This card confuses me. It’s from the second edition of Everdell.
What does it mean? It could be…
Draw two meadow cards. Play one of them for one resource less than it would normally cost.
Draw two meadow cards. Play one of them for one resource (likely less than the original cost of playing that item).
Draw two meadow cards. Play one and gain a free resource. This seems unlikely, but isn’t that what paying -1 resources means?
My left hand opponent dealt and bid one diamond. Partner passed. My right hand opponent bid one spade. I wanted to double one diamond, but not one spade, with the following hand: ♠KQT5 ♡K92 ♢2 ♣ KT653.
So I passed. Left hand opponent rebid two diamonds. Partner and right hand opponent passed. Now I doubled, because the last opposing bid was diamonds.
Partner’s distribution was 4-3-4-2, with xxx in hearts and Qx in clubs. She passed because she had four cards each and her remaining seven honor points in suits bid by the opponents, and she thought she was "playing defense." She didn’t want to bid one of her short "round" suits (clubs or hearts)to take out my double.
I told her, "I had four spades to support a spade bid, and a only a singleton diamond opposite your four diamonds. We were not strong enough to defend, but we were strong enough to play two spades" (RHO opponent had five little ones for his bid).
Partner thought that my double showed shortness in both the opponents suits. I say that my bidding pattern showed shortness only in diamonds and suggested strength in spades. Are either of these interpretations more nearly correct than the other? Or do some world class partnerships use one, and some the other?
I was looking at Contingency Plan and found the effect surprisingly similar to the keyword Surveil. To compare, first the wording of Contingency Plan and then the wording of the Surveil keyword:
Look at the top five cards of your library. Put any number of them into your graveyard and the rest back on top of your library in any order.
And
701.41a To “surveil N” means to look at the top N cards of your library, then put any number of them into your graveyard and the rest on top of your library in any order.
They quite clearly are the same, so can I assume the card states “Surveil 5” instead? And if so, does it trigger abilities which state “Whenever you surveil …”?
There are a couple of ways in which Player 1 can end up with the option to cast spells prepped by Player 2.
At the start of the game this is very simple – P1 casts a spark that P2 prepped, and deals 1 dmg. Great.
But as the game progresses this gets more and more complex, and it doesn’t really specify exactly how this works?
Things like:
I recently had remembered that at the end of the rule book of Monopoly that it says the rules for a short game and then says (60-90 minutes) in the header. At the back, it says the rules for a game that has an hour of termination decided. And there are "house rules" and I have no clue what those are. Bt in the instruction booklet, it doesn’t state how long a regular game of Monopoly last, with the normal rules.
I used to watch my family play and they normally had 4 players. And they didn’t use house rules (granted I was 6 so I don’t really remember but no one in my family knows what those are.)
My question is, how long does a normal game, with 4 players, last without a definite hour of termination and without house rules?
I was playing Wounded Waters Bleeding for the first time yesterday, and noticed an odd wording discrepancy in the Serene Waters Healing Card (included below). I couldn’t find anything directly addressing it in the FAQ. If I push Dahan into multiple different lands with one Power (assuming they’re all my lands), do I get to downgrade multiple Invaders or just one? (The "one of your lands" phrasing in the Dahan pushing sentence that isn’t in the Invaders pushing sentence is tripping me up.)
Specific example: assume for this example all lands have at least one of my presence. With one Power (i.e. Swirl and Spill), I push 2 Dahan and 2 Towns from one of my lands, each into different lands. Do I get:
Thoughts?
Animal Upon Animal is fun for all ages including adults but is particularly popular with the four- to six-year-old crowd. In this game from Haba for 2-4 players, you compete to see who can stack all of your animals first. The stack you are building is shared (the French name of this game, ‘Pyramids Des Animaux’ may offer a better visual of what happens as the game progresses), which means you don’t have the luxury of setting up sturdy balancing positions for yourself. Everyone is dealt a hand of adorable wooden animal-shaped blocks. A crocodile block is placed in the center of the table and players take turns rolling the die and following the instructions.
The instructions on the die are really quite ingenious for moving the game along in clever ways. You may be instructed to place one animal on top of the crocodile’s back, or you might see two animals on the die, meaning you have to place one after another. You can also be asked to give one of your pieces to someone else to place or have the other players choose which of your animals to place next (and they will invariably select one that is harder to balance). The final option is a picture of a crocodile, which means you can extend the base block to have a larger area to balance animals upon.
The reason I think this game is particularly enjoyable for younger children starting school especially is because even if you make the tower fall, you don’t lose and the game doesn’t end. The maximum penalty if more than two fall off the pile is that you take two animals back into your hand and continue playing. This keeps the focus on dexterity, strategy, and making stacks of cute animals, and nicely swerves siblings blaming each other for quote ‘ruining the game’ or a fear of failure at a time when there are a lot of new expectations. (OK, I clearly have some some childhood Jenga tower collapse issues to explore but never mind that now). Haba games are great generally for this age group. Dragon’s Breath is another lovely Haba game that fans of Animal Upon Animal may enjoy.
And finally, even if they’re not ready for big school yet, that doesn’t mean they aren’t ready for gaming (some of my friends’ toddlers have attempted to prove this by taking out every game on the lowest shelf ready to play…).
At this age, the focus for parents choosing games is about two things, really – replayability, and doing something that looks like what the big kids are doing, so the big kids’ game doesn’t get wrecked (for example, my three-year-old niece recently ripped the Candyland board clean in half, in the most impressive WWE style rage quit I’ve heard about in years. It would have been more impressive, I suppose, if I hadn’t been the one who bought it for her and if it hadn’t been my favourite game when I was her age. I hope she is not still doing that when she’s 30, but it was epic nonetheless).
I know, you wouldn’t think there could be a game that would keep a two-and-a-half-year-old entertained, but there is actually an entire series of them by a lovely French toy and game company called Djeco. They have a whole host of adorable games that are both beautifully designed and suitable for toddlers, which is incredibly rare in the world of board games. These games look like a game and feel like a game, but are more about gamifying toddler skills like matching and sequencing and recognising colours. It’s really very clever and the history of this company originally had a child development focus. Add in materials and designs that appeal to a grown up aesthetic and these games are pretty great for everyone. We have several of their games in the shop and our games library but I will focus on Little Collect (in the first of the photos below).
Little Collect is for ages 2.5 to 5. It’s a cooperative game for two players and takes about ten minutes… or as long as attention spans allow. The object of the game ostensibly is to follow picture instructions on the cards you draw until you have completed a scene on the game board. But beware! There is mild peril! The pastoral tableau of adorable bunnies eating peas and carrots can be disrupted. If you are unlucky enough to draw a fox card, one bunny must be ominously removed from your board. It can be returned on a later turn to complete the game, but still. Hey ho, circle of life. Sun rise, sun set. As sure as autumn follows summer, soon enough, even your littlest Little Connect player will be starting school too.
And you know what that means: more time for gaming for you.
I am interested in the interaction between Thalia, Heretic Cathar which is already on the battlefield and Castle Embereth, a non-basic land that is being played by an opponent and now enters the battlefield.
The two cards conflict with each other on what will happen. There is a ruling from 2016 which states that the effect of Thalia "wins", so that Castle Embereth enters the battlefield tapped.
I would like to know which rules in the Comprehensive Rules explain this result. Both cards create continuous effects that are also replacement effects. If one applies rule 613.9, the timestamp criterion determines that Castle Embereth would "win", which is obviously not the case.
Does it perhaps have something to do with the fact Castle Embereth says: "This land enters tapped unless you control a mountain." The word "unless" is perhaps less specific in its consequences then if it had said "except if" or "but not if".
Cycling does go on the stack.
702.29a Cycling is an activated ability that functions only while the card with cycling is in a player’s hand. “Cycling [cost]” means “[Cost], Discard this card: Draw a card.”
602.2. To activate an ability is to put it onto the stack and pay its costs, so that it will eventually resolve and have its effect. Only an object’s controller (or its owner, if it doesn’t have a controller) can activate its activated ability unless the object specifically says otherwise. Activating an ability follows the steps listed below, in order. If, at any point during the activation of an ability, a player is unable to comply with any of those steps, the activation is illegal; the game returns to the moment before that ability started to be activated (see rule 730, “Handling Illegal Actions”). Announcements and payments can’t be altered after they’ve been made.
Triggered abilities that trigger from cycling also go on the stack, on top of the cycling ability (because the process of activating cycling will have finished before the triggered ability is put on the stack).
603.3. Once an ability has triggered, its controller puts it on the stack as an object that’s not a card the next time a player would receive priority. See rule 117, “Timing and Priority.” The ability becomes the topmost object on the stack. It has the text of the ability that created it, and no other characteristics. It remains on the stack until it’s countered, it resolves, a rule causes it to be removed from the stack, or an effect moves it elsewhere.
117.3c If a player has priority when they cast a spell, activate an ability, or take a special action, that player receives priority afterward.
Arc Spitter‘s ability reads
Equipped creature has “{1}: This creature deals 1 damage to target creature that’s blocking it.”
I’m not sure what “target creature that’s blocking it” means when the equipped creature changes zones. Suppose my 1/1 blocks another 1/1 equipped with Arc Splitter. My opponent activates its ability, targeting my blocker, and in response I destroy the attacker. Does the damage ability resolve?
Of course I’m aware of the basic principle that abilities on the stack are independent of their source (Does an ability resolve if the source of the ability leaves the battlefield?), but in this case the source’s zone change seems like it could affect the legality of the target.
The key question seems to be, is my blocker still “blocking it (i.e., the attacking creature)”? If so, it’s a legal target and takes damage; if not, it’s an illegal target and the ability fizzles. 509.1g clearly says it’s still a blocking creature, but I’m not sure what rule specifies whether it’s blocking anything specific.
My best guess is rule 608.2b, which reads in part:
If the source of an ability has left the zone it was in, its last known information is used during this process [of checking whether its targets are legal].
That clearly applies here, so we should use the LKI of the attacker, and maybe that includes the set of creatures blocking it. On the other hand, the blocker is still on the battlefield, so we should use its current information. It’s a blocking creature, but it isn’t blocking any other creatures.
What should actually happen here and why?