Hey all! I’m just coming back after a few months away, and I just had an odd experience against a crazy Rogue deck on the Wild ladder. It seemed to be a variant of Garrote rogue, and I was playing Mage. They looked capable of looping infinite Bleeds thanks to an endgame of Augmented Elekk paired with Gear Shifts, Knickknack Shacks, Quasars, and Garrotes. They basically OTK’ed me with the loop, but I had an Ice Block up which -should- have bought me a turn.
They seemed to be continuing to take actions long after their rope expired i.e. cast more Gear Shifts and Quasars that they seemed to have just drawn, after the timer expired, to continue the loop with the Augmented Elekk. The Quasar animations were extremely long for each card going into the deck and being duplicated, too, and by the time the turn passed to me, my timer fuse was basically already up and the turn immediately passed back to them. It was impossible for me to cast my other Ice Block, so I lost when they attacked me with the Elekk.
My question is this - Was this a bug, or are there things I just don’t know yet about slush time? Is abuse of it a legitimate win condition? Granted, they would likely have killed me with the Bleeds anyway before I pulled off my endgame, but are the Garrotes even necessary if the loop gives you an infinite deck of cantrips AND causes your opponent to not be able to take another turn? The slush time manipulation, at the very least, seems to be a very strong alternate wincon with zero opportunity cost.