In a turn-based game like Hearthstone, a time limit is an absolute requirement for players to have any kind of fun. Like competitive chess, no one wants to watch an opponent spend several minutes deliberating over the perfect move, especially not spectators, of which Hearthstone has many.

So, of course, Hearthstone does have a 90-second limit for players to contemplate their move before they lose their turn. In theory this would mean that no turn would last longer than that 90 seconds, except for one exception: Once a player chooses an action, there is no limit on how long it it takes to complete.

Usually this is not a problem, as even particularly complicated attacks involving several cards and interactions take only a few seconds to finish. But through an unusual combination of card interactions and a little math, one player has managed to build a single Hearthstone turn that will take over 40 hours to complete, earning him a Guinness World Record if his game doesn’t explode first.

How it works

Twitch.tv streamer Mamytwink created his possibly record-setting turn by exploiting a mechanic involving a minion named Prophet Valen, whose effect says “Double the damage and healing of your spells and hero power.”

Because Prophet Valen is a Legendary card, Mamytwink is only allowed to have one copy in his deck, but by using a card called Faceless Manipulator, he was able to clone several copies of Prophet Valen, each of which doubled the player’s damage. Mamytwink then further broke his Prophet Valen minions by using a combination of other cards to buff their damage even more.

Still following? Here’s where the ridiculously long turn comes in.

First, Mamytwinks’ opponent – a friend helping him achieve the record – is under the effect of Ice Block, which means he cannot die this turn no matter how much damage he takes. Second, Mamytwinks casts several Arcane Missiles, a cheap spell that fires a number of projectiles based on the player’s damage. With Mamytwinks’ perfect storm of damage multipliers, this means that each Arcane Missiles card will fire 28,752 times.

Mamytwinks used nine of them.

At the time of writing, Mamytwinks is nearly eight hours in to his 40+ hour stream, which you can currently still catch live on his Twitch.tv channel, and his Arcane Missiles are still firing away.  Hopefully his computer and connection hold out that long, especially with Blizzard Entertainment’s regularly scheduled Tuesday maintenance.

Screenshot via Mamytwink/Twitch.tv