Chance Encounter / Frenetic Efreet

[TheLion]

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/35b&page=1


I don't know exactly the ruling on Phasing, but apparently you are allowed to use activated abilities, even if a permanent is phased out.
Whatever.

This will be a new 2 card combo, after the Power Level errata is removed...

Will it have a chance?

[Zork]

So, does this mean that Frenetic Efreet is unkillable? If so, the combo might see play since it has a built in invinci-wall. Otherwise, I don't see it happening as fondly as I remember running efreets in control (both).

[etrigan]

I don't know exactly the ruling on Phasing, but apparently you are allowed to use activated abilities, even if a permanent is phased out.
Whatever.


Not exactly. You just stack a ton of activations, and in resolving each one, you flip a ton of coins, regardless of whether Frenetic Efreet is still in play.

e: For reference's sake, this is a 2 card, 7 mana combo that wins the next turn. Not graveyard dependant, delayed by Stifle, countered by Trickbind, and Pithing Needleable. I do not think this will see play.

[Skeggi]

I also think that it doesn't make the cut. Leyline//Helm is stronger because the individual cards are not dead cards, and this combo isn't even played.

It's funny to see how new ruling makes old Mirage cards like Lion's Eye Diamond, Phyrexian Dreadnought and now Frenetic Efreet playable all of a sudden. Cards that were worth absolutely nothing back in the days when people sold their own mother for a Grinning Totem.

[TheLion]

Not exactly. You just stack a ton of activations, and in resolving each one, you flip a ton of coins, regardless of whether Frenetic Efreet is still in play.


And why, doesn't this work with the current oracle text?

0: If Frenetic Efreet is in play, flip a coin. If you win the flip, Frenetic Efreet phases out. If you lose the flip, sacrifice Frenetic Efreet.

[Black Mass]

Because, On resolving, the ability checks if the Efreet is in play. Either win or lose with the errated text, the efreet leaves play. Therefor every other ability on the stack will be countered due to being illegal.

[Van Phanel]

Because, On resolving, the ability checks if the Efreet is in play. Either win or lose with the errated text, the efreet leaves play. Therefor every other ability on the stack will be countered due to being illegal.

Basically yes, but the ability is not countered. It will simply have no effect.

[Ch@os]

Sry, i dont get it, whats the "new" Oracle text?

edith:\

Frenetic Efreet
This card got power-level errata when Chance Encounter was printed in Odyssey. Frenetic Efreet lets you play its activated ability as many times as you want in response to itself (since the cost is just ). When the first such ability resolved, you'd flip a coin and Frenetic Efreet would go away (either to the graveyard or the phased-out zone). According to Frenetic Efreet's original wording, all the rest of the abilities would still resolve, causing you to flip a coin each time. Nothing would happen to Frenetic Efreet (it's gone by now), but you'd get the easy opportunity to win lots of irrelevant coin flips and put plenty of luck counters on Chance Encounter, allowing you to win the game when your next upkeep started. To combat this combo, and the otherwise pointless free coin-flipping this card facilitated, Frenetic Efreet got errata stating that you flipped the coin only if it was in play.

[Finn]

Just a note on this.
I'm not saying that Frenetic Efreet is going to make coin flipping all the rage, but I have a friend who commonly wins on turn 3 or some such using Krark's Thumb as the basis for abusing coin flips. I imagine that having access to another reliable win condition is going to be a feather in his cap.


EDIT: @Chaos - the only change is that you can continue to flip coins and have the action resolve even after the Efreet has phased out. That way you can rack up coin flip "wins" for nothing. In the past, the other coin flips would be removed from the stack once any of them resolved.

[TheLion]

Was this combo seriously considered too overpowered for Vintage (I guess Mirage and Odyssey were never legal in Extended at the same time)?

Is there a list of all cards that still have power-level errata?

Or are their explanations of why a card was erratared?

e.g. Why was Dreadnought erratered? It was even before Stifle was around, and I just can't believe it was due to bad combos with Pandemonium...

So I wonder what was the motivation behind all the power-level-erratering...

[C.P.]

Why was Dreadnought erratered? It was even before Stifle was around, and I just can't believe it was due to bad combos with Pandemonium...


The 'Bad Combo' you talk about won a PT on the back of Necro. Like Trix, It may seem bad by today's standard, but it was a powerful deck back then.

[rufus]

So I wonder what was the motivation behind all the power-level-erratering...

A while ago the whole 'stack' thing hadn't really been worked out, and a lot of cards and rulings were made willy-nilly. The WoTC have come a long, long way since the days of Orcish Oriflame on the banned/restricted list.

Some of the power level errata (notably Flash) have to do with the 'intent' of the cards.


Why was Dreadnought erratered?
The notion of comes into play effects and comes into play replacements weren't well-defined.For example compare Lotus Vale's printed card text to its oracle text, and then look at Dreadnought.
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=4593
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=3263


It amuses me that Frenetic Sliver doesn't get the change....


Is there a list of all cards that still have power-level errata?
I'm not sure. I know that Transmute Artifact does. CiTP artifact abilities like Magister Sphinx get pretty silly under the old version, so it would probably end up banned/restricted.

[Malchar]

I don't think that there are any more cards with power-level errata. I thought that they had cleaned them all up when they changed Dreadnought to how it is now.

Some of the really old cards like transmute artifact technically don't have power-level errata. The wording back then was extremely different from how cards are currently worded. The oracle text is more like a best guess at how the card originally worked.

"...you must pay the difference or Transmute Artifact fails and both artifacts are discarded." The literal text makes no sense by today's standards. Besides, if people start complaining about it then it will just get banned like Flash.

[majikal]

It needs to be banned just because someone can go "declare 1000 coin flips". No thanks!

[emidln]

It needs to be banned just because someone can go "declare 1000 coin flips". No thanks!

Call a judge on them for stalling.

[Tacosnape]

Actually, it doesn't work in current form because if the Efreet isn't in play, you don't flip the coin at all. You can still stack the ability a bajillion times.

As for the combo's strength, Frenetic's not completely useless on its own, but Chance Encounter might be the first card in a long time that's worse on its own than Grindstone. Two card combos are weak in Legacy, generally. One card combos and entire deck combos have typically reigned supreme. And it's taken combos being three mana (Cephalid Breakfast) or completely colorless (Painter/Grindstone) to thrive. Doubt it sees play.

[majikal]

Call a judge on them for stalling.
Even 100, 50, or even 20 is too much. You have to do a lot of flipping to win enough to put 10 counters on your Chance Encounter, because as soon as you lose a flip, the Efreet is gone and you can't start again once you run out of stacked activations. The card needs to be banned for time constraint issues.

[emidln]

If they randomly start flipping a lot of coins without their other combo piece call a judge. This is no different than activating Sensei's Divining Top multiple times without changing the library order. You're wasting time and in effect cheating your opponent. If they have a combo piece with it out, concede if you don't have a way of dealing with it. This is no different than conceding to Solidarity once they demonstrate the ability to untap and draw a ton of cards. Sure, they might fizzle, but chances are incredibly good that they won't. Clock management is a valuable skill and you really should know when to call it, even if you haven't necessarily lost.

I imagine you could also get 10-20 flips in a minute. This doesn't seem like that big of a deal. If your opponent is going slowly, again you should call a judge.

I'll point out one last thing. This is incredibly fragile. It costs a million mana, of two different colors and is going to be hit hard by the tempo strategies already employed due to the presence of counterbalance (Stifle/Waste/Sinkhole/Daze/etc). This combo loses to Krosan Grip, Engineered Plague, and is vulnerable to both red AND blue blasts. This is garbage and I feel sorry for anyone taking it into an event because it's going to get splash hate from Goblins, Threshold, and Burn.

[Anusien]

So people understand, Frenetic Efreet has power level to prevent this interaction. If "If Frenetic Efreet is in play" is going to be removed from Efreet, so you can put ten thousand activations on the stack, be almost guaranteed to have 10 successes, and win with Chance Encounter. You could stack the activations before, but regardless of whether you won or lost the first one, the rest wouldn't be flipped. Now the flips still happen, but the first flip still determines whether it phases out or is sacrificed. Future flips cannot affect the fate of the Efreet since it has left play.


Not exactly. You just stack a ton of activations, and in resolving each one, you flip a ton of coins, regardless of whether Frenetic Efreet is still in play.

e: For reference's sake, this is a 2 card, 7 mana combo that wins the next turn. Not graveyard dependant, delayed by Stifle, countered by Trickbind, and Pithing Needleable. I do not think this will see play.
It's Needleable, but it's not countered by Trickbind, it's only delayed. Since you put all the flips on the stack in response to each other, they can't Trickbind to stop you. They have to Trickbind the Chance Encounter trigger, the same as Stifle.

Re: Time issues. The first flip must actually be determined separately (it determines the fate of the Efreet). After that, you are strongly encouraged to perform multiple flips at once. Like, get a fistful of dice, guess "even" or "odd" and roll all the dice at once and count successes.
Also, if both players don't agree to say "The rest of the successes/failures are irrelevant after 10 flips", judges are going to be suspicious. Players are strongly encouraged to shortcut this process to save time.

Edit: I would be very suspicious if anyone lost to Red Elemental Blast with the deck. It feels like a Painter/Grindstone that is not vulnerable to Ancient Grudge, but eats it to Plague and the pieces are less vulnerable.

[Malchar]

Compared to Painter-Grindstone, Frenetic-Encounter
-uses colored mana (and slightly more). But, the colors aren't that bad. Painter-Grindstone often plays with red and/or blue anyway.

-has a harder-to-kill creature. That is, it doesn't matter if the efreet is removed in response to activation. This is a major plus.

-None of the things are artifacts, which are really easy to destroy. Perhaps the large mana cost of Chance Encounter is an advantage against Counterbalance and Deed. Also, red and black can't kill enchantments at all.

-You have to wait a turn to win. The opponent gets to draw a card to try to answer it, and if you lose you have to find another efreet (unless you get really lucky). This is a huge disadvantage but remember that Painter-Grindstone requires you to wait "half a turn" or so until the opponent is decked.

All-in-all, it's definately not better than painter or helm of obedience but I can only assume that it costs less than $1 to assemble. It might be worth a shot for budget players. It could fit into a tidy shell of counterbalance blue with moon and other goodies. I can't really imagine seeing it do well though.

[Zlatzman]

Do you actually need to perform the flips after the first one? Can't players just agree that with a hundred million flips on stack Chance Encounter will get "enough" luck-counters?

[majikal]

That's the problem though. It is luck-based. I personally would let them stop after they got ten. But damned if I'm not making them go through the motions for playing such a boring combo. :rolleyes:

Although, on the other hand, it would be hilarious to play this with the intention of flipping a goofy, oversized penny over and over again. Possibly fake a stutter as well.

[Nihil Credo]

A regular coin flip, as accepted and expected by the MtG rules, is far from a mathematically perfect 0.5 event; Persi Diaconis has done some famous research on the subject, showing that there is usually a detectable bias towards the coin ending up on the same face it started as.

Given that the chance of not hitting ten wins in a Graham's number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number) of perfect coin flips is insignificant compared to the inherent bias of the coin, it's absolutely fair to accept short-cutting through the coin flipping.

That said, just in case you run into majikal or another particularly stubborn opponent, if I were to play Efreet Encounter at any tournament I'd just bring a scientific calculator with me.

[THEchubbymuffin]

Might be a bad place to ask this but could you replace a coin flip with rolling a six sided die? And odd is heads, and even is tails?

[Nihil Credo]

Yes. The Comprehensive rules explicitly allow another random event as a replacement as long as both players agree.

[rufus]

Yes. The Comprehensive rules explicitly allow another random event as a replacement as long as both players agree.

You might even be able to make the case that 'coin flips' require too much player skill.

It's a bit of a pity that Frenetic Sliver was printed with the power level errata in place. It would probably be a stronger combo element.

I guess Karplusan Minotaur + Frenetic Efreet doesn't quite work :/

[Mr.C]

Now that the power level errata has been removed, do you guys think it might see play? Or is it just way too janky?

[Aggro_zombies]

Now that the power level errata has been removed, do you guys think it might see play? Or is it just way too janky?
The power level errata has been removed for a while now. What do you think?