Sample format: Infinite magic 1 [1]
Jul. 18th, 2008 05:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackIs there a simple example which would make use of the rules? How about infinite magic: each player starts with infinite life?
It would be a place where people who like making infinite combos could play, because those would always be the best way to win, and never beaten to the punch by someone attacking for 20 or 30 points of damage :) I doubt that would be a fun format forever, but it would be very nice to try :)
The normal methods of kills would be:
* doing infinite damage
* special cases, like "you win the game" cards, and giving ten poison counters
* running out of cards (that's a loss)
* doing damage each turn for an infinite number of turns[2]
Of course, there'd be some other differences:
* Creatures and cards which attack for a finite amount of damage don't really matter
* Cards with drawbacks like "opponent may pay X life to counter this card" are useless
* Gaining life is really useless (Unless you find some way to gain an uncountable amount of life, one lot of infinite damage can take out all of your life however much you gain.)
* Any card that has "pay life" as a cost gets a lot better. (Fortunately, most of these don't matter.)
* Any card which lets you pay life do something repeatedly is insanely good. These are pretty broken even if you only have a finite amount of life, so they're not that many.
* You'd really have to play cards that always let you put cards back into your deck after you've used them, else you'd lose when you run out of cards.
* Spells which do X damage to you and your opponent are as good as ones that do damage only to your opponent
* If you gain an infinite amount of mana, you don't burst if you've nowhere to put it (Or maybe you should?)
On the other hand, some deck designs from finite magic could win in exactly the same way:
* By doing infinite damage (not just "much more than 20" damage, but actually infinite)
* By dealing ten poison counters.
* By running the opponent out of cards.
* By making a "lock" where the opponent can't act. You still need some way to win but either (a) opponent running out of cards (b) eventually finding your own cards that do infinite damage or (c) doing one or two damage a turn work fine
* By Phage the Untouchable "When this does combat damage to your opponent, they lose the game", * Or by Barren Glory "When you control no other... you win the game" etc
There would still be a race to see which of these got there first, just like normal magic.
[1] We're not going to run out of instance numbers soon :)
[2] I think if you both deal damage every turn it's a draw, even if you do more damage, because both limits are infinity. Does that sound right?
It would be a place where people who like making infinite combos could play, because those would always be the best way to win, and never beaten to the punch by someone attacking for 20 or 30 points of damage :) I doubt that would be a fun format forever, but it would be very nice to try :)
The normal methods of kills would be:
* doing infinite damage
* special cases, like "you win the game" cards, and giving ten poison counters
* running out of cards (that's a loss)
* doing damage each turn for an infinite number of turns[2]
Of course, there'd be some other differences:
* Creatures and cards which attack for a finite amount of damage don't really matter
* Cards with drawbacks like "opponent may pay X life to counter this card" are useless
* Gaining life is really useless (Unless you find some way to gain an uncountable amount of life, one lot of infinite damage can take out all of your life however much you gain.)
* Any card that has "pay life" as a cost gets a lot better. (Fortunately, most of these don't matter.)
* Any card which lets you pay life do something repeatedly is insanely good. These are pretty broken even if you only have a finite amount of life, so they're not that many.
* You'd really have to play cards that always let you put cards back into your deck after you've used them, else you'd lose when you run out of cards.
* Spells which do X damage to you and your opponent are as good as ones that do damage only to your opponent
* If you gain an infinite amount of mana, you don't burst if you've nowhere to put it (Or maybe you should?)
On the other hand, some deck designs from finite magic could win in exactly the same way:
* By doing infinite damage (not just "much more than 20" damage, but actually infinite)
* By dealing ten poison counters.
* By running the opponent out of cards.
* By making a "lock" where the opponent can't act. You still need some way to win but either (a) opponent running out of cards (b) eventually finding your own cards that do infinite damage or (c) doing one or two damage a turn work fine
* By Phage the Untouchable "When this does combat damage to your opponent, they lose the game", * Or by Barren Glory "When you control no other... you win the game" etc
There would still be a race to see which of these got there first, just like normal magic.
[1] We're not going to run out of instance numbers soon :)
[2] I think if you both deal damage every turn it's a draw, even if you do more damage, because both limits are infinity. Does that sound right?
no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 05:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 06:11 pm (UTC)If you can play Necropotence, you can draw all of your library for free and choose whatever you want, so it's a killer. Although, it's not that much better than drawing fifteen cards, you still need an infinite combo to draw.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 06:20 pm (UTC)I'm actually curious what decks would work in this system. I'm a little interested in magic, but don't really follow it.
I don't know if you'd play with all cards legal, or play with the vintage banned list, or if there's any point playing with the legacy banned and restricted lists.
If you get necropotence out, you get an unsurpassable tutor, you get to draw any cards you want. So if doesn't matter if your kill is one card, or two or three cards, or more, but you need an infinite damage or lock combo. But what's the least mana necessary?
And whether necropotence ought to be banned, or if it's interesting enough if you fight round it.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 09:21 pm (UTC)This format would have the drawback that you'd kinda have to build your decks for it. Although we could just pick out the few of my decks which have potentially infinite combos in (I've probably got about 6), pit some against each other and say "Whoever gets to the infinite combo first wins".
no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 11:42 pm (UTC)Yeah, quite. I'm not sure it could ever be different enough to be interesting, but similar enough for archetypes to carry across. "Pick out the few of my decks which have potentially infinite combos in and say whoever gets to the infinite combo first wins," would be a good place to start if you did want to.
I think it's going to turn out to be more of a thought experiment, and that it would make so much of what a normal magic deck is irrelevant that it wouldn't really be magic. But I was curious to find out, I'm still curious to know what the metagame would be, especially if you did allow infinite decks (with and without four-card restrictions); and you never know, one might get some useful transfinite house rules out of it :)