SCG LA: Four Horseman in 17th - How?

[sdematt]

Hey all,

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

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?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

[Shawon]

Deck Tech: Four Horsemen with Jeff Liu (http://starcitygames.com/events/coverage/deck_tech_four_horsemen_with_j.html)

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"

[Lemnear]

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.

[RaNDoMxGeSTuReS]

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.

[SuperProxy]

From what i heard he was limited to 10 per phase lol
i would be pissed if i was playing against this

[Finn]

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.

[xfxf]

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

[Koby]

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.

[rufus]

"...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.

[Koby]

@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.'

[xfxf]

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.

[sdematt]

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

[Julian23]

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.

[xfxf]

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.


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.

[rufus]

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.

[cdr]

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?

[Tammit67]

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.

[Arianrhod]

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.

[Goin Aggro]

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.

[rufus]

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?

[Jenni]

Is it just me... or does his sideboard plan seem like it would have been a better main-deck choice anyway?

Ignoring for the moment that 4horsemen is essentially a deck built around violating slow play rules, this is a pretty fragile combo, even if he goes off turn 2, a surgical or extirpate can just kill his deck, any other graveyard hate stops it if timed well, anyone who calls a judge over stops him(lol), and the usual control elements (force, pierce, thoughtsieze, etc) get in the way too, plus the artifact hate options like pride mage or shattering spree can stop him.

I mean, sure the painter-stone combo isn't perfect, but it seems a lot more reliable than his main-deck plan, since it isn't grave reliant, in a format where grave hate is basically required thanks to dredge and to a lesser extent reanimator, and Show and Tell emrakul is another pretty good combo already anyway.

If he just played his sideboard combos main deck over the horsemen combo, and had a more generally useful sideboard, I can't help but feel he could have had better odds...

[cdr]

Are two game states which differ only in that the library has been shuffled considered to be identical for the purposes of the rules?

Yes.


(What about if the top card is revealed due to Candles of Leng or something similar, and the top card is the same?)

Yes, 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?

Exact game states don't matter, it's whether the game is being meaningfully advanced. It's not something you can exactly define, it's a "I know it when I see it" sort of thing.

The gentleman in question says in the deck tech tech that he used all sorts of "tricks" to try to avoid slow play, like declaring null attacks and resolving Narcomeba triggers. That sort of thing doesn't fly, trying to avoid slowplay by performing meaningless actions for the express intent of trying to avoid slow play is still slow play.

Four Horsemen has zippo to do with loops - loops require both an exact number of iterations and a defined end state. Four Horsemen does not do that.

[sdematt]

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.

This seems interesting, so I'm going to Wikipedia all of these things. Hooray Math!

Class? What's that?

-Matt

[Psychovoid]

Well, the rules as written don't allow it, but it seems plausible to state the outcome of the Orb/Monolith loop as:

"Loop until all cards are put into the graveyard and Emrakul is the last card on the library."

Then you shuffle your deck, put Emrakul on the bottom, put all other cards in random order into the graveyard, then continue playing as normal.

This doesn't limit the capability of the other player to interact with the combo.

[Tammit67]

What do you mean by "Works"? The way the deck plays in most situations is clearly defined as slow play.


Someone found a cool interaction with a bunch of otherwise unplayable cards that results in a win. Everyone knows the intent and the outcome, but the governing body sees fit to not let it happen. That's all.

The refund or not part was from a business perspective

[mrjumbo03]

Is it just me... or does his sideboard plan seem like it would have been a better main-deck choice anyway?

Ignoring for the moment that 4horsemen is essentially a deck built around violating slow play rules, this is a pretty fragile combo, even if he goes off turn 2, a surgical or extirpate can just kill his deck, any other graveyard hate stops it if timed well, anyone who calls a judge over stops him(lol), and the usual control elements (force, pierce, thoughtsieze, etc) get in the way too, plus the artifact hate options like pride mage or shattering spree can stop him.

I mean, sure the painter-stone combo isn't perfect, but it seems a lot more reliable than his main-deck plan, since it isn't grave reliant, in a format where grave hate is basically required thanks to dredge and to a lesser extent reanimator, and Show and Tell emrakul is another pretty good combo already anyway.

If he just played his sideboard combos main deck over the horsemen combo, and had a more generally useful sideboard, I can't help but feel he could have had better odds...

Outside of Extirpate which doesn't even get played often, the deck doesn't get nuked by graveyard hate. The beauty of having 2 Emrakuls in the deck was, if your opponent responds to your Narc trigger with Surgical or Tormod's, you just respond by flipping some more until you hit the other Emrakul and letting his shuffle trigger resolve before letting the Surgical or Tormod's trigger to resolve, then carry on. As for Swords as a way to answer the Narc, what you do is you start milling until you hit a Therapy first, before hitting a Narc, resolve the Narc then without passing priority, Therapy his hand for any relevant removal or surprise hate. The resilience of the deck to hate is what made playing a slower combo than what was available out there reasonable. This was all prior to the rules change.

[Koby]

Well, the rules as written don't allow it, but it seems plausible to state the outcome of the Orb/Monolith loop as:

"Loop until all cards are put into the graveyard and Emrakul is the last card on the library."

Then you shuffle your deck, put Emrakul on the bottom, put all other cards in random order into the graveyard, then continue playing as normal.

This doesn't limit the capability of the other player to interact with the combo.

This isn't a valid randomization. You would be stacking your deck if you did that. Reaching the state that Emrakul is the last card in the deck requires chance, rather than a specific loop of actions.

Again, while mathematically plausible, the Four Horsemen victory condition is not achievable using Loops. This forces it to be performed mechanically, one library shuffle at a time. Since there is a large chance that the next iteration will achieve an undesired ordering of the deck, this is considered Slow Play.

The question is not the victory condition. The question is how to reach that state deterministically. You cannot.

[Lemnear]

Well, the rules as written don't allow it, but it seems plausible to state the outcome of the Orb/Monolith loop as:

"Loop until all cards are put into the graveyard and Emrakul is the last card on the library."

Then you shuffle your deck, put Emrakul on the bottom, put all other cards in random order into the graveyard, then continue playing as normal.

This doesn't limit the capability of the other player to interact with the combo.

The Problem with this and any shortcuts incarnations like "i repeat till a, b, c, d and e happens" is that this basically would require to legalize stacking Decks and graveyards.

Maybe Jeff questionable shortcuts this Way to explain/execute the combo against bis opponents which isn't within the rules afaik.

So you either Stack your deck/grave or slow Play and get ruled on that. This deck is like Sheherazade: You don't Play it to win but stall the game till Time is called or opponent scoops. It was in Jeff's hands to choose that path and the judges let him pass somehow.

As mentioned already: The fact that he ran 2 Emrakul instead of the obligatory 1-off is an evil addition to make the required flipover combination A LOT LESS likely (yes I have his SB tech in mind)


Edit: koby was faster

[rufus]

Exact game states don't matter, it's whether the game is being meaningfully advanced. It's not something you can exactly define, it's a "I know it when I see it" sort of thing.

This confuses me greatly. The player is clearly trying to win the game by producing lethal damage with a well-defined line of play - that's the epitome of advancing the game state.


The question is not the victory condition. The question is how to reach that state deterministically. You cannot.

This is an "ipse dixit" (because we say so) ruling.



As mentioned already: The fact that he ran 2 Emrakul instead of the obligatory 1-off is an evil addition to make the required flipover combination A LOT LESS likely (yes I have his SB tech in mind)


Yeah, that moves it from around 10 expected shuffles to combo out to around 13. Depending on how long shuffles take, that's in the realm of feasible in tourney time. I guess we can ask how many shuffles per game should be allowed.

Edit: Considering that shuffle shortcuts are allowed for Mind's Desire, it's not that hard to handle the mechanics of something like this similarly.
Edit2: How is this any worse than Solitary Confinement was as a win con?

Edit3: I got the lines of play wrong...1 go-through to get all the narcomobas, 3 or 6 on average to set up the Dred Return, and 7 to end the game.

[Aggro_zombies]

This confuses me greatly. The player is clearly trying to win the game by producing lethal damage with a well-defined line of play - that's the epitome of advancing the game state.
You're looking at this from an "ends justify the means" standpoint. Compare this to the old Ornithopter/Enduring Renewal/Goblin Bombardment combo: that loop had a precisely defined number of iterations that you had to go through in order to win, and that number was known at the outset. This loop has an undefined number of iterations because you are trying to find specific cards without hitting specific other cards while in the same loop. No one can say the exact number of iterations of the loop a player will need to perform at the outset of the loop. That is the problem here. The player can potentially be forced to go through dozens of iterations of doing nothing - that is, not accomplishing anything necessary in order to win - before the right combination of cards turns up. The rules were changed to prevent this because it's a massive waste of time.


Edit: Considering that shuffle shortcuts are allowed for Mind's Desire, it's not that hard to handle the mechanics of something like this similarly.
Mind's Desire is completely different beast. There, the randomness of the cards didn't matter - that is, you weren't going to keep Mind's Desiring until you found Cards X, Y, and Z. You must perform the Four Horseman loop until you have Dread Return, Sharuum, Blasting Station, and four in-play Narcomoebas. There is no way to shortcut that loop without cheating because what cards you turn up has an impact on how many more times you need to iterate the loop.

[cdr]

This confuses me greatly. The player is clearly trying to win the game by producing lethal damage with a well-defined line of play - that's the epitome of advancing the game state.

It doesn't matter what he's "trying" to do, he is either/both a) not sufficiently advancing the game state b) trying to advance an invalid "loop". Attempting to advance an invalid "loop" is specifically defined as Slow Play in the rules.


Yeah, that moves it from around 20 expected shuffles to combo out to around 33. Depending on how long shuffles take, that's in the realm of feasible in tourney time. I guess we can ask how many shuffles per game should be allowed.

You're allowed ~30 seconds per turn, and you're not allowed to attempt to advance an invalid "loop".


Edit: Considering that shuffle shortcuts are allowed for Mind's Desire, it's not that hard to handle the mechanics of something like this similarly.

Shortcutting shuffling between resolution of effects is completely different - you're really stretching for something and completely failing. There is no reason to shuffle a deck that's already randomized and that's why it's explicitly allowed by the rules. You cannot shortcut anything about the Four Horsemen "combo".

[Koby]

This confuses me greatly. The player is clearly trying to win the game by producing lethal damage with a well-defined line of play - that's the epitome of advancing the game state.

The game state that is desired to be reached is: Dread Return, Sharuum, and Blasting Station, but not Emrakul - in the graveyard. This condition is generated with Mill 1 being looped. The external factor is the ordering of the deck - something that cannot be controlled in a tournament setting. From there, a player could select N and perform the loop in order to attempt to reach that state. However, attempting to do so would amount to the following actions:

Mill 1, check for Emrakul.
If Emrakul, restart.
If DR, S, BS and not Emrakul, win.

This cannot be dealt with normal tournament shortcuts due to the indeterminate ordering of the deck. Thus, a player would just be looping through his deck without making meaningful actions to the game state. This is the very definition of Slow Play/Stalling.


This is an "ipse dixit" (because we say so) ruling.

The ruling is to insure game and matches complete in a timely manner and allow players to advance the game through normal actions. A common method to check for "slow play" - if you're watching a game and you're bored with what's going on - it's Slow Play. If you think it's Slow Play - it probably is. If no player makes an action that advances the game within 20-30 seconds, that's also Slow Play.



Yeah, that moves it from around 20 expected shuffles to combo out to around 33. Depending on how long shuffles take, that's in the realm of feasible in tourney time. I guess we can ask how many shuffles per game should be allowed.

Simply because the loop can be proven feasible mathematically using probability does not make it executable in a non-trivial amount of time. It could also be the case that 50 shuffles do not achieve the state desired.



Edit: Considering that shuffle shortcuts are allowed for Mind's Desire, it's not that hard to handle the mechanics of something like this similarly.
Here, the difference is that the deck is sufficient randomized after one shuffle. Shuffling after the first iteration does not make the deck MORE random than it was before. An accepted shortcut for this spell is to reveal the top X cards, where X is the total copies of Mind's Desire on the stack.



Edit2: How is this any worse than Solitary Confinement was as a win con?

The issue is not the win condition, but how Four Horsement deck reaches that state. It's perfectly acceptable to cast Blasting Station then continue looping to achieve 20 damage via the Narcomoeba/Emrakul reshuffle.

[Dark Ritual]

I'm surprised the guy got away with the four horseman at a legacy tournament due to the rules update with emrakul in the deck. If I were to play that deck I would practically default to the mimeoplasm + redcap + lord of extinction kill with no emrakuls maindeck as the blasting station kill is now illegal and considered slow play because trying to mill sharuum, blasting station, and dread return before hitting an emrakul can't be achieved without doing what a judge would consider slow play.

And yeah I saw the shitstorm on twitter. People went on about it for hours and hours, it only really stopped when Patrick Sullivan killed the maverick player in game 3 because he tapped his wasteland for mana.

[Finn]

Hey guys. I want to weigh in here.

In the few months I was playing this after we had figured out the Emrakul wincon and before the rules change that nerfed it, I was able to pull some pretty ridiculous "shortcuts". The rules change nerfs the deck not because the deck takes long to do manually (it almost never ever did, and was generally a good bit faster than Solidarity as a comparison), but because of the other evil things you could do if the shortcut "do this until x and y happen before z" is acceptable. Consider this scenario:

I have 1 Echoing Truth in the deck. I desperately need to get rid of Gaddock Teeg to avoid losing on my opponent's next combat step. I say "I cycle through indefinitely until I have only Emrakul, Ponder, and Echoing Truth in my library, then stop. I can tell you that the game did not really have a clear way to prevent this before. Once I got my opponent to agree to "x and y until z" for the regular combo, I could potentially get any combination of cards in my GY or library that I wanted and he had already agreed to the shortcut. So he was fucked if I felt like I wanted to pull shit like this.

For the record, I never did.

I totally accept that this rule needed to be created. Even while I was testing with my friends, we acknowledged that we were breaking the game, and that it was only a matter of time before wotc fixed it.

[Julian23]

Finn, even your example has a non-zero probability of not happening after the number of iterations you chose. Neither before nor after the IPG change would you have been able to get away with that. As you said, you never tried, but it should also never have worked.

[rufus]

It's perfectly acceptable to cast Blasting Station then continue looping to achieve 20 damage via the Narcomoeba/Emrakul reshuffle.

Since the Emrakul trigger can cancel the Narcomoeba's, and the player has to react to this random outcome, I don't see how that can be considered different from stacking for sharumon/dred return.

Now, I wonder whether short-cutting Chance Encounter + Frenetic Efreet is also not allowed. There's no conditional actions, but it's unclear how many counters will be on Chance Encounter after the coin flips so the end state is not clear.

[Koby]

Since the Emrakul trigger can cancel the Narcomoeba's, and the player has to react to this random outcome, I don't see how that can be considered different from stacking for sharumon/dred return.

Now, I wonder whether short-cutting Chance Encounter + Frenetic Efreet is also not allowed. There's no conditional actions, but it's unclear how many counters will be on Chance Encounter after the coin flips so the end state is not clear.

Each mill is a discrete event. Each Narcomoeba trigger is a discrete event. Normal resolution of a million Tap/Untap looped all at once will always result in Narcomoeba entering the battlefield.

The loop used:
Tap Basalt Monolith for mana - does not use the stack.
Untap Basalt Monolith - ability goes to the stack.
Resolve Untap, trigger Mesmeric Orb onto the stack.
Resolve Mesmeric Orb, put a card from library to graveyard.

You can select to do this loop 60 times, which will put the entire library into the graveyard.
To be clear here, once Narcomoeba or Emrakul triggers - the loop is broken. Players receive priority again here. If no further actions are taken, then either g/y trigger will resolve.

The difference between Chance Encounter + Frenetic Efreet is that you can select an arbitrarily large number resolve them to achieve a game state that is desired. The only indeterminate is the outcome of a coin-flip (50% odds) rather than the position of a card in a deck (<5% odds) or the position in relation to 3 other cards (<0.1%). Selecting 100 coin flips to win 10 ought to be enough. If it doesn't, the loop was attempted and the outcome failed, but now Frenetic Efreet is also dead. This advances the game state.

Looping through Four Horsemen will always lead to a fresh library and no graveyard, and a very very very small chance of the desired condition occuring.

Shortcuts are simply that, ways to speed up repetitive game functions - like double fetching or declaring blocks out of order.
Loops are a series of actions that have consistent inputs and results. These can be performed ad infinitum and therefore require to select a number of iterations. They can have exit conditions to stop suddenly based on a describable outcome. If any triggers occur during a loop and is not part of the loop, the loop is broken and players receive priority as normal.

Describing the outcome of an ordering of random cards is not allowed within the scope of this tournament rule. It is not a consistent or repeatable outcome.

[rufus]

Each mill is a discrete event. Each Narcomoeba trigger is a discrete event. Normal resolution of a million Tap/Untap looped all at once will always result in Narcomoeba entering the battlefield.

If you tap/untap and let things resolve, you might always hit Emrakul before you hit the Narcomoeba.
If, instead, you stack up a bunch of tap/untaps, then you might always hit Narcomoeba before Emrakul, and the Narcomoeba would get shuffled under.

Hence, unless you're allowed to react to triggers, running a million mills will only get you a Narcomoeba *almost* all of the time. Moreover, you can't guarantee what cards will be in the graveyard when the trigger goes off so you can't really shortcut to it.

You can argue that playing through the library once will guarantee a narco with conditional play, and that that should be legal since it 'advances the game state'...

P.S. I was stupid with my lines of play above. the finish is way faster than I thought.

[Lord Seth]

You're allowed ~30 seconds per turn, and you're not allowed to attempt to advance an invalid "loop".I'm a little confused, what does this mean? The question was about the number of times you should shuffle, so are you saying that each shuffle during a turn should take no more than 30 seconds? Or are you saying that a turn, barring complications, should be no more than 30 seconds?

[Koby]

If you tap/untap and let things resolve, you might always hit Emrakul before you hit the Narcomoeba.
If, instead, you stack up a bunch of tap/untaps, then you might always hit Narcomoeba before Emrakul, and the Narcomoeba would get shuffled under.

Hence, unless you're allowed to react to triggers, running a million mills will only get you a Narcomoeba *almost* all of the time. Moreover, you can't guarantee what cards will be in the graveyard when the trigger goes off so you can't really shortcut to it.

You can argue that playing through the library once will guarantee a narco with conditional play, and that that should be legal since it 'advances the game state'...

P.S. I was stupid with my lines of play above. the finish is way faster than I thought.

Think it through -
1. Tap Monolith for mana.
2. Untap Monolith, triggering a mill.
3. In response, go to #1. Repeat 99 times.

100 Mill triggers on the stack. Let them each resolve individually until you flip Emrakul.

Once Emrakul trigger, continue looping Monolith to get the rest of the deck. Each Narcomoeba resolves individually, jumping onto the battlefield. Let all the remaining triggers resolve.

It only takes 1 decking loop to pop out all the Narcomoebas, and this is exactly how it's supposed to be described.

"Mill until a g/y trigger occurs. If it's Emrakul, continue milling to hit all the narco's." - acceptable loop
"Mill until X, Y, and Z, but not D hit the graveyard" - not an acceptable loop.

[cdr]

I'm a little confused, what does this mean? The question was about the number of times you should shuffle, so are you saying that each shuffle during a turn should take no more than 30 seconds? Or are you saying that a turn, barring complications, should be no more than 30 seconds?

30 seconds is a general guideline for slow play - the longest amount of time it's acceptable to do something (like sit and think, most commonly) without advancing the game state.

I wouldn't give Four Horsemen more than 30 seconds or so per turn.

[Tao]

Assuming you play a Coin Flip deck against a Life Combo deck.

If you have a way to cast an arbitrary amount of Aleatory (Isochron Scepter plus Infinite Mana + Untap for Mana effect) on an unblocked creature while your opponent is at 1 million life.

Would that mean that you cannot win this game because you can neither name a number that is high enough to ensure 1 million wins nor perform 1 million actual coinflips?

[cdr]

Would that mean that you cannot win this game because you can neither name a number that is high enough to ensure 1 million wins nor perform 1 million actual coinflips?

There is no way to shortcut coinflips, no. The game would either be a draw or you would get a game loss for slow play, I'm not even sure which is correct. I don't think you want to find out in a tournament.

[Julian23]

...or you just die on your opponent's next upkeep :wink:

[troopatroop]

haha i love when judges get all self conscious and upset at good questions. It's all perspective...

[Stoyrm]

Tedious combo deck is tedious. I'm fine with people playing it, but he has to really work quickly if i'm to let this combo deck slide. He should be putting 3 narcomoemba onto the table quickly then try to get the station, sharuum and dread return down in there quickly. If he uses to long i will call a judge. There's no problem with him trying to combo of as long as it takes less than 5 minutes. How often do you see High Tide go off and kill you in less than 5 minutes? If he does it slowly however, i will call a judge due to the inherent slowness of the combo.

[cdr]

haha i love when judges get all self conscious and upset at good questions. It's all perspective...

Yeah, judges love it when you try to bring decks to tournaments that you've been told don't work under the rules. It's all perspective...

[Kanti]

If the time it takes to win with the deck is why it got dismantled by Wizards, shoudn't High Tide and more importantly Second Sunrise combo decks also be neutered?

I sling Chromatic Star all day and kept help but feeling bad for an opponent as I rifle through 5+ Sunrise chains for a win.

[GoblinSettler]

If the time it takes to win with the deck is why it got dismantled by Wizards, shoudn't High Tide and more importantly Second Sunrise combo decks also be neutered?

I'm pretty sure it is not the time to go off. Rather that going off doesn't involve putting a giant creature into play.

Golgari Grave-Troll is the only thing keeping the dredge mechanic legal.

:cool:

(Edit 1: High Tide is okay because it has Awesome.)

(Edit 2: Sharuum isn't big enough for Wizards.)

[Malchar]

Was the original question in this thread ever answered? How did he end up in 17th place? Did the opponents not know that they could call a judge, or is there some way to win without using the illegal loop?

I understand that he lost during the feature match explained in the second post, but he obviously did quite a lot of winning as well.

[xfxf]

If the time it takes to win with the deck is why it got dismantled by Wizards, shoudn't High Tide and more importantly Second Sunrise combo decks also be neutered?

No because High Tide dismantles its opponents much faster than decks like CounterTop, Stax and Lands. Also High Tide games end much quicker than most of the grindy Maverick vs BUG Control, Stoneblade vs Miracles, RUG vs RUG mirror matches etc.

[JDK]

You are mixing up two completely different things. "Infinite"-mechanics where you cannot name a specific number of iterations with a more or less specific board state are forbidden by the rules, whereas things like High Tide just involve casting lots of spells, where you take different choices and don't shortcut ("I cast Time Spiral, use my cantrips and tutors to storm to 17 and cast Brain Freeze" doesn't work, unless your opponent is either an idiot or really really impatient - in which case MTG is the wrong game anyway).

As for the tournament, I guess most people weren't even aware of the rule. I just don't understand, why no judge was monitoring his games after the first judge call.

[Darkenslight]

Was the original question in this thread ever answered? How did he end up in 17th place? Did the opponents not know that they could call a judge, or is there some way to win without using the illegal loop?

I understand that he lost during the feature match explained in the second post, but he obviously did quite a lot of winning as well.

IT's not, per se, illegal. It is, however, in the dictionary under "Slow". :p

It's the mechanism by which it wins: it's not Tide decks, which generally have a kajillion decisions to make, or Easter Eggs with it's infinite loops of DOOM! It's a probability-based deck (well, even more so than other combo decks) with four conditions that need to be met - Dread Return AND Sharuum AND Station NAND Emrakul.

And seeing as the last one needs to be done mechanically, as opposed to "Point Nomads en-Kor at Daru Spiritualist a Googol times, sac to Worthy Cause, gain agoogol and two life." The mechanics of the combo are the issue.

[rufus]

There is no way to shortcut coinflips, no. The game would either be a draw or you would get a game loss for slow play, I'm not even sure which is correct. I don't think you want to find out in a tournament.

So, let's say I have Chance Encounter + Frenetic Efreet in play. Is there a maximum number of coin flips I'm allowed to put in the stack before I get called for slow play? (With this rules regime, it seems like the efreet should be banned.)



IT's not, per se, illegal. It is, however, in the dictionary under "Slow". :p

Assuming one Emrakul, and three narcomoebas it takes, on average:
It takes 1 run through the deck to get the Narcomoebas out. 1
another 2.5 runs through the deck to get Sharuum and Dred Return
another 1 run through the deck to get Blasting Station
another 6 runs through to the deck to get 21 damage.

An average of 10.5 shuffles. It's really not that bad.

[Koby]

So, let's say I have Chance Encounter + Frenetic Efreet in play. Is there a maximum number of coin flips I'm allowed to put in the stack before I get called for slow play? (With this rules regime, it seems like the efreet should be banned.)

You would automatically terminate the loop and win the game after 10 successful flips. Picking a large enough number to win 10 flips will be fine. This interaction is at least obvious enough to see what you're trying to do and how to achieve it. De facto it's an implied win, so long as you pick a large enough N prior to resolving a coin flip.



Assuming one Emrakul, and three narcomoebas it takes, on average:
It takes 1 run through the deck to get the Narcomoebas out. 1
another 2.5 runs through the deck to get Sharuum and Dred Return
another 1 run through the deck to get Blasting Station
another 6 runs through to the deck to get 21 damage.

An average of 10.5 shuffles. It's really not that bad.

Your understanding of the Four Horsemen deck is flawed. There is only one opportunity to Sharuum + Dread Return + Blasting Station out, and that's when all three are in the g/y before Emrakul is milled. This condition can only be performed mechanically. There is no average number of shuffles that will be accepted by a judge and smart players to demonstrate that it will occur. It either occurs or it doesn't. In an ideal world, you would have all the time to reach that condition. In a tournament setting, you will be warned with Slow Play after a relatively short time of "durdling".

[rufus]

Your understanding of the Four Horsemen deck is flawed. There is only one opportunity to Sharuum + Dread Return + Blasting Station out, and that's when all three are in the g/y before Emrakul is milled.
Yeah, I forgot that Sharuum targets. It's still about 10.5 trips on average through the deck to do lethal damage.


You would automatically terminate the loop and win the game after 10 successful flips. Picking a large enough number to win 10 flips will be fine. This interaction is at least obvious enough to see what you're trying to do and how to achieve it. De facto it's an implied win, so long as you pick a large enough N prior to resolving a coin flip.

It's not that simple:
Chance encounter doesn't give an immediate win - you have to wait until your next upkeep for the game win trigger.
The djinn leaves play on the first flip, so you have to choose some fixed number of flips when you start flipping coins.
There's no number of coin flips that will actually guarantee at least 10 wins. Moreover the number of counters that are on Chance Encounter after all the flips have been resolved is not deterministic, so formally, I don't think the 'out of order play' shortcut can be used.
Finally, as cdr has pointed out, there is no way to shortcut coin flips.

In other words, let's say that I have Chance Encounter and Frenetic Efreet in play, and 'go off' on your end phase by putting say 1,000 activations of the efreet on the stack. If I don't actually flip a coin 1000 times, how do I know how many luck counters are on Chance Encounter when my upkeep starts?


This condition can only be performed mechanically. There is no average number of shuffles that will be accepted by a judge and smart players to demonstrate that it will occur. It either occurs or it doesn't. In an ideal world, you would have all the time to reach that condition.

Here's a more contrived scenario that illustrates my concern with 'advancing the game state':

Player 1's untap step and he has these cards in play:
Panoptic Mirror with Savor the Moment imprinted on it.
Goblin Bomb (no fuse counters)
Obstinate Familiar tapped with Paralyze on it.
With no other cards in his library, hand, or graveyard, and is at 1 life.
And player has 20 life, Rift Bolt suspended, with 1 time counter on it, and all his other cards exiled.

Player 1 clearly wants to win the game by taking turns until the Goblin Bomb can go off. Since he can't shortcut through coin flips, he starts going through his turns winning some of the coin flips, so, each turn Player 1 plays Savor the Moment, and activates the Goblin Bomb trigger.

After the first time that player 1 loses the coin flip, player 2 says he has to take a different line of action because it's a repeated game state. Moreover, he requests that player 1 be warned for slow play since he failed to advance the game state.

The first seems unfortunate, but possibly necessary. The second seems absurd.

[cdr]

So, let's say I have Chance Encounter + Frenetic Efreet in play. Is there a maximum number of coin flips I'm allowed to put in the stack before I get called for slow play? (With this rules regime, it seems like the efreet should be banned.)

The maximum that can be resolved in ~30 seconds. Activating it more than can be resolved in a reasonable amount of time would be Slow Play.

[Tammit67]

The maximum that can be resolved in ~30 seconds. Activating it more than can be resolved in a reasonable amount of time would be Slow Play.

Can you shortcut it by throwing a sock full of coins against the wall?

Inquiring minds etc

[cdr]

Can you shortcut it by throwing a sock full of coins against the wall?

Inquiring minds etc

If you could assure they were as random as tossing a coin and your opponent agreed (and not disruptive to the tournament, etc), sure. You could also roll a bunch of dice as long as they were rolled properly.

Somehow doubt a sock is going to allow the coins to spin enough etc, though.

[Tao]

If you could assure they were as random as tossing a coin and your opponent agreed (and not disruptive to the tournament, etc), sure. You could also roll a bunch of dice as long as they were rolled properly.

Somehow doubt a sock is going to allow the coins to spin enough etc, though.

Could you use a mobile phone program with a random generator?

[HammerAndSickled]

To be fair, I have never heard any respectable judge tell me "thirty seconds" was the magic number for slow play. Every single person I've talked to has said that it is context-dependent and relies entirely on the game state.

[kaiserruhsam]

Could you use a mobile phone program with a random generator?

ramdom.org (http://www.random.org/coins/) lets you flip 200 coins at a time, and it's borderline unsportsmanlike to not accept atmospheric noise seeded numbers as random. It's certainly more random than a physical coin.

[cdr]

Could you use a mobile phone program with a random generator?

705.3. ... Other methods of randomization may be substituted for flipping a coin as long as there are two possible outcomes of equal likelihood and all players agree to the substitution. For example, the player may roll an even-sided die and call "odds" or "evens," or roll an even-sided die and designate that "odds" means "heads" and "evens" means "tails."

There may be some hesitance to allow a RNG on a phone as it may be able to be influenced by the player using it; however I don't see a problem in general, especially if it's something well known/respected such as an official app or random.org. I would get the HJ's permission ahead of time.

[HAVE HEART]

Hopefully some of the information I present shows perspective.

Jeff works at Gary Games (with Justin Gary, Brian Kibler, John Fiorillo, etc.), and his roommate since I have known him has either been Ben Seck (until he moved to the Bay Area) or Brian Kibler. I think it is safe to say he knows how to play Magic pretty well.

When I heard of this deck being played, I asked Jared Silva pretty much how this deck is legal. He stated that attempting the combo once after every "meaningful action" is okay. This is where the grey came into the situation. Some judges feel passing priority is a "meaningful action." Some judges believe that a turn has to pass, if nothing has been played, for "meaningful action" to have taken place.

When I talked to Jeff about it at the tournament, it sounded like he was able to stack the Narcomoeba and Emrakul triggers in a different order, so that he was not attempting the same action over and over. I did not quite catch the entire reasoning as to why it was not slow play because the round went up while we were talking, but he sounded pretty confident in his reasoning.

[JDK]

I did not quite catch the entire reasoning as to why it was not slow play because the round went up while we were talking, but he sounded pretty confident in his reasoning.

Aside from this missing information being crucial in understanding the situation: If he doesn't sound confident in his reasoning he wouldn't bring the deck to the tournament and he would definitely face more judge calls.

[Anusien]

Hopefully some of the information I present shows perspective.

Jeff works at Gary Games (with Justin Gary, Brian Kibler, John Fiorillo, etc.), and his roommate since I have known him has either been Ben Seck (until he moved to the Bay Area) or Brian Kibler. I think it is safe to say he knows how to play Magic pretty well.

When I heard of this deck being played, I asked Jared Silva pretty much how this deck is legal. He stated that attempting the combo once after every "meaningful action" is okay. This is where the grey came into the situation. Some judges feel passing priority is a "meaningful action." Some judges believe that a turn has to pass, if nothing has been played, for "meaningful action" to have taken place.

When I talked to Jeff about it at the tournament, it sounded like he was able to stack the Narcomoeba and Emrakul triggers in a different order, so that he was not attempting the same action over and over. I did not quite catch the entire reasoning as to why it was not slow play because the round went up while we were talking, but he sounded pretty confident in his reasoning.
I would not be convinced by the stacking description you give. I would strongly advise not trying this, Jeff's confidence or no.

[rufus]

....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?

I'm curious, do you recall where and when this clarification was issued, or what the text change is?

[cdr]

I'm curious, do you recall where and when this clarification was issued, or what the text change is?

"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."

That was the text added. It was added at the end of last year along with the original version of the trigger changes (which got pulled).

Four Horseman was given as a the type of "loop" the Slow Play addition was targeted at.

[Sims]

I think someone on the first page mentioned this but I'm really confused as to why someone would play something like this with the Sharuum/Station win instead of just cutting the package down and running Mimeo/Redcap/Lord of Extinction?

More compact and you aren't violating slow play rules.

[(nameless one)]

I think someone on the first page mentioned this but I'm really confused as to why someone would play something like this with the Sharuum/Station win instead of just cutting the package down and running Mimeo/Redcap/Lord of Extinction?

More compact and you aren't violating slow play rules.

Isn't this the principle of Cephalid Breakfast?

[VeniVidiVici]

The Emrakul plan lets you play around certain forms of graveyard hate, either by winning through it or by allowing you to recur Narcomoebas to stall until you find an answer.

[Sims]

The Emrakul plan lets you play around certain forms of graveyard hate, either by winning through it or by allowing you to recur Narcomoebas to stall until you find an answer.

In game 1 that Graveyard hate is less likely to be present outside of a GSZ'd Ooze. Even in that situation, you have possible counter back up or just speed them out. Game 2 you're likely not staying on the Breakfast/Horseman mill plan and bringing in either SnT's and threats or Painters and Stones.

And as far as playing Mesmeric/Monolith over the Breakfast creatures... Artifacts are harder to interact/disrupt in game 1 than Creatures. It seems like the natural evolution of both decks would be entwined.

[(nameless one)]

Also, if you can catch your opponent while his guard is down, you can always go for Mesmeric Orb + Wake Thrasher

[Goin Aggro]

Just to dredge this one back up. (No pun intended)

Here's his side of the story.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/25043-Indefinite-Infinite-Loops-At-SCG-Legacy-Open-LA.html

[RaNDoMxGeSTuReS]

The article is a load of horse shit. No pun intended.

[Jenni]

Just to dredge this one back up. (No pun intended)

Here's his side of the story.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/25043-Indefinite-Infinite-Loops-At-SCG-Legacy-Open-LA.html

Honestly, this just seemed very whiny, the rule does serve a purpose, agree or disagree with it.
Not only that, but magic has no "infinite" - in any infinite combo, you have to be able to assign a number of repetitions and state 100% what the game state will be after that eg. repeat 100 times, end up with 99 tapped squirrel tokens and one untapped with the earthcraft squirrel combo.
Even with a more similar deck (say, the same list, minus the grave shuffling option) you could say "Repeat until my entire library is in the graveyard" which basically means "Repeat X times, where X is the number of cards currently in my library".

With this, though, saying "repeat until I have 3 narcomebas in play, a dread return and it's target in the graveyard, and emrakul still in my deck" means "Repeat X times, where X is unknown".
the only way this could be allowable is if it's "Repeat X times, or until I hit emrakul, then stop. Where X is some number less than the number of cards in my library." in that case, you can't repeat over and over each emrakul hit, though, because you're not advancing the game state at a reasonable pace by repeatedly shuffling your grave back into your library until you hit your lucky streak.

[Lemnear]

What is this article? Complaining about being bullied by judges combined with a lack of math.



1. The Combo of his deck requires 3 specific One-off's Out of his 60 in the yard without hitting any of his multiple emrakul's sans his cards in hand. While it's no Problem shortcutting his Combo into the grave, it's impossible to predict the order and/or other cards flipped which is the Point the loop becomes unhandleable for tournament rules.

2. Hypothetical #1 only requires 7 random cards without hitting Emrakul

3. Hypothetical #2 is a 50% Chance of flipping the coin in favour with a infinite repeat possibility (no downside in loosing the flip in this scenario) he described so the possibility for it to Deal damage tends to 1 (100%) so he can shortcut killing the creatures. Even a 0,01% possibility would do however. The Point is he can shortcut to "flip in favour".

If you can't differ or calculate possibilities of this 3 easy examples you shouldn't write an article about exactly that, sorry. I have not made up my mind about the Story, that he claims not to know about stalling, Slow Play or the functionality of this Decks in tournaments. If I google for threads/decklists for this Deck I have trouble to Dodge the discussions about the questioned rules change affecting the Deck.

[Koby]

Based on his autobio in the article and a quick google aearch showing he played at a Pro Tour leads me to one conclusion about the article and its author.

Certified trolling.

[JDK]

So after talking to several judges he is still not able to understand the mathematic and reasoning behind it? The article is a huge waste of time and his example with Nimble Mongoose even contradicts the "ten times" limit the judge gave him.

[menace13]

Is the ten times limit universal or something that the judge(s) decided was enough.

[Lemnear]

Is the ten times limit universal or something that the judge(s) decided was enough.

Just the prove the judge was very kind; he could have called a gameloss instead, which would have been accurate. The Point is that they let him continue the whole stalling the next rounds unmolested as it seems which is a joke

[menace13]

Just the prove the judge was very kind; he could have called a gameloss instead, which would have been accurate. The Point is that they let him continue the whole stalling the next rounds unmolested as it seems which is a joke
How is it stalling, Didn't he win within time constraints though?

[Viridia]

Because he isn't allowed to shortcut it, he has to do all the milling and shuffling manually, which, unless he hits it within the first few mills, is considered slow play/stalling.

[Lemnear]

How is it stalling, Didn't he win within time constraints though?

The easiest answer is to read the 4 pages this threads has. All is answered here.

[rufus]

The easiest answer is to read the 4 pages this threads has. All is answered here.
...
Not really. Fundamental questions such as "what does, and doesn't advance the game state" or "what is a meaningful action" aren't clearly answered:

... Exact game states don't matter, it's whether the game is being meaningfully advanced. It's not something you can exactly define, it's a "I know it when I see it" sort of thing. ...
Moreover, as long as it's a 'judgement call' thing, that question will not have a clear answer.

The article does mention this too:


...He said that I have to advance the game state. I responded that I was doing so and that I was filling up my graveyard and changing the order of my library. He said that's not enough, and I could hear the snickers of the crowd around us....




2. Hypothetical #1 only requires 7 random cards without hitting Emrakul
I think that's exactly the point he's trying to make: it seems absurd that, based on these rulings, milling into the graveyard if you've hit Emrakul is 'slow play'. (Since 'advancing the game state' is not a well-defined notion, one could argue about when the slow play rule comes into play here, or if you hit Emrakul a second time.)


3. Hypothetical #2 is a 50% Chance of flipping the coin in favour with a infinite repeat possibility .... The Point is he can shortcut to "flip in favour".
Coin flips cannot be short cut. Notably, If, instead of 4 damage, the player is looking for lethal damage from the bangchuckers against life.dec, as in Tao's similar hypothetical, then CDR doesn't have a clear answer either:

(http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24651-SCG-LA-Four-Horseman-in-17th-How&p=674443&viewfull=1#post674443)

There is no way to shortcut coinflips, no. The game would either be a draw or you would get a game loss for slow play, *I'm not even sure which is correct*. I don't think you want to find out in a tournament.

[sdematt]

Essentially, you could play the deck in a tournament. However, you'd need to get lucky and actually have the combo happen in the first, what, couple of tries? I guess it could happen and you could win, but every time this doesn't happen, you're getting a game loss for slow play.

-Matt

[Aggro_zombies]

...
Not really. Fundamental questions such as "what does, and doesn't advance the game state" or "what is a meaningful action" aren't clearly answered:

Moreover, as long as it's a 'judgement call' thing, that question will not have a clear answer.

The article does mention this too:




I think that's exactly the point he's trying to make: it seems absurd that, based on these rulings, milling into the graveyard if you've hit Emrakul is 'slow play'. (Since 'advancing the game state' is not a well-defined notion, one could argue about when the slow play rule comes into play here, or if you hit Emrakul a second time.)


Coin flips cannot be short cut. Notably, If, instead of 4 damage, the player is looking for lethal damage from the bangchuckers against life.dec, as in Tao's similar hypothetical, then CDR doesn't have a clear answer either:

(http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24651-SCG-LA-Four-Horseman-in-17th-How&p=674443&viewfull=1#post674443)
A lot of these objections are semantics.

Changing the order of his library and filling up his graveyard does not advance the game state. At the end of an unsuccessful loop, he is no closer to winning the game than when he started, and he still can't say precisely how many further iterations of the loop it will require to end the game. He has, however, eaten up time on the clock, no matter how briskly he plays. The tournament rules require - for good reason - that you be able to say exactly how many times you will need to execute a loop and what the game state will be along the way in order to shortcut it; if you can't, you're still allowed to try, but continuing to plug away at your loop in the hopes that you eventually combo off is disrespectful to other players and creates time issues for the tournament.

It's also worth remembering that probabilities are distributed. There may be an average number of iterations you need to go through to successfully go off, but it's not guaranteed that you will do so within the time limit.

I agree with Koby here: this guy is pretty clearly trolling. Four Horseman never struck me as being particularly competitive, so my suspicion is that this guy brought the deck to the tournament to see if he could get away with it (spoiler warning: he essentially did) and is now put out, or feigning being put out, that someone objected to it.

[Julian23]

What it comes down to and why a lot of people feel cheated when people try to "shortcut" the combo:


After n iterations of milling, you end up with a 9x,xx% chance of having assembled the right combination of cards in graveyard and library. Not 100%. More importantly, no matter how big n gets, it's always below 100%. By "shortcutting" into a win, people are expecting to be given that last %s for absolutely free.

[menace13]

Slow play. Did any of his games go to time?

Yeah, I know, he COULD HAVE. COULD HAVE

[cdr]

Oh yay, this again.

I read the article, and the guy does come off as a troll, intentional or not.

I do agree with him that the judge staff at the tournament - especially the HJ and the SCG staff - really punted and should've been giving him game losses for slow play.

The people setting rules policy have decided 'indefinite infinite loops' (as Liu puts it) are undesirable at tournaments and have effectively banned them. Trying to get around this by trying to 'technically' do other things while still attempting to perform that sort of loop is not acceptable.

As far as his main argument, there is never going to be a defined number of times you can do something that's not a loop. We have Slow Play to cover that sort of situation - you get the same reasonable amount of time as for anything else and after that it's Slow Play.

[Lemnear]

...
Not really. Fundamental questions such as "what does, and doesn't advance the game state" or "what is a meaningful action" aren't clearly answered:

Moreover, as long as it's a 'judgement call' thing, that question will not have a clear answer.

The article does mention this too:




I think that's exactly the point he's trying to make: it seems absurd that, based on these rulings, milling into the graveyard if you've hit Emrakul is 'slow play'. (Since 'advancing the game state' is not a well-defined notion, one could argue about when the slow play rule comes into play here, or if you hit Emrakul a second time.)


Coin flips cannot be short cut. Notably, If, instead of 4 damage, the player is looking for lethal damage from the bangchuckers against life.dec, as in Tao's similar hypothetical, then CDR doesn't have a clear answer either:

(http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24651-SCG-LA-Four-Horseman-in-17th-How&p=674443&viewfull=1#post674443)

It was said that these loops (no defined outcome nor set number of iterstions) are illegal quoting the rules, which was mentioned. Picking words isn't needed imo

The mongoose topic: milling Emrakul to reshuffle the Deck is fine and changing the gamestate. Endlessly repeating the process however is not. There is a huge gap between his loop and the mongoose mill he wants the readers to ignore.

About coin-flips: Why wouldn't they be able to shortcut if i have endless repeats without Penalty and a Set gamestate,which is possible to achieve with limitless iterations?

[Finn]

The deck I decided upon was one some ignoramuses named "Four Horsemen."That sumbitch!


Four Horseman never struck me as being particularly competitiveYeah, it actually was not. It had "hard to disrupt" going for it, but by the time the ruling came around I had stopped taking it to tournaments.

I thought I read somebody say that in a description of the rules change at the time, wotc actually referenced this very interaction in this deck as illegal. This does not look like trolling to me. But if he is rooming with Brian Kibler he had to be aware of all the attention he was getting. I don't blame the guy for wanting to give his side, though I don't know that he did himself any favors with this particular article.

But I completely agree with wotc for making these rules for reasons I have already explained in this thread somewhere. Just because he was not actively exploiting the type of truly sleazy manipulation that deck is capable of, does not mean that it was not available to him under previous rules.

[Julian23]

About coin-flips: Why wouldn't they be able to shortcut if i have endless repeats without Penalty and a Set gamestate,which is possible to achieve with limitless iterations?

Because there is no infinity in Magic.

[rufus]

...
About coin-flips: Why wouldn't they be able to shortcut if i have endless repeats without Penalty and a Set gamestate,which is possible to achieve with limitless iterations?

The interesting repeatable coin flips don't have a certain outcome or repeat without penalities: Let's say I'm looking to burn out an opponent who's at 2 life with some kind of repeatable Goblin Bangchunker combination. I need to win at least one flip for the Bangchucker to pay off, so putting N flips gives me a 1/(2^N) chance to win. There's no way to put enough activations on the stack that I can be certain to deal 2 damage.

FWIW a 'repeat without penalities' will run askew of the 'repeated game state' rules. For example the second scenario in my post here:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24651-SCG-LA-Four-Horseman-in-17th-How&p=674639&viewfull=1#post674639

The rules handling this sort of stuff are pretty dopey, so Words of War loses to a Solitary Confinement lock, but Obstinate Familiar draws instead.

[kaiserruhsam]

Well... words would need a target. One of the other words would be a better example.

[RyanRomanik]

What if Magic tournaments implemented something similar to chess clocks i.e. instead of 50 min, each player gets 25 min, and you can pass priority by hitting the button, etc.

Of course you would run into problems with the Top Eight no time limit rounds, but you could amend those to be generously timed giving each player 60 min or something.

Has this ever been proposed or discussed?

[Jenni]

What if Magic tournaments implemented something similar to chess clocks i.e. instead of 50 min, each player gets 25 min, and you can pass priority by hitting the button, etc.

Of course you would run into problems with the Top Eight no time limit rounds, but you could amend those to be generously timed giving each player 60 min or something.

Has this ever been proposed or discussed?

Isn't that how the MTGO clocks work?
Anyway, I like the concept but one thing that happens a lot is players sit there thinking for a long time, which eats into the clock quite a bit when it happens a few times in a game, so I'm not sure how fair it is to players who take longer to analyze the game state.

[menace13]

Isn't that how the MTGO clocks work?
Anyway, I like the concept but one thing that happens a lot is players sit there thinking for a long time, which eats into the clock quite a bit when it happens a few times in a game, so I'm not sure how fair it is to players who take longer to analyze the game state.

Offline it is not feasible since hitting your clock 12 times in a single turn every turn is going to eat more time than it saves.

[Finn]

Also, if the game ever turned into that you would lose all the scrubs who turn up to events thinking that they have a chance. The sheep arrive with the intention of playing a game, don't ya know...

[Jenni]

Offline it is not feasible since hitting your clock 12 times in a single turn every turn is going to eat more time than it saves.

Yeah, for that to work you'd need to hit the clock every time you pass priority, which would get pretty messy...

[Julian23]

Chess clocks had been discussed quite a bit around 2008. From what I remember, WotC/DCI people said that it would require too much organization by either the TO or players individually.

[cdr]

There have been trials of chess clocks by Wizards and others. They are completely infeasible for (physical) competitive Magic play. No one who has actually played with them wants to see them.