Pointed Discussion

Maybe it's not that powerful - or at least, needs unpowerful cards alongside it to work - but who cares? It's fun and funny.

It's a must for decks relying on coin flips, obviously. However, there may not be too many mainstream Chance Encounter decks running around... but still, it's cool! :D

Get 2 or 3 in play and almost never lose a flip again. Via Mirror Gallery of course to ignore the legend part.

Game of Chaos, Fiery Gambit and Mana Clash. Try a play set of each in a deck w/ the Thumb, and tell me you didn't have fun after playing w/ it.

I wonder how it would work with four of them in play? (With Mirror Gallery) It would be...AWESOME!

Here's a decklist I made for a "Coin-Flip Deck":

4x Krark's Thumb
1x Mirror Gallery
2x Chance Encounter
2x Goblin Bomb
1x Chaotic Goo
1x Crazed Firecat
1x Desperate Gambit
1x Fickle Efreet
2x Fiery Gambit
1x Fighting Chance
1x Game of Chaos
1x Goblin Assassin
1x Goblin Psychopath
1x Impulsive Maneuvers
1x Karplusan Minotaur
1x Mana Crypt
1x Planar Chaos
2x Scoria Wurm
1x Tide of War
1x Lightning Bolt
1x Aether Membrane
18x Mountains

It's 46 cards.

I love this card and it is loads of fun, however.

I don’t think Mirror Gallery will help this card as much as everyone seems to think it does.
The card reads (if you didn’t read it above) “if you would flip a coin, instead flip two coins and IGNORE ONE.” Not “Pick any number of winning coins from the pile you just flipped” For every pair of coins you get one mandatory outcome. So with 2 out you would flip 2 coins twice and get 2 outcomes that may not work with eachother. Such as Goblin Archeologyst, you win, destroy target artifact, you lose, sacrifice the goblin. You can’t sacrifice the goblin more than once. So if you have all 4 thumbs out, (16 coin flips) it will happen.
-Chance Encounter works well enough, loosing flips dosen’t remove counters so you could be adding as many as 8 counters per coin flipping event.
-Wirefly Hive wont work, one of your 8 pairs of coins WILL kill all the wireflys
-Goblin Bomb is just as likely to remove 8 counters as add 8 counters, so having 4 thumbs is actually slower than having just one thumb out.
-Chaotic Goo has the same problem, and an unlucky turn will kill it so fast youll wish you had fewer thumbs out.
-Crazed Firecat kinda works, you have to flip the triggered 16 coins each time you would flip one coin, as long as one of those pairs is a loss then it all stops, so it’s never going to continue to the second coin flip event unless your playing with rigged coins.
-Desperate Gambit & Impulsive Maneuvers, unless you win every one of the 8 flips then the damage is prevented. (Winning all of them would let you deal realy fun amounts of damage though)
-Fiery Gambit has the same problem, as long as you lose one flip it does nothing “-has no effect”
-Fickle Efreet, bank on winning all 8 pairs of flips, cause otherwise the critter is not yours any more.
-Fighting Chance, there is no result from loosing a flip so this card works as expected by all.
-Game of Chaos, dosent work with multiple results stemming from one flip event: you have 4 thumbs out, and your opponent wins an average of one quarter of the first 1 life bets. So for one, the life totals wont move as much. And now your opponent chooses to stop and you to continue. How do you resolve who gets to choose? A coin flip? LOL.
-Goblin Psychopath, there is no result form winning the flip so you will almost always take his damage whenever he dose damage. (And with any of the gambits/maneuvers out, you will have a slim but possible chance of dying right now)
- Karplusan Minataur works, just be ready to take a huge amount of damage yourself, many times
-Mana Crypt, keep those thumbs to a min (1). Cause if you loose any of the 8 pairs of flips you take 3 damage each loss cause it dosent say “if you win the flip prevent all damge”.
-Planar Chaos works awesome till your upkeep, it will counter everything, but on your first upkeep it will die if you so much as loose one pair of flips.
-Scoria Wurm, you will have a very, very hard time keeping this in play with more than one thumb out.
-Tide of War, get ready for all creatures to be sacrificed every combat. If you win a flip all his die, if you loose, all yours die, good chances with 16 coins both will happen.

Sorry for the length of this comment, reading all the cards has given me deck ideas though.

Actualy, this deck has as slim a chance of killing itself as any other player. It would spend 99% of it's games waisting everones time with stupid amounts of coin flipping and NO damage being delt. Its more of a sanity grinder than a chaos deck. Good sanity grinder though, i would quit too if my oponent spent 10 min fipping coins every turn with no result

This card would be a lot cooler if it wasn't legendary, as then it would at least give you the possibility of making coin flips fairly consistant. As-is, it is too inconsistent.
Maybe someday they'll make a creature which does this.

this is a very fun card to play with

however alot of you are suggesting using mirror gallery with it to further improve your chances. however, i recently asked a judge some questions about replacements effects for a few other combo's i was working on, and he told me that replacement effects do not stack. i forget exactly who it is that chooses(i think maybe active player) but in any case only one is chosen to take effect, the rest are essentially ignored. krarks thumb says 'instead' meaning that it is a replcement effect and thus multiple krark's thumbs are redundant.

Makes coin flip decks more reliable, though still heavily luck based. Sounds hilarious for casual though

In response to Yotiansoldier:

You are correct in your evaluation of the coin-flip-expansion (Doubling for every Krark's Thumb in play) But you need to remember, each individual coin flip isn't a win/lose instance, it's simply heads or tails.

Example: You have two thumbs in play, and you play Stitch in Time, calling heads as your winning toss.

Here's how it breaks down:

1-The first thumb will replace the initial coin flip with two coins instead. (A and B)
2-The second thumb will replace coins A and B with two of its own each. (Creating coins a, b, c, d)
3-You flip all four coins:
a-is tails
b-is tails
c-is Tails
d-is heads
4-a-Coins a(tails) and b(tails) were a result of coin A being flipped, so you ignore coin a and get tails as your result for coin A.
b-Coins c(tails) and d(heads) were a result of coin B being flipped, so you ignore coin c and get heads as your result for coin B.
5-Coins A and B were a result of the initial coin toss, so you ignore A (Tails) and get heads as your result for the initial flip.
6-Heads is what the thumbs deliver as the Winning result, so you get to take an extra turn.

(((a/b)A)((c/d)B)initial)

So, as long as at least one result is heads, you will "Win" the coin toss, regardless of how many tails got lost in the shuffle.

@Arachibutyrophobia

if you ran some blue, you could copy artifact them.

also, if you made everything enchantments (forgot the card that does it), you could make 12 with 4 copy enchantments

I just read in wikipaedia, that chances are you will tend to get the same resoult after you flip a coin, like TTH, so if you have Tails and you loose, chances of getting anotherTails are higher than Head, still, it is better than loosing the flip anyway.

Non-UnSet version of Goblin Bookie. Outside of tournament-legal-only games, run both to ensure you win every flip.

you cant have 4 thums in play, who cares that it would be redundent, (though i am not so sure it would be) but in case you didn't knotice, it's LEGENDARY

Teotanek: When you flip a coin, the outcome is unaffected by previous outcomes. It's always 50/50...

@stuarthamilton

Thats not exactly right, the effect on the thumb is a replacement effect, so like it has been said, having more than one thumb on the field is redundant, because the situation you described results in impossible outcomes. The card says flip two and ignore one. So if it worked like you said, you would have flipped, and instead, flip two, then for each flip, flip one and ignore one, so, you would have four flips, 2 of them were to be ignored and two of them be the result. the rules state:

614.6. If an event is replaced, it never happens. A modified event occurs instead, which may in turn trigger abilities. Note that the modified event may contain instructions that can’t be carried out, in which case the impossible instruction is simply ignored.

So, two thumbs wouldnt be advantageous.

O_O. Great card beyond words.

5/5

No, sadly Mirror Gallery and Krark's Thumb does not equal infinite coin flips, just 4 coin flips.

Quote from SCG 'Ask The Judge':

Q: I understand that with one Krarks Thumb the replacement clause makes it only trigger once, but if you have two or more (with Mirror Gallery) wouldn't the extra flips trigger the others? So, would this cause the infinite loop, or would the replacement clause protect it from this, too?

A: Replacement effects do not trigger, they just replace the specified event with something else. And a single replacement effect can only be applied to a single event once. So this does not create a loop. What happens with two Thumbs in play is that when you would flip one coin, you flip four and choose one.

I can't see how having multiple Krark's Thumbs would help you. The way I see it, there are two ways for Krark's Thumb to work:

1) It replaces each coin-flip event with an event such that two coins are flipped and one is ignored. So, to resolve this event, you start by flipping a coin (to be followed by flipping another coin and then ignoring one). Hold on, you've just tried to execute a coin-flip event. The Krark's Thumb replacement effect triggers and you need to flip two coins and ignore one. Clearly, this can't be the way the card works (otherwise flipping a coin would cause an infinite coin-flip event loop and end the game in a draw).

2) It replaces each coin-flip event with a two-coin-flip-ignore-one event. In this case, you flip two coins at the same time and ignore one of them. Since this is a two-coin-flip-ignore-one event, it's different from a coin-flip event and therefore does not trigger the Krark's Thumb replacement effect (on your first Krark's Thumb or on ANY other Krark's Thumb in play).

If anyone can see flawed logic in my post, please point it out to me.

I decided to make a deck based around coin flipping. Not only is it fun to play, but it works too!

My main card is of course Krark's Thumb. Having a Mirror gallery allows me to play more Krark's Thumb, which makes me almost always flip in my favor once I have 2 or 3 in play. Then, I have some cards that become really overpowered:

-Impulsive Maneuvers, which allows my creatures to deal double damage when attacking, and prevent damage from my opponent when he's attacking. Having multiples in play gives even more chance to prevent damage, but also allow 4x, 8x or 16x damage (at the cost of more chance to deal no damage).
-Planar Chaos, which will counter half of my opponent's spells (because he is the one who flips, not me) while countering usually none of my spells.
-Fiery Gambit: Nothing beats a 3 damage to target creature, 6 damage to all opponents, untap all your lands and draw 9 cards, all for only 3 mana, a bit of set-up and some luck. Also, if I have a Chance encounter in play, I could flip as many times as I can and possibly get all 10 luck counters at once.

Three words: Stitch in Time.

I love how the 'Display Rulings' on this card just says something about you and you're opponent flipping coins at the same time, when I can only think of one card off the top of my head that would do that, and it didn't exist until M10 (Hive Mind)

The Display Rulings tab on Krark's Thumb should be 'Probability and Statistics 101' and be like 20 pages.

Either it doesnt do anything- and they never make cards that dont do anything. they make cards that do stupid things, but not cards that dont do anything.

Or it makes you the God of Luck who almost never loses a coin flip.

Mirror Gallery is dumb, because it unnecessarily complicates a card that is already plenty good as a 1-of.

R&D claim this card is legendary solely to minimize how often they'd have to explain what happens if you have two of them.

Twiddle your thumbs!

mana clash

"Let's play a gambling game. We play with my coins."
"Well, as long as these are legit that's fine for me."
"Of course they are!" *throws two coins*
"Wait, aren't those two coins flying in the air?"
*catches them and hides one* "Do you have a lazy eye, my friend? Here, one coin. Which ended up to my favor i might add."

Hmm, pity Krark didn't show un in Scars of Mirrodin.
Maybe we'll finally see him in a couple of years when a third Mirrodin cycle shows up.
I'd like him as a one-drop then, since his thumb unfortunately costs and i don't want to cast a Mana Clash without it, so there isn't any pretty turn one option for gambling decks yet (without mana accel).

@dragonlordged: There is a special rule in place just to deal with this type of scenario. No replacement effect can replace the same effect more than once. This is why effects that double damage are not infinite, but having multiple Furnaces of Rath works.

I think that Krark's Thumb replaces one flip with two flips, and then the second Thumb would replace each of those with two more flips, but the same flip effect would never be replaced twice by one Thumb. So the net effect of having two copies of Krark's Thumb in play should be that you flip four coins and ignore all but one.

Reference:
614.5. A replacement effect doesn’t invoke itself repeatedly; it gets only one opportunity to affect an event or any modified events that may replace it.

Using Krark's thumb is a snap! No Twiddle required - just use the best coin-flip cards you can get and thumb your nose at the odds! Shooting for three with Fiery Gambit can really nail an unsuspecting opponent, quickly reducing him to single digits. A fiery assault like that will force even the most stalwart opponent to knuckle under! Add in Goblin Bookie to up your odds and you can really launch a joint offensive.

Help me... I can't stop.

In b4 Ral Zarek.
GG

Well, Ral Zarek is coming out in Dragon's Maze. I wonder if people will start dusting off the Thumb. I can almost see this making a splash in Modern with Mr. Zarek.

Almost.

Nah.

Rosencrantz:
*flips coin* ... "Heads." ... *flips coin* ... "Heads." ... *flips coin* ... "Heads." ... *flips coin* ... "Heads." ... *flips coin* ... "Heads." ... *flips coin* ... "Heads." ...
This continues for some time.

Guildenstern:
"A weaker man might be moved to re-examine his faith, if in nothing else at least in the law of probability."

Rosencrantz:
*flips two coins* ... "Heads... Heads!"

Guildenstern:
"Syllogism... One, probability is a factor which operates within natural forces. Two, probability is not operating as a factor. Three, we are now within un-, sub- or supernatural forces..."

Rosencrantz:
"I’m sorry—What’s the matter with you?"

Guildenstern:
"The equanimity of your average tosser of coins depends upon a law, or rather a tendency, or let us say a probability, or at any rate a mathematically calculable chance, which ensures that he will not upset himself by losing too much nor upset his opponent by winning too often. This made for a kind of harmony and a kind of confidence. It related the fortuitous and the ordained into a reassuring union which we recognized as nature. The sun came up about as often as it went down, in the long run, and a coin showed heads about as often as it showed tails."

Rosencrantz:
"What if I told you I have a magic unicorn's thumb in my pocket..."

Guildenstern:
"...oh god damn it."

Rosencrantz:
"It couldn’t have been real. It must have been thunder. Like drums."

Guildenstern:
"I’m sorry it wasn’t a unicorn. It would have been nice to have unicorns."

~exeunt~

Ral Zarek Can anybody find a card that can flip more than 12 coins?

Thoan doe'n deliver luck. THIS buzz't delivers luck.