HackerTube

I Built a COMPUTER in Magic: The Gathering

Because Science3 HN recommenders · 2019–2026
2M views · demo · evergreen · Uploaded 2019-10-31

Kyle Hill of Because Science explains and demonstrates, using real cards, how Magic: The Gathering can be used to build a Turing machine, a computer inside the card game.

HN links it as the accessible, hands-on demo behind the claim that Magic is Turing complete.

Computability & complexity theoryChess, board games & puzzles

Watch on YouTube

4 comments from Hacker News

@cyberfart2019 · in “My Kid Lost a Game of 'Magic' to Its Creator But Scored a Piece of Its Art”

Related to your comment, here's the paper [0] and Because Science recently made a video about how such a game would look like [1]. [0] [LINK] [1] [VIDEO]

CitesView on HN
@lukifer2020 · in “Accidentally Turing-Complete”

For anyone curious about the details of building a Turing machine in MtG, Because Science did a thorough breakdown and demonstration, using actual cards: [VIDEO]

RecommendsView on HN
@bentona2023 · in “Magic: The Gathering Is Turing Complete (2019)”

Here's a demo: [VIDEO] Didn't realize this before watching, but it's interesting that there's an incredibly complicated board state but the game state / actions are deterministic, e.g. the players don't have any choices about what to do once the machine is set up.

RecommendsView on HN
@mckn1ght2026 · in “MTG Bench: Testing how well LLMs can play magic”

Someone made a video based on the paper, if you want to see the cards being used and a little more explanation: [VIDEO]

RecommendsView on HN