Infinity, and beyond. Also, Warmahordes.

Hi,

Pretty relaxed night at the Dueling Grounds last night, Magic and some Warmahordes.  I was excited on arrival because I'd discovered my first card combination for Magic.  I've taken to spending my "desk lunches" perusing Wizards of the Coast's website, focusing on their Magic articles and the Gatherer utility.  The latter is a database of all their Magic cards with stats, rulings, updated rules text etc.

One article that intrigued me recently was on building a deck "out" from a single card.  I'd noticed this one the other day, and had decided to do a theoretical deck-building exercise, looking for cards under 25 cents (so a full deck would be around $20 with the sideboard cards, less than the pre-constructed starter deck I found).  The one that caught my eye (and which I still want to find a way to use) was Woodwraith Corrupter

The idea of the woods coming alive and attacking is too cool for school ;)

Once I had that card in mind, I started using Gatherer, searching for possible interactions; things that affect Forests, things that affect Saprolings, etc.  What I ended up finding was an interaction between these two cards, Sporemound, and Life and Limb:

Once both these cards are in play, all you have to do is play a land card.  Then the Sporemound makes a token, which is a Saproling and a Forest, which makes the Sporemound make a token, which is a Saproling and a Forest, which makes the Sporemound make a token, which is a Saproling and a Forest, which makes the Sporemound make a token, which is a Saproling and a Forest, which makes the Sporemound make a token, etc.  to infinity.  Basically, you end up in an infinite loop, with infinite green mana and infinite 1/1 creatures.

Now, the problem with this, is that infinite loops break the game (which defaults to a draw), which means to make it usable, the active player needs to be able to interrupt the cycle, as does the opponent if they wish to avoid the draw.  I'm now in the process of figuring out the best option(s) for that, as well as what to do with an infinite amount of mana and weedy little guys.  As it turns out, this combo had already been discovered and exploited, but I'm chuffed with myself, in spite of it This is the first time I've really connected the dots and discovered something like this.



After a few hands of Magic sadly bereft of infinite loops, ernieR, Otherdave and I say down to Otherdave's first Warmahordes game, a 15 point free-for-all.  ernieR brought his Trolls, and Otherdave brought Legion; Vayle, Typhon, and an Angelius came to play.



The game was mostly about demonstrating mechanics for Otherdave, really.  It also rather rapidly became about killing Typhon, when Otherdave advanced his beastie, and unloaded three flame sprays, one from each head.  That got ernieR's and my attention pretty quickly ;)



I sent in my Savage for some cheap beats, and ernieR threw in everything he had in range.  Between all of us, it was just (just!) enough to do in the great hydra.  Otherdave got in an assassination run with his Angelius against Madrak, which left it and Vayle against the might of Skorne.



Dave tried to pull the same trick on the Gladiator, but there was more beef than the flying snake could handle.  The return beats finished off the serpent, and Vayle was looking at several tons of angry Heffalump and friends.



We called it at that point.  Otherdave said he found things a little intimidating at first, but that it "clicked" for him part way through.  Hopefully that means some more games in the future.

FMB