devtrackers.gg
Long time magic player here (nearly 20 years...jeez). Now that Wilderness Reclamation has come out and pushed Nexus of Fate decks to be both more popular, and more powerful, and with what happened to Shahar Shenhar on stream (https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/al9d9r/check_out_2_time_world_champion_shahar_shenhar/), the discussion around applying the rules with regard to loops has now reached a zenith on this sub. It's clear that a solution is absolutely necessary. Suggestions have included:
- Banning Nexus of Fate
- Moving to an MTGO chess timer
- Relying on banning individual players
But those come with their own problems, either changing the game as a whole, or being ineffective. Given that the game servers should know the exact contents of each player's library and hand, how about the following:
At the beginning of each turn, check the following:
- The identity of the active player.
- The contents of the active player's hand, library, graveyard, and exile.
- Each player's life total.
- Whether any creature took damage on the last turn.
- The number and identity of permanents on the battlefield
Then, if each of 1, 2, 3, and 5 answer 'the same as last turn' and 4 answers 'no', then determine the active player is looping. There has been zero change in the game state. Allow this to repeat a certain number of times (say, 5) before warning the active player that they need to affect the game state or they will be given a game loss. Then after maybe another 2-3 loops force the loss on them.
This method should be able to automatically determine a Nexus of Fate loop and solve it without any manual intervention. Are there any programmers out there (or WotC staff? Not sure if they read this sub) who might be familiar with any restrictions in Unity/server architecture that might make this impossible? Are there any flaws to these kinds of checks that you can think of? Any unintended consquences?
Edit: Added check 5 for permanents on the battlefield.
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