Infinite life with random probability
Asked by SimicPower 9 years ago
Say you have Tavern Swindler on the battlefield. You also have an infinite untap combo, such as Illusionist's Bracers + Kiora's Follower + Kiora's Follower . You can now untap Tavern Swindler whenever you chose, and you can reuse her ability any number of times.
Now, say Rhox Faithmender is on the battlefield. Now when you win Tavern Swindler's coinflip, you gain 12 life instead of 6 life. Statistically, you should net more life than you lose if you activate the ability multiple times, and since you can activate it infinite times, so this should be an infinite life combo.
However, there is a chance that you will get really unlucky with your coinflips and end up losing all of your life, enough that you can't pay for her ability anymore. Even with hundreds of life, there is still a chance that you could have a really unlucky streak.
I realize that strictly speaking, there are no "infinite combos" in magic, but you could say, I activate the ability until I am at 3000 life.
So, can this be used as an infinite life combo, or must you actually flip a coin every time because of the slight statistical chance that you will lose all of your life?
nighthawk101 says... #2
You must flip a coin each time.
If there is the chance that you will lose all your life, then the combo does not have a definite outcome and a shortcut (ex. "I flip X coins and gain Y life.") cannot be used, since you don't know what will happen.
December 28, 2014 9:05 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... Accepted answer #3
nighthawk101 is correct.
From the CR:
716.2a At any point in the game, the player with priority may suggest a shortcut by describing a sequence of game choices, for all players, that may be legally taken based on the current game state and the predictable results of the sequence of choices. This sequence may be a non- repetitive series of choices, a loop that repeats a specified number of times, multiple loops, or nested loops, and may even cross multiple turns. It cant include conditional actions, where the outcome of a game event determines the next action a player takes. The ending point of this sequence must be a place where a player has priority, though it need not be the player proposing the shortcut.
Because coin flips do not give predictable results (the word predictable here meaning guaranteed, not statistically predictable as probabilities are), you cannot shortcut through them. Each repetition of this loop depends on you not losing the game for having 0 or less life at any point, and you cannot predict with absolute certainty that you will not lose the game in this way.
You can't cheat chance in this game. If something is not guaranteed (such as the outcome of a coin flip or of a combo that depends on cards you must draw to use), then you must do it manually.
SimicPower says... #1
This is a theoretical question. In reality, I would rather play Soulmender.
December 28, 2014 9:02 p.m.