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In Monopoly, Can I mortgage properties as I am bankrupted?
Rules state that properties can be mortgaged at any time.  But if I can't raise enough money to pay rent, I am bankrupt and out of the game.
Mortgaging properties just prior to handing them over to the new owner would be a nuisance.  Since the new owner is required to pay a 10% fee to the bank.
As the player being bankrupted, am I allowed to reduce the spoils I turn over in this fashion?
Note a similar question about making deals with other players when going bankrupt.

I'm no monopoly expert so I won't post this as an answer because I'm not sure, but as far as I know, not only are you able to do it, it is the most commonly done action by a player being bankrupted because it could be a means to get enough money to stop being bankrupted.

Basically, you can mortgage properties to try to avoid bankruptcy. But when it is obvious that you can't, you are supposed to restore the status quo ante, (before you landed on the other person's property), and hand over your property to your creditor as they "were." That is, mortgaged or unmortgaged, as they were at the beginning of your turn.

If your debt is to another player, you must turn over to that player all that you have of value and retire from the game. In making this settlement, if you own houses or hotels, you must return these to the Bank in exchange for money to the extent of one-half the amount paid for them; this cash is given to the creditor.

Do you have a rules quote for this? As Ivo Becker's comment said, I usually see people mortgage everything they can before giving up.

@GendoIkari: Added rules quote.

It's a start, but I don't think that answers the question. It clarifies that you must sell your houses, but doesn't say anything one way or the other about mortgaging properties.

@GendoIkari: The rules aren't explicit on this point. I draw certain inferences from what is not said.  Others may reasonably interpret them the other way.

After some digging I found support for this as part of the tournament rules (I don't have a copy, but https://boardgamegeek.com/article/1689205#1689205 and follow-up posts allude to rules about this). But I do not see any way that this is a rule in the home game. I cannot even see in the home game a way to avoid bankruptcy by making deals; the rules are written such that, the moment the owning player asks for the rent, you are bankrupt and must turn everything over. (Not that I have ever heard of people playing in that way!)

@jprete: The way I've played, a player can try to "deal" his way out of bankruptcy. Certainly, the rules allow him to sell houses and mortgage property to this end. Letting the player make "strategic" deals with third parties is icing on the cake. If he doesn't succeed, the "deals" have to be undone (except for the sale of houses and hotels to the bank for half price in cash), and payment made based on the status quo ante.

Right, I think the idea is to avoid the scenario where player A lands on B's property, but doesn't want B to win, so they sell all their stuff to C for $10, so that B only gets $10.  But selling their stuff to C for enough money to cover the rent they just landed on is okay.  Selling everything to C before the dice are rolled for $10 would also be okay, though very unsportsmanlike.

Straight from the Classic Monopoly Rules:

You are declared bankrupt if you owe more than you can pay either to another player or to the Bank.

So my interpretation of this, consistent with commentary on Board Game Geek, is that any and all attempted transactions are contingent on the right to perform transactions: namely, avoiding bankruptcy by raising sufficient funds to pay the debt.
Consider that your assets are now controlled by a trustee, as in real life, and released back to you if and only if you can release the bankruptcy; otherwise the trustee will not approve the transactions.

You can mortgage property if it makes you enough money to clear your debt.  You can't mortgage things just to screw over the person who bankrupted you by forcing them to pay the 10% mortgage penalty.


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Is Dimir's milling strategy viable in Gatecrash sealed deck? If not, what can they do instead?
The situation is similar to wesdfgfgd's question MTG Gatecrash Simic Strategies for a Prerelease event
I'm a habitual Dimir player.  In Gatecrash, many Dimir cards are strongly themed towards their millstone strategy or generating card advantage.
In sealed deck, and to a large extent in draft, millstone wins seem hard to pull off.  Many of the capstone cards for this approach are rare, so I probably won't have them.  (Milling is hard in general, and the format makes this kind of one-method-to-win focus inherently unreliable.  To win on turn ten, I'd have to average milling 2.3 cards per turn - while defending myself.)
While many Dimir creatures are rather nice for reasons of evasion or card advantage, I'll hardly win with a direct creature approach against Boros or Gruul.
Looking through the non-rare spells with Cipher, most are two or 4-drops, with a few areas of effect.  Most either generate card advantage (Last Thoughts) or fend for time (Hands of Binding, Voidwalk).  With 18 uncommons I can hardly count on getting enough Call of the Nightwing to token flood the ciphers through, and that's the most aggressive card.  (I don't feel Shadow Slice compares particularly well to a 5-drop creature in a sealed deck format.)
So, can the basic milling approach be made to work?  And if not, where should I be going for the win?  (And which splash colours would help me achieve it?  That decision depends on my draws, obviously, but of the obvious white-splash Orzhov or green-splash Simic, what would you recommend?)
(EDIT: This question originally referred to the Gatecrash prerelease, but has been edited to be less time-dependant.  The focus is primarily on sealed, but most answers are probably just as relevant to draft format; answers discussing the differences are particularly welcome.)

My gut reaction (without investigating the spoilers extensively) is that milling is almost always a strategy for draft, not for sealed.  I don't think Wizards is ever going to release as set where there's enough mill at large in the cardpool that it will randomly win the game, but in a draft where one player at the table is hoovering up every one of those disregarded cards, it's a different story.  The problem with mill is that winning with it is generally non-interactive with the rest of the game, unlike creatures, so it would be very bad to have too much of it going on, typically...

@thesunneversets: I'm inclined to agree, and it's not a bad thing in general.  But in specific, I need to figure out a way round it, and didn't see how to integrate Dimir's mill-focussed creatures with a non-mill strategy.  Oh well ;)  Heading out now, so thanks to all for their advice.

Since the pre-release was a one time thing, should we change this to say Draft instead?

Hmmm... good point @bwarner, but draft strategies are not the same as sealed.  Edited to the best compromise I can manage.

Well, it's up to you to figure it out based on your card pool, really.
However, some numbers are handy:

At the start of the game, your opponent will have at least 33 cards in his or her deck (more if there are mulligans).
Each instance of the "mill until you hit a land card" ability will mill something like 2.5 cards on average. That's pretty weak.

What Dimir does have going for it is that a lot of the milling in this set is attached to other stuff -- the common Balustrade Spy is a feeble mill card but also gives you a 2/3 flyer for a reasonable cost, for instance. And you do have access to some repeatable milling, like the prerelease promo Consuming Aberration and lower-rarity carsd like Paranoid Delusions, Sage's Row Denizen, Undercity Informer, and Duskmantle Guildmage.
I don't think Gatecrash's milling is nearly as explosive as similar decks in Dark Ascension Limited. And Dimir creatures are by far the weakest of all the guilds; if you want to actually play a solid defense, you're likely to need Orzhov or Simic to help you stabilize (Dimir can work well with both those guilds because it offers them the missing component they need to be a control deck -- lots more removal for Simic, countermagic for Orzhov). If I'm mixing guilds like this, though, I'd much rather be trying to win off of cipher+extort than straight-up milling.
Mostly I just don't think the power cards are there in any capacity. It feels like black in AVR -- you can get a reasonable deck going in draft if no one else is in your colors, but the card pool's pretty thin overall. Magic pro Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa had this to say about Dimir in Sealed, for instance:

This means Dimir has a bad promo, a bad Keyrune, an OK Guildmage, an
OK Charm, horrible rares, horrible uncommons, and horrible commons! To
top it all, pretty much all of the guild pack’s slots are filled with
cipher cards, which are not very useful—you want mill cards and
defensive cards, but those won’t be found in that pack. Unless I
underrate cipher very much, I’d stay away from Dimir, because it
doesn’t look like you’ll beat anything but the Orzhov decks.
In the end, if you want to play the Dimir colors, I think the best
alternative is an esper deck. You get the milling from Dimir and the
defense from Orzhov. If this is your plan, then I think the Orzhov
pack actually offers better cards for you—you lose the Dimir promo,
which is better, but instead of useless cipher cards you get 1/4
defenders and regenerating Thrulls.

Thanks; that's the analysis I was looking for.  (Consuming Aberration is the obvious bomb for a Dimir mill deck, but I can't tutor it, can't count on drawing it and can't protect it much against removal.)
So: mill if I get lucky and have strong support, otherwise provide control support for an extort or flyer evolve deck.

It's also a bomb that could just as easily be a 2/2 when you first summon it on turn 5. :(

I agree that almost all of the other guild packs are better choices for winning a sealed deck, but I intend to play Dimir in constructed so I want the cards and promo for my collection.  Also, I prefer blue-black and enjoy difficult tactical challenges.  (Personally I think da Rosa is underrating Cipher a little in limited, but in the evasion-heavy Gatecrash sealed environment he's right.)

I witnessed this at our prerelease: Chump Strider and Undercity Informer. Then a Sage's Row Denizen hit the battlefield. Mill is there.

I managed to go 3-0 with Dimir in the one draft event I've participated in. Some of it was luck, but I'll share what I learned:

My gameplan was: evasive creatures to whittle down their life total and combine with cipher, and removal and defensive creatures to hold them off for long enough to win.
While evasive creatures are essential, they also tend to be small. It's important to pick up a few non-evasive guys just to serve as blockers. Two mana 2/2s and 1/3s, and three mana 2/3s are there for the taking. Horror of the Dim served a useful role as a 3/4 that could at least compete with some of the bigger creatures.
Along the same lines, Riot Gear was essential in my deck. Turning a 2/2 into a 3/4 makes a huge difference.
I never actually used the abilities of the Duskmantle Guildmage, but he seems useful as a way to turn the incidental mill you are going to get into a few extra points of damage. Less so as a way to win by milling. For me he was just a two mana 2/2, which is fine.
Shadow slice won me a few games, it's a good way to get in those extra points of damage. But in retrospect, I think I should have picked up some of the Madcap Skills going around and splashed red for them.
I can't comment too much on the feasibility of a mill deck, I only got 1 Paranoid Delusions and I think I'd want at least 3 to try for a mill deck.
Duskmantle Seer is sweet. :)

Hope that helps!

Welcome to the site Jonathan.  While I back this approach in draft, in sealed deck I don't think it can be counted on - there's too little chance of drawing evaders and finishers.

There is enough mill in dimir that I think that it actually can be a decent strategy
Again, you have to see what cards you get, and if you get enough of them, but if you get enough mind grind, Paranoid Delusions, and Psychic Strike, among other mill cards, you can actually mill your opponent pretty quick.
You only need to hit about 10 lands with the various mind grind like milling to mill them all the way(odds are they'll play the other 6-7)
You have to remember that mind sculpt / sands of delirium was a very real limited paradigm in m13, and know some people who have succeeded with the axebane guardian / doorkeeper / gatecreeper vine / trestle troll plan.
Just think about your mill strategy as a burn strategy, except your opponent has 33 life to start and takes 1 damage per turn.

Ooh, good point, thanks.  (I'm returning to tournament play with this match after being out since Ice Age, so I'm far from up to date with limited strategies; I haven't seen much of M13.)  That said, both of those combos are much better mills than most things I might draw in Gatecrash; I get the feeling that Mind Sculpt / Doorkeeper were added with Dimir constructed in mind, but that won't help me tomorrow ;)

A lot of people underestimate the milling power of Dimir. I played Dimir at the prerelease yesterday and milled hard (and likewise got milled myself vs. Dimir). With Consuming Aberration being the promo card for Dimir that means there is a great chance to mill, plus its power and toughness are decided by the amount being milled so it has great stopping power. Thanks to Stolen Identity cyphered onto a Deathcult Rogue I actually had two 17/17 Consuming Aberrations before winning a match. My opponent's removal simply couldn't keep up with another Consuming Aberration appearing each turn.
As with anything this depends on what you pull. Dimir could use more removal but don't underestimate some of the unblockable creatures combined with the cypher ability. Hands of Binding, Stolen Identity, and Voidwalk are all amazing.)

I do think Dimir (with lucky pulls/correct picks) can be the dominant force in draft or sealed now...however, my opponent in the finals ran simic and splashed red for gruul, and he was a force to be reckoned with.  My belief about Gatecrash at this time, is that if your cards aren't allowing for Dimir, that red/blue/green is obviously your second best option.
Boros got slaughtered at my event...infact I never played a boros opponent because they all fell to the losers bracket almost immediately.  they simply don't have enough momentum to make use of battalion-especially with the multitude of affordable removal in this set.
Orzhov is deadly, no doubt about it, but if you are running black or white at all, I found a couple of extort creatures on your side of the board can balance the scales enough against an Orzhov opponent...enough so that you get them before they get you.

Curiously, I feel almost exactly the opposite - Dimir's commons feel the weakest of the bunch for draft, and (as a diehard RGU player looking forward to plenty of Simic drafts) Boros scares the hell out of me; it's the tempo color and I suspect most good Boros decks will regularly have opponents dead on the board by their 5th turn.

I plan on going dimir( pulls allowing) and possibly splashing white for extort, because if you cipher-cast a spell then you have plenty of mana left over for removal and all the extort you want, also, if you play mind grind with consuming abberition out it adds another land to the dig, so all the cars with that effect do it again, and also having more defense is a plus, managing to mill tenish land may not be as dificult as it seems

Hello and welcome to the site, Magicman.  I agree that cipher/extort seems like a solid combination, although I'm worried that it's too vulnerable to aggro.  With CA milling tenish land seems possible, but being able to try means committing to that plan, which is a likely loss in all matches where I don't draw the Aberration - probably two thirds of them.

I won my pre-release tournament last night with Dimir.  I did get lucky on some of my pulls (Lazav, Lord of the Void) but Consuming Aberration actually was the hero of the deck-easily finishing off my opponent a couple of turns after playing him.  Psychic strike also saved me a number of times while adding to the mill strategy nicely.  the 2/3 vampire with flying is very handy, and if you attempt this strategy I attempt snagging a few of him, as well as pretty much any rogue in your colors. The one drop rogue is great early damage, the 1/2 blue faerie rogue is a great evasion damage source many people are overlooking, and the unblockable rogues...do I really have to explain that when you've got cipher?
Also, grissly spectacle?  AMAZING.  Best non-rare of my deck.

Hi Nick, thanks for your notes and welcome to the site.  (Glad to hear it worked for someone.  My tournament contained an awesome Dimir mill deck without Lazav, using multiple Consuming Paranoia and smart evasion to set up the Aberration.  Unfortunately, it wasn't mine; I pulled three secondary mill cards, few bombs and a lousy creature curve.  Decent removal, but no winners except Undercity Plague.  So I had to really work to win my fair 50% of matches, and couldn't beat that.)

I left out the faerie rogue, but then I'd drawn two Cloudfin Raptors, Basilica Screecher, two keyrunes and Deathcult Rogue.  So I really didn't need it.

I got 3rd in a prerelease of 50-ish running dimir. I personally am a hardcore dimir player and love milling opponents, and I was disappointed that my draws did not support that. However, I pulled a lazav and an under city plague. I found that cipher is very underrated (I hated it until I used it, then I thought it was better) and that removal is needed for dimir because of its weaker creatures. Lazav didn't do me much good, I was playing silicon or dimir whenever I drew him, but death cult rouge is really good with cipher. There were numerous times when I stacked everything on him and ciphered my opponent away. I nearly always got my consuming aberration and the land milling is good because by the time he's out your opponents probably played 4-5 lands and might have 2-3 In their hand
This was my deck;
1x realmwright
1x shadow alley denizen
1 dusk mantle guildmage
4x death cult rouge
2x bane alley broker
2x sage row denizen
1x lazav dimir mastermind
1x consuming abberation
1x paranoid delusions
3x psychic strike
2x midnight recovery
2x grisly spectacle
2x way of the thief
1x shadow slice
1x under city plague
3x dimir guild gate
9x island
5x swamp
The psychic strike and grisly spectacle saved me numerous times

For the prerelease it is going to depend entirely on which cards you get.  In general, I would say no, milling is not going to be a good primary strategy (but may be a decent secondary strategy - try to get lucky and mill out opponent's bombs, pump up the Consuming Aberration)
For any prerelease guild you should build a deck around the cards you get, not the guild.  Your guild pack helps, but if your other packs don't support your guild then abandon it for one that works.
Someone more experienced than I may be able to give more specific advice.

'Get lucky via milling' isn't a strategy - you're exactly as likely to mill them to their good card as you are to mill them past it.  If you don't completely deplete their library, it literally doesn't matter how many cards you mill out of it.

Thanks for the general advice.  I'm always very dubious about mill as a secondary strategy; you're as likely to mill in an opponent's bomb as mill it out.  If you can't take advantage of graveyard size (as with Consuming Aberration), then milling is an effect you're paying for that doesn't help you win.  (Obviously I abandon Dimir if my draws don't support it; in this question I'm more concerned about what I do if the draws do support it, but don't have the Lazav / Aberration bombs for the mill-based win.)

Also: Hi, Tomanta; welcome to the site!  Thanks for your answer.

Good points.  Given the "mill until you mill land cards", you might be able to mess someone up if they are playing 3+ colors, but that also depends on luck.  Maybe an alternate win condition with Duskmantle Guildmage as well, but with the mana involved I don't think that is likely either.  I wonder if a cipher/extort strategy could work instead of mill, but it most of the cipher cards cost too much mana for that.

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Beginner Brass Strategies?
Inspired by all the great answers to the similar question about Power Grid, I'd love to hear some suggestions for Brass. I picked it up a little over a month ago, and we've only gotten it onto the table once. We pretty much struggled through it (ultimately, only finishing the Canal phase). I now feel like we have a basic grasp of the game mechanics, but basically no clue about strategy.
I know the rules have a whole page devoted to this, but I like bullet points!  ;)

A fantastic game. Definitely in my top 10!

Good luck with having got the rules right with one play, keep revisiting them, they're not written well, and are a little bit complicated.

@Lance I agree. The rules are hard to follow, somewhat difficult to decipher. I think it would be greatly received if someone re-wrote the rules to make a little more sense.

Loans in Brass can be key to a successful game. Loans at the very beginning are very cheap to repay, where as loans later in the game can be very expensive. If you are likely to need a loan at any point during the game (which you almost certainly will), I would advise you to take the loan early.
Some other pieces of advice I would offer.

Try to get some level 2 buildings in place before the end of the canal phase. It will make your position stronger. Choose the buildings that offer the most strategic positioning as the ones to upgrade, if you can.
If you opponents are fighting it out for the Shipyard pieces, try to concentrate on the cotton route. The level 4 cotton buildings give victory points of 12 each when flipped. Two of these give you a better return (for far less manoeuvring) than a single ship.
If the iron or coal demand track has a few spaces empty, consider building immediately, to repopulate the demand track. You will potentially get the tile flipped immediately, and make some money for your troubles.
Don't discount the idea of using two cards to place any industry on any city. Some will see this as a waste of a turn, but it can give you a tactical edge when there are few other options available.

Thanks @Codemwnci. I'm probably going to have to read the instructions again just to understand your third bullet point. :)

That specific rule for point. When you build an iron or coal building. You need to add a certain number of cubes to the tile. However, if the coal/iron demand track has spaces empty, you place the cubes on the demand track first. This makes it quicker for the tile to flip, and you get money from selling to the demand track (the amount indicated on the track). This can be very lucrative when the demand track is empty.

I posted 25+ bullets on Brass strategy here. The Cliff's Notes:

Build only 1-2 level-1 industries. Develop early and often. Do not build the L1 Shipyard or L1 Port, period.
Build as few canal links as possible
Location cards are more important than Industry cards in the Canal Phase; the opposite is true in the Rail Phase
If stuck at end of Canal Phase, build Coal Mines and take loans, the Coal mines will flip at the start of the Rail Phase, taking you out of the hole.
Build Rail Links early and often for maximum points and to expand your personal network.
Avoid building Coal Mines during the Rail Phase
Seal the Shipyards if in position
Overbuild your nearest rival's Iron Works
Be careful if you don't sell Cotton immediately after building; ensure the others can't empty out the Distant Market + Ports before your next turn
Try to hang out in Seat 4 most of the time (if you're spending the most money, you're probably getting the most points), then string together 4 consecutive actions before a key rival can take another turn at a crucial juncture.

More of a tactic than a strategy, but I think it's important:
In the last turn of the canal phase, assuming nobody before you has paid nothing and you have a level-2 building on the board, it is worth considering getting 2 loans: Having paid nothing, you will be in first place at the start of the rail phase, during which you could use some of your new found cash to buy 4 tracks at once, giving you more options to place buildings (using industry cards) and hopefully grabbing some of the best links with lots of VPs at the end.
In anticipation for that, on the previous turn, build a level-2 coal mine if you can.

I disagree with the above statement about loans. A loan when you already have enough capital to do something constructive (e.g. opening turn) is poor, because you could have taken it later and paid less interest. Equally a loan very late in the game that allows you to do something that you couldn't otherwise do (e.g. build a big ship for more VPs than your alternative plays) is very cheap... who cares about going backwards on the income track if there's no more turns to come?
A good time to take a loan is just before you expect to progress on the income track, and the farther back along the track the better, but your need for capital to get the VP machine rolling is more important.

Note that you are not allowed to take a loan very late in the game.  According to the rules, you can't take a loan after the draw pile is exhausted, which means there are at going to be four turns still to go with the cards still in your hand.

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What Dominion kingdom-card setups tend to lead to the shortest games?
Most dominion players notice early on that different kingdom sets have GIGANTIC effects on how the game ends up being played. This also means that some games will end fairly quickly, while others will go on longer.
What Dominion kingdom-card setups tend to lead to the shortest games when all players are trying to win? What kingdom-cards specifically tend to contribute most to making games end sooner? Feel free to give specific setups if you like, but I'm also interested in what cards/combos make for shorter games and why/how they do this. For instance, some cards sets encourage players to try for an early lead and then end the game on piles before their opponents can catch up, while some card sets tend to favor strategies where players build up an extremely powerful deck until they get to a turn where they churn out 20+ victory points. What cards cause dominion games at the shorter end of the spectrum to be that way?
Related: What Dominion kingdom-card setups tend to lead to the LONGEST games?

Could you clarify the problem you are trying to solve here?  As stated, this looks like a request for discussion.  Do you find Dominion games taking too long?

Pat does a good job continuing to make sure there is nothing interesting to read (or write) bcg.se.  FWIW, forum.dominionstrategy.com will give you good, high quality discussion of this if you want it.

Kingdom setups with +Buy, gain free cards, tend to end on piles instead of Provinces.

Workshop, Garden
Ironworks, Great Hall
Goons
Smugglers
Werehouse, Treasure Map

Particularly if the cheapest cards are useful non-terminals like Hamlet, Haven, etc.  If 3 piles are cards that you can ALWAYS want more of without hurting your deck, they'll go fast.


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How should I determine how many lands of each different color to put in my deck?
Situation: You've built your at least 2 color deck, know exactly what number of lands you want in it, but don't know how many to put in of each basic-land type.
How do pro-players figure this out? Obviously it seems like a deck that is about 50-50 color-wise would have equal numbers of each basic-land for those colors, but what if the deck is 60-40, 70-30, 80-20, etcetera? Or perhaps its a tri-color deck with a 40-30-30 or a 50-40-10 color distribution? Obviously it will depend on the mana-curve and the cards in the deck, but I'm just looking for some general guidelines.
Not getting any land in your side-color is bad, but not getting any in your main color is even worse. How do you manage these problems to get the best chance of success?

This question addresses how many lands to put in a 40-card deck, and This one addresses the general issues of building a multi-color deck but I'm specifically interested in color distribution of lands. It would be awesome if answers could address both 40 and 60 card decks. I'm talking only about basic lands, as I believe addressing the entire issue of "What lands should I put in my deck?" is far too big for one question.

Is your question specific to basic lands only? Or should we address cards like Glacial Fortress?

@AlexP Just basic lands for this question, I figure it would be better to address non-basic lands in a different thread. :D

As an unscientific method for quickly throwing lands into a draft deck, I could up the number of coloured mana symbols in the casting costs of my cards, and use the results as a ratio to choose my lands.  So, if my deck has 20 white mana symbols and 10 blue mana symbols, and I need to select 17 lands, I'd typically be thinking about 11 Plains and 6 Islands.
Though of course it's not quite as simple as that.  You also need to factor in coloured activation costs, of course; and then, consider when you need your different colours of mana.  In the example given above, if many of the white cards cost 4W or 5W, and all the blue cards cost U or UU, then evidently I need to draw my islands early and can get away with drawing plains later on.  That sounds like a pretty peculiar deck, but if for some reason it did exist you could easily be considering even 9 Islands and 8 Plains.
Another example: suppose your deck is pretty much mono-white, with a red splash.  Your red mana symbols may be less than 10%  of your total mana symbols: you may even only have one red card!  Even so, it might not serve you well to dogmatically have 1-2 Mountains and 15-16 Plains.  12 Plains should be more than enough to run your white spells off (assuming none of them cost WWW, anyway!) and you can make up the difference with 5 Mountains, to make sure you have a good chance of playing that red spell in any game you draw it.
Unfortunately I don't think there's any simple magic formula for answering this question: it's just the sort of thing that becomes more and more intuitive the more Magic you play.  But one last tip: if you're playing a lot of Limited games where your mana is letting you down, consider the possibility that it might not be your choice of lands that's letting you down at all - maybe you should be trying to assemble decks that are less ambitious about the range of spells they are trying to play!

It's not exactly simple, but this is about as close to a magic formula (pun intended) as I've ever seen: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/in-development-building-a-deep-mana-base/ (and for Modern: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/in-development-the-very-model-of-a-major-modern-manabase/).

@David Zaslavsky nice article mention! Although most players seem to just pick up the skill with experience.

Well explained, but don't forget that if you are running color-fixers that can influence it too.

Building mana bases is a mix of art and science. Fundamentally, mana
is the biggest resource constraint in a Magic deck, so your land
choices are just as important as your spell choices during deck
design.
Deckbuilding isn't just about picking spells for your deck,
but also about setting up lines of play. As such, your
mana base isn't just about what but about when.
Quick and dirty basic land distribution
When I'm pressed for time (e.g. in Limited) or just throwing together a
rough draft of a deck, this is my approach:

Count mana symbols, not cards.
A card costing 2WWW has the same converted mana cost (5) as a card costing
4W, but you'll need to play many more white mana sources to be able to
cast the 2WWW card reliably. Counting colored mana symbols in cards
is a way to account for this.
Some online deckbuilding tools (e.g. TappedOut) do this by default.
"Color screw" is awful and you should take pains to avoid it.
Therefore, if you have uneven color requirements, make the mana base a bit
less skewed than the color distribution of your spells. For example,
if you're running 70-30 red/white, your might do 60-40
mountains/plains. Most costs have a generic component, so having a
few lands of your "secondary" color on the field shouldn't significantly slow down
your "main"-color spells.
By the time you get to playing your six-drops,
you'll have seen something like a quarter of your deck; in contrast,
you've got at most 8 cards when it's time to make your first-turn
play. If you rely on a certain color heavily in the early game, play more
of the matching lands to support it.

Basic lands will only get you so far
If you have a deck that wants to play Grand Abolisher (WW) on turn 2 and
Chandra's Phoenix (1RR) on turn 3, no combination of basic lands is going
to allow that.
You can play cards like Rampant Growth and Evolving Wilds for "color fixing",
but the larger problem here is a lack of "color depth" -- the ability to make
different combinations of colors with the same couple of mana sources.
Building a multi-color deck using only basic lands limits your ability to
reliably make use of cards with heavy color commitments, which are often
some of the strongest effects for their CMC.

There are different strategies involved for 40 card decks versus 60 card decks.
A 60 card deck is constructed. This means you'll have access to a great number of dual lands and land fetches. A 40 card deck is limited. You will probably have only basic lands to work with, with may be one or two mana fixers you managed to pick up.
It's fairly easy to make the argument that the more cards in a color you have, the more you have to weigh into that color for your land base. That's very simple logic. In fact, it's almost too simple.
The first hole in that logic is that you'll have many more spells of one color in your deck than another. This really shouldn't be the case. If it was a sealed event, chances are your cards are fairly evenly balanced. You'll have 15-20 cards in each color, and more than likely you will play the two colors that both have 11 playables. You're unlikely to have a situation of 18 playables in one color and 5 in another color. If you had, let's just say, 18 red and 5 green, is it reasonable to think you had 5 or less playable cards in white, blue and black? No, it's not. Even if you did have 18 playable cards in red, you're probably still better off only playing the best 11 or 12 of those playables, and playing 9 or 10 white or black or blue or whatever color had the second most playables. If you were to bucket your cards into colors, and then sort each bucket by how playable the card is (not a scientific route, I recognize, but one that many players do) you will probably find that #'s 6-11 in one color are much better than 12-18th place in the main color. So your cards will be balanced anyway if you've built a good deck.
The second hole in that logic is that it doesn't take into account what this humble magic player finds to be the most important aspect of having multiple colored decks: color aligned cards. A color aligned card is one that has multiple colored mana symbols. Most cards in magic are in the form of {#}{x} where # is a number and x is a color. In other words, they're like Runeclaw Bear which is 1G and not like Garruk's Companion which is GG. Garruk's Companion is color aligned to green. For it to be effective, you need to have your first two lands be forest. Playing mono green, that's easy. Playing any non-mono-green deck, that's hard. It gets even worse for cards like Leatherback Baloth and Phryexian Obliterator which are very powerful, but are very color aligned. Because most cards only require 1 mana in any particular color, you only need to worry about getting 1 of those lands casting the spell.
In the recent pre-release, I had two copies of Martial Law. Because I had a significant amount of control spells (Dispel Syncopate and friends) I felt the need to be able to cast multiple blue spells in a turn. For this reason, I had 9 islands, 6 plains, and 3 Azorius Guildgate. As it turned out, only once did I have the need to cast multiple counters, and at the same time, twice I had Martial Law and Sunspire Griffin in my hand but couldn't play them due to having only 1 source of white mana. If I could play it over again, I'd've gone 6 Islands, 9 plains to compliment my 3 gates. I had four cards in my deck that were turn 3 or turn 4 color aligned white, with no spells color aligned to blue (except for the 2WWUU Sphinx, but since she's color aligned to both I didn't see it as a big issue. The likelihood of having 6 mana with only 1 source of either color was highly unlikely).
So here's what I do in limited:

I have only one color that allows for color aligned cards. Exceptions to this are if I have an incredible amount of land fixing, or if there is a huge benefit to be gained (for example, Trostani, Selesnya's Voice or Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord. I would also consider making exceptions if I were in a situation where I pulled, for example, Murder and Deadbridge Goliath.) Remember how my pre-release didn't technically have blue-aligned, but I treated it as such because of how important I thought it was to cast two blue spells in a turn? (That's basically the same thing as having a blue aligned spell.) Trying to align to two colors was disastrous for me in that tournament. I went against a primary tenet of my deck building strategy, and I paid a hefty price (0-3 first three rounds, until I finally WTF'd.)
Assuming I have no mana fixing, I will go with 9/8 basics for no color aligned cards. The 'winner' (the color with 9) is the one that has more cards in that color. I will go with 11/6 if I have 1 or 2 color aligned cards. I will go with 12/6 if I have three or more color aligned cards. Note that 12/6 adds to 18, not 17 as normal. Because there's so many color aligned spells, I can afford to play more lands. Why 'afford'? Because a color aligned spell in my deck will always be more powerful than a non color aligned spell of the same cost. If it wasn't significantly more powerful (compare Runeclaw Bear and Garruk's Companion again) I wouldn't align.
If I have mana fixing that is either mana-free (like dual lands) or is very cheap (like Traveler's Amulet or Transguild Promenade) then it takes away from the biggest mana pool. For example, if I would have gone 12/6, and I get 3 fixers, it instead becomes 9/6 with 3 fixers.
If I'm going 3 colors, I do not use color aligned cards. It becomes more difficult for me to set any hard and fast rules because I don't often go three colors in limited. This will probably change this block, since RTR is so color-happy, and perhaps I'll re-evaluate this answer after doing more RTR.

With constructed it's very different. I do not use formulas for constructed mana pool determination. I start with something that seems decent and I play test the deck against my other decks or against friends. With a constructed deck you have the luxury of playing the deck many, many times before you take it to a tournament. For this reason, you do not need to resort to using formulas which are always guesses to what your mana pool needs. The only way to really know if you have a good mana pool is to play test your deck many times. You don't time to do that in a limited environment, so you are forced to use a formula to approximate your ideal mana pool.
Also in constructed, you have access to a wide variety of dual lands and mana fixers. The key is to get the right mana at the right time. When you're play testing, keep track of how many times you want to play a particular card, but can't, and why you can't. Perhaps it's because you don't meet requirements of the card. This happened to me with metalcraft a lot in the Scars block: what was the point of playing a card whose benefit was only worth the mana if I had three artifacts out and I didn't have those out yet? That might mean I need to scrap the deck, or it might just mean I need to do some tweaking. If a card, game after game, can't come out on turn X where X is it's CMC, (and you want it to... you don't usually want to Murder on turn 3...), you either need to fix your mana base or scrap the card. Both are good or bad options depending on the situation, and you can't make hard rules about that. It's that decision making that separates good deckbuilders from great deckbuilders.

"You're unlikely to have a situation of 18 playables in one color and 5 in another color." It's about more than playables, though. Which cards work together? If I open 16 cards that are good for a weenie aggro strategy in white, why shouldn't I play all of them? Now instead of just looking for "playables" in my other colors I'm prioritizing based on access to aggression and removal.

As noted in the answer, the determination of a playable card isn't a scientific exercise. But if you have 16 good cards for white weenie, you still have at least 7 more spells required for another color. You're (generally) better off not going 16-7, but rather more like 13-10 or 12-11. In otherwords, of those 16 cards, three of them have to be the least synergetic. It's very very likely spells 8, 9 and 10 in that other color will be better than spells 16, 15, and 14 in white. So that's why you shouldn't play all of them. Will you have times when they are? Yeah, it can happen, but unlikely.

I don't think there's a very strong basis for the generalization that you're making. Sealed and draft pools can easily be very skewed, especially in sets where certain archetypes have very strong color associations. Think about infect in SOM block Limited. I think there's really no reason to assume that red card #11 is going to be better than green card #15 consistently enough to make "don't skew your colors" a rule.

Then we'll need to agree to disagree. I've found it to be case enough to make it a "rule of thumb". There's a huge number of other factors, too, of course - double-colored mana cost (e.g. Garruk's Companion), your curve, meta games, etc. Just like I don't use formulas to determine my mana pool, I don't use formulas to determine my card composition either. But I do use it as a rule of thumb and have found that avoiding color skew leads to more wins and a higher average power level. YMMV.

There is no definitive formula. Although you specifically ask about color combination it is just part of the bigger problem that is land distribution in a deck.
As @thesunneversets also mentioned, this is the sort of thing that (at least so far) has no simple answer. It is a skill that is refined as you play more and more. Even so, some important questions you have to ask yourself:
1) How many cards of each color (obviously);
2) How many cards that cost more than one colored mana - i.e. if some cards have RR in their cost you have to get two red mana at the same time before you can play those cards.
3) How many one/two casting cost cards of each color - i.e. if all your one drops are red cards, you probably want to make sure you have red mana in your first turn;
Highlighting #3, I would also say this isn't so much a problem of the number of cards in a deck (or format) but a problem of general game plan.
Example: a UR Storm deck in modern only needs red mana to win, but generally packs more blue mana just because it's game plan is to start the game playing cheap blue draw spells in the first turns. All the library manipulation also assure the deck sees the 1/2 red mana sources it needs in a single game.
Another example: Richard Bland's top 8 decklist in GP San Diego 2011 features only 2 really powerful cards that need red: Kessig Wolf Run and Devil's Play. Using  Traveler's Amulet and Caravan Vigil he could have two extra "virtual" Mountains, without stressing his manabase that much. Plus, both are late game winning cards, so a single Mountain to enable the strategy seems more than enough.

Well, while there is no definitive amount of land you should have as it all depends on format and what deck type you plan on building. But I generally try to build a deck around the land instead of adjusting the amount of land the deck need.
If you didn't understand that I'll give an example, let's say I put 10 Swamps and 15 Mountains in a deck I'm going to outweigh how many black cards I use by using more red cards since that's how I split up my land. That being said I'll still give you a generic list of variables you want to look for.

Gameplay format, if you're playing anything with "abnormal card counts" such as commander or a custom format you made with your friends, then you want to split cards roughly even, so if you're playing tricolor split it 35/35/30.

Type of deck, I personally think this is more important than other variables but that's beside the point, if you plan on building an aggro deck then I recommend 20 land, control decks I recommend somewhere around 30 land, combo decks I'd say 25 lands due to the need to play quicker early game, etcetera.

The last and 2nd most important detail is how you anticipate your opponent's moves, the reason I'm saying this is the second most important is this is more related to combat than deckbuilding, but the reason this is necessary knowledge is because you don't want to end up not having enough land to disrupt your opponent if they're trying to combo or power up their cards so you want to still have enough land in your deck and on your field so that if your opponent plays a boardwipe you can counter it or if that fails all your land isn't on the field at the time.

So that's about it for my list of things that I generally take into consideration while building my deck and as I said before, I prefer to put my land cards in first rather than at the last moment when I have to make more adjustments. But I'll leave that detail to you since it's your deck and I don't like being a back seat driver with these kind of things.

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Race for the Galaxy vs. San Juan and Puerto Rico
I've seen these games compared very often, with steadfast advocates on each side (that thread has a lot of interesting stuff as well). I'm mainly concerned with:

depth of strategy
suitability for new players (length of time to explain, etc.)
overall feel of the game
what situations you'd recommend playing each of them in.
anything else you think should be included in regards to comparing and contrasting them

Puerto Rico vs. San Juan is discussed here. I'm more concerned about how RFTG compares to both of them. If it matters, Puerto Rico is the only one I already have.

I was originally asking if RFTG was easy enough to pick up for new people, because it seems to have rave reviews everywhere, but decided to turn this into a comparison. Then it evolved into Race vs. San Juan with a point about how both of them were in relation to Puerto Rico, so I just gave in and added it as well.

RftG, in terms of gameplay, falls fairly in the middle of the two other games.  Similar mechanics of role selection, cards as money, 'big building' cards, victory points, shipping strategy (consume) vs. building.  There's slightly more relevance to role selection in RftG than in San Juan, but not as much as in Puerto Rico.  Seating order doesn't matter as much as in Puerto Rico.  In terms of learning, San Juan is easier to teach because it has a more accessible theme and RftG has an intimidating iconography.
Still, it's a game where it's hard to make real mistakes, just sub-optimal choices, so winning is usually determined by luck, game experience, and familiarity with the cards.
RftG has more luck than Puerto Rico, since it's based on card draws (even though this is mitigating by multiple reshuffles per game).  Still, all these games are 'group solitaire games' at their core.
I'd only suggest RftG to someone with some 'real' board game experience (i.e. not Monopoly or Apples to Apples), AND if they enjoy the space theme.  Rules take about 45 minutes to explain fully, but this can be done, in part during a first practice game.  Strategy isn't as important in RftG as it is in Puerto Rico, as the extra randomness tends towards good tactics being more important.  This is because it's a progressive build game where early decisions affect victory point 'velocity'.  Strategy comes in when you know the cards and can selectively optimize for one or more 'big building' cards, and usually is only relevant fairly late game.

I wouldn't call Puerto Rico group solitaire. Its close, but you really need to keep an eye on the other players to play well, like what their growing and what buildings they have. Now Dominion with no attack or interactions, THAT's pretty close to group solitaire IMHO. :D

True, Puerto Rico is less so than either RftG or Dominion, still I think the categorization is useful since the strategies are similar in how the little bits of interaction thee are relate.  Someone could take the last building you need just like they could take that last Province, or that ? VP card in RftG.  This constrained resources is one similar shared mechanism for interaction.  The other is role selection.  In fact, I'd argue that dominion because of the attack cards, makes it far more interactive, and less group solitare, since if you take attack cards, you're forcing me to take moats.

I've played both San Juan and RFtG, but only about half a game of Puerto Rico. RFtG is definitely WAY more complicated than San Juan, and you have to keep track of a lot of symbology. One of the things that is definitely unique to RFtG in the group is the simultaneous role selection mechanic. In PR and SJ, players choose their role for the turn in sequence, roles may only be chosen once per round, and the player to choose a role first in the round rotates every round. In RFtG the players each choose the equivalent of a role at the same time, and phase actions are performed by all players simultaneously, with the rare exception of drawing cards when the draw pile is running out. There's not much of a concept of turn rotation.

The symbology in RftG is a bit tough to pick up on at first, but it only really took us one game to get a handle on it.  The reference cards help a lot.

There isn't a whole lotta depth to SJ.  After playing many games digitally and IRL, SJ got bland for me, whereas, I still continue playing RftG.  These days, the SJ exp needs to be included for me to play SJ, and this is still vs. base game RftG.  On the plus side, SJ with the exp is still easier to teach than base game RftG, so I don't feel bad pushing SJ + exp on non-gamers or those otherwise not able to handle Race.  That's the one con of RftG... if you're teaching it to a newbie and he's only going to play it once, it may not be as worth it.  Back to back games are nice, but even once every week or even month can cut it, but if it's a game he won't play again for another year or 8 months, then... :(
Speaking of which, you can install a Window's version of RftG here (Keldon's AI.  Works on OSX and Linux, bjut with some alternate compiling)
http://keldon.net/rftg/
and the highly recommended UI patch here (just copy the files to the same install directory)...
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7379896/rftg/index.html
SJ base game can be found on iOS (AppStore) and the Java version for PC below...
http:// www.compoundeye.net/jsanjuan/
Search for Condado on Google Play for SJ with exp for Android
.
Race indeed has more depth in where with RftG...
-almost every decision point and turn is done simultaneously
-you can also get VP by earning VP chips (unlike SJ where everything's strictly pts from buildings)
-another end condition is also running the VP chip pool dry
-it's not just one type of building phase... the "buildings" in Race are divided into Developments and worlds, and each have their own phases for when they can be built.
-the worlds are divided into military worlds and non-military worlds.  As you've seen, non-mili-worlds cost $$, but can always be built if you can wrangle enough wealth.  OTOH, you can have all the wealth your hand limit will allow... but if you're one military strength short of a conquering a mili-world's defense, it's useless to you.  If you can afford it though... it's free :)
-you have temporary cards that get discarded from Tableau... granted that the Crane in SJ does have a unique mechanic that lets you build over buildings, which RftG won't come to a close equivalent until exp #3's Terraforming Engineers
-the lesser types of goods can be VERY valuable... the blue goods can be sold for more cards due to trade specific powers for blue.  Otherwise, lots of blue goods means you overall got those worlds for cheap and have more "power" in producing and consuming (converting goods to VP).  In SJ, it's linear... Silver is almost always superior to Indigo
-the 6-cost devs in RftG (that give variable pts) also have powers, whereas the 6-costs in SJ are strictly for points... no engine boost whatsoever.
many people compare RftG and SJ and consider them to be more similar to each other than RftG vs. Puerto Rico (PR).  The comparisons are far from black and white...
RftG & SJ: are similar due to them both being card games of that nature (using cards in hand to pay for other cards).
SJ & PR: both have the same theme... Governer, Library, indigo, coffee, markets, and that part of the world during that time period
RftG & PR: both have a mechanic to convert goods to VP, multiple end conditions, reasons to get inferior goods vs. the better ones, etc.

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What are some good 8 player games?
What's a good strategy game for 8 players? Many games can be played by 8 players, but suffer from a loss of pace, and long waits between turns. What games have parallel planning phases, or lots of interaction during turns?
I'm looking for games that can safely be called strategy games, so apples to apples and some other party games don't really count.
This is basically an extension of this question for 6 players.

Hola, need to tighten this up some.  An 8-player game to solve what problem, or set of conditions?  As written, you're looking for everything from Advanced Civilization to Texas Hold'em.  A good question shouldn't have an endless number of answers.  Including a number of potential answers in your question makes this look more suited to a forum than stackexchange.

I'll vote to reopen this if you can reword it to tell us more about what sort of game you're looking for.  Most games don't support 8 players, so this does have the potential to be a useful question.

Small nitpick, but I have noticed you don't capitalize game titles in your posts, and you randomly hyphenate some of them as well.  I realize I'm probably being pedantic, but improper capitalization is one of those things that drives me up a wall, and it really does make it difficult to pick out game names when you don't capitalize, bold or hyperlink them.

@Pat @Kristo I've edited the question, did I do any better? :D

One of my favorite games for a group of players as large as 8 is The Great Dalmuti (by Richard Garfield before he made Magic the Gathering) which is a fantastic and quick card game for large groups (it is based on a game that can be played with regular decks of cards but Dalmuti offers some great modifications that add to the game's enjoyment.
It isn't a full on strategy game so might not be exactly what you are looking for - however there is a lot of skill and because it is a game that resolves quickly - but importantly isn't just a one winner/7 losers game but one where there is a ranking of players based on when you go out each round, it works really well for the right group to play iteratively for how ever long you want to play. It also works well when players may need to drop out for a while and/or join in later (which with large groups is pretty common).
I always play with the rule that the order of physical seating while playing the game is dictated by the game results - this physical movement between rounds adds a lot to the game - not to mention makes it easier to play.
Summary - really fun, iterative, skill but with enough luck to have real swings, and easy for players to join/leave/rejoin and can be played for as long as your group wants to play

That is a fun game.  Better if you have crowns for the Dalmutis and ugly hats for the Peons, and everyone gets into haughty or servile character.  (Alternatively, have comfy chairs for the Dalmutis and make the Peons sit on the floor!)

We typically play that the Dalmutis get to pick their seats and everyone else has to sit in order around them. Also that the Greater Peon has to do all the card collection duties. In college when we played the regular card version of the game (President or Kings & Queens) we sometimes played with a drinking game or truth & dare variation - which was both fun & rather dangerous...

also really really fun when you have a number of couples playing who get competitive with each other - just serious enough to have fun but not so serious that you put relationships at risk

I have the dilbert version of this http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1814/dilbert-corporate-shuffle

+1 but I desagree that "It isn't a full on strategy game". I think it is most based on strategy and a bit of random cards, just to challenge your brian/strategy

I have two 8-player games in my collection that I've brought along to my weekly cafe boardgames group.  (Well, they have variants or expansions that allow 8 players, anyway...)
Citadels
A good, solid gamery game.  I expect the 8-player version would be too intimidating for people who hadn't played before, but it's definitely the sort of game that people can become obsessed over, and want to play again and again.  Individual turns are really quick, and there's a lot of tension in the fact that everyone's role for the turn is secret until it comes around, so there's definitely plenty to hold people's interest while they're waiting for 7 other players to take their go!
Bang!
Kind of a polar opposite to Citadels, in that I would have no qualms about letting a beginner sit down to the game, but I don't think there's quite as much to hold the long-term interest of dedicated strategy-heads.  Bang! is a lot of fun, as players form alliances (or, more often, get embroiled in vendettas) in a Wild West shootout, where no one is quite sure who is on the Sheriff's side and who wants him dead (Werewolf style).  The one issue with it as an 8-player game is the same one that Werewolf has: it's possible to be knocked out of the game pretty quick, and if that happens it's tough to be just a spectator for the next half hour or more.
ETA: Here's a list of LOTS of 8-player boardgames for anyone interested in really exploring the possibilities: http://boardgamegeek.com/tag/8-player.  Hopefully we have already covered the major contenders between us!

I've done a large amount of looking through the tag, but many of the games there aren't very good with 8. The fact that a game supports 8 doesn't mean its good with 8. However its a great place to start looking for those rare gems. :D

RoboRally

RoboRally is played with 8 players and is a free-for-all capture the flag race. Each player takes control of a single robot, but must program their moves 5 turns at a time. This makes the game quite fun with a dash of chaos, as your move for turn 1 will be obvious, but you must start predicting what others will try to do in order to maneuver around in subsequent turns. There is nothing more satisfying than bumping into another player, putting them off course, and watching their carefully pre-planned moves take them into a pit or off the board.

Wait, you mean the robot who dies the most explosive, hilarious death, doesn't win?  ;-)

If only there were a way to award style points!

One caveat - you'll want your course to be simpler with that many players, or else you'll be playing forever.

This is hard enough with 4 people, trying to predict moves in a way where your turn doesnt get blocked, or your robot bumped. I cant imagine it with 8. It seems like almost anything you plan would never happen, making the game more frustrating than chaotically fun.

It is quite difficult find good real strategy game managed to 8 players. But one thing comes to my mind: Formula D. It can be played up to 10 persons and it is almost strategy (it has a map at least :-).

Also I can suggest the game loved in my company - Saboteur (3 to 10 players). It is card game heavy related with bluffing. Where is bluffing factor, strategy comes too :-)

+1 was for Formula D. In questions like this, I really prefer to see 1 game per answer. I don't know if that's the official line here, but it seems to work best for me.

I was thinking should I split answer to separate items but decided not look like reputation-whore who is posting every sentence as new answer :-) (no offense to anybody).

You don't look like anything nasty when you provide each individual answer as an answer! I think it's more meaningful and more valuable for readers when each answer is separate. Take my comment, "+1 for FD". That doesn't stop Saboteur from floating to the top, even though nobody (at the moment, I am the only upvote) has voted for it!

@gomad I agree with your opinion.

Red Dragon Inn
Red Dragon Inn is the game of what happens after your adventuring party returns from the dungeon. They're flush with treasure and eager to party. Each turn, your character:

Performs an action, like starting a round of gambling, or stealing a coin, or punching someone
Buys a drink for a friend
Drinks

There are three economies in play:
 - Fortitude
 - Alcohol Content
 - Money
Fortitude and Alcohol content start at opposite ends of the same track. Fortitude almost never goes up, alcohol content almost never goes down and when they meet, the character is unconscious.
It's a straightforward game with most of the rules outlined on the player boards and cards. It's got humor, but is best when players 'make their own fun' with voices, in-character banter, or just gleeful play.
You'll need any two Red Dragon Inn sets to play 8 - they play 4 each and mix just perfectly. The third set is coming soon, apparently.

Advanced Civilization
This is a great strategy game that can plays well with 4-8 players.  The hardest part is finding a good copy since it's out of print, and you also have to have the original Civilization game, since Advanced is an expansion.  Be warned, it takes a full day to play an 8-player game.

I'd say 5-8 players, though. Playing with only 4 takes out a lot, since the sea is virtually useless, the players to trade with are only a few, etc.

@Looris, That could be, I never get to play with that few, just took the recommended off of BGG.

Tsuro
Quick, fairly light game. Very quick to teach new people and can be played even with 7 year olds. Every other players turn is going to change various players' locations, so its pretty riveting and keeps everyone intent on the gameplay.

I wouldn’t say Tsuro has much strategy when you have so many players. So much happens between your turns it’s effectively random

The Resistance
You could always have a look at The Resistance, a recent publication that easily accommodates that number.  If you've ever played Werewolf or one of its many variants, you'll have a good idea of the type of game play, but it's a social deduction game with some clever bits to it.

Blue Max
Works well with anywhere from 2-21 according to BGG. You're constantly fighting the other players as you skillfully maneuver your various planes, so you need to keep an eye on as many people as possible to be successful.

Shadow Hunters
Kind of like Werewolf as everyone's secretly assigned a role and trying to survive without being killed by the other players, but a bit more involved as there's more character abilities and special items. Very player flexible.

Junta
The link lists it as only taking seven players, but there are unofficial rules that raise it up to nine.
Most notable for being a game that gets better the more players it has (and gets noticably worse the fewer - I wouldn't play with less than five). Most game steps are either simultaneous or involve negotiation, so it's very hard to be left out.
The elevator pitch: Players are leaders of various factions in a banana republic, and must negotiate/intimidate/assassinate each other to get the most foreign aid into their personal Swiss bank account. (It's particularly amusing because it has quite elaborate rules, most of which are merely means to the end of getting the money.)
Werewolves of Miller's Hollow
This one starts at eight players and ramps up. Again, everyone is involved in all steps. Advantage is that it ramps straight up to 20 players. Disadvantage is one player usually has to referee.
Elevator pitch: A village tries to out the werewolves in their midst. Each player is a villager, but some are secretly werewolves (and must try to avoid being lynched).

Shadows over Camelot with Merlin's Company Expansion
Since its cooperative and you're all working on the same goal, everything that happens when its not your turn is still highly relevant and important, especially if you're the traitor.

Long Shot
Horse racing game for 3-8 players, good amount of strategy.

Memoir '44 is a scenario-based 2-player game, but if you have either 2 copies of the base game or certain expansions, you can play a 4v4 team game.
I haven't played the team version (called Overlord), but I love the 2-player one and am looking forward to trying it. In the 2 player game, the board is divided into three sections, and my impression is that in the 4v4 Overlord version, 1 player controls each flank and the 4th player is kind of a "general" directing the overall forces.

Poker
Some may object to a gambling game, but it's easy enough to just give everyone 5K or 10K in chips and play tournament style for the points. Or you could play candy poker: split a big bag of miniature chocolates up to use as chips.
Omaha Hold 'Em is a very exciting game that can play up to 11 (5 table cards, 3 burn cards, and 4 to a person, deals out the whole deck).
Texas Hold 'Em is quite strategic and popular as well, and can actually seat up to 22 people.  Mind you a 22 person Texas Hold 'Em game would be quite random and hard to follow, but you could do it.

Category 5 or slide 5
The games play exactly the same and have the same cards, they only vary slightly in the endgame condition Both well with anywhere from 4-10, and even potentially up to 12. During the game, player's choose a card from their hands and reveal them simultaneously, so there's no real conception of turns. This also means a 10 player game won't take much longer than a 6 player game.


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Evaluating Agricola as a 2 player game: how long would it take, how competitive is it, complexity, etc.
I've been thinking about getting Agricola for a while, primarily due to how much the gaming world seems to love it. But I want to make absolutely sure that the investment will be worth it. Currently my Mom and I end up playing games together fairly frequently, just the 2 of us. Usually we play Dominion, Carcassone, or Blokus. When I saw it ranked highly in this thread for 2-, I realized that even if all of my other friends end up hating it, I'll still get to play with 2 people fairly often, making it well worth the money.
Here are the main questions I'd like to pose:
Playing time. I've heard 1/2 hour per player from a wide variety of sources. Is this true? I don't care if our first several games take longer, but once we've played it 5+ times, will we be able to get through a game in an hour or less without rushing?
Aggressiveness. Take this scale:

No aggression. You win by building yourself up faster than your opponent and rarely if ever do something that hurts them. Each turn you try to figure out what helps you the most. (Group Solitaire, Dominion with no attack cards)
Occasional aggression. You're trying to build yourself up, but putting down your opponent is often a good idea as well. You have to compromise between building yourself up and hurting your opponents.  (Dominion with attack cards, Puerto Rico, Citadels)
Frequent aggression. You're often trying to find out how to hurt your opponents as badly as possible, but it's not the entire goal of the game. Some fighting over resources. (Settlers of Catan, Carcasonne)
Purely Aggression. The only way to win is by hurting your opponent. Each turn you try to figure out how to put your opponent in the worst position possible. (Chess, Risk)

Where do you think Agricola ranks on this scale? How 'aggressive' do you need to be to win?
Complexity.
Complexity of rules scale:

blokus
Ticket To Ride, Bohnanza
Carcassone, Settlers
Pandemic, Diplomacy
Puerto Rico
Arkham Horror

Complexity of strategy scale:

Go Fish
Ticket To Ride, Bohnanza
Carcassone, Settlers
Dominion, Puerto Rico
Chess, Go

Where does Agricola rank on each of these? I know the scales aren't great, so feel more than free to add your own opinions and comments.
Finally, what's your overall experience with Agricola as a 2-player game? Do you think it will work well for my Mom and I? Thanks!!! :D

Playing Time: I think with practice, a 1 hour game of Agricola is certainly possible, if you don't think every decision to death and you work out a quick way to restock the supply! But I think you'll be (or at least feel like you are) rushing. Especially with setup and teardown. I've played 4 player games in 2 hours, but it doesn't scale precisely. 1 hour games of the "family" version I think are quite within reach.
Aggressiveness: 2 - Occasional aggression. Aggression in Agricola (like most action-selection games) is in opportunity denial. I've seen varying degrees of aggression win. It also can boil down to which combinations of minor improvements and / or occupations occur in a given hand.
Complexity: 5- Puerto Rico. I think it's very comparable to PR in complexity. If you don't have PR, I would highly recommend it as a 2 player as well (there is an official 2-player variant from the designer). As in PR, the complexity comes from the tradeoffs that various decisions demand and from the emergent effects of multiple improvements, etc.. It should be noted that complexity goes up as the game progresses, because more actions are made available each turn.
Complexity of Strategy: 4 - Dominion, Puerto Rico. Frankly, I think that Dominion and Puerto Rico are in different leagues, but I'm a Dominion noob, so pay no attention to me on that score! The point is that Agricola has a lot of the same goals as PR - you have to pick a strategy but you have to be flexible. Agricola punishes specialists with negative points, but rewards high accumulation of any one thing. So every decision has rippling implications. You want to emphasize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses, just like in PR.
I love Agricola as a 2-player game. My wife and son and I used to play it in 2s and 3s all the time. But it just didn't hold up at my house under the onslaught of games like Dungeon Lords, Galaxy Trucker, and London, so it doesn't hit the table as much as it used to. Will you like it? Will your mom? I have no idea! Does your mom like challenging games? Or is Ticket to Ride her limit for the length of a rulebook? I think you'll like it - but my mom would hate it.
Do you have a FLGS you can go to and play it? If not, try moving! ;)

Although, I would add that when both players know the game well, even with the standard game a match can be played in 45 minutes (including setup time).

Agricola is an excellent two-player game. In fact, I find that I prefer the two player version of the game to higher numbers of players. I originally bought the game so I would have something less aggressive to play with my wife, and it works brilliantly for that purpose, both because of the game mechanics and because the theme is quite peaceful - Agricola is about building, not destroying or dominating.
It does take about 30 minutes per player, so yes, around an hour to play once you've got the hang of it is a reasonable estimate.
Agricola would probably be 'occasional aggression' on your scale. You are mostly concerned with improving your own farm, but there's a strong strategic element where you consider what actions you need to perform before your opponent. Usually it's more about making sure you get what you want, rather than deliberately trying to make your opponent's game harder, but you can definitely play it several ways. I know one friend who likes to try and deny animals to the other players, and constantly picks them up, even when he doesn't need them. What you tend to find though is that this type of behaviour is sub-optimal for your own game. In other words, if you concentrate on making your opponent's lives harder, you will have a tougher game yourself, because in general you will make less productive actions.
Agricola is quite a complex game, if you play the full rules with the occupations and minor improvement cards. Your first few games will probably be quite overwhelming. I would rate it as a 5 on your scale without the cards, 6 with. It's as complicated as Arkham Horror, but in a different way. The rules are much more precise, in my opinion, so I found once I'd learnt the game I very rarely have to actually look anything up.
Agricola is a pretty deep game. There are many different strategies, and one of the best features is that the random cards you draw each game often mean you are incentivised to play a strategy other than your preferred one. I have played Agricola hundreds of times, and it's one of the very few games in my collection that I don't really get bored with. It's much more strategic than Carcassonne or Settlers of Catan. However, no game I know is as deep as chess, so I guess that makes it a 4 on your scale.
Summary: If you like interesting board games, I don't see how you could not like this. There's a reason everyone loves Agricola. And for the amount of replayability this game holds, I think it is excellent value for money.

I've upvoted the other two answers, as I agree with them completely, but I just wanted to throw in my couple of bits:

It's definitely a great 2 player game, and I might even go so far as to say that the 2 player games I play with my wife are my favourite way to play Agricola.  Certainly I don't ever think "yeah, this is fun, but if only we'd been able to get a few friends around for the full experience", when I'm playing 2-player.  One thing I think is worth stressing is that Agricola changes with different numbers of players.  There are Occupation cards that you remove from the deck unless you have 3+ or 4+ players, and the available actions are different for different numbers too.  Actually that's really the best argument I can think of for playing it with more players: you get to play with some cool Occupations that you don't otherwise get to see!
In a similar vein - one of the beauteous things about Agricola is that you can scale up the complexity based on the experience levels of your players.  The Family Game dispenses with the Occupation and Minor Improvement cards, and becomes a fairly chess-like (or at least Caylus-like) experience with a very small randomness factor.  A beginner will probably still be a bit baffled by the intricacies of how to successfully bake bread, or breed animals, as both of these are multi-step processes and not initially easy to discern. But once you've got over that hurdle I guarantee you'll be hooked.  At which point you can introduced the "E" or "Easy" deck of cards, and then build up gently to the "Interactive" and "Complex" decks.  If ever a boardgame bent over backwards to have a graceful learning curve, it's Agricola.

I have met players who took an instant dislike to Agricola, on complexity grounds: there is a danger that, in your first game, especially if it's a 4 or 5 player game against experienced players, you might think "oh God, I have no idea what's going on, I don't have enough actions to get anything to work, all my people are going to starve to death". But many more newbies I've played with have taken to the game instantly. Because the ways to attack other players are non-obvious, it's very easy to just get on with building the best farm you possibly can, and not feel too harrassed or victimised.  Plus, Harvest Moon, Farmville, etc etc: everyone loves building farms, don't they?  With a theme this universal, and the attractive components, it's pretty hard to go wrong.  Agricola is more or less the best game ever.  Get it at once!


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How can I tell when to take a mulligan in Magic?
Determining when to mulligan is a very important skill in magic. But how can I hone my abilities in that skill? Obviously if I had no/all land I'd probably want to mulligan as the opportunity to actually cast some of my spells are worth the 1 card penalty. But what about when I only have 1 land or 1 spell? Are there any good rules of thumb to help me make this decision? How can knowing my deck make these choices easier? What other elements of my hand should I look at when making this decision?

Unfortunately, knowing your deck inside out and comparing your draw against it are the only universal rules that can apply, so it's a highly individual decision that depends on those two factors. If you already have a good idea of the opponent's deck, that also helps, of course. Essentially, experience is where it's at.
You can ask yourself a few questions.

How many more spells/lands do I need to draw in succession to get things going as planned?
How badly is my strategy damaged if I fail to draw more of what I need?
In case of land shortage (mana screw), how many of my spells can I play with the cards I currently hold?
In case of excess lands (mana flood), how powerful are the spells I hold?
Do the cards I 'can' play help me getting more spells by themselves (card drawers)?
Or are they strong enough to put pressure on my opponent, so I can buy a few turns to benefit from the regular card draw phase?
In multi-color decks and holding the wrong mana (color screw), how many colored mana am I missing to cast the majority of my hand, or how many more spells of the wrong color could follow?
What is the strategy of my opponent's deck? If he wins by putting out many fast creatures or direct damage, then losing a few turns may well mean defeat. If your opponent is playing a combo deck, all you may need is a single counter-spell that you can play at the right time.

Note that if you often get into a situation where you must consider mulligan (assuming careful shuffling before each game), then there might be an issue with your deck. Adjust the number of mana sources and/or the mana curve of your spells.
Shuffle thoroughly to ensure that the deck is randomised. Shuffling helps to ensure that if clumps of land or spells do occur, they do so naturally. Pile shuffling alone is not an acceptable means of shuffling. Mash shuffling and riffle shuffling are acceptable.
Mulligans are decided upon in APNAP order. They are acted upon in parallel. First, the active player chooses whether or not to mulligan. Then, the non-active player does the same. After both players have made a decision, mulligans are taken in parallel. This repeats until one player chooses not to mulligan. Then, the remaining player takes his or her remaining mulligans alone.
Some important piece of information is born from this process. When the non-active player chooses to mulligan, the active player should have already stated his or her choice. This extra information may influence the non active player's decision to mulligan. For example, a hand full of one for one spells may be acceptable to keep against a player who is taking a mulligan, because one for one trades generally favor the player with more cards.

Good points in the edit there. I would have to say that I am wary about the idea that your own mulliganing decisions should be influenced by whether your opponent mulliganed or not.  Yes, of course you're quite happy to see your opponent mulligan down to 5, that makes your life easier; but the decision about whether your hand is good enough to keep shouldn't really be anything to do with your opponent.  I guess if your opponent has repeatedly mulliganed you can be a bit less nervous about keeping a genuinely borderline hand though.

In essence, a mulligan is about trading card advantage for (a chance for) better card quality. The definition of card advantage already includes the difference in the number of your cards vs. the number of your opponent's cards. Therefore, since in a mulligan decision you must consider the card advantage implications, it is inevitable that you also consider how many mulligans your opponent has taken, if that info is available to you, which is the case if you're first to draw, because each of your oppoent's mulligans is a card advantage for you.

A slight correction: one of the new rules released with Magic 2010 (I believe) is that mulligans are now done in parallel. Each player chooses whether to mulligan to 6 in turn order; then once that's done, each player who drew a 6-card hand chooses whether to mulligan to 5 in turn order, and so on. It's no longer the case that you always know how many cards your opponent is keeping before you get to decide to mulligan (if you're drawing first).

In the old days, mulliganing was easy.  No lands?  All lands?  Draw a new hand.
And then along came the Paris Mulligan - now a mulligan is always an option, not just a get-out-clause for an absolutely unplayable hand.  And while you will certainly still always mulligan an all-lander or a no-lander (unless your deck is EXTREMELY unusual), there are many more borderline cases where you will have to make some tricky choices.
Hackworth has already provided a useful list of things you should be thinking about while deciding whether to take a mulligan, and I've upvoted that, but here's a couple of things that I feel compelled to add:

Everything else is a side issue to the following consideration: would an average six-card draw from my deck leave me with a better chance of winning than the seven cards I'm looking at right now?  If the answer is yes, then take a mulligan.  You may be looking at a three land, four spell hand and it may still not be a keeper, if the lands are all islands and the spells are all 7 mana with BBB in their casting cost, for instance.  A good deck can win in four or five turns against a "goldfish" opponent, so you usually MUST mulligan a hand where you have nothing to play for the first few turns, if you don't topdeck something.
A really, really important factor that Hackworth didn't go into: are you on the play or on the draw?  On the draw you can often keep slightly more marginal hands, simply because the chance of drawing into the crucial second or third land to make your hand "work" is dramatically higher when you have an extra draw step over your opponent.  By contrast, the benefit of going first is that you fly straight out of the gates and have a tempo advantage over your opponent.  This advantage is likely to be completely negated if you don't have a second land to play on turn two.

Beginning players, and I remember well that I used to be like this, have the mentality of "this will be a great hand... if the first card I draw is a land.  What the hell, I'll keep it!"  Thinking like that probably gives you a 60% chance of losing even before you play a single card, not good odds!  Being a card down is bad news, but it's much less bad than running the risk of not being able to play your deck at all.  Think through all the probabilities, and then, if necessary, mulligan away.  I think it's fair to say that having a good sense when to mulligan is one of THE major factors that distinguishes the pro players in the game...

How does it follow that if you're on the draw, you should mulligan less often? I agree that you're unhappier at a bad 7-card hand when you're on the play than when on the draw, but a mulligan is about as likely to improve the hand either way.

@warbaker, I do feel that you're not really necessarily mulliganing  to get a better hand, so much as to get a hand that surpasses a minimum threshold of acceptability.  If you're the starting player and your hand has one land and a bunch of 3 drops, your hand is much less likely to become playable than if you're on the draw, and have a whole extra turn to draw into the land you need to make the hand good.  Basically it's just that, IMO, there are many more hands that are obviously terrible on the play than obviously terrible on the draw.

A solid rule of thumb people throw around is to keep the hand if it gives you a plan of action. Do you have something decent to do in the first few turns even if you don't draw what you need?
Beyond this, a good mulligan decision depends on the particular characteristics of your deck. You have to understand what cards you're likely to draw, what your mana curve is, how well it performs with a smaller starting hand, how important tempo is in the first few turns, how important it is to make all your land drops... etc.
I regularly play a couple of different (casual) decks. One is a green ramp deck, where I am often happy to keep a hand with just two lands or one land and some mana acceleration because I'm very likely to draw more mana and have very few spells that cost more than 4. On the other hand, I might mulligan an otherwise healthy hand with 3 or 4 lands but no acceleration, because getting to 3 mana on turn 2 can give me a large tempo advantage. This is very different from my other blue/red deck which has less acceleration and a steeper curve: making at least the first three land drops is critical, so I'd generally mulligan a hand with less than three lands, but worry less about tempo in the first few turns.
Apart from your own deck, you should consider everything you know about your opponent's deck. If you're facing an aggro deck with lots of burn and cheap, fast creatures, an early blocker they can't deal with could be worth more than any other spell in your deck—and you may not have many turns to draw it if it's not in your hand. But against a control deck, that same efficient blocker could be almost worthless, effectively a dead card in your hand.
Dead cards are something you should definitely pay attention to: inevitably, against certain other decks, some of the cards you're playing will be worth a lot less than others. But if you have six good cards and one dead card, mulliganing won't gain you anything, since you'd be going down to six cards anyhow! I'm often tempted to mulligan if I draw two of the same legend or planeswalker, but that's often not the best choice. (And, of course, redundant cards like this can still be useful to mitigate disruption like targeted discard, counterspells and removal.)
Apart from all this general theoretical analysis, you should also just play your deck a whole bunch of times to develop an intuition for which hands are good when. This will also help you identify weird edge case like hands which are perfect... as long as the opponent doesn't have a turn-one lightning bolt or thoughtseize. (My green deck is particularly vulnerable to this when I keep hands with a single land and a mana dork.)


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What Dominion kingdom-card setups tend to lead to the longest games?
Most dominion players notice early on that different kingdom sets have GIGANTIC effects on how the game ends up being played. This also means that some games will end fairly quickly, while others will go on longer.
What Dominion kingdom-card setups tend to lead to the longest games when all players are trying to win? What kingdom-cards specifically tend to contribute most to making games longer? Feel free to give specific setups if you like, but I'm also interested in what cards/combos make for longer games and why/how they do this.
I get that a player in the lead should try to end the game and win as soon as possible, making very long games highly unlikely, but there is still a strong variation in game length due to the cards used and I'm curious what cards tend to be in the setups that are toward the longer end of the spectrum.
Related: What Dominion kingdom-card setups tend to lead to the SHORTEST games?

What problem are you trying to solve here?  It seems you are trying to lead a discussion, which contradicts our [faq].  If you could restate as a clear problem to be solved, that would be great.

Alex in Paris is correct that cursing/attacking kingdom sets do tend to lead to long games.
Another variety that tends to lead to long games is kingdom sets that include good "engine" combos, particularly non-terminal ways to draw more cards.
Cards like Laboratory, Menagerie, Crossroads, Caravan, Stables, and Hunting Party can easily lead to everyone having a deck that draws dozens of cards per turn.  These games don't take a long time in terms of number of turns (if everyone has a good engine piles will disappear quickly, in fact) but everyone's individual turn ends up taking a long time as they draw more cards they have to make decisions about.
When there's less draw power, players can decide what they'll do in advance and turns are quick.  When they have unknowns (the next 10 cards they draw) things take longer, especially if the combos are tricky and require a lot of thought about the "correct" order to play the cards.  King's Court and Throne Room combined with "engine" cards can particularly lead to lots of slow decision-making.
Additionally, including Platinum and Colony will usually make a game slightly longer as players are slightly more likely to spend time building a deck that can buy Platinums and then Colonies rather than focusing on Provinces or rushing Duchies.

You only gain actions from Crossroads for the first one you play in a turn (but you get +3 Actions for the first one...)

Yup, but that can still make for some ridiculous action chains especially if you've got a handful of greens to start.

Basically, any card that denies opponents their resources (i.e. cards in hand) or pollutes their decks (e.g. curses) makes for a longer game because it is more difficult to buy victory point cards for lack of money or just forces an interaction that requires a decision in your opponent (i.e. this increases the time, not necessarily number of hands).
Examples:
Militia - reduces all opponents to three cards, also increases time by a bit.
Bureaucrat - forces all opponents to put one of their victory point cards on top of their deck.
Spy - cycles through good cards in opponent decks, leaving until only a victory point cards or useless card is left on top, also just increases time.
Thief - trash or steal opponent treasure cards, also just increased time.
Witch - adds useless cards to opponent decks.

Thief can go either way.  Since one of the coins is always trashed, if they flip a Copper (and no other coins) later in the game, it can actually help them.

Sure but, later in the game, flipping only a Copper becomes much less likely if the person is buying Silver or Gold and either transforming Coppers with Mines or finding some other way to trash them.