AI not playing cards

starfall

Today I was playing RT against the following deck:

Blue Sun's Zenith

Storm the Vault

Talent of the Telepath

Sift

Thousand Year Storm

Oath of Teferi

Rupture Spire

Djinn of Wishes

Muldrotha

Zetalpa

You won't be very surprised to hear that this deck had beat me back to this position after a few turns:
https://imgur.com/a/IBc3EWz

What is surprising is this: my opponent stopped playing cards and passed the turn. There are no cards in the deck which cannot be played. There are cards that a human player might choose not to play, but the AI doesn't work like that, does it? Perhaps the AI has some kind of limiting effect which stops it from going infinite?

For the next 3 or 4 turns of the game, my opponent would play a Muldrotha, and I would bounce it back to their hand with a spell or a creature. But still, it didn't play the other cards in their hand which were full of mana. Even if there was some kind of limiting effect to stop the AI going infinite, why would it now end it's turn over and over again after playing just a single card?

Eventually I pulled a River's Rebuke and started to work my way back into the game. With the board clearer, my opponent started playing cards. The first two it played were Oath of Teferi and Thousand Year Storm. These cards must have been in it's hand already, why did it not play them? A player can't even choose not to play supports full of mana, can they?

In the end I won the game. Did the AI let me win?

I've noticed this happen in games before, usually when the AI is playing some kind of looping combo deck (e.g. with Imminent Doom), but this is the first time I've logged the entire deck so I could be 100% sure that the AI wasn't just locking up it's hand with spells it can't cast (e.g. Reclaim)

Has the AI been deliberately nerfed so that it can't play combo decks properly? We know that it's already been nerfed in many ways that we can see, it doesn't always pick the best color move, and it no longer tries to destroy your supports like it used to.

Mburn7

I've seen the AI hold cards that normally would not be held until I cast a creature.

Not removal spells, mind you, but stuff like Talent of the Telepath that normally get auto-cast.

Its very strange.

madwren

Yeah, this has been something that's very noticeable for awhile now--there are times when the AI holds onto cards strategically, which I think is great. However, there are times when it seems to hold onto them indefinitely.  In Goblinpile, we've seen it happen at least twice when we were facing the ID decks of coalitionmates, where almost all of the spells have no reason to be retained.

Unknown

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wereotter

It's possible the AI won't cast a card like Sift unless it can actually draw all the cards the spell lets you draw? The others I have no answer for.

hawkyh1

I've seen the ai hold onto supports when it already has that exact
support on the gem board.

HH

Kinesia

Maybe with Talent of the Telepath it doesn't understand that casting it will make the space for the card it's going to draw?