imagine this scene but with Georg Cantor in it somewhere

Obā-san

Klinotaxis

you CAN'T

i JUST DID

i like that this basically amounts to what would be an exploit that a judge would throw out in an actual card game

also, i bet cantor would be pretty good at yu-gi-oh

Calica

i'm pretty sure there actually are magic decks that cause infinite loops

Obā-san

there are infinite loops in every card game

even poker

that said IIRC in magic you cant just say "i go infinite" you have to declare a number, you can just make it like 3 trillion

unless of course the loop is out of your control in which case i think it's illegal?

i know infinite loops that are outside the players control are illegal in yu-gi-oh

Calica

quick google search suggests that infinite loops in magic trigger an immediate draw.

i know chess has a draw from threefold repetition, and then go has the ko rule that forbids repetition outright

Fossilmaiden

Calica said:

i'm pretty sure there actually are magic decks that cause infinite loops

There are, and unless a player has a way of cancelling the loop (i.e. destroying a component of it), the game is a draw.

The most infamous example is Worldgorger Dragon + Animate Dead. When Worldgorger Dragon enters the battlefield, all other cards you control are removed from play. When it leaves the battlefield, all the cards are returned.

Animate Dead takes a creature from your graveyard and puts it on the battlefield for as long as Animate Dead is in play, so casting it on the Dragon causes the following:

1) Worldgorger Dragon enters the battlefield
2) All cards you control, including Animate Dead, are removed from the battlefield
3) Worldgorger Dragon is now dead again.
4) All your cards come back to the battlefield, including Animate Dead, and the Dragon comes back to life.
5) Return to step 1.

Yarrun XIX

And then there's stuff like Ded Mikaeus and Triskelion

LOAD Cherry

Yarrun XIX said:

And then there's stuff like Ded Mikaeus and Triskelion

Wow that combo is almost too easy to execute.

Yarrun XIX

pulling it off should make the user easy to execute

and doing it in EDH gets them a good flogging beforehand

Fossilmaiden

unban protean hulk in edh

LOAD Cherry

unban most good green cards in EDH.

Odradek

Does this prove Ancient Egyptian mathematics was more sophisticated than we knew?