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The Slowest Way Possible to Win a Game of Magic

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I know this is something we may grumble to ourselves when we get paired against the Control deck, but it's not something that we usually actually encounter.

Until now.

Reddit comes through again, and in an odd subgame of finding the slowest possible way to win the game, they have determined a clear winner. In fact, there's so much math involved in determining this, I won't even try to understand that. I'll just trust them.

And they tell me it takes 21024 +9234 turns to win the game.

I don't even know what that means, but here's the "combo." The rules of the game basically involve a deck that cannot win the game except through its own power, in the slowest way possible, while playing against a brick wall.

The seven cards in the opening hand, that one will cast to win the game, are:

Lotus Bloom

Dwell on the Past

Doomsday (we all knew it would probably involve this)

Ivory Tower

Emerald Medallion

Growth Spasm

Magus of the Tabernacle

The secret to winning the slowest game possible.
The secret to winning the slowest game possible.

In case you were curious how to win this slowly, here's the full breakdown. Maths. Don't say I didn't warn you.

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Corbin Hosler

Corbin Hosler is a journalist living in Norman, Oklahoma (also known as the hotbed of Magic). He started playing in Shadowmoor and chased the Pro Tour dream for a few years, culminating in a Star City Games Legacy Open finals appearance in 2011 before deciding to turn to trading and speculation full-time. He writes weekly at QuietSpeculation.com and biweekly for LegitMTG. He also cohosts Brainstorm Brewery, the only financial podcast on the net. He can best be reached @Chosler88 on Twitter.

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10 thoughts on “The Slowest Way Possible to Win a Game of Magic

  1. At the university we once did a comparable challenge where you had to build 2 decks of I think 10 cards each (may have been 10 cards total) and figure out how much life could be gained when they faced off. No combination of cards could form an infinite combo and you could die in all the usual ways so eventually decking became an issue. The winning setup gained more life than there are atoms in the universe. Unfortunately I had misunderstood that both decks together couldn’t go infinite, thinking each deck separately couldn’t go infinite and no infinite combo’s could happen during the game, but, it was quite a lot of fun to think about anyway. I think the winning deck resolved around Fasting in some way.

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