http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?29806-Sorting-with-Petals-of-Insight-Shortcutting-and-Slow-Play I would love to know my fellow judges opinions on this discussion. My thoughts are as follows:
This is not a valid loop. The simple reason being that as an opponent I should have the ability to interact at any time. In a traditional loop a player will perform a set of actions and then “establish a shortcut” where that exact set of actions is repeated over and over. However in a Petal Loop the player is unable to state what actions they are taking in each shortcut of actions. Different numbers of cards are moved to the bottom/top each time and thus the gamestate cannot be tracked as it progresses. In a traditional loop a player can allow the loop to proceed any number of iterations and because every part of the loop is deterministic “after 19 loops, do X” because the exact gamestate is known. However in a Petals loop a player cannot say how many cards will have been put on top/bottom 19 interations in (without executing them) and thus a player cannot interact with this loop.
I think this would be pretty clearly outlined in 716.2a but there seems to be player (and judge) disagreement.
716.2a – “It can’t include conditional actions, where the outcome of a game event determines the next action a player take “