Magic: the Gathering Is Turing Complete

TsukiKage writes "A 50-card M:tG combo for four players is demonstrated that is used to construct a simple Turing machine, performing arbitrary computations just by following the rules of Magic and card text thereafter."

Re:Legend unique in play

[Anonymous Coward]

They have that covered with Mirror Gallery, which eliminates the Legend Rule while in play.

Re:Such vitriol for M:TG in these early comments

[donaggie03]

That's one of the reasons for the 2 year set rotation. Only the last 2 years worth of cards are allowed in standard play. (There's also the obvious reason of requiring people to buy more cards.) There haven't been any cards with poison counters in at least the last 2 expansions (that's when I started paying attention to the game) and I'm pretty sure there's none in the upcoming one either. The developers try new and different things to try to keep the game fresh and interesting to long time players, and it seems to be hit and miss. I think they've been fairly decent at hitting, but poison counters are a good example of a miss, afaic.

Re:Hacked texts?

[Anonymous Coward]

What he means is that he has cards with effects like "Change the text of target card from a to b..." When he uses one of those compeltely legal cards, he refers to it as hacked. So he is using proper legal rules.

Re:My thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to actually read the explanation. They're manipulating cards' text with the cards "Artificial Evolution" and "Mind Bend", and then using the drill sergeant to pull the chancellor from the deck. He then dies to a combination of the ghouls + aether flash, and gets wheeled back into the library.

Seriously, this is all in the "How it works" part of the explanation, and it does make sense. It's not something that could ever come close to happening in a normal game, but it obeys the rules if the situation were set up as described.

Re:Not so sure.

[TuringTest]

There *îs* a card for changing the colors in the text, and the guy's using it (and a second one to change creature type). The card modification is thus done according to the rules.

In fact, almost any magic effect in MtG is a change in the initial rules, so that's Magic for you

Re:Not so sure.

[HeckRuler]

Dwarf Fortress did it first with diabolical machinations dreamt up by fell craftsdwarves whose infernal machines are powered by the blood of kittens. No, literally, THE BLOOD OF KITTENS. I've seen perpetual motion water wheels with blood as the medium and catsplosions are a common method of pest control. The founts of blood splattering into the throne room where the dark emperor sits and laughs are merely a side benefit. Using pressure plates to trigger floodgates leads to all sorts of possibilites. Dark horrible possibilities.