Looping Regis in Monks

Regis looping was a concept first covered extensively by the Japanese player Petityan when Regis was released in Opus 12. The combo involved using 2 copies of Opus 6 Rinoa that had both died that turn as Regis targets to blink Regis and Thief or Lani (or any card, but Thief was the most straightforward way to win) to blink the pair infinitely and deck out the opponent. Because of the strict color restrictions (at least 4) and the way that Amaterasu and Mist Dragon completely shut down the combo, a deck that was primarily focused on looping with Regis never really saw much in the way of competitive success. 

But what if we could perform a Regis loop in an otherwise normal deck, using him as a combo finisher at close to no deckbuilding cost? Enter Opus 14 Regis Monks. Thanks to a relatively new discovery from none other than Petityan (again), Monks can now play for infinite resources and damage by abusing a slightly different Regis loop, made possible by the new additions of Mont Leonis and Titan, Lord of Crags. 

Core Loop and Infinite Yang/Maat

The core of the loop is simply having an 8000 power Ursula and Regis entering the field while able to choose 2 copies of Mont Leonis; it works as follows: 

1. Regis’ effect activates and chooses 2 copies of Mont Leonis.
2. On the stack, kill Regis with Ursula’s activated ability.
3. Both copies of Mont Leonis enter the field at the same time and trigger, then kill themselves via the name rule (same as Rinoa Regis loop).
4. Mont Leonis A ability chooses Regis, Mont Leonis B ability chooses Yang or Maat (actually any legal target works, but we’ll get to that later).
5. Regis and Yang/Maat enter the field and trigger their abilities. Regis chooses 2 copies of Mont Leonis again, and you use the ETF ability of Yang/Maat.
6. Use the Yang/Maat to activate Ursula’s ability again, killing Regis and restarting the process from Step 3.

By repeating this, you get infinite activations of Maat or Yang, or any Monk with an ETF. Maat lets you add all of the Monks in your deck to your hand, while Yang lets you play them. 

Entering the loop can be achieved from many different board states, the most comfortable of which is probably having an existing Mont Leonis on the board and using Magic Pot to fetch another copy while Regis is in the Break Zone. It is worth nothing that it can also be brute forced with Ursula’s effect alone. 

If we ended here, it wouldn’t be that noteworthy of a loop. Sure it gets you a lot of value, but it’s not ending the game on the spot and you still have to play through your opponent’s board… right? 

Infinite Ursula Activations and Infinite Mont Leonis Targets

Perceptive readers might have noticed that one of the bottlenecks to this loop as described above is that we have to resurrect a Monk with the 2nd copy of Mont Leonis in order to continue killing Regis and ensuring that the loop continues. We can actually bypass this part by using 2 copies of the 3CP Backup Monk and infinite Yang. Assuming we are currently performing the loop, we can repeat the following actions to generate infinite activations of Ursula. 

1. Resurrect Regis and Yang with 2 copies of Mont Leonis. 
2. Use Yang to play 3CP Monk Backup and add another copy of the 3CP Monk Backup from the Break Zone to Hand.
3. Sac Yang to Ursula’s ability, killing Regis, and continuing the loop. 

The Monk Backup played can be used as a free activation of Ursula. It costs us no cards in hand, since we got another copy with the ability as it was played. We can use this to clear our opponent’s entire board and make Ursula’s power as high as we like. Additionally, this allows us to play other Forwards off of Mont Leonis.

1. Perform the above steps to generate a 3CP Backup Monk.
2. Use Mont Leonis A to get Regis and Mont Leonis B to get any legal target, such as Cecil or Gabranth.
3. Use the 3CP Backup Monk to kill Regis.
4. Perform the Yang + 3CP Backup Monk loop again to generate another 3CP Backup Monk for Ursula activation.
5. Repeat for all of your Mont Leonis targets in the Break Zone.

We can use this adaptation of the loop to play all of our legal Mont Leonis targets, and for Gabranth in particular, use the infinite Ursula activations to keep killing and replaying Gabranth. This allows us to search our deck for all of our Gabranth targets as well, including Titan, Lord of Crags. This brings us to the last step of the loop: winning.

Infinite Damage via Titan

To very briefly recap: up until this point we’ve looped Yang, Maat, and all of our Mont Leonis targets as much as we like. This has given us all the Monks in our deck to hand, all of our Gabranth targets to hand, as many Monks as we like on board, as many Mont Leonis targets as we like on board, and infinite Ursula activations. 

The condition for the last part of the loop is having a Titan, Lord of Crags that is a legal target for Regis. If you already had one on field, you’re already set, just kill it with Ursula. If not, we’re going to do the unthinkable, and stop the loop for a second. Use some of the dozen cards in your hand to play a Titan, Lord of Crags, then kill it. Now play Mont Leonis (be sure to kill it before starting the loop again) or Regis again to re-enter the loop, and start from here.

1. Use the 3CP Monk Backup + Yang iteration of the loop to prepare an Ursula activation. 
2. Use Regis to play Titan and Mont Leonis.
3. On the stack, use the Ursula activation to kill Regis. 
4. Resolve Regis and play Titan and Mont Leonis, targeting Regis.
5. Resolve Titan first, killing your entire board (including Mont that’s still on the stack) except Ursula and Titan (and probably Sophie). 
   • On the first iteration of this version of the loop this might not deal damage, but on subsequent iterations it will. 
6. Resolve Regis and re-enter the core loop, playing all of your Forwards, and regaining the activation of Ursula. 
7. Repeat Steps 2-6 for infinite damage; assuming the number of Forwards generated on Step 6 is 4 or more (Mont Leonis will be the 5th) you will deal a point of damage on every Step 5. 

And given no EX Bursts are hit, that should be enough to win the game!

As there hasn’t been a lot in the way of testing this deck for me personally, I’m just going to give some loose thoughts on an existing version of the deck from the Kanazawa Masters event. 

Assuming we’ve looped Gabranth, not having access to the Titan isn’t normally a problem. Of course, there is no draw in the combo, only search, so if you don’t have enough Forwards to resurrect with Mont Leonis there could be issues with getting enough Forwards for Titan to deal damage. As it stands, Yang, Maat, 5CP Monk, and Mont Leonis are the only hits guaranteed by the loop as Maat targets, which could be a reason to consider re-slotting 3CP Monk in the Forward lineup.