Can you provide details? The combo I found online that claimed to produce uncountably many tokens didn’t actually do so (it produced countably infinite numbers of tokens from countably infinite numbers of Doubling Season, but that’s still a countably infinite collection).
(To be a bit more serious, don’t the rules of Magic forbid infinite loops explicitly? IIRC, the rules say you can pick any number of times to iterate the loop, but it must end after a finite number of stages.)
No, they explicitly allow unstoppable infinite loops.
Right – if a loop is truly infinite, the game is a draw, because it can never move to a new phase. But if the controlling player has a choice on whether to continue iterating the combo, he can just say “I do it eleventy billion times” – it’s functionally the same as infinite, even though it’s a finite number.
–Cliffy
First, you cast mox lotus (from unhinged), transcendence and platinum angel. Then tap the mox lotus for infinity, then disenchant it, then mana burn for infinity, which (due to transcendence) makes your life total infinity.
Then cast serra avatar, which is infinity/infinity. Then cast carrion, saccing the serra avatar and getting infinity 0/1s. Then give them all to your opponent by casting reins of power.
Now get yourself two nacatl war prides and an animated doubling season. Attack with both of them. In response to the first one triggering, cytoshape it into a doubling season. When its ability resolves, you will get infinity doubling seasons. When the second one resolves, you will get infinity war prides, doubled an infinite number of times.
So is that uncountably infinite?
Well, let’s start with a group of two objects, we’ll call them 0 and 1. Now let’s double the size of our group. So for each object in it, we get two new objects. So for 0, we get 00 and 01, and for 1 we get 10 and 11. Let’s double it again, giving us 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, and 111. Etc. So basically, doubling it n times gives us the set of binary strings of length n. So let’s double it infinity times, and that gives us binary strings of length infinity. But binary strings of length infinity represent the real numbers between 0 and 1, and are uncountable rather than countable.
What is this “mana burn” you speak of?
Clever and amusing combo. I’m impressed.
Yeah, it’s sad that it doesn’t work anymore. I thought I could get around with Omnath, Sleight of Mind and Celestial Dawn, but it doesn’t quite work.
May I make a suggestion for an alternate game?
Dominion is a card-driven deck-building game that, to my mind, satisfies the same kind of itch as magic, but it’s a self-contained game. You buy the box and you have everything you need to play (there are expansions, but they aren’t necessary). It’s one of my favorite games in my collection and has a ton of replayability because you only use a small portion of the total cards each time.
Blurb: “In Dominion, each player starts with an identical, very small deck of cards. In the center of the table is a selection of other cards the players can “buy” as they can afford them. Through their selection of cards to buy, and how they play their hands as they draw them, the players construct their deck on the fly, striving for the most efficient path to the precious victory points by game end.”
Even without mana burn, couldn’t you just throw the infinite mana through a fireball aimed at yourself to trigger the combo?
I second this. Dominion is a great game, and far far cheaper in the long run than MTG. I’ve actually left the Magic community and sold my cards. Dominion has more than filled the void. I like the symmetry inherent in Dominion, in that all players start with the same card pool. I always wanted to see a MTG event where players were all given the exact same deck and told to go for it.
Dominion is great, and indeed seems to work like a Magic without the open-endedness.
I have lots of friends that play Magic, but honestly I could just never get over the collectible aspect of it. It seemed to just be designed around a kind of rent-seeking behavior on the part of WotC. I don’t have a problem with a game company making money; only with games seemingly designed to extract a tax on the players.
But it’s one specific aspect that really rubbed me the wrong way. It’s one thing for WotC to release new updates all the time, and for players to spend money keeping up to date. What I really don’t like is this weird attitude that cards have some inherent value to them, and that only “genuine” cards are valid. The idea that conterfeit is even a valid concept when referring to a game is utterly foreign to me.
In chess, if you lose a pawn, then you substitute a penny or something, and everyone is happy. If you lose a playing card, then you scribble on one of the jokers with a Sharpie. Even in a card game like Munchkin, blank cards are *included *in the game in case you need to replace a card, or heck, write out an entire new one.
But try that in Magic and you’re in deep trouble, as best I can tell. Based on my observations of my friends, that’s even true of casual games. If I’m building a deck and I need a rare but totally legal card, why can’t I just make my own? It just doesn’t seem to be done.
To me, that aspect makes it barely a game at all. My opinion is my own of course, but I wonder how others defend the game.
In my somewhat limited experience, the more avid players are fine playing casual games with proxies. I’ve seen a situation in casual where a deck consisted of 60 lands, each with a different card name written on it with a Sharpie. It was difficult to play against unless you knew the cards, since only the name was given. I watched a game that took much longer to finish than it should have because his opponent had to ask what each card did, and what the mana costs were.
It’s definitely possible to put more info on, and I’ve played games with some proxies in those situations, but only where mutual agreement was reached before that play session.
Okay, that’s good to know. That fact that “proxies” are a valid thing at least with some groups is encouraging, even if it’s not universal. And the play difficulty aspect is totally understandable; having a deck like you described is a bit rude unless the player was simply so poor that he couldn’t afford a real deck at all.
When I played M:tG, it was primarily online with Apprentice. The collectible aspect was entirely removed as every card is at your disposal in it.
Unfortunately, Apprentice is no longer supported by its developers and broke completely when a recent set (Scars of Mirrodin, maybe?) cracked the hard-coded size limit for the card database.
Some people use Cockatrice, but I find OCTGN to be the best replacement. (though I do miss Apprentice sometimes, despite OCTGN’s impressive bells and whistles.)
I love Dominion more than most things in life, but it doesn’t scratch the Magic itch for me at all. It’s inspired by the same sorts of concepts, but plays very differently, IMHO.
In my experience, proxies are fine with most players in casual settings as long as the “what’s that do?” issue doesn’t detract much from the play speed. Many people will proxy-up a new deck idea to try it out before seeking out the cards for it, if it turns out well. The only place proxies aren’t welcome are at official tournaments, and some “vintage” format tournaments (where almost all the cards in Magic history are allowed, including the most rare, old, and expensive ones) allow a certain number of proxies per deck. (usually 5 or 10).
No, because when you cast fireball, you have to choose an amount. The rules of magic do not allow you to choose “infinity” as it’s not a finite number. However, if you do have infinite mana in your mana pool, and there is mana burn, then you have no choice but to burn for infinity.
There’s absolutely no way to actually get to infinity anything without mox lotus to start you off, I’m pretty sure.
Sorry Max, but your combo (fun as it looks) never worked, even before mana burn was removed.
The nontechnical summary: Transcendence tries to make you lose, and Platinum Angel stops you losing. So Transcendence tries again.
Repeat ad nauseam.
The technicalities.[spoiler]Transscendences second ability is not a normal trigger - it is a State Trigger. State Triggered Abilities fire whenever the gamestate matches the trigger condition. To make them work at all there’s a special rule that says the STA does’t fire again so long as there is an instance of the ability on the stack.
The ability resolves, and tries to make you lose. You don’t because of the Angel.
Then, because your life is still 20 or more, Transcendence fires again.
Consequently you had a loop of mandatory actions, and the game is a draw.[/spoiler]A pity, because the rest of it is clever.
That’s just stupid (on Wizard’s part, not MHaye’s). Their own rules say it should work, even if it is a state-based action. Losing when you have 0 or less life is also a state-based action, and Platinum Angel lets you keep playing.