Please keep the forum protocol in mind when posting.

Rules Q&A » Post: Omniscience and Petals of Insight as Shortcut

Omniscience and Petals of Insight as Shortcut

Aug. 11, 2015 04:38:12 PM

Thomas Weber
German-speaking countries

Omniscience and Petals of Insight as Shortcut

Omniscience and Petals of Insight, can I use a shortcut for these two cards ? After a certain number of passages ( number of cards in the library is not divisible by 3 ) I can first say that I know exactly of all the cards , where they lie in the Bib . After that I can ( theoretically ) work out after how many rounds the 2 ( or 3 ) cards that I use for my Combo need ( such as a Storm spell and counterspell ) , lying on top of the Bib and then use draw 3 cards mode . Sorry for the English , has been translated with google because my English is not good enough. Im german.

Edit: Als ergänzenden Hinweis (In deutsch deshalb, weil ich dem Übesetzungsprogramm bei Google nicht traue und ich befürchte, das wichtige Infos verloren gehen): Die Anzahl der Durchgänge ist feststellbar, damit ist die Zahl, die man nennen muß, eindeutig bestimmbar. Was aber genauso eindeutig ist: Es wird nicht jeder dieses Berechnen können und auch nur ein geringer Promillesatz (wenn überhaupt) in annehmbarer Zeit.

Was mich zu der Annahme verleitet, das es geht, ist dieser Abschnitt:

Infinite scry. A player with the ability to scry 1 ‘infinitely’ may shortcut this action by examining the library without reordering it and cutting it to a specific location. A player with the ability to scry 2 or more infinitely may shortcut this action by rearranging her library in any way she likes, but she must do so quickly. Players are not required to know the mathematics or technical steps behind this. August 2013.

Ganz besonders der markierte Teil. Er ist auf der verlinkten Seite unter Shortcuts:

http://wiki.magicjudges.org/en/w/List_of_Official_Rulings

Edited Thomas Weber (Aug. 12, 2015 02:19:48 PM)

Aug. 12, 2015 02:24:15 PM

Gavin Duggan
Judge (Uncertified)

None

Omniscience and Petals of Insight as Shortcut

Reply posted with permission from the forum Netrep:

tl;dr - Yes. State that you're going to cast it 410,758 times, and then you're you're guaranteed to have the three cards you want in a row. No math needed at the event; 410,758 will always get you what you want.

Long version: Fortunately, the number isn't theoretical, it's finite and fixed. You need to specify the entirety of the final result to avoid the “Four Horsemen rule”, but you can do that by saying that the outcome is “these three cards in a row, followed by the rest of the deck sorted by collector number.”

Unlike the Four Horsemen combo, which requires a random process (shuffling), that arrangement can always be achieved in at most 410,758 castings of Petals of Insight (assuming there are less than 60 cards in the library, and the number of cards is not divisible by 3). So if you cast Petals 410,758 times, your deck will be sorted in the
desired order. It probably needs far less (duplicate cards, chance pre-ordering, less than 59 cards in the deck, etc) but if the deck ends up sorted in less than the maximum number of castings, you just go through the remaining iterations without changing the order of the deck… so 410,758 will always do.

So,

* the number of iterations is finite and fixed
* the outcome is deterministic
* executing these loop iterations takes zero play time, same as any other loop (See the linked August 2013 ruling)

That that's good enough for the loop rule to apply. Once you've done so, you just need to manually cycle through the deck to put the three cards you want on top. That can require up to one more casting of Petals for each card in the deck, each time putting the top three cards directly onto the bottom in the same order if they're not the
three you want. This part can't be covered by the loop rules, but takes less than a minute and the game state is advancing towards a fixed end, so it's not slow play.