Ok, this is a little bit of a weird one, so bear with me. Player A is executing the Worldgorger Dragon + Animate Dead loop, and has as other relevant permanents being flickered an Altar of the Brood and an Island, so they have both an arbitrary amount of mill triggers and blue mana. They also have an Ancestral Recall in hand that they plan to break the loop with targeting their opponent once their library is empty to win the game. However, unbeknownst to them, Player B has one copy of Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in their deck.
Now for the actual question. Under what circumstances can Player A win the game with the Ancestral Recall? Obviously, if Player B is getting milled out for the first time and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is in the bottom 3 cards of their library, player A can just cast Ancestral Recall targeting player B with the shuffle trigger on the stack and win the game. But, in any other library configuration, the shuffle trigger will resolve, effectively resetting the game state to the beginning of the mill loop. At what point of this loop does the game become a draw (unless someone elects to take a voluntary action, like Player A casting the Ancestral Recall on themselves to try and find another way to break the loop?
I want to tag onto this question and ask, if player A proposes a shortcut of getting to where all the cards are milled (by saying to repeat that many times), what options does player B have regarding surprising the opponent that the Emrakul exists? Player B can only dispute the loop is well-founded on the general grounds about hidden information. Does player B have to just make the milling play out?
Players could skip over the other state changes so it's not a big time loss.
Player A could argue that all they want is to look at the order of the deck after each time it shuffles, so you really are just shuffling a given number of times and then revealing the order - and if Emrakul makes it to the bottom once, then player A wins. So the question for OP reduces to, how many times can you make the player shuffle before you call a draw - and, then, how can you try to get the cards shuffled reasonably fast?
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This is effectively the problem of the Legacy Four Horsemen combo deck, which is explained fairly well here. Since the deck information changes each time you can't shortcut the loop. And even with "infinite" loops in MTG, you still have to pick a number of times - if you're comboing off with Splinter Twin you don't say "I make infinite tokens", you have to specify a number like 10,000. So the combo player can't just say "do this until it works". I know there is a lot more info out there on the Four Horsemen combo, but generally its kind of a troll deck so people don't give it too many breaks.
Your situation is a bit different though, since Player A isn't solely responsible for this indefinite loop, they just ran into bad luck. Technically Player A wins eventually, but since it can't be proven to happen after X loops, Player B is under no obligation to concede. Presumably Player A tries to shortcut it all immediately when they combo off, even maybe revealing the Recall, but at that point Player B doesn't have to reveal anything, they can just request to play it out, or at least shortcut the Dragon part and just mill one-by-one. Eventually Emrakul is revealed, the deck shuffled, and the game hits this indefinite loop.
So again, Player A has the win in theory, but Player B doesn't have to give it to them. At the same time, as you pointed out, Player A can change the gamestate by casting Recall on themselves, so one could argue that they are stalling the game by going in circles, and call them for slow play. Also, if there's another creature in a graveyard or Player B's deck, Player A has another target for Animate Dead and the option to break the loop, so I don't know that the game becomes a forced draw either. Really, Player B had the perfect counter and Player A's combo is fizzling out, at some point Player A needs to just accept however the board state lies and move on, probably to a loss.
If I was judging it, and I'm not a judge, I'd let Player A play it out a few times, maybe 3-5 runs though the deck to see if they get lucky, and then at that point make them do something else like cast the Recall. If the Dragon loop can't be broken, as in Dragon and Emrakul are the only 2 creatures in either deck for Animate Dead, then it results in a draw. Otherwise Player A has to reanimate something else, and play out the rest of the game.
I'd like to check the text of Animate Dead but gatherer.wizards is not loading for some reason.
You are not compelled to bring in an Ancestral Recall from outside the looping system (whatever that means) to interrupt the sequence (CR726.5), which does loop all on its own IF there is never an alternate creature to the Dragon to bring back with Animate Dead.
For any who are reading, the reason is that the Emrakul will never be targetable because of APNAP stacking, but if the combo player has one viable enchantee in the grave or if the other player has any other creature at all that ends up there, then at some point, the Altar will mill a card, Animate Dead will be world-gorged, then come back, and that creature would be legal to enchant with the strange Aura instead of the Dragon.
You're right it's not a draw. Almost certainly. But not because of Recall.
A judge doesn't have discretion to decide what counts as a breakable loop, that's supposed to be formally given, as is the condition that a breakable loop must be broken. Sadly some terms regarding infinity in the rules are not yet formal, but they're definitely intended to be.
I still don't know how proposing the first shortcut may work.
If the first player proposes a shortcut that the second player knows has a possibility of not working due to hidden information they do not want to reveal then they should call a judge and explain the situation to the judge and the judge will inform the first player that the loop must be done manually due to hidden information while not explaining that hidden information.
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Now for the actual question. Under what circumstances can Player A win the game with the Ancestral Recall? Obviously, if Player B is getting milled out for the first time and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is in the bottom 3 cards of their library, player A can just cast Ancestral Recall targeting player B with the shuffle trigger on the stack and win the game. But, in any other library configuration, the shuffle trigger will resolve, effectively resetting the game state to the beginning of the mill loop. At what point of this loop does the game become a draw (unless someone elects to take a voluntary action, like Player A casting the Ancestral Recall on themselves to try and find another way to break the loop?
Players could skip over the other state changes so it's not a big time loss.
Player A could argue that all they want is to look at the order of the deck after each time it shuffles, so you really are just shuffling a given number of times and then revealing the order - and if Emrakul makes it to the bottom once, then player A wins. So the question for OP reduces to, how many times can you make the player shuffle before you call a draw - and, then, how can you try to get the cards shuffled reasonably fast?
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Your situation is a bit different though, since Player A isn't solely responsible for this indefinite loop, they just ran into bad luck. Technically Player A wins eventually, but since it can't be proven to happen after X loops, Player B is under no obligation to concede. Presumably Player A tries to shortcut it all immediately when they combo off, even maybe revealing the Recall, but at that point Player B doesn't have to reveal anything, they can just request to play it out, or at least shortcut the Dragon part and just mill one-by-one. Eventually Emrakul is revealed, the deck shuffled, and the game hits this indefinite loop.
So again, Player A has the win in theory, but Player B doesn't have to give it to them. At the same time, as you pointed out, Player A can change the gamestate by casting Recall on themselves, so one could argue that they are stalling the game by going in circles, and call them for slow play. Also, if there's another creature in a graveyard or Player B's deck, Player A has another target for Animate Dead and the option to break the loop, so I don't know that the game becomes a forced draw either. Really, Player B had the perfect counter and Player A's combo is fizzling out, at some point Player A needs to just accept however the board state lies and move on, probably to a loss.
If I was judging it, and I'm not a judge, I'd let Player A play it out a few times, maybe 3-5 runs though the deck to see if they get lucky, and then at that point make them do something else like cast the Recall. If the Dragon loop can't be broken, as in Dragon and Emrakul are the only 2 creatures in either deck for Animate Dead, then it results in a draw. Otherwise Player A has to reanimate something else, and play out the rest of the game.
You are not compelled to bring in an Ancestral Recall from outside the looping system (whatever that means) to interrupt the sequence (CR726.5), which does loop all on its own IF there is never an alternate creature to the Dragon to bring back with Animate Dead.
For any who are reading, the reason is that the Emrakul will never be targetable because of APNAP stacking, but if the combo player has one viable enchantee in the grave or if the other player has any other creature at all that ends up there, then at some point, the Altar will mill a card, Animate Dead will be world-gorged, then come back, and that creature would be legal to enchant with the strange Aura instead of the Dragon.
You're right it's not a draw. Almost certainly. But not because of Recall.
A judge doesn't have discretion to decide what counts as a breakable loop, that's supposed to be formally given, as is the condition that a breakable loop must be broken. Sadly some terms regarding infinity in the rules are not yet formal, but they're definitely intended to be.
I still don't know how proposing the first shortcut may work.
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