Manually “Fast Forward” the Last Turn

This season, I climbed to Infinite with a Venus End-Of-Turn (EOT) deck. It often fast forwards on its own, but when it doesn't, there are so many animations to watch.

This season, I discovered a trick to manually "fast forward" all those animations.

It's a pretty niche trick, but I wanted to pass it along for anybody else as impatient as I am.

How to Do It

Press "End Turn" on the last turn of the game
After the button's text changes to "Playing…", press "Retreat"
Press "Retreat Now"
Quickly press the red "x" button at the bottom of the screen
On the main menu, press "Reconnect to Game"

This isn't risky. The fail state is having to watch the last turn play out.

There are only a few gotchas:

You need to be quick on the "x" button; it disappears!
Sometimes the "Retreat" button won't work – I did this a bunch and never detected any patterns. It's worth trying even when its "grayed out".
Just like when the game fast forwards, reloading the game can take a varying amount of time depending on how complicated the turn was.

Here's a video of the trick in action:

Discovery

If you're interested, here's my journey to discovering this trick.

Part 1 – Reconnect

If you've ever had the game crash on you (I expect anybody reading this has), then you know it asks you to "Reconnect to Game" when you reload the app. Upon reconnecting, it loads on the next turn, with all the previous turn's animations finished.

Part 2 – Restart

This isn't my first Infinite climb with EOT. Before the recent nerf to Invisible Woman First Steps, EOT animations would go off even more times.

When Sunspot and friends proc 32 times each, the final turn animation can take literally 90+ seconds. Knowing that crashing the game gave me the option to "Reconnect" and skip animations, I got into the habit of restarting the app whenever I landed a huge EOT combo on the last turn of the game. It was slow, but not as slow as watching Sunspot, Havok, and Thena proc 30+ times each.

Part 3 – Retreat

I'd noticed many times before that the game lets you press the Retreat button while the last turn is playing out. Of course, it doesn't actually let you retreat, but it does briefly flash that "x" button. This season, the idea struck me to try to hit that "x" before it disappears. Sure enough, it takes you to the main menu if you catch it.