Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Puzzles and Challenges => Topic started by: jonaskoelker on November 17, 2017, 12:44:40 pm
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Here's the simplest infinite money loop I'm aware of:
Setup:
- 2xOverlord in hand.
- 1xOverlord in your discard pile (and nothing else).
- 0 cards in your deck.
- You can play Overlord as King's Court, Mining Village and Lurker.
Play one Overlord as King's Court, then:
- Play Overlord as Mining Village (drawing Overlord), trashing it for $2.
- Play the same Overlord as Lurker, gaining itself back from the trash.
- Play the same Overlord as King's Court.
Repeat the loop with the Overlord you drew, drawing the first Overlord back.
With 3xOverlord in hand and an empty discard pile, one iteration of the loop—i.e. Overlord as King's Court, then Overlord as Minining Village, Lurker and King's Court—gets you to the right game state, so really the setup is one tripled action, one Overlord in hand and one Overlord in your discard pile.
To bring King's Court into Overlord range, use Ferry or 2x(Overlord-as-)Highway. To have 0 cards in deck, use your favorite trasher, or Bonfire/Hireling/Lurker, or Native Village, or whatever else you like. You can payload other self-trashers than Mining Village, but be mindful that you need to draw the other Overlord. Teacher tokens can make a lot of things possible here. To make good use of $∞, add Travelling Fair to the board.
One weakness of this loop is that it's extremely restrictive; other loops let you play an arbitrary payload card of your choice infinitely often. The loop I'm presenting here needs to spend two out of three Overlord plays on Lurker and King's Court, so the first of the three has to be a self-trasher (or else all your cards eventually end up in play and the process stops).
Some loops without this restriction:
Kingdom: Overlord, Lurker, Raze, Watchtower, Crown, Mandarin
Kingdom, by cost:
2: Lurker
2p: Scrying Pool
3: Ambassador, Masquerade
4: Cutpurse, Thief, Pirate Ship, Villa
7: King's Court
Events/Landmarks: Bonfire, Travelling Fair
There are more loops in the same thread.
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- Play the same Overlord as Lurker, gaining itself back from the trash.
- Play the same Overlord as King's Court.
Does that work, though? Surely the third time you play the Overlord it's still a Lurker because it's not left play since then?
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- Play the same Overlord as Lurker, gaining itself back from the trash.
- Play the same Overlord as King's Court.
Does that work, though? Surely the third time you play the Overlord it's still a Lurker because it's not left play since then?
As part of executing Majiponi's loop, when Qvist plays a Crown'd Overlord as Embargo and then Lurker (at 8:15), the Overlord isn't put back into play. I assume the same would be the case in my loop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DvPNpSe7eQ&t=8m15s
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If you have sufficient (8 definitely works) other cards in hand, then using Tragic Hero instead of Mining Village gives you unlimited buys as well as allowing you to gain the entirety of every Treasure pile in the Supply.
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Wait, you can't use overlord as kings court. it costs $7
Edit: Ah, it was halfway down the post. I guess I should thoroughly read before commenting.
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Wait, you can't use overlord as kings court. it costs $7
To bring King's Court into Overlord range, use Ferry or 2x(Overlord-as-)Highway.
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Nice; I use a variant of majiponi's loop in the Empty the Supply solution, but I'll have to investigate setting up this loop instead. I think we can fit in Ferry without too much trouble.
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If you have sufficient (8 definitely works) other cards in hand, then using Tragic Hero instead of Mining Village gives you unlimited buys as well as allowing you to gain the entirety of every Treasure pile in the Supply.
Nice; I use a variant of majiponi's loop in the Empty the Supply solution, but I'll have to investigate setting up this loop instead. I think we can fit in Ferry without too much trouble.
Just because tooting my own horn is so much fun: have I mentioned that by virtue of only requiring 3 key cards and a usable self-trasher, plus a few ubiquitous effects, my loop is incredibly flexible? ;)
Re: Ferry, if you can put together your own Black Market deck, Tournament/Princess is great cost reduction too. Tournament also gives you a village to play Princess before your other terminals.
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- Play the same Overlord as Lurker, gaining itself back from the trash.
- Play the same Overlord as King's Court.
Does that work, though? Surely the third time you play the Overlord it's still a Lurker because it's not left play since then?
The following two threads discuss scenarios that—as far as I can tell—don't differ substantially from mine:
if I Throne Room an Overlord, picking, say, Embargo as the first emulation, trashing Overlord, then picking Band of Misfits as the second emulation, can I then emulate Engineer? [...]
Throne BoM, picking embargo as the first action. Now BoM is in the trash, so a second choice may be made. Choose lurker. Can Lurker regain the trashed BoM?
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Ew. Ick.
I guess I'm now convinced that's how it works. Just less convinced it's how it ought to work...
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Ew. Ick.
I guess I'm now convinced that's how it works. Just less convinced it's how it ought to work...
The only other possibility would mean the Overlord would remain a Lurker until it next left play, i.e. if you gained it (with Lurker, say), drew it, and then played it, it would still be a Lurker, and would only stop being a Lurker when it left play the next time. Which would be actually impossible to track.
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This isn't directly related to any puzzles, because even King's Court isn't strong enough to pull it off (or at least, I don't see a way to do it), but if I'm understanding how Necromancer works correctly we could potentially use it to get around needing Ferry or Bridge.
Consider a hypothetical "Emperor's Court", which costs a bazillion and lets you play an action 4 times. Then you could have the following:
Hand: BoM, BoM, Watchtower
Deck: BoM
Trash: Emperor's Court
BoM as Necromancer - Play Emperor's Court (turn face down)
BoM as Mining Village (draw BoM, trash self)
BoM as Lurker (gain BoM, topdeck with Watchtower)
BoM as Lurker (gain Emperor's Court, trash with Watchtower, now face up)
BoM as Necromancer - Play Emperor's Court
lather rinse repeat
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Very nice! I wrote so as not to use Events, but this needs only 5 cards (including an Event). Excellent!
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You can set this loop off as early as turn 4, starting with [CCCCC CCEEE] as your first shuffle:
- Play 5xCopper, spend a Baker token, buy Travelling Fair topdecking 2xLurker.
- Play 2xLurker to gain a King's Court; buy a Donate, keeping KC+2xLurker.
- King's Court a Lurker to trash a King's Court, gain it and trash a Cultist (to draw the KC). Play the newly gained KC on the other Lurker, to trash a King's Court, gain it and trash an Overlord.
On turn 4, your starting hand is three King's Courts and two Lurkers, with one Overlord in the trash.
Play King's Court on King's Court on 2xLurker (and later King's Court).
The 2xLurker gain the trashed Overlord plus 2 more, then trash a Cultist.
Your hand is now 3xOverlord plus the King's Court you're about to play.
Play the King's Court (you have 3 tripled actions).
Play Overlord as Mining Village (trashing itself), Lurker (regaining itself) and Bridge.
Your hand is 2xOverlord and there's an Overlord in your discard pile. You have 2 tripled actions.
Play Overlord as Mining Village (trashing itself and drawing Overlord), Lurker (regaining itself) and Bridge.
Your hand is 2xOverlord and there's an Overlord in your discard pile. You have 1 tripled action.
Cost reduction is 2, so you're ready to go off. Repeatedly do this:
Play Overlord as Mining Village (trashing itself and drawing Overlord), Lurker (regaining itself) and King's Court.
Kingdom: Lurker, Bridge, Mining Village, Baker, Cultist, King's Court, Overlord (+ 3 more); Donate, Travelling Fair.
Footnote: really you only need to gain 2xOverlord; a starting hand of 3xKC+2xLurker with no Overlord in the trash will do just fine.
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If you have sufficient (8 definitely works) other cards in hand, then using Tragic Hero instead of Mining Village gives you unlimited buys as well as allowing you to gain the entirety of every Treasure pile in the Supply.
I used my loop as a solution to the Embargo-times-100 puzzle, alternating between using Embargo and Tragic Hero as the self-trashing card.
Using tricks that I think won't work online, this means that you can get infinite an arbitrary number of buys, dollars and VP tokens by turn 4. Using tricks that do work online, you can get the same by turn 5, or if you drop the VP tokens you can get everything else by turn 4.
This is in the Embargo-times-100 thread. My solution is hidden in spoiler tags. It spells out the exact turns in detail; it may be interesting to see how I use Tragic Hero, and the crazy stunts I do to pull it all off in turn 4.