(4*) What happens if your library has no instants and sorceries? Support Judging FtW on Patreon at / judgingftw Suggest a question: forms.gle/YTK2qrQqTL18rRsJ9 A: You might get all your noncreature permanents in play...if you're lucky
Q: Primal Surge says "if you do [put it on the battlefield], repeat this process". Does Amy really get to repeat the process if she never got to put the card onto the battlefield, for example, because she shuffled it into her library instead? A: The relevant rule here is CR 118.12, which says (paraphrased) Some spells, activated abilities, and triggered abilities read, “You may [do something]. If you do, [effect].” The action [do something] is a cost, paid when the spell or ability resolves. The “If you do” clause checks whether the player chose to pay an optional cost or started to pay a mandatory cost, regardless of what events actually occurred. Therefore, if Amy chooses to put the card onto the battlefield, she gets to repeat this process, even if the card doesn't actually make it to the battlefield. I kind of swept this interesting detail under the rug, but I should have known my audience wasn't going to let me get away with that. Thanks to those of you who asked, because that's a great question! If you'd like a more thorough explanation, I have a more detailed breakdown of this rule in DDR#639: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0fJBsopJgeA.html
interesting, I like this rule a lot because it makes cards actually do things that feel novel when interacted with in novel ways, I've been playing yugioh a lot in the past year and the ruling on this type of interaction there is that if any part of the text fails for any reason the whole effect fizzles or could even be illegal to activate in the first place.
What's the reason for this being the rule? The intuitive reading is "if you put the card onto the battlefield", not "If you choose to put the card onto the battlefield regardless of whether or not you actually did". The linked video doesn't explain this.
@@yurisei6732 The reason is that the player made the choice to put it on the battlefield. So the card notes that you *attempted* to put it on the battlefield. It doesn't care what the actual result of that was, it just cares that you chose to do so. There is a similar thing going on with It That Betrays in ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cwSmR9nlQOs.html Sacrificing is a choice made by a player. It doesn't matter whether the card actually dies, it just matters that it was chosen to be sacrificed.
Yep! Replacement effects do not alter the nature of whether a specific choice was made by a player or not. For example, a sacrificed creature counts as sacrificed no matter what zone it goes to. It's similar to the It That Betrays ruling. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cwSmR9nlQOs.html
Funny, I was playing a commander game with a friend who uses primal surge and I played this exact card against him. We ended up just letting him continue to get all non creature permanents out and shuffle the rest back into the deck, which still ended up in his loss, but I was happy with that ruling, and so was he.
This is basically what I'd do: get all the relevant cards out, have both players confirm that's the case, and then shuffle the remaining cards. The player that used the card gets what the max value(and expected value) for their card and it saves the headache of going through the motions of shuffling and all that especially considering the person letting this strong of an effect resolve without just scooping immediately likely has a board wipe or other methods of not just dying immediately
*looks at table mates, smirks* "JUDGE!!!" The last time I called for a judge, he asked if I was winning. When I said yes, he tossed me an unopened pack of cards. No my question wasn't answered but hey free cards XD
Considering that the question "are you winning?" isn't mtg-specific, I'd like to get in contact with your judge - Hey, I just beat Ganon... - *smacks you with a pack of Ikoria Good talk
I do like th ruling of allowing a shortcut for this specific non-deterministic loop, with my personal justification being that in a deck like Four Horsemen, someone decided to construct a deck based around winning with a non-deterministic loop, and therefore should deal with the consequences of attempting to construct such a situation. In this case, unless Amy played both spells, she didn't intent to construct a non-deterministic loop, her opponent forced her into it, and forcing her to stop arbitrarily as far as the Comprehensive Rules is concerned feels unfairly beneficial to Nick. He still gets the benefit of his card as-written, no creatures are allowed to enter the battlefield this way and one creature is exiled from Amy's library, but without this Tainted Pact-like rider written in invisible ink that only shows up in tournament settings
Out of the context of the source material, it's absolutely hilarious. If you've seen that episode, the humor of it is tempered by the spooky lore. The flavor of the card is a weird mix of "oh, mechanically I guess that makes sense?" and "that's not how that works."
The concept where I happen to to hit the same card twice off the bat while I have only permanents in my deck and a judge rules I had to stop and opponent doesn't agree to have me reveal deck for shortcut, I'd punch someone.
Yeah this pisses me off so much.... Like, when you have literal mathematical certainty to *eventually* hit every card, the fact that you hit the same card in a row somewhere along the way feels irrelevant.... I know that the rules are all about "repeating a game state", but this is one of those cases where I (and probably most commander players) would say "eff the rules", we flip cards till we hit a non-perm", and we're all better off for it... Even if you hit grizzly bears twice, you still know that you'll hit something ELSE after that, and if you don't hit it next time, you'll hit it eventually. While I am aware there is a technical "you could be shuffling for 10 hours" issue here, we all know that wouldn't happen in practice and we're all here to have fun playing a game, eh?
Ran into you a bunch at MC Chicago, love your videos! This one's a great way to explain the spirit behind judging sub-comp-REL events like commander nights; really well done!
What a lovely sentiment, and a rare commentary on the difference between the letter of the rules and the spirit of the game. Anytime we get the opportunity to romanticize kitchen table magic, I think we should take it.
Now I want to make a Judges' Tower deck with Primal Surge and all permanents lol. How does JT handle deck running out of cards? How does Primal Surge resolve when there are no more cards left? Assuming they make it through all the etb effects, does the next player lose when they can't draw? Dave, these are the important questions that need answered 🤣
@@fabulousampharos9347 this. If you even get a fraction of the way through resolving the deck, and more than one person is left in the game, you're either all equally dumb, or absolute machines.
My local group ruled that if any player in Judge's Tower ever attempted to draw a card from an empty library, all remaining players won the game. A friend of mine had a Judge's Tower which had thousands of cards in it. We managed to do this with that stack exactly once, using Eye of the Storm that had exiled a Mind's Desire. Once we got going and the storm count was high enough, the general loop was to exile cards until you hit a castable instant, cast it, and bury it under a new pile of Mind's Desires (the other spells under the Eye also got buried under the stack). The only things that ever needed to fully resolve were Mind's Desire copies. Until we hit Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, of course. Which we survived by casting every creature in the exiled pile, with Yawgmoth, Thran Physician on top. Yawgmoth resolved, we sacrificed Teferi, and then a Reroute which we'd previously exiled with Desire and never had a valid target for restarted the chain. We ended the game with possibly over a million spells on the stack. But we did win it.
In response to me realizing the gravity of what's about to happen, I will play Arcane Denial on my own Don't Blink, because this will be miserable. Lol. I like your solution to reveal and get all the noncreature permanents. That is the best
Personally, at a kitchen table game, I'd suggest that we shrink it down to two shuffles. One shuffle after the first creature gets revealed (so that it takes care of any potential top/bottom deck manipulation from previous turns) and then one at the end of the resolution. Just keep exiling the creatures, putting the non creature permanents into play, and going from the top of the deck until you hit a non permanent or choose to stop. Then shuffle all the creatures back in. Keeps the same feeling of randomness, but saves dozens of shuffles. Definitely not tournament approved, but feels good at my kitchen table.
I did terribly. Thanks for asking. I wouldn't have thought that "one or more" would apply to everything that primal surge does, but only the first permanent.
Hey really enjoy your videos! How would an epic spell like Endless Swarm work with cards like Wizard's Spellbook? I would assume the player would be able to cast the spell, but I of course be very wrong. Thanks!
2:04 Hi, mathematician here. This is actually one of those cases where 100% probability is not the same as a guarantee. This outcome is called "almost certain" or "almost sure". There are infinitely many possible shuffle-sequences where Amy keeps flipping creatures forever while some noncreature permanent cards remain in the deck. It's just a smaller infinity than the ones where she does find all the noncreatures; small enough that the ratio of (not finishing) / (finishing) = 0. Because it's not a guarantee, the judge ruling does actually make sense to me here, though I could also see an argument that 0% is small enough to ignore even though that 0% remains technically possible.
Normal gameplay math is just addition, sometimes you have to multiply by two or three. I can see why the rules try to avoid situations where you would have to compute "Does this infinite sequence converge to 0 or not?"
The mathematical part of what you're saying is true, but I don't see at all how it means the judge ruling makes sense. If we assume that Amy wants to put as many permanents on the field as possible, the event "Amy chooses to stop once she reaches a game state she was already in before" is absolutely impossible (in this case it's not even that it has probability 0), so it does not make sense to me that it's the solution chosen by the MTR. If we really want to take into account the event "the loop goes on indefinitely" (which, as you said, is technically possible, even if its probability is 0), I think the best choice would be to allow the opponent to choose between the two scenarios, by letting them choose between "Amy puts all non-creature cards on the field and shuffles the rest" and "the game is a draw" (which is the usual solution for mandatory infinite loops, so I think it fits here, because even if the loop is non-mandatory, there always is a reason to continue). If Amy does not want the opponent to choose between these two solutions, she could still also choose, before the loop begins, a criterion she's sure to reach in a reasonable amount of time that forces her to stop (it could be "after N iterations" with N reasonably small, or "once we reach a game state we were already in before"), instead of the really arbitrary criterion there currently is.
What I would probably do is keep the creatures I draw to the side and only shuffle then back in the end, although if I had scryed (or scry because of a permanent entering the battlefield) then I would shuffle only the remaining cards as long as there are known cards in the labrary.
Could Amy show the whole deck during shuffles to Nick on her own, before any calls to judge (as to speed the process)? Ofc I'm interested mostly in competitive match rules.
Think about this in the context of casual commander: That shuffling is annoying, does it need to happen? After the 1st shuffle, the deck will be in a random order and it will end in a random order. We also know the creatures are doing nothing but going back to the deck in the end. Is Psychic Surgery, The War Doctor, or something similar in play? No? Then let's just set the creatures aside without shuffling and then shuffle them back into the deck once the process is terminated with a non creature card in exile or an empty library.
One interaction i saw recently that you might want to make a video on is Chatterfang + slime against humanity. Since the squirrel token gets +1/+1 counters
We had this discussion about infinitly activating the Luck bobblehead recently. Some people really dislike that the MTR doesn't let them win the game, despite is being as close to a mathematical certainty given arbitrarily long time. But trying to explain that the MTR is a specific time and place ruleset to make events happen and not what happens in everyday life, of course you would win at home, an opponent could concede and most of all this is never happening there anyway. And no, I don't think the tapped treasures constitute a relevant change beyond maybe the second activation.
Well that really depends how many bobble heads they have, assuming they have around 42 bobble heads then yeah its gotta a reasonable chance of winning eventually. If you have only 7 bobble then probably not since even if rolling the dice only took 10 seconds the expected time to roll 7 6's is like 700+ hours. Technically if its actually a true infinite it shhould probably be shortcutable, as unlike the 4 horsemen deck the opponent literally can't interact with the combo. I feel as though mathematically provable wins should just be wins.
@XenithShadow My favorite part of magic the gathering is that "mathematically provable wins," while reasonable in any game state you will ever hit in a competitive game, is technically an undefinable concept due to the risk of a player building a turing machine out of zombie tokens that, for example, tests the consistency of ZFC.
Here's how I'd handle this at the kitchen table level, especially considering the deck could contain other non-permanents; keep the creatures to the side and shuffle everything as the final step in the process. The deck is random regardless. Just keep flipping and correct the game state at the end while saving the most time. Thoughts?
My normal practice is to hold an AMA every channel doubling. I had one at 16K (ru-vid.comAYutHlwc0Dw), and I will do another once the channel gets to 32K, so be sure to tell all your friends to subscribe ;-) But since you asked... My favorite deck was Splinter Twin. I really liked the combo feel, but not being completely one-dimensional so that I had a backup plan if I saw too many hate cards to power through. In Legacy, it was Deathblade, which really rewarded format familiarity and experience. My favorite Standard deck was also Deathblade (Jace + Stoneforge control.dec) for largely the same reason. My favorite format was Legacy. Unfortunately, I stopped playing that after SCG took it off their tour and it stopped being an actual format, as defined by me to be a format with multiple high-profile events per year that are reasonable for me to travel to. After that, I mostly played Modern, which was nice because I started playing around the time Modern's cardpool starts, so I had almost all the cards from just playing regularly. Until MH2 came out and I went from having the cards for every tier 1 Modern deck to not having any. Shortly after I bought back in, the exact same thing happened when The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters were printed in the Lord of the Rings set, and at that point, I gave up. These days, I mostly only play EDH with a small group of friends every now and then.
I got a quick rule question about guts true zealot and if it interacts with drivnod carnage dominus or not. I’m not sure what kind of trigger guts has and how if at all it would interact with drivnod to double guts ability.
What if the opponent also has a psychic surgery? Even tho the triggers don’t go onto the stack after the resolution of primal surge, does it “triggering it” matter in determine if it was the same game state?
Since the shortcut performed is whatever both players and the judge agree to, the player with Psychic Surgery would ask the Primal Surge player to play it out because they want their triggers, which is perfectly reasonable and the judge would agree with this. This means the game state tracking doesn't matter because a shortcut won't be performed.
@@thekilla1234 I think it was moreso on determining if it was considered the same gamestate in a non-deterministic loop, aka if she reveals grizzly then shuffles and reveals a second does it count as the same because of the psychic surgery. Or maybe cosi's trickter would be better as it merely grows as apposed to eating the opponents library (as an opponent likely wouldn't risk their deck with multiple failed shuffles to the surgury but may not care about giving you a 10/10)
Last night I was playing draft and had a granite gargoyle equipped with a candlestick and it was taken by coerced to kill, so the opponent got the card with the artifact equipped and enchantment. Then I flipped Coveted Falcon and gave away the candlestick and a land to draw 2 and then attacked with the falcon to take back the granite gargoyle that the other player controlled with coerced to kill so I got him back with the artifact attached, the next turn I got the land back and the next turn I targeted the candlestick which was already equipped to my creature because I knew they would sac it as soon as it mattered. Was this all done correctly?
So, along this vein, as this is a replacement effect, am I correct that the ETB triggers from the creatures would not go on the stack as them coming into play is replaced by them being shuffled back into the deck?
Do you even repeat thw pocess with peimal surge. It says "if you do" and when you hit a creature you never put it onto the battlefield. It get's replaced into shuffeling into the library. Am I missing something?
An if clause in this manner is actually treated as a cost. Even if the cost, the placing of the (creature) permanent on the battlefield, is changed by a replacement effect, the cost is still considered to have been paid and the reliant effect occurs (CR 118.11).
Please explain, i am confused by the ruling My sense is that if the "put it onto the battlefield" part is replaced by "their owner shuffles them into their library", then the "if you do" part of primal surge would simply *not* see the permanent put onto the battlefield (and the loop stops). Can someone explain how that's wrong, and maybe the nuance with situation where "if you do" does work like i expected it? Thanks
In this case, the if clause will actually be treated as a cost. If the creature's entering onto the battlefield would be changed by a replacement effect, the cost is still considered to have been paid and the reliant effect occurs - as if the cost was changed (CR 118.11).
Hey Dave! Question that came up in a game last night: If my opponent has an awakened skyclave on the Battlefield and is exiled with my Gisa, Glorious Resurrector. Do I get it back on my upkeep? Does it come back as a battle? We were really confused with this lol thanks!
Not Dave, but I have your answer. After Awakened Skyclave was put into exile, the only properties the card has are on its front face. This is because double-faced cards outside of the battlefield have only their front face properties (CR 712.8a). So, your exiled not actually Awakened Skyclave, but instead Invasion of Zendikar - a battle, and not a creature. And because Gisa, Glorious Resurrector states, "At the beginning of your upkeep, put all _creature cards_ exiled with Gisa, Glorious Resurrector onto the battlefield...", Invasion of Zendikar will not be put onto the battlefield.
Going with your shortcut, how would you handle the order the noncreature permanents enter the battlefield? Since this could matter for triggered abilities and the like
Now add psychogenic probe, and Amy controlling a platinum angel with some ability to gain an indeterminate amount of life (via some recurring life gain and shuffling cards into the Deck to avoid decking) so that being more negative means longer before they can dig themselves out of the hole. Feels like lifeloss would force the game state to be different, even if you can’t lose (while plat angel is on the board)
If the controller of Don't Blink had a card in play hat triggers each time their opponent's library is shuffled, like Cosi's Trickster or Psychic Surgery, would this change the gamestate enough to allow more attempts on Primal Surge? I think this is interesting because it questions the meaningful change of the game state in a different way.
Doesnt the "if you do" line of primal surge prevent it from retriggering if the creature fails to make it to the battlefield? Like, you havent put a permanent card on the battlefield, you may not repeat the proccess.
The replacement effect changes "you may put it on the battlefield" to "you may shuffle it into your library". Therefore, if you shuffle it into your library, you fulfilled the effect and you may repeat it.
Hi there, I’m a little confused: because don’t blink has a replacement effect for creatures entering the battlefield, does that not mean a creature hit off the top never enters the battlefield, thereby stopping the loop? That is, because the primal surge says “if you [put the exiled card onto the battlefield], repeat this process” and the card never hits the battlefield but rather is shuffled into the players library, the condition is never met. Thanks!
I think the clause "if you do" doesn't actually check whether you do exactly what you were told to do, its meaning is more like "if you choose to do so"
@@Kettwiesel25 Well, I learned since young that "read the card explains the card". It's not what's saying". "If you do, then do", so "if you don't, then don't".
I was always a bit bothered by the way the rules handle situations like this -- for me, it always felt like if there's a non-deterministic loop but you can make choices so that if you go long enough you reach a certain game state with a probability 1 and you can prove it, you should be allowed to shortcut to it.
l would have thought that Primal Surge would continue until "Amy" decided to stop the process, in which Don't Blink would resolve however many times a creature permanent was put in play. As in, 4 Grizzly Bears and 4 Hill Giants would constitute 8 triggers right after Primal Surge finishes.
For a casual format shortcut: I think "Amy" should shuffle after the 1st creature is revealed (Amy might have scryed a card to the bottom earlier). Afterwards just set the creature cards off to the side in "exile" to shuffle back in at the end. The only cards I know of that care are Psychic Surgery and The War Doctor.
Hmm I thought that we had to let Primal Surge resolves completely first, then only the Don’t Blink will trigger and then shuffle the Creatures that came in through Primal Surge?
Don't Blink uses an intervening if (if... would enter, instead ...) rather than a triggered ability, causing the effect mentioned in the video. A card using a triggered ability would likely use a wording of "Whenever a creature would enter from exile, shuffle it into its owner's library." As an effect of this difference, the triggered version would also allow all ETB-triggers to go off.
Huh interesting. My first intuition would have been that this ends in a draw if there's no instants or sorceries in the deck because it's an unstoppable infinite loop.
Before watching the video, I'm making a prediction: I'm guessing that you do get to repeat Primal Surge even after Don't Blink comes into effect. My reasoning being that the "If you do" conditional is based on the choice you made, as opposed to whether you were able to actually complete the action. To make it work the other way, you would phrase Primal Surge as something more like "if a permanent entered the battlefield this way, repeat this process." I could see it going the other way, but I am _very_ confident that it comes down to whether the rules-ese for "if you do" refers to the action taking place, or the decision made. If there's some other complication, I'll just take the L.
Okay, it turns out the _real_ question was about rules enforcement, which I didn't predict. That said, I'll still call it a win for me, since I got the part I predicted right for the right reasons. I'm definitely not as familiar with the rules enforcement language as with the rules themselves, so I'll call that a no contest on that part of the video.
So if primal surge wasn't a may then is playing don't blink now an illegal game action that cause the player to get a game lose for slow play? As the owner of primal surge in this case has no option to stop revealing cards until they get all their permanents, so by playing don't blink you have effectively cause a loop that will force the game to go to time.
OK, I'm confused. I thought replacement effects don't really change what the cards do, they just do something else when the card wants to do its original thing. So in this case, the player controlling Primal Surge actually chooses to put a creature onto the battlefield, but then the replacement effect kicks in and instead sends that card into the library. Because the creature card wasn't put onto the battlefield, I'd expect the process end there and not repeat itself. Where am I making a mistake?
Apparently in this case, the "if you do" is referring to just choosing the option to put the permanent on the battlefield, not whether or not the permanent actually made it to the battlefield.
You can think of a replacement effect as just changing the words on the card (this isn't actually what happens but makes it easier to see what's going on). With the replacement effect, it would read as follows when a creature is exiled: "Exile the top card of your library. If it's a permanent card, you may shuffle it into your library. If you do, repeat this process." You could change "permanent" to "creature", but the replacement effect doesn't really affect that part, it just changes the action you perform on the permanent card if it's a creature.
@@thekilla1234 Well, the question is if the ability really reads like that on the stack or whether it stays the same and the game just does something else during resolution because of the replacement effect. Also note the replacement effect doesn't mention choosing to put something onto the battlefield. It says if something would be put on the battlefield (i.e. the game wants to put it there, so the player controlling Primal Surge has already made their choice), it gets shuffled into library instead.
@@janlinhart7914 You had to have chosen the option to put it on the battlefield for the replacement to even occur, satisfying the condition to continue on Primal Surge.
Lets suppose I have the classic mill combo of Retraction Helix + Traxos, Scourge of Kroog + Astral Cornucopia and am milling an opponent with Kozilek Butcher of Truth in their deck. In math terms I could iterate the mill 1 over and over leaving my opponent with a single card in library until I have concluded my loop where Kozilek has Not been milled(thus it must be the final card). This is sort of non-deterministic, but nobody wants to watch me sit through that forever…? To make it simpler, let’s suppose I have a Vedalken Orrery + Grand Abolisher, so my opponent cannot interact and I can mill their entire deck(by responding to the Kozilek trigger with flash to mill more cards) and can prove nothing else in their deck has a shuffle effect or would interact with my combo
There is not an official definition of a game state. That's why I offered my opinion of what should count rather than referencing the official definition like I usually do. Unlike the rules, the policy documents of Magic make no claim to be comprehensive, and indeed point out that they are specifically not intended to be so, as a comprehensive policy document is not practical to use, and may not even be possible to write.
(regarding infinite loops) Wouldn't Grizzly Bears printed from different sets count as different cards? There are official cards that reference sets. Shouldn't an Island from Arabian Nights be treated differently from any other Island because of City in a Bottle? Am I required to know that cards like City in a Bottle exist or don't exist for specific sets?
City in a Bottle effects the names of cards that were in the set and not the set symbol, so no they are not different cards. See DDR#413, or CR 206.3a referenced in that video.
But then, revealing any card from the top of Amy's library provides information to Nick. Even if the same card is revealed twice, Nick can start to deduce Amy's deck composition by the frequency of the cards being revealed. So, no matter what is revealed, the game state could be argued to be different, because Nick has new information each time. That's the natural consequence of treating the information Nick has as a different game state, so I think we shouldn't go this way at all
one question i always have in situations like this is, why don’t the magic rules allow you to repeat an action an infinite number of times? i suppose the answer is so that a judge doesn’t have to have a math degree to be able to explain to magic players the nature of infinity 😂
That's because in most cases performing an infinite number of actions is impossible. Let's say you perform an action that taps a permanent if it's untapped and untaps it if it is tapped. Then you declare that you want to perform this action an infinite number of times. What state is the permanent in at the end? There isn't a state that should be prefered above the other. The permanents state is undefined. But you are probably talking only about situations in which the anwser is uncertain after arbitrary number of steps, but aproches certainty as we go longer and longer. The thing is, in those situations the judge has the power to get the game to the state that would result from taking "an infinite number of actions", exactly how Judge Dave ruled the situation. Making a comprehensive description of situations that would allow a player to take infinite steps of a proccess would be very challenging and probably even provably impossible (as the magic game is turing-complete).
@@feliksporeba5851yes, his ruling does comport with a common-sense understanding of, as you point out, “arbitrarily large” numbers which aren’t a situation where a player can easily name a definite number in order to accomplish the intended effect. inevitably, all rulings are judgment calls, but my question is more, is there a way to get the kind of ruling that Dave made in this case more consistently? maybe not. and probablu irrelevant, because as the video says, my EDH games aren’t run under tournament policy and i routinely say i’ll do something infinite times. so, i’ll leave it untapped at the end 😉
@@seveneightlp There are very fringe cases where allowing infinite iterations doesn't really work. For example, let's say you loop an LED from your graveyard and say "I loop this infinite times". You then cast Tendrils on your opponent targetting infinite copies at them. Your opponent responds with Weather the Storm. What happens in this situation? The Tendrils player is doing infinite damage, but the Weather the Storm player is gaining infinite life. So now you need to argue infinites as you said. Tendrils deals 2, and Weather the Storm gains 3 life, so clearly Tendrils won't kill and both players end with infinite life, but the Tendrils player ends up with more infinite life than the Weather the Storm player. But now what if you have Aetherflux Resevoir? You have infinite life to spend on it, so you point infinite activations at your opponent. What happens now? Clearly the Aetherflux Resevoir player has way more life after the exchange, so they should be able to win. But because the opponent has infinite life they can't die, except they can because their infinite life is less than your infinite damage. At that point, you are trying to quantify the infinite values, so why not just disallow "infinity" and force players to pick a number instead? This removes infinity from the equation and makes it clear who wins. If they allowed "infinity" there would be so many arguments similar to the above example where the Weather the Storm player would refuse to lose because they have "infinite life" no matter how much you explain that they are dead, whereas with a concrete value like "10 trillion" you could prove to them that they are taking way more damage than they healed and they can't use "infinite life" as a counter argument.
Ya, at our table, if this came up, as soon as the first creature got shuffled back in, they would reveal their library to have no nonpremanent cards, n then just take all of the creatures out, shuffle them n put them back as their library, then shuffle the noncreatures n flip them over 1 at a time to determine wut order they enter, incase those permanents have abilities that trigger from other permanents entering the battlefield.
I have to disagree with the notion that revealing the same card on top twice in a row is the same game state. My proof is simple: If we are to believe that getting the same card twice on top after a shuffle is the same game state, then we are saying that shuffling a deck where no card placement is known has no effect. So at the start of a game, you draw 7 cards, and with the rest of your deck being in unknown order you should be allowed to shuffle for free. But try getting that move past anyone and they'll all disagree. Thus shuffling a deck, even one where every card is an unknown, changes the gamestate.
The criterion from the rule shown onscreen is that the game state needs to be identical in all relevant ways. Even if the order of the library is different, is that difference relevant? I have a hard time saying so, given that no player would even be able to tell the game had changed if some reality hacker were to magically transport the game from one state to the other.
Totally am on board with shortcuts like this. Would totally just let the Primal Surge player shortcut to their thing. I play Frenetic Efreet with Zndrsplt and always name roughly 1/2 - 3/4 of my remaining deck depending on the gamestate and ask: "Can I just draw half of the number that I called? If anybody has a problem I'll play it out for 10 minutes" Nobody has ever made me play it out, it's always enough to win anyway and I've only had 1 person ever grumble that it's "Technically Non-Deterministic" and even he didn't want to sit there for 10 minutes.
Disagree. You the surge player should show the revealed deck to the judge prior to a shuffle so he can see all potential hits. If there is an amulet of vigor in play or in deck this combo could result in a hasted any creature with double strike and trample with +~\+~ from the lans drops alone. If the combo is going to a winning position let it continue.
I guess I don't get how a shuffled library is not a change of game state. For time and sanity I would definitely opt for the "put in all permanents except creatures and shuffle your creatures as a new library."
