I Built a COMPUTER in Magic: The Gathering
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN links it as the accessible, hands-on demo behind the claim that Magic is Turing complete.
What it is
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.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2019 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends lukifer · 2020-04 · on “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: [this video]
Recommends bentona · 2023-12 · on “Magic: The Gathering Is Turing Complete (2019)”
Here's a demo: [this 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.
Recommends mckn1ght · 2026-06 · on “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: [this video]
Cites cyberfart · 2019-11 · on “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] [this video]