Snow Hound bounces Stern Proctor which bounces Mox Sapphire, and that mana can pay for buyback.
Chaos Warp looks safe over Show and Tell in this build (as a 3-mana instant), right? Then you can start on something like City of Traitors, Simian Spirit Guide, Chaos Warp the land into Omniscience. Later on when Chaos Warp gets brought back with Time Spiral, the ideal play for that seems to be "flip City into itself every time".
Each time you deal damage to Swans of Bryn Argoll, you get layers for Thought Reflection and Boon Reflection. You don't get any additional layers for all the damage that you can deal to the Swans because all the "draw a card" effects haen at once during the resolution of the ability, with no opportunity to increase the number of Thought Reflections or activate Words of Worship more times.
Each time you cast Crush Underfoot, you get two layers via Precursor Golem.
I see a couple changes we could make to the current working copy of Deedlit's deck.
First off, having Lim-Dul as the first creature targeter and Twisted Abomination higher up, won't work. Obviously with changelings, the particular choice of creature type is fungible and Lim-Dul changes to Black Poplar Shaman with no trouble. Beyond that, I think we can cut Harmonic Sliver + Woodland Changeling + Ashnod's Altar and replace them with Mana Echoes + Allay + a free card slot. Black Poplar Shaman itself will get the lowest useful Mana Echoes triggers, and they can be used to bounce itself again (with the input of black mana, of course). As a side benefit, this leaves artifact space completely untouched, in case we have a use for that at all: the only artifact landcycler is Sanctum Plowbeast, which could pair nicely with a mana myr and possibly get rid of one of the two transitional cards in the current outline, but I don't see a smooth way to shoehorn that in as one of the stages. For occasions where we need to sacrifice a creature, Claws of Gix is still there.
Builder's Blessing + Measure of Wickedness can collectively be replaced with Indestructibility and another free slot, ensuring we can stick the opponent with just the lone Invoke Prejudice and have it survive all the fights, while protecting our own creatures at 4 or less base toughness as well. Conveniently, Indestructibility is "enchant permanent" and not just "enchant creature", so it doesn't need any maintenance to stay on even when Opalescence leaves (for example, when Invoke Prejudice needs to counter a blue creature for Bloodbond March).
It also looks like there are too many nonpermanent cards there to get everything going with Primal Surge (especially since the Spirit Guides won't go to the library until after the surge, and then they still need a way to be brought back). This may require using up one of the freed card slots for a Consecrated Sphinx or something to get enough draw power (we obviously can't use ETI in a deck with Psychic Trance, Djinn Illuminatus, and Reito Lantern), but it shouldn't take more than one.
I've figured out how to add an eighth stage, using Dark Heart of the Wood and Crippling Fatigue. We could avoid the transition card by using Tel-Jilad Lifebreather or Village Elder, but I couldn't figure out how to make those coexist with Rimehorn Aurochs. With Crippling Fatigue, we can transition to Blood Baron of Vizkopa and Disciple of Grace, which have protection from black. Unfortunately, I had to resort to using a general cycling card, which cuts off instants/sorceries as well as permanents. So we're down to just the combat-related cards at the top. Still worth it for an additional stage, of course.
That nicely completes the set of basic lands. We can't exactly add a step for Ghost-Lit Redeemer because it can use its regular tap ability, so that's full saturation.
With regular cycling now on board, Chaos Warp is going to have to drop to Show and Tell again. Wheel of Fortune is also unsafe since we can put the opponent's cards back, but changing Reito Lantern to Soldevi Digger should fix that right up.
Cateran Overlord doesn't appear to serve any purpose here except as a sacrifice outlet, in which case it and Whetstone can fuse slots into Altar of Dementia. In the free slot, if Grip of Chaos goes back in and Rimescale Dragon becomes the snowball fighter, does that tick the last number in the chain up to 8?
As for the land sacrifice outlet, Stormwatch Eagle is a very minor improvement over Trenching Steed. This way, sacrificing the land at least results in an influx of Mana Echoes mana.
Phelddagrif appears to serve the "make sure opponent survives combat" role. It can also serve the "give the opponent a creature" role, which might allow Measure of Wickedness to go, but I don't think that quite works. Riven Turnbull is the lowest-level thing that needs to get a proper fight, and unlike the system where we could switch back and forth between Cowardice and Clash of Realities for a small expenditure that could all be handled at the Allay level, we have no way to put Gruul Ragebeast back in hiding until it gets up to Paragon of Fierce Defiance. Even if it did work, the slot would need to go back to Indestructibility so that the lone 1/1 Hippo token has some safety from all the forces that are gunning for it.
Right now we have no way to bounce artifacts, and in fact no way to sacrifice artifacts. This might leave room for Coldsteel Heart to make snow mana at the top, but can we do anything with that? Merfolk Skyscout could do just as well if it's untapping a snow-covered mountain; Krond the Dawn-Clad is inferior still because of no duplicates and because a spare Riftsweeper has to be used up to get the card back.
That nicely completes the set of basic lands. We can't exactly add a step for Ghost-Lit Redeemer because it can use its regular tap ability, so that's full saturation.
With regular cycling now on board, Chaos Warp is going to have to drop to Show and Tell again. Wheel of Fortune is also unsafe since we can put the opponent's cards back, but changing Reito Lantern to Soldevi Digger should fix that right up.
Hmm, I had thought that Chaos Warp might be okay. It can draw a permanent from the library, which could be Snow-covered Mountain, but that's all right. It can also target a permanent - so it can target Snow-Covered Mountain, then use the Psychic Battle triggers to target Disciple of Grace, using the last Psychic Battle to target the Snow-Covered Mountain (with Cowardice bounced in between) so that the spell doesn't fizzle. Either one would be okay, but it looks like having both effects goes infinite. Darn.
This kinda spoils my idea of starting with Leyline of Anticipation / Consecrated Sphinx / Wheel of Fortune, with the Leyline allowing us to tuck Wheel of Fortune back in the library (via something like Feldon's Cane) and drawing it again on one of the Consecrated Sphinx triggers. We can always add Mana Crypt back in to give us the starting space, assuming there are enough slots in the deck.
Cateran Overlord doesn't appear to serve any purpose here except as a sacrifice outlet, in which case it and Whetstone can fuse slots into Altar of Dementia. In the free slot, if Grip of Chaos goes back in and Rimescale Dragon becomes the snowball fighter, does that tick the last number in the chain up to 8?
I don't think so. Grip of Chaos means that with X mana / lands we can generate a stack of 3X groups of triggers, rather than just 2X without it, but that alone doesn't add any layers. We need to add something to that last group (Night Dealings to World at War), which is difficult due to how much Cycling cuts off.
Phelddagrif appears to serve the "make sure opponent survives combat" role. It can also serve the "give the opponent a creature" role, which might allow Measure of Wickedness to go, but I don't think that quite works. Riven Turnbull is the lowest-level thing that needs to get a proper fight, and unlike the system where we could switch back and forth between Cowardice and Clash of Realities for a small expenditure that could all be handled at the Allay level, we have no way to put Gruul Ragebeast back in hiding until it gets up to Paragon of Fierce Defiance. Even if it did work, the slot would need to go back to Indestructibility so that the lone 1/1 Hippo token has some safety from all the forces that are gunning for it.
Wait, does Riven Turnbull need to get in a fight? The only reason I added Gruul Ragebeast to the deck was so that Blood Baron of Vizkopa could dish out some damage and activate its lifelink; for all the other creatures, fighting doesn't really serve any purpose. Blood Baron of Vizkopa is high enough so that we can spare a green mana to put out a Hippo token that gets immediately killed off; no need for Indestructability or protection from Cowardice bouncing.
Right now we have no way to bounce artifacts, and in fact no way to sacrifice artifacts. This might leave room for Coldsteel Heart to make snow mana at the top, but can we do anything with that? Merfolk Skyscout could do just as well if it's untapping a snow-covered mountain; Krond the Dawn-Clad is inferior still because of no duplicates and because a spare Riftsweeper has to be used up to get the card back.
The idea of sticking artifacts somewhere is interesting, but I don't see how to squeeze them in at the moment. If we have no other sources for our Ackermann stages other than our five types of landcyclers, two Spirit Guides, and Skirge Familiar, it looks like we will have to go general cycling to cycle Mountains (I suppose we could theoretically go back to Breaking Through the Line to save a mountaincycler - I'll look into that, but cutting off power 2 or less is pretty restrictive), and that makes things very difficult; Coldsteel Heart can't be any better than a Snow-Covered Mountain or it will go infinite with Disciple of Grace.
Are there any cards that can tap or sacrifice a Mountain to do something? That could give us another option.
Okay, so if Riven Turnbull doesn't fight anything, it just makes a single black mana for each Bloodbond March--not very saturated, but that's still a lot of Bloodbond Marches.
I also see that Driver of the Dead can bring back Disciple of Grace from the graveyard where protection doesn't apply, and that cycling can draw a Crippling Fatigue so that it can be "hard-cast" without paying life, which don't appear to be problems: Crippling Fatigue still can't target the Blood Baron or the Disciple, and Driver of the Dead doesn't do anything that might cause a return to hand. Disciple could also potentially draw itself off of cycling, but there are no copies of the ability so that's just paying 2 mana to spin wheels in the mud.
Speaking of Blood Baron, having it fight a Hippo token is even better than Measure of Wickedness because the Hippo token can actually deal damage in return, causing Rite of Passage to make its power, and the ensuing lifegain, that much bigger for the next fight. It cannot hold a Guilty Conscience to trigger on its own outgoing damage in either case, so the Hippo is the only way it gets any pump. A pity that Five-Alarm Fire and Night Dealings force us to give preference to DS over Primal Vigor, or else one green mana would be good for a lot of fights.
Djinn Illuminatus got dropped from the deck somehow; it (or something like Pyromancer Ascension + a second Allay) is needed if for no other reason than to get one final burst out of World at War. With that in place, it also means Crippling Fatigue is slightly better than changing that slot to Unspeakable Symbol, despite taking a modicum more work to put back in place each time.
As far as cards that sacrifice Mountains, there's Lava Dart, which isn't much different than tapping it for mana. There's also Glacial Crevasses that even care about the fact it's a snow Mountain, but yeah...no.
For the last couple slots...Ghostly Touch on Hero of Bladehold? Might that do something in the declare attackers step each time, bumping up the number of triggers that Five-Alarm Fire gets a couple steps later? The Ghostly Touch triggers could untap the snow-covered mountain, or better yet tap a Gilder Bairn. It's not like there's much else in the way of safe space at this point.
Basically, we start on our opponent's turn, and use Phasing to protect our tokens from bouncing/Dual Nature. I think that the issue with trying to combine a Precursor Golem/Eye of the Storm build with our current best build, is that the current build is best with creatures, and the Precursor Golem/Eye of the Storm build is mostly enchantments. Also, bouncing Dual Nature is sort of difficult, so we need to phase it very strangely, which isn't particularly efficient (or efficient at all, really).
On the bright side, I mostly understand the more effective combo now, so that's good.
Barrin + Precursor + Mana Echoes is infinite, and remains so even if you get them all out without using Omniscience.
What is Time and Tide supposed to do when none of your cards have phasing, and why bother with storm spells in parallel with Precursor Golem as copy mechanisms that don't build off each other?
Also, Cowardice and Precursor Golem are of peculiar synergy. Since every initial target of a copied spell is one of the golems, Cowardice will end up bouncing all golems, regardless where the spell's target ends up at due to Psychic Battle
Barrin + Precursor + Mana Echoes is infinite, and remains so even if you get them all out without using Omniscience.
What is Time and Tide supposed to do when none of your cards have phasing, and why bother with storm spells in parallel with Precursor Golem as copy mechanisms that don't build off each other?
Yeah you're right. Also, apparently I can't read correctly. I was trying to "hide" the tokens from Cowardice and Dual Nature with Time and Tide, but I think that that's not going to work (EDIT: This definitely won't work, because apparently phased-out tokens go poof). Storm spells were just there because I was trying to get to 60, and although they don't synergize with Precursor Golem, they're good with Eye of the Storm and the Retraction Helix stuff. The particular Storm spells I was using are also decent with Cowardice, although I think that I would probably end up cutting both the Storm spells and Cowardice if I needed to make Precursor Golem work.
Okay, so if Riven Turnbull doesn't fight anything, it just makes a single black mana for each Bloodbond March--not very saturated, but that's still a lot of Bloodbond Marches.
Yeah, basically with X blue mana we get 2X-1 layers rather than 2X, which doesn't make an appreciable difference.
Djinn Illuminatus got dropped from the deck somehow; it (or something like Pyromancer Ascension + a second Allay) is needed if for no other reason than to get one final burst out of World at War. With that in place, it also means Crippling Fatigue is slightly better than changing that slot to Unspeakable Symbol, despite taking a modicum more work to put back in place each time.
I don't think Djinn Illuminatus is actually necessary; when we get down to the last group of theft counters on Night Dealings during the first postcombat main phase, we can use them to draw and cast World at War X times, using Riftsweeper to bring it from exile to the library. Djinn Illuminatus would get us the last Night Dealings out of a gazillion, so it's probably not worth making space for it in the deck.
As far as cards that sacrifice Mountains, there's Lava Dart, which isn't much different than tapping it for mana. There's also Glacial Crevasses that even care about the fact it's a snow Mountain, but yeah...no.
Lava Dart may actually have possibiliities - if we switch Paragon of Fierce Defiance to Breaking Through the Line, we could stick Lava Dart on top with a mountaincycler like Chartooth Cougar. The biggest problem, if we want to get nine Ackermann stages, is that we would have three stages with a general "target creature" ability - we're able to handle two such stages using protection, but three would require a lot to go our way, and I don't see the cards to do it.
For the last couple slots...Ghostly Touch on Hero of Bladehold? Might that do something in the declare attackers step each time, bumping up the number of triggers that Five-Alarm Fire gets a couple steps later? The Ghostly Touch triggers could untap the snow-covered mountain, or better yet tap a Gilder Bairn. It's not like there's much else in the way of safe space at this point.
Like Djinn Illuminatus, Ghostly Touch does a little, but no more than another Gilder Bairn token would do, so anything that increased the number of Doubling Seasons at any point prior would be a better filler card. I think the best use for the remaining spots will be cards that get things rolling early.
Thinking about the deck some more, it isn't necessary for the general cycler to retrieve a Snow-Covered Mountain so that we can use Rimehorn Aurochs - we can just cycle a spell that bounces a creature directly. I think that spell can even be Chaos Warp, since without Snow-Covered Mountain it can't double dip. Drawing the cycler from the library doesn't really help, so the best thing Chaos Warp can do is bounce the cycler, which is what we want it to do.
With that change, we have snow mana free, so we can convert the next to last stage to that, saving a card. Chaos Warp can be used to shuffle in and redraw Snow-Covered Forest, so that transition works very cleanly. I also switched around the previous stages to cut another card - not that we don't have plenty of spaces left, but I figure any extra spaces can be used for something profitable.
49 necessary cards, not including initial card drawers. Adding Finest Hour is a no-brainer. After that, Yawgmoth's Bargain makes sense since life is now free, and we can boost it with Thought Reflection. Once that is used up, we can move on to Words of Wisdom aided by Psychic Possession (I think that's better than Consecrated Sphinx, due to being cheaper as an enchantment) and Thought Reflection again. Finally we get to the combat phases and Night Dealings. That leaves six slots still open.
Jungle Patrol is out of order there (no green mana yet). Tinder Wall into Ranger of Eos fixes it at a cost of one card; I had a plan that could keep stage 5 at the same number of cards by building around Sanctum Plowbeast, but it required stage 2 to be reformulated and use up the extra card anyway, and then it still failed because stage 3 kicks off with Norritt instead of a mana producer.
Interestingly, this plan would get an infinite with Djinn Illuminatus or even Mirari, because that would allow the Chaos Warp to be countered (and redrawn) while it still has a copy made, and then the target can be passed around on that.
If Rite of Passage, Gruul Ragebeast, and the whole structure of fighting isn't going to be there, Phelddagrif might as well change to Abyssal Persecutor now to avoid having to pay ever-increasing amounts of white mana to keep the opponent alive.
Another candidate for the use of a card slot, now that we don't run any cards like Empress Galina which break if the original copy ever gets haste, is changing Minion Reflector into Dual Nature + Madrush Cyclops. Then we don't have to keep paying 2, especially at the enchantment-bounce level where replaying the cards doesn't get back anything, and at the start where there's not as much structure. Being able to get more than the one MR trigger on everything is also nice.
Ghostly Touch is essentially a duplicate Gilder Bairn, but what about the Hero of Bladehold I had it paired with? Five-Alarm Fire only triggers when a creature gets through, and normally that's limited to what we attack with. Hero is nice because it creates additional attackers, with opportunities to interleave more things between each trigger. Ultimately it's 5AFs times attacking creatures, and as long as something can make more 5AFs in the mean time (which Gilder Bairn does through a very circuitous route), this is just x^2 and not worth the slot. Never mind.
Speaking of Gilder Bairn, something that might lead to a productive outcome is if we had some limited way to regenerate it (this incidentally forbids anything that would allow it to turn black, since Horror of Horrors would then be able to regenerate it without limit). That neatly accompishes the goal of tapping it, and 5AF could burn it to invoke the shield followed by Bairn pumping the counters on 5AF, as long as there were spare regeneration shields available. The most promising choice here is the localized Soul Channeling, and then...Righteous Cause is just like half a Gilder Bairn, which isn't very useful as a card. Wingmate Roc, probably not much better (although it does make each subsequent trigger more powerful alongside Hero of Bladehold). Looking in another direction for the time being, maybe if there were something like Myr Battlesphere that wasn't restricted to tapping Myr, that would usefully get more and more Bairns each time.
If combat-related triggers are what we're looking for, then for once it looks somewhat hopeful they might create some useful cards in this space, right?
Jungle Patrol is out of order there (no green mana yet). Tinder Wall into Ranger of Eos fixes it at a cost of one card; I had a plan that could keep stage 5 at the same number of cards by building around Sanctum Plowbeast, but it required stage 2 to be reformulated and use up the extra card anyway, and then it still failed because stage 3 kicks off with Norritt instead of a mana producer.
If Rite of Passage, Gruul Ragebeast, and the whole structure of fighting isn't going to be there, Phelddagrif might as well change to Abyssal Persecutor now to avoid having to pay ever-increasing amounts of white mana to keep the opponent alive.
As Tstorm pointed out, Abyssal Persecutor eliminates using cards like Words of Wisdom for limited card draw; that isn't currently necessary, but it's a bonus that we might as well make use of.
Another candidate for the use of a card slot, now that we don't run any cards like Empress Galina which break if the original copy ever gets haste, is changing Minion Reflector into Dual Nature + Madrush Cyclops. Then we don't have to keep paying 2, especially at the enchantment-bounce level where replaying the cards doesn't get back anything, and at the start where there's not as much structure. Being able to get more than the one MR trigger on everything is also nice.
While that would be nice, to make the cut a card needs to be better than adding another Bloated Toad or Chaos Warp. Cards that make things more convenient usually won't be good enough.
Ghostly Touch is essentially a duplicate Gilder Bairn, but what about the Hero of Bladehold I had it paired with? Five-Alarm Fire only triggers when a creature gets through, and normally that's limited to what we attack with. Hero is nice because it creates additional attackers, with opportunities to interleave more things between each trigger. Ultimately it's 5AFs times attacking creatures, and as long as something can make more 5AFs in the mean time (which Gilder Bairn does through a very circuitous route), this is just x^2 and not worth the slot. Never mind.
Speaking of Gilder Bairn, something that might lead to a productive outcome is if we had some limited way to regenerate it (this incidentally forbids anything that would allow it to turn black, since Horror of Horrors would then be able to regenerate it without limit). That neatly accompishes the goal of tapping it, and 5AF could burn it to invoke the shield followed by Bairn pumping the counters on 5AF, as long as there were spare regeneration shields available. The most promising choice here is the localized Soul Channeling, and then...Righteous Cause is just like half a Gilder Bairn, which isn't very useful as a card. Wingmate Roc, probably not much better (although it does make each subsequent trigger more powerful alongside Hero of Bladehold). Looking in another direction for the time being, maybe if there were something like Myr Battlesphere that wasn't restricted to tapping Myr, that would usefully get more and more Bairns each time.
If combat-related triggers are what we're looking for, then for once it looks somewhat hopeful they might create some useful cards in this space, right?
Yes, definitely! Righteous Cause gets one layer for all the attacking creatures (as well as all the Righteous Causes) and one layer for Boon Reflection. I thought at first that Hero of Bladehold would add another layer, but it looks like it doesn't trigger Righteous Cause. Wingmate Roc gets the same two layers as Righteous Cause; it's a little worse because it gets fewer activations of the top layer. (I don't think we get anything extra for Wingmate + Hero + Boon Reflection.)
For the last few slots, it looks like Primal Surge is still safe (it puts Bloated Toad onto the battlefield, which doesn't go infinite), so that seems like a good starting spell; after that, I guess adding another copy of Bloated Toad and Chaos Warp is always good.
We can't have two Chaos Warps, or else they can be alternated to send the Toad back while there's still a Warp in the library to draw, just like Warp + Mirari copy. Likewise, there can't be two Toads, because they can each be cycled and a single Bloodbond March brings them both back, whereupon a redirected Warp gets the pair back in hand. Or cast one to build up the BM count, then cycle the other.
Okay, I see why two Bloated Toads go infinite; can you elaborate on what goes wrong with two Chaos Warps? If we cast the Toad, we can bounce it with Chaos Warp, then we can cycle the Toad to get a Chaos Warp back, but then to get the Toad back from the graveyard, either we have to use up a Bloodbond March trigger, or use a Chaos Warp to put it on the battlefield; in the latter case, we need another Chaos Warp to bounce it back to hand, and Bloated Toad only gets us one each time.
PS: im pretty sure this list can be improved alot, but i dont think there is a possible way to output more damage than 4 pyromancer's ascension and a berserk/twincast base
If i there are no ****ups the total damage output should be 3389627864620584847550693625513205259989643407061787800859003680786528677390448188398741047225780, nice turn one bruh
Lotus, Show, Omniscience, ETI to start. It doesn't much matter what you put back; let's say it's Hatred. Storm count 3.
Play all four Pyromancer Ascensions, followed by all four Tendrils of Agony. Target yourself with every copy, so there's no net change in life and the game doesn't accidentally end early. Ascensions all go active after the third one. Storm count 11.
Play all twelve Relentless Assault effects. This doesn't accomplish much, but the storm count is now 23.
Play Avatar of Slaughter followed by Emrakul. Storm count 25.
Play Soulblast. Choose the target (Avatar of Slaughter) and then pay the cost (sacrifice all creatures). Emrakul shuffles the graveyard into the library, which now contains 22 cards. Choose not to get copies of Soulblast from Pyromancer Ascension. The spell has a target that no longer exists, so it obviously fizzles and becomes the only card in the graveyard. Storm count 26.
Play Maelstrom Wanderer, and no matter what you flip on both cascades, decline to cast it. Storm count 27, library size stays at 22.
Play Berserk on Maelstrom Wanderer, and play Remand on Berserk. Pyromancer Ascension triggers four times for both spells. With the copies of Remand, choose to counter the original Remand as well as the original Berserk, and decline to take the other two copies. The copies of Berserk resolve normally, doubling Maelstrom Wanderer's power so that it's now 112/5.
Both cards are back in hand, but now the storm count is increased by two (29) and two cards from the library have moved to hand (20 cards left). Clearly, this can be repeated until the library is empty, by which time Maelstrom Wanderer's power will be 123,145,302,310,912.
Play three Worldspine Wurms. Storm count 52.
Play Grapeshot. Any Pyromancer Ascension copies and Storm copies will resolve before the original spell. Targets can be chosen for them individually, so just make sure that they target nothing but Worldspine Wurms, and that at least 15 copies are pointed at each Wurm. A storm count of 52 is clearly high enough to do this, and it will only get higher as you keep going.
As each Wurm dies, it will shuffle itself back into the library, and create three irrelevant 5/5 Wurm tokens.
Once all three Wurms have shuffled themselves back, it's safe to play Berserk again, followed by Remand. This time, the Remand copies should counter the original Remand, the original Berserk, and this time also the original Grapeshot. Draw the three Worldspine Wurms back from the library.
Now all the cards are back in hand, and the stack is empty. With Worldspine Wurm's ability to replenish the library, this altered version of the process can now be continued forever, and each loop adds 6 to the storm count, puts nine 5/5 Wurm tokens on the board, and multiplies Maelstrom Wanderer's power by 16 without making any other cahnges to the game state. Keep going for as much power as you want, then attack. The opponent is dead on the first strike of the first combat phase anyway, so neither Avatar of Slaughter's double strike nor the extra combat phases from Relentless Assault have any effect at all on the damage.
After drawing the deck...
Put back Pyromancer Ascension, just because.
Maelstrom Wanderer into PA, then pick up the other three PAs from hand.
Play 3x Relentless Assault to turn on all the PAs.
Hatred for 19 makes Worldspine Wurm into a 110/15, and both Vitalizing Winds make it 180/85. Avatar of Slaughter at 78/78 and Maelstrom Wanderer at 77/75 are considerably further back.
Eight Berserks and twenty-four Forks, along with PA copies, allow Worldspine Wurm to double its power 160 times.
Yawgmoth's Will is unfortunately pretty useless here. Omniscience only lets you ignore the mana cost for cards you play from the hand, not the graveyard or other zones. It turns out the best you can do with it is flash back Black Lotus for green mana, then three Berserks to get 15 more power doublings.
In all, that's a power of 8,620,287,417,370,624,828,265,702,027,720,489,157,855,407,562,282,762,395 combined among all three creatures, though of course the Wurm is responsible for most of it. It's only 55 digits, compared to your 97-digit estimate, due largely to Yawgmoth's Will not working out so well.
There are in fact a lot more efficient things you can do that repeatedly doubling the power of a single creature, but if you want to explore that avenue further, try looking at Feral Animist. Instead of using a full card to get a double, like Berserk does, Animist can repeatedly double its power for just 3 colorless mana. There are ways to get a lot of colorless mana without using very many cards, like Mana Echoes + Storm Herd...and from there it's worth letting you explore the space on your own.
Isn't ramping and Rites of replication as many times as you can + forking it on a Precursor golem always going to be the biggest? Also throw down 4 coat of arms and 4 shared animosity + as many copy artifact/enchantment spells as you can and a haste enabler.
Isn't ramping and Rites of replication as many times as you can + forking it on a Precursor golem always going to be the biggest? Also throw down 4 coat of arms and 4 shared animosity + as many copy artifact/enchantment spells as you can and a haste enabler.
1) S&T into omni into EtI (put a Praetor's Counsel on top)
2) Leyline of Anticipation
3) 4 Pyromancer ascension
4) Cast 4 Heroes Remembered so you charge the ascensions
5) Cast the 3 wishes and get your entire sideboard (this could be cool even in other decks)
6) Cast the 16 doubling effects
8) Cast 15 Storm Herd, then 15 Hellion Eruption, then 4 Day of the Dragons, then 20 Mogg Infestation then 20 Deploy to the Front then zealot and 4 behemoth (not 100% sure on the correct order) then 20 Fungal Sprouting and fork them 8 times
10) Now you can cast 20 Praetor's Counsel, and thanks to leyline and the last Hellion Eruption we should be able to recast creatures and the lotus between each copy, the counsel on top will be drawn via Renewed Faith.
11) when you have no more counsels just go for dream stalker, cast the harpy and bounce the behemoths as much as you can, then attack
I really have no idea how big the damage output is right now, but i think it should be really insane in the end
If some brave heart wanna do the math behind this it would be great, maybe ill do it tomorrow, but i guess this combo actually does a damage that could challenge the best one?
I've been following this thread for a little while--I admit I find Conway notation really hard to grasp but I still find it very interesting.
The reason I'm posting is because I'm having some trouble figuring out the core of Deedlit's deck? Specifically how the landcyclers work to add layers. I was wondering if someone could, like, explain how it runs? It's possible one of the earlier posts does sort of spell it out step-by-step but if so I have missed it (and I did look, though perhaps not hard enough)
Private Mod Note
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Chaos Warp looks safe over Show and Tell in this build (as a 3-mana instant), right? Then you can start on something like City of Traitors, Simian Spirit Guide, Chaos Warp the land into Omniscience. Later on when Chaos Warp gets brought back with Time Spiral, the ideal play for that seems to be "flip City into itself every time".
Doubling Season and Dual Nature are worth two layers.
Drake Familiar gets BM (Bloodbond March), DN, and DS layers.
Smokebraider gets DN, DS and Mana Reflection layers.
Swift Warkite gets BM, DN, and DS layers.
Crypt Angel does not get a DS layer due to the targeting problems.
one Channel mana gets a casting of Twinflame, which gets two layers via Precursor Golem.
Each time you deal damage to Swans of Bryn Argoll, you get layers for Thought Reflection and Boon Reflection. You don't get any additional layers for all the damage that you can deal to the Swans because all the "draw a card" effects haen at once during the resolution of the ability, with no opportunity to increase the number of Thought Reflections or activate Words of Worship more times.
Each time you cast Crush Underfoot, you get two layers via Precursor Golem.
Twitch gets two layers via Precursor Golem.
Learn From the Past gets one layer from Pyromancer Ascension.
Time Spiral gets one layer from Pyromancer Ascension.
With 8 copies of Time Spiral / Time Reversal, the final damage is about 2 -> 11 -> 22.
- 1 Mox Sapphire
- 1 Show and Tell
+ 1 Simian Spirit Guide
+ 1 Chaos Warp
First off, having Lim-Dul as the first creature targeter and Twisted Abomination higher up, won't work. Obviously with changelings, the particular choice of creature type is fungible and Lim-Dul changes to Black Poplar Shaman with no trouble. Beyond that, I think we can cut Harmonic Sliver + Woodland Changeling + Ashnod's Altar and replace them with Mana Echoes + Allay + a free card slot. Black Poplar Shaman itself will get the lowest useful Mana Echoes triggers, and they can be used to bounce itself again (with the input of black mana, of course). As a side benefit, this leaves artifact space completely untouched, in case we have a use for that at all: the only artifact landcycler is Sanctum Plowbeast, which could pair nicely with a mana myr and possibly get rid of one of the two transitional cards in the current outline, but I don't see a smooth way to shoehorn that in as one of the stages. For occasions where we need to sacrifice a creature, Claws of Gix is still there.
Builder's Blessing + Measure of Wickedness can collectively be replaced with Indestructibility and another free slot, ensuring we can stick the opponent with just the lone Invoke Prejudice and have it survive all the fights, while protecting our own creatures at 4 or less base toughness as well. Conveniently, Indestructibility is "enchant permanent" and not just "enchant creature", so it doesn't need any maintenance to stay on even when Opalescence leaves (for example, when Invoke Prejudice needs to counter a blue creature for Bloodbond March).
It also looks like there are too many nonpermanent cards there to get everything going with Primal Surge (especially since the Spirit Guides won't go to the library until after the surge, and then they still need a way to be brought back). This may require using up one of the freed card slots for a Consecrated Sphinx or something to get enough draw power (we obviously can't use ETI in a deck with Psychic Trance, Djinn Illuminatus, and Reito Lantern), but it shouldn't take more than one.
I've figured out how to add an eighth stage, using Dark Heart of the Wood and Crippling Fatigue. We could avoid the transition card by using Tel-Jilad Lifebreather or Village Elder, but I couldn't figure out how to make those coexist with Rimehorn Aurochs. With Crippling Fatigue, we can transition to Blood Baron of Vizkopa and Disciple of Grace, which have protection from black. Unfortunately, I had to resort to using a general cycling card, which cuts off instants/sorceries as well as permanents. So we're down to just the combat-related cards at the top. Still worth it for an additional stage, of course.
Latest deck:
1 Black Poplar Shaman
1 Skirge Familiar
1 Riven Turnbull
1 Island
1 Shoreline Ranger
1 Paragon of Gathering Mists
1 Dimir Guildgate
1 Greenside Watcher
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
1 Overgrown Battlement
1 Driver of the Dead
1 Swamp
1 Twisted Abomination
1 Horror of Horrors
1 Slimy Kavu
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
1 Plains
1 Noble Templar
1 Icatian Lieutenant
1 Axebane Guardian
1 Forest
1 Pale Recluse
1 Dark Heart of the Wood
1 Crippling Fatigue
1 Blood Baron of Vizkopa
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Disciple of Grace
1 Rimehorn Aurochs
1 Night Dealings
1 Five-Alarm Fire
1 Gilder Bairn
1 World at War
1 Bloodbond March
1 Riftsweeper
1 Minion Reflector
1 Psychic Battle
1 Cowardice
1 Leyline of Anticipation
1 Omniscience
1 Opalescence
1 Mana Echoes
1 Whetstone
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Doubling Season
1 Reito Lantern
1 Trenching Steed
1 Cephalid Shrine
1 Phledagriff
1 Chaos Warp
1 Gruul Ragebeast
1 Patron of the Moon
1 Amulet of Vigor
1 Cateran Overlord
1 Finest Hour
1 Consecrated Sphinx
57 cards required; I filled two of the extra slots with Finest Hour and Consecrated Sphinx, with one slot to be decided later.
Calculated damage: about 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 3 -> 7.
With regular cycling now on board, Chaos Warp is going to have to drop to Show and Tell again. Wheel of Fortune is also unsafe since we can put the opponent's cards back, but changing Reito Lantern to Soldevi Digger should fix that right up.
Cateran Overlord doesn't appear to serve any purpose here except as a sacrifice outlet, in which case it and Whetstone can fuse slots into Altar of Dementia. In the free slot, if Grip of Chaos goes back in and Rimescale Dragon becomes the snowball fighter, does that tick the last number in the chain up to 8?
As for the land sacrifice outlet, Stormwatch Eagle is a very minor improvement over Trenching Steed. This way, sacrificing the land at least results in an influx of Mana Echoes mana.
Phelddagrif appears to serve the "make sure opponent survives combat" role. It can also serve the "give the opponent a creature" role, which might allow Measure of Wickedness to go, but I don't think that quite works. Riven Turnbull is the lowest-level thing that needs to get a proper fight, and unlike the system where we could switch back and forth between Cowardice and Clash of Realities for a small expenditure that could all be handled at the Allay level, we have no way to put Gruul Ragebeast back in hiding until it gets up to Paragon of Fierce Defiance. Even if it did work, the slot would need to go back to Indestructibility so that the lone 1/1 Hippo token has some safety from all the forces that are gunning for it.
Right now we have no way to bounce artifacts, and in fact no way to sacrifice artifacts. This might leave room for Coldsteel Heart to make snow mana at the top, but can we do anything with that? Merfolk Skyscout could do just as well if it's untapping a snow-covered mountain; Krond the Dawn-Clad is inferior still because of no duplicates and because a spare Riftsweeper has to be used up to get the card back.
Hmm, I had thought that Chaos Warp might be okay. It can draw a permanent from the library, which could be Snow-covered Mountain, but that's all right. It can also target a permanent - so it can target Snow-Covered Mountain, then use the Psychic Battle triggers to target Disciple of Grace, using the last Psychic Battle to target the Snow-Covered Mountain (with Cowardice bounced in between) so that the spell doesn't fizzle. Either one would be okay, but it looks like having both effects goes infinite. Darn.
This kinda spoils my idea of starting with Leyline of Anticipation / Consecrated Sphinx / Wheel of Fortune, with the Leyline allowing us to tuck Wheel of Fortune back in the library (via something like Feldon's Cane) and drawing it again on one of the Consecrated Sphinx triggers. We can always add Mana Crypt back in to give us the starting space, assuming there are enough slots in the deck.
I don't think so. Grip of Chaos means that with X mana / lands we can generate a stack of 3X groups of triggers, rather than just 2X without it, but that alone doesn't add any layers. We need to add something to that last group (Night Dealings to World at War), which is difficult due to how much Cycling cuts off.
Wait, does Riven Turnbull need to get in a fight? The only reason I added Gruul Ragebeast to the deck was so that Blood Baron of Vizkopa could dish out some damage and activate its lifelink; for all the other creatures, fighting doesn't really serve any purpose. Blood Baron of Vizkopa is high enough so that we can spare a green mana to put out a Hippo token that gets immediately killed off; no need for Indestructability or protection from Cowardice bouncing.
The idea of sticking artifacts somewhere is interesting, but I don't see how to squeeze them in at the moment. If we have no other sources for our Ackermann stages other than our five types of landcyclers, two Spirit Guides, and Skirge Familiar, it looks like we will have to go general cycling to cycle Mountains (I suppose we could theoretically go back to Breaking Through the Line to save a mountaincycler - I'll look into that, but cutting off power 2 or less is pretty restrictive), and that makes things very difficult; Coldsteel Heart can't be any better than a Snow-Covered Mountain or it will go infinite with Disciple of Grace.
Are there any cards that can tap or sacrifice a Mountain to do something? That could give us another option.
I also see that Driver of the Dead can bring back Disciple of Grace from the graveyard where protection doesn't apply, and that cycling can draw a Crippling Fatigue so that it can be "hard-cast" without paying life, which don't appear to be problems: Crippling Fatigue still can't target the Blood Baron or the Disciple, and Driver of the Dead doesn't do anything that might cause a return to hand. Disciple could also potentially draw itself off of cycling, but there are no copies of the ability so that's just paying 2 mana to spin wheels in the mud.
Speaking of Blood Baron, having it fight a Hippo token is even better than Measure of Wickedness because the Hippo token can actually deal damage in return, causing Rite of Passage to make its power, and the ensuing lifegain, that much bigger for the next fight. It cannot hold a Guilty Conscience to trigger on its own outgoing damage in either case, so the Hippo is the only way it gets any pump. A pity that Five-Alarm Fire and Night Dealings force us to give preference to DS over Primal Vigor, or else one green mana would be good for a lot of fights.
Djinn Illuminatus got dropped from the deck somehow; it (or something like Pyromancer Ascension + a second Allay) is needed if for no other reason than to get one final burst out of World at War. With that in place, it also means Crippling Fatigue is slightly better than changing that slot to Unspeakable Symbol, despite taking a modicum more work to put back in place each time.
As far as cards that sacrifice Mountains, there's Lava Dart, which isn't much different than tapping it for mana. There's also Glacial Crevasses that even care about the fact it's a snow Mountain, but yeah...no.
For the last couple slots...Ghostly Touch on Hero of Bladehold? Might that do something in the declare attackers step each time, bumping up the number of triggers that Five-Alarm Fire gets a couple steps later? The Ghostly Touch triggers could untap the snow-covered mountain, or better yet tap a Gilder Bairn. It's not like there's much else in the way of safe space at this point.
1 Black Lotus
1 Show and Tell
1 Omniscience
1 Enter the Infinite
1 Dual Nature
1 Doubling Season
1 Celestial Dawn
1 Mana Echoes
1 In the Web of War
1 Psychic Battle
1 Cowardice
1 Grip of Chaos
1 Eye of the Storm
1 Precursor Golem
1 Barrin, Master Wizard
1 Opalescence
1 Copy Enchantment
1 Retraction Helix
1 Rite of Replication
1 Rally the Righteous
1 Demystify
1 Astral Storm
1 Ground Rift
1 Scattershot
1 Temporal Fissure
Basically, we start on our opponent's turn, and use Phasing to protect our tokens from bouncing/Dual Nature. I think that the issue with trying to combine a Precursor Golem/Eye of the Storm build with our current best build, is that the current build is best with creatures, and the Precursor Golem/Eye of the Storm build is mostly enchantments. Also, bouncing Dual Nature is sort of difficult, so we need to phase it very strangely, which isn't particularly efficient (or efficient at all, really).
What is Time and Tide supposed to do when none of your cards have phasing, and why bother with storm spells in parallel with Precursor Golem as copy mechanisms that don't build off each other?
Yeah you're right. Also, apparently I can't read correctly. I was trying to "hide" the tokens from Cowardice and Dual Nature with Time and Tide, but I think that that's not going to work (EDIT: This definitely won't work, because apparently phased-out tokens go poof). Storm spells were just there because I was trying to get to 60, and although they don't synergize with Precursor Golem, they're good with Eye of the Storm and the Retraction Helix stuff. The particular Storm spells I was using are also decent with Cowardice, although I think that I would probably end up cutting both the Storm spells and Cowardice if I needed to make Precursor Golem work.
Yeah, basically with X blue mana we get 2X-1 layers rather than 2X, which doesn't make an appreciable difference.
I don't think Djinn Illuminatus is actually necessary; when we get down to the last group of theft counters on Night Dealings during the first postcombat main phase, we can use them to draw and cast World at War X times, using Riftsweeper to bring it from exile to the library. Djinn Illuminatus would get us the last Night Dealings out of a gazillion, so it's probably not worth making space for it in the deck.
Lava Dart may actually have possibiliities - if we switch Paragon of Fierce Defiance to Breaking Through the Line, we could stick Lava Dart on top with a mountaincycler like Chartooth Cougar. The biggest problem, if we want to get nine Ackermann stages, is that we would have three stages with a general "target creature" ability - we're able to handle two such stages using protection, but three would require a lot to go our way, and I don't see the cards to do it.
Like Djinn Illuminatus, Ghostly Touch does a little, but no more than another Gilder Bairn token would do, so anything that increased the number of Doubling Seasons at any point prior would be a better filler card. I think the best use for the remaining spots will be cards that get things rolling early.
Thinking about the deck some more, it isn't necessary for the general cycler to retrieve a Snow-Covered Mountain so that we can use Rimehorn Aurochs - we can just cycle a spell that bounces a creature directly. I think that spell can even be Chaos Warp, since without Snow-Covered Mountain it can't double dip. Drawing the cycler from the library doesn't really help, so the best thing Chaos Warp can do is bounce the cycler, which is what we want it to do.
With that change, we have snow mana free, so we can convert the next to last stage to that, saving a card. Chaos Warp can be used to shuffle in and redraw Snow-Covered Forest, so that transition works very cleanly. I also switched around the previous stages to cut another card - not that we don't have plenty of spaces left, but I figure any extra spaces can be used for something profitable.
The current deck:
1 Black Poplar Shaman
1 Skirge Familiar
1 Riven Turnbull
1 Island
1 Shoreline Ranger
1 Paragon of Gathering Mists
1 Norritt
1 Swamp
1 Twisted Abomination
1 Horror of Horrors
1 Slimy Kavu
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Patron of Heart Defense
1 Jungle Patrol
1 Plains
1 Noble Templar
1 Icatian Lieutenant
1 Greenside Watcher
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
1 Harabaz Druid
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Pale Recluse
1 Adarkar Windform
1 Bloated Toad
1 Chaos Warp
1 Night Dealings
1 Five-Alarm Fire
1 Gilder Bairn
1 World at War
1 Bloodbond March
1 Riftsweeper
1 Minion Reflector
1 Psychic Battle
1 Cowardice
1 Leyline of Anticipation
1 Omniscience
1 Opalescence
1 Mana Echoes
1 Altar of Dementia
1 Doubling Season
1 Soldevi Digger
1 Stormwatch Eagle
1 Cephalid Shrine
1 Phelddagrif
1 Patron of the Moon
1 Amulet of Vigor
1 Finest Hour
1 Words of Wisdom
1 Psychic Possession
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Thought Reflection
49 necessary cards, not including initial card drawers. Adding Finest Hour is a no-brainer. After that, Yawgmoth's Bargain makes sense since life is now free, and we can boost it with Thought Reflection. Once that is used up, we can move on to Words of Wisdom aided by Psychic Possession (I think that's better than Consecrated Sphinx, due to being cheaper as an enchantment) and Thought Reflection again. Finally we get to the combat phases and Night Dealings. That leaves six slots still open.
Interestingly, this plan would get an infinite with Djinn Illuminatus or even Mirari, because that would allow the Chaos Warp to be countered (and redrawn) while it still has a copy made, and then the target can be passed around on that.
If Rite of Passage, Gruul Ragebeast, and the whole structure of fighting isn't going to be there, Phelddagrif might as well change to Abyssal Persecutor now to avoid having to pay ever-increasing amounts of white mana to keep the opponent alive.
Another candidate for the use of a card slot, now that we don't run any cards like Empress Galina which break if the original copy ever gets haste, is changing Minion Reflector into Dual Nature + Madrush Cyclops. Then we don't have to keep paying 2, especially at the enchantment-bounce level where replaying the cards doesn't get back anything, and at the start where there's not as much structure. Being able to get more than the one MR trigger on everything is also nice.
Ghostly Touch is essentially a duplicate Gilder Bairn, but what about the Hero of Bladehold I had it paired with? Five-Alarm Fire only triggers when a creature gets through, and normally that's limited to what we attack with. Hero is nice because it creates additional attackers, with opportunities to interleave more things between each trigger. Ultimately it's 5AFs times attacking creatures, and as long as something can make more 5AFs in the mean time (which Gilder Bairn does through a very circuitous route), this is just x^2 and not worth the slot. Never mind.
Speaking of Gilder Bairn, something that might lead to a productive outcome is if we had some limited way to regenerate it (this incidentally forbids anything that would allow it to turn black, since Horror of Horrors would then be able to regenerate it without limit). That neatly accompishes the goal of tapping it, and 5AF could burn it to invoke the shield followed by Bairn pumping the counters on 5AF, as long as there were spare regeneration shields available. The most promising choice here is the localized Soul Channeling, and then...Righteous Cause is just like half a Gilder Bairn, which isn't very useful as a card. Wingmate Roc, probably not much better (although it does make each subsequent trigger more powerful alongside Hero of Bladehold). Looking in another direction for the time being, maybe if there were something like Myr Battlesphere that wasn't restricted to tapping Myr, that would usefully get more and more Bairns each time.
If combat-related triggers are what we're looking for, then for once it looks somewhat hopeful they might create some useful cards in this space, right?
I think I found a sequence that saves the card: Twisted Abomination transitions to Slayer of the Wicked, white transitions to green via Greenside Watcher, and green to red via Zhur-Taa Druid.
As Tstorm pointed out, Abyssal Persecutor eliminates using cards like Words of Wisdom for limited card draw; that isn't currently necessary, but it's a bonus that we might as well make use of.
Phelddagrif could be replaced by Soldevi Steam Beast if we had an easy way to tap it, but we don't currently.
While that would be nice, to make the cut a card needs to be better than adding another Bloated Toad or Chaos Warp. Cards that make things more convenient usually won't be good enough.
Yes, definitely! Righteous Cause gets one layer for all the attacking creatures (as well as all the Righteous Causes) and one layer for Boon Reflection. I thought at first that Hero of Bladehold would add another layer, but it looks like it doesn't trigger Righteous Cause. Wingmate Roc gets the same two layers as Righteous Cause; it's a little worse because it gets fewer activations of the top layer. (I don't think we get anything extra for Wingmate + Hero + Boon Reflection.)
For the last few slots, it looks like Primal Surge is still safe (it puts Bloated Toad onto the battlefield, which doesn't go infinite), so that seems like a good starting spell; after that, I guess adding another copy of Bloated Toad and Chaos Warp is always good.
1 Black Poplar Shaman
1 Skirge Familiar
1 Riven Turnbull
1 Island
1 Shoreline Ranger
1 Paragon of Gathering Mists
1 Norritt
1 Swamp
1 Twisted Abomination
1 Horror of Horrors
1 Slayer of the Wicked
1 Plains
1 Noble Templar
1 Icatian Lieutenant
1 Azorius Guildgate
1 Greenside Watcher
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
1 Zhur-Taa Druid
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Pale Recluse
1 Adarkar Windform
1 Bloated Toad
1 Chaos Warp
1 Night Dealings
1 Five-Alarm Fire
1 Gilder Bairn
1 Righteous Cause
1 World at War
1 Bloodbond March
1 Riftsweeper
1 Minion Reflector
1 Psychic Battle
1 Cowardice
1 Leyline of Anticipation
1 Omniscience
1 Opalescence
1 Mana Echoes
1 Altar of Dementia
1 Doubling Season
1 Soldevi Digger
1 Stormwatch Eagle
1 Cephalid Shrine
1 Phelddagrif
1 Patron of the Moon
1 Amulet of Vigor
1 Soul Channeling
1 Boon Reflection
1 Finest Hour
1 Words of Wisdom
1 Psychic Possession
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Primal Surge
1 Thought Reflection
1 Bloated Toad
1 Chaos Warp
Edit: Just realized that Zhur-Taa Druid activates Night Dealings. I'll keep looking.
1 Show and Tell
1 Omniscience
1 Enter the Infinite
4 Pyromancer Ascension
1 Avatar of Slaughter
1 Worldspine Wurm
1 Maelstrom Wanderer
1 Hatred
4 Berserk
4 Fatal Frenzy
4 Twincast
4 Split Decision
4 Fork
4 Reiterate
4 Reverberate
4 Increasing Vengeance
4 Relentless Assault
4 Waves of Aggression
1 Soulblast
1 Yawgmoth's Will
The damage output should be over 100 zeros
PS: im pretty sure this list can be improved alot, but i dont think there is a possible way to output more damage than 4 pyromancer's ascension and a berserk/twincast base
If i there are no ****ups the total damage output should be 3389627864620584847550693625513205259989643407061787800859003680786528677390448188398741047225780, nice turn one bruh
Lotus, Show, Omniscience, ETI to start. It doesn't much matter what you put back; let's say it's Hatred. Storm count 3.
Play all four Pyromancer Ascensions, followed by all four Tendrils of Agony. Target yourself with every copy, so there's no net change in life and the game doesn't accidentally end early. Ascensions all go active after the third one. Storm count 11.
Play all twelve Relentless Assault effects. This doesn't accomplish much, but the storm count is now 23.
Play Avatar of Slaughter followed by Emrakul. Storm count 25.
Play Soulblast. Choose the target (Avatar of Slaughter) and then pay the cost (sacrifice all creatures). Emrakul shuffles the graveyard into the library, which now contains 22 cards. Choose not to get copies of Soulblast from Pyromancer Ascension. The spell has a target that no longer exists, so it obviously fizzles and becomes the only card in the graveyard. Storm count 26.
Play Maelstrom Wanderer, and no matter what you flip on both cascades, decline to cast it. Storm count 27, library size stays at 22.
Play Berserk on Maelstrom Wanderer, and play Remand on Berserk. Pyromancer Ascension triggers four times for both spells. With the copies of Remand, choose to counter the original Remand as well as the original Berserk, and decline to take the other two copies. The copies of Berserk resolve normally, doubling Maelstrom Wanderer's power so that it's now 112/5.
Both cards are back in hand, but now the storm count is increased by two (29) and two cards from the library have moved to hand (20 cards left). Clearly, this can be repeated until the library is empty, by which time Maelstrom Wanderer's power will be 123,145,302,310,912.
Play three Worldspine Wurms. Storm count 52.
Play Grapeshot. Any Pyromancer Ascension copies and Storm copies will resolve before the original spell. Targets can be chosen for them individually, so just make sure that they target nothing but Worldspine Wurms, and that at least 15 copies are pointed at each Wurm. A storm count of 52 is clearly high enough to do this, and it will only get higher as you keep going.
As each Wurm dies, it will shuffle itself back into the library, and create three irrelevant 5/5 Wurm tokens.
Once all three Wurms have shuffled themselves back, it's safe to play Berserk again, followed by Remand. This time, the Remand copies should counter the original Remand, the original Berserk, and this time also the original Grapeshot. Draw the three Worldspine Wurms back from the library.
Now all the cards are back in hand, and the stack is empty. With Worldspine Wurm's ability to replenish the library, this altered version of the process can now be continued forever, and each loop adds 6 to the storm count, puts nine 5/5 Wurm tokens on the board, and multiplies Maelstrom Wanderer's power by 16 without making any other cahnges to the game state. Keep going for as much power as you want, then attack. The opponent is dead on the first strike of the first combat phase anyway, so neither Avatar of Slaughter's double strike nor the extra combat phases from Relentless Assault have any effect at all on the damage.
PS: Guess im still pretty far off 2 -> 17 -> 417 :P, done my best tho
Put back Pyromancer Ascension, just because.
Maelstrom Wanderer into PA, then pick up the other three PAs from hand.
Play 3x Relentless Assault to turn on all the PAs.
Hatred for 19 makes Worldspine Wurm into a 110/15, and both Vitalizing Winds make it 180/85. Avatar of Slaughter at 78/78 and Maelstrom Wanderer at 77/75 are considerably further back.
Eight Berserks and twenty-four Forks, along with PA copies, allow Worldspine Wurm to double its power 160 times.
Yawgmoth's Will is unfortunately pretty useless here. Omniscience only lets you ignore the mana cost for cards you play from the hand, not the graveyard or other zones. It turns out the best you can do with it is flash back Black Lotus for green mana, then three Berserks to get 15 more power doublings.
In all, that's a power of 8,620,287,417,370,624,828,265,702,027,720,489,157,855,407,562,282,762,395 combined among all three creatures, though of course the Wurm is responsible for most of it. It's only 55 digits, compared to your 97-digit estimate, due largely to Yawgmoth's Will not working out so well.
There are in fact a lot more efficient things you can do that repeatedly doubling the power of a single creature, but if you want to explore that avenue further, try looking at Feral Animist. Instead of using a full card to get a double, like Berserk does, Animist can repeatedly double its power for just 3 colorless mana. There are ways to get a lot of colorless mana without using very many cards, like Mana Echoes + Storm Herd...and from there it's worth letting you explore the space on your own.
You can go much, much bigger! For example, see http://www.soniccenter.org/sm/mtg/megacombo.html
1 Show and Tell
1 Omniscience
1 Enter the Infinite
1 Leyline of Anticipation
4 Heroes Remembered
1 Renewed Faith
4 Doubling Season
4 Primal Vigor
4 Copy Enchantment
4 Pyromancer Ascension
1 Dream Stalker
4 Praetor's Counsel
4 Mogg Infestation
4 Deploy to the Front
4 Hellion Eruption
4 Fungal Sprouting
3 Day of the Dragons
1 Flame-Kin Zealot
1 Golden Wish
1 Living Wish
1 Cunning Wish
3 Twincast
1 Day of the Dragons
1 Cavern Harpy
1 Twincast
4 Increasing Vengeance
4 Parallel Lives
So the idea is:
1) S&T into omni into EtI (put a Praetor's Counsel on top)
2) Leyline of Anticipation
3) 4 Pyromancer ascension
4) Cast 4 Heroes Remembered so you charge the ascensions
5) Cast the 3 wishes and get your entire sideboard (this could be cool even in other decks)
6) Cast the 16 doubling effects
8) Cast 15 Storm Herd, then 15 Hellion Eruption, then 4 Day of the Dragons, then 20 Mogg Infestation then 20 Deploy to the Front then zealot and 4 behemoth (not 100% sure on the correct order) then 20 Fungal Sprouting and fork them 8 times
10) Now you can cast 20 Praetor's Counsel, and thanks to leyline and the last Hellion Eruption we should be able to recast creatures and the lotus between each copy, the counsel on top will be drawn via Renewed Faith.
11) when you have no more counsels just go for dream stalker, cast the harpy and bounce the behemoths as much as you can, then attack
I really have no idea how big the damage output is right now, but i think it should be really insane in the end
If some brave heart wanna do the math behind this it would be great, maybe ill do it tomorrow, but i guess this combo actually does a damage that could challenge the best one?
The reason I'm posting is because I'm having some trouble figuring out the core of Deedlit's deck? Specifically how the landcyclers work to add layers. I was wondering if someone could, like, explain how it runs? It's possible one of the earlier posts does sort of spell it out step-by-step but if so I have missed it (and I did look, though perhaps not hard enough)