Are these combos legal and how many times in a row can I use them? I've read somewhere that abusing isn't allowed more than 2 or 3 times in a row, but I didn't find a specific rule.
All of these combos work. There's no specific ruling against how many extra turns you're allowed to take in a row, but you will need to choose an specific number of turns (as opposed to just saying "infinite turns"). Assuming that you have a specific number in mind, you should be fine.
All of these combos work. There's no specific ruling against how many extra turns you're allowed to take in a row, but you will need to choose an specific number of turns (as opposed to just saying "infinite turns"). Assuming that you have a specific number in mind, you should be fine.
Thanks for your answer.
And are they allowed in tournaments?
I found some rules from 2009 (not sure if they are valid anymore) about breaking the loop but I am not sure I understood how the breaking works right. I am not a native English speaker - it might the problem.
421.1. Occasionally the game can get into a state in which a set of actions could be repeated forever. These rules (sometimes called the "infinity rules") govern how to break such loops.
421.2. If the loop contains one or more optional actions and one player controls them all, that player chooses a number. The loop is treated as repeating that many times or until another player intervenes, whichever comes first.
421.3. If a loop contains optional actions controlled by two players and actions by both of those players are required to continue the loop, the active player (or, if the active player is not involved, the first involved player after the active player in turn order) chooses a number. The other player then has two choices. He or she can choose a lower number, in which case the loop continues that number of times plus whatever fraction is necessary for the first player to "have the last word." Or he or she can agree to the number the first player chose, in which case the loop continues that number of times plus whatever fraction is necessary for the second player to "have the last word." (Note that either fraction may be zero.) This sequence of choices is extended to all applicable players if there are more than two players involved.
Example: In a two-player game, one player controls a creature with the ability "{0}: [This creature] gains flying," and another player controls a permanent with the ability "{0}: Target creature loses flying." The "infinity rule" ensures that regardless of which player initiated the gain/lose flying ability, the nonactive player will always have the final choice and therefore be able to determine whether the creature has flying. (Note that this assumes that the first player attempted to give the creature flying at least once.)
If I understood it correctly, at the end step of my turn my opponent can respond to my actions at APNAP order. And what if I have Sen Triplets in my deck? Does it mean if I name, for example, "10" as a number of turns I want to take and I have Sen Triplets, my opponent couldn't LITERALLY do nothing, not even use instants or flashes?
Thanks for your answer.
And are they allowed in tournaments?
Provided that the cards are legal in the format, yes. (Time Vault is only legal in Vintage, for example.)
The rules you quote involve a process called a shortcut. A player declares a legal sequence of actions, and the other player may accept that sequence or indicate that they are doing something different at some point in the process. If the sequence is accepted, the game simply moves to the point where that sequence has been completed. For actions that form a loop, you need to use shortcuts in the interest of expediting play, so that you don't literally go through the motions of a combo a million times to, say, gain a million life.
In tournament settings, there are rules related to Slow Play infractions that govern loops - basically, once you've done a loop, you need to do something else now, since doing more of the loop could have been accomplished by declaring that you were doing more of it the first time. Taking extra turns doesn't necessarily fall into this, because the game state is changing over time (you draw a new card each turn, which can impact what decisions you make.) You also can't necessarily shortcut through an arbitrary number of turns under normal circumstances because even if you choose to do nothing with the cards you draw you will eventually have to discard cards given enough turns, and doing so requires a decision based on what cards you have at the time (which you won't be able to predict when setting up the shortcut.)
If you have a way around this, you could shortcut through multiple turns - let's say you have Invisible Stalker, Spellbook, Voltaic Key, and Time Vault. Since you won't have to discard, you can declare a shortcut of taking 20 turns where you draw a card, do nothing with it, set up the next extra turn, and attack your opponent for 1 during each of those turns. But most of the time, the way to play this is simply to go through your turns as normal and do so at a reasonable pace.
As a practical example of the rules you quoted, let's say you control a Basalt Monolith, a Rings of Brighthearth, a Staff of Domination, and a Stuffy Doll naming your opponent. It is possible to generate an arbitrarily large amount of mana using Monolith and Rings, with which you can repeatedly untap Stuffy Doll with Staff of Domination and tap the Doll to deal 1 point of damage to it followed by 1 point of damage to your opponent. The loop rules indicate that once you demonstrate that this sequence is a loop, you can (and should) propose a shortcut where you repeat the loop a certain number of times (such as exactly enough times to bring your opponent to 0 life).
The other part of the rule covers what happens if your opponent has a loop of their own that they want to use to counteract yours. For example, let's say that they have a Kitchen Finks, a Viscera Seer, and Melira, Sylvok Outcast on the battlefield. They can use this combo to sacrifice and return the Kitchen Finks an arbitrary number of times to gain an arbitrary amount of life. At this point the loop could repeat on itself endlessly (you deal them some damage, they gain some life, repeat.) At this point, the rules dictate that if neither player wants to break the loop, the player whose turn it is ultimately has to be the one to do something different.
If I understood it correctly, at the end step of my turn my opponent can respond to my actions at APNAP order. And what if I have Sen Triplets in my deck? Does it mean if I name, for example, "10" as a number of turns I want to take and I have Sen Triplets, my opponent couldn't LITERALLY do nothing, not even use instants or flashes?
If your opponent is able to respond to your loop, they can choose to do so at any point where they would normally receive priority. Having Sen Triplets will of course make it more difficult for them to respond (though not impossible - the ability triggers during your upkeep, meaning there is a brief window where they can cast instants or spells with flash while the ability is on the stack.)
It's worth noting that you always have the option to ask your opponent to concede. If you are able to demonstrate that you have a way to get unlimited turns and a way to use that to win the game, and if they have no way to stop it, it is likely that they will concede in order to move on to the next game more quickly even if you can't directly shortcut through the process due to eventually needing to discard cards or similar.
This will only create up to three extra turns for each Medomai hit. You get one from the original trigger, another from copying it with the Resonator, and a third if you untap the Resonator with the Key and activate the Resonator again.
I suspect you think you can copy the Key activation with the Resonator, untapping both in order to keep copying Medomai triggers, but this isn't possible. The Key's activation can't be copied by the Resonator because the Resonator can only copy triggered abilities, not activated abilities. (An activated ability has the form "[cost]: [effect]." A triggered ability begins with Whenever/When/At.)
This will only create up to three extra turns for each Medomai hit. You get one from the original trigger, another from copying it with the Resonator, and a third if you untap the Resonator with the Key and activate the Resonator again.
I suspect you think you can copy the Key activation with the Resonator, untapping both in order to keep copying Medomai triggers, but this isn't possible. The Key's activation can't be copied by the Resonator because the Resonator can only copy triggered abilities, not activated abilities. (An activated ability has the form "[cost]: [effect]." A triggered ability begins with Whenever/When/At.)
Of course, you could just repeat this during each extra turn with Medomai, essentially making infinite turns - for every extra turn you take, you have two more waiting.
The rulings forum isn't the place for this sort of question. You would be better off posting your question in the appropriate subforum for whichever format you're planning on playing (e.g. Standard, Modern).
Of course, you could just repeat this during each extra turn with Medomai, essentially making infinite turns - for every extra turn you take, you have two more waiting.
Medomai can't attack during extra turns, so this doesn't work. (It would already go infinite on its own if it could!)
For more fascinating discussion about shortcuts, loops, determinate loops, and indeterminate loops, look for "Four Horseman" on this or other forums. It's a very arcane and interesting area of the Magic rules. This game, unlike almost any other I know of, can interact just fine with infinity. The problems arise when you also toss uncertainty into the mix, and then overriding concerns about preserving the shortcut rules and tournament time start to come into play.
I will toss this much in, because I never really "got" the indeterminate loop rules until I realized the following:
In Magic, if you end up being able to perform a loop, typically you will want to shortcut that loop to some conclusion. Many loops cannot be actually performed over and over within the time allowed for a tournament. For example, you want to keep using Petermite/Kikki Jikki until you have a google number of copies. You can propose that shortcut, and then your opponent is free to say they want to stop the shortcut at the point when you reach 20 creatures so they can do something. With a determinate loop, that's fine, you all know exactly what the board will be.
But indeterminate loops thwart this strategy. In your example, perhaps your opponent can see the top card of their library at all times and wants to stop the loop once the Eldrazi is on top so they can cast Quicken and Kaboom! for the win. Well, when you propose a shortcut of shuffling them until the Eldrazi is on the bottom... and they want to stop the shortcut when the Eldrazi is on the top... how do you know which one of these outcomes will actually occur first? Answer: You do not.
So, an indeterminate loop renders shortcuts impossible as a general matter. You cannot then just try to "do it" repeatedly until you randomly hit your win condition either, because then the floor judges could never go home and would starve to death on bad hotel lobby food before the game ended. As a result, the IPG Slow Play rules and the Comp Rules just work together to prohibit you from continuing an indeterminate loop.
It might be arbitrary, but it's not illogical.
(The scenario in question here is one where a player has the ability to make the opponent shuffle an arbitrarily large number of times.)
The upshot here is that there are two rules to be aware of:
1) Determinate loops, where you know exactly what the state will be after X iterations, are shortcutted. Arbitrarily large number of turns? Just fine.
2) Indeterminate loops, where you cannot say exactly what the state will be after X iterations, cannot be shortcutted. You can go through the iterations only so long as you are advancing the board state.
First one is the longest on search in library.
Second one seems to be the cheapest on mana and the fastest if I use Fabricate and Tinker and/or Master Transmuter.
Third one takes even less actions, but more mana.
I'd go with the 2nd one, can I have any suggestions?
I need help with rulings for the following combos:
1) Time Vault + Voltaic key.
2) Thopter Assembly + Time Sieve
3) Medomai the Ageless + Strionic Resonator + Voltaic key. Copy for as many mana you have.
Are these combos legal and how many times in a row can I use them? I've read somewhere that abusing isn't allowed more than 2 or 3 times in a row, but I didn't find a specific rule.
Thanks in advance.
Draft my cube! (630 cards)
Thanks for your answer.
And are they allowed in tournaments?
I found some rules from 2009 (not sure if they are valid anymore) about breaking the loop but I am not sure I understood how the breaking works right. I am not a native English speaker - it might the problem.
If I understood it correctly, at the end step of my turn my opponent can respond to my actions at APNAP order. And what if I have Sen Triplets in my deck? Does it mean if I name, for example, "10" as a number of turns I want to take and I have Sen Triplets, my opponent couldn't LITERALLY do nothing, not even use instants or flashes?
The rules you quote involve a process called a shortcut. A player declares a legal sequence of actions, and the other player may accept that sequence or indicate that they are doing something different at some point in the process. If the sequence is accepted, the game simply moves to the point where that sequence has been completed. For actions that form a loop, you need to use shortcuts in the interest of expediting play, so that you don't literally go through the motions of a combo a million times to, say, gain a million life.
In tournament settings, there are rules related to Slow Play infractions that govern loops - basically, once you've done a loop, you need to do something else now, since doing more of the loop could have been accomplished by declaring that you were doing more of it the first time. Taking extra turns doesn't necessarily fall into this, because the game state is changing over time (you draw a new card each turn, which can impact what decisions you make.) You also can't necessarily shortcut through an arbitrary number of turns under normal circumstances because even if you choose to do nothing with the cards you draw you will eventually have to discard cards given enough turns, and doing so requires a decision based on what cards you have at the time (which you won't be able to predict when setting up the shortcut.)
If you have a way around this, you could shortcut through multiple turns - let's say you have Invisible Stalker, Spellbook, Voltaic Key, and Time Vault. Since you won't have to discard, you can declare a shortcut of taking 20 turns where you draw a card, do nothing with it, set up the next extra turn, and attack your opponent for 1 during each of those turns. But most of the time, the way to play this is simply to go through your turns as normal and do so at a reasonable pace.
As a practical example of the rules you quoted, let's say you control a Basalt Monolith, a Rings of Brighthearth, a Staff of Domination, and a Stuffy Doll naming your opponent. It is possible to generate an arbitrarily large amount of mana using Monolith and Rings, with which you can repeatedly untap Stuffy Doll with Staff of Domination and tap the Doll to deal 1 point of damage to it followed by 1 point of damage to your opponent. The loop rules indicate that once you demonstrate that this sequence is a loop, you can (and should) propose a shortcut where you repeat the loop a certain number of times (such as exactly enough times to bring your opponent to 0 life).
The other part of the rule covers what happens if your opponent has a loop of their own that they want to use to counteract yours. For example, let's say that they have a Kitchen Finks, a Viscera Seer, and Melira, Sylvok Outcast on the battlefield. They can use this combo to sacrifice and return the Kitchen Finks an arbitrary number of times to gain an arbitrary amount of life. At this point the loop could repeat on itself endlessly (you deal them some damage, they gain some life, repeat.) At this point, the rules dictate that if neither player wants to break the loop, the player whose turn it is ultimately has to be the one to do something different.
If your opponent is able to respond to your loop, they can choose to do so at any point where they would normally receive priority. Having Sen Triplets will of course make it more difficult for them to respond (though not impossible - the ability triggers during your upkeep, meaning there is a brief window where they can cast instants or spells with flash while the ability is on the stack.)
It's worth noting that you always have the option to ask your opponent to concede. If you are able to demonstrate that you have a way to get unlimited turns and a way to use that to win the game, and if they have no way to stop it, it is likely that they will concede in order to move on to the next game more quickly even if you can't directly shortcut through the process due to eventually needing to discard cards or similar.
This will only create up to three extra turns for each Medomai hit. You get one from the original trigger, another from copying it with the Resonator, and a third if you untap the Resonator with the Key and activate the Resonator again.
I suspect you think you can copy the Key activation with the Resonator, untapping both in order to keep copying Medomai triggers, but this isn't possible. The Key's activation can't be copied by the Resonator because the Resonator can only copy triggered abilities, not activated abilities. (An activated ability has the form "[cost]: [effect]." A triggered ability begins with Whenever/When/At.)
Since Time Vault is banned in most expansions, I will skip it. Medomai the ageless doesn't seem that reliable too.
EDITED: What combo is a more reliable one?
Thopter Assembly + Time Sieve + Rings of Brighthearth or Planar Portal + Beacon of Tomorrows
Many thanks to everyone for help!
Of course, you could just repeat this during each extra turn with Medomai, essentially making infinite turns - for every extra turn you take, you have two more waiting.
The rulings forum isn't the place for this sort of question. You would be better off posting your question in the appropriate subforum for whichever format you're planning on playing (e.g. Standard, Modern).
Medomai can't attack during extra turns, so this doesn't work. (It would already go infinite on its own if it could!)
From: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-rulings/magic-rulings-archives/578706-on-infinite-combo-and-statistics-shortcuts
(The scenario in question here is one where a player has the ability to make the opponent shuffle an arbitrarily large number of times.)
The upshot here is that there are two rules to be aware of:
1) Determinate loops, where you know exactly what the state will be after X iterations, are shortcutted. Arbitrarily large number of turns? Just fine.
2) Indeterminate loops, where you cannot say exactly what the state will be after X iterations, cannot be shortcutted. You can go through the iterations only so long as you are advancing the board state.
Can anyone tell which combo is better from these three? I might have missed something.
1) Thopter Assembly + Strionic Resonator + Time Sieve + Voltaic Key
2) Thopter Assembly + Time Sieve + Rings of Brighthearth
3) Planar Portal + Beacon of Tomorrows.
First one is the longest on search in library.
Second one seems to be the cheapest on mana and the fastest if I use Fabricate and Tinker and/or Master Transmuter.
Third one takes even less actions, but more mana.
I'd go with the 2nd one, can I have any suggestions?
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