Is is possible to create an infinite loop?
Asked by Alien_King 9 years ago
Is it possible to create an infinite loop by having x2 or more Parallel Lives on the battlefield, then playing a token creation card like Hive Stirrings?
From Gatherer:
"If you control two Parallel Lives, then the number of tokens created is four times the original number. If you control three, then the number of tokens created is eight times the original number, and so on."
The general principle of the thing is: If a card uses the word "instead" somewhere in the text, it has what's called a replacement effect. Replacement effects only replace whatever they replace once.
In this case, 2 Parallel Lives are in play and a token making event happens. Both of them want to replace this event with making twice as many tokens. The first one replaces "tokens" with "2x tokens", and the second one replaces "2x tokens" with "(2x2x)=4x tokens". It ends there, because no new events have happened, the existing ones just changed.
Boza says... #1
While there are ways to create infinite loops in Magic, this is not one of them. Using those two cards, you will create (2 to the power of N)x2 tokens, where N is the number of parallel lives.
So, by using 3 parallel lives and 1 Hive stirrings, you will get 2 to the power of 3 times 2 tokens or 16 tokens. Using 10 parallel lives you will get 2048 tokens, etc.
February 26, 2015 5:22 a.m.