Deck Doctor 3: Going Infinite

The Infinite Loop. The pinnacle achievement of all players looking to break a format, finding one almost always resulted in a ban/errata if the loop was attainable too early. Many players shrug and assume all infinite lists have been dealt with but alas, several options still exist. Let's build one!

So first off, we want one that can go off by the mid-game, so ideally turn 5 or even earlier, but first we need to decide what kind of lynchpin we want our loop to be based around. In general infinite loops focus around cards that give easy +1's. For example the banned dr. light was a +1, but when used with rama-tut (another errata'd card from this interaction), you netted even more! This allowed the recycling of cosmic radiation while players would delete Rama for Devil's due. (In my humble opinion, the card that REALLY needed a ban but I digress)
As another example, Black box represented a unique infinite loop If you purposely decked yourself before it was errata'd to be unable to cycle other black boxes, or even simpler, a Syphon energy that targetted another Syphon energy while Feral was attacking for an infinite atk Feral (Syphon energy was errata'd to not target itself as well)

So where shall we begin? That is the hard part. I actually found my key while looking for the worst card ever printed.

A friend of mine recently asked for my help to categorize the 10 WORST cards in Versus System, using a series of qualifiers to determine the absolute worst cards. So there was a lot of spitballing cards that generally were considered to suck. Dr Tzin Tzin, Reign of Terra, J, and Jonah Jameson were among many others being nominated to this list, when one card in particular was mentioned due to low stats and a difficult effect to utilize.

 Jackal, Dr. Miles Warren.

Give this man a pimp hat.

My VS brains exploded. 

This is essentially a Dr. Light 4 drop for Syndicate. With Rama-Tut's errata to recruit only though, we need a different target for card cycling. What's more, with a limitation to the recovery phase only, we need to be able to consistently go off under the assumption that the Jackal is stunned unless we can also hide him.

So eventually I came up with a skeleton.
4x Jackal, Miles Warren
4x Floronic man, Jason Woodrue
4x Black Rose, Roxanne Simpson
4x Cosmic Radiation
- Any fantastic 4 characters
- A pile of teamups

So with this we have a hypothetical infinite loop:
Assuming all teams are crossed-over (Syndicate + Fan 4 + Underworld + Secret Society), at the start of recovery, we could activate jackal, put floronic man into play, ko floronic man, get cosmic rad, activate black rose, get floronic man, play cosmic and do it all again. Rinse and repeat et-infinitus.

Well that's swell Aaron, but that doesn't win us the game.

Correct. Not alone it doesn't.
So let's add our win condition.
 +4 Advanced Hardware
All we need is one and any other visible character. We ARE going infinite after all.

Now consistency. How can 4 teams regularly see a team-up ASAP?
Black rose forces some underworld consideration and Hypnotic charms is a BOSS for teaming up. So let's take a page out of Black Bamboo and try the Orb focus with as many hidden characters as we can fit. Secret Society will reinforce this with Straight To the Grave allowing us to send key cards to the KO pile and also, making sure we have a Cosmic radiation in the KO as well. (everyone seems to forget SttG's secondary effect)

Now things are coming together! But with a hidden-character Orb build, Advanced Hardware has no good equip target. So we're going to swap them out for Future Technology instead. Since if done right every character in play will be fan4 anyhow. This allows our disposable hidden 1 drops to get some work done. Lastly, we'll add some recovery options, and throw in some Medical Attentions since our 6/6 isn't going to be much of a threat in combat.

So lets see what we have now. I'd like to present to you:

Infinity Dog

Locations:
    1 [MHG] Soul World
    1 [MOR] Avalon Space Station
    1 [DJL] Slaughter Swamp

Characters:
    4 [MMK] Orb-Drake Shannon 
    3 [MEQ] Black Panther, Vibranium Vogue
    3 [MUN] Green Goblin, Insanity Unleashed 
    1 [DCL] The Riddler, Riddle Me This
    1 [MVL] Uatu the Watcher, He Who Watches

    4 [MTU] Black Rose, Roxanne Simpson
    2 [DCL] Dr. Sivana, Mad Scientist

    4 [DJL] Floronic Man, Jason Woodrue
    3 [MEV] Vision - Earth-1010

    4 [MSM] Jackal-Dr. Miles Warren

    1 [MUN] Invisible Woman, Secret Avenger

Plot Twists:
    4 [MOR] Cosmic Radiation
    4 [MMK] Hypnotic Charms
    4 [MXM] Enemy Of My Enemy
    4 [DJL] Straight to the Grave
    4 [MOR] Medical Attention
    3 [MEV] We Can Rebuild Him

Equipment:
    4 [MVL] Future Technology

The general premise is not unlike Black bamboo when it comes to setting up. fly through the deck as fast as possible using vision, we can rebuild him, Orb, Straight to the Grave, and Enemy of my Enemy to get Hypnotic Charms set up as soon as possible. Ideally by turn 3 you'll have a future tech equipped on a hidden lowbie so you can go nuts on the recovery phase of 4.

Tech options:
As usual the Oh-so-boring Pathetic Attempt is a good fit here to prevent enemies from KO-ing Jackal before he can recover, but a chained Medical Attention works just as well so I didn't bother including it, but you may want to try it. I am also a big fan of dipping into an early Uatu search to see any tricks opponents may draw into before equipping him with a Future tech.
There is something that waxes poetic about a 0/1 character dedicated to watching being the cause of infinite endurance loss.

Aside from that however, I'd wouldn't consider much else as a tight fast build is better than a slow one choking on too many answers. However, for those of you that NEED to play with tweaks, there are some other quick tricks you could make, sacrificing the builds speed in favor of more favorable matchups, As I already mentioned, this is essentially the black Bamboo engine, so if one were so inclined, it wouldn't be too hard to fit in a full suite of Black Bolt 1 drops and a Tarnax IV for some decent play into a rush by dropping a superfat 1 drop in the way.

Needless to say, Jackal did NOT make it onto our "Worst Cards List".

Let me know what you guys think and keep those deck clinic ideas coming!