What is there to confirm? You know as much as we do.Originally Posted by Kanti
Even when you don't go infinite right on the spot, stealing an efficient creature or equipment sounds pretty good. As soon as you cast it, it doesn't matter if Hostage Taker gets removed, you will still keep the stolen permanent.
Instead of arguing how Wizards can fuck up this bad again, we should at least think about what shell could get the most milage out of it.
It's UB, so U means Brainstorm/FoW and possibly other cantrips, B means DRS. Welp, that looks familiar - oh, the joys of Legacy deckbuilding.
Edit: I just realized that Esper Soul Sisters with this is going to be the shit in Modern. I'd keep my eyes on the prices.
What's the ruling if I am milling someone and hit Emrakuls with this thing? How many times can I mill them? When does 4 Horseman ruling come into effect and stop me from milling my opponents deck until he has the remaining Emrakuls on top of his library with every other card in his library milled?
Also, isn't all the talk about drawing the game irrelevant because attempting that loop would constitue "slow play" and you need to add a finite number to the whole thing?
edit: bless my soul, I just ordered x10 foil Altar of the Brood. Hopefully they at most errata this shit to make it so it can't draw on an empty board. Godspeed.
If it said you "may" exile, that would be the case, but it doesn't (it says "may" but that refers to casting the exiled card), so you're required to choose a target when it comes into play. So if that wording is correct, and there's no rules change, then on an empty board it creates an infinite loop that ends the game.
Or so is my understanding of the rules.
Old-Growth Dryads
G
Creature - Dryad (R)
When ~ enters the battlefield, each opponent may search his or her library for a basic land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle his or her library.
3/3
I feel like this card has the potential to be relevant
"You either die a Onesto-Player, or live long enough to see yourself become a Dredger"
Not really, Nacatl isn't playable, and this is arguably almost always worse.
Needed forest-walk or an ability of any kind, or to be a 4/4. It's a really neat design though. They could go for more spells with this "drawback" on it as well. More Vet. Explorer effects could make nic-fit an actually relevant effect. If this is a theme of the expansion i'd LOVE it. Need more basic-promoting cards in the game. Fetches need to be toned down a bit.
At some point you can start playing 'exhaust the basics.' Either with Veteran Explorer or with Path to Exile and Ghost Quarter.
Even so, this seems more like an EDH hug card than anything else.
@ New nacatl card
It seems alright. A backwards Rogue Elephant that punishes people if they don't play any basics, or only play one, etc. Works well with Weathered Wayfarer effects too; though the tempo loss will hurt. Not sure what to think. It's nice that it's not in Naya which is why I think it has potential.
@ People arguing about rules
I hadn't seen Aligned Hedron Network/rulings but I also feel like that ruling is just wrong. It's logically/mathematically is not consistent with itself. If it exiles itself, it can't possibly be in exile because it's duration is already used up. They literally have their own rules wrong there based on old templating. There is no trigger to allow the permanents to come back and retrigger, nor is there the ability for it to exile itself and come back in, it's a contradiction. Given that Tabek is a Logic Nerd like myself (computer science) my guess is that he's fixing this somehow; likely by stating that if the effect would exile itself, nothing happens because the duration of '0' cancels itself out. Please remember that there is no trigger upon leaving; it happens without even checking state based effects, *without the stack.* It just occurs at the exact same time, so if it exiles itself at the same time it's putting itself back into play nothing should happen. This is what logical contradictions do. Again, please note how if you kill a banisher priest that is holding a Phyrexian Revoker; there is no point in time where you can stop the revoker from coming into play, nor can you stop it from naming things. [EDIT: Compare this to an O-Ring; where you can stifle the leave-trigger play a containment priest, or some other effect that uses the stack.]
Just like TNN or Revoker name things *at the same time* they come in, the banishing rules (why didn't they keyword this?) happen concurrently. I get that a I'd be ruled against currently by AHN's ruling and that my interpretation of current rules is not how it works despite it meaning they have a built in divide-by-zero clause.
We'll find out in a short bit whether it's:
* Fake
* Indicative of a minor rules change about '0' duration effects
* Actually a mistake
* something else
The big red light on it is that it draws on an empty board. Like land, Dark Ritual, Lotus Petal, Pirate, onto g2? Makes no sense. I am hoping they don't change it too much though, as there are just so many ridiculous interactions with this thing. I want Woldgorger Pirate to be real. It enables x100 combos.
edit: the more I look at this, the more I think it's a misprint or something. They are just gonna add the word "another" to it, and it's gonna be a great card in Vintage, as 2UB to take control of an artifact is schweeeeet. It's basically Nekrataal+Control Magic rolled into one. Very blue/black effect, great design if they remember to add "another" on it. Though I really wish they add "you may" so I can live in combo winterland.
edit2: am i right to think I can cast this, target a creature, then once it resolves cast that creature before passing priority? So even if they exile my Hostage Taker, I can still use mana of any color? Schweeeeeeeet, if so.
Here's the thing, if it is real and they plan to change the rules, all is good. If it's real and they missed it, it's likely to get fixed now. If it's fake it's not a problem anyway. No matter the situation, I don't see this becoming an issue.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
What would be the actual rules change though? Anything I can think of seems sloppay.
I don't think you will be able to go infinite with this. I guess if you target itself it will never leave the Battlefield. Same if you kill Dragonlord Silumgar in response to his trigger
Either it stay exiled because it's the last step before it loops, you lose the game because a draw caused by an infinite loop = loss for the player causing it, or they simply add a go-like rule where you can't choose an option that regress the game to a previous state, aka targeting itself is illegal and it stay into play.
I realize you may have read my other two posts; but what is sloppy about something like:
* "If an effect has a duration and would cancel that duration as a result of the effect, that effect is countered."
or
* "Duration effects can never choose a target that would cause the duration to be canceled" or even
or the best so far I think
* "if an effect would cause the same non-token permanent to both leave and enter the battlefield or the same spell card to both leave and enter the stack, the actions cancel and the permanent or spell instead doesn't leave or enter the battlefield as a result of that effect."
This is how they deal with -1/-1 counters and +1/+1 counters effectively and how they deal with counters not targeting themselves (which you can't do even with a Misdirection and thus has nothing to do with the order you declare targets/etc and place things on the stack.)
P.S.
An aside; I do realize why they ruled it that way, and I now believe it's correct despite making no sense. Basically the permanent leaves and enters the battlefield at the exact same time*, causing it to count as entering the battlefield and the full effect from the previous trigger having resolved.
*[Note: this is not the same as Flickering, which leaves and then enters but happens to be contained within the same clause and thus has no space to play with the stack. This is actually the same permanent both leaving and entering at the same time.]
The moment you try to shortcut and can't name the number of required iterations for the loop and a definitive outcome.
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This makes sense. The object changes zones for exactly 0 time per its own ability and so its ability resolves having done nothing. And since it technically never left play its ETB doesn't re-trigger so there is no infinite loop.
One reason we may even be seeing this leak is they realized the broken card after it went to the printers, so they had to scrap the whole run instead of having another PR fuck up out the gates.
Past that, whatever story you want. Disgruntled operator who got told to scrap production and go home cause the customer fucked up, foil sheet heading to the trash so someone scooped it up, etc.
I don't think they'd come up with some convoluted computer programming logic puzzle to explain to a 11 year old who drafts this, plays it on an empty table, and is told it doesn't do anything. Not that creating an infinite loop is any better of course...but wizards wants cards that you can walk through by reading the text and following the instructions.
That's partially right. Here's an exerpt from my article about Loops, perpetually a work in progress:
This section explains why you can't shortcut the Four Horseman loop:
..and this section explains why you can't just do it without a shortcut, either:A. The Problem of Indeterminate Loops.
The best example of such a loop occurs (and comes up frequently on Magic forums) in the context of the much-maligned “Four Horseman” deck. You can see a copy of this deck performing well in Legacy recently if you look up Jeff Liu’s deck, which came in 17th place at the September 16, 2012 Star City Games Legacy Open. The deck functions by resolving Basalt Monolith and Mesmeric Orb. Since you can tap the Monolith for 3 mana, and spend that mana to untap the Monolith again, you can trigger the Orb as many times as you like.
The deck’s goal is to mill a Blasting Station, at least three Narcomeboas, Sharuum the Hegemon, and a Dread Return. Once it does that, it puts the Narcomebias into play, sacrifices them to Dread Return to return Sharuum, who brings back the Blasting Station. This leaves you with a bunch of Narcomebias in the yard. No problem; just keep tapping your Monolith and keep milling yourself until you hit an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. When she hits the yard, you will shuffle those lovely Narcobmebias back into your library, where you can mill them back into play and start feeding them to the Blasting Station to ping your opponent to death.
There’s a random element to all of these moving parts, however: the order of cards in your shuffled library. Consider what happens if the Four Horseman player mills an Emrakul before the other half-dozen cards it needs to be in the yard. Emrakul’s shuffle trigger will go on the stack next time the player has priority. The player can keep milling in response, certainly, but the stack will never be empty until Emrakul’s trigger finally resolves. That’s a problem, because Dread Return in a Sorcery, and you cannot cast Sorceries until the stack is empty. The upshot is that player shuffles the yard back into the library and try again from scratch if Emrakul arrives early.
In theory, the player could keep doing this as much as they like, just as someone could keep rolling a twenty-sided dice until they hit a 1. But, since the outcome of each roll or shuffle is based on chance, there’s no way to pick a specific number of iterations around the loop that will be required in order to accomplish the desired graveyard order. Worse still, there’s no way to know, in advance, exactly what will be in the graveyard or in the library when the win condition finally comes up.
B. Winning Eventually Is Not Enough For a Shortcut.
Fans of the Four Horseman will be quick to point out that, if the deck was given infinite time, then it eventually would reach the necessary conditions to win. Put more precisely: for any arbitrarily small probability X, you could calculate a number of iterations around the Four Horseman loop that would bring the probability of failure after that many iterations below X. Since the deck will eventually win, given enough time, the player should be allowed to propose a shortcut without specifying the particular finite number of iterations or the particular board states passed through to get there, or so the argument often goes.
This suggestion fails for two reasons. First, the shortcut rules do not allow you to shortcut where you can prove there is a vanishingly small chance of getting the result you want. The mathematical concept of a “limit” is not contained in the Rules. Since you cannot specify a number of iterations that will precisely get you to a specific board state, you cannot use the shortcut Rules.
The second flaw with this argument is that it ignores the second part of the shortcut rule: the opponent’s option to shorten it. Perhaps, by way of illustration, the opponent wishes to stop the combo when the last two cards in the pilot’s library are the two Emrakuls and then attempt to exile them to deck the opponent. It is impossible for the players to know how many iterations will occur before this state is reached. It is also impossible to know whether this state will happen before or after the Four Horseman pilot hits his win condition.
This is why it is so critical that a shortcut involve both a finite, specified number of iterations and a definite, predictable board state during and after the loop. Without both, you cannot use the shortcut rules. Instead, you just have to go through the actions that would make up your loop, action after action, just like you were playing on Magic: The Gathering Online. Except that, if you do this in a tournament setting, you might get warned by a judge for Slow Play and told to stop trying to win with your combo. We will discuss that in more detail below.
Slow Play
To understand Slow Play, we must leave the realm of the Comprehensive Rules and enter the domain of the Infraction Procedure Guide, or IPG. The IPG does not apply to all Magic tournaments, only those “held at a Competitive or Professional Rules Enforcement Level.” I.P.G. at Introduction (July 22, 2016). At your kitchen table, or at Regular R.E.L., you may very well be allowed to execute your Indeterminate Loop to your heart’s content. Remember, check with your local judge beforehand!
Slow Play is a tournament error that results in a Warning. I.P.G. § 3 and 3.3. When players think of Slow Play, the usual thing that springs to mind is someone taking longer than normal to move the game along. Slow Play does indeed occur when “[a] player takes longer than is reasonably necessary to complete game actions.” I.P.G. § 3.3. Tucked away behind this definition, however, is a subsidiary definition that appears to be included here mostly because it does not really fit anywhere else. The Guide says: “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.” Id.
This short statement is packed with meaning. It applies when someone is trying to “execute” a loop. The term “execute” is not defined by either the Comprehensive Rules or the I.P.G., but it appears to be intended to include both shortcutting a loop or carrying out the actions involved in a loop. The Slow Play definition also specifically calls out the type of loop we have defined as an Indeterminate Loop above; one for which the player cannot provide both a specific number of iterations and a specific resulting game state.
This all means that, in practice, you cannot execute - carry out - the actions of your Indeterminate Loop. But, as we already explored above, you cannot propose a shortcut of such a loop, either. The result is that you simply cannot win with an Indeterminate Loop! As it applies to the Four Horseman in particular, Head Judge Josh Stansfield had this to say about Mr. Liu’s deck at the Star City Open:
"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.
Put another way: Mr. Liu would violate the shortcut rule if he proposed a shortcut, but he would violate the Slow Play rule if he did not, and as a result, he is barred from trying to win.
This is little unusual. It is not often in Magic that a player is told they may not take an otherwise legal game action, even though the action is clearly designed to win. This strange rules interaction makes the option of bringing Four Horseman to a tournament impossible or at least wildly unwise. That strikes many people as unfair. People also rankle, understandably, at the suggestion that fast-paced play with the goal of winning can be defined as Slow Play, the same tournament error that applies to someone who is simply wasting time.
There is a logic behind this rule, however. The shortcut rules are already complicated, and it is not at all clear whether any change to accommodate Indeterminate Loops would be good for the game, or even possible. Once shortcuts are off the table, infinite loops present a massive challenge the Magic Tournament Rules. Sure, your deck may be able to win given an infinite amount of time. Magic Tournaments do not occur over an infinite amount of time (even if it seems like they do on some occasions).
Under the Tournament Rules, tournament matches are given a time limit, which must be at least forty minutes. Magic Tournament Rules at Appendix B (July 22, 2016). Once the time for a match has expired, “the player whose turn it is finishes his or her turn and five additional turns are played in total” at which point the game ends in a draw. Id. § 2.5. There is nothing in the Tournament Rules allowing a judge to stop a player from continuing to act but not actually ending his or her turn. A player executing an infinite loop could simply keep doing so and the tournament would grind to a halt. That situation is not good for anyone involved.
The Slow Play rules give judges a way to avoid this scenario, to the benefit of all players.
Even if Tabek could magically produce bug-free rulings, he's not the only one who makes rulings. "Self-exile until" is legitimately ambiguous or singular. I would have sworn that the ruling actually went the other way when I originally asked about Aligned Hedron Network. (In other words that the ruling was that it was 'one blink for everything else.')
On a different note, have they responded to this leak yet? I can't find one. They're under new management IIRC and it could be that they've started playing 4D-chess by beta-testing the player base. Our confusion on the way the wording works could be a move to see how we respond to the cards or if they make sense. [Not us specifically, but the community in general.]
After all, dedicated forum nerds are probably just a small sample size of the wider community.
Again, this is total speculation and whatnot, but I feel they responded faster last time with immediate damage control and process debugging, begging and blaming the community for stuff. The total silence on this could indicate it's time to delve into conspiracy territory :P
It's more likely they just actually have adults in charge now, instead of the garbage in, garbage out crew that somehow avoided running the game into the ground - solely due to patenting the very concept of a TCG and thus crippling any potential competition - for so long.
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