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How would it change the game play style if players can see each other's racks in Scrabble?
I've always been curious, and wanting to try this with a friend, but I don't know any real life friends that would play me. Also no apps that I know support it afaik, and you'd have to manually tell the person your rack each turn, which I doubt anyone is willing to try with me. I think it would make it more strategic although a prolonged game.
I was thinking a few things would change:

Each turn would take longer because each player is trying to counter the other one's moves.
In a game of 2 players, trying to block scoring opportunities for your opponent will have about as much weight as scoring high or rack management.
In a game of 3+ players, it won't have much of an effect until the endgame, because it takes a long enough time to figure out the best scoring or highest value play (a play that leaves with good tiles for next turn).
"Fishing" for letters may become a thing. If you notice all your opponent's racks contain no o's, the board contains few o's, but you need an o to make a bingo, you can probably assume there's a high chance of drawing an "o", so you use up only 1 tile or you exchange a tile when making a move now but score low points on the next turn would be less than exchanging tiles and scoring big next turn.

I think this would depend on the skill of the players in question

I agree with "In a game of 3+ players, it won't have much of an effect until the endgame", but I think there's a stronger reason than the one you pose: earning one point for yourself always has the same net effect as denying each of your opponents one point. So with one opponent, earning and denying are equally valuable, but with multiple opponents, earning becomes far more important than denying.

It would make gameplay more frustrating
There is very little to gain, and a lot to lose from this tweak.

Because players have more information available, it will take longer to decide what the optimal play is.

Because other players can see what you have, they are more likely to make moves that will block your best possible play.

Rather than encouraging strategic play, open information would instead encourage tactical play - you've added more information about what your opponents have right now, while adding comparatively little information about what will happen in the future.


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Game about rescuing books from churches
I watched a review of this one a couple of years ago. It's set in France, I think, roughly late medieval / early Renaissance. There's religious unrest which is causing a lot of church burning, and you're trying to get the books to safety before they're burned up. It's a standard counters-on-a-board game.
Can anyone identify this?

Could be Alexandria (although that's not exactly in France): https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/209538/alexandria

My thoughts exactly. It even came out around the same time as the OP saw the review

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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what if you an your opponent die at the same times
Suppose my opponent and I have a life total of 1. I play a blood toll harpy. And we each lose one life. What happens?

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


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Phase 10 - Can you hit on the same turn as playing a phase?
Reading the rules it states that you must have a phase before you can "hit" on other people's phases.
That said, do you have to have that phase at the start of your turn? Or can you play a phase, and then immediately hit the other player's phase?
The rules seem to make it seem like you can, but that would make playing your phase first the least advantageous, since all the players after you would get a chance to hit on your phases after they play their own (and you didn't get to hit anywhere because you were first)

I don't have the rules in front of me but I have always played that you could play on other players right away.
I could see that argument in a 2 player game that going down second would have an advantage but if both players are playing that way it is more likely that your opponent will just go out when they put down their phase and therefore stopping you from playing your phase and sticking you with a lot of points.  I would argue it better to move on to the next phase and get a small amount of points then not to go down at all.


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Battlestar Galactica (base game) Sympathizer explanation?
I recently purchased BSG the boardgame and, reading the rules, two questions aroused to my mind regarding the sympathizer mechanic.

With 4 and 6 players, after dealing the starting loyalties cards, we have to add the Sympathizer card to the deck... That means the deck now has +1 card than the number of players, so is it possible that, during the sleeper agent phase, no one becomes the sympathizer, right?
Also, if the sympathizer card goes to a non-revealed cylon player and there is at least one resource in the red zone, this player becomes a sympathizer. Then, if he deals the non-revealed cylon card to another player, we can have 2 cylon (sympathizer + cylon) in a 4 player game, and 3 cylons (2 cylons + sympathizer) in a 6 players game right? Wouldn't it be a bit unbalanced?

Thanks for the answers!

All of the loyalty cards are dealt out.  The starting loyalty deck compositions have (2n - 1) cards in 4 and 6 player, where n is the number of players, so that when the sympathizer card is added, there are exactly enough loyalty cards.
The point of the sympathizer card is to be half a cylon, by being either a handicapped cylon (no super crisis, can't activate the cylon fleet) or a handicapped human (in the brig).  As each of these favors one side slightly, the side that is losing at sleeper phase gets the advantage so the game is a bit self-balancing.  If the humans are winning (all resources in the blue), the sympathizer is a handicapped cylon; if the cylon's are winning (at least one resource in the red), the sympathizer is a handicapped human.  Note that the sympathizer is always something; the sympathizer card always gets revealed and does something to that player.

Note on the sympathizer: Fantasy Flight (the maker of the game) was never quite happy with how the sympathizer worked.  The game at its heart works best with 5 players and everything else is an attempt to make it work with other numers.  The Pegasus and Daybreak expansions introduced four potential mechanics to replace the sympathizer, Pegasus introducing the "Sympathetic Cylon" and "Cylon Leaders (agenda cards)", and Daybreak introducing the "Mutineer" and "Cylon Leaders (motive cards)".  Having tried all of these, the best option for a 4 or 6 player game (in my opinion) is using a Cylon Leader with motive cards from Daybreak.


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MTG: Modal cards and graveyard targeted effects
In regards to modal double-faced cards there are many effects which allow you to "Cheat" in one side or another.

If an effect allows you to play a land or cast a spell from among a group of cards, you may play or cast a modal double-faced card with any face that fits the criteria of that effect.

However does this effect apply to targeting abilities? If one has a Birgi their graveyard (Birgi, God of Storytelling / Harnfel, Horn of Bounty). Her flip-side is an artifact. Would one be able to Sacrifice an artifact (a Myr token lets say), with something like Goblin Welder or Daretti, Scrap Savant 's -2 to reanimate either side of Birgi?

No, if you reanimate a double-faced card (modal or transforming), or otherwise do something that isn't casting it, you can generally only operate on the front face.
The most important rule here is 711.4a:

While a double-faced card is outside the game or in a zone other than the battlefield or stack, it has only the characteristics of its front face.

If you are trying to target a double-faced card in the graveyard, you can only target the front face, because that face is the only one it is considered to have there.
The other important rule covering reanimation is 711.10:

A double-faced card put onto the battlefield from a zone other than the stack enters the battlefield with its front face up by default.

The Daybound ability modifies this. A card with Daybound instead enters the battlefield with its front face or back face up depending on whether it is night or day, as specified in rule 702.145b:

Daybound is found on the front faces of some transforming double-faced cards and represents three static abilities. “Daybound” means “If it is night, this permanent enters the battlefield transformed,” “As it becomes night, if this permanent is front face up, transform it,” and “This permanent can’t be transformed except by its daybound ability.” See rule 724, “Day and Night.”

Casting is different because modal double-faced cards have a special rule that allows you to cast either face, in 711.7:

If a transforming double-faced card is cast as a spell, it’s put on the stack with its front face up. A player casting a modal double-faced card as a spell chooses which face they are casting before putting it onto the stack. See rule 601, “Casting Spells.”

There is now an exception for the MID werewolves - they enter with the side up that matches the game's day/night status with their daybound/nightbound status per rule 702.145b

Sort of. A daybound permanent can enter the battlefield transformed, but it still only has the characteristics of its front face in other zones. So the question "can I target a double-faced card in the graveyard if the targeting restriction only applies to the back face?" still has the answer "no", and the same is true of "can I choose whether the permanent enters the battlefield transformed?"

It is the exception to 711.10, so while you will target the card represented by the front face with a reanimating spell, the back face will be what enters the battle field at night. I felt it worth mentioning.

I added a note with that information


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Detailed MTG card List
Is there a way to obtain a detailed list from WotC’s The Gatherer of magic cards? What I am looking for is a way to enter a list of magic cards and to get a print off of the card details in a nice rowed format, something that I can cut and copy directly into Sheets or MS Excel.
Name  – Cost – Type     -  Text       -  P/T

Name1 – 1W   – Creature – Flying      – 1/1
Name2 –  U   – Instant  – Draw a Card – “”
...

I see one of the Gatherer’s default displays is Text only, but the layout it uses is very scattered and not copy-paste friendly. Any work-arounds for that are also acceptable answers.

Personally I download the list in a txt format after inputting it in deckstats.net, but this does not seem to justify making a full answer, so I'm putting it here

Possible duplicate of https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/q/31870/10354

@JonTheMon Nasher's question is practically the exact opposite of this. He was looking for just a list of cards with Name-Only, specifically calling out that he did not want to see Mana Costs or Text. This question is definitely looking to include those. Looking through the answers he received might show what I am looking for thou, so I'll review those.

@L.P. if you are fine getting them from Scryfall then the second answer explains how to get a csv which is easy to import into Sheets or Excel.  On import you can eliminate the columns you don't want.

Which is why I didn't actually vote to close.  I did feel that the process of those answers could be close to what you need.

@CALEBF unfortunately the csv from Scryfall doesn't appear to include card text.

@murgatroid99 Oh wow, I'm at work so I didn't check that.  I guess it would be hard to make a csv since there are commas in card text

The CSV format allows for commas in values.

The most complete collection of card data I'm aware of is mtgjson, which offers a variety of data structuring to choose from, and has everything you asked for. It is used by a number of MtG-themed web pages, and due to its structure is well-suited for both applications, and purposes such as yours.
However, to get it into a layout of your choice, you'd have to parse the data and write a script to output it, which might not be feasible for everyone.

Another option would be Gatherer Extractor, a tool to extract pictures and text data from Gatherer (WotC's official card database) and according to that thread export as CSV or XML.
Unfortunately, the thread I could find and download are dubious at best, and the Github page is quite dated, making it difficult at best to decide on the trustworthyness on either.

A quick google search for "excel import json" turns up this support page, so using the JSON from mtgjson may not be all that hard.

Got the json file, and just used an online converter to change it from Json to CSV. There's lots of extra junk in the data, but it's easily cleaned up using Excel.


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Commander Damage Stacking & Player Control
In Commander/EDH, as far as I understand if a commander does 21 damage to an opponent they lose. I understand separate commanders must be tracked separately in multiplayer.
How does this count if for instance you attack and hit Opponent A, with an 11/11 Commander. Then Opponent B gains control of that same commander (Donate, Confiscate, etc) and on his combat attacks and hits. Is the damage totalled and Opp A loses, or is it tracked separately again? If it’s the latter does commander damage from two different commanders but controlled by the same player stack?
Please include if there are “Mind Control” effects that would yield difference results to this questions.

They would not track separately; the player will lose.

903.10a A player that’s been dealt 21 or more combat damage by the same commander over the course of the game loses the game. (This is a state-based action. See rule 704.)

And

903.3. Each deck has a legendary creature card designated as its commander. This designation is not a characteristic of the object represented by the card; rather, it is an attribute of the card itself. The card retains this designation even when it changes zones.

Basically, no matter who controls a commander, it is still the commander of the deck it started in; it is the same actual commander. While you can take control of a player's commander, there is no way to change it into your commander.
In regards to your question about 1 player controlling 2 separate commanders, this can easily happen with the Partner ability, that allows you to have 2 Commanders. In this case, damage from each commander is tracked separately; you need 21 damage from the same commander to lose the game.

702.123d Except for determining the color identity of your commander, the two commanders function independently. When casting a commander with partner, ignore how many times your other commander has been cast. When determining whether a player has been dealt 21 or more combat damage by the same commander, consider damage from each of your two commanders separately. See rule 903.11a.


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Activated effects after combat damage
I am looking for some rules clarification on the sub steps during attacks.
Q1a- I am told that Reconnaissance can be used AFTER combat damage has been dealt to an opponent, thus granting your creatures a pseudo vigilance. Can this be done even without additional Combat-triggers to respond to? (Something about gaining priority after damage?)
Q1b- Does the same rulings work with Berserk. To destroy unwanted creatures of my opponents after they deal damage?
Q2- How does Berserk on one of your own creatures interact with Maze of Ith or Reconnaissance? Are you able to prevent a creature from being destroyed? Or will Berserk's effect still trigger because said creature is still marked as having attacked at all?

Welcome! Stack Exchange only allows one question per question, so you should split Q2 to a different party.  Q1a and b are sufficiently close to be considered a single question.

I think that the second question is similar enough to the first in the sense that the second question seems to rely on his understanding of the first question, easier to have it condensed into a single question then separate similar answers into two indistinct sections

Question 1A
Reconnaissance can in fact be activated after combat damage. The reason for this is because after damage is dealt, all players receive priority before creatures are removed from combat.
Question 1B
Berserk contains the text

Cast this spell only before the combat damage step

So you wouldn't be able to cast it after the creature deals damage regardless. This seems self explanatory to me, so if I'm missing part of your question's intent, please let me know.
Question 2
The gathering ruling on Reconnaissance reads,

Does not undo any effects that triggered on declaration of attackers or blockers.

I interpret this to mean that anything that triggers or depends upon a creature having attacked will still be in effect. Regardless of if the creature is no longer attacking, it still has been declared as an attacker, meaning that the creature would still be destroyed by Berserk. Maze of Ith WOULD follow the same logic, except that it doesn't actually remove the creature from combat. Instead, it reads,

Untap target attacking creature. Prevent all combat damage that would be dealt to and by that creature this turn.

Maze will have no impact on Berserk whatsoever, although it is worth noting that even if it removed a creature from combat, it still would not save a creature targeted by Berserk.

506.1. The combat phase has five steps, which proceed in order: beginning of combat, declare attackers, declare blockers, combat damage, and end of combat.

Players recieve priority (have the ability to cast spells and use abilities) in each step, after the event the step is named after happens.  (So, in the declare blockers step, all blockers are declared, then players can cast spells.)

511.3. As soon as the end of combat step ends, all creatures and planeswalkers are removed from combat. After the end of combat step ends, the combat phase is over and the postcombat main phase begins (see rule 505).

Reconnaissance has no timing restrictions, but it can only target attacking creatures.  Per rule 511.3, a creature stays attacking until the End of Combat Step ends.  That means that you can get the vigilance effect you want by using Reconnaissance during the Combat Damage Step (because the damage happens before priority) or during the End of Combat Step (because the creature stays attacking until after priority)
Berserk, on the other hand, reads "Cast this spell only before the combat damage step."  You can't cast it after damage had been dealt.


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Ugin's Condition Tokens & Doubling effects
Using Ugin, the ineffable's +1 ability that creates a token with the condition that if it leaves play, return the related exiled card to hand.
How does this condition interact with effects such as Doubling Season's (or similar cards) x2 token production.
If either token leaves play do you return the exiled card?

This is addressed by one of the Gatherer rulings for Ugin:

If an effect such as that of Doubling Season causes Ugin to create two Spirit tokens, you still only exile one card from your library. You’ll put that card into your hand the first time that either of the tokens leaves the battlefield.

The ability also triggers the when the other token leaves the battlefield. It simply does nothing because it the exiled card no longer exists. This would be relevant if the first ability is countered, for example.

Where are the comp rules for that? Is this a case of an ability being linked to itself; as described in 607.1c?

I think there is a linked ability here, but I don't think that addresses the main issue. The main thing is that making two tokens effectively changes the triggered ability to "Whenever either of those tokens leaves the battlefield...". I'm not sure what a good rule reference is for that.


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Why is there no ruling to offset Mandatory Loops?
Why is there no ruling to offset Mandatory Loops?
As pointed out in a recent question: Marauding Raptor and Polyraptor - what happens when a loop has no exit?
Which states this ruling

721.4. If a loop contains only mandatory actions, the game is a draw. (See rules 104.4b and 104.4f.)

Now I understand within the confines of the game that certain cards have been created and balanced with mandatory actions that once cast can not be deviated from. This is part of card design- which is a whole different topic, but sometimes these have the unintended consequence of looping forever.
Non-optional unintended loops are presumably outside of the preferred intended play by the designers, and it leads me to wonder if any effort has been done to investigate outs for when these situations arise (eg. after a mandatory-loop, loops x100 then remove any further triggered/replacement effects.)
Allowing a hard break to certain loops might allow some niche decks to arise, perhaps this might lead to a negative impact on certain formats, which might be why this decision was done?
So ideally I am looking for any sources which point to why they have decided to leave this rule as such, and for so long. Has any past attempts at reanalyzing this rule come up?
Disclaimers:
Mainly looking for reasons within sanctions tournament rules, or other official events, but creditable sources outside that may be acceptable answers.

Don't have any official sources, but I'd suspect with game like Magic that has so many possible interactions (both currently and with future cards) it's probably safer to just have a safety net like this.  Say those loops exited after 100 iterations, where in that loop do you exit?  And how do you determine game state (an already ambiguous term) after that?  For a two card combo like the one cited in your question, that might not be too hard.  But what about 3, 4, 5 or 10+ card combos?  Also, why is going to a draw always a bad thing? If you are losing and can force a draw, is that really bad?

I suspect the real answer is rather uninteresting - this is a niche problem which would require a very inelegant and technical solution (see also murgatroid99's answer why it's not so easy as "stop after X iterations"). Just defining these games to be a draw is the easiest and cleanest solution that always works. Also, Magic design has started to favour optional triggers over mandatory ones in recent years, so the problem is bound to become even more niche.

For optional triggers the solution is simple - if choices you make lead to an endless loop, you can decide how often you want it to happen, but you do need to make a decision that breaks the loop eventually.

There is no reasonable way to eliminate all mandatory loops, so this rule would still be needed for loops that can't be eliminated. For simplicity, it's better to just have the one rule.
The biggest problem with trying to stop mandatory loops is listing what exactly stops happening, and putting the game in a valid state afterward. The simplest loops are the kind you describe, where one ability triggers, and the resolution of that ability causes another ability to trigger, and so on until the first ability triggers again and you end up in a loop. But there are other kinds of mandatory loops that are a lot harder to cut off.
One of the strangest mandatory loops in the game involves the card Lich's Mirror. If a player controls a Lich's Mirror that they do not own, and gets 10 poison counters, the Mirror's ability replaces the state-based action that would make the player lose, but the Mirror itself stays on the battlefield, so when state-based actions are re-evaluated, exactly the same thing happens. Stopping this loop would require either suspending the rule that causes state-based actions to be rechecked after they do something, or making the Lich's Mirror's replacement effect no longer function. In other words, that player either loses immediately, or becomes nearly unkillable, and both changes have other unpleasant implications. Ending the game in a draw is a reasonable compromise.
There are also several cards with "state-triggered abilities", which trigger on a particular game state, instead of an event. Some combination of those cards allow those abilities to trigger and resolve without changing the game state, so they immediately trigger again. There's no good way to change the game state so that those abilities stop triggering.
In addition to that, there are more technical issues with defining such a rule. In particular, it's not clear how you would define an "iteration" of the loop, or how you would determine what part of an iteration to end it on. For player-defined looping shortcuts, the player makes those decisions, but a mandatory loop can involve both players equally, leading to difficult-to-resolve disagreements about how exactly such a loop should end.

Essentially you would need to create a directed graph of each interaction to show what a single loop is.

"Stopping this loop would require either suspending the rule that causes state-based actions to be rechecked after they do something" There's a card that does that in silver-border land: Rules Lawyer.

Rules Lawyer suspends checking state-based actions entirely. That would probably be too extreme a solution to trying to control one card looping. I was talking about the rule (the second sentence of 704.3) that says that after state-based actions are checked, if any of them did something, they get checked again (and again, and again, until none of them take any actions).

But in this case, none of the state based actions actually did anything at all. So, no loop.

Actually, in the Lich's Mirror loop, at minimum, every iteration you have to shuffle your library. Sure, the game state may not have meaningfully changed, but actions were still performed and that's what matters here.

The rule is necessary. Limiting purely mandatory loops to a certain number of repetitions is impractical, especially for paper Magic, and it is potentially game-distorting.
Magic the Gathering is Turing-complete. This means a few things. Primarily, it means you can simulate a Turing Machine with only tournament-legal cards and the official rules. It also means that the game is subject to the Halting Problem, which means that there exist legal game states when it's impossible to predict, even in principle, whether or not a loop in the game will run forever.
That means the game needs a hard and (literally) fast rule to decide when to end the game permaturely. In paper Magic, without digital computation, it's impractical to make players play out a loop a number of times (e.g. 100) and then decide whether the loop will go on. In digitally enforced Magic such as Arena, it's even harder, because algorithms can't handle infinities or handwaving very well. And how can you possibly determine the optimal number of repetitions? Is the optimal number 10, 100, 1000, or a billion? At which point can you be sure that the loop will go on forever? You can't.
Note that the term "game state", which is for example used in deciding whether or not a loop is fragmented and whether players may continue performing it, isn't even defined anywhere! On the one hand, for a game in which every single minute detail is nailed down in the rules, sometimes repeatedly, it is quite shocking to have such a fundamental term undefined. On the other hand, it shows intuitively that the game is as complex as the scientific paper cited above has proven. In some extreme circumstances, the game just has to stamp down and call it quits. Because of the existence of paper Magic, that point has to come as soon as possible.
That's why  721.4 is necessary.

I think the problem with citing Turing completeness here is that if you can't decide whether a loop will run forever or not, then you also can't decide whether rule 721.4 applies. Also, I think the point about the impracticality of playing out loops is a bit of a red herring: For almost all loops, it would be easy to create a shortcut for however many iterations.

This is actually a misnomer as while it IS a sequence of mostly mandatory actions. It's not actually a loop (Repeating the same-same choices and actions over and over), it's much more complex and falls outside what is defined as actual Loops by the Tournament Rules committee.

Also, is the game still even considered Turing-complete if in a format that doesn't have the access to the required cards (Such as standard or a cube).


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Golden Guardian removed before death related trigger
Golden Guardian says:

(2): Golden Guardian fights another target creature you control. When
  Golden Guardian dies this turn, return it to the Battlefield
  transformed under your control

If an opponent targets Guardian with a kill spell, and you activate it's ability in response; it will return transformed. That's great.
But if you activate it's ability to fight another creature, THEN in response your opponent kill-spells it. Does the ability fizzle or will it still revolse returning the Gaudrian to the battlefield transformed?

What do you mean by a "kill" spell?

I think that's a common enough slang for a spell that destroys (or possibly exiles) a creature.

@murgatroid99 Maybe but it still would be nice to know as I assume that the difference between destroy and exile could matter in some cases.

Golden Guardian doesn't return to the battlefield, but you can activate the ability again in response to the kill spell to have it transform when it dies.

Golden Guardian will stay dead.

That part of Golden Guardian's ability is a delayed triggered ability. It won't trigger because it's only created during the resolution of the activated ability.

603.7a Delayed triggered abilities are created during the resolution of spells or abilities, as the result of a replacement effect being applied, or as a result of a static ability that allows a player to take an action. A delayed triggered ability won’t trigger until it has actually been created, even if its trigger event occurred just beforehand. Other events that happen earlier may make the trigger event impossible.
Example: Part of an effect reads “When this creature leaves the battlefield,” but the creature in question leaves the battlefield before the spell or ability creating the effect resolves. In this case, the delayed ability never triggers.
Example: If an effect reads “When this creature becomes untapped” and the named creature becomes untapped before the effect resolves, the ability waits for the next time that creature untaps.

(Empahsis mine)
A ruling on Golden Guardian confirms this.

If Golden Guardian leaves the battlefield before its activated ability has resolved, it won’t be returned to the battlefield when the ability resolves.

When Golden Guardian's activated ability resolves,

You are instructed to have the Golden Guardian fights another target creature. Nothing happens because the Golden Guardian no longer exists.[CR 701.12b]

You are instructed to create a delayed triggered ability. It will never trigger because the creature it references in its trigger condition no longer exists.[CR 201.4, 400.7]

PS - It doesn't fizzle, which means removed from the stack as it would resolve for complete lack of legal targets. It simply doesn't get placed on the stack because it doesn't even trigger.

So does that mean it can still trigger later if you revive+kill the guardian in the second main phase?

@Tezra No. That would be a different Golden Gardian (even if it's represented by the same physical card). When a card refers to itself by name, it means "this object".  [CR 201.4] And that object ceased to exist the moment it left the battlefield. [CR 400.7]

Golden Guardian will stay dead.
Since the ability doesn't resolve until after Golden Guardian dies, it won't "see" the Guardian die, and therefore won't trigger.
There is a Gatherer ruling that states this specifically:

If Golden Guardian leaves the battlefield before its activated ability has resolved, it won’t be returned to the battlefield when the ability resolves.

If the Golden Guardian dies before its ability resolves, then the ability will effectively do nothing and the Guardian will stay dead.
The ability does two things: it has Golden Guardian fight the target creature, then it creates a delayed triggered ability that brings the Guardian back from the graveyard transformed when it dies. If the Guardian is already dead, the fight instruction will do nothing because both creatures need to be alive to fight, and the triggered ability will be created but it will never trigger because the Guardian is already dead.


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Intentionally Fizzling Mandatory ETB Effect
Can one stack several mandatory triggers on one target in such a way to make the consecutive triggers Intentionally fizzle?
The situation is you have several mandatory ETB creatures coming into play (we'll say 4+ Acidic Slime or Indrik Stomphowler), entering at the same time from mass reanimation or something like Legion's Initiative. Your opponent for whatever reason has no valid targets, but you control 2+ valid targets.
Are you able to minimize the loses by having all the ETB effects target a single Artifact/Enchantment? Thus the first one successfully destroys it's target and the following fail? Or must they resolve in such a way that you must target,destroy #1, new target, destroy #2, etc?

Yes, you can choose the same target for all the effects.
When multiple creatures enter the battlefield simultaneously, their ETB effects all trigger at once.  The next time a player gets priority, all those abilities are placed on the stack one at a time (in the order of the player's choice or APNAP order, whichever is applicable).  Nothing resolves (and nobody gets priority) until all the 'waiting' triggers have been placed on the stack.
Targets are selected when the spell or ability goes on the stack, as per rule 601.2c.  At that time, the chosen target must be legal, and the game does not "look ahead" to see whether or not the target will still be legal when the spell resolves before allowing you to choose the target (because, among other things, doing so would be impossible).

Incidentally, this technique is rather similar to the trick of using a redirection spell to counter a counterspell by changing the target of the counterspell to the redirect.  The counterspell could not possibly counter the redirect because the redirect is going to leave the stack as soon as it finishes resolving, but until it does it is still a legal target for the counterspell (which is good, because the counterspell itself is not a legal target for itself, and there is usually only one other spell on the stack, the one that you don't want to be countered).


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Mass Spell Recursion & Storm
If one overloads a card such as Mizzix's Mastery to recur a graveyard full of instant/Sorceries, including a card with Storm (Grapeshot). Will Storm trigger for each spell you're also casting from the graveyard? As I understand storm is an on-cast trigger, so does order stacking matter in this instant?
This is question is not specific to Mizzix's Mastery or Grapeshot. If there is a better example of Mass Recursion & Storm please use that.

The spells cast by Mizzix's Mastery would count towards the storm count if you casted them in the correct order.

From the Gather rulings under Mizzix's Mastery:

If Mizzix’s Mastery exiled multiple cards, you may cast the copies in any order. The last copy you cast will be the first one to resolve.

The correct play to maximize your storm count would be to cast every spell other than Grapeshot first, and then cast Grapeshot last.
For instance, lets say your graveyard had Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, and Grapeshot, and you had casted no other spells that turn.

You cast overloaded Mizzix's Mastery (Storm=1)
Each player passes priority, Mizzix's Mastery resolves.
Exile Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, and Grapeshot, making copies of each of them
Cast the copy of Time Walk (Storm=2)
Cast the copy of Ancestral Recall (Storm=3)
Cast the copy of Grapeshot
Grapeshot's Storm ability triggers on cast with the Storm count equal to 3
Place 3 copies of Grapeshot on the stack on top of the original Grapeshot
Each player passes priority, Grapeshot storm copy 3 resolves
Each player passes priority, Grapeshot storm copy 2 resolves
Each player passes priority, Grapeshot storm copy 1 resolves
Each player passes priority, Grapeshot Mizzix copy resolves
Each player passes priority, Ancestral Recall copy resolves
Each player passes priority, Time Walk copy resolves

Just so we're clear: it's the spells CAST before Grapeshot that count as increasing the storm, NOT the spells RESOLVED before Grapeshot, right?

@Nzall correct, I'll update the answer to add that in there.

Yes, the order matters, but luckily you can cast Grapeshot last, so that you can have maximum number of storm copies.

Beat me by 47 seconds!

Yes I did, but your answer is better!


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Feather and spells turning permanents in to Creatures
If I have Feather, the Redeemed and I cast an Instant or Sorcery that turns a target permanent into a creature (Say Siege of Towers for example) Will that trigger Feather's ability to return that to my hand?

No, it will not.
Feather, the Redeemed triggers on casting a spell, which happens well before the spell would resolve and have any effect such as turning its target into a creature.
When you cast Siege of Towers, it is not targeting a creature you control; it is targeting a land you control. By the time the mountain becomes a creature, it is well past the chance for Feather, the Redeemed to trigger. Unless you are targeting a land that is also a creature.

However, if you have two copies of it, you can have the second one target the mountain that the first one turned into a creature, and replicate it onto a new mountain.

I think that’s covered by my last sentence.

My point is that if you replicate the spell, you just need the original to target a creature. The copies don't have to target a creature.

@Acccumulation Ah, I see, didn't notice that Siege of Towers had Replicate.


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Gloomhaven: road events and scenario reset
When you encounter a road event, it could cause your party to take damage. When you die in a scenario according to the rulebook you can retry it at full health, without doing another road event. Unless I miss understood, wouldn't it make more sense resetting the party health at the value after the road event? Feels like I can just exploit this rule and avoid the effects of the road event by dying intentionally in the encounter.

You understand the rules correctly. If you fail and retry the scenario, the Road Event effect no longer applies. Thematically, retrying the scenario isn't like loading your save in a video game. The failed attempt actually happened (which is why you only exhaust instead of die, and why you get to keep coins, treasure contents and experience). You could also view it as a balancing measure: if the scenario was too hard with the Road Event penalty, maybe it'll be just the right difficulty without one.
On the flip side: positive Road Event effects and Bless cards from donations also don't apply to retries.
And yes, you can game this system by dying intentionally, but then you could also repeatedly die intentionally to go through your entire stack of City Events in one go. With cooperative board games, the game kinda has to assume that you're willing to experience the game as intended, since no one can stop you from cheating if you would like to.


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How to mitigate "bandwagon attacking" from players?
Let's assume I am playing a board game with at least 2 other players and there is a clear way to see how well players are progressing. Also assume there is an attack mechanism that cannot be directly blocked. This is a scenario I have experienced across several such board games:

I find a way to progress relatively well.
Other players see this and team up to attack me.
I start to fall behind due to the attacks. Others progress past me.
Other players continue to prioritize attacking me.
I finish far behind in last place.

Up until step 4, this seems like a rational way for players to play. At step 4, however, it would make more sense to switch gears and attack the other players that have gotten ahead, but this either doesn't happen or it happens far too late in the game. It appears that there is some kind of psychological aspect wherein once players start attacking someone, they don't want to stop.
My question is: how can I mitigate this "bandwagon attacking" from other players? This is an issue for me because the game feels hopeless once I realize step 4 is occuring, and I find myself waiting for the game to end.
I have tried explaining to the other players that it would make sense to start attacking different players, but they write this off as me trying to protect myself (which isn't wrong). I have thought about quantifying the attacks by keeping a tally of some sort, but that feels a bit petty.
For reference, these are some games that I have experienced this in:

Lords of Waterdeep
Villainous
Survive - Escape from Atlantis
Blood Rage

Does this only happen to you, or does any player in the lead experience this?

Don't play Monopoly. Problem solved. Otherwise read, How To Make Friends And Influence People.

Maybe play a game like Dominion where attacks always affect all players.

In Blood Rage you should be able to mitigate the problem by picking the right strategy.  Losing units in Blood Rage doesn't necessarily mean losing the game.  Survive is a family game designed to allow kids to pick on their parents (or at least that's how it's been explained to me).  Lords of Waterdeep does have some attacking but it shouldn't be game ending (pick a strategy which better hides how well you're doing).  I've never played Villainous.

Such behavior happens if I bring a game I own to a party where they never played it before. As they assume I'm very proficient in the game, they will gang up against me no matter what, so the first game I play with them inevitably ends up with me on the last place.

Suggesting other types of games to play might not be an answer you are interested in, but just for the record, if this kind of behavior bothers you much, maybe German-style board games would be better. They keep all the players in the game until the end (there is usually no death), conflict is limited, and a large part of the score is hidden. Players strive towards their (often independent) goals, there are limited ways to prevent others from progressing, and it's not immediately obvious who has the highest chances to win. It might not stop this problem completely, but will surely mitigate it.

For Lords of Waterdeep, sometimes i keep a lot of my resources in my tavern. There's not penalty to doing this and you can keep taking quests without completing them. Someone might notice, but its a lot sneakier than having your points token jump to an early lead. Also helps if your lord is the quest types that have higher costs, or if you see a nice quest combo opportunity.

@ArcanistLupus We have this situation in my friend group, too--someone who usually gets ahead early, and then gets slaughtered as we all drag them down...and I would guess we do usually overkill them, no point in dragging them down to where they have a fighting chance, make sure the stay down (until the game is over). I can think of one person who refuses to play Lords any more for this reason.

Related term: kingmaking.

See also: Short track speed skating at the 2002 Winter Olympics – Men's 1000 metres

@ArcanistLupus It is not just me. Of course in the heat of the moment my cognitive bias may try to convince me otherwise!

This just happened to me the other day will playing Villainous as Jafar - three of the other players kept ganging up on me. The Red Queen player that nobody was focusing on then won the game. Something similar occurred the time before when I was playing as the Red Queen, though not as extreme. Players that play together semi-regularly tend to gauge each other's strength and weakness and play accordingly. For example, I'm always extremely wary when playing against a certain friends of mine as he tends to count and calculate points to the extreme which usually makes him a formidable opponent.

Most of the answers so far are recommending you be the second or third player only to dodge being attacked. This is a strategy Sun Tzu mentions in "The Art of War": “Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

Use this bias in your favor!
Some players just won't listen to the most reasonable arguments.  Trying to convince them that you were attacked enough won't work, instead use their biases in our own favor.  Don't lead on the start of the game, try to be the second strongest player, then stay quiet while others attack the leader.  It is nice to see everybody team up to destroy the leader, giving you an easy win.
In those kind of games, being second is usually the best in terms of winning probability.
I will add to the reference list:

Catan
Struggle of Empires
Munchkin

Of course this "stalling" strategy is groupthink dependent, looks like that in your gaming group it will work like a charm.

To add to this: Has it ever occurred to you (the OP) that the person typically winning the games is using this strategy deliberately on you? Is it typically the same person winning?

Another game where this is extremely obvious: Munchkin, never be the first to try and win the game, with more players it is even better to be third, because the first two will be grilled.

Looking that you're behind is usually the best in terms of winning probability; it's worth to take a careful look at any potential differences between "in-progress" score as it looks to other players and the score that actually matters in the end - things that are either hidden or perhaps not easily available for others to notice; or things that bring you zero score right now but have a potential to bring you lots of score after a few turns.

@Tom The groups I play with in a game tend to be a bit random but there is definitely one recurring player that comes to mind. I can see now that he has likely been doing this in each game I play with him. Thanks for the answer, this appears to be the prevailing advice overall and I can see why.

Managing psychological aspects of the other players is as much a part of the skill of a game as the mechanics written in the rulebook!

My experience is mostly from Magic: the Gathering, so may not be applicable here but I have found a couple of effective tactics.
Make Attacking You Painful
Since the first person to be attacked frequently becomes a  target for others, you must avoid being that player. To achieve this, the best way in my experience is to make attacking you involve a significant cost. In my games of Mtg one player has cards to make attacking them cost life/mana, or destroy creatures; but the cost does not have to be direct: If you make it clear that someone attacking you will receive your full wrath, they will think twice as to whether they can afford it.
Don't Let Them See Your Strength
Or more accurately, don't let them see you as a threat to them. Faced with a choice between defence and offence, choose defence until you can be sure that none who remain will be capable of retaliation. Frequently, in my experience, this involves someone who has done so little as to be forgotten suddenly pulling off an infinite combo.
Team Up With THEM
Before they decide to attack you, align yourself with them. There may be nothing forcing them to remain loyal but people tend to at least pay tribute to the idea, lest they be considered unreliable (side note: unreliable allies make excellent common enemies.) This does also free you to retaliate against people who do attack you. Just make sure that you can claim they betrayed you before you attack your allies. The one to break an alliance is rarely looked upon favourably.

Welcome to the Site! Great first answer!

I'm not familiar with MtG but these are good ideas. The last one especially is something I should be more proactive about. Thanks for your answer.

Appear less threatening than you really are.  Depending on the game, you have a variety of options available to you:

Sandbag or stall your plan like Cohensius describes so that you are not the first target.
Amass resources instead of spending them on flashy plays.  For example, in Lords of Waterdeep, this could mean saving your resources for future plans instead of immediately completing quests.  This means you won't be in the lead as often, and you'll also have more flexibility with which quests you complete.
Change your play-style to play with more deception instead of straightforward strategies that are easy to gauge the threats from.  For example, in Villainous avoid characters like King John, whose win condition is very easy for your opponents to keep track of.
Play different games.  Try games where it's less easy to directly sabotage another player or games that aren't zero-sum.  For example, Terra Mystica is a competitive game, but the game is designed in a way that a good play for one player doesn't necessarily adversely affect the other players.  There are a lot of mutually beneficial arrangements built into the game.  Or even play team/cooperative games.  People won't target you if they're your teammate.

If these changes of strategy don't work, then you really have a metagame problem with your reputation.  In these cases, your targeting is not due to in-game decisions but rather to how fellow players perceive you as a player.  Perhaps you really do win more than your fair share of games.  Or maybe other players think you win more than you do because your victories are more memorable.  You'll likely have to adjust your expectations of victory.  Either way, the best advice is to take your lumps for a while, congratulate the victors, and subtly point out that there is a new king of the hill to overthrow.

I used this strategy to win at MTG for years in my group.  Also, had a friend use this exact strategy in hearts.  He always would be "second best" until the last hand.  EVERY game.  He was that good.

I haven't heard the term Sandbag before but that is a good one to add to my dictionary. Thinking deceptively is not something I'm used to but this is a good reason to start learning. Thanks for your answer.

There are many ways to mitigate this, although which one(s) work will depend on the game and the playgroup:

Don't take an early lead.  In a game where players have an easy way to penalize/attack one player, hanging out in second and pointing out how dangerous the person in first is can be a great way to sneak into the victory if everyone dogpiles the person in the lead.
Make deals and/or build preemptive alliances to get people on your side before the ganging up happens.  Make sure that your allies/trading partners feel that they are benefiting enough from your strength to not betray you.
Go for victory routes that are less visibly obvious.  If the game has both hidden and visible victory points, go for more of the hidden ones.  Alternatively, prepare yourself to seize a number of objectives simultaneously so that when you gain the lead, it is sudden and harder to stop.
Focus on infrastructure in the early game rather than points.  Build up a base that makes it easier for you to do things and/or attack other people rather than initially trying to win, and then be opportunistic.
Play games with hidden victory points (such as Chinatown or Smallworld) or a game where victory points are sufficiently hard to calculate (Agricola, 7 Wonders) so that people can't necessarily tell who's winning in order to gang up on that person.
Play games that don't have as many ways of attacking people (Power Grid, Chinatown, 7 Wonders, Race for the Galaxy) or where attacks are directed by the game rather than by players (Cosmic Encounter, Dominion (depending on the kingdom cards))
Play games that have 2 teams (Battlestar the Board Game, Star Wars Rebellion, Descent) to remove the problems of multiplayer dynamics while still playing with a large group.

Games with hidden victory points are tricky, in some instances it will exacerbate the effect. My repeating experience with Smallworld was that careless expansion or using some overpowered combination effects in being bashed forever, as players are often completely clueless about how effective initial retaliation was. OTOH, hidden points are perfect for "stay second" strategy: average players are going to be consistently surprised by your score.

@Frax Not everything is good for every playgroup.  Your experience with Smallworld sounds like the appropriate response for that group is the "less visibly obvious" routes to victory

These are good points. Your answer also helps me realize one reason I like many of the games you listed in the last couple of bullet points. Thanks for your answer.

You could embrace your notoriety and play with "everyone vs you"-rules. For example, Magic: The Gathering has an "Archenemy" game mode, where one player is the "Archenemy" and everyone else gangs up on them. It might not make you win more, but you won't feel cheated, and victory will be all the more sweet. You could also take turns being the "Archenemy" so the others get a taste of their own collusive medicine.

I think  the important thing to distinguish is why the other players are attacking you for. Are they attacking you because:

it is funny to them? (them attacking you has little to no benefit to them in game, and they enjoy seeing you suffer more then they enjoy winning the game)
you are too good at other games compared to them and they think you will win the game unless teamed up against?
you get ahead in the game too early and seem like the biggest threat in early stages of the game?

If it is the first one, you may want to talk to your friends, explaining to them that attacking you just for the heck of it is making games unenjoyable to you.
If it is the second one, then ooph. Tough spot. You may have to lose a few games before you try to run the argument of "Hey, I keep losing at this game, so why not attack player X, who has won this game way more times then I did?"
If it is the third one, you have landed yourself in what is called the "early leader syndrome" (term taken from the board game Diplomacy). This means the other players see your score early, think you are the biggest threat, and hurl everything they got against you because they think you'll win otherwise. The key strategy against this situation is to be at a good spot, but not at the best spot. For that, you have to figure out what the players think matters the most in the game. For example, in Lords of Waterdeep, if players focus on the victory points, try to spend your early game actions to create an engine that will help you score quests instead of trying to score quests (focus on plot quests or buildings that will help you complete quests instead of trying to complete 10+ victory point quests). If the players are experienced enough to judge who is the biggest threat based on the engine they create, then try to create the second best engine, and then point out to everyone that there is a player who is a bigger threat than you. In my gaming sessions for example, whoever gets the quest for hiring the Lieutenant becomes public enemy number one, and is screwed over whenever able. That is when I build my engine. "Oh, I am totally buying this building to screw over the lieutenant holder, nothing else"

"Early Leader Syndrome", I haven't heard that term before that is quite apt to what I have experienced, maybe a bit of #2 mixed in there with recurring groups. Thanks for your answer.

@user1442605 my pleasure :)

Make yourself beneficial to them
As with some of the other answers, this one is coming from experience with the card game Magic: The Gathering.
I have a reputation among my friends of being tactical and pulling out surprise combos and come-from-behind victories. This causes me to be a frequent target if the deck I'm using can't readily fend them off. One deck in particular simply isn't a strong enough deck to do that, so I took a different approach.
In that deck, I added a card called Curse of Echoes. You target a player with it, and then as long as that card remains active, then whenever that player casts a sorcery or instant, all other players get to copy that sorcery or instant.
I wait to play that card until I know who is leading, or who has the most sorceries and instants to play, and then I put it on that person. And just like that, I'm no longer a target from anyone except that one player! Now, instead of trying to eliminate me, the other players actively try to protect me because I am useful to them!
And at that point, as weak as that deck is, I'm suddenly very likely to actually win the game, because I am now beneficial to the other players.


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Canasta pick up from discard pile
If your discard is the only card in the discard pile, can the next player pick up the one club assuming they have 2 in their hand.

Yes
Unless the discard was a three or a wild card.  Those can never be picked up when they are on top of the pile.
http://www.canasta.net/canasta_rules.php


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Frozen discard pile
When picking up a frozen discard pile I understand that you have to have a natural pair in your hand, but can I add those cards to a meld in play in front of me to create a canasta?

Yes, once you have picked up the discard pile, the cards are all in your hand like normal; and you can always add to any existing meld by melding more cards from your hand. Whether the discard pile was frozen or not does not have any relevance here.

A player may add additional cards to a meld by his side, provided that the melds remain valid (having no more than three wild cards). He may not add cards to the opponents' melds.

https://www.bicyclecards.com/how-to-play/canasta/

You're welcome. On Stack Exchange; the best way to thank someone is to vote the answer up if you found it useful, and click the check to accept it if it's the best one. Sometimes it's useful to wait a little bit before accepting an answer to see if other people answer as well.


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Can I summon Blue Eyes Chaos MAX from my deck?
What if I have Chaos Form in my hand, with the required materials but Chaos MAX is not in my hand. Can I summon it from the main deck?

No you can't.
This simply isn't how ritual summons work. Unless any card states otherwise (e.g. the nekroz ritual spells) you must tribute monsters from your hand or field to summon a ritual monster from your hand.
In general you cannot interact with cards in your main deck, unless another cards specifically states otherwise.

I mean it doesn't really say that you can't. So I guess it's up to players choice?
"thats simply not how ritual summons work" doesn't really apply. The game has evolved so much if it doesn't specifically say that you can't summon it from the deck then go for it.

A quick look at the basic rules for ritual summoning proves this answer incorrect - it's stated that you need the ritual monster in the hand in order to summon it.


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Mahjong - declaring
I'm a British beginner and am learning by playing 2 player Mahjong with my Chinese lady in Hong Kong.
Yesterday, she picked up the 9 of circles that I discarded and laid it with 2 other 9s to (so I initially thought) make a Pong.  She then laid all her other tiles declaring Mahjong.  I pointed out that there was no pair - but instead the 7 and 8 of circles.  She moved the 9 to join the 7 and 8 to make a Chow, leaving the the other two 9s as the required pair.
She regularly plays 4 player Mahjong and assured me that this is ok. Whilst it was technically a winning hand, I felt that the game should be void as she had mis-declared.  COMMENTS PLEASE

The Rules of Mah Jong by The World Series of Mah Jong state:

Change of Claim: If a player, after announcing a claim for “chi”, “pong” or “kong”, changes his mind and wishes to change his claim into one of another type (or to “win”), this is usually allowed without penalty. (Unless the player has already exposed his set, in which case any illegally exposed tiles become penalty tiles). The player should not do this too frequently, otherwise the judge may impose a penalty.

According to the facts as you have laid them out, the change of claim made by your lady is acceptable.
In regards the parenthesized section above, regarding Penalty Tiles:

"If mahjong were a two-player game, such exposure would be disadvantageous to no one but the offender himself; thus, no penalty would be necessary, and the offender could just retrieve the exposed tiles and continue playing."
The point of Penalty Tiles is to allow a game to continue after an irregularity without undue advantage to any of the other three players not party to the irregularity. As the current deal is ending, there is no need to exact a penalty in order to permit fair continuation of play.

She had exposed the "Pong" and then the rest of the tiles, so shouldn't the section of the answer in brackets apply?

@Mick: No! See my amended post. You are frankly being rather obnoxious to your lady.

How precisely these things are handled depends a lot on the ruleset used.
The following is from the "Green Book" detailing the Mahjong Competition Rules.

"A player must not declare "Chi", "Pung," or "Kong," followed immediately by the declaration of
  "Hu." When a discarded tile completes the hand, the player must say "Hu" only. Commission of
  this error, or errors involving "Hu" declarations in nonstandard ways, or failure to reveal his
  standing concealed tiles, prohibit his winning on the present turn; he'll have to discard a tile and
  hope to declare "Hu" on another turn. If a player shows his tiles but neglects to declare "Hu," he
  forfeits the right to win, and must continue playing.
Revealing one's tiles before declaring "Hu" forfeits the player's right to win the current hand."

BUT: This is from the official rules of the format, describing how play should proceed at high level events, such as international tournaments.
I would advice to not be this strict when playing for fun (and especially when playing a 2-player variant, which will certainly not use this ruleset anyway).


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Mansion of Madness scenario game time
I've played a handful of scenarios now for Mansions of Madness 2nd edition, but they all seem to take far longer than the "recommended" time in the app. And quite frankly, while I love the game, it just takes too long to get regular plays in.
What general suggestions do you have to complete scenarios in less time? (or at least closer to the time the app states)

Make sure you are only resolving ONE horror check per investigator for the monster with the highest horror rating and if multiple investigators need to do a horror check for the same monster, they do the same encounter, not a separate encounter each - we missed that the first few times we played and it made the game much longer than it needed to be

That's interesting, we DID do a seperate encounter each when resolving horror checks against the same monster.

Once your party gets more used to the game, the time you take should get closer to the time the app states. It still varies strongly, but we usually fall within the designated timeframe by now, often with one "new player" and a bunch of veterans.


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Game ideas that you cannot get better at (non electronic)
Trying to find a game (non electronic) that requires you to do only one task and that you cannot get better at no matter how much you play. Game at which beginner and pro would have almost equal chances.
Example that would work: You randomly get 10 letters and you need to build a word with them.
Example that would not work: Riddles (as at some point of time you will know the answers to many of them) which meant you will be better than the person that never played before.

If it requires skill, an experienced player will have an advantage over a weak one. If it doesn't require skill, it's not a game. Also, game recommendations are off topic.

Your example that would work is basically scrabble and the more you play the better you can be.

The card game war, where you split the deck and flip the top card to see who wins. I remember really enjoying it as a kid, but there is no way to be 'good' at the game. Just a coin flip simulator.

The problem is that the only cases that really work are:

Solved games (e.g. Tic-Tac-Toe, where any player beyond a certain skill point is able to force a draw)
Games requiring no skill at all (e.g. Candyland, where your moves are determined entirely by a card draw)

Things like "Make a word out of these letters" depend on how big your vocabulary is, and "Make these numbers equal this other number" depend on your mathematical acuity - see the UK show "Countdown" (or its Australian equivalent "Letters and Numbers"), so that unless everyone has unlimited time and resources, there is still a gap between a beginner and a pro.
Puzzles like Sudoku are similar - technically, anyone could solve any sudoku if given enough time and support, and indeed people could apply different skills to solve the same puzzle (I could, for example, write a computer program to solve a sudoku, which might take me about the same amount of time as it takes you to brute force the solution).


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Mille Bornes Fast Play Rules Clarification
The Dujardin version has Fast Play Rules (see page 7 in the manual). One of the rules allows players to immediately play a Remedy card right after receiving a Hazard card, and then immediately draw a new card, and then the game play will resume according to the normal flow of play. However, unlike the "Coup Fourré" move, the player does not gain or lose points.
I'm confused by what "resuming the normal flow of play" means in this context, especially compared to the Coup Fourré situation.
Let's say we have 4 players: North, East, South, and West, and the order of play is clockwise (N-E-S-W-N-E-S-W-...). North puts down a Hazard card onto South.
In the "Coup Fourré" move (page 12 in the manual), if South has a Safety card, then South can immediately put that card down to remove the Hazard card, draw a replacement for the Safety card, and then South gets a move by drawing another card and then play/discard another card. After that, it's West's turn. East doesn't get any turn. Therefore, effectively, South hijacks the turn, interrupting the normal flow.
Under the Fast Play Rules, South is allowed to play a corresponding Remedy card immediately after North plays a Hazard card against South. Then South draws a replacement card for that Remedy card. So far this is simliar to the Coup Fourré move. Now, who's playing right after South draws that replacement? Is it West, just like in the Coup Fourré move? Or is it East, because it was North who put down the Hazard card, and East was supposed to play next (hence "resuming to the normal flow of play")?
The Fast Play Rules are not in the classic version but I still wonder which makes more sense.

I believe the "resume in normal order" text is there to emphasize the difference between this and the normal Coup Fourré move -- that is, that in your example, after South draws their replacement card, and North's turn ends, East takes the next turn as normal.

It would be East's turn. You are right in assuming the normal flow of play moves to the next player in proper turn order, these rule adjustments allow you to remedy a hazard outside normal turn order when it's played, but it doesn't actually change the turn order, unlike Coup Fourré.


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Catan cities and knights 2 player variation
At start of player one turn ,he rolls all three dice twice. Is correct sequence roll 1st set of dice then 2nd set then resolve both event rolls then distribute resources, or , roll 1st set of dice then distribute resources then roll 2nd set of dice then distribute those resources.

Where are you getting these 2 player variation rules? As far as I know; there are no official rules for this; so there would be no “correct” answer; it’s just a house rule where people can play as they decide to.

@Gendolkari.  I've added link to 2 player rules from catan.com in my answer so I'm assuming that thats official.

Looking at rules here it says

As is customary, each player rolls the dice two times when beginning his turn; for this, all three dice from C&K are used (white die / red die / Event Die). If the second dice roll gives the same result as the first roll, the second roll is repeated – but only the two number dice are used, without the Event Die. The Event Die result is resolved immediately. Therefore, even though you may have to roll the number dice more than two times, the number of Event Die rolls is limited to two.

So if the second roll matched the first you carry out the event die and resolve again.  If you hadn't already fully resolved the first roll you would then be resolving the 2nd event before the 1st due the 'immediately' instruction which feels odd to do unless explicitly told too.
The basic game rules here state :-

Each player who has a settlement on an intersection that borders a terrain hex marked with the number rolled receives 1 Resource Card of the hex’s type. For an example see resource production

As the original rules say you get resources if you have a settlement on intersection rolled then I would do that straight away and resolve the even. and then make second roll and resolve that.
Also there is a video demo of the rules here and go to 2:40 you will see the demonstrate roll 1st, resolve 1st, roll 2nd, resolve 2nd.


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How to throw cowrie shells
I saw a game being played at a party where they were using cowrie shells as the dice. While some players rolled random numbers during their turns, others seem to be almost preternaturally good at getting the rolls they want.
Is there a technique to throwing the shells?

Whilst not answering how to throw them you might want to look at this question.
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/33334/fairness-of-cowry-shells-as-dice  where answers suggest that are not fair, ie 50/50


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How easy is it to start Magic from scratch?
I'm currently trying to get into a card game and am now wondering how easy it might be to get into Magic with no experience whatsoever. I heard about a Magic online game/something you can download, so I guess I could start there so I don't have to spend a whole lot of money on cards. But I feel like Magic is way more complex, thus more difficult to learn, than other card games.

Some extra information, I've always been learning quickly in school and stuff, I'm in my early 20s and have played Yu-Gi-Oh for some years, if this might help in any way.

Could you clarify what exactly you're asking? It should be obvious that nobody can answer how easy or hard MtG would be to learn for you specifically. Are you expecting some kind of statistic on new player retention, or are you asking for learning resources for new players, or what else?

@Hackworth Good point. I'm looking for some experience on how quickly others learned to play it when they first startet, I guess. Just a point of reference.

The "Magic Arena" tutorial is an absolute fantastic introduction to the basics of this game.  I would start there even if you have no interest in digital magic.

If you already played another TCG, either digital or paper, you already climbed 90% of the learning curve. The rest is learning the big differences between the games. Details can be explained later when you encounter them organically.

Magic may definitely seem intimidating.  It's got a rulebook over 200 pages long, and passed 10,000 unique cards back in 2008.  I'm sure you've heard stories of people spending tons of money on magic collections.  But, done right, Magic can be quite approachable and quite affordable.  Whether or not this is "easy" depends on your goals.  If you just want to play magic with friends and have fun, then this can be done quite easily.  If you want to win tournaments, this will take a lot work.  There is a whole spectrum in between.
Learning to Play
If you have a friend or friends who play Magic, odds are they will be very happy to induct you into the cult teach you how to play.  Having friends who already play or want to learn with you is also really important because having a dedicated play group will make learning a much more pleasant process.  If you don't have such a group, see if your local game store has casual events so that you can find one.  Learning to play against strangers is a much less forgiving experience.
There are potentially a surprising number of people in your life who already do or once have played Magic (especially if you already have friends that play other CCGs).   Try leaving a few decks of Magic cards on your desk and see how many people go, "Oh, you play Magic too?"
If you don't have friends who already know how to play, you can read the Magic basic rules, which are only 18 pages.  These describe the bulk of the mechanics you need to understand to play (although somewhat comically omits the most important 2 pieces of information: you start with 20 life and lose when you hit 0).
Duels of the Planeswalkers is also a decent tutorial in computer game form if you prefer that medium, although it can get a bit slow due to the game waiting to see if you want to do something every time you could do something (which is quite often in Magic).  Magic: The Gathering Arena is another digital option for leaning to play.
My personal belief is that Magic is best played in-person.  It wasn't designed or optimized to be a digital experience.  A digital version of Magic can be a good way to learn and can let you play when your playgroup is not around, but if you have physical decks and a playgroup that you can get together, you should do so.
The Card Pool
While the card pool seems the most intimidating aspect of the game, it's a bit of a red herring.  When playing a game, you only care about the cards you and your opponent are using.  A normal deck is 60 cards.  Typically over a third of a deck is going to be lands, which don't vary that much.  That means that in a normal game of magic (i.e. not Commander), there are fewer than 100 distinct cards you need to think about, which is less than 1% of the card pool.
Even when you start building your own deck, you will be limited to your collection which, at first, will probably be much smaller than 10,000 cards, and probably under 1,000 distinct cards.  Only when you want to expand your collection or build a competitive deck do you start to care about all cards in Magic, but even then, not necessarily.  If you want to expand your collection, start with a search tool (such as scryfall.com) and look for cards you want, or a site where people post decklists that you can use as a starting point to look for particularly exciting cards.  Meanwhile, if you want to get into the tournament scene, you can (and should) start with a tournament format with a limited card pool or one that doesn't require you to have a massive collection; more on that later.
Building a Collection
If you have a group of friends that already know how to play, odds are one of them will have decks that you can borrow when you are starting.  Just make sure to tell them you want to borrow an aggro deck, as using a combo or control deck is terrible when learning to play (If no one in your playgroup has any aggro decks on-hand, try finding a different play group :P).
Alternatively, if you have a group of friends that are learning Magic together, consider either making some bulk purchases together that you will split among the group, or having one person buy cards that everyone will use at first (until people have built out individual collections).
If you want to start playing without needing to build a collection, buy some preconstructed decks.  Wizards prints these pretty frequently, and they can give you a great starting point in terms of having a deck that works, so you can start playing right away, then step up to tweaking the deck, and then eventually try to build one from scratch.  Check out the Ravnica Guild Kits as a good example.  These are especially good if you have a group of players all learning Magic together.
If the deck building is what excites you most about magic, you should get a Deck Builders Toolkit (from any recent set) and/or look online for someone selling a bunch of cards for cheap.  You can often get a bunch of cards in bulk for around 1-2 cents a card on the secondary market; these aren't going to be the best cards or tournament staples, but they will be a bunch of cards that you can start building decks with.
Building a Deck
Building a deck is a skill unto itself.  There is a lot of advice on how to actually do it.  I'm not going to try to tackle that here.  This is just a few pieces of advice on how to approach deck building (rather than on how to do it).
If you have friends who are established players, ask them what they take into consideration when building a deck.  Tell them what you want a deck to do (after you've played a few games) and have them help you build it.  Otherwise, start with a preconstructed deck.
Once you have your own deck, play it and tweak it after every few games.  Take out cards you don't like, or cards that keep feeling weak, or cards you keep not being able to afford (mana-wise).  Put in cards that are exciting, or cards that do things you keep being frustrated at not being able to do, or cards that have a better mana cost, or cards your opponents used to trounce you.
Once you've tweaked a deck for a while, make another one.  Then tweak that one.  Do this enough times and you'll get a sense for how to build a deck.  And, better yet, you'll get a sense for how to build the type of deck you like to play.
Beginner-Friendly Formats
The most beginner friendly "format" (and the one I use when teaching people how to play Magic) is regular 1-on-1 60-card Magic, but where your deck (you being the beginner) is much better than your opponent's deck.  This gives you plenty of room to make mistakes and still possibly come out on top.  If you have  a friend who is both an experienced player and a good sport, go for this.
Alternatively, if no one in your playgroup knows how to play very well, this is usually sufficient beginner-friendliness that format doesn't matter.  No one has vast expertise to throw around.  Just make sure no one has spent wildly more money buying cards and this should shake out pretty well.
If you are joining an experienced playgroup with competitive people, try for multiplayer (either free-for-all or something exciting like Star Power).  My first ever game of Magic was against two very experienced friends, yet I still won because they spent the whole game fighting each other (because I had no idea what I was doing), and then I was able to finish them both off.  Two-headed giant is also a great format possibility as you have an ally that can give you unbiased tactical advice and help you with rules questions without giving away too much information to your opponents.
I'd stay away from Commander at first.  It is a very fun format, is multiplayer, and is often more about doing interesting things than it is about winning.  I highly recommend it... once you know what you're doing.  However, as a new player, there are a lot of pitfalls: there are a lot more cards you will have to care about in a commander game (due to the restriction that you have only one of each card in a deck), the complexity of the game state tends to get much higher than that of a normal magic game, and Commander games tend to run much longer than normal games, making mistakes more expensive.
Tournaments
Tournaments are a totally optional part of Magic.  I have friends who have played Magic for years and never played in a tournament.  But they are also an option if that's what excites you.
Magic has 3 general types of tournaments: Sealed, Constructed, and Draft.  Sealed is a tournament where you open a set of cards at the tournament, build a deck out of them (plus basic lands), and then play with that deck.  Draft is similar, except that it has a complex process for how you select the cards you keep.  Constructed is where you bring a deck you have made and play against other people who have done the same.
If you are a new player who wants to get into tournaments, I recommend sealed tournaments.  These are much more affordable price-wise (all it costs is the admission price; you don't have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a deck), you often get to keep the cards you open (thus growing your collection), and the games themselves tend to be a little more straight forward (it's more about cards that stand on their own merit rather than complex card interactions or decks tuned to the metagame).
While all of these things describe both sealed and draft, draft adds the added complexity of the card selection process, which is yet another skill to learn (worth doing eventually, but not needed at first).  In sealed, it's just rudimentary deck building and playing magic.  Set releases or prereleases are especially good for new players because at that point, people haven't had as much chance to use the cards in that set, thus reducing the experience bias even more.
If you want to get into constructed, there are a bunch of formats within that genre (Standard, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage being the big 4).  You should probably start with Standard, in which only cards from the most recent few sets are legal, thus reducing the number of cards you will need to learn to be competitive in the tournament format.
I'd recommend playing for at least a few months before joining a tournament.  You need to be at least moderately proficient in the rules before you play in one (regardless of format) because your opponent will almost never let you take back a mistake in tournament play.  Additionally, you need to either have some practice in deck building (especially for sealed or draft) or have copied a competitive decklist (if you're playing constructed and don't want to design your own tournament-grade deck).

Magic the Gathering is actually one of the easiest TCG to get in.
It has entry products aimed at beginners or people trying to get in mainly :

Construction Kits
Give a lot of lands (you need them for basically anything) and
quite a lot of cards of each color and some of each dual color. The
power level isn't especially high, but it also contain boosters. All
in all, a very fine way to start a collection. There's a leaflet in
the kit with advice on "How to build a balanced deck ?" which will help you to
tinker with the deck on your own.
Planeswalker decks
Give you access to every card
types (or so) there is in magic, you've got some unique cards and
staple commons/uncommons. The decks' plans are usually quite
straightforward and made with playability in mind, they aren't
competitive, but they surely can be played as in.
N.B. Premade decks in previous times were either stupidly powerful or
contained especially potent cards (e.g. Rats deck of Kamigawa, Elf deck
of Lorwyn etc) or gimmicky at best (all the other Kamigawa decks
etc). The cards in it weren't especially useful outside of the deck's
theme, so it was kinda hard to learn Magic with them. Nowadays you've
got planeswalker decks.
Challenger decks
Tournement ready decks. These products usually are quite competitive and allow one to see the meta and explain how the deck works, usually they are quite    instructive.
Game Night
Contain 5 decks made on a theme based on the color (graveyard is actually
useful + zombies for black etc). These decks aren't
especially powerful but are made for beginners to "feel" what each
color is about, as well as get a taste for multiplayer. I found it quite instructive.

The main difference between Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh is the resource management, you can play as many monsters as you want every turn, but you need to pay the cost. Which depends on the land cards. All in all, the Magic rules are quite simple,
 but card interaction isn't. You'll understand quite all of it very quickly by playing.
MTGArena (the latest video game version of Magic) is also a very good way to learn the rules, and get a feel for how phases work and how the game plays out. The theme decks that are given in the beginning are not very strong though, and some of them are barely playable as is. MTG Arena is a Free-to-play version of Magic so it is the easiest version to try things out in.

I would add cubes high up on that list; if someone knows what they're doing, they can make a cube that allows for deck building while avoiding more complicated mechanics.

Seconding Arena as an excellent way to learn Magic for free.  The starter decks are trash, but the 2-color decks they give you in the first couple of weeks are pretty decent and fun to play.

There's also welcome decks which can be acquired for free from an WPN store. They're about on par with the theme decks from Arena

@Pureferret The welcome decks are 40 cards iirc, which is a "weird" format to learn

@LamaDelRay it's less about learning the format, and more about learning the cards. Also if you play limited, you always make a 40-card deck IIRC.

@Pureferret Limited is, usually, a choice you make with people. If you want to play something on your kitchen table, you'll usually play a "normal" game, these decks can't really be played in normal games, it can't compete with planeswalker decks etc...

I think it's worth warning new MtG & Arena players that the PVP they throw you into is not gated.  I fought a guy with a legendary dragon deck in my third PVP game to my surprise. PS: I still agree and gave you +1.  Just something vet players may be used to or take for granted.

@joedragons A legendary dragon deck isn't especially stronger than any other deck, just starting MTGArena gives you the tools needed to build a deck, and craft a legendary dragon, if you so wish. A constructed deck, on average, will be stronger than a theme deck they've given, but that's something you can do as soon as you start

@LamaDelRay While I don't disagree with what you said, it housed me and I was playing the standard given decks.  I've been playing MtG for a long while so still think despite what you said a disclaimer is warrented.  Consider what you just said but to a new player, it'd be like greek (IMO).

A quick note: Planeswalker Decks and Deckbuilder's Toolkits/Construction Kits have since been discontinued. There is, however, a relatively cheap two-deck starter set nowadays, the Arena Starter Set, that also comes with codes to have those decks in MTG Arena.

While the other answers cover structure and resources of the game, I think the most useful answer is to draw some light on the ways of actually getting to learn the game, and evaluate from there.
Either way, learning the game will be a process, not something you'll do in a day like you'd expect from a board game with a four-page manual. Instead, you'll be learning more and more of the mechanics, while the people around you will likely correct more and more of your mistakes, all while already playing the game. Even when you're reasonably experienced, new editions will introduce new mechanics, so you'll keep picking up things as you go.
I actually don't think MtG is a game that's easy to learn, as its ruleset is overwhelming to even experienced players sometimes. There also aren't just the rules, but the language to learn that players will use at the table. That said, the complexity makes it interesting, and you can approach learning it a few different ways.
Being taught by a friend
Almost everyone I ever met playing MtG has been taught by a friend, and many of these friendships have established in local game stores. While the possibilities are different today especially over the internet, I still meet a lot of beginner players in the store, so I think it's worth being mentioned.
However you come by someone to teach you, if you know someone who already knows the rules reasonably well, I would say that's the best way to pick up the game. Having someone to answer your specific questions prevents many of the barriers you might encounter trying to read the rules.
And of course by playing with a friend, you'll already have fun while learning!
Learning by watching or attending local events
I have organized and judged FNM and prerelease/release tournament events at a local store and local conventions for a few years now, both being formats that are supposed to be welcoming and tailored towards new players. At tournaments, you are expected to know a little bit about the game, while FNM events the way I know them are gatherings without specific expectations and therefore without prerequisites.
I will say that no matter how beginner-friendly you're trying to make those events, it's tough picking up the game from simply being around experienced players. The more you're used to the game, the quicker you go through the motions, making it very hard to follow unless you already know what's going on. Additionally, you're more likely to feel discouraged to ask questions because you're pausing multiple people's games, or even prolonging an ongoing tournament.
Nevertheless, if you don't know anyone playing the game yet, I suggest that you visit local events just to meet people. You might even ask if someone would spend the time to explain the basics to you - there's probably someone around willing to teach, and people are generally happy to expand their player group in my experience.
I want to point out that some of those events will be so-called Sealed events, meaning everyone gets a number of boosters to build their decks from. As soon as you picked up the basics, this equalizes the playing field in terms of investment at least, as you won't have to compete against decks worth hundreds or thousands of dollars with your starter kit cards. As mentioned in the comments, there are other ways in which a store in general can help you get started as well.
Learning by playing digital versions of the game
I looked into both Duels of the Planeswalkers and Magic Arena, and the fact that they take care of most of the rules makes getting started with the game relatively easy. Understanding some mechanics like how to attack, or win/lose conditions are well conveyed, while others such as paying costs and when to tap and not to tap will generally be less apparent. Still, you might be able to pick up how the game works enough to play a couple of "actual" games.
Although I find this method to be the least favorable, I wouldn't call it a bad alternative. You will learn the game, and if you can't find a local store and don't know anyone else playing it, it's still a good option. Nevertheless, when I observed players on MtG Arena, I could tell that they are generally making choices an experienced player would catch right away. If you would be sitting at the same table as that player and made that mistake, chances are they would let you know and help you learn that way. While I don't have any data backing it, I would imagine that learning process is a lot more tedious playing a digital version of the game.
Learning from videos or other guides
I think this method of learning is mostly useful for picking up advanced mechanics or interactions, not as much for starting to learn. Beginner videos will be joyfully explaining what tapping and paying costs is, but due to the lack of interaction, you should quickly find yourself in a situation they didn't cover, and be left wondering what to do. Also, wanting to learn the game probably means you want to play either at a physical or digital table in the long run, so in my opinion, just skip the guides and go there straight away.
However, if you are completely new to the concept of trading card games, they might be interesting in order for your to evaluate what you're getting yourselves into.

My memory might be fuzzy but isn't duel of the planeswalker the mtg game where picking a character over one another had a definite impact on how you play ? I also found your review on mtga quite harsh, it's the best explanation on phases i saw and the stack is quite easy to understand. Not perfect, but still quite a good way imo

@LamaDelRay Duels of the Planeswalkers had very predefined decks where changing their themes wasn't really an option, so you could say that, yes. I also don't mean to make MtGA sound bad whatsoever, but the abstraction level just seems way higher to me than playing with paper cards. I'll agree that the visual representation of the stack is something that paper magic often lacks, though! As I said, I don't think it's bad in general, just that I'd always favor a person teaching you with paper cards if you have the option.

I remember when I first started MtG they had a 2-deck box that came pre-shuffled and you followed instructions describing how a game would play out and telling you each card to play, how to pay for it, the effects happening, etc.  I believe one deck was red/goblins and the other green/elves.  Is this no longer a thing they do?

@DavidStarkey Those may be the free demo decks distributed through local game stores which are very much still a thing.

I learned to play in 10 minutes with some friends, I've taught plenty of people to play in the same time frame. The basic rules of "play a land, cast a spell" are really straightforward.
There is a lot of hidden depth and complexity when you get into it but you don't need to know all that to start playing. I've even answered rules queries at the top tables of a competitive tournament where people lacked basic knowledge of the stack and yet had still made it that far.
Your best bet is to find a friendly local store and go along and play or to try playing in Mtg:Arena online.
Try and find a sealed event (there is a pre-release coming up soon) or a draft as then you do not need to bring your own deck. Instead you open cards and then play using those cards. Drafts are trickier than sealed as you need to know how to draft but again a quick intro will give you enough to get started and then you can learn from there.
Just expect to lose a bit while you learn :)

Depends on what your goals are.
1) If your goal is "learn to play", MTG Arena, and also the now-defunct series of Duels of the Planeswalkers games are great for that.  They're (mostly) free to play (one of the Duels games was priced IIRC).  I started playing Arena about 3 weeks ago and I have a reasonably high-tier deck and currently ranked in Gold rank in both Constructed and Limited, and I've only spent $5 for the welcome bundle.
2) If your goal is to play with your friends at the kitchen table, that's pretty easy too.  There are lots of ready-to-play products, such as Planeswalker decks that you can buy to play with your friends.  You can also try Commander decks, but those are a bit harder to play with to start off.  If you can get your hands on Duel Decks (now defunct), those are great as well.
3) If your goal is to play tournaments, well that's where it gets harder.  Tournament decks necessarily play "the best" (for some definition thereof which I won't go too deep into) cards, and those cards are necessarily on the higher end of the pricing bellcurve.  Having played Yugioh, you have an idea of what a competitive constructed deck might cost you; MTG isn't quite as expensive as YGO (at least when I played YGO, but that was a long time ago), but it's in the same general area; a Standard deck will run you somewhere in the area of $200-400, and Standard rotates once a year.
If you want to get into competitive MTG, my recommendation would be to play Standard for a little while, and then get into Modern.  Modern doesn't rotate, so your cards will retain value for longer.  That said, Modern has a problem where the format is balanced by banning cards every so often and randomly nuking decks out of orbit.  It's a delicate balance to own the cards to build competitive decks and also not getting your collection randomly nuked by a ban announcement, although as a YGO player I'm sure you're accustomed to that already ;-)  That said, a Modern deck will run you around $1k, so it's not chump change.

Magic the Gathering is, functionally, a pay-to-win game at most levels, and is a pay-to-compete game at high levels of play. If you just want to play casual games with your friends, buying a premade deck is fine.
If you want to stand a decent chance of winning a relatively casual tournament at your game store, you can probably expect to pay about $300 for a Standard deck that will likely have pieces rotate out in a year, or about $600 for a Modern deck that will remain usable indefinitely as long as it doesn't get core pieces banned. Some decks will cost more or less money, but these should give you a ballpark estimate on how much you'd need to spend to compete.

Did they change the timescale for rotations again? It was 6 months the last time I played.

Ok error corrected.

I agree it's an expensive hobby but you can get a top tier standard deck for significantly less than $300 - although I agree the most expensive ones cost more. The challenger decks getting released soon are a good starting point as well.