#mtg math

[prokopetz]

Did you see that Magic: the Gathering now has a game state in which you need to prove that there are an infinite number of twin primes to win? I can explain it more if you are interested.

(With reference to this post here.)

By all means, please tell us about the Magic: the Gathering combo which requires proving the twin prime conjecture in order to win.

[worlds-smallest-epsilon]

I’m channeling her power

[flavoracle]

Any of my fellow MTG folks wanna chime in on this math? I don’t see any need to correct it.

Okay

So let’s say I make 1 singular Human.

Tapped a Thraben Doomsayer.

Let’s start with the Ojer Taq trigger. 1 token becomes three tokens.

Now Doubling season. Each of those 3 tokens becomes 2 tokens if I’m doing this correctly. 3 becomes 6.

And then primal vigor does the exact same, 6 becomes 12.

Finally, Mondrak. 12 becomes 24.

From 1 SINGULAR Human, I make 24. Did I do that right?

[iridescentholly]

X spells in magic the gathering are where the fact it was designed by a maths guy really pops. Majority of the maths in magic is "can I pay cost" or "is damage dealt enough to kill a creature/player", so playing around with that number being variable rather than fixed makes some sense, and maths has X as a default variable, so you get fireball

right there in the first set - variable cost for variable damage, 1:1. This spell is great for ending games, which makes up for it's poor rate for the time (see lightning bolt, where you pay 1 mana for 3 damage)

So now you can use X for the cost to give a linear scaling effect, such as additional counters on creatures

Where we get really mathsy next is the relatively few examples of effectively "do something X times, X times" for example:

These two cards are roughly equivalent in what they do to the previous two - but appear to scale at a much worse rate, having to pay two or three times the cost for each time you do "X" but the trick here is these aren't actually scaling linearly, they're scaling quadratically, making them much more effective than they seem.

Anyway all this to say that sometimes evaluating how good a magic card can require understanding quadratic scaling!*

*but almost never will because these effects are almost certainly intentionally costed too highly and attached to traditionally uncompetitive effects, likely so that players don't actually have to think about quadratic scaling. This is probably for the best. Also there's one card that scales exponentially (2 to the power of X) rather than quadratically (X to the power of 2). It's literally called exponential growth.

[total-cards]

Magic the Gathering is really trying to get us to do maths during our games…

[suhmayzooka]

hey nerds, my GF is trying to get me into magic the gathering and i understand there's some math involved. anyone have some fun explanations? my bachelor's is in applied math & master's in a more finance-oriented risk management (capitalist math), so i won't shy from game theory and probability type stuff but also i'm not super sharp when it comes to long proofs and theorems but i can follow along lol

[thestormlightnetwork]

never played mtg. LOVE seeing mgt posts on my feed

[augustaugustaugustgibmonster]

8 scute swarms to 512 scute swarms in one turn

[drmajalis]

Doing complex statistical calculations to best optimize my Maelstrom Wanderer deck, math can be fun sometimes

[ashpeth]

I love them so much! Math nerd and himbo jock fight ghosts together. Best duo i didn’t know I needed but now can’t imagine my life without.

[unnonexistence]

hermann gottlieb WOULD play magic the gathering

[vedalkensamurai]

If there's one career where you're sure to find a lot of Magic players, it's computer programmers. I think Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer, would have enjoyed playing this Commander deck.

[worlds-smallest-epsilon]

i'm going to make a commander deck that's prime collector number tribal, i.e. only include cards that have been printed with a collector number that's prime.

[theothin]

when I first got involved with the mtg massive damage combos, I remember being intimidated by these parts of the discussions and making a point of focusing on more grounded stuff instead. coming up on the one-year mark and I've ended up diving all the way in

(I'm still mad that my life and limb idea ended up still having problems with the layer rules. treacherous pit-dweller would have made it finally work!)

[badmtgcards]

snackin

[magicwithclass]

This feels like a college recruitment flyer that Zimone from Strixhaven would make. I especially like that it mentions the conflict of whether math is created or discovered. Very quandrix!