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by lanternfish 924 days ago
There are multiple unresolvable game states (panglacial wurm...) but there are catch all rules which allows judges to say 'you're not trying to win, so your blocking line results in a game loss'. They have banned cards before (painter's servant) which resulted in competitive non-deterministic winning sequences that forced hundreds of game actions to resolve.
1 comments

> 'you're not trying to win, so your blocking line results in a game loss'.

Is that how it goes now? It used to be infinite loops (e.g. playing a Faceless Butcher when the only creature in play is a Faceless Butcher that exiled another Faceless Butchers) resulted in a draw, not a loss.

Forced infinite loops are still a draw, but setting up a complex-enough board state where the infinite-ness or forced-ness of a particular loop is hard for the judge to decide on will just result in a game loss.

Put another way: you can try to set up a game state in a competitive match where the judge has to solve the Collatz conjecture, but because that would take way too long and clearly be contrary to good sportsmanship, you'd never reach that point.