20

You start this game with 3 cards of your choice in hand.
Your opponent starts with 0 cards in their hand.
Both libraries do not contain any other useful cards.

What is the highest life total you can end your turn at?

Assume you start at 20 life points. Beyond that, the rules can follow any of the official two-player formats by Wizard of the Coast.

Extra Challenge: If you want a personal challenge (although this is not what I am looking for in the answers to this question), try to find the 4-card infinite-life combo that made me restrict the puzzle to 3 cards only.

David Coffron
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    Define "useful cards"... can you use cards in your library in some way as long as you aren't casting them or otherwise caring about what specific cards they are? – GendoIkari Oct 23 '19 at 18:18
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    @GendoIkari If a specific card is needed for the solution to work, that card is not in either library. If any card would work, that's fine (such as if hand-size or discard is needed) – David Coffron Oct 23 '19 at 18:34
  • Would it be allowed to specify that the library contains all creature cards; if it doesn't matter what cards they are? – GendoIkari Oct 23 '19 at 18:39
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    @Gendolkari Probably not. In that case creatures would be useful cards since they are vital to the solution. – David Coffron Oct 23 '19 at 18:40
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    @DavidCoffron When you say "end your turn", do you mean that the opponent has to be alive after whatever actions I take until the regular end of my turn, or can the combo immediately win the game as well? – Hackworth Oct 23 '19 at 20:16
  • There is a cheating answer which only uses two of my cards, but requires the top card of the opponent's library to be something specific. – Peter Taylor Oct 24 '19 at 19:13
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    It seems to me to depend on 2 things. What is the legality rules, and what is your starting life total? A few of my friends made a format where you start at 500+ life, or you could be at 40, or 20! Please specify. – CollinB Oct 24 '19 at 19:16
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    Specifically, could you be playing commander – CollinB Oct 24 '19 at 19:22
  • @CollinB Addressed – David Coffron Oct 24 '19 at 19:40
  • That hasn't really clarified anything. Commander is one of the listed formats, and it explicitly allows for 2 players. If you want to start at 20 life, just say that. Otherwise, you might as well just say that you start at 40 life and bump everyone's score up by 20. – murgatroid99 Oct 24 '19 at 19:44
  • @murgatroid99 Good point. I'll do that – David Coffron Oct 24 '19 at 19:54
  • So no Silver-Bordered Cards – CollinB Oct 25 '19 at 02:42
  • Note, if your opponent helps you out, you can get significantly higher. i.e. take David's answer, combined with Hackworth's answer as one trivial example. So you're assuming a goldfish opponent? If so, that seems to make Hackworth's answer less "reasonable." – John Jul 23 '20 at 01:32

7 Answers7

27

With just 2 cards, you can be at arbitrarily many life points.

The 2-card combo is Black Lotus and Game of Chaos. As long as both you and your opponent keep playing, the stakes increase indefinitely, and you can end the game whenever you win a flip.

Assuming both you and your opponent keep playing exactly until someone gets to zero life or below during Game of Chaos' resolution, you can go to 103 life with the 2 card combo, or 109 with 3 cards.

If you win (+1), lose (-2), lose (-4), win (+8), lose (-16), win (+32), win (+64), then you (and your opponent) will be at

  • 21 (19),
  • 19 (21),
  • 15 (25),
  • 23 (17),
  • 7 (33),
  • 39 (1),
  • 103 (-63) life.

At the start of the game, reveal Providence for another 6 life - this doesn't change the sequence of coinflips because your opponent would still fall to 1 life at the same point of the sequence.

Hackworth
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    OP asks for the highest life total you can end your turn with, do you end the turn if your opponent loses? – Taemyr Oct 23 '19 at 18:53
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    Of course. When the game ends, the turn ends also. You are thinking of "finishing" the turn, which is a difference. – Hackworth Oct 23 '19 at 18:54
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    I think the infinite-life solution is far more interesting - the goal isn't to win, it's to have the highest life total. – Nuclear Hoagie Oct 23 '19 at 19:37
  • It would be interesting in its own way - since the game presumably still takes place in physical reality, the life total couldn't acually be infinite. You can flip a coin only so many times during the length of the game; specifically, you can flip a single coin at most once per Planck time. Assuming 1 coin at hand and a 50 minute round of a sanctioned event, you could flip it at most 5,565e+46 times, and, if you win every flip, for a life total of 19 + (2^5,565e+46) life. You couldn't use shortcut rules to name a higher number either, obviously, because coin flips. – Hackworth Oct 23 '19 at 19:51
  • Also, the terminology is indeed "end turn", not "finish turn" - the end step in the ending phase is commonly referred to as "end of turn", and cards that referenced "end of turn" are now errata'ed at referencing the "end step". Karn Liberated allows you to end (and restart) a game without ever reaching the end step of turn in which he was activated, so it's not really clear to me that you do actually end your turn if the game ends. It depends on how pedantic you want to be with the interpretation of the OP's "end of your turn". – Nuclear Hoagie Oct 23 '19 at 20:01
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    This question was about the difference between ending and finishing a turn. Spoiler: the official tournament rules use the term "finishing" a turn to mean to take it through all its phases, while "ending" a turn means ending it immediately as per CompRules 716. Also see CR 104, "Ending the game". – Hackworth Oct 23 '19 at 20:08
  • There is a difference between "end the turn" as a verb, and "at the end of your first turn". Ending the turn is a specific action that is irrelevant to this question. In game cards, "at the end of your turn" is an old wording for "at the beginning of your end step". – murgatroid99 Oct 23 '19 at 20:13
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    You should use Providence instead of Radiant Fountain for 4 more – Zags Oct 24 '19 at 22:34
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    It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to assume that the person playing Game of Chaos makes their decisions in a way that rationally optimizes to achieve victory, considering that they already chose to put Game of Chaos in their deck and play it. – user2357112 Oct 25 '19 at 06:50
14

Here is my best solution (42 Life Points):

3 Cards:

Turn

  1. Pass until Precombat Main Phase
  2. Play Radiant Fountain [gain 2 life]
  3. Cast Black Lotus
  4. Activate Radiant Fountain
  5. Activate Black Lotus's ability, adding enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here
  6. Cast Illusions of Grandeur [gain 20 life]
  7. Pass until End Phase
Community
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David Coffron
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    I think it is very likely that this is the greatest amount of life you can gain deterministically in a single turn with 3 cards. There aren't any good combos with just 0-cost cards, so you need mana. Illusions of Grandeur is the card that deterministically gains you the most life immediately without any other supporting cards. And Radiant Fountain is the 0-cost card that gains the most life immediately without any other supporting cards. – murgatroid99 Oct 23 '19 at 19:36
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    The best deterministic solution I can find with only two cards is 35: Nourishing Shoal + Autochthon Wurm. – Peter Taylor Oct 24 '19 at 20:35
  • You can get to 43 if you use Chancellor of the Dross, or 46 if you use Providence instead of Radiant Fountain. – John Jul 23 '20 at 01:30
  • @John We need the mana from Radiant Fountain to cast Illusions of Grandeur – David Coffron Jul 23 '20 at 12:59
  • Argh. Very sorry to miss that point, for some reason I thought it was converted manacost 3. – John Jul 24 '20 at 04:27
14

41 life without using Black Lotus

This is a legacy/modern entry (i.e. doesn't use Black Lotus).

Reveal Providence to go to 26 life. Then exile Autochthon Wurm to cast Nourishing Shoal to gain 15 life.

Multiplayer: 20 + 9 * number of opponents

The question clarifies that there are two players. If we relax that restriction, we can do better in cases where there are 4 or more players. Have 3 Chancellor of the Dross in your opening hand and reveal all three to steal 9 life per opponent.

4 Cards: Arbitrarily high life

The question specifies three cards for a reason. Allowing one more card lets you go infinite. The 4 cards are Black Lotus, Daru Spiritualist, Shuko, and Diamond Valley.

Use Black Lotus to Cast Daru Spiritualist and Shuko. Repeatedly equip Shuko to Daru Spiritualist, giving Daru Spiritualist +2 toughness each time, until has [arbitrarity high odd number] toughness. Play Diamond Valley and use it to sacrifice Daru Spiritualist to gain [arbitrarity high odd number] life.

Zags
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6

I'm going to cheat a bit... because you didn't specifically state that this was a 2-player game only (though you did use the word "both"...)

Hand:

This gives you an unbounded 3n life, where n is the number of opponents you have in the game.

With only 2 cards, you can get 2n life using Syphon Soul instead.

GendoIkari
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    They say "both libraries", and they also say "opponent" singular. I think this is a stretch. – murgatroid99 Oct 23 '19 at 18:23
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    I agree it's a stretch. I did mention the use of the word "both" in my answer. – GendoIkari Oct 23 '19 at 18:23
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    4n: Exsanguinate – Peter Taylor Oct 24 '19 at 19:02
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    3x Chancellor of the Dross for 9n – Zags Oct 24 '19 at 22:35
  • Is there any format where you can actually have two Lotuses in your deck? (EDIT: apparently "freeform" is an official format in Magic Online) – user2357112 Oct 25 '19 at 11:13
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    Why not just dark ritual from the lotus and not have this 2 lotus nonsense. Or I guess a swamp – Andrey Oct 25 '19 at 13:59
  • I think that's not really relevant to my answer... I could have just said "4 mana and Blood Tithe". Any format casual enough to have a large number of opponents is also going to be casual enough to not follow any restricted or banned lists. "Kitchen table magic" exists; people play MTG randomly with friends without playing any specific tournament-sanctioned format. – GendoIkari Oct 25 '19 at 14:16
  • Speaking of cheating: Since there are so many solutions with 2 lotuses despite it being restricted I'll just assume that "3 cards of your choice" means no restrictions whatsoever. Therefore you could just use 1 Blacker Lotus and you'd have a 2-card combo. – Alex Oct 25 '19 at 14:36
  • @Alex I started by looking for silver-bordered solutions before coming across this. – GendoIkari Oct 25 '19 at 14:40
  • Just use Chancellor of the Dross and avoid this whole argument. It's the one card equivalent of the posted combo – Zags Oct 25 '19 at 17:34
  • @Zags Ooooooh, that means we can combine the combos, i.e. Chancellor of Dross, Blacker Lotus AND Bloot Tithe. XD Now we're at 2x3n life. – Alex Oct 26 '19 at 15:14
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    @GendoIkari So you explicitly looked at Unglued etc. and then didn't remember the Blacker Lotus? That's funny. XD – Alex Oct 26 '19 at 15:16
5

Black Lotus x 2, Auriok Salvagers, Stream of Life

Play the lotuses and crack them for white. Cast Salvagers, use the 2 leftover to return lotus.

Cast lotus, crack for white, return lotus -> repeat as much as you want to gain a white mana each loop.

Return lotus, crack for green mana, cast stream of life for x + arbitrarily large number .

Toon Krijthe
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user29682
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4

The best I can manage is 32 life:

A second solution for 32 life:

  • Black Lotus
  • Ritual of Restoration

  • Weather the Storm

    1. Cast Black Lotus and sacrifice for 3 white mana.
    2. Cast Ritual of Restoration, returning Black Lotus to hand.
    3. Cast Black Lotus and sacrifice for 3 green mana.
    4. Cast Weather the Storm, creating 3 copies with storm. [gain 3 life * 4]
John
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Dysnomian
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    All the other answers are accounting the initial 20 life, I suggest you do the same to provide a comparable result. – Bernat Oct 24 '19 at 13:19
  • Yeah, my first assumption was that this was a joke answer and you were intentionally damaging yourself rather than gaining life. – aslum Oct 24 '19 at 13:59
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    I love that even with this combo, it's just barely above lotus+chaplain's blessing+chaplain's blessing – CollinB Oct 24 '19 at 19:22
3

Black Lotus x2
Beacon of immortality

Depends on the format how much life you gain. 20 on a default game for example or 40 in Commander for example

Ivo
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