Last July, I wrote an article about Inifinite Loops in Achroma, and why they didn’t work. I then wrote about how the door to Infinite Loops got re-opened with the arrival of Achroma 2.0.

I had expected Achroma to close the door on these loops, but have just had it confirmed that since they’re all considerably tricky do, the loops will remain in the game for anyone willing to try to pull them off. As such, I thought I’d review the loops available to players, and suggest some decks designed to utilise them.

Club of Dagda
The loop relies on the powerful Realm Relic Club of Dagda, which gives the attached character unlimited attacks and +1 every time they attack. If you PROTECT the attacker and defender, and you could attack repeatedly to get to 30 shards, as neither character would get erased.

This was initially shut down with the ruling that you can’t attack a character that was down to 0 shards. However, PROTECTION was subsequently reworded so that cards with PROTECTION don’t lose shards (a fact that actually made objects with PROTECTION much stronger). Thus, the loop is back on the table.

The most popular deck that utilised this loophole in July 2023 was a Spirata deck that revolved around Jamshid Orb and Release the Fireflies, plus Factory Production Line to REVEAL one of the two key objects. It’s not the easiest combo to gather the necessary cards, but given that the rest of your deck is in Spirata, you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting the necessary shards, plus you can use the remaining 25 or so cards to build a normal Spirata Chroma deck, meaning you don’t have to lean too heavily on the loop for the win.

Aroberts93 posted a version of this deck to the Achroma discord, with a palette list that also included Spirata greats such as Ray/Firetender and Dr Hue’s Lab Coat. Another deck that used this combo was posted by chase back in May 2023. It used an un-erasable Torstein, combined with Lacringi Cliff Dwelling and Eirik to find your objects, plus Jamshid Orb to protect the opponent’s character.

This combo also sits quite nicely in Salum Planum. The realm has ways of finding objects (Hex Clunker and Alchemist’s Tincture being the big two) and protecting characters (for example Bothy, which can be revealed by Veil Chaser’s Nest). Here’s a prototype build that utilises these combos, with plenty of cheap achrom characters so you can protect the opponent’s character with Delilah’s Concoction:

Of course this deck won’t exactly be 100% consistent. It relies on the opponent actually playing characters, plus it has little gain, steal, or trade fodder. In a best of 3, if you win the first game, I would imagine smart opponents just trading to victory and not playing characters, and for that reason, this isn’t an issue for competitive play. But in a one-off casual game, or especially a multi-player, it’s likely to be much more effective.

Prismsprayer loop
This loop is one I haven’t written about before. Back in June of this year, Antinomy93 wrote an article about Thrash (link here). In the article, he mentioned that Prismsprayer is a great card with Thrash, since when it’s erased it gets deployed again, allowing you to trigger Thrash again. This got me thinking: how about using Thrash to erase the Prismsprayer you just deployed, erasing it again, deploying it again, and and erasing it again ad infinitum. Not much use on its own, but combine it with an ability that triggers when one of your cards is erased, and you can trigger it repeatedly. Enter The Unruly:

Phisto could also work instead of The Unruly, but as he’s a legendary, it limits your build options a little. After a bit of thought, I designed this deck to abuse this combo:

Here’s the thoughts behind the card choices:
Finding Unruly: Squad Formation will only ever reveal Squad Leader and Coffey, then Coffey finds Unruly. So 4 copies of Unruly.
Finding Thrash: Either Coffey as above, or 2 copies of Pixie Enlisting, so 6 cards to find him.
Finding Prismsprayer: Lost Property and Factory Production Line, so 5 copies of that.
Other card choices: Dracon, Imp, Blueprint, Full Palette: all solid cheap Spirata staples.
Splat Square, Giant Prism, HAIM, ASP, promo locations: high cost trade fodder.
Squad Leader: simply the highest shard value uncommon painter for Squad Formation, to use as trade fodder.

I shared this decklist with Antinomy93 after I built it and he took it to the Achroma store that week, winning a multiplayer game, though he conceded it was a bit slow. This is difficult to pull off and costs plenty of shards to get going, but as with the Dagda loop, it’ll probably be strongest in multiplayer games.

Cintimani Stone loop
The idea here is that if the opponent has a Cintimani Stone in their dregs, you can play Stone on one of your characters, and use its ACTION to play their Stone from their dregs on one of your characters. Thanks to the change to the heroic rule from Achroma 2.0, the first Stone is erased and then the action on Stone triggers, allowing you to play the first Stone again. Combine this with an ability that triggers when one of your cards is erased, such as The Unruly, Phisto, or Norso Totem, and you’ve got yourself an autowin.

Of course the obvious problem with this combo is it relies on an opponent having Cintimani Stone in their dregs. But as most decks have a copy of this card in their palette, the chance of this isn’t so small. Basically, if your deck happens to have Cintimani Stone plus one of Norso Totem, Phisto, or The Unruly in it, keep an eye out for the opponent’s Stone hitting their dregs or their canvas. Erase it from their canvas, and you’re good to go.

Hod Mirror
A minor loop to finish. If you’re playing Hod vs Hod (a Hod Mirror match), then as soon as the second Hod hits the canvas and either play GAINS some shards, someone will win, though it might not be you.

Will there be more infinite loops in the future for Achroma? At present, all these loops are harder to execute than simply winning by Chroma or Achrom. So long as that remains the case, these funky alternate win conditions will likely remain a feature of Achroma gameplay.

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