Has This Happened/What Would Happ
General forum
Posted on July 20, 2020, 1:06 p.m. by DarkMagician
So in sanctioned play whenever you can go infinite with an ability that gains you life you have to state how many times you're activating the ability and how much life you're gaining. So what happens if you choose a googolplex and has anybody ever done so at a major event?
It's a little silly. If it's essentially infinite, your basically saying I win unless you can get your own infinite combo. So now you have to remember, after executing your combo, I complete this combo X amount of times, where X is whatever bullshit number you landed on. There is very rarely going to be a non-infinite situation where your dealing damage that is hypothetically just short of that redundantly big number. It's either infinite or its not. IMO. I'm not a fan of "I win because you misspoke"
July 20, 2020 1:36 p.m.
SynergyBuild says... #4
Just play 4xDoubling Season, Opalescence, and Rite of Replication kicked onto the Doubling Season. You get a total of 84xDoubling Seasons, if you include the original. Then play Eyeless Watcher.
2^85, which is something like 3x10^25, which is a bit over 1 million ;)
July 20, 2020 2:02 p.m. Edited.
DarkMagician says... #5
DarkHero I'm talking about gaining life, not dealing damage. And in a sanctioned tournament you can't say you're performing an action an infinite number of times because infinite isn't a number.
Massacar DeinoStinkus to write out a googolplex on paper would require an amount of paper with a greater mass than the mass of the entire milky way lol.
July 20, 2020 2:37 p.m.
DarkMagician yes... a googolplex is an incredibly large number. But you can literally write "Googolplex" for sanity's sake.
July 20, 2020 3:18 p.m.
DarkMagician: I think the more important question is "but why?"
DarkHero hit the nail on the head, what's the point of setting your life to a billion if ten thousand (for example) is well above anything short of another infinite combo which can knock your life total down to zero. And then at that point, your chosen life total is irrelevant.
But if your opponent across the course of a game can maybe deal 150 damage (let's pick modern as the format) then if I have ten thousand life or if I have a quintillion life, what's the benefit to having the stupidly large life total? Especially since your opponent can ask you what your life total is and you have to tell them. So while you could say "a googolplex", once you have taken damage then it's no longer that nice, round number. Have fun reading that life total out.
Plus in addition to all of that, I'm pretty sure a judge would tell you to pick a less stupid number or get out.
July 20, 2020 7:28 p.m.
""Googolplex minus forty-seven" doesn't seem that hard."
A statement which proves the pointlessness of setting one's life total to a googolplex.
July 20, 2020 8:05 p.m.
whenever i get infinite i usually just say "arbitrarily large amount" as both players pretty much understand that it doesn't matter. i'm picking a number thats high enough that it doesn't matter anymore. we then continue play assuming the number is big enough. i may have said a googleplex during some match, or at least some other specific large number. no one particularly seemed to care all that much which number i chose. certainly no judge was ever called.
July 20, 2020 8:51 p.m.
TriusMalarky says... #10
I just say 1764. It's 42^2, so it is very much the answer to everything. If I think it's too low, I'll go 1.5013094e+68 which is 42^42.
Just sayin'
July 21, 2020 10:15 a.m.
WolfWitcher518 says... #11
DarkHero: i don't believe "misspeaking" has ever caused anyone to lose when dealing with infinite combos. that sort of thing happens more when people use cards that say "choose a card name" and choose the wrong name, in which they absolutely deserve to lose. if someone plays a Slaughter Games and says Borborygmos while i'm playing Borborygmos Enraged, then thats too bad for them.
July 21, 2020 2:02 p.m.
Flooremoji says... #12
WolfWitcher518 so you disagree with that rules change?
July 21, 2020 4:02 p.m.
aholder7: the only issue with that is if you're doing something like creating tokens. I was talking to another player (Player A) who was recounting a modern game where his opponent (Player B) was running a Splinter Twin deck (when that was still a thing) and made "like a billion tokens" only for Player A to cast Rakdos Charm so Player B took "like a billion damage". This then caused Player B to argue that he hadn't defined the number so he shouldn't have to take lethal.
It also shows why picking realistic numbers is important. Sure, you're probably safer picking a billion life over making a billion tokens, however why pick a massive number if you don't need to.
July 21, 2020 5:40 p.m.
as someone who has cast Rakdos Charm against a Splinter Twin deck on a few occasions. i assure you, they take lethal. the problem is when they don't specify a number at all and simply say "i cast Splinter Twin and kill you". because you know they mean they make some large number even if they didn't say it. But if you ask "how many do you make?" they now realize you have something like Rakdos Charm or an equivalent card and now decide to figure out exactly how many they should make instead of the ludicrous amount they were going to do before.
July 21, 2020 10:04 p.m.
WolfWitcher518 says... #15
Flooremoji: i know which rules change you mean, but would have to look more into the specifics of it. basically all i know about it is that "if you know what the opponent meant, then they meant that card", but in cases of creatures/planeswalkers sharing the same name it gets murky. especially when the card they "say" (but not the one they meant) is a full card name by itself, such as with the borborygmos example.
July 22, 2020 12:44 a.m.
WolfWitcher518 says... #16
enpc: that situation has a lot more to do with player B's pettiness than the wording of "like a billion". i'd have pointed out to him that by his own logic, his opponent wouldnt take lethal either since he didn't define a number. watch the cognitive dissonance melt his face.
July 22, 2020 12:53 a.m.
WolfWitcher518: I'm pretty sure that poeple who act that petty don't care about congitive dissonance, they just want to complain when something doesn't go their way, regardless of how much of a hypocrite it makes them. But poeple being (insert insult of choice) is only tangentially related to the thread :P
aholder7: Without doubt. The "I do a non-descript amount of damage and kill you" is one of the more annoying things as you don't want to give away that your opponent picking a big, dumb number will in fact kill them. The story may have gone more like you were describing (and I could just be telling it wrong) however that was quite a few years ago so my memory is a bit foggy on it.
But it still illustrates the point, picking a big, dumb number for the sake of picking a big, dumb number is at least unnecessary and at most can potentially backfire in one's face.
Massacar says... #2
You just state the number of times and that's the number you get. You might need a pen/paper to write stuff down.
July 20, 2020 1:23 p.m.