my elementary school.
At my school, the wooden pieces were long gone, and the board had been played with coins for many years. So long that years of coin-impacts had worn away at the wooden sides and hazards at the best places to bounce the pieces.

I have this game. It is called Fore-par table golf.  It was made by world wide games Inc. out of Delaware OH.
The board is made of all wood and is very durable.

The original game was called "Fore Par" and it was manufactured by World Wide Games. It was a wooden board with, as noted 18 holes, bounded by wood bars and dowel pegs to make the shots trickier. The 'golf ball' was a wood disk which had a rubber ring around it so that it could bounce off of the pegs, bars, and frame around the board, so one could 'bank' shots in as in pool. World Wide Games was bought out by S&S World Wide, out of Colchester CT, who continued to manufacture the game for several years, along with "bumper puck", a bumper pool style game which used the same pucks. Unfortunately, the company no longer makes either game, and I have been unable to find replacement pucks anywhere, which is sad, since I do have one of the games.

What you describe sounds a lot like Carrom, but on a golf course-style board, so a (slightly gimmicky) Carrom variant. Do the games described on this page sound like what you saw? In particular, Bumper Golf sounds like a strong candidate:

Bumper Golf, published by S&S Worldwide is a version of the Carrom
  golf board game sometimes seen in parks and arcades. The game board
  depicts an 18-hole golf course. Players shoot wooden disks from
  numbered tee spots, trying to sink their disk into the equivalent
  numbered cup.

An American Carrom variant based on golf is also described on Wikipedia, but unfortunately there is no reference for further information:

A version of American carrom was played in Southern California schools
  in the 1950s–1980s, using a somewhat larger square board and wooden
  rings struck with cue sticks.[citation needed] There was both a golf
  version and a maze version. In the golf version, there was a series of
  nine "holes" (really just green areas on the board.) A player had to
  start at the tee for a particular hole and get a carrom coin
  completely within the green region to advance to the next hole. Sand
  trap hazards would cause the player to lose a stroke and lake hazards
  would cause the player to lose two.[citation needed] A modified
  commercial version also exists.

I was initially reminded of Crokinole, which is not quite a golf game, but probably in a similar league to Carrom... what are the differences between Carrom and Crokinole?

"Fore Par Table Golf" and it's recreation entitled "Bumper Golf" by World Wide Games is very, very close. Though I can't find a picture of the original made in the 80's.

We definitely played it with coins. Quarters, that we slide on the table. That doesn't mean it was made for coins; if it was old, the carom discs or marbles could have been lost long before. I do remember losing turns for hazards.
It was played on for so long, that you could see the best moves because of the wear the coins had placed on the sides and pegs and other things. As such, everyone always shot their coins to the wear marks.

Thank you for posting this answer. You sent me down a search for this game and I happily ran into Nok-Hockey boards and Carrom which I played over many a summer in upstate NY. Brought back great memories from my childhood.

I played this game only a few weeks ago in Sweden! I went over to a friend's place for Christmas, and after dinner her family pulled out this really old game from Finland, just as you described! Using coins, 8 or 9 levels, with wooden obstacles to increase difficulty. You can play in teams (we did men vs women), and each player has 5 attempts to get the coin across the obstacle and into the scoring zone (the hole itself, or numbered sectors around it). After 5 failed attempts, you get 9 points. Hole-in-one is 1 point. Like golf, highest amount of points loses. It was a lot of fun! I forget what it was called... I'll ask my friend and get back to you.

Sounds a little bit like Shove Ha'penny.
Only cooler.

I think what you are looking for is called Strokes Table Golf (http://www.strokestablegolf.com/) It is a Carrom like game with a custom board exactly as you describe it. It has jumps, ramps, and other hazards. My feeling tho is this may just be the modern version of the game which is different than what you had played. They also have an iPhone app.

The link in your answer seems to be broken. Here's an archived copy at archive.org.


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What is a solid basic strategy for surviving Arkham Horror?
First, I should note I've only played Arkham Horror once in a 2 player game and loved it. I am curious if the game is even survivable, and if so, what factors contribute to that success?
I am delighted at the thought that all players eventually get devoured by the Eldar Gods, and "winning" consists of having fun and the game going a long time. Seems much like life itself, to me.
If at least one player can survive, I am guessing that several factors would help, such as:

Lots of luck
Lots of cooperation among players
Lots of players

If at least one player can survive, what other factors have you found contribute to that?

People survive, and quite frequently as well. Here's a Google Doc of recorded games that a guy on the FFG forums has been keeping. It's got some pretty interesting statistics on it.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AliZyklaTCWzdEszdXpoRVJQNGltTU5wMi1qWEJnQkE#gid=2
As far a good strategies go, it's pretty simple. As you can see from the speadsheet, games with more investigators generally have a higher rate of success than games with less investigators. I've found that four investigators is generally a good number to play with. Any more and people can get bored with down time, any less and there's a good chance there's too much going on to take care of. It's also a nice middle ground for the number of gates that are allowed to be open, the number of monsters in Arkaham, the number of monsters in the outskirts, and you still only have one monster appearing per gate opening.
It's important to keep the gate count under control. Even if you can't seal a gate, make sure you have people going through gates so they have enough time to travel through and close without hitting the limit. Assuming one new gate per turn is a bit high, but it's a good rate to keep in mind for higher player games. I've had games end on the second turn in an 8-player game just due to unlucky Arkham encounters that opened gates. It can sneak up on you!
Which gates you seal/close is also important. It's slightly less predictable with expansion boards added in, but in the base set you have the 'Big 4': Independence Square, The Witch House, Unvisted Isle, and the Woods. These locations have gates that open significantly more frequently than other locations. If you close a gate here without sealing, odds are there's going to be another gate there soon enough, which adds a doom token to the track. Those are also the locations where Monster surges are more likely to happen. Conversely, locations such as the Historical Society, the Lodge, Hibb's Roadhouse, and the Science building, are targeted by Mythos Cards much less frequenty; it's less dicey to close those gates without sealing.
You may think it's important to have a dedicated monster killer (or at least someone good at it), and it definitely helps, but you can get by without it. Don't be afraid to spend a clue token or two to sneak past a monster guarding a gate so you don't have to deal with it. Also, don't forget that closing a gate removes all monsters with the matching symbol from the board.
Don't get sucked into spending all your clues to pass a check! I've seen so many instances where a player just decides, "Well, I've already spent two, might as well spend more..." only to burn their entire clue pile and have nothing to show for it at the end. Don't be afraid to fail a check!
Have a decent amount of health before wandering into an Other World. Don't go into R'yleh with one Sanity and one Stamina. And please don't go into Unknown Kadath with one Sanity and one Stamina. If you're going for a seal, having more than five clues going in helps, obviously. The extra buffer isn't necessary, but it's comforting.
Some people will swear by getting retainers from the newspaper or bank loans to get cash to buy weapons, but more often than not my group can get by just fine with our starting equipment and the odds and ends we pick up while playing. Encounters spent trying to get money and good items could be spent getting clues, either off of the board or from random encounters. It's up to you to decide what would be more useful.
Most importantly, have fun!

Yes, you can totally win. I win most of my games, playing with the same friend. (Most as in definitely more than half.)
Lots of cooperation? Yes, of course. It's a cooperative game, and if you're not coordinating so as to take full advantage of every investigator, you're going to have a rough time.
More players are helpful too, up to a point. Generally, I think that four investigators is the easiest number, followed by three. Note that you can still just have two players, each of them playing as two investigators. (This is what my friend and I do.) The difficulty jumps up at five investigators (more monsters appear). Additionally cooperation tends to go downhill with sufficiently many players; discussions start taking longer, people get tired, people get distracted, people don't pay attention to the entire game...
Luck is certainly a factor, but you can often play in such a way that you have at least a fighting chance as long as you don't get really unlucky.
There's also a very common house rule of taking two investigators and choosing one; this can help avoid awkward cases where the investigators are too similar. For example, if everyone has high sanity and low stamina, and you might be unable to take out a monster that's blocking off important locations.
My biggest piece of advice, though, is just to keep playing. Having a general sense of the game is also extremely important. You'll do much better if your decisions are informed by some overall strategy, not just a general goal of staying alive. It's hard to give blanket advice about all the little decisions you're going to make, but you'll develop instincts about them as you play!
One of the first things you need to be able to do is decide which victory condition you're aiming for. With some Ancient Ones, your best shot is frequently to defeat them in battle, so it's important to make sure you've stocked up on the appropriate type of weapons, and whatever is necessary to survive their attacks. Going for six seals, if it's possible, is generally a bit friendlier than trying to close all the gates, since closing all the gates often relies on two players closing two gates on the same turn, so you can get screwed over if one of them gets delayed.
It's also good to develop a sense of which locations most commonly have gates appear, so you know which ones to seal and perhaps which clue tokens to grab first, and which locations tend to have friendly or painful encounters. (This includes the other worlds!) And don't forget, the board has symbols next to the locations reminding you what kinds of rewards they might provide.
I could go on, but the flavor of the advice will be the same: keep on playing, keep cooperating, and you'll start finding it easier. (And then you'll still have games every now and then where you're completely destroyed by turn 6. Oh well.)

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How many Mythos cards can be played during the investigator's turns?
I am wondering how playing Mythos cards works. I read that the Keeper can play 1 Mythos card in the investigators' turn. Does that mean:
1) when playing against 4 investigators, the Keeper can play 4 Mythos cards (one card each per single investigator's turn) before his turn comes,
or
2) the Keeper can play only 1 Mythos card per a complete turn cycle of all investigators (i.e. the Keeper can play 1 Mythos card before his turn comes)?

The keeper can play one Mythos card per investigator's turn.
From the rules, bottom of the first column on page 16:

The keeper may play a
  maximum of one Mythos card per investigator turn and may
  never play Mythos cards during the keeper’s own turn.

Each player/investigator has his own turn each round.  Playing against 4 investigators, the keeper could play a maximum of 4 Mythos cards a round.
From pg. 6

Playing the Game
Mansions of Madness is played over a number of game rounds.
  During each round, each player resolves his turn (starting with
  the investigators)

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Dominion Dark Ages: Ruin Strategies
With Dark Ages cards only in play, what are some strategies for dealing with a deck clogged with ruins (assuming that each player has an equal clogged deck)?
The only strategies that seemed effective in playing DA is using a Storeroom (only promising a minimum of $4), Altar (which is nice because it trades Ruins for Duchies or good actions, but can be hard to raise the $6 with a clogged deck), or Beggar (when you have 5 coin in hand, using a Beggar adds 3 Copper immediately to the hand, giving you $8 for that province).
Any other ideas for effectively dealing with ruins, with only Dark Ages cards in play?

The strategies used against Cultist and Marauder, the two offensive Ruins-giving cards, are similar to the strategies used against Curse-givers in other sets. Ruins are not quite as bad as Curses, since the cards have a little bit of utility and don't carry a VP penalty.
That said: Dark Ages has lots of light trashing to help you handle both unwanted Coppers and Shelters, and any Ruins that might come your way. Hermit is a dynamite Ruins-trasher, since you don't actually have to line it up in the same hand and it can give you Silver (or more Hermits) to overcome deck dilution. Junk Dealer cleans your deck up and provides a bit of buying power too. Forager doesn't usually give much buying power, but it's cheap.
A little more obliquely, Procession can give you a benefit and clear out the Ruins as well, although you'll want other targets for it. Death Cart inflicts Ruins on yourself--but $5 is an incredible chunk of change, and you won't lack for targets if your opponents are giving you Ruins as well. If you have lots of junk, Sage can help you wade through the bad stuff to find your Junk Dealers or Altars. Count can clear a lot of junk from your deck at once; put the only good card on top of your deck, then choose the "trash your hand" option. And Catacombs deals with junk by letting you discard it and draw something else.
You brought up Beggar and having two Silvers is pretty great. The gain-three-Coppers option, if you don't get attacked, depends a lot on the deck. It's great for Duchy and alternative-VP rushes (Gardens, of course...); less so if you have Provinces in mind for the endgame.
One last note: Rats looks like an attractive trasher, and it is powerful in that regard, but then you have to get rid of the Rats! I think Rats combines best with trash-for-benefit cards like Apprentice, Bishop, and Salvager, and not so well with most Dark Ages cards.

I thought at first that procession would be good with Rats, since you could gain expensive actions that way while getting rid of Rats. Don't be fooled! You have to play Rats twice while only getting to trash the 1 card, so you still gain Rats, even if you can gain a good action too!


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Dominion: How to Deal With a Board Filled With Terminal Actions
My hardest games are where the board is filled with terminal actions.  When you have a board where 10 out of 10 actions are terminal actions, some of which are attack cards, or there is one card that has a plus card and plus action, but may not be the most appealing to chain with, I'm not sure what a good strategy is here.
It seems like it may be beneficial to go with a 2 or 3 to 1 coin to action, does that make sense?

Just buy a few of the very best actions and stock the rest of your deck with money. :)

A card with +1 Action is, by definition, not terminal.

Yes, what I mean was what to do when the deck has 9 terminal and one non-terminal, but that one may not be that good.

A high money:action ratio is definitely required with an overabundance of terminals. What ratio is appropriate will depend on which of those terminals you decide to use and if/how you're being attacked. Generally it's better to err on the side of too much money; people aren't usually disappointed by a hand full of Silvers, and you won't bore your friends taking time to decide which 1 of 3 actions to play. A slightly augmented big money strategy is often very competitive in the absence of an engine.
If your hand will be small (due to, say, a discard attack and not much card draw available), you can risk having more actions because they odds of collisions are lower. In a >2 player game where you think Militia is likely to be played between almost every one of your turns, you could probably do nearly a 1:1 ratio of Militias and Silvers until you get to Golds. Games like this often end on piles, so getting an extra buy and starting early on Duchies is probably a good idea. (If you're discarding cards anyway, they might as well be points rather than money.) Also realize that in games with more than 2 people, joining in on attacks is less mandatory. If both other players are snapping up the Militias, you'll be better off letting them attack each other and instead getting a card that actually benefits you (e.g. Navigator).
On the other hand, if you are trashing or drawing a lot, you should be buying more money. If one of your terminals is Council Room, that means you're drawing 4 cards and hoping none of them are actions. Even if your terminal only draws 2 cards, if you've gotten rid of your Coppers, you need to be buying Silver and Gold to make sure your deck has enough money cards. "Doublejack" where the only non-money cards you buy are two Jack of All Trades is incredibly good because it trashes, draws, and helps you treasure-up all at once (not to mention it's extremely resilient against attacks). And you only need 2 Jacks to do it.

'Jack of all trades... not to mention it's extremely resilient against attacks' - how so?

@BrianMains: Got Curses? Trash them with Jack. Have to discard? Draw back up. Opponent leave you junk on top of your deck? Discard it. Good cards getting trashed, or trouble buying move? Gain Silver.

@sitnaltax Of course, the downside is that gaining a Silver isn't optional with Jack of All Trades, so if you have a lot of Golds (or Platinums), using Jack of All Trades has a definite downside.  The fact that you can't trash Treasure cards also means it doesn't work well against attacks that stuff Coppers into your deck (Montebank, Jester).

Hardly a downside at all. It's difficult to have so many Golds that adding a Silver makes your deck worse, and if that were the case you should have started greening long ago. In a Colony game, Jack means you're explicitly choosing a run-out-the-Provinces strategy over a (you hope) too-slow Colony/Platinum strategy.

On boards like this, you will indeed want to buy mostly Silver and Gold, with no more than a few Actions.
How many Actions you buy will depend on the Actions. If your Actions draw you cards, you will usually want fewer of them. Smithy and Envoy in particular provide powerful increases to your buying power and help cycle your deck. A deck with nothing but a single Smithy or Envoy and treasure can be pretty powerful, even against fancy action chaining. But adding a second drawing card doesn't help much, because if you draw both together (likely, since each one draws cards) the second is a wasted card and you'll wish you had Silver instead. Library, Council Room, and Hunting Grounds similarly don't play very well with other actions in the absence of Villages.
On the other hand, if strong terminals that don't draw are available, you can probably afford two or three in your deck. These are less likely to collide and be wasted, because they don't increase your handsize. Shujaa cited Militia, which is an excellent example. Other candidates include Navigator and Jester.
If there are actions that offer +1 Action, consider them carefully along with your terminals. With terminals that draw, they can be risky. Drawing a Market with your Smithy is maddening. If your terminals don't draw, it's less of a risk. Also, if powerful chain drawing like Laboratory or Stables is available, make sure you know where your +Buy is coming from. It does you little good to have a $14 hand if you have only one buy.
Finally, I want to second shujaa's recommendation of Jack of All Trades, an important card on any board and a dynamite card in any deck that doesn't rely on heavy action chaining. Filling your deck with Silver, trashing Estates, and not losing handsize to do it is a powerful combination.


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How do you start playing?
We totally don't understand how to start playing Shadows over Camelot. I only have three total players. We each have a die, 5 white cards, 1 loyalty card, and a coat of arms & have placed our respective miniture at the round table & have placed each a white card from our individual hands face up on the round table. All display fight 2 are numbered 2 and the other is number 1. What do we do now? We are all first-time players.

It's a cooperative game.  So, the first thing you need to do is decide, as a group, how to distribute the three white face-up cards among the group.  You could decide that all three go to one person, or you could decide any other division.
This decision is often made based on which characters are in play.  For example, if you're playing with Sir Galahad, you all might choose to put all special whites into the middle face-up and give them all to Sir Galahad (remember everyone starts with a Merlin, so everyone will have at least one special white), since Sir Galahad can play them for free on his turn.  Likewise Galahad might play a high fight card to give to Sir Kay, since Sir Kay is more likely to do combats (e.g. for the armor, which is a good first quest to attempt).
You likely wouldn't want to give Sir Gawain any cards, since his special power is to draw an extra one, so he can fill up his hand at Camelot faster (the 'heroic action' at the round table is to draw more white cards, and he gets an extra)
Since this is your first time playing, especially with only 3 players, the rules strongly encourage not playing with the loyalty cards/potential traitor.  I agree with this.
If King Arthur is in the game, he goes first, else the youngest player starts.
First you 'progress evil' by drawing a black card and doing what it says.  Let's say that it's a Picts card, so you place a Picts miniature on the Picts battlefield.  Now the player gets to do one thing.  This can be to move away from the round table to a quest (place the miniature in a/the small circle of that quest), draw two cards (this is the 'quests heric action'), or play a special white.
I'd recommend option two for the very first turn, as it's unlikely you have enough cards to sucessfully complete a quest.
The goal is to be able to 'finish' a quest, and not waste a lot of time moving around.  This means having two pairs of fight cards, a run of 1-5 fight cards, etc. to correspond to the quest (black knight or picts/saxons in those two cases).  Strategy-wise, I suggest the group gets someone with a 'full house' (two of one fight card and three of another) and then go to the Lancelot's Armor quest, as the armor's power makes the game much easier.
Feel free to ask clarifying questions (comments) if you need more help.


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If they counter my Goblin Grenade, do I still lose my goblin?
If they use a Counter Spell or some other similar way to counter my Goblin Grenade do I still lose the sacrificed goblin?

Why would you expect to not lose the goblin?

@user1873: I think the OP was just confused about when costs are paid. (The original card text was a lot more confusing in that department, but given the gatherer links, it seems unlikely the OP was looking at that.)

@Jefromi, you are possibly correct. It might be the case that Yaztromo is an old 5th edition player. My familiarity with 5th edition rules isn't spectacular.

@user1873, to be honest, I'm originally an unlimited edition player... I always struggled to keep up with the game after the introduction of Ice Age as since then I played much much less than I used to...

Yes. This is pretty obvious if you remember that, like the card says, sacrificing the goblin is an additional cost. It's like paying mana for a spell - and you don't get mana back if someone counters one of your spells.
If you want to read the comp rules, casting spells is section 601.1. Paying the cost for a spell is 601.2g; the spell becomes cast after that in 601.2h. At that point, it's on the stack and your opponent has a chance to counter it. When they do, the costs are already paid (your goblin is dead and your mana is spent).

Yes. You pay costs to take actions. This includes Mana Costs listed right of the Card Name, and any additional costs within the cards Rules Text. Nothing in the Basic Rules allows you to get back costs that you paid to cast a spell. Remember, your opponent is paying a cost to counter your spell (usually a mana cost, and the instant counter spell that will leave their hand and go to their graveyard). It wouldn't be fair for them to have to pay to counter your spell, if you just got your resources back. From the Basic Rulebook:

COST - A cost is something you have to pay to take another action. You must pay a cost to cast a spell or activate an activated ability. Sometimes a spell or ability will also ask you to pay a cost when it resolves. You can’t pay a cost unless you can pay all of it.
COUNTER A SPELL OR ABILITY - To cancel out a spell or ability so it has no effect. If a spell is countered, it’s removed from the stack and put into its owner’s graveyard.


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If an opponent unsummons my Goblin, does it spoil my Goblin Grenade?
If I'm launching a Goblin Grenade (that requires the sacrifice a Goblin) and my opponent uses an Unsummon on the Goblin (or similar effects like the ability of a Time Elemental) does this effectively counter my spell?

@Rainbolt Why would you flag both questions as a duplicate of each other?

@Hackworth I closed them as duplicates of each other because I couldn't decide which is the better target. One is more specific and more concise. One is more general and less concise.

No. Your opponent cannot cast any spells, activate any abilities, or do any other actions while you have priority, unless specifically directed to do so.

116.1. Unless a spell or ability is instructing a player to take an action, which player can take actions at any given time is determined by a system of priority. The player with priority may cast spells, activate abilities, and take special actions.

116.3a The active player receives priority at the beginning of most steps and phases, after any turn-based actions (such as drawing a card during the draw step; see rule 703) have been dealt with and abilities that trigger at the beginning of that phase or step have been put on the stack. No player receives priority during the untap step. Players usually don’t get priority during the cleanup step (see rule 514.3)

116.3d If a player has priority and chooses not to take any actions, that player passes. If any mana is in that player’s mana pool, he or she announces what mana is there. Then the next player in turn order receives priority.

Since the Goblin Grenade has "sacrifice a goblin" as an additional cost to casting the spell, the goblin will not be on the battlefield, which means it will be an illegal target for Unsummon

117.8. Some spells and abilities have additional costs. An additional cost is a cost listed in a spell’s rules text, or applied to a spell or ability from another effect, that its controller must pay at the same time that player pays the spell’s mana cost or the ability’s activation cost. A cost is an additional cost only if it’s phrased using the word “additional.” Note that some additional costs are listed in keywords; see rule 702.

It is impossible for your opponent to unsummon your Goblin after you have chosen it to be the grenade victim.
When you cast a spell, announcing the spell, choosing its targets and modes, and finally paying its costs (and yes some other more fiddly things), is all a single action that you take at once.  Other players do not get priority to interrupt you in the middle.
Because sacrificing the goblin is part of the cost of the spell, it is part of that one big action and other people can't jump in the middle to do something.  By the time your opponent gets priority again after you have chosen the goblin, it is already in the graveyard.

No. Your opponent may only cast Unsummon on your goblin when they have priority. Your opponent gets priority after you pass. Wou will have finished casting your spell and paying all necessary costs at this point, and the goblin you sacrificed will be in your graveyard. (From the Basic Rulebook)

Since players can cast instants and activate abilities during each other’s turns, the game needs a system that makes sure only one player can do something at a time. Priority determines, at any given time, which player can cast a spell or activate an activated ability. The active player (the player whose turn it is) gets priority at the
beginning of each step and each main phase—except for the untap step and the cleanup step. When you get priority, you can cast a spell, activate an activated ability, or pass (choose to do nothing). If you do something, you keep priority, so you make the same choice again. If you pass, your opponent gets priority, so now he or she gets that choice. This goes back and forth until both players pass in a row.

ADDITIONAL COST - Some spells say they have an additional cost. To cast that spell, you must pay both the mana cost in the upper right corner of the card and its additional cost.

CASTING A SPELL - To cast a spell, take the card you want to cast from your hand, show it to your opponent, and put it on the stack. ... Now check what the spell’s cost is. Tap your lands to produce the mana necessary to pay that cost, and pay it. Once you do that, the spell has been cast.


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How do I find players willing to participate in test-playing my games?
I have some game ideas that are currently in the prototype phase. I am now looking for groups who are willing to test these games.
I am somewhat afraid that they won't like the game and would not be willing to play again.
Do you know where I can find players that test new games?

People not liking your games will probably be the default for the most part of the game design process :p That's why people test in the first place, right?

I think it's important that they like the process more so than the game itself. A good way to get playtesters to retest a game -- even one they didn't like the first time -- is to make them feel like their input from the first time around is contributing to improvements. (That or you can pay them. :) )

It also matters why they dislike it. If the idea is there, but there's some mechanic that's broken (which you probably won't catch yourself, since different people have different play styles), gamers will generally be patient with that and be interested in trying again. My first run of one prototype was with my wife, who does not play games typically. There was a broken mechanic, but she essentially said that she won't ever voluntarily play it again, because she didn't see potential for her to ever enjoy it.

Oliver: This may be a bit personal (and is certainly unsolicited), but might I suggest that you put less stock in whether people like your game or not? Within our gaming group, we own and have played 17/20 top games on BGG, and most of us STRONGLY dislike some of these games. While we may not play them often, we can still acknowledge that they are good games. When I commit to alpha/beta testing, it is more important to have a reasonable developer than that I like a game.

@The Chaz, you are surely right, that you don't have to like a game to test and assess it. But I would feel bad, if this group would spend time with a game as a favour for me and it would be an annoying experience for them. But you are probably right: if they are willing to test it, they voluntarily took the risk of a boring game (and they still could bail out, I guess, if it would be too bad)

Andrew Looney (Fluxx, Icehouse) has written several great articles about game design on his blog, which I'd encourage you to check out (even if you don't like Fluxx). For the purposes of your question, I think this graphic is very helpful (and funny).
He breaks playtesting down into three phases: inner circle of friends, outer circle of friends and random strangers. I have conducted playtesting on one game, and I agree wholeheartedly with these divisions. I don't know how far along you are, so I'll write this assuming you've only done the "mental" playtesting necessary to build a prototype and are looking for a first test run. There might be more detail in here than you need, but I think it's important to define the phases in order to help you find the appropriate people to fill them.
For initial testing, it's important to have people who are both friends and gamers. For me, this was my game group. To your concern about them not liking it, Looney's instruction about this phase is to "repeat until fun", and I think that's a great distillation of the point: until the huge bugs are ironed out, you don't want to "waste" the interest level of people you don't know until your product is fairly polished. The friends part is important because they'll be patient with you, and the gamers part is important so that they'll have some frame of reference for any familiar mechanics, be able to make good suggestions from experience, and roll with things if you need to change them midstream. I'll also add that you shouldn't bother with a rulebook at this phase, at least not for others; you may end up changing things mid-game, let alone between games. Think of this as alpha or maybe even pre-alpha testing. If you don't have any gamer friends (and don't want to pay people to playtest), you really should make some if you want to have success designing. Many areas have game groups that you can find via BoardGameGeek or Meetup; if not, try starting a Meetup group yourself. (You may have success pulling pre-alpha testers off the street, but then I think your concern about them not liking the game and never coming back is valid.)
Once you've gotten things to the point where everyone is having fun (for me, my metric was when my friends started requesting the game), you can move on to the outer circle. For me, this was people like my father-in-law; he'll play games if asked, but won't seek them out on his own. It's helpful to get fresh eyes on it at this stage because the people who've seen the game since its inception have preconceived notions about it and, often, you'll run into situations where a mechanic or situation is a lot better than it was, but still not good enough. These folks are still friendly enough with you that they'll put up with a game with some kinks in it, but often not patient enough to sit though the broken sessions of your pre-alpha period. Family members and non-gamer friends (unless they're militant non-gamers) should do nicely here. This is probably more like alpha testing; you still should be the one explaining the game and possibly playing, but things should be less volatile at this point; changes should be more along the lines of tweaks than overhauls, and you probably shouldn't make any significant changes mid-session "to see what happens".
By the time you get to random stranger testing, you should have a product that someone could pick up off of a shelf and teach themselves how to play. The artwork doesn't have to be professional (or existent), but rules and player aids should exist, and everything should be clear. It's better at this point if you can be there in person, but don't say anything unless the group has answered a rules question incorrectly. This is the fly-on-the-wall point, like dropping your baby off at their first day of kindergarten and letting them go off into the world. Finding players for this stage is fairly easy, because you can find plenty on BoardGameGeek if you can't find anyone locally. I did my testing at a convention, which is a convenient place if you've got one you can reasonably get to. The key part here is to know your audience. If you're making a children's game, Origins or Gen Con is probably not the best place to approach people. Likewise, you wouldn't try a church youth group if your game is a 4-hour brain burner with a provocative theme. Try to find random strangers who are in your target audience; typically, this will be gamers, but not always.

Start by finding an "adventurous" gaming group interested in playing many different games. The thing about most gamers: we love discussing games as well as playing. As long as your group isn't obsessed with a particular game, different people with different interests and backgrounds will provide a game designer with a lot of material to think about after a play test. It doesn't even matter what kind of player they are: the hardcore gamers can help find ways to make your system robust by trying to break it. They more casual players can work as a fun compass telling you if the game is boring or not.
From your question I get that your biggest worry is people not wanting to play again after they try a flawed game. If you make it clear this is a play test, that the game can be improved and that you value their opinion they might even get invested in improving and suggesting new ideas for your game!

Is this something you've had experience with?

I refrained from mentioning personal experience since I'm not a professional game designer. Would it help?

Without personal experience as a game designer or a tester your answer would be just a guess.  With the experience, then you're an expert sharing hard earned advice.  I couldn't judge which this was, so I asked.

The best solution I've seen is to post a request for playtesters on the major boardgaming sites, ost notably, Boardgamegeek.com

This is certainly a good idea for beta testing - that is, if the game has undergone some refinements, has a rulebook that is clear and comprehensive, etc. For the first few plays, though, it's important to do it locally so that you're there to answer questions and clear up misconceptions in real time.

No, it really isn't essential to be there even for alpha test. (I've done some alpha testing. You'll get to a suitable beta faster with blind alpha.)

Really? I'd believe you could do it, but it's very surprising to me that a board game could actually be faster this way (unless it's because you have a larger pool). I admit I've never tried it, but it seems like you'd lose a lot of data from misunderstood rules for a game of any complexity. Even in published games, many a gamer needs to refer to an FAQ in the middle. How do you handle questions, or ensure that they were playing correctly?

you can never "assure that they're playing correctly" in a blind test... but that's the point. What you can do in blind alpha is put a prototype in their hands with written rules, then revise those rules based upon what's going on in your own process. Alpha is usually about development; beta should be about clarity... but late alpha and early beta are practically indistinguishable... aside from the potential for major "WFT???" moments.


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What's a good counter-strategy to Workshop/Garden?
If we play a board that has Workshop and Garden kingdom cards, I almost exclusively play them as my strategy. In the early game, I focus on buying Workshop and by the third round I typically get two "buys", one in the Action phase with Workshop and the other in the Buy phase.
Mid-game, I switch to buying Garden (which gives you one VP for every 10 cards in your deck) and if I have less than 3 coins in the Buy phase, I get an Estate or Copper. This strategy has proved to be almost 100% effective in rushing to deplete three decks and ending the game around turn 16 or 17.  I've only lost once or twice using this strategy and it's usually when I deviate from my plan and forget to pick up an Estate/Copper or pick up another card on a whim.
For this scenario, I'm only playing the base set and the third pile I'm depleting is Estates.
What are effective counter-strategies to a Workshop/Garden strategy?

I recently started playing Dominion, and I noticed this strategy right away.  It's ridiculously easy to win with this combo (and to win by a lot!).

Workshop/Gardens is usually a dominant strategy. There are a couple of exceptions:

Bishop can counter Gardens by buying Gardens and then trashing them for VP. This prevents the Gardens player from being able to get a favorable Gardens split and means that the Bishop player can focus on getting VP chips or Duchies while the Gardens player is buying out Workshops and whatever other pile.
Cursing attacks can often foil a Gardens strategy. Since Gardens games tend to end fast, a difference of 3 or 4 points can be huge. The threat of pumping up the value of the opponent's Gardens is overrated; even if the Gardens player gets all 8 Gardens, 10 curses would still be a net loss of 2 points.
Discard attacks can significantly slow a Gardens player. Only having 3 cards in hand means that the person can probably keep a Workshop and 2 treasures, which will frequently be Coppers. That's not enough money to keep acquiring Workshops or to get a double Gardens. Ghost Ship is especially brutal because the Gardens player will have lots of bad cards, and so forcing him or her to see those cards multiple times instead of being able to just discard them is really painful.
Embargo can make Gardens unattractive very quickly. Put an Embargo on the Workshop pile, then the Estate pile, then the Copper pile. Embargoing the Gardens themselves is ok, but usually the gardener will be gaining Gardens via Workshop and so the Embargo won't matter. If you Embargo their buy possibilities, however, it quickly slows down their deck.
A quick mega-turn engine may be able to overwhelm a Gardens deck. I'm thinking about Native Village/Bridge, which can be used to end the game in a single turn. This engine might be fast enough to buy a couple of Provinces, drain the Estates, and end the game on piles. It's ridiculously difficult to simulate because of the pile-ending conditions and needing some intuition in order to decide when to pull the mega-turn, but I played a couple of solo games earlier today and it seems viable as a strategy.

Side note: There are 12 Gardens in a 3+ player game, not 8 Gardens.

If you ever come back to this answer could you reflect on the Bureaucrat and, Perhaps the Swamp Hag and possibly Haunted Woods/Bridge Troll (Adventures)?

I did ask about expansions for a reason. My first two thoughts were modified versions of Workshop/Gardens: Ironworks and Silk Road. Maybe this isn't what you're asking exactly, but if either of those is around, you can beat Workshop/Gardens at its own game. Ironworks should be able to beat out Workshop - it does cost one more, but the extra benefit it gets you upon gaining a card makes it well worth it, especially given that I doubt you're buying a Gardens on your first two turns with a 4/3 split. Silk Road can easily be worth as much as Gardens if you're going all out gaining cheap victory cards. Compare the effort of gaining four victory cards to that of gaining ten cards.
If Tournament is in the game, along with anything at all that might net you a reasonably early province and let you use it, you can do very well with most of the prizes. If someone manages to get all the gardens and the estates in a two-player game, they'll probably be at either 35 or 43 points. That's not that hard a score to top if you're the only one at all capable of buying provinces. And toward the end of the game, it's very easy for the richer player to grab up a few of the lower VP cards and take a big chunk out of the Gardens deck.

I've not found Gardens to be anything like unbeatable.
As with many Dominion strategies, one counter is "also play it". If we're splitting the gardens, they aren't as good. In fact, with Gardens in particular, buying them just for denial -- whether if i'm trashing them (as the Bishop answer, but it also works with remodel, etc.) or just not getting many points for them -- can be particularly effective.
Another way to counter a Gardens strategy is with trashing attacks -- Thief or Pirate Ship removing your spare treasures might keep you below your next point-shelf, especially if you're rushing things. If you're ending the game after 17 turns, even with a workshop or a +buy you're unlikely to be getting to 40 cards.

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


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Weight and dimensions of Hive game pieces?
What are the exact dimensions and weight of the bug pieces used in the game Hive?
What are they made of?

Why do you want to know?

I was thinking about doing home-made version of the game and I wanted it (the dimensions) to be as close to the original as possible. As for the weight and material, I'm just curious.

It varies by edition. There are at least 4 versions of the game.
Version 1 was stickered wooden pieces; I do not know the size, but I suspect them to be rather close to the Bakelite. At least two different sticker sets were used by Gen42 games.
Version 2 was bakelite pieces, hexagons 37mm face to face, and 12mm thick.
Version 3, "Hive Pocket" is also bakelite pieces, hexagons 24mm face to face, and 9.5mm thick.
Version 4, "Hive Carbon" is the same size pieces as the second version, but is black and white markings and tiles.
I lack a scale accurate enough to measure the mass.
Boardgamegeek.com has, on the hive entry, a table:
Item                         Hive    Hive Pocket
Tile Width Flat to Flat      38 mm   25 mm
Tile Height                  12 mm   10 mm
Weight of 26 tiles           600 g   200 g

On one of the images, it shows 38x12mm and 25x10mm for the bakelite

I wanted to 3D print some tiles to go with my hive set so determined the answer to these questions for myself. From @aramis's answer, I deduce I have the "Hive Carbon" set.
My fairly precise scales and callipers suggest:

Mass: 21.8g
Height: 12.4mm
Distance between parallel hexagon edges: 37.9mm

Printing my own part to these dimensions with 3mm fillets and 100% infill using PLA gave a mass of 17.3g. It's different enough to notice if you focus on it, but not so bad as to be terribly distracting. The bigger issue is surface finish, and I experimented with sanding from 240 to 2000 grit using wet/dry paper and a little water.
The original bakelite pieces are lovely. As fun as it's been to make my own expansion pieces, if I find I like playing with them I will buy some official ones.


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First Auction Power Plant in Power Grid?
Ok, let's say we just started Power Grid game for 4 players: A, B, C and D. We will be focusing on Step 1st/Phase 2nd, which is the first Auction Power Plants phase in the game. We have (randomly) determined initial player order, which we can assume is now ABCD.

Exception: In the first round of the game, each player must buy a power
  plant.

Ok, so let's assume that this is what happens in the first round's Auction Phase:

A selects Power Plant, D wins the first auction.
B selects Power Plant, B wins the auction.
C selects Power Plant, C wins the auction.

Now, this would be D's turn to select the Power Plant, except he has already bought one, so he cannot bid nor offer a plant at auction.

Once a player has purchased a power plant in a round, he cannot bid in
  another auction in the same round, nor can he offer a plant at
  auction.

Does that mean we are back to A, and he selects Power Plant as the last player this round and therefore buys it at a starting price? Or was he obligated to choose plant again after D won the first auction?
Side note: I was quoting Official Rules found on RioGrandeGames.com.

After D won the first auction, Player A is obligated to choose a plant again. You may have missed this on page 3 of the rules:

When the auctioning player wins the auction and gets the power plant, the next player in turn order takes his turn at offering a power plant for auction, if he has not already purchased a power plant this round. If he has, the next player in turn order may start an auction, and so on. When a player other than the player who started the auction wins the auction, the auctioning player may choose a new plant to auction from the actual market or pass.

Since the exception says everyone must buy a power plant first round, Player A may not pass.

You are right, I wasn't aware of this rule. Makes more sense now, thank you.

I played my first game 2 days ago and made D pick the powerplant and bought bad powerplant and bad rate. Thank you for clarification :)


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How exactly does Xenograft work, and not work?
The Blue Enchantment Xenograft (New Phyrexia) reads like this:

As Xenograft enters the battlefield, choose a creature type.
Each creature you control is the chosen type in addition to its other types.

Discussion on The Gatherer about this card is avid, complicated, and at times, contradictory.
What exactly does this card do? I was first under the impression that it affects all creature cards I control from the point it hits the board and continues to do so for the rest of the game. Then I was under the impression it only affected creatures that were in play at the time of its casting, and NOT creatures that come out later. Now I'm just totally confused and unsure about anything other than that I can obviously add creature types to some or all of my creatures, at some point or another.
Too much confusion. Someone set me straight! Specifically:

Does Xenograft apply to creatures that are already on the battlefield when it's cast?
Does Xenograft apply to creatures that enter the battlefield after it's been cast?
The Gatherer's details page says, among other things, this about Xenograft:

Creature cards not on the battlefield and creature spells are not affected.

What does creature spells are not affected mean exactly? Aren't all creatures creature spells? I'm lost here.
Please go the extra mile if possible and cover anything I haven't mentioned here if it comes to your mind. I'm so lost with this card that I wouldn't be surprised if you end up answering questions I have that I can't even put into words yet.

All creatures already on the battlefield and all creatures that come under your control later are affected by Xenograft. No if's and but's. As pointed out, it's a static ability that generates a continuous effect. If Xenograft would affect only the creatures that are in play at the time of its casting, the wording would be quite different and would probably involve counters to mark the affected creatures.
Creature cards not on the battlefield are simply that: Creature cards on the stack, in your hand, library, graveyard, command zone, exile, ante, or out of game are not affected by Xenograft.
Creature spells are not creatures, but objects on the stack. You control the spell, but a spell is not a creature, so Xenograft does not apply to them either. Only if and when the spell resolves does it become a creature to which Xenograft can apply.
Creature spells are spells, not creatures:

111 Spells
111.1. A spell is a card on the stack. As the first step of being cast (see rule 601, "Casting Spells"), the card becomes a spell and is moved to the top of the stack from the zone it was in, which is usually its owner's hand. (See rule 405, "Stack.") A spell remains on the stack as a spell until it resolves (see rule 608, "Resolving Spells and Abilities"), is countered (see rule 701.5), or otherwise leaves the stack. For more information, see section 6, "Spells, Abilities, and Effects."
302 Creatures
302.1. A player who has priority may cast a creature card from his or her hand during a main phase of his or her turn when the stack is empty. Casting a creature as a spell uses the stack. (See rule 601, "Casting Spells.")
302.2. When a creature spell resolves, its controller puts it onto the battlefield under his or her control.

Xenograft only affects creatures on the battlefield:

603.6b Continuous effects that modify characteristics of a permanent do so the moment the permanent is on the battlefield (and not before then). The permanent is never on the battlefield with its unmodified characteristics. Continuous effects don't apply before the permanent is on the battlefield, however (see rule 603.6e).

user1873's answer also covers this well.

@Hurricane996 Mostly true, it's banned for tournament play, but is explicitely allowed as an optional variant of playing the game. Ante rules are explained in section 407, and the ante zone still exists.

Given this is the top & accepted answer to a relatively popular question, I've done some editing at the start to make it present independently of other answers. The original implied required prior reading (another answer) as well as mentioning dependency on information that was missing from this answer (a citation of rule 603.6b). Now it just focuses on presenting the answer outright.

Hackworth's answer doesn't cover the situation where a creature is being modified as it is entering the battlefield, nor the situation where another continuous effect with a more recent timestamp is modifying that layer. In that situation, Xenograft doesn't work.
Xenograft is a Static Ability with a Continuous Effect.

604.3a A static ability is a characteristic-defining ability if it meets the following criteria: (1) It defines an object’s colors, subtypes, power, or toughness;
603.6b Continuous effects that modify characteristics of a permanent do so the moment the permanent is on the battlefield (and not before then). The permanent is never on the battlefield with its unmodified characteristics. Continuous effects don't apply before the permanent is on the battlefield, however (see rule 603.6e).
Example: If an effect reads "All lands are creatures" and a land card is played, the effect makes the land card into a creature the moment it enters the battlefield, so it would trigger abilities that trigger when a creature enters the battlefield. Conversely, if an effect reads "All creatures lose all abilities" and a creature card with an enters-the-battlefield triggered ability enters the battlefield, that effect will cause it to lose its abilities the moment it enters the battlefield, so the enters-the-battlefield ability won't trigger.

Xenograft will not apply to is replacement effects that modify a creature AS it is entering the battlefield. From the 4th Ruling of Bramblewood Paragon:

4/1/2008  The creature gets the counter if its copiable characteristics as it would exist on the battlefield include the specified creature type. For example, say you control Conspiracy, and the chosen creature type is Warrior. If you put a creature onto the battlefield that isn't normally a Warrior, it won't get a counter from Bramblewood Paragon.

Additionally, Xenograft doesn't apply to (as the rulings say)

Creature cards not on the battlefield and creature spells are not affected.

Creature cards can exist in zones other than the battlefield (hand, exile, graveyard, out of the game, etc.), but you can only control creature (permanents) on the battlefield, not any other place. Xenograft only affects creatures you control, so it cannot apply to cards in other zones.

108.4. A card doesn’t have a controller unless that card represents a permanent or spell; in those cases, its controller is determined by the rules for permanents or spells. See rules 110.2 and 111.2.

Creature spells can only exist on the stack, not any other place.

111.1. A spell is a card on the stack.

Xenograft only affects creatures on the battlefield, so it cannot apply to spells.
Finally, if another continuous effect modified the same layer as Xenograft, it the ability that generated that continuous effect had a more recent timestamp, Xenograft's continuous effect would be overridden.

613.1d Layer 4: Type-changing effects are applied. These include effects that change an object’s card type, subtype, and/or supertype.
613.2. Within layers 1–6, apply effects from characteristic-defining abilities first (see rule 604.3), then all other effects in timestamp order (see rule 613.6). Note that dependency may alter the order in which effects are applied within a layer. (See rule 613.7.)

Ok, thats a start, but I need more information to quell all my questions, I've edited my question to hopefully help you help me.

The answers here are good but I would like to give some examples to help understand things. I will also cover how Xenograft is different from Conspiracy and Arcane Adaptation.
The basic idea is every creature you control has the type chosen with Xenograft added to it as it enters the battlefield, and keeps that type as long as it is on the battlefield. Conspiracy or Adaptation adds those types to the cards wherever they are (hand, deck, grave, stack, etc) while the enchantment in play.
This means you cannot search for something that is not naturally an elf using Elvish Harbinger or Nissa Revane's ultimate with Xenograft in play, but can with the other two. It means you can counter something not naturally a Faerie using Faerie Trickery. Because until they are entering the battlefield, Xenograft has no effect on them, but the other two do. Door of Destinies will not have a counter added if the same type was chosen for it and Xenograft, but will have the counter added for casting creatures due to Conspiracy or Adaptation. You can't use March from the Tomb to return creatures from the graveyard not printed as Allies using Xenograft, but can with the other two. With Silvergill Adept you can only reveal cards printed with the type Merfolk from your hand using Xenograft, but can reveal any creature using the other two.
It does affect the spells while they are entering the battlefield, so anything that cares about that type of creatures entering the battlefield, all three enchantments will make Dragon Tempest trigger by adding the Dragon type.


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When should I start collecting Victory Points in Dominion?
When is a good time to start collecting victory points... is it good to wait until toward the end, or seldomly through the beginning of the game?  The tradeoff too early is they can clog up your deck, but too late then you can't acquire enough victory points to win the game...
Any strategies?

This question is really dependent on the Kingdom cards available and no overreaching general rule can be made without a lot of major caveats.
One good strategy would be

Always buy a province when you can afford it
(Unless you don't have a gold yet, and the game is still young)
Start buying Duchies once one pile is empty if you think the game will end by 3 piles disappearing
Start buying Duchies once half the provinces are gone if you think the game will end by province depletion.
Start buying Estates when you think you have at most one shuffle left in the game.

Again, this is general advice and specific cards can change things up drastically!

It's safe to say that, unless you have a very specific strategy that can put deck clogging victory cards to use, you'll never want to buy them early in the game.
The most crucial aspect is your opponents deck.
If you are tuning your deck into something that might be able to buy a Province every turn, then you can hold off till your opponent buys the first Province (assuming their deck is not as good as yours).
If your opponent is ahead of you, or you can see that they will eventually have a deck you cannot compete with - time to get creative and start buying earlier, hopefully in ways that will allow you to acquire victory points steadily and not slow you down late (at which point your opponents deck will probably be even more powerful).


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Can The Haunted Tower be played without the base game?
My girlfriend received Dungeons & Dragons: The Haunted Tower for Christmas. Can it be played without the The New Easy to Master Dungeons & Dragons?
I figure that it would be possible to create tokens for characters and such. Though I'm not sure how much The Haunted Tower relies on materials from the base game.

It says right on the back of the box "To play the giant three-part adventure, you must own the Dungeons & Dragons game. The bonus board game is playable immediately." I would think that at the very least you'd need the rule book from the core game and a full set of polyhedral dice to make things work properly if you wanted to play the three-parter.


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Can I combine troops from multiple regions when conquering?
I have a question regarding Smallworld and using tokens to attack a region from multiple regions.
The scenario is this: A group of 7 Shrooms is sat between a group of 2 dwarfs to the north and 6 to the south. Can the dwarfs combine forces to attack the region with the Shrooms?

No, they cannot combine. (in the way that you are implying).
Attacks are not made from units on the board, they are made from units "in hand".  Once deployed to the board, units may not be moved or picked back up until the next turn.
Each attack is from one distinct region to another.  Note that during the Ready your Troops phase, you should pick up all extra troops from each area (and can even eliminate all troops from areas if you wish) in order to make a bigger attack force.
In your example, if those troops haven't attacked this turn, then you can effectively combine them when you ready your troops.


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Is Duplicate Bridge (standard Matchpoints) a game of pure skill?
I'm inclined to say "no" because because each of the following could be considered lucky:

A finesse can be tried 2 different ways and your partnership selects
the one that works
You play a routine, obvious hand against the strongest partnership of
the match
You play a challenging hand against the weakest partnership of the
match
You play a hand that better maps to your bidding system than that of
the other partnerships playing the same hand
You purposely pursue a poor risk/reward chance at an overtrick and
make it, earning top score, in order to avoid an average result

But in discussing this a few minutes ago, I got to wondering what if you controlled for most of these things - assume 2 human partners playing a Duplicate Bridge (standard Matchpoints) tournament against a bunch of expertly programmed robot bridge players, all at the same level, all using the same bidding system.
In these more controlled circumstances, would Duplicate Bridge be a game of pure skill?

Even team games are called duplicate. Are you interested in only Matchpoints?

@BAryabhata I'm not understanding your comment/question. My intention is to describe typical club and tournament play, where you play with the same partner but against a bunch of different partnerships. Is my wording ambiguous? If so, which part?

Duplicate bridge is not necessarily Matchpoints (the club/tournament play you describe). The title of your question can also be applied to different forms of duplicate, like IMP teams, BAM teams etc. Perhaps in the title you should mention Matchpoints somewhere. I was trying to clarify this because my answer might have depended on what you exactly wanted :-)

There is still luck in guessing where cards are, just because they are "fixed" in duplicate bridge doesn't mean they aren't random. You could have the dice rolls for a game of settlers chosen in advance and kept secret, then played duplicate style. I'm not convinced it would reduce the luck factor though.

@Nick: interesting analogy. The rulebook for Railway Rivals specifies that each player rolls the die on his turn to decide how much rail he can build. Nowadays it is usually played with one dieroll per round, so that everybody has to make best use of the same luck. Is that 'pure skill'?

From the court records of the Ontario Superior Court, spoken by Eric Murray for the defense: "Bridge is a game of luck only when played as by the justices of the Ontario Superior Court, in chambers."

Even with the same experts playing North-South, there will be luck involved.
For instance

When you have a pure guess in a two way finesse for a Q or distribution etc.
When you have a guess during bidding (sacrifice or not etc)
System wins/losses.
When you overbid/underbid/play incorrectly and hit a lucky lie of the cards.
Same hand could be played differently on different tables, because of different actions taken (during bidding or play) by the players. One might play like a bozo, but resulting in the expert to take the wrong inferences, handing you a win (it happens!) etc.

What you say will reduce the randomization of the field (some people call it field protection), but will not eliminate luck completely.
For instance, a world class level Matchpoint contest will have very little randomization (similar to your proposed situation), but to win you need to play well (skill) and need some luck.
Of course, most of the time it is your skill that matters, but luck does factor in, especially against equally matched opponents.

Essentially your argument is that "pure skill" can't exist in a game with (relevant) hidden information, since you're always taking a gamble, right?

@AlexP: I would not say you are always taking a gamble! There is skill involved in estimating the odds and playing so that the odds are in your favour. Playing for the odds is not gambling (unless you mean anything other than 100% is gambling :-)).  The weaker player might play against the odds, but get lucky. So I would not say my argument is essentially that.

@AlexP: But yes, luck comes into play because there is incomplete information and because you are almost never 100% sure that your action will win, there is luck involved. Perhaps that is what you mean by taking a gamble?

I would expand on Aryabhata's answer by noting a fundamental fallacy in the question: the assumption that correct play by a given system always results in the same action on a given hand.
There are many reasons - psychological, strategic, and game-theoretic - why in many situations the correct play is not constant. One of the most common answers given by good players to the question "Wasn't I right to bid the game/slam?" is "Did you need to force a top-bottom swing?" Part of improving one's play is better reading of when to force a swing, and when to play for an average-plus, or even an average-minus. Likewise in possible preemptive or psyche situations, one should not be too predictable - the optional game-theoretic strategy is to make the action part of the time.
There is a further fallacy in the assumption that a given bidding system prescribes a single action for all bidding situations. Bidding systems are presented this way to novices and intermediates, to teach them the fundamentals. In reality, complex auctions sometimes can be approached soundly in different ways by players sufficiently knowledgeable both of fundamentals and the intricacies of their system.

Of course there is still an element of luck in Bridge for the reasons laid out.
In pairs competitions there is the luck of the "field", i.e. what your opponents do against you when they arrive at your table. If they do all the right things, your prospects are limited. However they are still there. The skill is in making the most of your own prospects on a hand. There will always be some hands where the opponents do all the right things, and there you "range" of available scores maybe only between 0 and 25% (at MP). Just ensure you get the 25% and don't end up with the total bottom under some illusion that "it's going to be a bad score anyway". Those 25MP will add up in the whole total you get at the end of the tournament.
And here is where your own skill will come in over the course of a lot of tournaments. Of course you'll also throw some points away but assuming you throw away fewer than anyone else, you won't always win but you will sometimes and when you don't you'll probably not finish last very often.
The other factors that have been mentioned, of course, is that the percentage play or bid is not always the winning one.
Most games, even ones that are pure skill, have an element of luck. For example tennis is pure skill but you can get a lucky net-cord shot. Similarly you can get flukes at snooker and even at chess, your not-properly-thought-out move could happen to be the right one. Not that you had worked it out, but it just so happens it was. And in a round-robin chess tournament of course with grandmasters, you may play very well in most of your games and still only come away with draws.

There is no definitive answer to this question, as it depends on how you define "pure skill." If you consider any game that requires some level of strategic thinking to be a game of skill, then Duplicate Bridge would certainly qualify. However, if you believe that a game of pure skill is one in which chance plays no role whatsoever, then Duplicate Bridge would not be considered a game of pure skill. While the bidding and play of the hand are primarily based on skill, the element of chance comes into play in the form of the random distribution of cards.


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What is optimal end play in Settlers?
Part of what makes Settlers of Catan both balanced and exciting are two sets of slow-the-leader rules: The robber and trade embargoes. While this means you have a chance to win even after a slow start or a seemingly poor starting position, it conversely means it can be difficult to close out the game for victory after having a great starting position, making many great tactical decisions, and having the lead for most of the game. The most extreme example I've seen is the leading player with 8 victory points lose to a player who had 4 victory points, 10 to 9, as everyone successfully and almost completely stalled out the leader for many turns. Much more common are games where someone reaches 8 or 9 points first goes on to lose to someone with 2 fewer victory points.
Is there one (or a small set of) end play technique(s) that significantly increase(s) one's chances of winning when faced with opponents who competently employ slow-the-leader techniques?

Arguably, the slow-the-leader techniques you have to defend against are the less competent ones - the ones where people expend too much trying to defeat the leader, at the cost of their own success. (The extreme example you gave could have been like that.)

@Jefromi My high-school best friend had an absolute gift, in any game, for getting everyone else stuck on "slow the leader" even after their original target obviously wasn't the leader anymore, while he just durdled his way to victory quietly in the background. :)

In my (amateur, non-tournament) experience, hoarding a couple of dev cards is the strongest protection against disruption by other players in the late game.
In addition to the hidden Victory Point cards, you can use Monopoly, Year of Plenty, Road  Building, and sometimes even Soldier cards to unexpectedly snatch up the final point or two that you need to seal up the game. Good players, of course, won't just ignore your dev cards, but they still don't know exactly what you're going to do to win (e.g. build up, build out, claim Longest Road, build a single extra settlement and then plop down two VPs in cards).
Also, unlike resource cards, dev cards are safe in hand. The only game mechanic that discourages stockpiling development cards is the one-card-per-turn limit.
One downside of this late-game plan is that some opponents may overvalue your dev cards, leading them to punish you with "slow-the-leader" tactics even when you're already rather behind. Another is that the cards you draw are random, so it's quite possible you'll "whiff" and get something you can't use.

Doesn't the limit on playing dev cards apply to all types (with Victory cards being revealed, rather than played)?

@TheChaz Just checked the rules. You are correct. Modified accordingly!

Things have changed a lot in the 11 years since I first played. It used to be the rule that trading and buying were separate phases in one's turn, and once you had started to buy, you couldn't return to trade (even 3:1, 4:1 etc)

@TheChaz — If I remember correctly, that was a mistranslation by Mayfair Games (but oh, the arguments I've seen at tournaments).

@David: Really?!?! I can't believe it! Indeed, MANY an argument has resulted from this (non?) rule :)

IMO, This was the most complete of the top 3 answers but the other 2 answers are also well worth reading.

Plan your last few VPs with resources you can gather yourself. For example, if you have decent wheat and ore resources, build your extra villages before your towns. That way when you have only the cities left to build and are a VP or two away, you can finish off on your own power without trading. Obviously ports can increase your versatility in this manner.

I agree. I would also add that it's good to be able to win without needing to expand into contested territory - for example, plan to complete the longest road by an internal connection that others can't build in to. Or plan to build a settlement at the end of a road that isn't (or better - can't be) contested. Or convert villages to cities, or play soldier cards. This prevents other players from making poor trades purely to be able to prevent you from expanding. Of course, if you CAN expand into contested territory, you should :)

Hoarding development cards and developing self-sufficiency, as mentioned by other answers, are two good common strategies I've seen employed often in Settlers. They do work, but a highly cooperative defense can stop even a fairly self-sufficient leader with 1-2 random development cards. Sometimes these will be the only options available to the leader.
However, I've found that "sneak  attacks" work even better, when they are available as an option. What all sneak attacks have in common is that you purposely do NOT take the lead, but rather stay just a point or two behind the leader or perhaps convince other people that even though you're tied for the lead that the other person is more likely to win. Then, when the right circumstances hit, you leap to victory on a turn where you start with only 6 or 7 victory points.
There are a number of ways to do this. Here are some more common ones:

Hold off using a Monopoly card even if you get it very early in the
game. Wait for exactly that right moment when there are many of one
resource that you can monopolize and efficiently convert into several
settlements/cities/dev cards.
Hold off using a Road Building card until it results in you getting longest road and a new settlement all on the same turn.
Hold off using a Year of Plenty card until you happen to have a card combo in your hand where employing it results in a 3 victory point turn.
Have a couple roads that go off to horribly unproductive locations - but are nonetheless potential settlement sites. Many people automatically assume you'll never build there - but you will on the turn it vaults you to victory.
Sometimes people have a hard time seeing how your disjoint road network can turn into a longest road by closing certain loops. This one is actually the most common type of successful sneak attack for me - people often have no clue that I can take the longest road with just 2-3 more road links closing 1 or 2 loops.

If you have to spend many turns defending against endless robber attacks and overly cooperative trading, you may or may not win no matter how good you are. On the other hand, if you time a sneak attack right, you just win.

This is what I was going for when I wrote my answer (hoarding the dev cards that will be useful to you).

@alexP Your answer is good and mine does overlap somewhat but I shifted the emphasis from unplayed dev cards to sneakiness, which doesn't always require dev cards (see my 4th and 5th points above related to useless settlement sites and connecting disparate roads).

I actually like your answer better than mine, since I think it does a better job of addressing why you might want dev cards and what you're actually going to do with them. :)

Yes, an optimal strategy does exist. What that optimal strategy would be though, would depend upon when your opponents start to slow the leader. Let's assume that in your group that your opponents begin attempting to slow the leader at 8 VP. Your best approach then would to make sure that you are self sufficient by 7 VP, and have some defense against the robber.

Self sufficiency can be obtained by controlling a 3:1 port, or by controlling a 2:1 specific resource port, although the latter is more susceptible to Robber disruption.
Robber defense is best accomplished by trading Ore, Grain, and Sheep for development cards. The rules, if I remember them correctly allow you to use a development card before you roll, so you should have at least one uninterrupted resource roll. If all your opponents are always moving the robber over your developments, make sure to block their Ore, Grain, and Sheep production to reduce the number of Knight development cards moving the robber. The nice thing about all your opponents buying Development cards, is that it makes it easier to ensure the 7- cards necessary for the Knight 2VP bonus.

I don't understand that last sentence. In my version of the game (2007?), the only requirement for Largest Army is having 3+ Knights and more Knights than anyone else.

If you count the Knight cards, you will find that there are 14. If you have 7, you ensure you get largest army. If you have 3+ players buying Knight cards, you need fewer than 7 to ensure largest army.


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Bottom card drawn during epidemic: Are 3 cubes added to the city pictured, when the disease in that city's region has already been eradicated?
I suspect not, because the rule on Eradicating Disease states:

From now on, cards of this color have no effect when drawn on the
  Infector's turn. Take all of the cubes of the eradicated color and
  place them back in the box - they will not be used again for the rest
  of the game.

However, Epidemics do not occur during the Infector's turn, and the Epidemic rules state:

Take the bottom card from the Infection Draw Pile and add 3 cubes to
  the city pictured on the card, then place the card into the Infection
  Discard Pile.

There are more rules in this section but none of them clarify whether there is an exception.
So I don't know which of the two rules the game designers intended to take precedence. So I would like a definitive answer to the question: For the bottom card drawn during epidemic, are 3 cubes added to the city pictured, when the disease in that city's region has already been eradicated?

Further clarification isn't needed. Under the Eradicating a Disease section you quoted (emphasis mine), the rules instruct you to put the cubes away, they will not be used for the rest of the game.

If a cure for a given disease has been discovered and all of the disease cubes of that color have been removed from the board, ﬂip the Cure marker for the disease to the “Sunset” side. From now on, cards of this color have no eﬀect when drawn on the Infector’s turn. Take all of the cubes of the eradicated color and place them back in the box—they will not be used again for the rest of the game.

The only exception to this rule would be from the Pandemic: On the Brink expansion Virulent Strain card Hidden Pocket, where it is possible for a disease that has been eradicated to come back.


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What are the differences between the various versions of Stratego?
I've only played the classic version of Stratego from the 1970s but it looks like there are at least 3 fundamentally different versions as of 2012. What are the differences between the various versions and how do they impact the overall feel of the game?
If some versions have identical rules but only differ cosmetically, please indicate that. If versions have been produced with minor rule changes over the decades, that would be useful to know as well.

I can't give a complete answer, but as far as I'm aware there are no rule changes in any version. There is one difference between the set I owned as a kid and a more recent set I purchased is that the numbers were all reversed. In one set the general is #1 and in another set is he #10. In one set the miners were #3 and the other set they were #8.

@Apreche What prompted my question was an Amazon search that showed me at least 2 new versions. (1) Spinmaster Games version with a planetary setting, 30 pieces, and a "Spotter."  (2) Milton Bradley has a fantasy themed version with 30 pieces. Quickly bewildered by the proliferation of versions that all have exactly the same name (Stratego), I figure it's worth getting a precise answer from someone who has played several versions rather than wading through several dozen Amazon reviews to try to get to the bottom of it.

I can't speak definitively for all versions, but I can give you some information.
"Classic" Stratego is played with 40 pieces per side on a 10x10 board. There was a misprint in an early version that claimed Scouts could not move more than one space and attack in the same turn, so this is sometimes incorrectly cited as a difference between editions. There are also some differences in numbering among different versions; sometimes the highest rank is 1, in other cases it is 10.
As of early 2012, Spin Master Games has 3 different versions available. The 50th Anniversary Collectors' Edition has the original rules, theme (Napoleonic) and piece distribution, with some variant pieces available optionally. They also released a 50th Anniversary version that's a Toys R Us exclusive, which has the classic rules and theme, but no variant pieces. The third version is simply titled Stratego, and has a Sci-Fi theme, 30 pieces per side on a 10x8 board, and one of the pieces has a special ability to destroy an adjacent piece of any rank if it can correctly guess its rank.
Some retailers have some special edition exclusives, like Barnes & Noble's Onyx Edition and Target's wooden box and bookcase editions. These are generally the classic version.
Several other sets have had pieces with special abilities over the years, including (but not limited to) Stratego revised (sometimes called Fire & Ice), Civil War Stratego, Stratego Legends (which also supports up to 8 players) and Lord of the Rings Stratego. Most of these give most of the pieces powers, not just one as with the current version. (There's also Ultimate Stratego, which adds 4 player options, but I do not believe this version adds special powers to any pieces.) My understanding is that most of the rethemed versions have changed gameplay at least somewhat.
Of the variant rulesets, I have only played the LOTR version, and I will say that special powers do change the game significantly. In LOTR, the piece powers are asymmetrical, and I found them to be unbalanced. It also minimized the role bluffing plays and made the game more about getting the pieces with useful powers into the right positions - which could be a good or a bad thing. (I personally didn't like this change; it's also my main objection with some of the Stratego-inspired games I've played like Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation.) The piece distribution and board size was the same as classic in that version, so I can't say how the change in numbers impacts gameplay, though the consensus on BoardGameGeek seems to be that the smaller board doesn't change the feel of the game. The two rows that are lost are horizontal relative to the players, which means it shouldn't impact the way the armies interact. (If this is true, any of the special power sets should be acceptable, since you can always apply the classic ruleset to them.)

I got the 2012 Stratego version for my son's birthday, and was surprised at the spotters. Also, I think the numbers are the other way around.

The limitation that scouts could either move multiple squares without attacking, or else attack an adjacent piece, was a misprint rather than the intended rule?  If the rule is that a piece which could move to the square occupied by another piece is able to attack it, why not just specify that more directly?

I have both 1970's Classic Stratego by Milton Bradley and 1997 Ultimate Stratego, which allows either 2 or 4 players.   Both are played on 10x10 board.   However, while Classic has two 40-piece armies, Ultimate has four 20-piece armies.  There are slightly different rules for 2 player "Lightening Version" using only one army or "Campaign version" for using 2 allied armies.   Other big addition in Ultimate is Captain is given cavalry capability and allowed to move 2 spaces.   Also in Ultimate, Scout can disarm bombs while in Classic this ability went to next higher rank (called Minor then but Corporal now).

Bombs are defused by Miners (as in, someone who defuses mines), not Minors (that spelling makes it sound like they should be somehow the opposite of Majors).


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Do you have to go around the board once to purchase properties?
When it comes to Monopoly I know there are ways the gameplay can be altered and I was wondering if this is one of them. Basically everytime I play I'm told you have to go around the board once before you can purchase properties but then I read somewhere else that you can purchase them immediately. Is this true or is this rule just made up?

Before you can purchase? So are they still put up for auction? Never played like this before but I have played with people that randomly distribute all the properties at the start.

Sounds like a house rule to me.
http://richard_wilding.tripod.com/monorules.htm claims to be a copy of the rules from the official rulebook.  The section on Buying Property reads only:

Whenever you land on an unowned property you may buy that property
  from the Bank at its printed price. You receive the Title Deed card
  showing ownership. Place the title deed card face up in front of you.
  If you do not wish to buy the property, the Bank sells it at through
  an auction to the highest bidder. The high bidder pays the Bank the
  amount of the bid in cash and receives the Title Deed card for that
  property.

Nothing about having to go round once, and certainly I've never played a game of Monopoly in that way.  What would it even achieve, apart from slow what is already a potentially long-winded game down to an even more glacial pace?

That is confirmed by the PDF copy of the rules available from Hasbro's site.

As an aside, the game is much less "long-winded" if you remove another pervasive house rule: you're not supposed to be awarded anything for landing on Free Parking. That infusion of cash prolongs the game unnecessarily.

@Iceman - I've never played with that rule either, but Monopoly does seem to be plagued by many such house rules... seemingly designed to make the game more palatable for children?  I do remember that, when I was young, we never auctioned properties off - either you could afford the face value or you couldn't, and if you couldn't, no one else got a chance to bid...

What it achieves, theoretically, is more-or-less randomly rebalancing the purchasing ability of players who roll last to not be as likely to have nothing to buy (seems especially common when playing with more than three people, in my experience). The theory is that by waiting until at least one person has made it all the way around the board (which can happen on the first roll if you hit Chance and draw "Advance to Go"), players are distributed evenlyish and property purchases can be more "fair". Personally, I dislike the rule, since the whole point of the game is to own everything.

No, you don't need to go around the board before you buy. This is a house rule.

This may be a house rule but it is certainly a widespread house rule. I've always played using the once around the board rule.  With all the various groups of people I've ever played with the issue never arose as to some other possibility. I didn't know it was optional. Is it possible that it was once a rule but is no longer?  Anyways, the point of going around once before allowing purchases is to help negate the advantage that going first provides.

How does that negate the advantage of going first though?  You're still more likely to get round the board first, unless I'm missing something.  And if you roll badly and someone else rolls well, doesn't that just that the advantage has randomly been passed on to a different player, and possibly amplified?  It's been a while since I played Monopoly, though, so I'm genuinely curious to know if I am missing something...

It may be meant to disperse the player tokens a bit so that they aren't all landing on the same properties. Since it uses two dice, there's a high probability of 6, 7 or 8 being rolled. With everyone starting from the same spot, there's a reasonable chance players 3 and 4 will kind of follow players 1 and 2 around the board landing on many of the same properties (which players 1 and 2 have probably already purchased). I guess going around the board once would mitigate that a little.

@Todd There's also a "reasonable" chance that players 3 and 4 will pass players 1 and 2. I don't buy this analysis.

@ghoppe I'm not sure which part you don't buy. I was just pointing out that on the first trip around, there's a higher probability of players landing on the same squares (because they start from the same spot). Once they've made it around the board once, they will be a little spread out and less likely to do so. Passing isn't really relevant. I only referred to 3 and 4 following 1 and 2 to try to illustrate the point.

@Todd I haven't done a rigorous statistical analysis, but the part I don't buy is that the person going last has an appreciable disadvantage which would be mitigated by this house rule. Whether or not the pieces are "spread out" is irrelevant, except that it acts as a placebo for people who think that bunched up pieces means their odds of landing on a bought property have increased.

@Todd Waiting to go around once just means that people have more money to buy properties on the second go-around, which means the person who is unlucky and has lower rolls and doesn't roll doubles is at even more of a disadvantage, as the luckier people have more of a head start. Without the house rule, at least the person going last has a better chance at winning auctions on later properties. All you've done is switched the luck from the luck of the draw to the luck of the roll.

@Todd Lastly, what happens to the poor slob who lands on or gains a go-to-jail card? Now they have to wait even longer to get a chance to buy a property, severely punishing them for being so unlucky on the first lap around the board.

@ghoppe In a 6-player game, on player-6's first turn, there's a high probability they will land on a property someone else already purchased. Given the likely clustering of pieces, this is also pretty likely on the 2nd turn as well. This can cause a negative play experience for some. Some people like this house rule because they feel the luck that occurs during the several rolls needed to get around the board is "better" than the luck used to determine starting position. Is it statistically valid? Probably not. I'm not advocating the rule; I don't use it myself. Some people like it.

Honestly, why would anyone want to make a game of Monopoly even longer? The game already drags on way past when the winner has been decided (mostly through blind luck).

@Todd I created a simulation to help answer your points. For simplicity I assume all squares are properties, all have the same value, and when you land on an unowned one you can and do buy it. I know these assumptions are rather extreme but I believe that the relative effects shown by the results are valid even if the absolute effects are off. Here are the results:
With extra lap, Player 1 gets 26.4% of the properties and Player 4 gets 23.6%; Best player beats worst by on average 5.38 properties.
Without: Player 1 gets 27.1% and Player 4 gets 23.0%; Best player beats worst by 4.95.

@ghoppe We see that when there is an extra lap, the first player advantage is diminished (the variance in rolls starts to overwhelm the difference in start times). However, we also see that the extra lap tends to increase the gap between the luckiest and unluckiest player. This makes sense because the first person around the board has a greater head start on purchasing properties than normal (i.e. first to purchase and a few squares ahead vs just first to purchase).
You can examine my python simulation at https://docs.google.com/document/d/12PvVYoTtdeha7r7u9S_dGqEXkvNHZgchOpKA8oEE25s/edit

@Stephen - an average Monopoly game only takes me 90-120 minutes (with 2-4 players). Adding 5 minutes at the front end doesn't really make it "drag on" much longer.

@ghoppe - if everyone has to make it around the board before buying, then yes: it's a very bad house rule. The only way I've seen it used is that buying starts as soon as any player makes it around.

We use this rule, a good example of when we didn't:
4 players
First 3 players roll and each end up with a light blue, player 4 lands on an owned light blue pays rent, first 3 players go again and a purple, train station and orange gone and player 4 lands on train station and pays rent, by the time all the players had got round the board players 1 to 3 owned most of the board and hadn't paid any rent to anyone, player 4 owned nothing and had a lot less money than the others.
So going round once first may not effect 2 (possibly 3 players) too much, but for 4 to 6 players it is a very good way of spacing people out and making sure you don't have a frustrated player(s)

I'd love to see rigorous probability testing of this. My intuition is that the silly "go around first" rule is more of a placebo for those looking for patterns (I always pay rent when I go last!) than making any appreciable difference. What's the difference in being unlucky and moving last and being unlucky and not being the guy that rolls doubles and zips around the board?

Starting in Monopoly is certainly an advantage.  One possible way to mitigate this is to reverse the order in rounds with even numbers.  Say you have four players; A, B, C and D.  In the first round they go in the ABCD order, in the second DCBA, in the third ABCD and so on.  You can stop after say the third reversal or when everyone has passed Start once so that you do not always have to remember this.  Or even better; you could bid money for starting first, second and so on, paying into the bank some of the starting money for the right to go first.

Here is the 2 dice probability chart. Everyone has the same amount of chance rolling the dice and starting to buy property before going around the board seems more fair and equal for all players. Going around the board first, doesn't account for those who get stuck going to jail before passing go. I feel this "house rule" makes it unfair to the players who don't pass go first and allows the player that does able to win easier and quicker. Our house is divided by this rule. :'(

Welcome to the site, and thanks for your input! I'd recommend deleting the 2 dice probability chart from your answer - it's an enormous image that doesn't really add anything to your argument.