@DukeZhou FYI I sent you an email; just wanted to make sure you got it

@Rainbolt haha, same!

@Rainbolt your edit to the title of boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/39962/… makes the body awkward

yeah the double negative was deliberate because it was there to represent the "wait, what? why? aren't they out of rotation?" in the body.

they're not asking if they're still standard legal, they're assuming they are not and asking us what's with this situation

They came at the question from the wrong way, assuming the answer, makes it a bad question really, but still the half edit didn't really make it better.

Yep

My bad. I didn't put enough thought into that...

Hey @Rainbolt, do you have a particular set of colors you have affinity for in MTG?

@doppelgreener No. In Standard (when I played Standard) I preferred whatever deck gave me the highest chance of winning. In Draft/Sealed I play whatever color has the best cards. In Modern I play only Blue, but only because I really love Time Warp as a deck, not for the color.

Radical, okay.

When I was newer I had an affinity for Izzet, because I thought the guild was cool and card draw + burn spells seemed like a cool archetype.

@Rainbolt Spike 4 lyfe?

I mean if I were a spike I wouldn't be playing Time Warp lol

But in every other format, yes

Can I check something with you? I've got a deck I'm putting together which has a black strategy I haven't used before and I'd like to confirm viability of the general strategy with someone and see if there's pitfalls or whatnot.

haha

@doppelgreener If it's not EDH then I can probably generate a decent level of advice

It is EDH, but I figure the advice you can give me is still relevant

Hit me. I can maybe think of a card you didn't think of

The general picture is this: Reyhan, Last of the Abzan is out with Ravos, Soultender. I use cards like Yahenni, Undying Partisan or Nylea, God of the Hunt which are hard to remove, and cards like Algaea Gharial and Drana, Liberator of Malakir to generate "food" for them. I let my creatures die or sacrifice them, use cards like Ravos and Sun Titan to turn my graveyards into merely a pit stop, and cards like Dictate of Erebos to apply pressure.

Overall consolidate power onto Yahenni & co to generate a specific champion or two, and smash them into people as 20/20s.

I'm sort of tempted to move into red because Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder will create double the hurt, and cards like Fling turn into "you lose now".

This is breaking new ground for me strategy-wise and I know it's all easier said than done, so I'm interested in what your thoughts are about how this general strategy sounds.

Mindless Automaton is a good draw engine for you

Actually, half of the green or colorless cards in this deck might be good for you: tappedout.net/mtg-decks/animar-soul-of-11-counter-shenanigans

@Rainbolt nice :)

If you move into blue, you get proliferate

something like hangerback walker could generate a whole bunch of food for you

Here's a gatherer search for every single card with undying, which seems like a decent idea in a deck that wants counters and creatures to sac (you can sac them twice): gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/…

along with cards with hardened scales type effects

@Rainbolt HA! And the second time they give me an extra +1/+1 counter to move around!

Devoted Druid gives you infinite mana if you can keep enough counters on it.

@Malco For sure.

And at the very least it's a double ramp every other turn

All of the megamorph cards get a counter when they turn face up

also keep in mind that persist will allow you to sacthings over and over if you can cancel out the -1/-1

persist plus Drana, Liberator of Malakir or Bellowing Aegisaur or Fangren Firstborn or etc are pretty nice.

If you have two persist creatures with Reyhan out, you can sac infinitely right? Sac A, put counter B. Sac B, put counter on A. Repeat?

@Rainbolt Reyhan cares about +1/+1 counters exclusively, and those creatures enter with -1/-1's and no +1/+1 to move around.

the old modern combo was Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit and Kitchen finks

... though if I have a way to put counters on them I could do that

gives infinite life with a sac outlet

Oh right. Well Vizier of Remedies works, but then you're just stuffing a combo from Modern into your EDH deck.

If I move into blue I also get Master Biomancer, Vorel of the Hull Clade, and Deepglow Skate as counter doublers, and I get to optionally have Atraxa, Praetor's Voice in my 99.

Oh, Malco already got it (with Anafenza instead)

I'm cautious about moving into Blue specifically though because I want this deck to have a more Abzan-y feel and not feel like my existing Atraxa deck.

Red gives me a handful of cards like Rubblebelt Raiders

& making a nonblue four-colour deck just makes it an Aggressive Abzan sorta deck

So Abzan or Abzan+Red is currently the constraint I'm putting on myself to avoid my decks getting samey.

The Animar list is helpful. Borborygmos looks fantastic for this.

what is your focus? Big beefy +1/+1 counter creatures, or lots of little small dudes with +1/+1 to make them scary?

because if you are going white and red you could go a bit more wide

but if you are going tall you might need to focus more on protecting your big dudes

@Malco Honestly I'm trying to figure that out at the moment. I'd be open to doing a wide strategy, but was exploring how to focus on making a narrow strategy that focuses on piling +1/+1 counters onto things.

I played a hardened scales deck back in Origins Standard where I went tall with managorger Hydra

one thing you need to be careful of is getting 2 for 1'd with removal. dumping a whole bunch of cards into buffing something up just to have it be removed by one card

doubling season and annoited procession too

Right -- I can regenerate, use Asceticism or Hammer of Nazahn or otherwise make it hard to target or remove, but an "exile everything" is still going to mess me up.

hmm I think there are a couple cards that might help... one sec

The goal is ultimately to have a single card power through, evading or going over the top of their creatures with flying or trample, and to make it hard to remove that power because if that creature dies, all the power just shifts to the next creature in line.

scryfall.com/card/med/79 and scryfall.com/card/med/169 will save your dudes if you go tall

Tawnos's Coffin would do it

... those cards are outside my price range. D:

they must be popular

Thanks though. That the basic strategy can make sense and function is helpful.

Oh man. @Rainbolt actually, on that, if I move into blue and use Reyhan alongside Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker, I could make a deck focused around killing the crap outta people with Ishai & use everything to feed him.

hmm I had a thought... these cards might be able to save your dudes too with some caveats

scryfall.com/card/mir/87 is blue

scryfall.com/card/c17/8 you can only do once and leaves you defenseless until your upkeep

scryfall.com/card/vis/49 only saves artifact creatures

@doppelgreener Basically every creature with modular fulfills the "if the creature dies, the power moves to the next creature inline" criteria. gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?text=+[modular]

And most of them are colorless so you get some flexibility

Or rather, all of them are colorless

And Arcbound Ravager has the double bonus of being able to sacrifice things

Lol had to edit, because I realized half of the modular creatures are named Arcbound SomethingOrOther

@Malco not defenseless -- impenetrable.

I cannot be damaged (so no infect), nothing can hurt me, nobody can meaningfully do anything to me.

Arcbound Fiend also satisfies the evasive criteria (Fear is on par Flying or Tramble right?)

Yeah it is :)

Tramble. :D

Is the gatherer down?

Yeah it's not just you

Tramble: Soon to come to a RoboRosewater card near you!

By the time I realized why you were saying Tramble my grace period was over. I am permanently ashamed :(

haha poor Rainbolt, you just need to make it into a cool new keyword to save face

Tramble is clearly a creature with trample and last strike

it takes its time ambling over your bolckers

RE: Teferi's Protection you are basically out of the game until your next upkeep but anything that affects all players or all opponents hands can still get you. And you lose your lands so you can't pay costs.

I guess you could still force of will....

@Rainbolt <3

(not that you ever said that second one. i think.)

Awesome! Is this what spurred your earlier question about my color affinity?

no i made that just now

I love that the artist of the card is Lightning Helix

i tend to use the artist credit line on mtg.design to credit whatever card i'm stealing the art from

I like the other theory more. Kev Walker drew Lightning Helix, which then became human and drew a self-portrait as the art for my card.

Perfect

That'll do then

incidentally though

using lightning helix for your card as a spikey player its own kind of affinity :D

It's a staple for sure

it was one of the winningest cards in its standard heyday, i'm given to understand

I think I just offended a coworker. He/she was asking me what they can work on, which automatically puts me on tilt because we have a well organized list of things to work on. As we went through the task list, we basically came to the conclusion that there is nothing available to work on that doesn't require learning something new. So I said "Well, I guess you can learn something new." and they just kind of shrugged and walked off.

that could land as rude or not depending on how you said it etc

but it's also true :D

I didn't say it in a nice way

if there's nothing to do they might as well study

That's not a bad idea honestly. We're kind of ahead in our sprint. Maybe we can identify an upcoming thing-for-which-we-lack-knowledge and tackle it now.

Sounds good.

Maybe the mistake was made a long time ago. We're having to integrate with a PostgreSQL database. We're SQL Server experts. I've been working on this feature for a few days now, and they haven't, so they'd have to learn a bit about PostgreSQL to not be completely lost. But if we were really swarming (that's a scrum term for everybody works on a thing until it's done done), then we'd all be equally as lost when we started.

My fault in this case, since I'm the one that skipped ahead.

I know scrum teams are supposed to be self-organizing, but some days I wish we could get a scrum coach in here to kick us all in the behind.

Is there a card that specifically cares that an extra turn came from a specific source?

I need it to illustrate a point, but if there is no card then I have no point

Medomai cares about extra turns in general, but doesn't care how they were created

Something like "At the beginning of an extra turn created by <this object>, <effect>"

I don't think so, it normally wouldn't matter

Maybe Final Fortune

It refers to "that turn". If you take a different extra turn before that turn, then skip that turn, do you still lose?

looks like no

ruling says:

> If you end up skipping the extra turn that is gained, you do not lose the game.

also:

> If multiple “extra turn” effects resolve in the same turn, take them in the reverse of the order that the effects resolved.

weird card

There's also Savor the Moment, which also refers to its own extra turn

That'll work perfectly, thanks

So, on a somewhat different topic, I've been thinking: is it feasible to determine computationally whether a sequence of MTG game states are part of an involuntary infinite loop?

My hypothesis is that there is a small set of numbers you can track, and if none of them is moving in the "wrong" direction, then the game is a loop

@murgatroid99 There was a problem with auto-yield and involuntary loops causing a problem for Magic Online, and I think they fixed it. I can find discussion about the problem, but not where they fixed it.

Are you saying put in a bunch of abilities/effects and then the program tells you whether they will loop?

@Malco Or you have a Magic rules engine running a game, and at some point it would stop and say "you've entered an endless involuntary loop, the game is a draw"

reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/31qjed/…

Ahh I see

Apparently this is known as the Halting Problem

That applies to Turing-equivalent languages

But as far as I know, there is no known set of involuntary actions that results in an equivalent to a Turing machine

So far, all of those "Turing machine in Magic: the Gathering" things involve players making choices (usually choosing "yes" for may abilities)

You also have to choose to pass priority

If you have no other options, it's not a choice

no other meaningful options

My point was we can just pretend the player is going to choose that option every time, instead of depriving the player of every other option

huh?

If you auto yield, the game chooses for you. So if you auto yield, the player doesn't make choices. The choice is made automatically.

So you can pretend that there really isn't a choice at all, so long as the player is auto yielding

OK, that seems true. I don't know what you're getting at

Well, I'm not going to attempt to unwind this discussion because I don't think you're trying to follow.

In case it wasn't clear, I was trying to make the point that involuntary actions in MTG are not known to be Turing complete, and therefore the Halting problem is not known to apply to that specific subset of game states

And I was trying to say that it doesn't matter if the actions are voluntary or involuntary so long as the voluntary choice is always the same

It matters in that the rules for handling it are different

Maybe I created some confusion by using the wrong word. I am specifically talking about automating detection of rule 719.4: "If a loop contains only mandatory actions, the game is a draw."

Oh, I understand what you are saying now

I also missed a word in your original question (involuntary... haha)

My bad

I deleted my comment since you addressed it in an edit (Malco)

I guess another way of putting my question is: is it possible for a sequence of mandatory actions (which may involve choices) to go for an arbitrarily long time in what looks like a loop, then shift gears or otherwise stop doing that?

That might actually be a good question for the main site, if I can choose a good definition of "looks like a loop"

@Malco I thought of a second reason why it's important to be clear that the turns don't cancel out immediately. You can stack your triggers such that the "skip your next turn one" resolves with each iteration, but the "take an extra turn" triggers pile up until the end of the loop. That's one of the four possible ways that the scenario in the question could play out, so would it still be an edge case?

I don't think that sequencing makes a difference in the end result

It doesn't, but only if you explain correctly how the turns are cancelling out

Right, yes. That's your point. It doesn't make a difference because they don't cancel out immediately

Yup

I think that example is easier to understand than the Savor the Moment example I commented with (and then deleted)

I just reread Wormfang Manta and now I'm not sure that my answer or Malco's is correct. Does Wormfang Manta create a replacement effect or not?

Yes, a "skip" effect is a replacement effect

See 614.1b

> 614.1b Effects that use the word “skip” are replacement effects. These replacement effects use the word “skip” to indicate what events, steps, phases, or turns will be replaced with nothing.

Thanks!