The short answer is, the rules make the decision, not the judge.Originally Posted by RoddyVR
The long answer is, the ruling is, for all intents and purposes, that brainfreeze or Laquatus with an arbitrarily large amount of mana + Gaea's Blessing in an opponent's deck does not = a successful loop, and can't be shortcutted to a condition with Blessing as the last card to be milled. You are given a reasonable amount of time (at the discression of the Judge) to achieve that gamestate manually, but past that, the loop fails.
I wasn't completely clear. If you as the Brain Freeze player (or even your opponent) wants to continue with a game that is not advancing within a reasonable amount of time, as in this situation, you would be stalling.troopatroop / RoddyVR
You are not going to be allowed to take up the entire round shuffling and re-shuffling a deck.
At that point, if there are copies left on the stack, you have two options that avoid stalling: both players can agree to draw, or one can conceed.
Skipping shuffles is an established shortcut - game situations can modify whether shortcuts are appropriate to use. Neither Psychogenic Probe nor Latern of Insight would force you to shuffle, either - you can just take the damage / reveal the card as appropriate, without actually shuffling. That's a different topic, though.
“It's possible. But it involves... {checks archives} Nature's Revolt, Opalescence, two Unstable Shapeshifters (one of which started as a Doppelganger), a Tide, an animated land, a creature with Fading, a Silver Wyvern, some way to get a creature into play in response to stuff, some way to get a land into play in response to stuff (a different land from the animated land), and one heck of a Rube Goldberg timing diagram.”
-David DeLaney
Ruling that way vis-a-vis Lantern of Insight is incorrect. After each copy of Mind's Desire resolves, the players get priority, and the top cards of each library is revealed. As soon as players can make decisions based on what the top card of the library is, the library ceases to be random because the Mind's Desire player might, for example, have cantrips that he or she can play to pull dead cards out of his or her own deck
I fail to see how doing this with Ambassador Laquatus and doing this with Brain Freeze are the same thing.
With Brain Freeze, you have to pick a number, and that number isn't guaranteed to get there.
With Laquatus, assuming you can continue your mana engine while it's in play, you don't have to pick a number, because you can continue to redo it. Therefore there is absolutely no chance the deck won't eventually be stacked the way you want it.
I feel that should be a different case.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The situation described is not someone delaying for time. It is not someone playing slowly. It is someone approaching their one remaining path to victory with all due speed as is their right as a player. Can you grasp that? They are doing the one thing that enables them to win, and which clearly has a real, tangible chance of success. You cannot logically maintain that the rules won't let you determine that after declaring a googolplex iterations of the action, that it would eventually happen and so you can move the game state along; but then in the reverse situation, determine that because someone's chance of immediate success with the strategy isn't very large, you can just skip it. Your stance is inconsistent and illogical.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
It really seems like the 'infinity rule' assumes that the action is degenerate or the sum of the actions does nothing to the game state outside of the loop, in which case it would make sense to pick a number and execute the action that many times.
In this case, though, you can show mathematically that repeating this action (milling to Blessing and re-shuffling) infinite times will contain a case where the deck stacks in the way you want it to (all Blessings on the bottom), meaning the sum of actions converges to a real result. It's a fairly easy math proof, too.
It seems like the rules should be modified to take these types of situations into account.
Fred Bear...
I don't argue about it. I am relaying rules and policy. Feel free to go harass #mtgjudge or judges elsewhere.
They're actually mostly the same - you can create an arbitrary number of 3-card mills with Brain Freeze copies, or an arbitrary number of 3-card mills with Laquatus activations. By the rules, they're the same - neither is a loop.
The difference tournament-wise is that you can force a draw or concession with enough Brain Freeze copies, whereas with Laquatas you are directly controlling the milling and would have to stop activating him or face stalling penalties.
You could try writing to someone on the rules team. They're pretty sick of this (largely inconsequential) topic, though.
As Andy Heckt wrote:
"Realize the likelyhood of these situations is very very low and the
debates about them (which rise up about every 2 years) occur more often
than actual situations. In fact a table collapsing during a match occurs
more often"
“It's possible. But it involves... {checks archives} Nature's Revolt, Opalescence, two Unstable Shapeshifters (one of which started as a Doppelganger), a Tide, an animated land, a creature with Fading, a Silver Wyvern, some way to get a creature into play in response to stuff, some way to get a land into play in response to stuff (a different land from the animated land), and one heck of a Rube Goldberg timing diagram.”
-David DeLaney
As Laquatus can be activated at instant speed, what about getting an arbitrarily large amount of mana, and using all of it to activate Laquatus in response to itself? This seems logically equivalent to the Brain Freeze version. Could you force a draw or concession that way?
And what if the players can't agree on either drawing or one of them conceding?
SummenSaugen: well, I use Chaos Orb, Animate Artifact, and Dance of Many to make the table we're playing on my chaos orb token
SummenSaugen: then I flip it over and crush my opponent
You are choosing to activate Laquatas, so you are intentionally wasting time. Past a reasonable amount of time, you have to continue the game (stop activating Laquatus) or you are stalling. I sort of see what you're saying, and I guess it's pretty much equivalent.
I would tell the players that drawing is the only reasonable option, if one of them doesn't want to conceed. Continuing the game is not an option. I would think that the players would be reasonable.
“It's possible. But it involves... {checks archives} Nature's Revolt, Opalescence, two Unstable Shapeshifters (one of which started as a Doppelganger), a Tide, an animated land, a creature with Fading, a Silver Wyvern, some way to get a creature into play in response to stuff, some way to get a land into play in response to stuff (a different land from the animated land), and one heck of a Rube Goldberg timing diagram.”
-David DeLaney
lol. i think that right there is the problem. players =! resonable in any situation where a game loss depends on it.
Id just play through the ten million copies of freeze letting my opponent agonize over never getting a play again. If you explain to them your milling with 10 million copies on the stack I cant see this as stalling. You comboed. If your opponent doesnt like it they can concede. You just need to be up one game obviously.
I could see a judge ruling against your probable mill but he cant tell you to stop the gamestate when you have millions of copies of a spell on the stack. Mill away, let your opponent shuffle their deck till their hands bleed.
Now playing real formats.
I'll say this once more: the judge will not let you play through more than a few copies. He can and will "tell you to stop". You can agree to draw the game, or you can likely get disqualified for stalling.
“It's possible. But it involves... {checks archives} Nature's Revolt, Opalescence, two Unstable Shapeshifters (one of which started as a Doppelganger), a Tide, an animated land, a creature with Fading, a Silver Wyvern, some way to get a creature into play in response to stuff, some way to get a land into play in response to stuff (a different land from the animated land), and one heck of a Rube Goldberg timing diagram.”
-David DeLaney
Syntax error: =! unknown operator.
(!= btw)
What happens if the opponent doesn't agree to draw?
As I said earlier, the player not agreeing to draw would face stalling penalties. I don't want to speculate about neither player wanting to take the draw; I don't think it's ever happened and I certainly hope it never does.
In fact, I've never even seen this type of situation actually occur in a tournament, and have heard about it happening maybe once.
“It's possible. But it involves... {checks archives} Nature's Revolt, Opalescence, two Unstable Shapeshifters (one of which started as a Doppelganger), a Tide, an animated land, a creature with Fading, a Silver Wyvern, some way to get a creature into play in response to stuff, some way to get a land into play in response to stuff (a different land from the animated land), and one heck of a Rube Goldberg timing diagram.”
-David DeLaney
How is Ambassador Laquatus entering the equation here? If you have him and a way to make your opponent draw a card and infinite mana, you win the game, Blessings or not.
Opponent reveals a milled Blessing, trigger goes on the stack, you respond by activating Laquatus again, repeat at next Blessing trigger, etc, your opponent eventually has zero cards left you force them to draw.
If you have infinite mana, Laquatus and no way to make them draw a card, and they have Blessing, you lose. They have a 100% chance of having a library after your arbitrarily large number of shuffles after Blessing triggers.
That simple.
Other thoughs on this:
This topic isn't really worth anyone's time. Why would you use Brain Freeze over Grapeshot? What's the probability of this specific interaction coming up in tournament? Why are people deciding that their own view of the game is more important than the rules of the game?
The rules are pretty clear that you have to advance the state of the game, or that you're stalling for time.
State =
Cards in hand,
Phase,
Turn,
Life,
Permanents in play,
number of cards left in library
Nowhere in the state of the game does order of the library come up because that information is hidden. Some of you may be thinking that "you've got # of cards left in library, wtf?", however, the number of cards left in the library isn't changing after the action you took (action = playing a spell, attacking, making some other decision). You played a spell (took an action), their library isn't going away (state isn't changing).
It's really irrelevant if it's your only avenue to victory. Maybe you shouldn't play a crappy deck...
The problem is, THIS IS FLAGRANTLY WRONG.
The judges MUST let you play through as many copies as there are. The judge can make sure you don't take forever for each copy, but you cannot force someone to concede or be punished.
Team Multi-Grain - We're wholesome.
Finally, someone makes some sense on this thread. I didn't expect it to be Cait_Sith, but seriously... I can't believe Akki actually counsels telling a player they can't perform an action that will very probably win the game just because it'll take some time. Remind me to check which tournaments Akki is judging before I go. "Hi, we're going to let you play as much Magic as you want today, but we reserve the right to force players to draw rather than play out their games. Thanks!"
Woah there pardner. They are NOT the same. For example, consider Power Artifact on Grim Monolith + Ambassador Laquatus + Cephalid Looter in play. That combo is truly INFINITE - if I ever run out of mana, I can just make more. I can make a million copies and if it isn't enough I can always make a million more. In this situation, if the opponent tries to stop me from winning, their argument will always rely on their not being enough time in the round to win by my chosen method. In that case the OPPONENT is trying to use the time limit against ME.
By contrast, the posted Doomsday combo is merely "arbitrarily large" (you pick a natural number N, and that is a large but finite [and shrinking as the copies resolve] number of copies).
It would be different if you didn't have the way to force a card draw, because then even if you get the perfect shuffle, the library will be reshuffled. In that case, resolving more copies of the ability will not do anything meaningful, and that would indeed be stalling.
It is not a waste of time to try and win the game by the only means at your disposal!You are choosing to activate Laquatas, so you are intentionally wasting time.
Wrong. You left out "objects on the stack." A critical error.State =
Cards in hand,
Phase,
Turn,
Life,
Permanents in play,
number of cards left in library
Ambassador Laquatas is no where near comparable to Brain Freeze. If you have an infinite mana engine + Laquatas + a way to make your opponent draw at instant speed it wouldn't matter if your opponent's deck was 300 Gaea's Blessings, you could just mill them in response to each trigger and then make them draw a card with no cards in library and 300 Gaea's Blessing trigger on the stack.
However, if someone says that 999,999,999,999,999,999 copies of Brainfreeze doesn't beat 3 Gaea's Blessings doesn't understand logic. The chances of the 3 Gaea's Blessings not showing up on the bottom in any of the near infinite cases is essentially 0. If you are handed a loss and disagree, why are you running 3? Either run 4 or 1, 3 is probably the worst number to run.
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