[thom]

Yeah, I’ve come round to this because the base case is a zero mana activated ability that you never stop activating. That ought to give you a loss on time the moment your opponent calls a judge and you refuse to stop. More complex loops where you nevertheless choose to continue and can’t make a convincing case you’re progressing should be the same. The recent ruling just short circuits that discussion for one specific combo so I suppose I’m fine. For online play we have clocks and they should fix MTGO’s stack depth.

I’m still not convinced uncontrollable loops should be forcibly avoided. That seems unnatural and I’m not really against draws per se. I guess I’d just feel very angry in chess if I were forced to play a worse move and lose when a repetition leading to a draw was available.

[caf]

In the recent ruling case (Amalia/Wildgrowth Walker), neither decision (mill cards or leave the same card on top of the deck) ends the loop, though. The loop will still continue with an empty library. The idea is that making the mill choice might eventually tempt the opponent to end the loop, if they have the ability - so that does seem a lot different to the "you must choose to stop looping if you can" case.