[Codex Puzzle] Insure ALL the things!

Codex
1

Inspired by discussion of a possible union between Law and Present, especially my disappointment that Insurance Agent doesn’t really combo with Temporal Distortion, I thought I’d pose a puzzle to the community:

How can one maximize the resources gained from Insurance Agent(s) in a single turn?

You can use any combination of specs for you and your opponent, so long as one of your specs is Law. All the rules of Codex are still in play, but the board can be set up in whatever legal circumstances are ideal for your plan must not have any units, heroes, building cards or upgrades in play at the start of your turn for either player (anything else can be set up in any legal way). This creates a couple points of interest:

  1. As discussed in the topic above, for an Insurance Agent to be able to collect insurance on a unit’s death, the Agent must not have left the board before the unit being insured dies, and the unit being insured must die, so having it leaving the board another way won’t work either.
  2. A player can have a max of 20 gold at a time, so if any infinite solutions exist they need ways to dump gold. Probably not an actual issue, but it’s something that needs to be kept in mind (and yes, any gold that isn’t gained because of reaching the gold limit does not count toward your total – meaning that unlike @mysticjuicer’s Hyperions puzzle, having 20 workers might not be ideal).

Because they could have different solutions, I’m looking for both a sequence that maximizes gold gained and one that maximizes cards drawn, both before your opponent’s turn starts. If an infinite solution is found for either, it and the highest non-infinite solution will count as winning (because the answer to every puzzle shouldn’t be “here’s an infinite loop”).

1 Like
2

The Hyperion puzzle solution already gives you infinite cards and gold. You want the highest non-infinite solution?!?

An alternative puzzle would be the most gold/cards you can make from a blank board state. It’s still probably an infinite loop with Rememberer, Seer, Ebbflow Archon, Omegacron and Insurance Agent. Maybe banning Tech III could be the next constraint?

ETA: So I sat down and tried to build an infinite loop from a blank board state, and it’s harder than I thought. So I recommend you make that the constraint!

2 Likes
3

I totally forgot to check what the infinite solution was, so I feel pretty foolish now… Yeah, in the end I guess I want a non-infinite solution, but I don’t know if that would be very interesting. Maybe I’ve just wasted everyone’s time? Sorry about that!

Edit: OK, that’ll work. Let’s make it a blank board state and see what happens!

4

For a non-infinite solution, you have to exclude Ebbflow Archon. Once you’ve done that, you can remove / re-summon agents with the following cards:

Law:
Insurance Agent
Jurisdiction (if you can return other spells to your Codex somehow)

Past:
Undo
Origin Story (on Prynn, who banished 2 agents each time)
Rewind
Second Chances

Present:
Temporal Distortion
Geiger max-band
WGD (if you can get Agents back into your Codex)

Future:
Double Time (multiply other solution by 3)

Truth:
Reteller of Truths (max +2)

Necromancy:
Max Garth
Blackhand Resurrector (with haste)

So it looks like Past + Law + Future is the best bet (also gives Omegacron as an easy sac outlet)

5

I’m wondering if quality over quanitity might not be better… maybe something that involves no-cost Gigadons via Murkwood Allies or something. So you Gigadon for free, insure, kill it somehow… hmm.

1 Like
6

Assuming having 2x Double Time suspended at the start of the activity is kosher, I have a line that generates 80 draws, generating 648 gold.

If Double Time is excluded, then it’s only 28 draws, generating 224 gold.

The exact mechanism of this solution is left as an exercise for the reader.

Edit: forgot to account for all the cards I was burning through, so one less payout available per cycle, but gold value is slightly increased. Note that this means you can get 228/660 gold total, if you go down to 26/74 draws.

3 Likes
7

I’m sure you accounted for not being able to reshuffle more than once per turn, right? 30 draws in one turn is a lot, but probably within reasonable limits…

Edit: Actually, the more impressive bit is how much gold you’re getting without it being infinite. I agree with @robinz below, this is probably going to be tricky for anyone else to get even close to figuring out.

8

That takes me back to my happy days as a student (both undergraduate and postgrad) studying Maths :slight_smile:

(Many memories of reading “it can be easily shown that…”, and then failing to prove it to my satisfaction an hour and several pages of scribbles later…)

6 Likes
9

I think you misunderstood me, I’ve made not the slightest attempt to recreate EricF’s solution (too lazy, and too many other things to spend time on right now). I was just making a flippant comment based on his phrasing.

Although I strongly suspect I’d get nowhere near if I tried :slight_smile:

1 Like
10

Yeah, I haven’t tried either. It’s just that your comparison made me realize how much it would take if someone did try, so leaving it “as an exercise for the reader” is about as helpful as saying “you need to find a specific person; they live somewhere in Africa. Good luck!”

11

This reminds me of the discussion about how to do the most damage to the opponents base from a blank board without going infinite. EricF also solved that one on the old forum if i remember correctly.

2 Likes
12

Sure, but what’s even better than ludicrously overkilling your opponent? Getting flithy, stinking rich first! :wink:

Even without knowing what @EricF’s solution is, I have to assume it either involves lots of things attacking or will eventually end with lots of things that can attack next turn. If all the gold goes purely to keeping the loop sustained without any intention of attacking, that’ll be disappointing…

13

it’s not missed lethal, it’s just really elaborate BM

1 Like
14

“BM”? Not sure what that acronym is.

Edit: Ah, I see. I haven’t played many online games before, so this is my first experience with a lot of things. Thanks for the explanation!

1 Like
15

‘bad manner’

it can get used in a variety of ways: “wow, Idra is so BM”, “omg he /danced his zerglings in his opponent’s base that’s so BM”, “this dude on ladder was just BMing me non-stop so I had to block him”

BM covers a variety of behaviours in online gaming, from trolling your opponent by deliberately taking extraneous actions before actually landing lethal (dancing your units or spamming MULES in StarCraft 2 for example), to sandbagging and deliberately missing lethal to demonstrate how hopeless their situation is (thinking of Hearthstone here), to just being or being known for behaving in a cold, snippy, abusive, or unsportsmanlike way (see under Idra in the dictionary)

1 Like
16

No worries! I love real time strategy and fighting game jargon, and really love that I get to use some of that language when I’m discussing Codex and Yomi. :smiley:

2 Likes
17

Sorry, I forgot to account for the cards spent. Updated stats listed above (fewer cards drawn, but more gold earned!)

2 Likes
18

Law-Past-Future I guess.

Lets see now 26 draws is the most important part to figure out I think as that tells us that each insurance agent arrives approximately 13 times.
Play IA x2 (+2)
Past kit –
Undo IA x2 (+2)
Origin Story Prynn (2x IA) x2 (+4)
Rewind IAs (2x IA) x2 (+4)
– (10)
Reshuffled past kit.
Law kit –
Community Service x2 (IA opponent)
– (2)
Reshuffled Law kit.
Non-shuffled kit:
Second Chances x2 – (theoretically 2 if we can contrive both insurance agents to leave at the same time and NOT a bunch of other things? Otherwise getting two to leave simultaneously is probably a judgement day thing?)
END OF CYCLING: Maxband Prynn, who actually dies this time – (2), but we don’t get to use her next turn.

2+10+10+2+2+(2+2) = 26-30x Insurance Agent runes?

Involved expenses per cycle:
Maxband Prynn (8), rewind x2 (8), OS Prynn (3), Maxband Prynn (8), OS Prynn (3), Undo IA (3), Seer to give Prynn +1 rune for each maxband here (2)
Insurance Agent played 8 times (8) and arrives an additional 4 times via Prynn maxband.
Bigby (2), Community Service x2 (10)
14 runes, 6 targets.

Omegacron x2 (4) sac outlet for 12 things, like Nebulae x2, Lawbringer Griffon x2, Hive x2, Justice Juggernaught x1,
(Nebula A 14, Nebula B 14, Lawbringer A 20, Lawbringer B 20, Hive A 12, Hive B 12, Justice Juggernaught A 12) = 104 gold 14 runes used, do it all over again gets me up to 208 gold, 28 runes used?
Nebula can probably eat a Justice Juggernaught life or two.

This looks close.
I’m not sure the exact order but it should look something like this?
You do use a bit more than HALF of the gold just playing bodies I should note.

EDIT: minor improvement -
Second chances can be used to replace the JJ in cycle 1 for 8 extra gold if Lawbringer is the first thing that leaves play of ours in the turn, as then we have a cycle 1 insurance set of: Griffon x3, Nebula x2, Hive x2. (203+142+12*2) = 112. Second cycle still resting at 104, total now 216.
If we’re allowing Prynn to die for realzies at the end, we get another 12 and draw +2 by maxbanding her to blink our insurance agents and insure a second JJ in our second cycle, which puts it up to 228. HAH I got a number!

19

Check your card counts - you only make a profit on 1 card per “2 agents target something that dies”

Also, you can’t play Second Chances, Omegacron, and Insurance Agent since they are all Tech II things from different specs.

20

Since this doesn’t exclude having things in Forecast, the optimal answer for “most cards drawn via Insurance Agent’s ability” is:
Past/Future/Law, naming Law for the Tech II, with a Tech Lab naming Past.
Start turn with 2x Double Time and 2x Omegacron forecasted (you replaced your Tech Lab last turn)
Play:
Insurance Agent (2)
Community Service for opponent’s Insurance Agent (2)
Rewind, re-playing both agents (4)
Undo each agent (2)
Origin Story, after banishing agents with Prynn (4)
Second Chances, one at a time, to refresh Omegacrons (-)
Total: 14

Then you sac Agents & Second Chances to Omegas, use Temporal Research to reshuffle, and do it all again.
Then you do the whole sequence another 2 times, thanks to your extra turns.

On the last turn, you can use one of the Second Chances on an Agent. Then Prynn dies, giving you 2 extra triggers.

14 x 6 + 3 = 87 total agent activations.

This doesn’t maximize gold, since you’re using Rememberer/Seer/Rememberer loop to keep up on cards and gold, instead of playing and sacking more expensive things.

1 Like