Mei Feng loop...is it op?

[Rurouni Benshin]

Far from "OP", I consider it utterly terrible sportsmanship. I have no issue using Mei Feng and her emissary, but if you're referring to cycling your deck using rail walk for whatever reason, I simply don't consider it a legitimate tactic; it's an exploit, and it has no place in my games of Malifaux. Using it to begin an actual rail walk chain is fine, IMO, but doesn't really change Mei's tactics other than making long rail walks far easier to achieve.

/2cents

Completely agree.  It should and ONLY should provide a reliable way for her to Rail Walk from construct/scrap marker to construct/scrap marker.  Anyone attempting this in a casual game would determine whether or not I play this person again in the future.  For purposes of a tournament, I'd make it my every effort to minimize the amount of time being wasted on the effort, and then having a lengthy discussion with the TO about it after the round is over.

That said, I don't believe it to be OP.  It doesn't change the way Mei Feng is played, and you're equally as likely to burn through good cards as you are bad cards.  It's a pittance of a legitimate tactic at best, and a stall tactic at worst.

[Breng77]

I'd be willing to let an opponent use it to reshuffle so long as the black joker is out of the deck, beyond that it gets silly.  Stating that it can be used to sculpt the deck would require any player using it to have advanced card counting skills.  Unlike tappin in magic shaping the deck requires actual skill to do and given a million years some players would never be able to do so meaningfully.

[decker_cky]

If you are playing by the rules of the tournament then if the opponent has a black joker in their hand, then this combo lets them shuffle out any cards they don't want in their deck and put them in their discard, then shuffle their deck. That's how it ends up working. If the tournament organizer or Wyrd wants to errata it then they can, but if they don't that's how the rules read.

It's like in Magic if you have an infinite damage combo, it's foolish to argue that it doesn't work because the player would never tap cards or use abilities in that order, without opponent input, that many times to win a game. It's a game with rules, sorry if those rules seem strong or broken.

It's also a rule in every tournament that what the tournament organizer says is binding, so what everyone else has said is true. 

[volt_ron]

Pretty much seems like a stall tactic to me.

It's terrible, terrible sportsmanship.  

[Bengt]

If you are playing by the rules of the tournament then if the opponent has a black joker in their hand, then this combo lets them shuffle out any cards they don't want in their deck and put them in their discard, then shuffle their deck. That's how it ends up working. If the tournament organizer or Wyrd wants to errata it then they can, but if they don't that's how the rules read.

It's like in Magic if you have an infinite damage combo, it's foolish to argue that it doesn't work because the player would never tap cards or use abilities in that order, without opponent input, that many times to win a game. It's a game with rules, sorry if those rules seem strong or broken.

The big difference is that to actually remove desired cards from a Malifaux deck by going through the motions takes a long time, longer than a game for almost any level of shaping, hundreds of years on average for some more specific things. Not to mention that it's random and whatever thing you are trying to shuffle yourself to might not actually show up before the Sun goes red giant in 4-5 billion years. In contrast the Magic the Gathering combos that I've seen (which granted is far from all of them) would usually take minutes to complete by going through the motions and use known cards in play/graveyard, rather than random elements.

Pretty much all tournaments in any game have a set times for each round (except Cricket ) and subsequently have rules for stalling. There might be some TOs that you can convince that your endless shuffling is a legitimate tactic and let you win a game by shuffling until the end of the round, but I suspect they are few and far between.

[Doctor Borris]

If you are playing by the rules of the tournament then if the opponent has a black joker in their hand, then this combo lets them shuffle out any cards they don't want in their deck and put them in their discard, then shuffle their deck. That's how it ends up working. If the tournament organizer or Wyrd wants to errata it then they can, but if they don't that's how the rules read.

It's like in Magic if you have an infinite damage combo, it's foolish to argue that it doesn't work because the player would never tap cards or use abilities in that order, without opponent input, that many times to win a game. It's a game with rules, sorry if those rules seem strong or broken.

[Mewens]

Just a quick note on the comparisons to Magic – this exact situation came up in that game, as well. (Google the Legacy deck "Four Horsemen" for a breakdown.)

Without writing a novel, this move – stacking your deck or discard pile by invoking an open-ended loop – is illegal in tournament Magic. In Magic, if you can't say what the game state will look like once you complete a loop of actions, then you can't take a shortcut to execute that loop. (Yes, stacking your deck is a shortcut.) If you try to do the loop manually, you'll get cited with a slow play violation. (There is gray area in the rules – the judge does have to make the call, ultimately – but the stacking-your-deck bit is well outside of that area).

I'm far too new to Malifaux to know if this game has put a stark divide between mechanical certainty and statistical likeliness, but Magic's tournament rules certainly have.

[Breng77]

If you are playing by the rules of the tournament then if the opponent has a black joker in their hand, then this combo lets them shuffle out any cards they don't want in their deck and put them in their discard, then shuffle their deck. That's how it ends up working. If the tournament organizer or Wyrd wants to errata it then they can, but if they don't that's how the rules read.

It's like in Magic if you have an infinite damage combo, it's foolish to argue that it doesn't work because the player would never tap cards or use abilities in that order, without opponent input, that many times to win a game. It's a game with rules, sorry if those rules seem strong or broken.

a big difference is that in Magic the damage need not be infinite, as soon as I can deal damage equal to your life total I can end the combo with certainty that it will work.  Stacking the deck is far different in that no matter how many times I rail walk I can never be certain of my deck order.  In fact I may never get to the point where it is stacked the way I want it as each time I reshuffle the deck the likely hood of my desired set up remains the same and doing it more often does not increase that chance.  As it is not a certainty that it will happen attempting it would be slow play.  It is akin to walking into a store to buy lotto tickets and saying well if I play this forever I'll eventually win....

For Example the probability of shaping your deck to have nothing but face cards and the RJ left is  quite low lets consider the best case Mei with Arcane res, and Hannah, and having no face cards in hand.  On each resuffle you have an ~0.0000000001% chance of getting the deck set up such that it is all face cards and the red joker.  This does not improve the more you do it as you have not changed the state of the deck in anyway.  So your chances are ~ 1 in ten billion to get that set up. Which don't seem like really great odds to me.  Now you can say it will eventually happen if you shuffled infinite times.  The problem is it is not possible for you to shuffle infinite times.  That also assumes you never miscount a face card on your flips.

 

Unlike infinite damage in magic (which is really only however much damage I need to do to kill you), this is never a given.  If I have a set up in magic where I can infinitely tap and untap a card to do 1 damage.  You and I can agree that I can tap it a number of times equal to your life total (usually 20) and that you will die.  It would be inevitable.  In this case we cannot agree that if I mill and reshuffle my deck a certain number of times that I will with certainty end up with a specific deck order.  In the magic example I can turn to you and say.  Hey I can keep doing this damage, so if I do this 20 times I win.  In the rail walk case I cannot specify the number of times.  Thus it is not inevitable that it will happen.  At which point you are simply stalling time.

 

Beyond that combos like that are what make magic uninteresting to play, furthermore matches are  best 2/3 and side boarding is allowed.  So having this happen once does not ruin 1 of your 3 matches for the day etc.

 

Edited October 15, 2015 by Breng77

[Doctor Borris]

Just a quick note on the comparisons to Magic – this exact situation came up in that game, as well. (Google the Legacy deck "Four Horsemen" for a breakdown.)

Without writing a novel, this move – stacking your deck or discard pile by invoking an open-ended loop – is illegal in tournament Magic. In Magic, if you can't say what the game state will look like once you complete a loop of actions, then you can't take a shortcut to execute that loop. (Yes, stacking your deck is a shortcut.) If you try to do the loop manually, you'll get cited with a slow play violation. (There is gray area in the rules – the judge does have to make the call, ultimately – but the stacking-your-deck bit is well outside of that area).

I'm far too new to Malifaux to know if this game has put a stark divide between mechanical certainty and statistical likeliness, but Magic's tournament rules certainly have.

My arguement is that in this situation, if you remove the black joker you can 100% say what will be in your discard pile with absolute accuracy. The only variable will be your deck's order not the contents. This is not debatable.

If that is not ok for some reason what amount of shuffling is allowed for this debate? 5 minutes per cycle? 10? This value must be determined beforehand otherwise by the "delay games" arguement you should be able to stop your opponent's turn midway because of how they time manage. I'm assuming the players want to win the game, so the combo needs to be addressed, random redoing of the rules mid game sounds pretty shady. Hey Nicodem keeps slowing up the game with trash zombies, time to call over a TO to redo his card abilities. Maybe one summon a turn. One summon every two turns!

In conclsion tthe ability needs a cuddle or adjustment.  House ruling official tourney rules is a bad but viable solution. Trying to argue math midgame and getting a knee jerk TO call is not ok. If getting to stack the deck is broken that part needs fixing not arguing if its possible because it mathematically most certainly is.

 

[Bengt]

My arguement is that in this situation, if you remove the black joker you can 100% say what will be in your discard pile with absolute accuracy. The only variable will be your deck's order not the contents. This is not debatable.

You are very much wrong about that. You can't guarantee that a specific combination of cards will ever end up in the discard pile if you flip less than all cards from a new shuffle. If you do it enough times the probability will be high, but it will never reach 100%. The mathematical limit will be 100% as the number of shuffles approaches infinity.

[Ludvig]

This isn't a philosophical discussion on math, if it were you would be right in your analysis. This is a discussion of the game Malifaux, played to provide amusement for people.

You are going to have to show me the actual text in the rules that allows you to skip performing your actions to more quickly arrive at the final conclusion. Last time I checked the game needs to specifically permit you do to things, not the other way around.

If you are seriously saying this is exactly the same thing as Nico's quite finite zombie cycle I'm not sure what to say. If it was hyperbole as I believe then please stop.

[Breng77]

I'm still not seeing where you can 100% guarantee what would be in your discard pile.  Is it because if it were possible to shuffle infinite times every order of cards would occur at some point?  I suppose that is true.  But you cannot actually shuffle your deck infinite times, for any number of practical reasons (the deck would be destoyed, there is not enough time in your life, etc.). The  "infinite "damage combs in magic are not actually infinite, just as much as needed which is a finite amount.  Given any finite amount of shuffles you cannot guarantee with any level of certainty what will be in your discard pile.

 

do I think this needs an FAQ sure I do.  Do I believe anyone should try it in an event prior to said faq?  Nope, and if you do he judge with snap rule against you and you shouldn't get upset because you knew he would.

Edited October 15, 2015 by Breng77

[Myyrä]

My arguement is that in this situation, if you remove the black joker you can 100% say what will be in your discard pile with absolute accuracy. The only variable will be your deck's order not the contents. This is not debatable.

You are very much wrong about that. You can't guarantee that a specific combination of cards will ever end up in the discard pile if you flip less than all cards from a new shuffle. If you do it enough times the probability will be high, but it will never reach 100%. The mathematical limit will be 100% as the number of shuffles approaches infinity.

There is also a nonzero probability for you dying within the next week because of a falling grand piano, but that is also completely irrelevant to this discussion.

[solkan]

If you are playing by the rules of the tournament then if the opponent has a black joker in their hand, then this combo lets them shuffle out any cards they don't want in their deck and put them in their discard, then shuffle their deck. That's how it ends up working. If the tournament organizer or Wyrd wants to errata it then they can, but if they don't that's how the rules read.

It's like in Magic if you have an infinite damage combo, it's foolish to argue that it doesn't work because the player would never tap cards or use abilities in that order, without opponent input, that many times to win a game. It's a game with rules, sorry if those rules seem strong or broken.

Since when is Malifaux played according to the Magic the Gathering tournament rules?  There's this document called the Gaining Grounds 2015 Edition which specifies the official tournament rules.

According to the rules in the Malifaux book, you have to legally perform each and every flip in the game and aren't allowed to take shortcuts.  "It is impossible for me to fail this sequence of flips because I have the black joker in my hand" is not a reason recognized by the rules.

 

Edited October 15, 2015 by solkan

[Hateful Darkblack]

If you are playing by the rules of the tournament then if the opponent has a black joker in their hand, then this combo lets them shuffle out any cards they don't want in their deck and put them in their discard, then shuffle their deck. That's how it ends up working. If the tournament organizer or Wyrd wants to errata it then they can, but if they don't that's how the rules read.

It's like in Magic if you have an infinite damage combo, it's foolish to argue that it doesn't work because the player would never tap cards or use abilities in that order, without opponent input, that many times to win a game. It's a game with rules, sorry if those rules seem strong or broken.

The rules explicitly forbid stall tactics and unreasonable delays.

[Doctor Borris]

I'm a little suprised by how non competitive many of these answers are. If the arguement could be made for delay of game because achieving a certainty takes a period of time, do most people who play Malifaux just try to not win? If I had 100 dice that could do something cool like heal a model for 3 damage but only if they all rolled 6, but I had infinite rerolls how would that be ruled? I would say it's an auto 100 6s, but if someone wanted you to roll them all, and your master had 3 health left and burning 3, what qualifies? Is that a delay of game where relenting means a loss?

I'm just asking this as a question for people, tell me at what point doing things becomes a delay? Shuffling out aces? 1 through 5s?

[Rathnard]

So does anyone actually intend to use this infinite railwalk combo? Or is this thread just a quagmire of theory and hyperbole? 

 

In other words, what exactly is the point of this thread?  

[Breng77]

I'm a little suprised by how non competitive many of these answers are. If the arguement could be made for delay of game because achieving a certainty takes a period of time, do most people who play Malifaux just try to not win? If I had 100 dice that could do something cool like heal a model for 3 damage but only if they all rolled 6, but I had infinite rerolls how would that be ruled? I would say it's an auto 100 6s, but if someone wanted you to roll them all, and your master had 3 health left and burning 3, what qualifies? Is that a delay of game where relenting means a loss?

I'm just asking this as a question for people, tell me at what point doing things becomes a delay? Shuffling out aces? 1 through 5s?

when it serves no purpose other than to delay.   Let's just take your above example of a master with 3 health left and burning 3.  If there are 15 minutes left in the round would you be ok with me mulling over my play to stall out the game.  At which point is endlessly flipping different from thinking my move over?  The large difference is that one could delay the entire game.  The result you desire is unachievable in any realistic timeframe, and thus deserves an FAQ.  Pending that I'll (likely) speak for every TO by stating that you cannot do it.   As an organizer for a small hobby game it is important to foster people's continued desire to play said game...this trick does the opposite as nothing is less enjoyable than one sided hopeless games.  You can call it non-competitive, but it is clearly not the intent for the rule to work this way.  Were I to FAQ this I would go with "triggers resulting from targeting this marker do not gain+6 CA". 

[benjoewoo]

For those interested in hearing a compromising thought on the combo, here's a conclusion my local store came to after the store owner, another henchmen, and myself discussed the combo at length, the rules, and what should be allowed locally.

At our store, if you want to use the Mei Feng infinite combo, you may use a modified version in several ways, following these steps:

1.The player must demonstrate the combo and explain how it is an infinite; AND

 

2.The player may choose to only use the combo to move from a scrap marker to another legal target; OR

2.The player may choose to flip cards from the top of the fate deck until the Black Joker is flipped; OR

2.The player may shuffle his/her discard pile into the fate deck after revealing the Black Joker, and then flip the top card to continue the combo to another legal target or to the same scrap marker, artificially ending the combo there with that particular Action Point.

The combo may be repeated in one of the above ways, each time spending a new additional Action Point once one of the above results has been achieved.

We felt that the above options gives a Mei Feng player who wants to use the combo useful options so as to avoid re-writing too much of the purposefully printed text, but balancing the outcomes so neither player makes a great sacrifice for sportsmanship. None of the above results allows for true stacking, and each of the options involving multiple rail walks to the same marker have significant potential drawbacks that balance out the potential positive gain, e.g. I lose all the 12s and 13s on my way to discarding the BJ or I just shuffled in all my 1's and 3's. 

Probably more importantly for logistics and general enjoyment of the game, all of the above results take little time to effectuate. The longest result is going to be flipping until the BJ, but the Mei Feng player could just flip and move cards quickly. It shouldn't take more than a minute and a half to flip and move through a maximum of 48 cards. The longest step will likely be explaining how the combo is an infinite one.

Food for thought

Black listing/DQ'ing players in competitive or casual play is an extreme "solution" in light of the fact the enabling upgrade card was purposefully designed the way it was printed. In addition to chilling creativity that falls outside of unofficially dictated bounds, these solutions give negative impressions of our community. 

Of course, this is only food for thought so long as the combo continues to exist in its current form. An errata or FAQ clarification on repeatable combos would change this thinking process, and change the local ruling above, but until then this combo exists and should be acknowledged in some form beyond adding a possibly purposefully omitted clause, DQ/community blacklist, or potentially telling any player go find somewhere else to play.

[Ludvig]

So does anyone actually intend to use this infinite railwalk combo? Or is this thread just a quagmire of theory and hyperbole? 

 

In other words, what exactly is the point of this thread?  

Better to hash it out here where Wyrd can follow the discussion than at every event when someone brings this.

I like Benkoewoo's suggestions. I'd be totally ok with someone showing me their black joker in the hand and saying: "I've spent a lot of good cards and would like to reshuffle my deck now, can we speed it up?"

If someone would say: "Given an infinite amount of time I could stack my deck exactly like this, can we just speed it up?" I would say Nope, don't buy it.

Any sort of "I would like to pick out this but keep this" is nonsense in my opinion. Reshuffle quickly or just drop it. 

I don't think that attitude "non-competative" in a negative way, I think it is healthy. Remember that this is first and foremost for the enjoyment of both players. I often back down even when I believe myself to be in the right regarding measurements or iffy rulings if I can't more or less instantly point to a place in the book that backs me. I

believe that even in a tournament or competative environment you need to consider that this is a game and even if the price is cash you have lost countless hundreds of dollars playing this game because you thought it was worth investing to have fun. Almost every player in my area started Malifaux after realizing yhat they weren't having fun plaing Warmahordes/GW because the tournament scene had taken the enjoyment out of the game. On this forum this discussion has a place but in a tournament I hope someone trying this would just drop it without asking the TO for a ruling if the opponent called foul play.

[enderwiggin]

I like Benkoewoo's suggestions. I'd be totally ok with someone showing me their black joker in the hand and saying: "I've spent a lot of good cards and would like to reshuffle my deck now, can we speed it up?"

If someone would say: "Given an infinite amount of time I could stack my deck exactly like this, can we just speed it up?" I would say Nope, don't buy it.

Any sort of "I would like to pick out this but keep this" is nonsense in my opinion. Reshuffle quickly or just drop it. 

I don't think that attitude "non-competative" in a negative way, I think it is healthy. Remember that this is first and foremost for the enjoyment of both players. I often back down even when I believe myself to be in the right regarding measurements or iffy rulings if I can't more or less instantly point to a place in the book that backs me.

I agree with this stance. I'm not going to let the opponent set the deck any more than I would ask him to let me set my deck the next round as I want (since I can infinitely shuffle sans ability before the round and if we're ignoring the time:odds ratio it could happen) after flashing the BJ.

I kept the last little bit btw because I wanted say another thing about you backing down on measurements... One thing I picked up from Necromunda/GW, agree pre-game that in the case of measurements the other player will have the final say. Sounds bad but that social contract of a rule keeps both players pretty honest in my experience.

[madaxeman]

Really...?   Really...?  

Surely there are only 2 possible scenarios here.

1. Wyrd, who appear to have gone to great lengths to design a well balanced game and to support and encourage the idea that it is played by sensible people with adult attitudes about fun gaming, sportsmanship, and the importance of developing a narrative gameplay style over power-listing uber-competition gamers have however deliberately included one (just one) specific interaction in the entire game, that only works between 2 of the 300+ (?) models they have or plan to release that serves to throw all of those core principles completely out of the window, allowing power-gamers to either effectively spoil the game for their opponent, waste as much time as they like, or to - by using more time than is allowed for a standard game - to effectively totally eliminate the randomness of the card-flip mechanic which is fundamentally core to the way the whole game works. 

2. Wyrd didn't spot this one particular interaction in pre-release testing, but they will of course issue an amendment to outlaw it in the next set of clarifications and amendments to be published.

 

Don't know about you, but I'm kinda guessing option 2 is correct....  

 

[Fog]

I'm a little suprised by how non competitive many of these answers are. If the arguement could be made for delay of game because achieving a certainty takes a period of time, do most people who play Malifaux just try to not win? If I had 100 dice that could do something cool like heal a model for 3 damage but only if they all rolled 6, but I had infinite rerolls how would that be ruled? I would say it's an auto 100 6s, but if someone wanted you to roll them all, and your master had 3 health left and burning 3, what qualifies? Is that a delay of game where relenting means a loss?

I'm just asking this as a question for people, tell me at what point doing things becomes a delay? Shuffling out aces? 1 through 5s?

Try this:

Nowhere in the Malifaux rules does it allow for taking a short cut to the end of an infinite loop. Your implication that it should be allowed has no ground to stand on.

Your arguing that because something is theoretically possible given unlimited time and energy is pedantic. This game does not allow for infinite time. No player, tournament organizer, or rules arbiter has any need to capitulate to your demands in this scenario.

Besides which, if we're talking infinite probabilities, then you will never reach a probability of 1 that the required cards are in the deck. You will approach one, and become infinitely close to it, but it never reaches 1. Simple statistics show this, as each shuffle is a completely independent event. Your logic that you are guaranteed to eventually get there is based on a false premise. 

Now that you have been mathematically proven wrong, please stop. You're not doing anyone any favors here.

[Doctor Borris]

 

For this combo, you know the discard pile is 46 to 40, so you set a threshold at say 30, and count up every card less then say 8, and speed flip them.  If you hit 30 and haven't gotten at least 20ish or W/E then reshuffle. It's not a slow process.

That is a rather rude response. In a discard pile of perhaps 42 cards, of which I can freely flip cards straight from my deck into my discard pile, caring ONLY if they are less or more then the value I want to purge to say it would take an infinite amount of time is very condescending. I bet if I set my threshold at say, 5, I could probably flip out and reshuffle a 42 or 40 card deck clear in less then 5 minutes. 

The rule sucks and should be changed, don't get Warhammer on me and tell me it's not ok to use the rules as written because it's WAAC and for no other reason.

If my diabolical attitude here makes a TO worried enough to call out the combo and adjust it pre tourney.... good. That's fine with me. I am that jerk that will play by the rules so if the rules say that's how it works and that horrifies, then please try to land those delicious tears in my jar so I can sip on them later next to my fine steak when I'm eating it next to the trophy.

Edited October 16, 2015 by Doctor Borris

[Kadeton]

I don't feel like there's anything being added to the topic at this point - everyone's stated their positions quite clearly. The designers are well aware of the issue by now, and hopefully we'll see something official in the near future.

Thanks for the discussion, everyone!