Plunge into the Calculator

MonkeyPirate2002MonkeyPirate2002
in Just for Fun Contests
While I was looking at one of my older card, Plunge into Despair, I was wondering what was the cheapest way to kill an opponent at 20 health. Rather than do it myself, I thought it would be a fun idea to get you guys to pull out the calculator and do it for me. The opponent has a board of an infinite number of nontoken creatures. The only permanents on your side of the battlefield are basic lands, and the only card in your hand is Plunge into Despair.

Rewards:

1rst place will get 5 favorites of their choice and a follow from me.

2cnd place will get 3 favorites of their choice and a follow from me.

3rd place will get a favorite of their choice and a follow from me.

Plunge into Despair:

image

The deadline is Thursday, January 10th in the evening

Comments

  • Bowler218Bowler218
    So, like a multiplier for your card?
  • fiskertonfiskerton
    edited January 2019
    I'm not 100% sure on the card since I think it's using X multiple times with different values, but I'm assuming the card works by choosing a number of times you want to kick, pay some amount of mana each time you kick, multiply all the mana you spent together, then multiply that number by the number of times you kicked.

    You can optimize it based on how many times you kick the card and the number 20. The aim is to minimize the number of 1s you must factor in because they dont increase the damage but they increase mana spent.

    Kick once = 20 damage per creature -> 20 mana spent

    Kick twice = 10 damage per creature minimum -> 5x2 = 7 mana spent. 3x4 = 12 still results in 7 mana.

    Kick three times = 7 damage per creature minimum. If you go for 8, that's 2x2x2 = 6 mana spent. Cant factor past that without using 1s.

    Kick four times = 5 damage per creature minimum -> 2x2x1x1 doesnt work. 3x2x1x1 is 7 mana. 5x1x1x1 is 8 mana.

    Kick five times = 4 damage per creature minimum. You can do this by either doing 4x1x1x1x1 = 8 mana or 2x2x1x1x1 = 7 mana.

    This is where it starts to break down because you have to start factoring 1s to fill in the rest of the kicks. So the minimum kicker mana you can spend is 6 mana targeting 3 creatures kicking for 2 each.
  • MonkeyPirate2002MonkeyPirate2002
    edited January 2019
    @fishkerton alright, so a 13 mana card that makes your opponent lose the game isn't that bad (not at all)

    Let's see if someone can get lower. It might not be possible, but who knows.
  • LyndonFLyndonF
    That's probably the limit...

    Let k the number of times you kick the spell and n be the total amount of mana you have avaliable for kicking. The best way to optimize the damage is to spread out the mana evenly, i.e. declaring X as n/k each time. Under this case, the damage will be roughly k*(n/k)^k (since n/k isn't always an integer.)

    We can try to minimize the mana used by increasing n by 1 each time and seeing what the maximum output is.

    n=1: k=1, 1 damage
    n=2: k=1, 2 damage
    n=3: k=2, 4 damage
    n=4: k=2, 8 damage
    n=5: k=2, 12 damage (or k=3)
    n=6: k=3, 24 damage

    So that's probably the quickest way to win.

    Of course, if the creatures all have lifelink, you might as well concede....
  • MonkeyPirate2002MonkeyPirate2002
    edited January 2019
    Contest is now closed.

    Winners:
    1rst place: @fiskerton
    2cnd place: @LyndonF
    3rd place: N/A

    Winners may now link favorites.
  • MonkeyPirate2002MonkeyPirate2002
    edited January 2019
    Eh, you know what. Since everyone forgot about this (I felt like it was meh too) I'm going to close this. @Corwinnn , could you do the honors?
This discussion has been closed.