Silly accomplishments

Lagartha

I decided to do something fun for this Revolt Against the Consulate event. I have a level 1 Nissa 3 and I put together a cycling deck to see just how far I could get without altering a single card. 

I beat every single opponent (and only needed more than one try against Freejam) with this deck..

Supports:
New Perspectives 
Drake Haven 
Nissa's Pilgrimage 

Spells:
Haunted Cloak 
Hieroglyphic Illumination
Floodwaters 
Dissenter's Deliverance 

Creatures:
Shefet Monitor
Greater Sandwurm 
Ulvenwald Hydra

It was a lot of fun. Cycling is sooooo broken. XP

Thésée

I'm starting to think that when Hibernum_JC stated that he did beat Exquisite Archangel in 4 turns he was actually using a cycling deck at the time

(well after all he is the chief Game Designer, he can design and use all the cards he wants even 4 months before we see them XD)

Joke aside it's amusing to confront new mechanisms with old objectives or bosses to mesure how broken they are

Magog

That's a good one, might try that.

One I've done is seeing how big a pile of Drake tokens you can create in one go.  Put down Drake Haven and New Perspectives, get a full hand then start cycling and see how big it can get before you need to end your turn.  I once got to 112.

wickedwitch74

Great job, Lagartha.

But... I think that points to a big problem with this company's R&D department.

That should not be possible.

With Cycling, they have let loose a monster.

Delnai

Yeah. I never knew how to get that 7-round win with the Archangel before, now with Drake Haven (not even New Perspectives) win it in my first try. (Though not with a level 1 PW. Bravo on that!)

Lagartha

She got a surprising amount of secondary objectives too. I think she gathered 43 points total before I went in and swept up the rest with Dovin, Saheeli and Koth. 

I know it's incredibly broken, but I thought it might really help some new players who are struggling to get crystals and runes to progress in the game. I'm willing to bet level one Nissa 3 and even just a few of those key cards (drake haven, new perspectives) would get them far enough in story mode to save up for other walkers and more cards. 

bk1234

I've been telling new players to hold off for N3 over Kiora -- I know most existing players won't agree with this, but that is because they are used to Kiora and probably don't have N3 yet. I think in Standard, she is the most powerful PW by far. 

babar3355

So both of you ladies are off the Not.Another.Dime bandwagon.  That's a good sign D3.

Lagartha

 I've stepped away from competitive  play for a while and I'm trying to focus more on actually having fun while I focus on irl things. I gotta say... taking away the competitive aspect removes a ton of the things I hated about the way d3 runs things. XP

bk1234

Lagartha said:

 I've stepped away from competitive  play for a while and I'm trying to focus more on actually having fun while I focus on irl things. I gotta say... taking away the competitive aspect removes a ton of the things I hated about the way d3 runs things. XP

Agreed. It's great to just love the game for the game again. 

babar3355

And you two are agreeing?  WTH is this world coming to

Dodecapod

Regarding the original topic, as much fun as cycling can be at first, beyond a certain point almost anything achieved that way starts to seem a little like a silly accomplishment in a way, and the whole mechanic honestly feels like cheating half the time; it would be easy to write a novella rehashing all of the myriad insights everyone has already posted in various places about just how degenerate cycling is, but instead of 10,000 words I'll just share a few personal highlights from decks which include neither New Perspectives nor Drake Haven, to add to the ever-growing pool of examples suggesting something must have gone terribly awry in testing the mechanic:

RSIcling:  The Illustrated Picture Book

During the first cycle of Trial of Zeal, it was hard to be sure of 3.3's appeal.
Though each point my Vizier gained at first seemed nice, it was less so when Sphinx then increased its stats thrice.
Add in a deficit of ~400 hp, and my consternation should be plain to see.
Yet endless Floodwaters created a Fog, and sooner or later everything Turned to Frog.
It seemed my position had grown slightly less dour, until ending the turn took almost a full hour.
Though cycling's power was absurd by my rating, I'd thus begun down the long path of cycling hating.

Early on during the last turn:

End of turn:

The next game comes from a recent ToA, in which the AI suffered grievous dismay.
Creating an 8 times stacked Octopus token, barely scratches the surface of everything broken
that occurred in a game which prematurely ended, on a gem swap that wasn't even intended.
While dragging a Lizard into the bin, I must have swiped the gem board to secure the win.
So while the stats are already enough to abhor, the theoretical limit could have been so much more.

Cycling by the numbers:

Total damage:  492
Mana spent:  476 (at least)
Damage on board:  390
Cards cycled:  303
Loyalty gained:  78+ (possibly much more)
Minutes spent on final turn:  24
GRs cast:  18
Spells cast:  1

Damage per turn:  98.4
Mana spent per turn:  95.2 (at least)
Cards cycled per turn:  60.6
GRs cast per turn:  3.6
Decks cycled per turn (assuming 40 cards):  1.515

Copies of New Perspectives and Drake Haven cast:  0

Times accidentally making a game-ending swap while attempting to drag Shefet Monitor to the exile bin:  1

The final example was a personal best, in which I was able to put the AI to rest
not only before it could make my life hard, but even before it could draw its 3rd card.
Anyone who assumes infinite cycling needs blue, can now open their mouth and insert their shoe.
For the scariest part isn't just that one game is obscene, but that winning before turn 5 seems entirely routine.
If the AI could play decks like this and not blow it, that would surely spell the end of this game as we know it.

First-turn win with Ajani 2, aka "this isn't even my final form" (as with the last game, I accidentally swapped gems while trying to exile a card, and I missed the final screenshot; when the game ended, GR was above 200 power and embalmed Oketra's Attendants were around 120/120):

Thésée

Extraordinary poetic achievements ! :-) 

And wonderful thing you record them like this. They will soon be forgotten I think. 
It's the nature of this game. We build op decks and power creep erase them from our memory, One day a player who is in Bronze now will post screenshots of 5000/5000 GRs (well maybe it will be in two months). 

In the dunes of the desert of Amonkhet lies an ancient statue we built. Two vast and trunkless legs of stone. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies. 

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Baral, cycling king of kings:

Look on my works, Ye Mighty, and despair!'

bk1234

Thésée said:

Extraordinary poetic achievements ! :-) 

And wonderful thing you record them like this. They will soon be forgotten I think. 
It's the nature of this game. We build op decks and power creep erase them from our memory, One day a player who is in Bronze now will post screenshots of 5000/5000 GRs (well maybe it will be in two months). 

In the dunes of the desert of Amonkhet lies an ancient statue we built. Two vast and trunkless legs of stone. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies. 

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Baral, cycling king of kings:

Look on my works, Ye Mighty, and despair!'

With these drop rates the chances of a player in Bronze pulling GR is next to none. 

GamerX

bken1234 said:

With these drop rates the chances of a player in Bronze pulling GR is next to none. 

Logic cannot defeat hyperbole.

Dodecapod

bken1234 said:

Thésée said:

Extraordinary poetic achievements ! :-) 

And wonderful thing you record them like this. They will soon be forgotten I think. 
It's the nature of this game. We build op decks and power creep erase them from our memory, One day a player who is in Bronze now will post screenshots of 5000/5000 GRs (well maybe it will be in two months). 

In the dunes of the desert of Amonkhet lies an ancient statue we built. Two vast and trunkless legs of stone. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies. 

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Baral, cycling king of kings:

Look on my works, Ye Mighty, and despair!'

With these drop rates the chances of a player in Bronze pulling GR is next to none. 

The nice thing about cycling is that most of the strongest weapons are non-mythic, so at least this particular iteration of powercreep is more attainable than (for example) the SOI block bombs or KLD block energy enablers, and going (functionally) infinite means GR could be replaced by literally any attacking creature as the win condition with virtually indistinguishable effectiveness in most games (read: don't try to win with a 130/520 Guardians of Meletis, but just about anything else is fair game :P).

While I'm fortunate enough to own GR and often use it as a matter of personal preference, Fleetwheel Cruiser, Bomat Courier, Samut, Skysovereign, Crocodile of the Crossing, Snare Thopter, Iron League Steed, and Ovalchase Dragster (possibly along with a few more I'm forgetting) would all replicate the same function in Standard with comparable or in some cases perhaps even greater efficiency, and even a 5000/5000 Caustic Caterpillar or Depala would be equally plausible and would usually get the job done a turn later than the haste/ETB creatures (provided neither one's device nor one's patience gave out before reaching that point).

The not-so-nice thing about cycling (apart from generally reducing much of the competitive meta into an onerous mechanical execution of trivial technique) is that finishing prosaic wins like the ones in those examples often takes 20-60 minutes depending on how many low-risk scenarios one is willing to leave open for the AI, and I shudder to think how long it would take to build up a 5000/5000 stack of creatures before winning, but in principle it seems likely that reaching the theoretical limit of a dedicated cycling loop could take thousands of cards if not more with optimal play, and throughout that loop one would be free to cast arbitrarily large numbers of copies of any card in the deck.

In a way, Baral might even be more comparable to Yawgmoth than Ozymandias; at first it seemed as though the problem of functionally infinite looping was gone when its leader was eliminated, but now the root of the issue has evolved, diversified, and still threatens to consume the entire metagame/multiverse and remake it in a twisted parody of its former self.

Tl;dr - Baral, eat your heart out; we now have longer, more powerful, more tedious loops than ever before, with power distributed among so many cards that adjusting only one would barely make a dent, and with such an overwhelming advantage for humans over the AI that many games are over before they begin in terms of technique, yet take more real time to play through than almost any competitive deck type in the history of this game.  Maybe nerfing some cards won't be all that's needed anymore; can we ask for a slight nerf to R&D's imagination?  :P

GamerX

Durring Onslaught block of paper MTG.  Cycling was kind of 'broken' as well.  Anybody remember playing with or against Astral Slide decks?

Lagartha

Level 1 Nissa 3 has made it all the way to the last battle in Fateful Showdown. Noxious Gearhulk might be the end of it though. I've lost to him 5 times so far. Just need a bit more luck. 

bk1234

Lagartha said:

Level 1 Nissa 3 has made it all the way to the last battle in Fateful Showdown. Noxious Gearhulk might be the end of it though. I've lost to him 5 times so far. Just need a bit more luck. 

I'd love to see that deck. If you have time can you send it to me on Discord? bken1234#6233

I just leveled her last night and she's pretty much unstoppable. 

Lagartha

@bken1234 it's in the original post. Thankfully... since I have NO idea what I'm doing when it comes to Discord. XP

Lagartha

I had to switch out Ulvenwald Hydra and Haunted Cloak for Clutch of Currents and Shimmerscale Drake, but I beat Noxious Gearhulk with Nissa still at level one.