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Thread: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

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    SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    Hey all,

    The most recent SCG event in LA yielded a 17th place deck which is this: The Four Horseman.

    http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=49452

    Now, if I recall, I was pretty sure this was fixed by the recent-ish rules update, so that you couldn't shortcut this, thus leading to a slow-play warning if the combo was attempted to be assembled.

    My point is, how did this guy get to 17th place? Is he doing something different, since it doesn't look like that to me. Is everyone just conceding to something they don't have to? Am I wrong somewhere?

    -Matt

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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    Deck Tech: Four Horsemen with Jeff Liu

    Head Judge's statement:

    "During Round 3 of the tournament, I was made aware of a Four Horsemen player on the feature match table. I went over to watch the match, knowing that I was likely to see a problematic line of play according to the IPG. When the player started to flip cards from the Basalt Monolith/Mesmeric Orb combination, he quickly ran into Emrakul, and was forced to shuffle his library. After doing this again, he was left in an identical game state: An empty graveyard and no other change to the game state. By performing the same loop of actions without changing the game, he was violating the shortcut policy outlined in the Magic Tournament Rules and the Slow Play policy in the Infraction Procedure Guide. These state:

    MTR 4.2 – Tournament Shortcuts

    'A tournament shortcut is an action taken by players to skip parts of the technical play sequence without explicitly announcing them. Tournament shortcuts are essential for the smooth play of a game, as they allow players to play in a clear fashion without getting bogged down in the minutia of the rules. Most tournament shortcuts involve skipping one or more priority passes to the mutual understanding of all players; if a player wishes to demonstrate or use a new tournament shortcut entailing any number of priority passes, he or she must be clear where the game state will end up as part of the request.'

    The shortcut to loop Monolith/Orb until you reach a game state with a specific graveyard composition does not qualify as a being 'clear where the game state will end up as part of the request.' You are looking for a random configuration of cards that includes three specific cards in any order: Dread Return, Sharuum, and Blasting Station.

    IPG 4.3 – Tournament Error – Slow Play

    'It is also slow play if a player continues to execute a loop without being able to provide an exact number of iterations and the expected resulting game state.'

    This is where we run into a problem. The player is executing a loop (Monolith/Orb until Emrakul flips, shuffle, repeat, any unknown number of times until the magic graveyard exists). To attempt to repeat this loop constitutes Slow Play, and that upgrades from a warning to a game loss on the second infraction.

    In the end, I instructed the player to make a different game choice to advance the game state. Manually tapping/untapping instead of shortcutting doesn’t fit the bill.

    The game ended shortly after I made this ruling, and I was not called to any of his other matches.

    Josh Stansfield
    Los Angeles Legacy Open Head Judge"

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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    Playing 2(!) Emrakul in MB is mean. It would take forever to achieve milling Sharuum, Station and DR without flipping a Spaghetti monster.

    I'm amazed no other Player called him Out on Slow play or called a Judge then Jeff (likely) shortcuts the named 3 into the graveyard to actually proceed in gamestate instead of looping for minutes each game.
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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    There was a shit storm on Twitter about this.

    Judges told him the ruling during an on-camera feature match. No other judges followed up with him for the rest of the tournament.

    Concede game one and Emrakul/Painter them game two, probably. Don't quote me there.
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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    From what i heard he was limited to 10 per phase lol
    i would be pissed if i was playing against this
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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    The combo does not actually take much time to go off. Because there is no complicated decision tree once the pieces are assembled you just rifle through.

    I have to presume that Mr. Liu had a frustrating day in the end, and not his opponents. He could basically be called for a game 1 loss by anyone who knew the rules.
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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    What is the difference between this loop and a petals of insight loop?

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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    Quote Originally Posted by bilb_o View Post
    What is the difference between this loop and a petals of insight loop?
    Deterministic game state.

    You can loop through your deck with Petals after 20 storm and find a burning wish.
    "Cast and decline to draw 20 times with petals, then continue until I find Grapeshot"
    You cant loop through random positions to find 3 out of 4 cards in a non random order for 4 Horsemen.
    "Tap/untap Monolith until I mill Dread Return / Sharuum / Grinding Station but all before Emrakul"

    The second relies on a random chance encounter and while mathematically possible, might not happen until a very large N, and might take more than 50 minutes to execute mechanically.
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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    Quote Originally Posted by Shawon View Post
    "...During Round 3 of the tournament, I was made aware of a Four Horsemen player on the feature match table. I went over to watch the match, knowing that I was likely to see a problematic line of play according to the IPG. ....

    Josh Stansfield
    Los Angeles Legacy Open Head Judge"
    From the competition rules:
    ...
    716.1a The rules for taking shortcuts are largely unformalized. As long as each player in the game understands the intent of each other player, any shortcut system they use is acceptable.
    ...
    So there was a game where, ostensibly, the players understood what was going on, and were playing according to the rules, and apparently on his own he decided to fly by and take a crap on it. He might as well be saying, "Hi my name is Josh Stansfield and I want the judges to make decisions for the players."

    ...After doing this again, he was left in an identical game state: An empty graveyard and no other change to the game state....
    I'm a little curious if there's an official definition of 'identical game state'. The distinction between 'identical' and 'effectively indistinguishable' can be subtle.

    IPG 4.3 ...
    if a player wishes to demonstrate or use a new tournament shortcut entailing any number of priority passes, he or she must be clear where the game state will end up as part of the request.
    ...
    Notably, 'clear' does not mean deterministic in this context. Shortcutting, for example: "Orb/Monolith grind until there's an Emrakul or Narcomoeba in the graveyard" is clearly not deterministic, but is something that should be short-cut.

    If the shortcut goes all the way to winning the game, or includes grinding up another Emrakul trigger reshuffle, then the end state is clear. There's also a case to be made that this sort of reshuffle falls under the out-of-order play that is allowed by MTR 4.3.

    TLDR:
    If judges decide - on their own - to meddle in games where both players are following the competition rules, there's a problem with the judges.

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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    @rufus

    Those are all correct except you Ignored the one relevant part:
    IPG 4.3 – Tournament Error – Slow Play

    'It is also slow play if a player continues to execute a loop without being able to provide an exact number of iterations and the expected resulting game state.'
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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    So another question. In infinite loops it's enough to demonstrate the loop once and then say it's infinite, like infinite mana. You demonstrate it once and then play the rest of the game with infinite mana. This loop is an infinite loop with a guarantee that in its infinite number of iterations the desired conditions will be satisfied at least once no matter what. Why isn't it enough to demonstrate this loop once and then say "I repeat the loop an infinite number of times in which it is guaranteed that at least once the necessary conditions will be satisfied and therefore I win.."?

    Edit: In the petals loop you have deterministic probability. Given the number of cards in the deck you can compute the necessary number of iterations. In this loop as x approaches infinity n (the number of times you have satisfactory conditions) approches 1. Since the loop is infinite it is safe to say n=1.

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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    I think the Petals of Insight loop is different since you're not looking for X, Y, and Z, you're just repeating it until you do it twenty times, then you cast Burning Wish.

    This is saying repeat the loop and maybe hit X, Y, and Z. Not every loop is the same in this case; you're not repeating and getting the same thing. Mindslaver lock (even though it's not a lock, I know) does the same thing, over and over. This doesn't.

    If I was playing against him and realized it was Four Horseman, the first thing I'd do is a Judge call, 100%. I feel bad if this is your favourite deck, but it doesn't exist anymore. Sorry bud.

    -Matt

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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    There is no infinity in Magic.

    I say it again.

    There is no infinity in Magic. Almost. Whenever actual and inevitable infinity happens, the game ends in a draw. Like 3 Oblivion Rings removing each other without other possible permanents to enchant.

    Whenever you perform a loop, you name the desired number of iterations and provide the game state after those. You can't do the later in the last case.

    On another note: even before the most recent IPG update, this loop was practically unplayable.
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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    Quote Originally Posted by sdematt View Post
    I feel bad if this is your favourite deck, but it doesn't exist anymore. Sorry bud.
    No man, it's a terrible deck I hate it. I'm just being the devil's advocate because I'm in a bad mood today.

    Quote Originally Posted by Julian23 View Post
    Whenever you perform a loop, you name the desired number of iterations and provide the game state after those. You can't do the later in the last case.
    Ok, this is good enough for me.

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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    Quote Originally Posted by bilb_o View Post
    So another question. In infinite loops it's enough to demonstrate the loop once and then say it's infinite...
    With a conventional infinite loop, the rules only allow you to say "I do this 1000 times" or "I do this 10^100 times". There's no going 'infinite' as such -- that sort of thing is "Here there be monsters" territory.

    Current rules do no allow for repeating a loop until some random event of non-zero probability occurs. (A bit more discussion on this below.)

    IPG 4.3 – Tournament Error – Slow Play

    'It is also slow play if a player continues to execute a loop without being able to provide an exact number of iterations and the expected resulting game state.'
    FWIW, "loop" and "game state" don't have clear definitions here.

    From a 'rules lawyering perspective':
    I just noticed that it's not technically legal to shortcut through four horsemen (or, depending on the definition of 'action' petals of insight).
    716.2a At any point in the game, the player with priority may suggest a shortcut by describing a sequence of game choices, .... It can't include conditional actions, where the outcome of a game event determines the next action a player takes. ...
    In order words conventional shortcuts can't even be used for the 'four horsemen' combo.

    I'm admittedly somewhat naive, and WotC has clearly spread it's policies and rules over several different documents, but it seems like the four horseman combo elements are resolved under something like MTR 4.3 (out of order sequencing) rather than the 'conventional' loop or shortcut rules.

    Edit: In the petals loop you have deterministic probability....
    It's clearer to say that the petals of insight loop is deterministic (provided the number of cards in the library is not divisible by 3.), so it's possible to stack the library within a finite (bounded) number of steps.

    P.S.
    Just for fun, regarding loop rules: Since magic is Turing complete, it's possible to set up a 'halting problem' loops. For example, a game could be set up so that it is a draw by loop if (and only if) the Goldbach Conjecture is true. I wonder how the judges would address that.

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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    Quite frankly, I'm disappointed in the HJ (and coverage team - two feature matches and a deck tech?!) of the event if a Four Horsemen deck was allowed to proceed that far. Short of the opponent scooping, that deck relies on blatant Slow Play 99 games out of 100 it wins. The Slow Play rule was clarified pretty much to specifically target that deck - how much more instruction do you need?
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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    It saddens me that a combination of cards works but cannot legally be executed :(

    What would happen if the HJ decided this deck doesn't work and followed him all day? does he autolose every match? Does he get any sort of refund, since he can't actually play a game of magic with what he thought was a legal deck? It would have been interesting to see how SCG handled it. or maybe this was their way of doing so.
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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    Quote Originally Posted by cdr View Post
    Quite frankly, I'm disappointed in the HJ (and coverage team - two feature matches and a deck tech?!) of the event if a Four Horsemen deck was allowed to proceed that far. Short of the opponent scooping, that deck relies on blatant Slow Play 99 games out of 100 it wins. The Slow Play rule was clarified pretty much to specifically target that deck - how much more instruction do you need?
    It just continues to show that SCG actually knows nothing about legacy, despite supporting it. If they knew anything about legacy, they would have known as soon as they saw a deck called "Four Horsemen" that the entire deck is essentially illegal. Also, giving 4H a deck tech has to be the single greatest waste of time of a deck tech ever. Very disappointed that the deck somehow got 17th. I have a feeling that he got lucky and played against a lot of durdles that didn't understand that the loop is illegal, and he just jedi'd them into scooping to the loop on the explanation of how it wins.

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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tammit67 View Post
    It saddens me that a combination of cards works but cannot legally be executed :(

    What would happen if the HJ decided this deck doesn't work and followed him all day? does he autolose every match? Does he get any sort of refund, since he can't actually play a game of magic with what he thought was a legal deck? It would have been interesting to see how SCG handled it. or maybe this was their way of doing so.
    What do you mean by "Works"? The way the deck plays in most situations is clearly defined as slow play.

    It's not SCG's, or any tournament organizers responsibility to tell the players what they can and cannot play. By entering a tournament, you are expected to know the rules of the game, and while four horsemen is a "Legal" combo as far as the Legacy banlist goes, it's toeing the line/over it per the IPG.

    I wouldn't say this deck works as anything other than a massive waste of time for everyone involved.
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    Re: SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

    Quote Originally Posted by cdr View Post
    Quite frankly, I'm disappointed in the HJ ...
    I wonder if you could address some questions this discussion has brought to my mind:

    Are two game states which differ only in that the library has been shuffled considered to be identical for the purposes of the rules? (What about if the top card is revealed due to Candles of Leng or something similar, and the top card is the same?)

    It seems like manipulating the Mesmeric Orb/Bassalt Monolith/Emrakul triggers can effectively ensure the graveyard is basically always populated with some cards or there are unresolved milling triggers and exact game states are thus, extremely unlikely to be repeated. Is there an official 'loop condition' that can be used as a test?

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