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What is the difference between thickness and heavy stones?
Thickness in Go describes a strong formation of stones.  A heavy group is one that's over-concentrated.  How do I know when my stones are thick, without going too far and becoming heavy?  It seems like this can happen in just a very few moves.  Are there any good tutorials that illustrate positions where a player turns a thick group into a heavy one?

This is addressed in most of the answers, but for future readers I want to point out here that "heavy" is quite different from "overconcentrated". See the answers for details.

The terms thickness and influence are precisely defined and very easy to differentiate once you got the idea.
Influence simply refers to a group facing the center of the board.
If a group create influence and at the same time is already alive or can make eyes very easily is called thick. Note that a living group that is facing the edge of the board is not thick.
Distinguishing between thickness and heaviness or overconcentration is more difficult.
Heaviness refers to a group of many stones yet few eyespace. Typically, it is created by trying to save too many stones, or by playing bad shape.
Overconcentration is a different phenomenon and refers to cramped positions, typically hand in hand with a violation of the wall+1 rule. Overconcentrated positions tend to be extremely thick, far past the peak of efficiency.

todo: add diagrams

I'm no expert (10k on a good day) but if you follow the general rule of playing away from thickness you should be off to a good start. If you fail to play far enough away you could easily get over connected which could lead to a heavy group.

Thickness is indeed about the same as strength and comes with "eye potential" and "connectivity". We only speak of thickness in the context of outward influence, while strong enclosed groups or groups with limited potential for expansion are rather called "solid".
Most of the answers get this part right. But "heavy" is not at all the same as "overconcentrated".
Heavy stones are never thick: they may be large in number, but they lack eye potential, sometimes even making dumpling shapes. They are weak and vulnerable. More importantly, they are not easy to sacrifice, so they place a burden on the player.
Overconcentrated stones on the other hand can be and often are thick: if a player has created 3 or more eyes for his group, such investment was exaggerated, hence the stones are called overconcentrated.
Now if you start to fill all your eyes, turning it into a dumpling shape, a thick, overconcentrated group will become heavy indeed. But this would really be a novice mistake.
Next to that, it is imporant to understand that "being thick, heavy or overconcentrated" can be an aspect of a local group, but also of the entire distribution of stones. "Black is thick" means there are no easy ways to attack him. "White is heavy" means White has lots of burden. "Black is overconcentrated" means he has invested too much in a few areas.

Thickness and heavy stones are "similar," insofar as they involve a large number of stones. But there the similarity ends, because thick and heavy groups function differently.
Thick stones are those that you want to drive your opponent toward, because they are secure, meaning that your opponent's relatively few stones will suffer in the presence of your many.
Heavy stones are sometimes referred to as "dangos" or "clumps," awkward, insecure groups of stones that are easily chased by your opponent's stones, even if fewer. They are stones you'd rather have your opponent stay away from.
Occasionally, if a group of thick stones have suddenly lost their "eye space" or foundation, they can become heavy. On the other hand, a heavy group with new-found eyes can become thick.


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By how many points did alphago win against Lee Se-dol?
Today, the computer program AlphaGo from Google won against the Go world champion Lee Sedol. I read that it won by resignation. If I understand correctly, it means that Lee realized he could not win and accepted his defeat without ending the game.
My question is, by how many point AlphaGo would have won approximately if Lee had fought until the end?

The last time Michael Redmond (9p) counted in the live commentary he said black (Lee Sedol) is leading on the board, i.e. without komi. That means alphago's lead was less than 7.5 points. I will update if I find a source with a more precise counting.

Myungwan Kim (9p) in his live commentary estimated white's lead to 3 1/2 or 4 1/2 points.

Ok, but later at 2:23:40 he counted even or 1 point on the board for black, which would be 6.5 points for AlphaGo.

This question could be asked for all matches played.

For the record, in go the point difference is not necessarily a good measure of the difference in strength. This seems especially true in the case of AlphaGo, whose algorithm chooses the safest path to victory.

I'll even add that a close win by half a point is often more prestigious than a huge win by say twenty points.

The DeepMind channel on Youtube has a short review of each game by Michael Redmond 9P.
At the end of the summary for game 1, Michael estimates that black is slightly ahead on the board. When you factor in the 7.5 point komi, it means that the final score would have been around 5.5 in favor of AlphaGo.
Note that

AlphaGo does not attempt to maximize its points or its margin of victory. It tries to maximize its probability of winning.

[Source: wired]

Yeah the last point is an important one. AlphaGo would prioritise a 100% chance of a 1 point win, over a 99% chance of a 5 point win. Not that that's a likely scenario

You can download the game record (.sgf) file from this link and use an score estimator as in the KGS Goban (free), which will give you W+2.5 (including komi) and by looking at the screen we can see that AlphaGo could easily got additional points, so perhaps 5.5 as in the previous answer is the best estimate.

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In MTG, Can Rhox redirect its damage when it blocks?
My opponent blocks my creature with a Rhox, and instead of dealing damage to the attacker, would prefer to deal that damage to me. Does Rhox's ability work that way?
The same ability can also be seen on cards such as Thorn Elemental.

Add the name of the game (an abbreviation, actually), to the heading.

@Tom Au - Actually, I think that's a terrible idea. We have tags precisely so you don't have to do this.

@ire: I wouldn't call it terrible. But there appears to be a pretty even split of opinion on the related meta question, so I'll stop doing this.

@Tom Au - I have just started a discussion about this on meta. Feel free to express your point of view there if you like: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/103621/should-questions-contain-general-categories-in-the-title

Unfortunately the answer is "no".  The text on these cards, and others like them, is

"this creature may assign its combat damage as though it weren't
  blocked"

It's obvious what this means when the creature is attacking - if it weren't blocked it would deal damage directly to the player.
When blocking, it's academic whether "the creature may assign its combat damage as though it weren't blocked".  The only permissible place to assign a blocker's combat damage, ever, is to the creature it's blocking.  As such, Rhox and Thorn Elemental's special abilities have no effect while they're on defensive duty.

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What are the differences between the various versions of Axis & Allies?
I used to play Axis & Allies all the time when I was younger.  I recently purchased the Axis & Allies Revised Edition, and was floored by all the added complexity/new units/new rules/map changes.  It was definitely a whole pile of fun, but I notice now that there are many other versions of Axis & Allies available as well.  Are the "new" rules the same across all the "new" versions?  Does each version have its own rules?  Are the differences in the rules relatively minor, or do I need to keep track of six different sets of infantry rules for six different games?

I was helping some friend with one of the new versions, and it was way different.  No research rules for starters.  It would be nice if someone had a definite guide on the differences.

Looks like there are quite a few differences.  I'm not sure how to convert the info to a readable form for this site, especially as I'm not too familiar with A&A, but the Wikipedia page for the game appears to have significant detail.

##This is a community wiki
This is a running list of the changes to the the traditional 1942 version of Axis & Allies listing each progressive revision below it with all the changes from the previous version--just like software release notes.
Please add to the list if you see something missing.

Axis & Allies (Nova Games Edition) — 1981

Initial release

Axis & Allies — 1984
a.k.a. "Axis & Allies: Classic"

Map and setup is changed
Sequence of play has been revised
Costs and incomes are 1/100th that of the previous games
Bombardment is added
Neutral countries can no longer be occupied (previously, it could be done by paying a cost)
Fighters can no longer be built directly onto carriers; they must be built in land areas and then travel to carriers
Air units no longer add 1 to their movement if they start on islands
Loading land units on ships is now part of the land movement phase, rather than naval movement phase
Submarines now participate in normal naval combat, instead of firing a single salvo during their own phase prior to naval combat
National advantages have been removed
The option to produce an atomic bomb through technology research has been removed

Axis & Allies 2nd Edition — 1986
1986 reprint

Commander-In-Chief rules deleted
Transport rules changed
Amphibious assault rules changed
Multiple Force rules changed — such forces cannot attack together any more
Newly built and captured industrial complexes have limited production
The sea zone surrounding Panama is two sea zones
Appendix IV added with five optional rules variations: (1) Total Victory condition that requires ownership of original capitals plus two enemy capitals; (2) Ability to place naval units in occupied sea zones; (3) Germany starts with jet fighters and Japan with super submarines; (4) Russia is not allowed to attack on the first turn; (5) No new industrial complexes may be bought or placed.

Axis & Allies: Revised — 2004
a.k.a. Axis & Allies 20th Anniversary Edition

Map and setup has changed
The Artillery and Destroyer units have been added
Cost of fighters has been reduced from 12 IPCs to 10
Transports may now carry 1 armor + 1 infantry
Armor attacks and defends on a 3+
Victory cities have been added as a replacement for economic victory

Axis & Allies: 50th Anniversary Edition — 2008

Italy and China have been added as factions
A 1941 setup has been added in addition to the standard 1942 setup
The Cruiser unit has been added

Axis & Allies: Spring 1942 — 2009
a.k.a. Axis & Allies 25th Anniversary Edition

The changes from the 50th Anniversary Edition are not incorporated except as follows
The Cruiser unit has been added

Axis & Allies: Spring 1942 (Second Edition) — 2012

The Anti-aircraft Artillery unit has been added

The 1986 edition definitely allows submarines to fire before other ships.  I have a copy, and the manual says it's printed in 1986.  Neutral territories can also be occupied.  So, I'm wondering if your comments on the 1984 edition are incorrect, or if they we reversed again for the 1986 edition?  Or perhaps you're referring to a 1999 edition?

I have A&A 1942 1st edition. The copyrights on the box and manual all read 2009 and there are anti aircraft units. They even have a statblock in the appendix. We're they net new in 1942 2nd Edition or were there rule changes for them?

I own Axis and Allies 1984 original, the 2004 and 2009 revised editions, as well as the new Europe and Pacific games.
The new rules, new units, new everything make the game so much more interesting.
For example, in Europe and Pacific, there are "Harbors" and "Air Bases." These allow units that move from them to move one extra space. Let's say a fighter is in Hawaii. Fighters have a move of 4. If it leaves from an area with an "Air Base" however, its mobility is upped to 5. The same is true for bombers (and the new tactical bomber). These bases add one movement to any unit. Harbors allow all ships leaving the harbor to move at a 3.
If you want more info on these versions, please comment back.

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Games with features like Battlestar Galactica's "Traitor" Mechanic?
My local gaming group has been playing the heck out of Battlestar Galactica for some time now.  Are there any other board games that can be recommended that have a similar theme, or similar mechanics?  Obviously, we're not talking about clones or rip-offs here, but games that embody the "Everyone's in it together except for 1 or 2 who are out to get you.  You better find out who they are!" theme.

There are many games with a "traitor" or "uninformed majority" type mechanics. In some of them, such as Mafia and Are You The Traitor?, that is the main point of the game; you are trying to discover each person's role, with not much else on top of that. In others, it's a more incidental feature, usually involving the win conditions for each player or team, but with more traditional gameplay mechanics for the main duration of the game. In the following descriptions, I sketch only out how the "traitor" mechanics work for each game, not how the whole game works.
There's Mafia, also known as Werewolf or Assassin, which is probably the most well known, and one of the oldest, of the genre. In its most basic form (using Werewolf terminology), you have two Werewolves, one Seer, and the rest are Villagers, though only the Werewolves know who each other are. Each day, everyone (Villagers, Seer, and Werewolves) try to decide who the Werewolves are, and hang one person. Each night, the Werewolves silently and secretly choose one person to kill. Each night, the Seer gets to discover, silently and secret, whether one player is the Werewolf. The humans (Villagers and Seer) win if they kill both of the Werewolves, the Werewolves win if they equal the humans in number. The Seer is trying to help guide the Villagers to kill the Werewolves instead of innocent Villagers, without revealing himself as he will be killed by the Werewolves the next night (unless he identifies both of them openly; but of course, a Werewolf could also claim to be the Seer...).
In Are You The Traitor? from Looney Labs, there is a Key-Holder, trying to deliver a key to the Good Wizard, while the Evil Wizard tries to get the key instead (only the wizards know which is which). The Guards are trying to help the Key-Holder get the key to the Good Wizard, but there's a Traitor in their midst, who's trying to (secretly) reveal to the Evil Wizard who has the key, without being caught by the Guards. The Good team wins if the Key-Holder delivers the key to the Good Wizard, or the Guards catch the Traitor. The evil team wins if the Key-Holder accidentally delivers the key to the Evil Wizard, the Guards attack someone other than the Traitor, or the Evil Wizard catches the Key-Holder is before the Key-Holder delivers the key (the Traitor can never win directly, only by communicating secretly to the Evil Wizard). It's an interesting twist on traitor mechanics, lots of different roles, all with very different goals, but still has the basics of the traitor mechanics.
The multi-player version of Homeworlds, an Icehouse game has a traitor mechanic, though the 2 player version, Binary Homeworlds, is more popular. In the multi-player version, players are secretly assigned Good and Evil roles. The basic mechanics of the game are an abstract strategy game, in which players are trying to eliminate each other (I won't go into the details, as they aren't relevant to the traitor mechanic). The Good players are on a team; they win if all Evil players are eliminated. Each Evil player is playing for themselves; they win if they eliminate any other player, Good or Evil. So, Good players are all cooperating, and Evil players are all competing.
Bang! is a spaghetti western card game, with a Sheriff who is known to everyone, and Deputies, Outlaws, and a Renegade. The Outlaws are trying to kill the Sheriff, the Sheriff and Deputies are trying to kill the Outlaws and Renegade, and the Renegade is trying to be the last man standing.
Napoleon is a trick-taking card game (played with ordinary playing cards) originally from Japan (and apparently over 100 years old, though not in its exact present form). 10 cards are dealt to each player, and two blinds are left. The players bid a number of tricks and a trump suit, similar to Bridge. The winning bidder is Napoleon. He names another card, and the player who has that card becomes his General (but only the General knows that); they together need to make the bid to win the game. Napoleon now gets to take the two blinds, and discard two cards; if the card he named was one of the blinds, he's playing alone, with no General. The game is then played as a trick taking game with the named trump. No one but the General knows who that is, and Napoleon and the General (or Napoleon alone) are playing on a team against the other players, who are also on a team.
Shadows Over Camelot is a cooperative game, but there is a variant in which one player might be a traitor (or there may be no traitor). The players are working together against the game, but the traitor will try and sabotage the progress of the other players while remaining undiscovered. The loyal knights may accuse someone of being the traitor; if they're correct, they get an advantage, if they're wrong, they're set back; of course, depending on the game, there might not even be a traitor. If the traitor remains secret until the end of the game, he can set the players back and turn victory into defeat.
In The Resistance you are a group of resistance fighter running missions against a corrupt and evil government. However, there are government spies in your midst. You need to complete three out of five missions successfully, without a spy sabotaging the mission. Each round, a new player is the leader, and must select a team, trying to choose only loyal resistance fighters and no spies. After selecting the team, the players vote on whether that team should be formed. If the spies sow discord, and no team can be formed after 5 tries, the spies win and the government crushes the resistance. Otherwise, they go on the mission; but any spies on the mission have the chance to sabotage it, causing it to fail. If they do, however, they risk being found out.

Keep in mind, that Traitorious Knights can also accuse other knights of being traitors to get an advantage (each player only gets one opportunity to accuse someone)

The "uninformed majority" type of games can be played both live and online.
Also, they can be either short games (less than 2 hours) or long games where the game day-night cycles are in sync with real life days and nights.
You can read more about this game variations on
http://exposemafia.com/about

In Betrayal at House on the Hill, someone becomes a traitor part of the way through the game. The traitor gets a secret agenda, but the group of remaining players gets a related counter agenda. Each side is unaware of what the other side is trying to accomplish.

I would recommend you check out Shadows Over Camelot it was the first game I played with a traitor mechanic. It's a cooperative boardgame with (obviously) an Arthurian theme, and if I remember correctly, a traitor is possible in each game, not mandatory.
So you get "Is there a traitor?" questions instead of just "Which one is the traitor?"

Saboteur is an excellent card-based game with one or more traitors.
You are a group of dwarves tunneling toward gold, but some of you are traitors paid by a rival mining company.  Saboteur is especially great with large groups (7 or 8, the game supports up to 10) as the accusations fly fast and furiously.
Individual games go quickly, and you play 3 games in a row to decide an overall winner.

La Resistance! This is a great Werewolf/Mafia game that runs without a moderator, and even works for 5 players! It's tense, tactical, emotionally draining, and best of all, everyone plays right up until the end of the game, no-one gets eliminated during play.
The one drawback is that is becomes a little luck-based as the number of players reaches 8 and beyond, so at that point, we tend to switch back to Werewolf.

I really like this game. I think it's much better than Werewolf, which is fun, but is very random, especially with a lot of people. I disagree that The Resistance becomes more luck based with more players. I've played with all different numbers of players and I think it's just as good at every number. Actually, I tend to prefer more than seven because the first mission has three people and doesn't always go to the resistance.

Those types of games are normally called "uninformed majority games"; one game I quite like that's in that class is Mafia (Werewolf, Assassins, etc.). The base game is pretty much as simple as uninformed majority games get; every night the mafia players choose someone to eliminate, and every day the townspeople try to figure out who the mafia players are. Mafia is entertaining mostly because there are dozens of extra roles and house rules people have added that can be played in ridiculous numbers of combinations, so you can almost certainly find something that your particular group enjoys

The expansion for Pandemic includes a 'bio-terrorist' where one of the players is secretly a 'traitor'.

I've designed and released two free print-and-play games that have traitor mechanics:
Haunted Destinies: All players start as amnesiacs (Each player has a small set of face-down Psyche cards that you're not allowed to look at.).  The goal is to figure out who The Opener is and prevent that player from killing all of the other players.  If you realize that you're The Opener, your goal is to kill all of the other players.  If you die, and you're not The Opener, you become a Ghost.  Special "Haunting" cards come up during play that give the Ghosts special victory conditions.  There's also a novel mechanic that lets you "steal" destinies from other players, so it's possible to steal The Opener role from a player and take it for yourself.
Space Monster: Playable as pure co-op, one-vs-many, or with an "up for grabs" traitor.  The plot of Space Monster parallels the movie Alien – Figure out the space monster's weaknesses and kill it before it eats all of you.  The "up for grabs" traitor mechanic comes into play with the escape pod.  There's one escape pod, with enough room for one person.  If you think that the monster will win, you can bail and leave in the escape pod.  If you do this, and the monster wins, you win instead.  With this set-up, any player can become a "traitor."

Fury of Dracula has a fog-of-war mechanic in which one player plays Dracula, whose moves are generally hidden from the other players, while the other players collude (in plain view of both each other and Dracula) to kill Dracula. Everyone knows up front who is playing Dracula, but the other players have to guess what Dracula is doing.

That reminds me of the board game Scotland Yard, in which case one player in Mr./Mrs. X and the other players are trying to catch him/her. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland_Yard_%28board_game%29

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How do the new Dark Eldar interact with the Kill Team rules in the Battle Missons rulebook?
The Battle Missions book, near the end, features a scenario called Kill Teams, wherein:
Your force org chart is:

0-1 elite
0-2 troops
0-1 fast attack
200 points.

Exact Rules:

Every man For Himself: All models operate as individual units in this mission, even if they were chosen as part of a squad or squadron.  In addition, when a model shoots or fights in an assault, it may split its attacks up amongst any eligible targets if desired.

The issue:  The new Dark Eldar are very dependent on their Pain Token abilities.  These grant "pain tokens" to the squad at certain times (1 to start, and gain additional ones for wiping out other units).  Are the pain tokens now tracked 'per model'?  Or still shared among the whole squad?  Do you now gain pain tokens for each model killed, or just when you wipe out all the models that make up an enemy squad?

If there is nothign in the Kill Team rules that says individual models are considered to be a single squad of 1, then I would say the pain tokens are given to the entire squad (a squad being one elite, troop or fast attack choice) for wiping out an entire enemy squad.
However, if the Kill Team rules explicitly state that each model is conisdered to be its own squad, then I would say pain tokens are given on an individual model basis for each model they wipe out.

I will check the exact wording and post clarification.

Posted the exact rule.

@GWLlosa -- The phrase "even if they were chosen as part of a squad or squadron" to me implies that even though you may have 10 Dark Eldar Warriors in a squad operating as individual units, they are still considered a squad.


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Accessible (and educational) deck building game for second grade primary school child?
What deck building / card games would be most accessible to a 7-9 year old? As a bonus, are there any that could encourage his/her learning, in line with his/her abilities at that age?
As guidance, Wikipedia states that for second graders:

... students are taught place value to tens, hundreds or
  thousands, and renaming with addition and subtraction... Another skill students practice is counting money and making change. Positive and negative numbers are introduced, but not added and subtracted.

Also

In reading, students read to perform a task using fictional and
  non-fictional texts, and learn about story elements, text features,
  character traits, sequencing, and main idea/details.

As an example, my 7 year old is ready to move on from 'Top Trumps'. He has a solid grasp of the relative values of numbers and in my opinion is ready to add a strategic element. We've tried and enjoyed 'King of Tokyo', although I have noticed he mostly goes for the higher value cards'.
I'm sure there are many 'advanced/adult' games that 7-9 year olds are capable of getting their heads around, but I'd really like something that is immediately accessible to that age group.

Down-voters. Please provide reasons in comments.

You don't have any downvotes.  You do however have close votes, because this is a game recommendation question which are not allowed on the site.  See the FAQ page about "What kinds of questions should I ask".

If you're looking for simplicity, probably one of the easiest to learn would be Star Realms. It's the simplest deck builder I've played, at least for the base game, but still provides some depth.
One other game I've seen lots of kids enjoy is Quarriors. Your "deck" is composed of dice in a bag, but the same concept applies--you accumulate money to buy creature dice, and those creature dice deal damage to other creature dice. A lot of symbols to deal with, especially if you buy the expansions, but still very accessible.
Getting to math concepts of tens/hundreds and negatives might be difficult since deck builders tend to deal largely with single digit numbers and don't usually have "debt" systems or the like, but the money counting/addition/subtraction element should be present in almost any deck builder.


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Official Diplomacy sets, variations and where to buy
Diplomacy only seems to have one set available to buy widely that I am aware of, built by Gibson Games.
It's nothing special, an averagely constructed cardboard board with plastic pieces.
Are there any other officaly distributed boxes available? Preferably available to order online.
There also lots of variations of Diplomacy available online, have any of these made it 'into the wild'?

The original Hasbro Edition is probably the physically best edition ever made - much better than the current US version with cardboard counters.
The other highly recommended edition is the 1992 Deluxe Diplomacy by Avalon Hill, which turns up very occasionally and very expensively on eBay.
The only professionally printed Dip variants I know of are Colonial Diplomacy and Machiavelli.

Would love to see pictures of the Deluxe Diplomacy set :)

Added a link to the Amazon.com page, but it doesn't have internal pics.

I came across the following variants whilst doing a bit more digging at Board Game Geek:
The Anniversary edition with metal pieces, an 'Asmodee' edition, a German variant from the 70's and some amazing custom-built boards (one & two - shown below).

The original has wooden pieces, not plastic. Blocks for the armies and flat pointed ovals for the fleets. But I haven't seen that in a while.
There have been versions in other languages (at least I know of a Dutch version).
Sorry no links.


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Alternative rules for SimCity: The Card Game
Back in the 90s, I enjoyed collecting SimCity: The Card Game. I can't help but feel excited that there's a lot of potential in the game, but that the rules are broken and in certain aspects, to be honest, downright absurd.

I am especially bothered by a number of things that are either annoying or out of balance:

The sheer amount of counting the rules have you do.

Once you have a decent city going, keeping track of the number residents within however many of blocks—either by road or rail—is a headache.
Worse yet, add a couple of Receive # for every [card type] within # blocks into the mix, and you'll spend a good deal of the evening counting.

Zoning bonuses become crazy. Once a residential zone has reached a modest size, the value of putting any card down is dwarfed by the massive bonus of appending it to a zone. There's no sense in trying to close off a zone, either, because your opponent will eat you alive.
Council members are useless. Never does the game reach a point in which rezoning is really an issue, because it takes too many members to veto the mayor and/or council chairman. You require much too many in the deck, and pretty much any other card yields more value in the long run.
City services pay off much too much. Put down a few schools and a few police stations, and you'll be "adding" & "receiving" yourself to bliss.
Many of the event cards are either extremely focused on the council, or, like Fire!, extremely destructive.
Phase one cards pollute your deck once you have passed beyond that phase, but there's a dilemma: you can't really have less than a third of your deck filled with them unless you intend to sit around collecting cards for the first hour or so.

Some of these rules might be somewhat alleviated by limiting the playing area to something like 6×6, and having the good sense not to add too many city services, but that doesn't cut it for me. I sometimes get the impression that I might not be fully understanding the rules, but the official rulebook leaves so many questions unanswered.
For some reason, I feel very attached to the game, but the rules just let me down. Are there any good alternatives?
This Flickr stream has some photos, for those who haven't played for the past 15 years and wish to refresh their memory.

I wish I could help you, but it's been far too long since I've played this game.

I picked it up recently after about 10 years. After the first game I already had some ideas for improvement (dealing out the council members pre-game and having separate stacks for Stage I+II and Stage III+IV). There's something to it that just makes me excited. I know there's got to be a great game in there somewhere, but I always end up annoyed by the rules. If there as enough interest, I'd make this a wiki to hear suggestions, but it seems the game never got a big following.

I enjoyed this game, it was played pretty heavily in our shop for 6 months or so.  I still have a stack of the long cards somewhere...  What I remember is that you could get wildly different decks depending on which cards you had.  The store set was relatively complete, but individual people unwilling to buy a large amount of packs would tend to be lacking in some basic resource like certain council members or they'd have 5 of one power plant and no other ones.  I think it could be a better game in a Dominion style everything in one box approach.  (Plus a rules cleanup!)

I also really enjoyed the game, long long ago, but all I can do is agree that it suffers from poorly designed rules. Not certain what to suggest for revisions.

I had a similar response to a Wolfgang Kramer game "The Market of Alturien".  The components are so pretty and you want it to be great... but in the actual play it's a stinker.  I tried to suggest variant rules to my group and the only response I got (in slightly less polite phrasing) was "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear".  It's a shame...

SimCity is a classic example of a well designed but poorly developed game.

I found some house rules for SimCity here (TXT), which don't address all of your issues, but had some interesting ideas, such as:

If playing the common deck game, then consider splitting the deck further as follows:

One pile for Phase 1 & 2 cards + Phase 3 Power Plants + Council Members
One pile for Phase 3 & 4 cards + Events
One pile for Long cards
You may draw from the Phase 1 & 2 deck anytime
You may draw from the Phase 3 & 4 deck in phases 2-4
You may draw from the Long Cards in Phases 3 & 4

You may play one event card in addition to placing a block on your turn (presumably to done down events)
Minimum size of a zone or complex before it counts as a zone / complex is 2.  City Services are wild for all zones in the normal way.
The Zone and Complex Bonus are calculated normally, except that only cards which are within 2 blocks of the block being played count as within the complex / zone for purposes of calculating the bonus.

I haven't played SimCity before, so I can't say for certainty how useful his rules are, but they look promising.

I think it's all how you build your deck. Everyone should be playing from the same deck. I've just recently found the game and am planning to pull it out at the next friendly get-together I go to. I don't have a rule book anymore, so maybe that's why I'm not haunted by the 'official rules'. But I did use the rules I could remember and play tested a few solitare games, I know it will play much easier and be more interesting when there are two or more players.
So here's how I played. All cards are now unique. When I built the deck I tried to keep it down to one police station, one fire station ect. 100 card deck (for now) I did include the the Phase 1 guard house (but I love the Phase 1 colonial era cards) as a bonus. Only one power plant of any kind can be played, after the first is played, players just discard any they draw in the future, UNLESS it is a phase 4 power plant, then it may replace the existing one.
Playing a zone: I think it makes sense to award a bonus point for each connection you join when you play a zone. For instance, you play a road block next to another road block, you get a point. You can earn up to three bonus points this way (road, rail, power lines).
Split the game into 'rounds' or agree to a point goal. A round is defined when all players have finished their turns. So for large groups maybe you just say, lets play five rounds and whoever has the most points wins. A point goal would be something along the lines of, whoever has reached $250 at the end of a round wins, if two or more players have done this in the same round, whoever has the most points wins.
Players split up duties along with keeping track of their own points. This is still not the most appealing, but it's part of the game. It will slow the game down, but hey, this isn't meant to be a fast paced action packed shoot 'em up game, lol. Each player also needs to write down the cards they have played (generically names cards like River, Forest, ect just place a scrap of paper with the player name on it), this will help keep things sorted out. Each time something is played everyone should be looking to see if it effects them, this will keep people engaged even when it's not their turn.
The following needs to be counted (Road/Rail means the card has both):
Poulation: Total Population, Road Population, Rail Population, Road/Rail Population
Jobs: Total Jobs, Road Jobs, Rail Jobs, and Road/Rail Jobs
Crime (don't forget to minus Police coverage)
Polution
You can't play a card that requires Sims, unless you have enough available sims to run it. Rail bussinesses need rail or road/rail sims, ect.
Buildings covered by the Police/Fire stations need to be kept track of by the player who placed the station. 0 crime blocks can be covered by the police station for points at no coverage usage.
Complexes (Farm 2, Hospital 4, Univertity 1, ect), which I always loved, just need to be placed adjacent to another complex card to get the bonus points (you don't need four anymore).
As the city grows, the point bonuses will get huge, BUT, I do feel that's how it should be, the more developed your city is, the more services it provides, the more value everything has.
There was other stuff and I'm still flushing this out. Hope this helps anyone else who wishes to mess around with this game.

I really like some of these rules. I'm thinking of buying some colored beads so each player can easily identify which card is his.


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What's the proper etiquette when a Euchre trick is earned?
When a team has 3 tricks and the other scores a trick, you can throw in all the cards because you know the team of 3 tricks will get one point only. There is no sense playing out the final trick. I have played both ways and do not have a preference as long as everybody is consistent.
What's the best way to determine the "speed" at which the game is played?

When I used to play a lot of Euchre the side that didn't call trump would often toss in their cards after taking one trick conceding the rest of the tricks to the caller.
Sometimes all it would take is to show the left bower after the right had been played on the first trick.
Each group has to decide what they are comfortable with, but I think the more you play the faster you will get.

Clearly you play with more talented people than I do, if you're willing to always assume the makers will get three :). Not only do we regularly euchre each other, we've had euchres on people who went alone

@Michael Euchre's happen all the time.  If you aren't getting euchred occasionally you aren't taking enough risks IMHO.  Usually it becomes obvious pretty fast if there is potential for a Euchre.  Generally one person will be able to figure it out if the hand can end early and will toss their cards in demonstrating such.  Very rarely are they wrong.  An example - on the first hand, a led Ace goes thru.  The caller tosses their hand in showing 4 trump such that he can guarantee that he will take 3 tricks.  He was hoping his partner could cover his off-nine.

Edit: I just realized I misread the question and answered a way more complicated case than what you asked. In the case where you literally already have three tricks and the other team has one, definitely throw it in. My answer below is for the more complicated case where you know what the final score will be without having played enough tricks to actually decide it

It depends on the group, and it can get complicated. You can be in a situation where you each have one point and you know that you can win two of the next three (without knowing which two), and in my normal group that plays all the time showing your hand is generally fine, since everyone else can figure out pretty fast how you were guaranteed to win. In a new group I've only played with maybe three times I did that and there was mass confusion and I ended up spending about a minute explaining why I was guaranteed to win, which is much longer than it would've taken to just play the hand (and probably just annoyed people)
As long as it's a friendly game and it's obvious to everyone why it's a win I would do it; if you think you'll need to explain it I would probably just play the hand out anyway, unless you're trying to teach someone how to tell that a hand is won

I agree with others that the speed of play and the acceptance/willingness to throw in cards increases with the more you play and the more comfortable you become with the game and your partner/opponents.
I usually play the way you describe in your question. We play out all the tricks until the remaining cards no longer have mathematical significance. Sometimes, if I am playing an intense game with beginners or suspected cheaters, I want to see all the tricks played one-by-one so that I can make sure no one gets an unfair advantage by reneging.


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Arkham Horror: Tokens
This is more a question for the big games with a lot of investigators. A few non-critical tokens seem to be able to run out, and I can't find anything about those specific tokens in the rules.
Do you just rip a piece of paper and create a clue token or are they out when out? I do know some of the tokens (like portals) awaken the Ancient One when they run out, but for the others there are no mentions in the rules (or I'm just missing them) about what to do when there are none left in the box.
In an 8 player game I've had this problem with Clue, Stamina, Sanity, Money and Explored (those you get once coming back from a portal) tokens. I don't believe the intention is to get sucked back into the portal just because there are no tokens left, but I might be wrong.
Any ideas about official rulings in these cases?

I'm having trouble understanding how you are running out of those things.  How many people are you playing with?  Any house rules?  Are you sure you have a full component set?  (There is a list on page 2 of the rulebook).  For starters, you should have 54 points worth of stamina/sanity markers.  That's almost 7 per character in an 8 player game.

Does it matter how? The fact is my supplies are running low. I'm boosted with allies, retainers, items, etc.

well, I suspect you are playing a different game than I am.  I've played a fair amount of AH (~50 games) and not run into this problem.  Therefore my suspicion is that either you are using house rules that lengthen the game, or perhaps you are misunderstanding a rule or two.  If you don't have a full component set, then you should address that as well.  (FYI, if you include a @pat, I'll get notified of any response)

So far I've had 1-2 games with 8 investigators where a couple tokens run really low/out, I only want/need to find out official rulings (if they exist) and yes I have a full set. I also have some spare copies from a game that was destroyed but I am not sure I should mix those markers with my current copy until I manage to find out the answer to the question ;)

Also in a 6+ player game its convenient to have pools of these around the table for ease of use.  With somewhat limited components you need to be careful how you size each pool.

Its very easy to run out of clue tokens, especially when playing on the double clue easy level or using a herald that provides extra clues each turn - I do every single game at some point (usually early to mid game). There is nothing in the rules to say that the number of clues is limited to the number of tokens provided so use any other counters in pace of these.

What I do in my playing is give the players enough stamina and sanity tokens to reach their maximum, in denominations so that the player can "break" their stamina and sanity totals without ever having to put them back into the pool, or take new ones out (unless their maximum goes up, obviously).
For example, if an investigator has a maximum of 5 sanity, I'll give them one 3 sanity token, and two 1 sanity tokens, for a total of five.  If they take two points of sanity damage, they move their two single sanity tokens off of their investigator card (or onto their card, it doesn't really matter so long as they are consistent in how they do it).  If they then take a further point of sanity damage, they move the 3 sanity token onto the card, and put the two singles back.
The same can obviously be done with stamina.
There are no official rules that state that something happens when clues or money or explored tokens run out, so I would assume that it's safe to go ahead and replace those with stand-ins (small change works well for money: pennies for $1, nickels for $5, and dimes for $10, for example).
One thing that may be worth checking out if you have an iOS device is the Arkham Horror Toolkit released by Fantasy Flight Games on the App Store.  It can keep track of your sanity, stamina, money and clues.  It's not free, but it does have some other neat features (support for the expansions -also not free, but not too expensive), and a built in dice roller.

I agree with Pat in that it appears next to impossible to run out of any/all markers and tokens.  However, if this situation does arise, after reading the rules it appears that the intent is not to limit the players by the amount of tokens but rather that the supplies are given the numbers they are because they clearly can't just give you infinite of all supplies.
From reading through the rules I inferred that, should you run out of tokens that don't have any explicit result (like losing if you run out of gate tokens), they should just be replicated with paper and pen, or other odds and ends (pennies, paper clips, etc...).

I looked on the official boards and was unable to find anything on this.  My inclination would be to awaken the GOO if you run out of clues.  The rest can be faked.  I've never come close to running out of money.  Go shopping!

@Pat Not a bad idea to awaken the GOO if you run out of clues, I just figured that if that was the intention, it would have been stated as it is for running out of gates.  Although, if you have 8 people and have gone through all 48 clues and aren't spending them, then perhaps the GOO should be awakened just to teach you a lesson! =)

Yes, it isn't like you're going to have a better shot at him/her/it :)

The faq posted in 2012 here says

Q: What happens if the general supply of Clue tokens
  is depleted?
A: Use pennies, poker chips, or some other small items to stand in for the Clue tokens until the general supply
  is replenished. Alternatively, if no more Clue tokens are available, track any Clue tokens that are gained or placed in play with paper and pencil.

I don't see mention of how to treat stamina, sanity, money, and explored tokens, but given that if any of these were to be argued to be limited it would likely be clues in some story driven way, and given that they explicitly say the above answer for clues, you can likely infer that the same can be done with the other items in question.


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In Chess what is the Queens or Kings Indian?
In Chess what is the Queens or Kings Indian, and why might it be useful?

At a high level, an "Indian" in Chess is just advancing the pawn which is in front of a knight by one square.
King or Queen indicates which side the advanced pawn is on.  This move will usually be followed by the fianchetto of the bishop nearest the pawn.  This puts the bishop in front of the knight and allows him to control one of the long diagonals on the board from a safe location.
Two common openings using this are:

The King's Indian Attack, usually done in response to the French defense.  A famous example is from 1967.  Bobby Fisher against Lhamsuren Myagmarsuren.
The Queen's Indian Defense starts like this 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 b6

This answer is nonsense. "Indian" refers to the family of openings after 1. d4 Nf6 other than transpositions to the QGD. cf Bogo-Indian, Old Indian, Nimzo-Indian which do not necessarily feature a fianchetto. The "King's Indian" normally refers to the King's Indian Defence 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 without ...d5 soon. The King's Indian Attack has a different character, but is named by analogy with the KID.

Rather than comment, it sounds like you should create your own answer.  Also, you should downvote mine if you think it is "not useful"  Thanks for the feedback.

I was a little shocked by the 9 upvotes and wished to point out how the answer is factually incorrect (though it surely could be useful). I would vote this down if I had more rep: I don't have a more comprehensive answer in mind to the OP's question.

@RoundTower - if you take your comment and put it into an answer, I expect you'd get some votes and hence rep, and will be able to downvote soon enough!

The King's Indian is a hypermodern opening, where Black deliberately allows White control of the centre with his pawns, with the view to subsequently challenging it with the moves ...e5 or ...c5.  The Queen's Indian Defense, also a hypermodern opening, is defined by the moves 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 b6  The move 3...b6 increases Black's control over the central light squares e4 and d5 by preparing to fianchetto the queen's bishop, with the opening deriving its name from this manoeuvre. As in the other Indian defenses, Black attempts to control the center with their pieces, instead of occupying it with their pawns in classical style.


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History of board games
Is there a good book about the history of board games?
Preferably the book would cover all the way from the ancient games to the newest fads in the market.

Is the "book" tag something that's actually going to occur often enough to warrant a tag?

@lilserf The beta is a good test of which tags will occur often enough. If a tag only occurs once, it will eventually be automatically deleted. If it occurs only a few times by the late beta, we should consider removing it or merging it with something more general. If it's used reasonably often, and there are no obvious merge targets, then it's probably a good tag. This is something that doesn't need to be fixed immediately, but we can wait and see how it's used; extra tags don't cause much harm.

While not a direct answer, check out the recent "Hobby Games, the 100 best" book.  It has games from the last 100 years and there is a lot of history contained within its page.  Each entry is written by a game designer as well.
I enjoyed the book very much, learned a ton.

I think A History of Board Games Other Than Chess is one of the definitive books in this category. The Library Thing page I linked to also has several related books to check out.

Published in 1952 per Amazon

R.C Bell wrote several books on board games, though I don't think they were as structured as the Oxford book that Jeremiah already mentioned.

Dork Tower #34: A Brief History of Gaming is a comic book featuring the early history of board games. John Kovalic is the author/illustrator (he is also a game designer) who created Dork Tower, a comic book that frequently features gaming of all kinds.

I am currently reading (and very much enjoying) A World of Chess: Its Development and Variations Through Centuries and Civilizations, by Jean-Louis Cazaux and Rick Knowlton. It's very much specific to chess, but of course chess was and continues to be a big part of the history of board games. What I'm finding particularly awesome about the book is that it goes into the mechanics of chess in each of its many incarnations over the times and places its been played. Anyone interested in this topic (history of board games) will absolutely find it fascinating.


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Can you choose the role with the "New Assignment" event?
In Pandemic: On The Brink there are several new event cards.  We are curious as to whether the "New Assignment" card lets you choose, or whether you pick one at random (as at the start of the game).
As a follow up question, the card suggests that any player may swap their role with the unused roles, does this mean each in turn gets the opportunity, or any one player?

You can play it on any player (not just yourself) at any time.  That one player is then allowed to choose a specific role from the available ones.
The thread here has the game's designer clarifying that it is intended to only affect a single player.  He doesn't specifically comment about choosing versus random, but since earlier people mention choosing and he doesn't correct them, it seems this is the correct interpretation.
This makes the card quite powerful, but choosing a random role would be too weak (you're just as likely to get something less suited to your current situation), and allowing everyone to switch roles would be ridiculously overpowered.


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In Catan, should you try to exclude others players from one resource?
In Settlers of Catan (the board game), in a game with four players, is it considered a good strategy to try to lock one (or two) other player(s) from a given resource in order to have an upper hand for later trading? I mean, placing your cities so that you prevent someone from accessing any ore, for example. (Ore is the easiest, because people tend to neglect it in the very beginning of the game.)
I never do it, but it happened on its own once or twice, and it is really great. You can get better bargains because people are desperate for it. So, is it a known strategy? Do you look for that kind of advantage when playing Catan?

It's not a bad strategy, if (1) you still have access to all resources, and (2) you have a group willing to trade. But it's not generally a "good strategy."
I've seen a situation where one person had a lock on all the wood (random setup). The result? everyone else went for ports, and no one traded with them.
You can't really compel competent players to pay more than 3:1 for any resource, since a port allows 3:1, and they who get too greedy tend to lose out on everything else as no one will trade with them.
If, however, you have it on good numbers (5,6,8,9), and trade it to others at 2:1 and/or can get the 2:1 port for that resource, build your cities on it, and use it for just about everything, it's workable. A lot depends upon the group being played with.

In the many instances I have seen this strategy attempted, it has always involved a compromise on other resources, which hurts the greedy player in the end.  Furthermore, nobody trades with a player who is dominating them.  It's psychology and strategy both.
In the best case scenario, provided you can get good probabilities of all 4 of the other resources, and lock up the only high-probability ore, by all means go ahead.  This will involve a lucky setup and a lucky roll (to go first, and to still be able to get all 4 other resources.)

Ore (and to a less extent Corn) are both incredibly important resources. Since there are only 3 Ore hexes, its definitely worth trying to corner the market in Ore if you can. It is hard to build cities if you have to trade 3:1 for ore. Since people often want Ore in bulk, you can often get very good mutually beneficial deals such as 3 ore for wood+bricks+2corn.
I wouldn't try to do the same for wood or bricks since you won't really be able to leverage it into much of an advantage. And definitely not with sheep!

It's definitely one of the components you should look at when deciding on your strategy in the game at the start.  I evaluate the following components when placing (and deciding where to go later on):

Number Diversity
Resource Diversity
Good Numbers
Getting close to a monopoly on a resource (this question)
Ports
Whether there's one resource that is going to be shortchanged
Order of Placement


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What different opening strategy exist when playing Quatro?
I enjoy very much playing Quatro, as I find that the small board, small set of pieces and symmetry. However, I am at loss in playing the beginning of the game anyway other than randomly. Because the pieces placed are neither yours nor the opponent's, thinking in terms of "occupying the central ground" make no sense.
Do you have any strategies?

I don't know that you're going to do much better than random.
Clearly, when you are not the first placing player your piece choice doesn't matter.  All the pieces are equivalent (the same number of potential matches will remain after play).
If you are the first placing player, then there are only 2 distinct opening moves.
Placing any of the pieces on:

a "corner*"

the "inner" pieces are functionally equivalent to outer corners on the first move

a "wall" but not a "corner"

This is due the board's symmetry, and the lack of piece ownership, coupled with the equivalence of the piece "types."
None of these moves deny any potential win condition, clearly.
So, the first choice that has any impact on the outcome of the game can't occur until the second piece choice.
Here, the first placing player can choose a piece with 3, 2, 1, or no commonalities with one just placed.
This means that by the end of the first placing player's turn, there can be only 8 functionally distinct boards.  Not a lot to choose from in terms of strategy.  In comparison, Chess has 20 at this point and Checkers has 7.
A bit less fairly, this analysis suggests that given perfect play the first placing player will always win or force a draw.
*I apologize for the paraphrasing but I haven't actually played this game personally, only read about it.

Thanks for the analysis and link. I'd be interested in knowing how you back up the statement that "the inner pieces are functionally equivalent to outer corners on the first move"


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Countering Villa + Jeweler in Puerto Rico: The Nobles
A while ago I played a game of Puerto Rico with all of the buildings from Expansion II: The Nobles.  One of the players pretty much had a run-away game using Villa + Jeweler, and we were pretty much at a loss as to how to stop it.
With the new expansion, each time the Colony Ship is refilled, one of the colonists is replaced by a Noble.  Each Noble is worth 1 VP at the end of the game, but more importantly they can trigger other buildings.
Mayoring became the hot action of the day, and the Corn player pretty much forsaking all building until they hit 6 doubloons + quarry + building privilege to buy the Jeweler (they were pretty much Captaining the rest of the time, if you're curious).  The Jeweler gives you 1 doubloon in the Craft phase for each Noble you have, which isn't exactly overpowered given it's cost, until you bring Villa into the picture.
Within two turns of Crafting, the Jeweler player had enough money to buy a Villa, which lets you take an additional Noble from the supply when anyone mayors.  Thus, if he would Mayor, he could actually get two Nobles, one from the ship and one from the supply.
This is pretty much where the game got silly, because every Mayor gave him +1/2 endgame VP which translated into +1/2 more doubloons during the crafting phase, which, in turn let him buy the Royal Gardens (+1 VP for each noble at end of game) and other big-ticket items quickly.
I'm not sure which part of the combo is broken, though, the Villa or the Jeweler?  The Jeweler is more expensive than the Factory, but rewards you for something you already want to do (collect Nobles).  The Villa simply gives you an extra Noble each turn (1 VP a turn isn't unreasonable), but put them together and the free money starts to roll in.
Short of all other players buying Villas as soon as someone buys a Jeweler, or applying a house rule, how can you counter this?  Or have others seen that Jeweler + Villa is degenerate enough to simply not allow both buildings in the game at the same time?

Ultimately, we decided that Jeweler and Villa shouldn't be allowed in the same game.  Since the first expansion already has the rule that the Hacienda and Forest House shouldn't be allowed in the same game, there's a precedent for this.
Villa + Royal Gardens is still a bit of a problem, but with Jeweler out of the picture, you won't be getting obscene amounts of money from all of your Nobles during the crafting phase.

I've got to play this once now, and found the Jeweler is an incredible building.  Combined with the Royal Gardens, I handily walked away with the game.


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Viable, alternative, first round role orders in 5-player Puerto Rico
I'm a big fan of Puerto Rico.

But one thing that bugs me a little bit in my (5 player) games is how stable the first round is, with regards to role choices.
It (almost) always goes:

Settler
Builder
Mayor
Craftsman
Captain

The rationale is pretty straightforward:

A quarry will be manned by round 2*, since Mayor will almost certain be chosen
Guaranteed to have highest purchasing power, and all buildings are available
Guaranteed to have an unmanned building (with a chance of a first round indigo)
Practically guaranteed to have a manned corn, and no other player can produce 2 goods
No-one can ship for more than 2 victory points

Every now and then we'll get crazy and swap the order on Builder and Settler.
My question is, are there any significantly different first round role orders that are just as viable?
*Which is great efficiency for a quarry.

I doubt there's a significantly different first round order.  Certainly at the beginning there are very few options that are of use.  We often see a prospector in fourth and fifth, the rational being:

If the fourth player produces then the fifth player may take prospector (or trader in the unlikely event they managed to get a small market).
A player on corn wants to save up for a more profitable good.

So in short the five player first round sequences that we tend to see are:
[Settler/Builder], [Builder/Settler], Mayor, [Craftsman/Prospector], [Captain/Craftsman/Prospector/Trader].

We always have Prospector for the 4th and 5th roles on the first round.

Player 4 shouldn't be playing Craftsman, knowing that player 5 will Captain.
Sure, if he player 4 uses Craftsman, players 4 and 5 get a 1-2 VP advantage over players 1-3, but they'd both be better off Prospecting this early in the game.
So the following is a good alternative:
Player 4: Prospector
Player 5: Prospector or Craftsman

It seems like you may be asking for a variant.
You can vary things in many ways

Pre-seed roles with money.
Use a closed money auction mechanic instead of turn order.
Make a certain role unavailable first round
Draw roles randomly first round
Invert benefits first round.

The first pull, barring extraordinary tile draws, should be Settler->Quarry.  I agree with Pat that Prospector is better than Craftsman for player 4.
A great strategy guide is here.

In a 5 player game, if the 2nd player gets coffee, they may take prospector and then builder on the next round and build a coffee roaster as their first building. It can work out well for them, since the player will be able to trade coffee unblocked for several rounds.

Coffee can be dangerous that early, since smart players will make you ship it, and it will always be shipbound.

@lance -- then they're clogging a boat with coffee and can't ship as well themselves, so I'm making as many shipping VPs as they are.

@Chris, yes, but in the beginning of the game, money is what's important, so it's usually best to bring up a second good to protect your coffee (or tabbaco), so you can ship other stuff, and sell your good trading commodity.  There's always exceptions to the rule of course.

@Lance, sure I do even better if they let me sell the coffee, but I'm still doing at least as well as others if I'm forced to ship it.  So its not really 'dangerous' to get the coffee, it just might not give me an immediate lock on winning.


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Is castling still done in the openings in modern chess?
I have read in a somewhat old book that castling was to be done as soon as possible, but some of my playing friends don't bother to do it in the opening. What's the modern usage?

It's normally a very good idea to castle early, but 'as soon as possible' is not really a correct rule. It depends on a number of factors, including your choice of opening, and your opponent's response.
Leaving your king in the middle of the board is a bad idea. Your pieces can be pinned, you're much more vulnerable, and your rooks can become isolated, trapped on the sidelines. One exception to this rule sometimes arises if you have exchanged queens. Once this happens it is considerably harder to mount a successful direct mid-game assault on the king, and it may sometimes be reasonable in this situation to treat the king as an additional fighting piece, rather than as a delicate thing to hide away on the sidelines and protect at all costs.
There are a couple of rare openings where not castling is a valid strategy, but they are unusual. Castling does not occur, or occurs very late, in some variations of the French Defense. See for example Kramnik-Anand, 2008. Similar things can happen in the Sicilian Taimanov and the Hedgehog Defense. Sometimes giving up castling is a valid line for white, as happens for example in some variations of the King's Gambit Accepted such as the King's Bishop's Gambit, where Black checks on h4, and white plays Kf1.

The Hedgehog Defense link does render properly, it's just broken in the preview (which uses a different implementation of Markdown, which apparently has a bug). You can probably remove the disclaimer about that.

Castling is still done in "modern" openings, but it doesn't quite have the urgency that it used to.
"In the old days" (until about 30-40 years ago), the accepted practice was to develop as quickly as possible, castle (usually kingside), and then start an attack against the enemy king. "Nice" for White (who gets the first move), not so great for Black.
With increasing frequency, Black started to play for positional compensation elsewhere on the board other than kingside (center or queenside). Such maneuvers often required extended sequences in which (early) castling would be a wasted move. White, in turn, sometimes delays castling to counter these maneuvers.
And there are other sequences in which Black waits for White to start an attack on one side of the board, and then castles on the OTHER side. The idea is to cause those attacking moves to be "wasted," thereby nullifying the advantage of White's first move.

Castling early is still a good general rule of thumb for beginners. I believe it is more related to actual playing strength than playing "modern" openings (which I don't believe in either, I only believe in modern lines). Strong (or very strong) players, with their better and more precise understanding of the game, know when and how to identify exceptions and break the rules with very clear justifications, such as:

they get sufficient compensation (particularly king safety) for late/not castling, such as in cases where the center is blocked
the a/h files for respective rooks will become open/semi-open through exchanges/pawn captures, thus removing a need to develop them by castling
the opponent hangs a piece that can be captured by moving the king or the rook, it never hurts to win material this wway


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Alternatives to the coins supplied in Puerto Rico
After getting the Rio Grande Treasure Chest for the two Puerto Rico expansions, I want to spice up my set of Puerto Rico a little bit.
Can anyone recommend any good sites where I could get physical coins to use instead of the $1 and $5 pieces in the game?  I was thinking period-authentic replicas, or just even nice looking small gold and silver doubloon-looking coins.

According to the actual fact, this question wouldn't fall under the shopping question type?

Board Game Bits has little wooden disks in various sizes.  You could get some cheap plastic pirate coins you can get at pirate stores.  This might help spice things up also.  There is also a company out of Australia, Campaign Coins, that specializes in coinage useful for games and LARPs.  They're prices are a little steep at $7 for ten coins, but they have a good selection of different designs.

Both this links are broken. Can you update the links?

I got real gold doubloons from The Great American Coin Co. They are about the size of a nickel, and are authentic looking, real metal coins based on the 17th century Spanish doubloon. They make the game so much more fun!
http://www.greatamericancoincompany.com/c5/Shiny-Gold-Doubloon-Replicas-You-Choose-Quantity-p184.html

Christopher, welcome to B&CG.  Thanks for sharing your experiences here!

I got some really nice doubloon coins from Momcorp.  They're a lot more enjoyable than the paper coins, and a pretty good deal for $29 -- you get 50 coins (40 small silver coins & 10 large gold coins).
http://momcorp.com/moms-famous-antique-doubloons/


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Catan: when to buy development cards?
I never buy development cards in the beginning: the Knights are fairly useless, the Largest Army bonus is not a priority, and it's too risky to gamble on drawing a Road Building card.
When is the best time to start buying development cards?

Or is there a best time? Many of my best games have gone from start to finish without buying a dev card. While one of my regular opponents always invests too much in them. He may get the largest army, or maybe a victory point, while I build the assets that produce resources when the dice are rolled.

Whenever you buy a development card, it increase your options because:
Development Cards solve your problems.

Get a resource you couldn't otherwise, with Monopoly, Year of Plenty, or stealing using a Knight.
Get more resources by getting the Robber off your land. (Remember you can do this before you roll!)
Slow down an opponent by putting the Robber on their land.
Build roads quickly to cut someone off or reach a settlement first, with Road Building.

And they don't, on average, actually cost 3 resources. Monopoly, Year of Plenty, and Knight all gain you at least one back, which you can choose (even somewhat when stealing with the knight). Road Building is worth 4 resources. Even if you get a victory point, how many resources do other victory points cost? Settlement is 4, City is 5. Longest Road is a lot.
Because of the low effective cost of development cards, and the gains you get from them, buying development cards actually banks your resources in a fairly fluid way, yet out of your hand so you don't have too many cards.
In short, when should you buy development cards? Anytime you can and you don't have something else you'd rather build THAT TURN. Buying the card means all the better chance of building whatever you want next turn. I buy Development Cards whenever I can.
One last note, if you are richest in sheep, development cards are probably your shortest path to victory (combined with some expansion/cities).

That's an interesting way to think about them, thanks!

Very useful breakdown.  I've never thought about how many resources each VP takes, but it's very helpful.

yeah, sheep seem to be the weakest resource, but buying development cards can make it easy to turn them into more valuable things. :D

Focusing too much development card to early is not a good move.  When you compare to Colonies and City, development card gave you a lot less resources, except near the end of the game.

There are five victory card point out of 25 cards.  You will need a average of 15 resources for a victory card.

@GuillaumeCoté By the time you buy 5 cards, you will nearly always have 3 soldiers, and so have 2 points anyway! This means you get about 3 points per 5 cards, which isn't too bad if you have nowhere left to expand to.

I'm really curious if this has been studied. From my experience I'm doubtful that I buy Development Cards whenever I can is an effective strategy, as it will continually defer your building the settlements and cities that lead to real prosperity.

I generally buy developments when I have the ore-grain-sheep combination, absolutely nothing else to buy, and I have six or seven cards in my hand.
If I have to pick between losing half my cards or getting a development card.
I've had some games where the robber is on one of my hexes, I've had abysmally bad rolls and can't roll a 7, and I'll buy a development card for a chance at a Soldier.
Development cards can be nice in a larger game when you've been ringed in, and you need the VP cards just for a fighting chance to finish.

I've seen some people win with a "cities and development cards" strategy. If you have the appropriate combination of resources from your initial settlements (lots of ore and wheat), you can basically spend almost all of your resources on dev cards and cities. Dev cards can help you with the things you're weaker in; road building can help you build roads even if you're short on wood and brick, and other dev cards can help supplement your other resources.
You will need to build at least one more settlement, but you can probably trade for the resources needed for that (or get them through dev cards). And if you buy dev cards early and often, you can rack up a few secret VPs, get the largest army and get rid of the robber to help you produce more of that vital ore and wheat. In this strategy, you generally want to buy at least one city before you start buying dev cards, but after that, alternate between dev cards and cities, with just enough emphasis on your extra road and settlement to make sure it doesn't get blocked.
When you use this strategy, you don't depend on the exact outcome of two VPs, largest army, and 3 cities. You need to be flexible based on what you draw; if you draw lots of development cards that give you resources, you build out more, possibly getting 4 cities, or you might just wind up with lots of VPs and not even need the third city.
And if you draw lots of soldiers, the person I knew who played this way most often would use them to extort good trades out of people; threaten to put the robber on their best producing tiles, unless they gave him very favorable trades (he used to demand that they simply give him resources, until we noticed the rule that a trade must involve both players giving the other something). Thus, there are two paths to victory; one by VP/largest army, and one by generating lots of resources through dev cards (plus largest army; this strategy pretty much guarantees you that).

You hit the nail on the head that you need a third settlement location.  With 3 cities and largest army, your counting on drawing two victory points.  With 5 development cards out of 25, your looking at having to buy an average of 10 development cards in order to pull those two victory points.  (Fate would have to be against you not to have largest army at this point)  Your turning ~30 resources into 4 victory points.  Two build two more settlements and turn them into cities, is only 18 resources.  Your resource diversity needed is less but the number of resources needed is more.

Since my last comment is rather long, I'll also say that cap of 4 cities does make my analysis a little off.  If I have 3 cities now, I can only build one more.  Assuming if I build only 1 city and two more settlements, you would need only 17 resource cards, and three more total locations to get to 10 points.

@ICodeForCoffee I responded to you in a comment, then decided to expand on that a bit and so just edited the comment into the answer. The basic gist is that you're not just buying the dev cards for the VPs; you need to use all of the dev cards effectively to make this strategy work.

@ICodeForCoffee Not my play style; someone I used to play with. He was actually a real jerk, and I stopped playing Catan because of him; he would really overdo the extortion (and also fight about the "no trades for nothing" rule). It was effective, certainly, but because of the extremely aggressive way he played it, it made the game a lot less fun. I think the strategy can be played without being as much of a jerk, especially if you don't argue about the "no trades for nothing" rule; I just don't want to imply that this is my strategy since I have bad associations with it.

No no no, I meant your play style, not your friends.   Your more focused on building up then building out earlier then me I am it seems.  Since I focus on building out and then up, I think it would be a good game.  Your friend's play style is likely to cause the other players to gang up against him, and I see games becoming, "As long as he doesn't win, we've all won!"

I start buying development cards when I have the resources and I am looking to break out of a stalled position.  In the early part of the game, being lucky enough to draw the Year of Plenty card can really help you break out.  I also buy development cards when I'm concerned I have two many cards in my hand, and I'm likely to have to discard cards if the robber comes up.  If things are going well, and I'm able to keep expanding, I don't buy development cards till the game is coming to the end.
Edit
Expanded what I said to Brian Campbell in comments on his answer, if your trying to focus solely on development cards, your still going to need three settlements upgraded to cities.  With only two cities, you would need to draw 4 victory points out of a possible 5, and have largest army.  While it's possible, it's not probable.  The odds are two much against you.
Biran's strategy of early development card buying is useful, but also emphasizes flexibility.  Using developments cards that grant resources to buy more settlements is exactly what I was talking about drawing a year of plenty card early on, and a point I agree on.  I personally favor focusing on getting land first, and then building cities and buying development cards.  the amount of land of the map is limited, and the more of it you control, the more resources you can generate.  On a flip side, the more of the land your control, the less of it your opponents can control.  Settlements with low production potentials are of course less desirable, but are still worth points.
Do with what the resources your getting allow you to do.  I generally focus more on development cards after the early part of the game, but if have the resources in your hand right then buy a development card.  The best strategies in Catan are flexible, and usually involve combining multiple tactics.  Since resources are generated by the random roll of the dice, don't be afraid to adjust your strategy based on resource availability.

So you only switch to a win-with-developments strategy when you can't expand?

Yes.  I only focus on development cards early on cause they can only take you so far.  If you focus on development cards to early, your going to be fall behind the other players and they'll get more resources then you in the late game.  I'll buy a few in the early part of the game, but in the beginning more land is what I'm after.

The benefit of development card are constant during the game, the benefit of cities and colonies diminish each turn.  Generally, I tend to favor more colonies in the beginning of the game and cities in the middle and development card at the end.  Of course, depending of which number are played.
If you use your resources for many development card at the beginning, your colonies will probably be in least interesting place that if you have build them at the beginning.   Other players will take the best spots.
That being said, when the dice give you what you need for a development card and you don't have the possibility to trade to be able to build a colony, you are generally better to take the card.  But in the beginning, trade focusing on colonies.
There is a special case, when the wood or brick all have extreme number (2,3, 11 or 12), it will be hard for all player to get road and colonies.  Investing early in several development cards can give you quick start.
Also, when you have a stop that attract the robber.  Getting a few card to have a reserve of knight can be a good thing.  Then you let people know that whoever steal who will get the robber back on their best spot next turn.  And you do it.  I you successfully deter some player to rob you, it is a worthy investment.

Buying development cards is a "slow but steady" way to win the game. It is best done when your progress has slowed to a crawl.
Early in the game, you might not want to do this, because the impact of other early moves such as founding settlements, building roads, or upgrading settlements to cities will last you the whole game. So the value of a victory point (or other "get") might be less than than doing other things.
Each development card (which costs three resources) is worth about one victory point. This is clearly the case for victory points. If you're going for largest army, you need at least three knights, sometimes four or more.
But if you have reached an impasse, buying development cards might represent the "biggest bang for the buck" (or resources). At this stage of the game, the victory points are useful, and if you don't get one, the other help that you get (knights for the largest army, two road pieces toward longest road, year of plenty or monopoly cards, might be worth a victory point (or two). Let's say four on average. That's 12 cards to get two points, or half a point per card. But in addition, you additional benefits by 1) removing the robber from your hexes, and 2) "siccing" him on others. Likewise, progress cards are worth about one victory point on average.
A settlement is one victory point and costs four cards, and a city is worth one victory point and costs five cards (in each case more than three). But besides the victory point, a new settlement gives you 2-3 new resources (and possibly a port). A new city doubles the production of your hexes. These "side" benefits, which last the balance of the game, are the reason why development cards are less valuable in the early game.
In short, look at development cards at a de-bottlenecking tool, to be used when you reach a bottleneck.

I'll buy a development card early if I'm ok on grain and sheep (position-wise), and I'm still a road away from the next settlement spot.  The real bummer is if you draw a VP card early, any other card will do something for you, but that just slows you down.
It's good to have a soldier card to hold in case the robber gets set on you.

Yes, but if you're ok on grain, you're only 2 ore away from a city. Don't think I've ever been disappointed with a VP card, BTW.

@Michiel, in strategy games initiative is everything, the VP card in the beginning can really slow you down.  I'm usually focusing on a settlement in the beginning (even if I'm playing an ore/grain strategy) so I don't think so much about the city, but if I was close I'd just hold on.  A lot depends on the availability of the resources.  Besides if you get a VP card early, every one will figure out you have one.

I agree.  Getting an early victory point card is nice, but I usually want something else then.

Buy a dev card when you want a knight. Getting something else is usually good too, notably except an early vp. It is good to dev when you're ahead because the robber will be played on you, or anytime you are very vulnerable to the robber. And when pursuing army.
Also, a time not to dev is when it will prevent you from getting a critical settlement or city. When the choice is between deving and ending your turn with 8+ cards, usually dev.
When you have no more important cities and settlements to place, deving becomes a priority if you have a chance to get army.

The time to buy development cards is after you have upgraded your best settlement (or possibly best two) to a city.  You usually have at least one very strong settlement in the beginning, and turning this into a city is far more valuable in the early game than the two development cards that are the resource equivalent (two wheat and three ore vs two wheat, two ore, and two sheep).
Development cards are also more useful later game.  Robbers are more effective when production is higher, so moving the robber is move valuable later game.  Monopoly is more valuable as people have more resources, which tends to happen later game.  Road building matters more when you need two roads to get somewhere, whereas your first expansion spot you can usually get to with one road.
Overall, in the early game, you want to spend your resources improving your production to capitalize on the principal of "the rich get richer".  Since improving your production gives you points in Catan, it makes the tradeoff fairly straightforward.  First, go for points on the board (settlements and cities), then later go for about virtual points (victory cards, largest army, longest road).  Where the optimal time for the flip is will depend on the production potential of your expansion opportunities and the scores of the other players.

Buy in middle as per condition in game. If you happen to have more of bricks and logs rather focus on getting longest road as it helps at times.
If you are running out of resources to build more settlement it's best time to focus on getting few developement cards.
At start intention should be gather sure points using settlements and cities.


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Advice for responding to "Kwabang" attack when playing Japan?
When playing Axis & Allies as Japan I occasionally have an opponent use the "Kwabang" opening against me, which is where UK attacks Kwangtung on her opening move with the two infantry and fighter in India (landing the fighter in China, typically).
My usual opening move with Japan involves attacking the Pearl Harbor fleet, but when UK opens with a successful Kwabang attack (meaning they capture the territory with at least one infantry) I call that attack off and instead do the following:

Send one infantry from Burma into India.
Send my two transports with four infantry into Kwangtung, along with the two battleships (and pray that the transport doesn't strike a blow).
Throw all of my available infantry (3 in Manchuria, 1 in Burma) plus all air power into attacking China, especially if the UK fighter is based there.
Move all remaining naval units to the Japan Sea Zone.

While this strategy usually works well enough to retake Kwangtung and to capture China (and, more importantly, to remove the US and UK fighters in Asia), it has the following undesirable consequences:

It leaves the Pearl Harbor fleet unmolested.
It leaves Manchuria and Burma unguarded. Granted, these are two territories that are usually easy to take back because they are reachable from Japanese transports in one turn, but if Russia has stacked infantry in east Asia on turn 1 then it can take up to two turns to get Manchuria back.

I'm curious how others deal with this opening and if there are any recommendations on how to refine my response.

Completely unrelated to the question, but holy cats, I thought your name sounded familiar, and then I checked your profile -- I loved the 4GuysFromRolla site, and used the message boards quite frequently years ago when I did ASP sites.  Just wanted to say "thanks" for the great site.

@LittleBobbyTables: Thanks for the kind words. The site still is around and regularly updated if you do ASP.NET work anymore! :-) Also, if you'd like to play A&A sometime, I play at GamesByEmail.com (their WWII game is a clone) - lemme know if you want to play.

The problem with the Kwabang attack is it can give the UK a decent foothold in Asia, as well as denying Japan some early IPC, and it really screws with Japan's starting strategies.
Part of me wants to say, "Just ignore Kwangtung, go after Hawaii, and start grinding out transports and armor turn 2 for a mainland attack", but I think the Kwangtung attack swings things enough that you need to deal with it first turn.
While 5 infantry plus 2 battleships against 1 infantry anywhere would normally be overkill, in this case I don't think it is, because:  what else are you going to do with them?
To successfully attack the Pearl Harbor fleet, I feel you should throw everything in your fleet and air force at it, and if you're already sending your bombers into China instead of Hawaii, and you probably want at least one battleship in Kwangtung for the bombardment, there's not much left you can send against the Pearl Harbor fleet.
Sooo... finally to your question, where does that leave us?  I guess it depends on what the US does.  With an intact fleet, I think the US have two options -- harass Japan so they can't start a mainland invasion, or swing through the Panama Canal and support UK's landfall into Germany.
If the US goes after Germany -- good news, it's not your problem, at least not directly.  You'll just have to push hard into the mainland to advance into Russia, and find other ways to support Germany (ideally by eliminating the US and UK presence, setting up a mainland factory, and cranking out infantry and armor from the east coast of China).
If the US uses their first turn to move towards you, their fleet can't make it to Japan in one turn, so you'll have a turn to buy units and bulk up.  If you're playing with two-hit battleships, consider one; otherwise, consider subs and destroyers to counter their navy.  You'll want to go after the US navy pretty fast, because they'll do one of two things:  camp out in the Japan sea space, or start island-hopping with the UK to drain you of IPCs quickly.
Oh yeah, as for Manchuria, if you think you can get away with it, leave one unit in Manchuria for the defense.
Wow, that ended up being longer than I intended.

Take India / Fortress Manchuria
My response to this strategy is based on the 2nd edition map and is fairly simple.

Move everything from Burma into India. This move have two purposes: first, it ensures you can hold India from a 2 inf + 1 fighter counter attack from Sinkiang and prevent the UK Indian factory; second, it leaves Burma enticingly open--you want the US or UK to take the bait and move a single inf there. (more on this in a minute).
Use the two transports to drop 4 infantry in either Burma or Manchuria. Manchuria is the preferred location, but your ability to do this depends on how much counter attack capability Russia has nearby. If you can hold Manchuria against the potential triple attack from the US, Russian and the UK--where hold means losing infantry is fine but losing aircraft is not--then land there. You should land with 4 inf and all your airpower that can't participate in Pearl Harbor. If playing with 2-hit battleships (a good rule mod that helps to balance out things for the axis), you can probably even land an additional fighter in Manchuria.

Kwangbang also means I use a transport and infantry strategy as Japan instead of a factory and tank strategy. The reason for this is two fold. First, a factory in Burma or Manchuria could potentially be captured (even though you're bracing against it, why take the risk). Second, you want the flexibility of the transports on turn 2.
On your next turn, your large transport fleet can attack Burma (with Indian support) or Kwangtung with Burma or Manchuria support. Once the ships and fighters get back from Pearl on turn 3 you can use the battle ships and fighters to ensure you own everything on the coast.
The reason you want to entice them to take Burma is for them to divide their limited and irreplaceable defensive forces where you can pick them off and/or take them with overwhelming force.
So the Kwangbang has perhaps cost you a turn of early expansion but the cost was completely forgoing the most effective UK strategy: the Indian factory. It looks good early, but you're in the game for the long-haul (especially if you understand the infantry push mechanic) and this early advantage is not worth the fact that it cedes control of Asia to Japan after the 3rd turn.
Another advantage of using transports vice factories is that when you find yourself with a spare transport it can be used to harvest free infantry from the South Pacific islands and use them to take African territory, New Zealand, and with the support of a soon-to-be useless battleship or two even defended islands like Australia. Don't underestimate the value of 1 or 2 IPC territories integrated over several turns in the mid game.

The only Allied advantage of Kwabang is that it derails the Pearl Harbor attack. The disadvantage is that it hands you India on a silver platter. (No factory there, and maybe not in Sinkiang either).
This falls under the category of "spoiling" attacks. You're going to cry if that transport gets lucky and scores a hit (one chance out of six), but more likely, the Brits have overreached and opened up the game for you. Ultimately, it's a question of whose chances really get spoiled? All Axis players should be so lucky (five times out of six).
Forget Pearl Harbor, which is now Plan B. That WAS the means to the end, not an end of itself. India is the bigger prize by far. Although Germany would have been defeated, Japan might have gotten a negotiated peace if she had used the Pearl Harbor attack fleet to support an amphibious invasion of India, and ultimately of Persia instead (no "day of infamy," hence "live and let live").

The Kwabang attack is a gambit. It should only be attempted by an expert and only in the search for some future startegic goal. This attack by the british is a diversion of scarce resources in a vainglorious attempt to make something happen early. Only by responding to this example of bad play with more bad play will you be in any danger. Take your time and remember that you really do have overwhelming naval power in the pacifc.