text:
How should I approach teaching Magic:The Gathering to a new player?
I've been playing MtG since Ice Age (mostly with friends) so I'm now sitting on a massive duffle bag of cards, plenty of decks, and quite some experience of the game.
I want to teach the game to someone completely new. I know there once was a set called Portal which was designed exactly for that purpose, is it a good resource for teaching?
It seems like a lot to explain mana, phases, the stack, capabilities, planeswalkers, and all that at the same time using a full compliment of modern cards :-)  Which terms are key and must be taught?  Which can be avoided for a few games while I get them hooked?
I'm happy to buy starter decks or to print out some proxies to get my friends started.
So, what's the "recommended" way to teach someone MtG starting from the basics ?

This article on the Magic site today offers some good tips for introducing new players to the game! http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/130

Have to say, I hated Portal.  If someone can't cope with the word "block" (Portal used "intercept" instead) or the concept of playing a spell at instant speed, they're not going to get on with Magic in the long run.  So why even bother with a watered-down version?
Modern Magic Core sets, like M11, are pretty well designed so that they contain everything that makes the game great, while remaining pretty accessible to a beginner.  Sure, there are some moderately advanced concepts in the set... but they tend to be restricted to uncommon or rare cards.  The commons are pretty straightforward, and have important rules clearly reiterated on the cards, in the form of reminder text.  You don't have to worry about explaining at great length how Flying works: it says so on every common card.
Sure, Magic is a pretty complicated game. However, it's gotten a lot easier from the worst bad old days of interrupts, mana burn, damage on the stack and the subtle difference between "destroy" and "bury".  Anyone who can cope with Settlers of Catan shouldn't have a problem getting their head around Magic!  All you really need to explain is one land a turn, sorceries only in your turn outside of combat vs. instants at any time, and the fact that you have a window to do things after attackers are declared, and then after blockers are declared, and you've explained 90% of the "intricacies" of the game.
Don't sell your friends short - let them into the full and wonderful game.  If you must simplify it, then build some decks with only simpler cards in them, and play with those, gradually introducing more concepts as you go along.  But I really don't think there's any call for Portalizing the game.  Anything that is in a modern Core Set has been proven to be "grokkable" even by beginning players by extensive WotC market research.  I think people respond better, in general, to you giving their intelligence the benefit of the doubt, rather than patronizing them with a vastly reduced experience!

+1 - While I miss mana burn and damage on the stack, it certainly has made things friendlier to newcomers, I think.

I had success in the past with making successive ses of learning decks.  Start with 1 color, basic land and only creatures.   Then add in enchantments.  Then sorceries.  Then instants, then two colors, then artifacts.

Cheers, thanks for sharing your opinion. I think I'm going to follow your advice and just build a simple deck with creatures, and then I'll move on from there.

@Gyom: Try removing the uncommons and the rares from a pool of cards from a modern Core Set.  I'm pretty sure all the concepts on the commons are both simple and annotated with handy reminder text.  And then you can add in uncommons and rares as your pupil's confidence level grows!

@thesunneversets: will do !

@thesunneversets: I think removing all of the uncommon and rares may make the game a little easier to run, but it would also remove a lot of the things that may get a new player to become excited about the game. So I would recommend judiciously remove some of them depending on their complexity and ungrokkability.

+1 for the Portal hate. Several absolutely terrible design decisions (pointless terminology shift, clunky card texts, no stack interaction whatsoever) make it useless as an MTG teaching tool. Players absolutely need to learn about Instant-speed play by their second or third match; it's much harder to integrate that information into your understanding afterward.

Ironically, from my reading of it, Portal would be more interesting for an experienced player. Stripping down to the real core of play. But yeah, getting used to instants after getting used to instantless would be like going from driving an automatic to a stick-shift car.

@deworde If you think "deciding whether to run a 3/3 attacker into two defending 2/2s" is the real core of play, then I suppose... there's a lot of vanilla cards in Portal, and an experienced player can generally size up the board position very quickly.  Not my thing I have to say.

Summary: This article by Mark Rosewater detailing the common issues with teaching Magic and showing how the Duels of the Planeswalkers video game mitigates a lot of them, at the same time providing a handy guide to how you should approach teaching. According to MaRo, Duels of the Planeswalkers has taken the place of the core set as the "Casual Intro" tool, and the Core Set is the next move from there. Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014 is the current release, also available for X-Box, PS3 and iPad.

Magic's R&D have spent the last 5 years modifying the system to make introduction easier, and there are some great articles by Magic designers and Magic developers on how to do exactly what you want. Also, for guidance on how to introduce any game, I can't recommend the "Extra Credits" episode, Sharing Our Medium enough. It's focused video games (which may in fact be where you want to start, see below), but a lot of the general ideas translate really well.
How To Play
Setup

Know your audience: Don't give your tactical mate a Green-Red Raargh deck, and don't give your 12-year old cousin who likes explosions a control deck where they don't hit anything. Better yet, before playing spread a couple of starting hands from the decks out in front of them and see what they gravitate to. You can even adjust this during the game, focusing on the bit they're into. If they like the art, let them root through the deck.
Use Simple Decks: Obvious, but tricky. What makes a card too complex? What makes a deck too complex? A simple-sounding mechanic (+1/+1 for every creature in graveyard) can become really complicated with a bit of graveyard manipulation. Tom LaPille's advice here is great. Flying's pretty obvious, Milling, not so much. Don't introduce multiple win paths until you think they understand the basics.
Choose something that opens big: For Magic, this translates to which decks you choose to start with. It sounded counter-intuitive when I first read it, but Tom LaPille makes a good point that the starting deck should be two-colour. His reasoning is that it makes it easier to understand the mana system, but there's another good reason: Gold Cards are cooler. By contrast, monoblue denial decks are the least cool thing ever, especially as an opponent.
Add a little bit of Awesome: One mega card and a couple of things at the "Serra Angel" level. Some vanilla's and basic spells, a couple of things that are obviously good things to have(TM), all built around one major player. Basically that's what a purchasable Intro Deck is.
Allow them to control their deck: Obviously, they need a pre-built deck to start with, but give them a sideboard of cards they might like. Include some cards they're not going to click with so they can choose to swap them out. Play in the same colours so they can trade with you for that card that they really love-hated.
And then, once they've built their deck? Let them walk away with it. Obviously, you need to make sure you didn't show them any card you wouldn't be prepared to give them, but by giving it to them, you now have an opponent to play with. And who knows, they might return the favour come the next block release.

Play

Start Playing Quickly: "Cards have costs. Lands allow you to pay the costs. You play spells, attack with creatures, I block, then you get another chance to play spells. Then your creatures heal up, and it's my turn. Your creatures can't attack on the turn they come out, to give me a chance to respond. If you have a card with the type "Instant", you can play it on my turn at any time. Okay, let's get started." - Obviously you'll want to be interacting with them more, but the information above is all you'd need. And yes there are some minor over-simplifications in there. That's deliberate.
Don't Worry About Them Making Mistakes: YOU ARE NOT PLAYING TO WIN AT MAGIC. Repeat it. REPEAT. IT. The game you are playing is "Convert My Friends to a Game". If losing puts them off it, you need them to win. If winning suspiciously makes them feel patronised, you need to adjust for that. If being mana-screwed puts them off, allow them to mulligan without losing a card till they've got a hand where they can see where they're going with it. And most importantly of all: If they make a mistake and play a card which they shouldn't have, allow them to take it back, and then play as if you haven't seen it. Don't not attack because you know they've got an attacker-killer. Don't not play your creature because they've got a Wrath of God. Surest way to make them not like the game.
Don't Be Afraid to Tweak the Rules: When playing a game with someone new to it, hidden information actually drops in value for the new player, to the point where it's actually a drawback. Not only do they not know a good move, they're hesitant to ask you about their move, then get annoyed when they realise they made a bad move. Easiest way to solve this? Draw face-up. If you're following the advice I told you to repeat above, you won't be trying to memorise their hand for your own advantage, so there'll still be a trace of hidden information.
Make Sure They're Having Fun: Seems obvious, but don't confuse your own fun with theirs.

Post-Game

Make Them Feel Good: Best way to do this is to listen to them. Answer their questions. If they've been mana-screwed over, tell them about your most childish mana-screw strop. If they like a rubbish card, don't criticise it.
Another Game?: If they've had a good time, offer them another game with the same deck. If they lose badly, swap decks and try again. If they decide that a card sucks, trade it and play again.

Different Player Types
Board Gamers
Most board gamers have heard of Magic, in the same way that most footballers have heard of Manchester United, and almost all board gamers want to be introduced to more games. It helps that Magic's quite quick, especially by board game standards. So a lot of the heavy lifting's done for you. Try reading Mark Rosewater's "Timmy, Johnny and Spike" to work out which type of player they are in other games, and then bring out the deck during the setup phase for Mansions of Madness. As for what to use? Probably one of the latest intro decks or the duel decks. All pre-built decks are designed for intro use (see New World Order for how they use rarity to help with this)
Video Gamers/Casual
In my personal opinion, the best thing to buy for a "true casual" player would be the latest version of the Duels of the Planeswalkers game. It was clearly designed as an intro system, and it's got a good subset of the core rules, and because they're computer determined, (including the default decks), it's less intimidating in terms of making a mistake. It also avoids some of the disadvantages of competitive play:

You can play on your own to show them how it works. Even better, as you play, they can start "back-seat playing", and as they get more into it, you can then hand over the controller.
The AI is significantly less frustrating to lose to. It isn't judging you, it doesn't suggest better plays you could have made, and you don't care about its opinion of you.
It allows them to play against a consistent opponent in the AI (and at the early levels, a deliberately beatable opponent).
When they lose against the AI, they can just jump straight back in, no shuffling, no post-game argument.
The rules don't change on them. You don't forget the new changes to the Legend rule, or that Damage is no longer on the stack. Their mistakes are their own. Just make sure they always hit to stop the "instant clock".

Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014 just came out, available on PC & Mac, and Wizards has clearly realized they're onto something with this.
Another option is to get them into a Free-to-Play TCCG that isn't Magic. My wife is now a chronic Solforge addict (70 hours and climbing). She wants better deck control and the ability to takeback after a play mistake? If only I had this deck of a very similar game right here...
Sources:
  Making Magic, Latest Developments, Extra Credits

Wizards has a new product released this month (September 2012):
Booster Battle Packs (MSRP $9.99)
Each Booster Battle Pack contains:

Two 20-card semi-randomized decks
Two 15-card Magic 2012 Core Set booster packs
Magic "learn to play" guide
Rules insert

The ad copy says:

Each pack contains a pair of semi-random decks, each with land appropriate for the deck's two colors. To play Booster Battle Packs, each player selects a deck, opens a booster chooses up to five cards from it, and shuffles them into their deck, then the spell-slinging begins. Since each pack will have four different colors, the two decks won't overlap. And when you add the booster to the equation, Booster Battle Packs create nearly limitless limited play options.

So, that's a pretty affordable way to get your feet wet. Don't drown.

I believe this product is currently called "Fat Packs"

I believe they're called "Booster Battle Packs"!  Fat Packs have existed for ages, are slightly less focused at providing an out-of-the-box introductory two-player gaming experience.

Wizards has released ten 30-card sample decks (2 in each color) designed for exactly this. Unfortunately, they do not appear to be a product. I saw boxes full of these given out at conventions as freebies.

I went to the Magic guy at my FLGS and asked for them, telling him I was going to use them to teach new players. He gave them to me for free, as long as I told them to drop by his store. :)

I have found one simple word switch that is a helpful teaching aid.  Substitute the word mana for money.  You can't do anything without money.  The more money you have, the greater your options become.

This does not add anything significant to the existing answers. You might improve this answer by expanding upon it, especially with use-cases and examples of this technique's success.


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What are the blue-backed cards in Dominion for?
There is a set of one of each card, but with blue inner border on their backs instead of beige.
What are they for?

The blue backed cards are the randomizer cards.
They are listed among the contents (on page 2) and the main use is detailed on pg 5 of the rules.

For example, the players can shuffle the
Randomizer cards for all Kingdom cards and
draw 10 to select the cards for the game.

Or,
players can take turns selecting cards.
Players may also use the Randomizer cards
as Placeholders to mark the card piles so
empty piles are easily seen.

A lot of folks use a random deck generator.  If you use sleeves, it may be helpful to use a different color sleeve for the randomizer cards so that they catch your eye easier.
Do not add them into the piles unless you want to change the balance of the game.  There are supposed to be 10 of each card, not 11. Some game strategies revolve around depleting piles fast or unexpectedly and you would impede those by having 11 cards in each stack.  Also, since they have a different back, they will be noticeable unless you are using opaque sleeves.

You can put them at the bottom of the piles if you all agree that they aren't actually buyable cards. Then you have a clearly visible marker for an empty pile, rather than having to visually interpret the absence of cards (in a place that's implied to have had them before).

They were primarily intended to be used for randomizing, but most people use some sort of application for that. However, as is suggested in the rules, they can also be used as placeholders to indicate depleted stacks. This can be useful, as it's easy to lose track of how many stacks have been used up.

This question about Dominion organization and setup has some related answers.

lilserf talks about an iPhone app that helps with game setup
my answer "fine the way it is?" explains how we use the randomizer cards
if you're interested in using a computer program as a randomizer, Pat asked a question about which apps are the best

They are called the randomizer cards, and they are supposed to be kept separate from all the other cards and used to select 10 random kingdom cards at the start of the game.
I personally use one of many online deck randomizer (my favorite),  for this and just leave them in with the rest. You can cheat and try to bring them to the top of your deck when shuffling so you can draw them more quickly, but I've never played a serious enough game for this to be an issue. Also, leaving them in will make the game infinitesimally different since each kingdom pile has one more card. If you were running a tournament, you might want to leave them out for maximum fairness.

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Bottom card drawn during epidemic: What happens if there is already more than one disease cube in the city?
How do you handle a situation where the bottom card drawn in an epidemic is for a city with 2 or 3 cubes (of the same color) on it already?
For example, if Mumbai has 2 black cubes on it due to prior outbreaks in Chennai and Delhi, what happens if Mumbai is then drawn as the bottom card in the epidemic?  The first cube placed would put the total number of cubes up to three, the next would cause an outbreak, but would the third cube cause a second outbreak?
While a literal reading of the rules would seem to imply as much, it seems almost guaranteed to cause cascading outbreaks and almost certain loss.  Is my literal reading accurate?

This is actually explicitly mentioned in the rulebook, on page 6, under Epidemics:

2)   Infect: Take the bottom card from the Infection Draw Pile and add 3 cubes to the city pictured on the card, then place the card into the Infection Discard Pile. Note: No city can contain more than 3 cubes of any one colour. If the Epidemic would cause the city to exceed that limit, any excess cubes are returned to the stock and an outbreak is triggered. See rules for Outbreaks on page 7.

Note that this is only one outbreak:

any excess cubes are returned to the stock and an outbreak is triggered

If Mumbai has 2 black cubes, and comes up during the Infect phase of the epidemic, Mumbai only outbreaks once, and ends up with 3 cubes. Of course, this outbreak might cause chain reactions as usual (which, as usual, cannot cause Mumbai to outbreak a second time during the chain reaction).

The best way to prevent this situation is to keep track of the cities that might outbreak (3 cube cities that aren't in the infection discard pile, or if the infection discard pile is getting large, all 3 cube cities), and reduce them to 1 cube cities. I think it's also important to deal with cities that have just had outbreaks - since if they pop again, there will be a large group of interconnected 2/3 cube cities, leading to the loss situation you describe.
Keep in mind that the particular draw of the setup, affects the difficulty a lot - in my opinion, much more than the number of epidemic cards in the deck. One way to deal with this is to choose the number of epidemic cards to play with after you've set up the initial infected cities.

Just one outbreak occurs (unless the original outbreak cascades).
From the rules page 6:

No city can contain more
  than 3 cubes of any one color. If the Epidemic would cause the
  city to exceed that limit, any excess cubes are returned to the
  stock and an outbreak is triggered.

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What is the most damaging thing a cylon can do in BattleStar Galactica on a turn he is revealing himself?
What I have seen people do is try to brig a player making a final attempt to sway someone to help.  The best success I have had in a game was grab the admiral position for a turn with a character power, and hit the FTL early.  Are there any better strategies?  Do you think you should deny it to the bitter end no matter what never taking openly hostile actions?

Most of the absolute best reveals I have seen typically involve either getting an executive order, or playing a critical situation, whilst abusing things like arrest orders.  Most recently, we had Laura Roslin, who had moved to the Admiral's Quarters with the intention of visiting the Ally there, receive an Executive Order from another player.  Roslin immediately played an arrest order with her first action, brigging that player, and then with her second action, activated the location, targetting another human, and then playing the new 6-strength yellow skill card that auto-passes locational checks in order to force him to the brig as well with no check.  That ended the turn of the unfortunate human; next up was... Laura Roslin, who played another arrest order, brigging the last human player, and then revealed as a Cylon (the shock!) damaging Galactica.  That particular game ended in a hurry as the two revealed cylons were now opposed by three inmates, and the damage mounted up fast and furious.
The lesson:
NEVER XO the player whose turn is next, unless all cylons are accounted for.
The contrapositive lesson for the cylon:
Get an XO when your turn is soon or next for maximum carnage.
Other tips:

Use communications to move civilians out of their defended areas straight into raider fleets.
Make sure you use up any Once-Per-Game effects you have;  you lose them when you are revealed to be a Cylon.  That means re-roll successful FTL checks(Gaeta), force humans to decide badly on skill cards (Helo), force humans to lose on Legendary Discovery (Boomer), shoot the President/Admiral (Cally), etc.
Brigging the admiral is more effective than brigging the president;  it throws the title in the air, and you may wind up with it.  If you do, squander the nukes :)
If you are playing with the New Caprica expansion, the most lethal thing you can do is jump Galactica away before any civilians are launched.  Watch for timely opportunities to either be the Admiral (very difficult, lots of groups will execute the Admiral on principle to try to find the Cylon) or be someone who can become Admiral by power (Ellen Tigh) or by succession (be next in line, execute the Admiral).  As soon as Galactica returns, jump out, which causes EVERY CIVILIAN SHIP IN PLAY TO BE DESTROYED. I've never seen a group survive that.
If you are playing with the Ionian Nebula, visit lots of allies.  You can set up negative consequences on powerful allies, and then recommend to the other humans that they be visited :P.
If you are playing with the Ionian Nebula, you can try to eliminate a key human player during the trial by dumping trauma tokens on them with certain trial-crisis cards.  Also, in the leadup to that point, the more turns you can force humans to spend in sickbay/brig, the more likely they are to lose their trial or be flat-out executed.
If you are Lee Adama, you can use your once per game to remove viper cover from civilian ships at a key moment.  Don't forget that every viper launch is a mini-XO for you;  if the player before you launches a Viper, you can use that to launch yourself, trigger your once-per game, wreck the humans viper coverage, and then on YOUR turn, carry out the rest of your nefarious plot.

Overall, the key to a successful reveal is to either cripple mankind directly with big stat hits, or to gain an advantage by wrecking their hands/freedom of movement through execution or brigging.  Bear in mind that in the Ionian Nebula, the longer any given person is in the brig (or sickbay) the more likely they are to get executed or eliminated in the trial.

Also, Starbuck gets an extra action if she starts her turn piloting a viper. You can use your movement to get to Galactica to do a bad jump, brig, etc and then reveal yourself on your second turn.

+1 the first thing you mentioned,  communications can nearly always be done and always always hurts (far more than just putting one player in the brig.

I played last night as Cally, and became president. I got XO'd on the previous player's turn while in the "Play quorum" cards space.  Arrested two people, then on my turn shot the Chief.  The humans were then without any engineers, and galactica fell to damage shortly afterwards as it was surrounded by raiders and no civ ships.

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How much control does the first player have when placing multiple monsters?
When drawing multiple monsters and placing them is there a choice in which monsters go to the outskirts?
Do we get to pick what monster goes on what gate?

Just for reference...
For normal gate openings, on Pages 9/10:

The first player draws a monster marker from the cup at random and
places it on the location. If this would bring the number of monsters
over the monster limit, the first player places the monster in the
Outskirts instead (see “Monster Limits and the Outskirts,” page 18)
Exception: If there are five or more investigators playing, then draw
and place two monsters instead of one.

For monster surges, on Page 9:

The first player draws monster markers from the cup at random and
places them on each location with an open gate. When placing monsters,
they should be divided as evenly as possible among the open gates,
with no gate having more monsters placed on it than the gate where the
monster surge occurred this turn. If there are more monsters to be
placed than allowed by the monster limit (see “Monster Limits and the
Outskirts,” page 18), the players should decide where monsters will be
placed. The players must make this decision before monsters have been
drawn from the cup. If the players cannot agree where the monsters are
to be placed, the first player decides the placement

You are right, the rules don't explicitly say anything like draw and place monsters one at a time, though most everyone I've seen discussing this on the Fantasy Flight AH forum and the BoardGameGeek AH forum agree that hand picking which monsters get to go where is against the spirit of the game.
What would that mean thematically anyway? That the investigators can somehow allow two Cultists passage into Arkham but force the Gugs into the outskirts? The Mythos Phase is virtually completely free from investigator influence (save for things like the Psychic and Arcane Insight) and allowing the players to choose which specific monsters end up where on the board gives them a large degree of control that it doesn't make sense to have.
For monster placement, I just draw and place one-by-one, so it's pretty unambiguous which monsters are the ones the go over the limit. For surges I just draw monsters from the cup one-by-one and place them around the board going clockwise-ish starting at the surging gate. Any monsters that would get places but are over the limit go to the outskirts and I don't worry about fine tuning the placement in that instance.
That said, there's absolutely nothing stopping you if you feel like manually choosing the end locations for the drawn monsters.

Monsters are placed randomly in the outskirts and on the gates. You cannot choose to place the toughest monsters in the outskirts.
During a monster surge, follow these steps:

Determine how many monsters will be placed (subject to the monster limits)
Divide the total monsters placed by the number of open gates.  Each gate will get at least this number of monsters.
If the division is uneven, the first extra monster will be placed at the initial location
If there are still extra monsters to be placed, the players decide which gates will get the extras (no gate can receive more monsters than the initial location, if the players cannot agree the first player makes the decision)
Now draw the monsters one at a time declaring before you draw them which location the monster will be placed in.

This is summarized from the rules, on page 9.

If there are more monsters to be placed than allowed by the monster limit (see “Monster Limits and the Outskirts,” page 18), the players should decide where monsters will be placed. The players must make this decision before monsters have been drawn from the cup.


text:
What are the differences between Small World and SW Underground?
I was excited to see Small World Underground on the shelves of the local game shop yesterday, but neither the box nor the official web site seem to offer a succinct comparison with the original game.  It's clear that the races and maps have changed, but what else?
Additionally, how well does Underground work when used as an expansion for the original game (or vice versa)?  Some races have terrain-dependent powers, but at a glance, Underground doesn't appear to use any of the original terrain types.  Similarly, which expansions for the original game work with Underground?

There's a great "first look" at Small World Underground here.  This section in particular caught my eye:

After you choose a map, do not use powers that depend on features
  that are not present.
The following features are considered equivalent concerning their
  interaction with powers:
  -- Black Mountains / Mountains
  -- Mudpools / Marshes
  -- Mushroom Forests / Forests
  -- Mines / Mine symbols
  -- Mystic Crystals / Magic Symbols
  -- Rivers / Seas & Lake

I would add that some of the special powers in SWU duplicate racial
  powers in SW, or vice versa. If they happened to get combined
  (Immortal Elves, for example), I would simply put them back in the bag
  and draw again. [Edit: Many such combos are OK, since they enhance
  each other -- e.g. Commando Ogres, Vampire Sorcerers -- just like
  Pillaging Orcs in SW.]

From the sound of it, there has been some effort to "integrate" the two different games so that they are not basically incompatible (i.e. making sure there are analogous terrain types), but this only goes so far.  Some races may not work, and some races may get special powers that duplicate their racial powers.  So it could prove a bit annoying making them work together, if you like things to be really neat and tidy...


text:
Does anyone have a way to modify Ticket to Ride to accommodate six people?
I recently bought Ticket to Ride to play at our monthly game night, which consists of three couples, i.e. six people. Stupid me, didn't read the five player limit before ordering the game. I've played a few times now, and I really like the game, but can't think of any way to accommodate an extra player.
So, am I stuck making someone sit out or putting two people on one team if we want to play this with six people? Or has someone else come up with some modification to make this work with one extra person?

The obvious approach is to simply reduce the number of carriages each player has available, by enough to allow another player to join in. Normally each player has 45 carriages. In the 5 player game that makes 225 carriages available to place on the board. Divide by 6 instead, and you get 37 carriages per person.
So your only issue then is where to get your extra carriages. You can either make substitutions yourself, or buy one of the other versions (e.g. Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries, or Ticket to Ride: Märklin Edition), which come with other train colours.
I wouldn't expect to see any other significant balance issues with the extra player - Ticket to Ride is a pretty straightforward game.

+1 Good suggestion for fixing the total number of carriages.  Re. Balance issues: I would expect an extra player will make it harder to complete routes.  Although I doubt this will upset the game-play vastly, it might make the game less 'satisfying'.

Having fewer carriages also means that you'd be able to complete fewer routes. This may not be so much of an issue on European maps, but on the North America map, you'll only have enough time to complete the initial routes, factoring in the likelihood of that line between Houston and New Orleans (or even between Seattle and Vancouver) being blocked even before you can place your first couple of cars. You can use paper clips for the carriages of the 6th player.

Ticket to Ride Asia has a double-sided board, one side for up to 5 players playing individually, and the other side for 6 players in 3 pairs. It's very well written and playing in pairs doesn't just mean a straightforward teaming up as you only share half your information with your partner. Complicated on first play... but all the best games are!

What does playing in pairs do?  You and the person across from you each share a pool of trains of one color?

@NealTibrewala: Each pair plays a single color, but it's more complicated than that. While each partner has their own train cards and tickets, the also share a set that either can use (the expansion comes with card holders for the shared hand). Each time you draw train cards, one of the two cards must go in the shared hand. However, there is a limitation as well: the partners are not allowed to discuss their strategy in any way. Among other things, that means that your partner has no way of knowing what tickets are in your hand, other than by inferring based on the routes you take.

You may want to consider adding stations (or increasing the number of stations if you have Ticket to Ride: Europe) if you find the board gets too crowded and people are blocked completely from their routes too often (Note: too often. It should be allowed to happen sometimes)

A Train Station allows its owner to
  use one, and only one, of the routes
  belonging to another player, into (or
  out of) that city to help him connect
  the cities on his Destination Tickets.
  Stations may be built on any
  unoccupied city, even if it currently
  h> as no claimed routes into it. Two
  players may never build a Station in
  the same city. Each player may build a
  maximum of one Station per turn, and
  three Stations throughout the course
  of the game. To build his first
  Station, a player plays and discards
  one Train card from his hand, and
  places one of his colored Train
  Stations on the chosen city.To build a
  second Station, the player must play
  and discard a set of two cards of any
  one color; and to buil   his third, a
  set of three Train cards of any one
  color. As usual, you can replace any
  number of cards by Locomotives. If a
  player uses the same Station to help
  connect cities on several different
  Tickets, he must use the same route
  into the city with the Station for all
  of those Tickets. The Train Station
  owner does not need to decide which
  route he will use until the end of the
  game. A player is never required to
  build any Stations. For each Station a
  player has not used, four points are
  added to his score at the end of the
  game.

Remember that each Station played
  allows its owner to use one (and only
  one) route belonging to another player
  into that City for the purpose of
  completing a Destination Ticket. If a
  player uses the same Station to help
  connect cities on the paths of several
  different Destination Tickets, he must
  use the same route into or out of the
  city with the Station for all Tickets.

Ok, we tried a method that worked for us (family of 6). Using the original US map we divided up into three teams. Each player was given two cards and could only keep one. There was no "sharing" of information just trains. We each were given 4 train cards to start the game and we were off. New tickets could only be drawn when you finished your original route. Two tickets were drawn and only one could be taken. It made for a very quick and frantic game but was enjoyed by everyone. Since we are all familiar with the routes we could guess our team members goal and help connect our trains quicker. We have played this way a few times and so far no major snags (except when someone gets the track you wanted before you). It was actually a very simple and nice solution to our six player problem.

I have played TTR Europe with six players several times using an extra set of train pieces from TTR Nordic. We had 45 pieces each and using 3 stations it worked just as well as five players

The ticket to ride Old West map (part of the France edition originally released in 2016) has a sixth colour so that it can be played by six players. From TTR Wikipedia:

Play the Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 1 – Team Asia & Legendary Asia.
Play the Team Asia in the form of 3 teams of 2 persons. Playing in form of teams it is far more tense.

We played with scrabble letters for trains(on the US version). Played it twice no problem. Loads of competition :)

It sure seems like an answer to me.

Welcome to B&CG Nile.  It would be great if you could expand on this answer a bit.  Did you change the number of trains available to each person?


text:
Can Joe Diamond attempt to solve a puzzle twice with his magnifying glass?
In our latest session of Mansions of Madness, we allowed Joe Diamond to use his magnifying glass to make two attempts at a rune puzzle. However, at the time and shortly after the completion of the game, we questioned whether this should be allowed.
I came across this answer on the Geek stating that "a single investigator may not attempt the same puzzle more than once in a turn," but since it doesn't reference any specific rule I just wanted to find out whether this is the general consensus.
The Magnifying Glass card reads:

Once per turn, immediately after you spend an action to explore a room, you may take 1 additional action.

One puzzle attempt per turn per investigator is the rule.
From the rules, bottom of the first column on page 18 -

Each investigator can only attempt the same puzzle once per turn
  (but multiple investigators may attempt the same puzzle on the
  same turn).


text:
Why do some board games have long-lasting appeal?
Often, one plays a computer game through once and then is done with it. "Replay-ability" is something that is a great plus with a game, but not every successful one has it. But with board games, being able to play again and again is a basic necessity for its success. And some games are still loved (e.g., Monopoly and Risk) generations after they were first invented. The ultimate in replayability. Why is it that some games continue to hold lasting appeal even when society, culture, and the people themselves have changed so much since they were invented?

I think the basic premise of this is flawed.  There are board games that have terrible replayability, and there are computer games that have great replayability (Tetris anyone).  I agree with some of the answers, but they could just as easily by applied to non board games.

More on the flawed part.  No one plays Counter Strike once and calls it "played" There are 2 kinds of activities if put roughly, one time journeys with narratives, or repetitive, competitive activities

I agree with Lo'oris' argument that most older well known games are still widespread mostly because they already are everywhere. How many people go out and buy chess boards compared to the number of people who simply have them around from previous generations?
I think there are some additional aspects:
Simplicity
In my experience games need a good balance between complexity and depth in order to be popular. Basically the ratio of options a player has divided by the amount of rules he has to learn. A lot of games that are popular in our family are relatively easy to learn but offer a lot of possibilities in comparison. This can be illustrated especially well with games that are in very similar but somehow one of them just feels better. Compare Pachisi and Dog/Tock. The have the exact same basic concept — move your pieces around the board one time and get into the safe haven. But in all the groups I've played in Dog/Tock has completely displaced all other Pachisi variants because with a few additional rules it has become a much more interesting game.
Uniqueness
Most modern boardgames aim to produce a specific atmosphere or experience that is perhaps unusual for the players — a feeling they would otherwise not have. With so many games out there a lot of times games can feel similar to each other. There are countless games where you throw dice, move along a path and do something according to the field you landed on — nothing special. And then there are games that somehow manage to capture something special. For example Pandemic expertly captures the rush of working together against an overwhelming threat, Bohnanza produces an intense trading atmosphere, and games like Werewolves or Battlestar Galactica allow people to play out their mischievous and paranoid traits.
Whenever a game is released that succeeds with a good combination of these two (and maybe other) aspects then it is likely to become quite popular. Of course others will try to copy and improve that mixture. Some will fail but others will eventually succeed. At that point a battle will take place between the improved qualities of the newer game and the established following of the older one.

For the curious (like me), here's a link to the Wikipedia article on Dog/Tock (currently a stub): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tock

Monopoly and Risk were better than many others when they came out, so they were successful and became very widespread: now their "appeal" is only based on either nostalgia, or "getting used to them", or "not knowing the better alternatives", because overall they are very very poor games (especially Monopoly).
In general boardgames have a better replayability value simply because they are designed to have it, as opposite to some videogames that are (more or less) designed to be played just once. You will notice how PvP videogames usually have an higher replayability value than the PvE one: that's because playing against your friends makes the game more unpredictable than playing it against fixed opponents/levels. Since boardgames are almost exclusively PvP...
It's worth notice that both the videogame and the boardgame industry are recently experimenting different kinds of gameplay, so what I just said is only valid up to "a few years ago": now things are changing.

curious - what makes you say Monopoly is a "very very poor" game?

@warren: I don't know about Lo'oris, but here's why I dislike Monopoly so much (Copied from my user profile): It lasts hours, it's not very intellectually or socially entertaining, you have all sorts of house rules (many of which break the game or prolong an already insufferable game), people say they don't like board games when they really just hate Monopoly and haven't discovered better games.

@Firefeather - funny, outside of playing international Monopoly, I rarely have a game last more than 75-90 minutes

@warren: That would be nice; I think the house rules are mainly responsible for all the long games I've played (things like winner-is-the-last-one-bankrupted, haggling over trades, pick up tax money when landing on free parking). Unfortunately, some of these house rules have become incorporated into the rules. Also, its lack of intellectual or social entertainment value also makes it feel long. I think one reason why there are so many house rules (even all the bad ones) is that the game is so boring when played by the official rules.

@Firefeather how is "winner-is-the-last-one-bankrupted" anything but a standard rule that was there from the beginning? That's how I always understood the game was meant to be played, and I learned the game as a small child by actually reading the instructions (and then getting mad at the people setting up 'free parking' funds).

Something I find that helps tremendously in replayability is variable start-up. This is critical to games like Settlers of Catan and Dominion. Every time you start things are going to be very different and require a different strategy. Compare this to something like monopoly, which is going to start exactly the same and have the exact same strategies almost every time. If you've never played Dominion with a certain kingdom card, or never played Catan where you end up without any brick, its going to feel very different and re-engage you possibly as much as the first time you played it. New strategies and evaluations of new situations make up most of the difference between the game you end up playing 5-15 times and the game you end up playing 50+ times.
How this variability in strategy is achieved varies as widely as board games themselves do. Dominion has different kingdom cards, Catan has variable islands, bridge has your starting hand, Carcassonne has what tiles you draw, werewolf has different personalities you're playing with, and many cooperative games have different player roles and varying threats that need to be addressed. But the more similar a game is each time you play it, the less you'll tend to want to play it again.

From the standpoint of combinatorial games, it has to do with 3 factors"

Simplicity

The rules must be few so that the games are easy to learn.  The gameboard and play pieces must be simple so that people can make their own sets when formal sets are not available.  (A possible tic-tac-toe board, carved in stone, is at least 40,000 years old.)  These games are categorized as "abstract", and and the longest-lived games in existence.  [See "Elegance in Game Design" by Cameron Browne for further exploration of this topic.]

Non-triviality

This relates to the inability of the player to solve the game.  Triviality is subjective--to the average 5 year-old, tic-tac-toe is distinctly non-trivial! For the most part, games regarded as non-trivial are those they defy solution by the strongest human players, and more recently, automata. [Note that while AlphaGo can beat the strongest human players, the game itself is unlikely to be solved.]  Non-triviality means the game has depth and unlimited potential replayability.

Emergent Complexity

Emergence is a broad category, and in the context of games the term "emergent complexity" may be more apropos. (Unfortunately, the linked "emergent gameplay" wiki focuses on video games, but this quality is a factor in combinatorial games going back at least 2500 years via Go.)  Emergent complexity a key reason Go and Chess have been continuously played for millennia, and relates to depth, but in the context of strategy.  The basic idea is that unsolvable games are chaotic systems and new strategies will continue to emerge, which is what makes the games so compelling and long-lived.

Note: I focused on abstract, combinatorial "playgames" because they are the oldest and arguably most widely played games in existence (Chess and Tic-tac-toe in particular.) Other very old games include Backgammon, which is in a slightly different class per it utilization of randomness.  Although games like Monopoly and Risk are sure to be played for many decades to come, and might last centuries, I'd be very surprised if many modern games are still widely played in 1000 years, with the exception of Tetris*, but have little doubt that the abstract, combinatorial games will still be going strong.
One of the key conditions that limits the lifespan of video games is advances in computing (processor speed, memory, graphics) which results in popular games being supplanted on an ongoing basis by newer games which utilize stronger computing capability.  What makes Tetris so unique, and the reason it is potentially the most successful computer game of all time, is that it is a fundamental, abstract game, not subject to obsolescence as a result of stronger computing.

I think the main (though not sole) factor is the competition, and depth is another major one.
I love video games, but in most of them I am playing against the computer, often with a difficulty slider, often with the ability to adjust it after the game has begun.  It is fun, but not competitive.  I might play it through twice (especially if a different play through style) but more than that is very rare and by then I've seen it most of everything there is to see.  Enslaved: Journey to the West is one of my favorite recent vide games, but I only played it through once because there wasn't much more to see or do on a second playthrough.
With Chess or Go on the other hand, I am competing against another human (I do play against computers on both, but I see that largely as training/practice for playing against humans).  They also have enormous depth, where I frequently discover things that are new to me in games or in books about the games.  In contrast, while I certainly missed some things, I found most of what was available in Enslaved: Journey to the West in my playthrough.  Even more, professional Go and Chess players are discovering things that are new to the entire world.
To agree with and expand on what Lohoris said, video games that incorporate depth and competition last a lot longer than others.  Starcraft, which is all about competition and has enormous depth, is still played many years later and only really started dropping in popularity when Starcraft II came out with those elements and better graphics.

I think this simply comes down to the game mechanics.
What makes a great game great, is that depending on the strategy employed by the person you are playing against, it can significantly change the outcome of the game. Not one strategy is going to last you through winning at all times, but requires you to shift and change your strategy based on the approach your opponents are playing. A good game mechanic can ensure that the available strategy for winning is varied and dynamic.
Predictability is boring, variety is not.
That said, I am a much bigger fan of luckless games. Whilst I like to try to outsmart my opponents, I hate to lose or win by the luck of the dice or the random turn of a card.

I like some element of chance to the game most of the time because it more closely mirrors how life appears to work :)

Luck is important because, I agree, predictability is boring. I'd also comment that the reason why some people don't like too much luck is that luck comes at the cost of the feeling of control. I agree with Csíkszentmihályi's theory of Flow, in that the most enjoyable state of mind can only be achieved in activities where one can believe he/she has a certain level of control of the situation.

It's possible to have an element of luck in the creation of the "environment" and then leave it entirely up to skill to make the best use of that environment.

The social aspect is huge, and it's importance cannot be overstated. Even with all the new technology, playing video games with people in other locations doesn't provide anything close to the same camaraderie of a bunch of people in one room. And even now there are very few video games that work for more than 4 people at once, and many multiplayer video games have a steep skill curve and will be less fun if some of the participants aren't as good as others.
Another factor (inspired by the comments about Monopoly) is adaptability. One of our most popular tags here is one that's completely absent from gaming.stackexchange: [house-rules]. With board games, it's easy to experiment, try something unusual, twist and combine. Most games I like I've at least tried to play in a different way, and some of the variations have stuck. This is so easy to do with board games, and takes a lot of effort and some specialized skills to do with most computer games.

This is wrong. Most games are not really "adaptable", and as soon as you recklessly introduce some random house-rule without thinking straight and testing much, you will likely break the game.

@Lohoris, well, [house-rules] is the the 5th most popular tag on the site. I did edit my answer giving adaptability second seat to the social aspect, which I think is by far the most important factor.

@Lohoris I must beg to differ slightly.  Most variants started as house rules somewhere, and handicapping systems are almost always part of house rules.  Yes, many house rules will "break" the game, but some succeed spectacularly and spread, sometimes creating a new game or popular variant.  Chess was created by adopting a series of house rules to caturaṅga over time.  Many multiplayer versions of Magic: The gathering started as house rules that spread.  I don't think they are a reason board games are popular, but they certainly aren't a bad thing.

@shujaa: due to your edit, removed the -1 ;)

For our purposes, there are two main styles of board games: European (or German style) and American style. In recent years, the European style has become more popular because they emphasize skill rather than luck. That is, they involve primarily the earning of "income" of one sort or another, and the deployment of the resulting resources. The luck regarding "conflict" between opposing resources is a relatively minor part of the game.
The more popular American games, such as Monopoly and Risk probably have relatively greater appeal because they employ European style dynamics, specifically regarding "income" and the management of such income (long before the European style games came into vogue). In this regard, they are different from typical American style games such as those of e.g. Avalon Hill that are based on fixed resource endowments (based on historical availabilities), and direct conflict between those resources, without prior income management.


text:
Best cross-country route in TTR USA?
There are a number of potential cross country routes in Ticket to Ride USA:

the northern route (via Canada, Vancouver to Montreal)
the mid northern route (Seattle-Helena-Duluth-Sault St. Marie)
the central route (SF-Salt Lake City-Denver-St. Louis etc.)
the southern route (LA-El Paso-Houston-New Orleans-Miami)

Are any of these cross-country routes definitively more or less advantageous? What about with the 1910 expansion?
Another way to phrase this is, based on an analysis of the available tickets and scoring, within the framework of a cross-country strategy, are any of the potential cross-country routes particularly advantageous over another? Or are they essentially equal?

Please note: This answer is predicated on the use of the 1910 expansion pack. The analysis for which tickets are available for which route will not be valid for the "vanilla" Ticket To Ride: USA game, but the other elements of analysis (which routes are easier to build, get more points for building the routes themselves) will still be of value.
On a basic level, each of the four cross-country routes executes the same game plan: get across the country to connect as many high-value tickets as possible. There are of course other game plans, but if you wanted to use a cross country route, here is some advice.
Some ways to analyze our options are:

The number of turns it takes to build all of the lines (if it takes fewer turns to lay down the trains, then you can use more turns for picking trains, getting tickets, etc.)
The value of the trains for the lines (the actual value of building the trains themselves)
The number of trains it takes across the country (higher can be better because it helps get the longest train card, however lower can also be advantageous because you need to collect fewer train cards, and gives you more trains to do other building with)
The tickets that you can potentially complete using said route -- for example, if you can get Los Angeles to New York, you can get Los Angeles to Chicago relatively easily (but only if take the central route)

Depending on what you want to prioritize, the routes will be appealing to different amounts.
Before attempting to analyze the routes, here are the routes themselves:

Northern Route: Vancouver-Calgary-Winnipeg-Sault St. Marie-Montreal-New York (alternately, the so-called "more southernly northern route": Vancouver-Calgary-Winnipeg-Sault St. Marie-Toronto-Pittsburgh-New York)
Mid-Northern Route: Seattle-Helena-Duluth-Toronto-Pittsburgh-New York
Central Route: San Francisco-Salt Lake City-Denver-Kansas City-Saint Louis- Pittsburgh-New York
Southern Route: Los Angeles-El Paso-Houston-New Orleans-Miami

Number of turns

Northern route: 5 turns to build (vs. the "southernly northern route": 6 turns)
Mid-northern route: 5 turns to build
Central route: 6 turns to build (via Chicago: 7 turns)
Southern route: 4 turns to build

Value of trains

Northern route: 51 points (vs. the "southernly northern route": 43 points)
Mid-northern route: 49 points
Central route: 35 points (via Chicago: 31 points)
Southern route: 49 points

Number of trains it takes to cross the country

Northern route: 23 trains
Mid-northern route: 22 trains
Central route: 21 trains
Southern route: 20 trains

Tickets that can be completed
To assess this, we can see which tickets are completed within the route itself (i.e. you don't have to do any additional work - if you get the route, you can get the ticket) and those which are easily completed if you get the route (i.e. if you build a couple more times, you can get the ticket).
Also, the question of which tickets can be completed is predicated on which ones you actually get. So in a game with fewer players, of course you have a better chance of getting the specific tickets you want. You also have to be prepared to spend many turns taking tickets and hoping you get the right ones - which is why no strategy is foolproof. You can always just get the wrong tickets.
Northern Route
Tickets completed within the route itself:

Vancouver-Montreal (20 points)

Tickets easily completed from off of the route:

Seattle-New York (20 points, requires 2 extra routes)
Vancouver-Duluth (13 points, requires 1 extra route)
Vancouver-Denver (11 points, requires 2 extra routes)
Portland-Nashville (17 points, requires 4 extra routes -- yes, this one is a long shot -- unless you use the "more southern" option that goes through Toronto and Pittsburgh, in which case it only requires 2 extra routes)

Mid-northern route
Tickets completed within the route itself:

Seattle-New York (20 points)

Tickets easily completed from off of the route:

Portland-Pittsburgh (19 points, requires 1 extra route)
Vancouver-Duluth (13 points, requires 1 extra route)
Denver-Pittsburgh (11 points, requires 1 extra route)
Chicago-New York (5 points, requires 1 extra route)
Vancouver-Montreal (20 points, requires 2 extra routes)
Seattle-Oklahoma City (14 points, requiers 2 extra routes)
Vancouver-Denver (11 points, requires 2 extra routes)
Portland-Nashville (17 points, requires 3 extra route)

Central route
Tickets completed within the route itself:

Denver-Pittsburgh (11 points)
Salt Lake City-Kansas City (7 points)
Denver-Saint Louis (6 points)

Tickets easily completed from off of the route:

Salt Lake City-Chicago (11 points, requires 1 extra route, unless you reroute through Chicago)
Chicago-New York (5 points, requires 1 extra route, unless you reroute through Chicago)
San Francisco-Washington (21 points, requires 1 extra route)
Las Vegas-New York (19 points, requires 1 extra route)
8 Portland-Pittsburgh (11 points, requires 1 extra route)
Kansas City-Boston (7 points), requires 1 extra route)
Seattle-New York (20 points, requires 2 extra routes)
San Francisco-Atlanta (17 points, requires 2 extra routes)
Portland-Nashville (17 points, requires 2 extra routes)
San Francisco-Atlanta (17 points, requires 2 extra routes)
Chicago-Santa Fe (9 points, requires 2 extra routes, unless you rereoute through Chicago)
Chicago-Boston (7 points, requires 2 extra routes)
Los Angeles-Atlanta (15 points, requires 3 extra routes)
Seattle-Oklahoma City (14 points, requires 3 extra routes)

Southern route
Tickets completed within the route itself:

Los Angeles-Miami (19 points)

*Tickets easily completed from off of the route:*

Las Vegas-Miami (21 points, requires 1 extra route)
Los Angeles-Atlanta (15 points, requires 1 extra route)
Los Angeles-Oklahoma City (9 points, requires 1 extra route)
San Francisco-Atlanta (17 points, requires 2 extra routes)
St. Louis-Miami (8 points, requires 2 extra routes)
What does this tell us?

The Northern route via Montreal is perhaps the most out-of-the-way route: there are not a huge number of tickets to complete if you keep to the top of the board. However, if you compromise on using long trains only, and go Sault St. Marie-Toronto-Pittsburgh-New York instead of Sault St. Marie-Montreal-New-York, you have more potential tickets, because many tickets stop in Pittsburgh
The mid-northern route completes very few tickets in and of itself. However, off of this route there are a great many "high value" tickets which can be completed. This also means that there isn't as much competition for it, both because it consists of so many 6-train routes (and none of them are gray!), and because relatively few tickets go to Helena, Duluth, or Toronto.
The central route has the most versatility, due to the fact that it is in the middle of the board and so you can build off of it in both northern and southern directions.
The southern route is perhaps most difficult to complete, because the Houston-New Orleans route can be taken easily, and is highly valuable. If you choose this route, take that quickly; but it may give away your strategy.
The southern route clearly has the highest route points per turn necessary to build the route, and can be built quickly. So the southern route works best in conjunction with another strategy, such as building up the east coast (which gives access to many other tickets such as Los Angeles-New York, etc).
If you choose the central route, going through Chicago will get you more potential tickets, but you will lose a turn and 4 points by building two routes (St. Louis-Chicago and Chicago-Pittsburgh) rather than the single St. Louis-Pittsburgh route.
Though it is the most versatile (and can be completed even if there is competition over it, due to the double-routes), the central route has a number of downsides. It takes many turns to build, which reduces the number of chances to take tickets - a central element to the basic strategy of trying to complete as many tickets off of your main route. In addition, it is worth far fewer points in and of itself. Especially if you go through Chicago, in which case you both lose a turn building, and there can be a 20 points difference between the central route and the northern route! It is also the most visible of the routes -- since it has so many double routes -- and so people gravitate towards it and it is highly contested.
Plus there's the element of luck. You can't quite just pick a strategy and get the tickets you want. In many ways the appropriate strategy is based on the random tickets you get at the beginning if the game.
In the end, the routes are very balanced - as one would expect from a game which exhibits such high replay value.

The single biggest advantage, in terms of score, is a route containing 6-segment sections. Because of the way points scale, the points-per-car value of a a 6-segment connection is the highest.
Obviously, it's important to weigh this against the increased difficulty of completing the section, because getting six cards of one color (when there are 12 in the deck) is not easy, even with the help of locomotive cards.
I am not a TTR expert by any means, but I would say it's very unlikely that any one route is definitively advantageous. In every game that I've played, the person who won had the most points from completed tickets with a fair distribution of 6-segment sections. In some games, it was one or two big East-West routes, but in others it's been a higher number of shorter routes.
In short, I would suggest that there is not a definitive best route in TTR USA, because success depends so heavily on completing tickets, playing sixes, and blocking opponents.

Thanks - though I'm not interested in the "best" TTR route in general -- just the best cross country route. Ie. if you want to make a cross country route, which is the most advantageous one from a points, tickets, and strategic perspective.

@Jason - I appreciate that! I'd be interested to see an answer from someone who knows the game better and maybe  has done more math. My answer here is that I don't believe there is a best cross country route from a strategic perspective.


text:
Distribution of tokens in Standard 4 player catan?
My 4 player catan set has been mixed with my 5 & 6 player expansion set, parts have been lost, and last time I played we had 3 fields with an '8', no number '2' and a missing '10'.
Would someone be so kind as to run through the values in the standard game - i.e. A-R where A=x, etc…

Related: same question for the 5–6 player expansion

Here you go:

A = 5
B = 2
C = 6
D = 3
E = 8
F = 10
G = 9
H = 12
I = 11
J = 4
K = 8
L = 10
M = 9
N = 4
O = 5
P = 6
Q = 3
R = 11

Thanks! Is that all of them? I'd better get busy with paper and scissors…

@Edd - Yup, for 4 players, that is all of them.  You should be done in no time :)

Is there any meaning of the letters besides to identify them? When people ask what they mean I always have to confess that I have no idea.

The letters are just to put them in proper order. You start at an Edge with A, and continue alphabetically until you hit R. You skip the desert. The dots under the number indicate the relative frequency the number is rolled to give some at-a-glance clue to which spots are best. 6 and 8 are the most often rolled (aside from 7) so those are red.

I've marked the back of my 5-6 player ones, so I can tell them apart.

Interesting -- the backs on my 5-6 player expansion are speckled (in addition to the letter), while the original ones are plain.  The same is true for the tiles.

Another method:
I've noticed that my 5-6 player tokens have very dark gray numbers vs the normal tokens that have black numbers. It's hard to tell, but I could separate the two if I had to.
The answer given by @LittleBobbyTables is correct, but I probably won't have easy access this webpage (unless I print it) when the blunder that mixes my number tokens occurs. If you know this trick, you'll have a fallback method. Note that this may or may not work depending on what edition your game is (mine is 4th).

Agreed, although my expansion has brown numbers.

If you have a computer and an internet handy, this could solve all your troubles.

Have you any experience with that?  It looks interesting, but I was unable to find exactly what they're doing to ensure a better experience .. so I'm a bit skeptical.

I think I heard some rumor at work that the guy who runs that site works or used to work at my company, so I'll see.

I wrote Better Settlers. The main goal of it is to try to lay out the tiles/probabilities/harbors in such a way that it's random, but in a fair way. My friends and I got tired of playing games where the winner was decided with the initial placements. Since it doesn't follow the traditional "spiral out with numbers" strategy, it also adds more variability to games. Some people love it, some hate it, but if you have further questions (stackexchange comments don't allow full explanations :), feel free to ping me emailus(at)bettersettlers.com. There's also an Android app for those interested


text:
Can 'Eyes in the Dark' be played on an Investigator with a Torch?
Torch Investigators may Ignore Darkness in your room.
Eyes in the Dark: Requirement Basement or any room in darkness.
We took the ruling that the mythos card could not target the investigator as he was ignoring the darkness token.
We felt that there was an argument that while the investigator was ignoring darkness, he was still in fact in a room that was dark.

The investigator cannot be targeted by Eyes in the Dark.
The ruling you are looking for is on page 15 of the rules:

Some Exploration cards (such as the “Lantern”) allow
  investigators to ignore these effects. When ignoring these effects,
  an investigator also cannot be targeted by cards that require them
  to be in a room with a darkness token.


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What are some good strategies for Elder Sign: Omens?
I recently bought Elder Sign: Omens for my iPhone, and I really like it, but it seems to be VERY difficult.
Does anyone have some good strategies on how to play?
Specifically:

What is a good team to start with for a beginning player?
When should I use my cards? Should I use them as soon as I get them? Hold off a bit?
Which adventures should I try to defeat first? Which should I avoid until I absolutely have to beat them?
Is it even possible to win this game? Or is the point of the game the impending doom of the players?

Edit
Elder Sign: Omens is based off the board game Elder Sign

I have found Elder sign by normal rules to be too easy to need a real strategy.  Is this game much harder?

I can't win any of the rooms in the museum. Most of the time, it requires a perfect roll in order to beat the adventures. I just watched a "How to play" video and the board game plays exactly like the digital version.

I went ahead and asked the creators of Elder Sign: Omens and here's some responses from them and other members of their message board:

There are easier/less difficult adventures. Sure, you are still at the whim of the dice, but target some of the easier ones - specifically with the investigation tokens. These are easier to roll and succeed at and in turn provide you additional items and rewards that can be used to overcome some of the more difficult adventures down the turn.

Don't write off an investigator. My two guys were slouchs at first but when I started picking my adventures a bit wiser they ended up coming on strong.

The footprint token that allows you to reroll glyphs is priceless. Added dice is nice but the reroll is fabulous.

Target adventures that don't have sequential phases with investigators that don't have reroll abilities. This allows you to use the dice that are available when you have them and not in the order the adventure dictates.

Remember the odds of the dice. Each green dice has the following sides - Investigation ×1, Investigation ×2, Investigation ×3,  Lore, Peril, Terror. Be sure to Focus according to the odds and the needs of the adventure. Yellow dice replaces Terror with an Investigation ×4. Red dice is like the Yellow dice but replaces Investigation ×1 with the Wild token - lovely, lovely wild.

Cashing in trophies tokens at the Entrance seems to be a waste if you are using four investigators - especially if you have the adventure that is hitting you for 2 trophies every midnight. With four investigators, you only get two turns per investigator per day. I'm going to try with less than four to see if that dynamic will change.

Assist is a great feature that works if you fail an adventure and then have a second investigator come in. Instead of focusing one dice, you'll be able to focus two. A nice synergy in the game and makes getting past some of those tough adventures a little bit easier.

I used some/all of these tips and I was finally able to win a couple games.

First, if you hare having trouble winning any rooms I would recommend reviewing the rules.
Don't forget that:

You can hold one die after a failure
Special items let you have more dice
Clues let you re-roll any number of dice
Characters have special abilities
Investigation requirements can be made out of a few dice.

General strategy:

Don't hoard items
If you don't have items, try an easy room to get items
If you do have items go for a hard room to gain elder signs
Take special successes before investigation
Do not remove many dice to complete an investigation, unless you are finishing a room
Unlock dice as soon as you can

I have found the digital version to be much harder.  The board game tends to add 1 or 0 doom tokens every midnight.  In the digital version I have gained 3 in one turn.  There are other differences, some making the game easier.

Yeah, I get on average 2-3 even 4 Doom in 1 Midnight.

Just to add to the good advice already given:
More dice is always better, so my recommended investigators (in order):

Joe Diamond is key.  No one can get more dice.
Mandy Thompson is a close second, since her ability doesn't depend on
items
My key exception is Kate Winthrop: her ability to ignore terror
effects is powerful, especially considering that adventures with
terror effects tend to be easier to accomplish.
Gloria Goldberg and Jenny Barnes are a toss-up: Gloria is a touch
more useful since there are more other world locations at the end
game, and they tend to have elder signs to win.
Darrell Simmons has had some success for me, mainly clearing out
lower end adventures

One trick I've found useful - you don't have to complete a task just because you have the glyphs to do so.  I've discarded so I could focus (reserve) a special glyph that I need for later.
Monsters aren't always bad - sometimes a monster can make an adventure easier by covering a more complex task.
The game moves very quickly, and if you get behind the doom count it gets difficult to catch up.  Don't waste time buying/hoarding items, only heal when you have to.  The one exception is elder signs - I've won a couple of games by buying the last elder sign or two.

The super-team, as I've trial-and-errored to learn, is:
Harvey Walters, Michael McGlen, Kate Winthrop, and Gloria Goldberg.
The most important thing about the lot of them is that their abilities aren't item-dependent, and that can turn a game that's going badly into a squeaked-out win. Harvey and Michael's respective "swap out the terror glyph" abilities are really butch, and let them deal with lore-heavy (or peril-heavy) adventures with little item assistance. Kate's terror/monster immunity means she totally owns terror adventures, and monsters can't appear whether she fails or not. That makes her the perfect choice to go looking for the adventures that open other worlds. The other world adventures are the key to fast elder sign acquisition, and Gloria owns them all, since she gets the full load of glyphs when she's gallivating among the dimensions. Fun Fact: in the Cthulhu expansion you raise R'lyeh at the end and have to do a special adventure on it, and it's STILL AN OUTER WORLD, so Gloria's ability is still on full-blast.
In play, use Harvey and Michael to deal with the adventures where they have an advantage. They make good hatchetmen, too, since their individual good stats mean they can soak up the residual damage from monster slaying and still come out on top. These two are also primarily in charge of dealing with the midnight effect adventures, which you absolutely must defeat. Letting a midnight adventure keep dinging you will spell your doom (especially in the Tsathoggua campaign for some reason. You'll be up to your neck in Formless Spawn and won't be able to get anything done).
Kate's job is to tackle the terror-enhanced adventures, and look for adventures that open other world portals so she can set those up for Gloria. On Gloria's turn, if there's an other world open, she's going in. If there's not an other world open, angle her into adventures that earn her spells and clues--she doesn't need glyph items for what she does best, and after a couple of other world adventures she'll have plenty of those anyway.
Good Hunting!

Now that I have played through all the adventures but the last one, Ithaqua, I have developed a pretty good set of companions to take with me. Using Loren Dean's advice I started with Harvey Walters, Michael McGlen, Kate Winthrop, and Gloria Goldberg. Harvey and Michael are great for adventures that require many Lore or Peril roles.
I decided the goal of my party was to have as many dice to play with as possible. With that In mind I switched out Kate for Jenny Barnes. Jenny's ability to use up an item to get a red die and a yellow die made her almost invincible. At the same time I took Amanda Sharpe whose ability to complete multiple adventures in one turn allowed her to fulfill Kate's role of dealing with terror plagued adventures Often taking them out with just one role. Keeping Gloria for Portal adventures always payed off. I also kept Harvey. It seemed that his high sanity became more important in later adventures.
The game became very addictive for me. The Dark Pharaoh adventure was the best. Deciding which allies to take and trying to keep my stock of trophies full to take advantage of their powers was great fun. With the team above I was able to finish it in a couple of tries.

Dexter Drake is handy for picking up extra spells. I agree with Gloria for the Otherworld Levels, good way to pick up elder signs. You have to clamp down on the midnight effects, and remember you can kill a monster even if you can't complete the tasks. Take the hit (and reward) and come back next time for the tasks.
For the record, I hate The Curator.

authors: ʇolɐǝz ǝɥʇ qoq


text:
Identify Strategy Game with Chariots and Elephants
This was a strategy board game I played a few times as a child almost 20 years ago. Here is what I remember:

There were two sides with identical sets of pieces. I seem to recall the sides being brown and grey.
There were medieval soldier pieces. Some chariots (that the soldiers could ride), and elephants.
Each player has a set number of moves per turn that he can distribute as he sees fit on his pieces.
There was a hierarchy of power. I'm pretty sure a soldier (alone) couldn't kill an elephant.
The map was a network of connected circles.
Each side had a castle composed of 5 or 6 connected circles.
To win you had to occupy your opponents castle.

Thanks in advance!

Don't know why this was downvoted - seems like a reasonable and objectively answerable question!  Also, sounds like an interesting game...

The game you are looking for is Conquest:

Ooh, pretty board...

Yes! That's it! A self published game? Hmmm. Makes me really wonder where the people who had it got it from. It's not like we have a big board game market in Asia.

Awesome ... it looks interesting enough that I might even check it out.

I added a link to the BGG page.  There are multiple different versions with different BGG pages, so I chose the earliest one, but that might not be the version that you had.


text:
What is the "En passant" rule in chess?
How useful is that rule and how many times we can use that in one game?
Under what conditions can the en passant rule be used?
How often does it come up and is it a good idea to use it?

En Passant is when an opponent's pawn is two ranks away from your pawn row (either 4th or 5th rank depending on color), and you move your pawn two spaces forward with one move, so that is is next to his pawn.  You are allowed to make your first move with a pawn two spaces, but the En Passant capture allows your opponent to capture you just as if you had moved one space.  Note, that this capture is only allowed as the very next move.  This prevents you from being able to sneak pawns by your opponent's pawns.

It's not only useful, but chess would be a completely different game without it, since everyone would have to be very concerned about moving a pawn to the 4th or 5th rank, knowing that a pawn could get past them.  The main way you could change it so that the game wouldn't change radically is to disallow 2-space moves by pawns, but that is still a substantial change from the way's it been*, and would eliminate the majority of standard openings. A less tumultuous change would be to simply prohibit double movement in the cases where an en passant capture would be possible. This would have almost the same exact effect as the en passant rule, since it happens more often that the threat of an en passant capture is enough to make an opponent not move two spaces, and actual uses of the move are rare.
* unless you go back to the 15th century, when the ability to move pawns two spaces was added to the game.

It's worth noting that if pawns were only allowed to move one space at any time, the en passant rule wouldn't be required, and chess would still be the same game (albeit slower).

Also, you should explain that you can only make this move on the turn immediately following a two-square pawn move.

@ire, both good points, I'll edit the answer.

Great answer. I think that this move must be used very seldom, since its primary value is as a sort of preventive threat.

It's interesting to note that pawns used to be restricted to single space moves - and consequently there was no en passant rule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawn_%28chess%29#History

@Andrew Vandever: It is rare, but definitely important, like promoting a pawn (queen isn't always the right answer).

@Andy: excellent point.

I somewhat disagree with: "A less tumultuous change would be to simply prohibit double movement in the cases where an en passant capture would be possible. This would have almost the same exact effect as the en passant rule" - it might be used as a tactic to force someone to an en passant, correct?

Can other chess pieces (a bishop, queen, or king) use the en passant rule to capture an opponent's pawn which has advanced two squares, or is the rule limited to pawns?

@RobertF, it is limited to pawns.


text:
Small World : purpose of hiding VP
Have you ever tried playing Small World with visible VP ?
It sometimes frustrates me to discover in the end that some player had much more or less VP that we expected. Memorizing the VP count for every player is feasible but requires so much concentration.
Consequences I envisaged :

game might take longer because of added strategic thinking
new players may get earlier the feeling of which strategy is successful and also who they should attack
less talk during turns "you should attack him, not me since he made 14 points last turn"

What are your experiences or feelings with this variant ?

Have you tried this house rule?

Not yet ... my player group does not meet that often unfortunately

In Vinci, the original game that Small World is based on, VPs are open.  In that game it can lead to end game kingmaker effects where a player can't possibly win, but can decide who does win based on who they attack.  With hidden VPs, the kingmaker effect is still there but its less obvious, as players who aren't precisely tracking every VP won't know when a particular attack will make a difference of who wins.

That's a good reason ... do you see others ?

Specifically, this is the reason why the designer added the hidden VP rule to Small World.  The aim was to prevent the end-game kingmaking which is prevalent in Vinci.


text:
Why is it of high importance to control the center of the board in Chess?
One reason for this is that from the center of the board, your pieces
have quicker access to the other parts of the board. Another is that
your pieces often attack a larger number of squares. What others are there?
I often find myself having control of the center, only to end up
thinking "Ok, now what?".
What advantages do I get, and how can I
make something useful out of these?

Unless this is intended to be a community wiki, I don't think there is any need to update your question with a list of advantages; let the answers speak for themselves.

@LittleBobbyTables That was in fact my initial intention =). However, I did not have the required rep for that at the time.

I often find myself having control of the center, only to end up thinking 'Ok, now what?' - Now use your knowledge of chess theory to form a plan.  See for example this question.

In addition to the points you made, controlling the center means that your opponent will then have to form his or her attack on the wings.  Think of not only what it does for your pieces but what it means for your opponent's.
Picture the movement pattern of a knight - if you control the center, the knight can attack all eight squares.  If your opponent's knights are forced along the side of the board they're likely going to be in the first, second, seventh or eight columns (files).  That means they're less effective. ("A knight on the rim is grim.")
If you have control of the center, it's usually the time to start planning an attack.  Has your opponent castled?  If so, start getting your pieces aligned to make an attack on the appropriate side.  If you're playing more of a positional game it's time to start marching forward, taking up real estate on the board and placing your pieces and pawns onto squares that make it difficult for your opponent to move/develop his or her pieces.

Controlling the Center:
1) From the beginning of the game until the King castles, the center of the board is where the King is, and so it is the logical place to begin operations. After the King does castle, the operations tend to focus on creating an attack on the flank where the King has moved to.
2) The middle of the board allows for the most mobility for all of your pieces but the Rook. Knights have 8 squares in the middle, 4 on the edge, 2 in the corner.
Bishops have 13 moves in the middle, 7 in the corner. The queen has 27 in the middle, 21 in the corner. The more squares your pieces control, the more options you have later in the game
3) Moving a center pawn forward frees three pieces (Queen, King, one of the Bishops). Moving a Bishop pawn forward only frees the Queen or the King. Moving a Knight pawn forward only frees a Bishop, and moving the Rook pawn forward only semi-frees the Rook. So in order to get the most pieces developed efficiently, moving the center pawns are important. Once they have been moved, it is critical that they remain as a shield at least until your King has been moved to safety.

Also consider that your opponent thrives to control the center, so you controlling it derails his strategy which gives you an advantage.
Had opening books, ending books, and training/practice regimens centered (pun intended) on flanking strategies rather than strategies for controlling the center, people'd push for controlling the flanks and not think about the center so much.
But the general premise holds. Chess pieces have easier movement and larger fields of influence when in the center as compared to being on the flanks.
A knight for example, when sitting on a center square, directly covers 8 squares. When sitting on an edge square, it covers only 4 squares.
For other pieces this is even more pronounced.

The center of the board is its crossroads, much like the center square in tic-tac-toe.
From the standpoint of chess, once you control it, you (usually) limit your opponents' options, including his power to attack you. That's a major benefit.
As to how to attack your opponent with that advantage, study some tactics.
One way is to attack a target with all your pieces, force your opponent to defend, then move some of your pieces to a different target, probably on the other side of the board. You can move faster than your opponent because you control the center, so you'll "hit" the second target.
A good exposition of these ideas can be found in "Chess Fundamentals" by former world champion Jose R. Capablanca. It is an "old" book written by someone born in the 19th century, but it taught me how to play chess years ago. It can also be found online under Googlebooks.


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In Descent SE can you sell search cards after use?
In Descent second edition it says on most search cards that if you use them that they should get flipped over. In campaign mode does this mean that you still can sell them in the campaign phase?

Yes. That's why they're flipped face-down when used rather than being discarded--to keep track of how much gold you've earned. Conceptually, the card represents that your search uncovered a cache with both gold and a useful item.
From p. 10 of the rulebook:
Gold: When playing the campaign, this number shows how much gold the players have earned, in addition to the abilities listed on the card.

though it is then odd that you can't keep unused cards between campaigns


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The fear of door knobs and being moved by the keeper
There is an insanity card (one of my favorite as a keeper) that says that the investigator has to roll will+2 everytime he/she walks through a door. What me and my players haven't been able to agree upon is whether the investigator should roll the dice even if it is the keeper who forces the player to move.
My gut says yes as in the same manner that you need to roll horror if the keeper moves you into a room with a monster as well. What is your opinion and are you able to find any basis for it in the rules?

The investigator should roll even if they're forced through the door by the Keeper. It isn't covered explicitly in the rules, but it is essentially a horror test and the entire benefit of the trauma is that the Keeper should be able to exploit it.
I would say that, as with normal horror tests, passing through the same door more than once in the same turn should only force one test however.

Just to clarify, if a investigator had moved through a door at his turn (and rolled for it) then he shouldn't need to roll for it again if the keeper moves him again in the investigators turn or in the keepers turn? Anyhow, your answer makes a lot of sense.

Sorry, I meant I think the investigator should only roll once per door per turn. So for example the Keeper plays a Mythos card that forces him through the door in the Investigators turn and then if the Keeper moves him in the Keeper turn, he should roll roll again - That means the Keeper can mess with the Investigator a bit with Mythos and Keeper Actions but stops him from using the same action (most likely "Uncontrollable Urges") multiple times in his turn to keep forcing horror tests.