Infinite Mana and Infinite Tokens + Pontiff of the blight == infinite extort?
Asked by gufymike 11 years ago
If I create infinite mana and tokens with say Nim Deathmantle + Grave Titan + Ashnod's Altar and I have Pontiff of Blight and Initiates of the Ebon Hand in play, can I cast a spell and extort that infinite times? I guess what I'm asking is does Pontiff of Blight ability affect tokens. I think it does because the wording is 'other creatures you control' not 'Other nontoken creatures you control' and just verifying.
Technically it's not infinite. You cannot create infinite of anything, it must be a finite number.
May 16, 2013 10:38 a.m.
MindAblaze says... #4
well, if something is only confined by your desire it can technically be described as infinite. You choose when it stops
May 16, 2013 10:40 a.m.
aloehart199 says... #6
Extort only triggers once per creature you have so you would have to generate the tokens with titan, sac him and 1 token to the alter to generate mana for the mantle, netting you 1 token per cycle. Repeat this however many times you like to generate a few hundred zombies. Then you'll have to sacrifice some tokens and cast a spell and you can only extort the number of times that is equal to the number of creatures you control.
The only part of the game that is "infinite" by the official rules though are boundless loops which end in draws
May 16, 2013 11:06 a.m.
The extort combo you're making isn't and won't ever be infinite, though technically it could. Though I'm pretty sure that if you did the steps to your combo enough times to run out the time you'd be penalized for stalling the game.
You can force an infinite loop, if there's a Oblivion Ring exiling another Oblivion Ring and nothing else on the battlefield, and then someone plays a 3rd Oblivion Ring . If that is the board state, the game will end with a draw, unless someone interrupts it somehow. This is because there is no "may" clause.
With your combo you can simply chose not to perform the combo actions anymore, and thus it is not truly infinite. Though arbitrarily large.
An "infinite" combo would be Sanguine Bond + Exquisite Blood , +1 damage or life gain. Though it usually stops when the opposing player is at 0 life or less. (Bar something like a Platinum Angel ), in which case the loop would continue.
May 16, 2013 11:16 a.m.
Absinthman says... #8
Summary:
Combo is viable.
Use "bzillion", rather than "infinite".
May 16, 2013 11:29 a.m.
Keep in mind that the number you choose has to be a real number.
May 16, 2013 11:42 a.m.
I used infinite for simplicity sake. I was more worried about the combo. The nitpicking on use of infinite is useless because most people define this as an 'infinite combo' knowing infinite in play is limited to a real number. It only takes a couple weeks playing to learn this.
May 16, 2013 11:58 a.m.
aloehart199 says... #11
great in commander until someone in the crazy format drop Damnation off of an Alchemist's Refuge
May 16, 2013 12:07 p.m.
true aloehart199, but you can still respond to that by casting something and extorting before Damnation resolves and/or restart with 4 mana open as the two of the 3 main pieces are artifacts, the reanimater and sac outlet, so you can pull out the rest of the combo pieces.
May 16, 2013 12:16 p.m.
Darkness1835 says... #13
Arguing over the technicality of "infinite" is irrelevant to this thread. Yes, you can do this combo forever until you choose to stop it. No, it is not "infinite".
May 16, 2013 12:29 p.m.
Use Graham's number +1000 as your choice in where to stop the loop. That way any non-infinite source of disruption to your combo is trivialized and thus you don't even have to keep track yourself. (The +1000 is just in case your opponent is REALLY nitpicky about tracking numbers).
cedrix says... Accepted answer #1
Yes it does work, this works great for ending edh games :)
May 16, 2013 10:22 a.m.