if I have altar of dementia, Saffi Eriksdotter, and Sun titan I can mill out any number of players. If someone has an eldrazi in his deck, and only one, can I say to mill out his library and have the eldrazi be the last card since I can technically mill his deck infinitely until that result would normally happen anyway?
You cannot do something infinitely in Magic. You have to pick a number. Plus, with the combo you mention, each mill happens six at a time.
What happens when the Eldrazi hits the graveyard is this: The trigger to shuffle it and the graveyard back into the library is put on the stack. The remaining effect that mills continues until completed, and then the trigger resolves. So, the mill up to six would happen from the Titan, and then the trigger would hit if one of the cards was a legendary Eldrazi, and the creature and the graveyard would shuffle back into the library.
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Standard: WBRG Aggro-Reanimator Humans GRBW
Modern: UR Twinning RU G Venus Fly Trap G U Artifacts Aggro U
Sadly you cannot as you cannot state how many times the action would need to be done before you get the desired result. In a casual environment, aka non-tournament, sure there's no issue with this. But in a tournament this would be slow play and you can get in trouble for pursuing it.
Any format where Altar of Dementia is legal, graveyard order matters, so there's no way you can say for exact certain what the state will be that you want to create. If your opponent somehow had 6x + 1 cards in their library (such as 37, 43, etc.) and you wanted to mill their whole library except for the Emrakul, and this wasn't in an eternal format, it would make sense to me, but a judge wouldn't allow it because, as has already been said, you can't do something an infinite amount of times. You have to choose a number of times to do it, and if it doesn't work after a certain amount of time and you keep trying, a judge can claim you're stalling, so mostly this sort of thing doesn't work.
I've never understood the logic of this line of reasoning; we have a random result to a predetermined sequence of events, but we're going to do it the number of times required to produce a specific result.
Since shuffling your graveyard into your library produces a random library order, which is not dependent on the previous library order. It would be like saying "I'm going to flip this coin the number of times it takes to get heads as a result." There's no way to guarantee heads will be the result, because each time you flip the coin, you have a 50% chance of getting heads. The chances do not change with each flip. Likewise, the result of shuffling your deck is random every time you shuffle it. There's no way to ever guarantee that the Eldrazi will be the last card in it.
Now, the reason this doesn't work within the rules has already been stated; you can't state the number of iterations of the combo you need in order to achieve the desired result. If it were me, I'd say that it doesn't even work in casual for these reasons.
ok thanks. I know the result is random each time, but if done for a billion or something then chances are the eldrazi would be the last card. I see that it's not something that I can prove will happen no matter what number I pick. The probability would be in my favor, but I guess since I can't prove it definitively I can't do it. Thanks for the help.
ok thanks. I know the result is random each time, but if done for a billion or something then chances are the eldrazi would be the last card. I see that it's not something that I can prove will happen no matter what number I pick. The probability would be in my favor, but I guess since I can't prove it definitively I can't do it. Thanks for the help.
Yah, it would be far too easy to turn a certain loss into a draw if you could simply repeat this until time ran out :p.
My Saffi deck
What happens when the Eldrazi hits the graveyard is this: The trigger to shuffle it and the graveyard back into the library is put on the stack. The remaining effect that mills continues until completed, and then the trigger resolves. So, the mill up to six would happen from the Titan, and then the trigger would hit if one of the cards was a legendary Eldrazi, and the creature and the graveyard would shuffle back into the library.
Standard:
WBRG Aggro-Reanimator Humans GRBW
Modern:
UR Twinning RU
G Venus Fly Trap G
U Artifacts Aggro U
Legacy:
B Reanimator B
WU Stoneblade UW
EDH
WBGGhave, Guru of SporesGBW
URGRiku of the Two ReflectionsGRU
WUBRGScion of the Ur-DragonGRBUW
Casual
Far too many to list
Since shuffling your graveyard into your library produces a random library order, which is not dependent on the previous library order. It would be like saying "I'm going to flip this coin the number of times it takes to get heads as a result." There's no way to guarantee heads will be the result, because each time you flip the coin, you have a 50% chance of getting heads. The chances do not change with each flip. Likewise, the result of shuffling your deck is random every time you shuffle it. There's no way to ever guarantee that the Eldrazi will be the last card in it.
Now, the reason this doesn't work within the rules has already been stated; you can't state the number of iterations of the combo you need in order to achieve the desired result. If it were me, I'd say that it doesn't even work in casual for these reasons.
When in doubt, call a judge.
Objectivist here. Hit me up to talk philosophy.
My Saffi deck
Yah, it would be far too easy to turn a certain loss into a draw if you could simply repeat this until time ran out :p.
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