4 ms·

I appreciate the article is trying to get people to check out MTG, but it's just inaccurate. http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=9

by sturmeh 10y ago

I appreciate the article is trying to get people to check out MTG, but it's just inaccurate. http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=980 http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiver... is vastly more meta, and complicated to the point where it is outright banned from the game for being a waste of time in all practical sense. And that card was printed in 1993.

touchofevil 10y ago
I was just about to post about Shahrazad! Totally agree! Shahrazad: Players play a MAGIC subgame, using their libraries as their decks. Each player who doesn't win the subgame loses half his or her life, rounded up.
pavel_lishin 10y ago
Doesn't having that card in your library nearly guarantee an infinite descend into madness?
- civilian 10y ago
  If you're playing the card, then it is no longer in your library. (Remember, your library is your undrawn stack of cards.)
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    It would be fun to build a library of just those cards. Infinite recursion until opponent stops acknowledging you and packs up his things and goes home.
    - civilian 10y ago
      I think you've underestimated the stubbornness of magic players :-P (There's also a deck card limit of 4 of any one card. ;) )
    - zck 10y ago
      As another comment mentioned, you can't play more than 4 of a card in a deck. But Magic didn't start out that way -- you could have any number of cards in a deck. (The creator, Richard Garfield, assumed that most people would only have a few hundred cards, so no one would have that many of any specific card.) I don't know exactly when that rule was introduced (Shahrazad was printed in Arabian Nights, the first Magic expansion), but let's ignore the rule. So you build a deck with only Shahrazad and Plains (to cast spells, you need to pay the casting cost. And that cost is "white mana", which you get from a card called Plains). If you don't have any other cards in your deck, you can't kill your opponent. So you have to rely on the opponent losing another way. There's a rule in Magic that if you have to draw a card, and can't, you lose. This is called "decking" your opponent. So if we keep recursing, eventually one player will run out of cards. But note that in most formats of Magic, there's no maximum size of your deck. Most formats have a 60-card minimum. So if you build a deck with 50 Plains and 50 Shahrazad, you'll have more cards in your deck at all times. If you go first, each player draws an initial 7 cards (down to 53 in their deck; 93 in yours), and then on turn 1 draws another card (down to 52 in theirs, 92 in yours). On turn 2, you draw a card (91) and play Shahrazad, so each subgame consists of your opponent's library going down 8 cards, and your library going down 9. So start again. After the next recursion, they have 44, and you have 82. Then 36/73, 28/64, 20/55, 12/46, 4/35, and you win. You pop up a level (to the 4/35 game), and your opponent loses half their life (down from 20 to 10). You play another Sharazad game, and again you win, and in the 4/35 game, they go to 5 life, then you Shahrazad and they go to 2, then to 1, and you win. So at each level, you need to win five times (the branching factor is five). And there are seven levels, so there are 5^7 (78,125) games that you need to win through decking your opponent. You can't pull this off in a tournament; you only have an hour to play each match (that is, 3600 seconds), and you have to win two games to win the match. So if someone tries to Sharazad you in a tournament, they'd definitely be able to beat you, given enough time. But all you have to do is not resign, and they won't win; you'll tie the match. That's better than conceding.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

by sturmeh 10y ago

touchofevil 10y ago

I was just about to post about Shahrazad! Totally agree! Shahrazad: Players play a MAGIC subgame, using their libraries as their decks. Each player who doesn't win the subgame loses half his or her life, rounded up.

pavel_lishin 10y ago

Doesn't having that card in your library nearly guarantee an infinite descend into madness?

civilian 10y ago
If you're playing the card, then it is no longer in your library. (Remember, your library is your undrawn stack of cards.)
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  It would be fun to build a library of just those cards. Infinite recursion until opponent stops acknowledging you and packs up his things and goes home.
  - civilian 10y ago
    I think you've underestimated the stubbornness of magic players :-P (There's also a deck card limit of 4 of any one card. ;) )
  - zck 10y ago
    As another comment mentioned, you can't play more than 4 of a card in a deck. But Magic didn't start out that way -- you could have any number of cards in a deck. (The creator, Richard Garfield, assumed that most people would only have a few hundred cards, so no one would have that many of any specific card.) I don't know exactly when that rule was introduced (Shahrazad was printed in Arabian Nights, the first Magic expansion), but let's ignore the rule. So you build a deck with only Shahrazad and Plains (to cast spells, you need to pay the casting cost. And that cost is "white mana", which you get from a card called Plains). If you don't have any other cards in your deck, you can't kill your opponent. So you have to rely on the opponent losing another way. There's a rule in Magic that if you have to draw a card, and can't, you lose. This is called "decking" your opponent. So if we keep recursing, eventually one player will run out of cards. But note that in most formats of Magic, there's no maximum size of your deck. Most formats have a 60-card minimum. So if you build a deck with 50 Plains and 50 Shahrazad, you'll have more cards in your deck at all times. If you go first, each player draws an initial 7 cards (down to 53 in their deck; 93 in yours), and then on turn 1 draws another card (down to 52 in theirs, 92 in yours). On turn 2, you draw a card (91) and play Shahrazad, so each subgame consists of your opponent's library going down 8 cards, and your library going down 9. So start again. After the next recursion, they have 44, and you have 82. Then 36/73, 28/64, 20/55, 12/46, 4/35, and you win. You pop up a level (to the 4/35 game), and your opponent loses half their life (down from 20 to 10). You play another Sharazad game, and again you win, and in the 4/35 game, they go to 5 life, then you Shahrazad and they go to 2, then to 1, and you win. So at each level, you need to win five times (the branching factor is five). And there are seven levels, so there are 5^7 (78,125) games that you need to win through decking your opponent. You can't pull this off in a tournament; you only have an hour to play each match (that is, 3600 seconds), and you have to win two games to win the match. So if someone tries to Sharazad you in a tournament, they'd definitely be able to beat you, given enough time. But all you have to do is not resign, and they won't win; you'll tie the match. That's better than conceding.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]