I don't think it is, if we can go back to forcing a hyperstage level trigger to get back Omniscience. Come to think of it, how are you getting Omniscience back on the battlefield after the megastage in your version?
Edit: making Academy Rector black seems much harder than giving it flying was.
Oh, right. I guess the easiest way to get Omniscience back is to add Academy Rector and Misery Charm. But that makes getting Omniscience back very cheap.
Hmm, is killing Metallurgeon in addition to Winding Constrictor a problem? Normally, we have Psychic Battle triggers at the top of stage stack, so these can already destroy Metallurgeon. We then resolve down to the next Bloodbond March trigger to get Metallurgeon back. Hmm, but we can hold back the usage of Engineered Explosives until we use the Bloodbond March trigger, and get another hasted Metallurgeon. So that indeed seems to be a problem.
So, making Omniscience expensive seems like a good idea. One idea is to hardcast it, and make getting blue mana not too cheap. How about Silver Myr? No, that just requires several Bloodbond March triggers from Metallurgeon, but doesn't decrease the number of layers, whereas getting more hasted Metallurgeons will add to the number of layers. I'm not sure yet.
Princess Lucrezia is black and can be put on a Mimic Vat to make a hasty token? That's some old school tech, ironically. Isn't that how the first write-up deck worked?
Hmm, Princess Lucrezia is interesting. We will need three tokens to get Omniscience back I guess. We can destroy and bounce Princess Lucrezia with Krosan Constrictor, but the optimal strategy seems rather complicated.
Edit: Actually, I realize I'm confused on how the hyperstage is supposed to work. We can tap a Krosan Constrictor to get lots of Psychic Battle triggers. We can use one of those triggers to bounce Boggart Mob, which brings Goblin Dark-Dwellers back to the battlefield, and we can cast our instants. This includes Rebuild, which will bring Engineered Explosives back to our hand, which we can cast with four charge counters once things are set up properly. We sacrifice the Explosives, destroying Krosan Constrictor, and create a Mimic Vat token. We can also use Verdant Succession to bring Krosan Constrictor back to the battlefield. We still have more Psychic Battle triggers, so we can use them to bounce more Boggart Mobs and create more Krosan COnstrictor tokens. Why isn't this an infinite?
It doesn't go infinite, because we have to wait until we get back Vedalken Orrery, below all the Psychic Battle triggers, comes back into play, to cast Engineered Explosives. We don't actually have any more Battle triggers at that point. We could, if we could respond in between bouncing Boggart Mob and bringing back Goblin Dark-Dwellers, which is why we can't just have the creature bounce the Dark-Dwellers, and need the indirection of the champion creature. I think that keeps it bound to the finite numbers, but I could be wrong.
As for Princess Lucrezia, I don't actually think that works: we can bank up the blue mana between stages, spending a Krosan Constrictor each time, and so the next time we run through the combo, Omniscience will be too cheap. We need to tie a Constrictor activation to Omniscience coming back NOW.
That works, I think. In that case, we'll need to go back to discussing death triggers.
However, now that we've switched to the Dark-Dwellers plan, there are two issues: 1. Using Explosives on 4 also kills Boggart Mob, which is bad. 2. We can no longer exile Orrery and save it, so we"re liberated from cmc 4. So, death triggers on cmc 3 creatures are available too. I'm not sure cmc 2 is, though, since that would also let us kill Metallurgeon.
So let's talk about death triggers. At 1 cmc, we have Promised Kannushi, which has a fair amount of potential, but I haven't been able to make work. I haven't explored that cost much, but if we can find a Donate effect that works at such a low layer, Slithery Stalker has a lot of potential (side note, but between this, Tidebinder, and Cherished Hatchling, it's really starting to feel like WotC's rule for adding "an opponent controls" to these effects is really "just add it whenever it's most likely to screw these decks over").
Actually, one other issue: whatever we have that targets Boggart Mob can't also target Child of Alara, or we can go infinite. So there's a long way to go for that plan.
Edit: here's a wild thought, but if we could somehow force Opalescence and March of the Machines to be on the battlefield, False Prophet could work as a replacement.
Edit: looking at the old color-based stages, it doesn't look like they use etb, so I'm not sure we have to stick with Boggart Mob as the champion creature: the only creature etb effect in our current deck is Kederekt Leviathan, which we:re talking about replacing. Changeling Berserker, Changeling Hero, and Changeling Titan are all much easier to target, can still champion Dark-Dwellers, and it doesn't look like they'd break the mana stages. That should make our job much easier. For one thing, any "target creature_type" tapper can become our hyperstage creature.
Hmm, does Boggart Mob having CMC 4 cause a problem? We can destroy both Boggart Mob and Krosan Constrictor with an Engineered Explosives. But this puts Boggart Mob in the graveyard, so to save it, we have to preemptively bounce Boggart Mob further down the stack, and make some Bloodbond March triggers. I'm not sure whether that goes infinite, but it might.
The plan for Mishra, Artificer Prodigy was that, after we sacrifice the first Engineered Explosives, we can cast the second one, bringing the first one back to the battlefield. Then Rebuild can bring them both back to our hand. It seems to work.
Using a Changeling championer is interesting - let's give it a shot!
Coastal Drake can target Changeling Berserker but nothing else. We can't boost explosives with Constrictor anymore (or we make killing Child of Alara too cheap), so add a 1-drop death trigger: Promised Kannushi. Skyfire Kirin and Adamaro, First to Desire can turn that into targeting Coastal Drake, but nothing else important. This does mean making blue Mana plentiful, so add an azorius Mana rock instead of Ramos. This is safe because we no longer can exile Orrery in the hyperstage, and don't get any Explosives in the megastage. Unearth can be used to buy back our creatures when they die.
Then, at the megastage, we need a way to target Child of Alara, so Smite the Monstrous. Blue Mana is plentiful, so we can cut Rector. Spirit Guide is unsafe with Kirin and can't be rebought with Child anyways, but Wall of Roots can be, and doesn't go infinite with Thoughtweft Gambit.
Very interesting! Two questions: How are we putting Adamaro, First to Desire in the graveyard? And how are we returning Child of Alara to the battlefield?
For the first one, we can just get our opponent hellbent as a one-off effect, and Adamaro can die, but if that's too expensive, we can also play him, stack the Kirin trigger under a Bloodbond March trigger, counter Adamaro, bring him back, and then use battle triggers from the Kirin to kill both it and the Drake. Or does that go infinite?
Let's see. We can instead bounce the Drake that way and then bounce Adamaro to get more triggers, but then Drake is in the graveyard and we need either a BM trigger on it, or an Unearth, which will cost a Drake activation. So I think that's fine.
As for rebuying Child of Alara... Oops. +1 Loyal Retainers? I don't know if a more global effect would close off the ability to add token stages later, because we can kill them with Child's death trigger and then reanimate them, so that seems as narrow as we can get. That gets us down to 9 slots left.
If we really can make stages out of that, of course, we're in amazing shape. I don't know enough about how the stages at the bottom of the stack interact with the n-stage above them to say if we can.
I think the death trigger from Child of Alara is fine as far as later stages go, since it will destroy all copies of Mimic Vat as well, so we can't imprint any creatures.
Looking at future stages, it looks like we have to stick to creatures with CMC > 3 and Power < 4. That actually cuts out most of our stage creatures, but the Possessed creatures are still available. I'm not sure if Paragons are acceptable, token copies would make them vulnerable to Smite the Monstrous, but perhaps those will get destroyed in the main combo. I'm not sure. Anyway, we could go:
I just noticed a problem with the above deck: now that white and blue Mana are available, we can play explosives for 2 and kill Wall of Roots, profiting 1 green Mana. So we have to find a new creature that doesn't require blue Mana.
One possible replacement is Royal Assassin, combined with a "tap X untapped creature_types you control: do some benign thing". It's one more slot, but we can turn that into a way to make Royal Assassin target only the changeling. Cloudgoat Ranger? It doesn't target, and I can't imagine we'll need a Kithkin stage later.
Of course, then we can't use "target creature with flying" as the instant in the megastage.
I still haven't looked at the Megastage and higher too much. But for the latest non-Alara versions I'm kinda wondering what you do with the Kederekt Leviathan? As far as I can tell you bring it back from the graveyard with Fated Return and then it just sits there, indestructible.
As for replacing Unearth - I dunno, perhaps Ranger of Eos can keep Promised Kannushi around, and then have something higher up to bring back the other creatures?
Dual Nature is also unsafe with Leviathan, so I think we can rule it out.
For the Leviathan deck, we at one point had a sacrifice effect in there, but dropped it for some reason. Probably my fault. I think the most reliable version we have now is this:
Which I realize now still has Farrelite Priest which it doesn't need, but I can't be bothered to change all the numbers, so one more free slot.
If you could check out the proposed mega- and gigastages, that would actually be really helpful, because if this version works, we can start by optimizing it and then move on to seeing if we can open up some stages.
Moving back to the Alara deck, I think the spirit/Kirin plan actually isn't safe after all: we can manipulate Bloodbond March triggers to end with the spirit still in hand, because its own Kirin trigger can target itself. So we've still got a long way to go on that one.
Cast Roar of the Wurm for a bunch of Spellweaver Volute triggers. Resolve the first to sacrifice Leviathan and imprint it on Mimic Vat.
Resolve another to bring Elvish Spirit Guide to the battlefield.
Put activations of Mirror of Fate and Perpetual Timepiece onto the stack.
Use Mimic Vat to create a Leviathan token and bounce everything, including Elvish Spirit Guide. Exile the Guide for 1 green.
Use the Mirror and Timepiece activations to move Leviathan and Spirit Guide to the graveyard.
Use Volute triggers to bring both to the battlefield and bounce the guide once more. Exile it for another green.
We generated one extra green and are back to where we started. (Apart from minor differences that can be fixed by that extra green, just like they are after standard transitions)
Dang. That infinite seems hard to work around... even if we could make our original idea work of making Engineered Explosives destroy the Leviathan, it still seems like we can imprint the Leviathan on a Mimic Vat and do the above combo anyway.
For the Alara deck, if we go back to using Coastal Drake and give access to every color BUT green, we can manually cast Explosives for 4, use it to rebuy Goblin Skycutter, and use the Skycutter to make a Drake token. A second Drake can rebuy the first one (use spare battle triggers on Skycutter to bounce the second Drake, cast it, Bloodbond March the first one back), and Bloodline Necromancer can bring back Driver.
From there, Wall of Roots is out, but we may be able to find a soulshift creature that can slot in there.
That route closes off Mana stages, but opens token stages because we can go back to Gloomwidow's Feast over a mass untap. Though the setup is gonna be awfully expensive with no lotus...
Edit: heh. Synthetic Destiny is the card we were using earlier, I think. For the constrictors, Deedlit has some math worked out that uses up the spare Explosives activations we get from the megastage reset to create the exact right amount of Constrictors.
Ooh nice - exiling a creature won't trigger Mimic Vat!
The idea behind the Winding Constrictor was that, Kederekt Leviathan gets us two extra uses of Engineered Explosives, by bouncing the Explosives and also bouncing Goblin Dark-Dwellers. So we would use those two Explosives activations to create two Winding Constrictor tokens. We start with one Winding Constrictor on the battlefield, and cast the Explosives so that it has two charge counters. Then we sacrifice the Explosives, and imprint it on the Mimic Vat. Activate the Mimic Vat, bring the Winding Constrictor back via Verdant Succession, get Engineered Explosives back via Salvaging Station, put a Vedalken Orrery on the stack, cast Goblin Dark-Dwellers, trigger a Rebuild cast, bounce Engineered Explosives, get Orrery back and cast Mimic Vat again, play the Explosives with two charge counters, sacrifice the Explosives, destroy the Winding Constrictor, imprint it on a Mimic Vat, activate the Mimic Vat, wind up with two Winding Constrictor tokens. Get the Winding Constrictor back to have three Winding Constrictors in total.
For the Kederekt deck, we can replace Gambit with Patron of the Orochi, if we can arrange to start each megastage transition with one Patron token, tapped or untapped, already out. We can use Fated Return to reanimate the nontoken, legend rule the nontoken to death, imprint it on a vat, make a hasty copy, and untap all our Constrictors. Repeat for each Fated Return.
I don't know if that opens us to any token stages, but I think it might.
Of course that would also be a problem if we don't want to use Explosives on two for the Winding Constrictor. The Megstage itself doesn't require Winding Constrictors unless we need to execute the sub-Hyperstages, so for the purpose of going infinite we could just ignore them and use the extra explosives for Metallurgeon anyway.
Some other drain would be needed for explosives. I actually thought Academy Rector is intended for that, but that only gets rid of one Explosive, and since Omniscience persists through Rebuild the second Explosive is still free to use in going infinite.
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Actually, one issue: is it a problem that we can create both a Winding Constrictor and a hasty Metallurgeon token?
I don't think it is, if we can go back to forcing a hyperstage level trigger to get back Omniscience. Come to think of it, how are you getting Omniscience back on the battlefield after the megastage in your version?
Edit: making Academy Rector black seems much harder than giving it flying was.
Hmm, is killing Metallurgeon in addition to Winding Constrictor a problem? Normally, we have Psychic Battle triggers at the top of stage stack, so these can already destroy Metallurgeon. We then resolve down to the next Bloodbond March trigger to get Metallurgeon back. Hmm, but we can hold back the usage of Engineered Explosives until we use the Bloodbond March trigger, and get another hasted Metallurgeon. So that indeed seems to be a problem.
So, making Omniscience expensive seems like a good idea. One idea is to hardcast it, and make getting blue mana not too cheap. How about Silver Myr? No, that just requires several Bloodbond March triggers from Metallurgeon, but doesn't decrease the number of layers, whereas getting more hasted Metallurgeons will add to the number of layers. I'm not sure yet.
Edit: Actually, I realize I'm confused on how the hyperstage is supposed to work. We can tap a Krosan Constrictor to get lots of Psychic Battle triggers. We can use one of those triggers to bounce Boggart Mob, which brings Goblin Dark-Dwellers back to the battlefield, and we can cast our instants. This includes Rebuild, which will bring Engineered Explosives back to our hand, which we can cast with four charge counters once things are set up properly. We sacrifice the Explosives, destroying Krosan Constrictor, and create a Mimic Vat token. We can also use Verdant Succession to bring Krosan Constrictor back to the battlefield. We still have more Psychic Battle triggers, so we can use them to bounce more Boggart Mobs and create more Krosan COnstrictor tokens. Why isn't this an infinite?
As for Princess Lucrezia, I don't actually think that works: we can bank up the blue mana between stages, spending a Krosan Constrictor each time, and so the next time we run through the combo, Omniscience will be too cheap. We need to tie a Constrictor activation to Omniscience coming back NOW.
Edit: So the deck is currently looking like:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 March of the Machines
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirroworks
16 Tooth of Ramos
17 Metallurgeon
18 Battle Cry
19 Rebuild
20 Make a Stand
21 Swarm Intelligence
22 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
23 Boggart Mob
24 Krosan Constrictor
25 Panharmonicon
26 Engineered Explosives
27 Engineered Explosives
28 Mishra, Artificer Prodigy
29 Winding Constrictor
30 Verdant Succession
32 Thoughtweft Gambit
33 Roar of the Wurm
34 Fated Return
35 Kederekt Leviathan
36 Elvish Spirit Guide
37 Academy Rector
38 Phyrexian Bloodstock
39 Wormfang Behemoth
40 Vile Redeemer
41 Spellweaver Helix
42 Aether Mutation
43 Worldpurge
44 Acorn Harvest
45 Acorn Harvest
46 Radiant Fountain
47 Glimmerpost
48 Walking Atlas
49 Black Lotus
50 Channel
51 Genesis Wave
53 Tamanoa
54 Justice
55 Repercussion
56 Winter Blast
57 Spiritual Focus
58 Pain Magnification
59 Five-Alarm Fire
60 World at War
Iijil, could we get your assessment?
However, now that we've switched to the Dark-Dwellers plan, there are two issues: 1. Using Explosives on 4 also kills Boggart Mob, which is bad. 2. We can no longer exile Orrery and save it, so we"re liberated from cmc 4. So, death triggers on cmc 3 creatures are available too. I'm not sure cmc 2 is, though, since that would also let us kill Metallurgeon.
So let's talk about death triggers. At 1 cmc, we have Promised Kannushi, which has a fair amount of potential, but I haven't been able to make work. I haven't explored that cost much, but if we can find a Donate effect that works at such a low layer, Slithery Stalker has a lot of potential (side note, but between this, Tidebinder, and Cherished Hatchling, it's really starting to feel like WotC's rule for adding "an opponent controls" to these effects is really "just add it whenever it's most likely to screw these decks over").
Actually, one other issue: whatever we have that targets Boggart Mob can't also target Child of Alara, or we can go infinite. So there's a long way to go for that plan.
Edit: here's a wild thought, but if we could somehow force Opalescence and March of the Machines to be on the battlefield, False Prophet could work as a replacement.
Edit: looking at the old color-based stages, it doesn't look like they use etb, so I'm not sure we have to stick with Boggart Mob as the champion creature: the only creature etb effect in our current deck is Kederekt Leviathan, which we:re talking about replacing. Changeling Berserker, Changeling Hero, and Changeling Titan are all much easier to target, can still champion Dark-Dwellers, and it doesn't look like they'd break the mana stages. That should make our job much easier. For one thing, any "target creature_type" tapper can become our hyperstage creature.
Edit: Goblin Dark-Dwellers can't cast Engineered Explosives, so the Mishra plan doesn't work.
The plan for Mishra, Artificer Prodigy was that, after we sacrifice the first Engineered Explosives, we can cast the second one, bringing the first one back to the battlefield. Then Rebuild can bring them both back to our hand. It seems to work.
Using a Changeling championer is interesting - let's give it a shot!
Coastal Drake can target Changeling Berserker but nothing else. We can't boost explosives with Constrictor anymore (or we make killing Child of Alara too cheap), so add a 1-drop death trigger: Promised Kannushi. Skyfire Kirin and Adamaro, First to Desire can turn that into targeting Coastal Drake, but nothing else important. This does mean making blue Mana plentiful, so add an azorius Mana rock instead of Ramos. This is safe because we no longer can exile Orrery in the hyperstage, and don't get any Explosives in the megastage. Unearth can be used to buy back our creatures when they die.
Then, at the megastage, we need a way to target Child of Alara, so Smite the Monstrous. Blue Mana is plentiful, so we can cut Rector. Spirit Guide is unsafe with Kirin and can't be rebought with Child anyways, but Wall of Roots can be, and doesn't go infinite with Thoughtweft Gambit.
Putting it all together, I get:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death’s Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omnsicience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 March of the Machines
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Azorius Keyrune
17 Metallurgeon
18 Battle Cry
19 Rebuild
20 Swarm Intelligence
21 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
22 Changeling Berserker
23 Coastal Drake
24 Panharmonicon
25 Engineered Explosives
26 Engineered Explosives
27 Mishra, Artificer Prodigy
28 Promised Kannushi
29 Skyfire Kirin
30 Adamaro, First to Desire
31 Unearth
33 Gloomwidow's Feast
34 Roar of the Wurm
35 Smite the Monstrous
36 Child of Alara
37 Wall of Roots
38 Loyal Retainers
39 Wormfang Behemoth
40 Vile Redeemer
41 Spellweaver Helix
42 Exile into Darkness
43 Worldpurge
44 Acorn Harvest
45 Acorn Harvest
46 Radiant Fountain
47 Glimmerpost
48 Walking Atlas
50 Channel
51 Black Lotus
That leaves us with 9 cards, and cuts not only general targeting but also Thoughtweft Gambit, which I think leaves us room for token stages, as well.
Let's see. We can instead bounce the Drake that way and then bounce Adamaro to get more triggers, but then Drake is in the graveyard and we need either a BM trigger on it, or an Unearth, which will cost a Drake activation. So I think that's fine.
As for rebuying Child of Alara... Oops. +1 Loyal Retainers? I don't know if a more global effect would close off the ability to add token stages later, because we can kill them with Child's death trigger and then reanimate them, so that seems as narrow as we can get. That gets us down to 9 slots left.
If we really can make stages out of that, of course, we're in amazing shape. I don't know enough about how the stages at the bottom of the stack interact with the n-stage above them to say if we can.
Looking at future stages, it looks like we have to stick to creatures with CMC > 3 and Power < 4. That actually cuts out most of our stage creatures, but the Possessed creatures are still available. I'm not sure if Paragons are acceptable, token copies would make them vulnerable to Smite the Monstrous, but perhaps those will get destroyed in the main combo. I'm not sure. Anyway, we could go:
for three stages. We still have Possessed Barbarian, but I'm not sure how to switch from green to red with our restrictions.
One possible replacement is Royal Assassin, combined with a "tap X untapped creature_types you control: do some benign thing". It's one more slot, but we can turn that into a way to make Royal Assassin target only the changeling. Cloudgoat Ranger? It doesn't target, and I can't imagine we'll need a Kithkin stage later.
Of course, then we can't use "target creature with flying" as the instant in the megastage.
Not sure how we would target either Royal Assassin or Dwarven Demolition Team though. Is there a replacement for Wall of Roots?
The Mishra, Artificer Prodigy + 2nd Engineered Explosives can probably be replaced by Salvaging Station again. Black Lotus is unsafe anyway since Mirrorworks can generate tokens without the original ever going to the graveyard.
I still haven't looked at the Megastage and higher too much. But for the latest non-Alara versions I'm kinda wondering what you do with the Kederekt Leviathan? As far as I can tell you bring it back from the graveyard with Fated Return and then it just sits there, indestructible.
As for replacing Unearth - I dunno, perhaps Ranger of Eos can keep Promised Kannushi around, and then have something higher up to bring back the other creatures?
For the Leviathan deck, we at one point had a sacrifice effect in there, but dropped it for some reason. Probably my fault. I think the most reliable version we have now is this:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death’s Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Cephalid Shrine
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omnsicience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 March of the Machines
12 Perpetual Timepiece
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirroworks
16 Su-Chi
17 Farrelite Priest
19 Battle Cry
20 Rebuild
21 Make a Stand
22 Swarm Intelligence
23 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
24 Boggart Mob
25 Krosan Constrictor
26 Panharmonicon
27 Engineered Explosives
28 Salvaging Station
29 Winding Constrictor
30 Verdant Succession
31 Spellweaver Volute
32 Thoughtweft Gambit
33 Rescue from the Underworld
34 Fated Return
35 Kederekt Leviathan
36 Roar of the Wurm
37 Elvish Spirit Guide
38 Academy Rector
40 Vile Redeemer
41 Spellweaver Helix
42 Worldpurge
43 Acorn Harvest
44 Acorn Harvest
45 Radiant Fountain
46 Glimmerpost
47 Walking Atlas
Which I realize now still has Farrelite Priest which it doesn't need, but I can't be bothered to change all the numbers, so one more free slot.
If you could check out the proposed mega- and gigastages, that would actually be really helpful, because if this version works, we can start by optimizing it and then move on to seeing if we can open up some stages.
Moving back to the Alara deck, I think the spirit/Kirin plan actually isn't safe after all: we can manipulate Bloodbond March triggers to end with the spirit still in hand, because its own Kirin trigger can target itself. So we've still got a long way to go on that one.
Cast Roar of the Wurm for a bunch of Spellweaver Volute triggers. Resolve the first to sacrifice Leviathan and imprint it on Mimic Vat.
Resolve another to bring Elvish Spirit Guide to the battlefield.
Put activations of Mirror of Fate and Perpetual Timepiece onto the stack.
Use Mimic Vat to create a Leviathan token and bounce everything, including Elvish Spirit Guide. Exile the Guide for 1 green.
Use the Mirror and Timepiece activations to move Leviathan and Spirit Guide to the graveyard.
Use Volute triggers to bring both to the battlefield and bounce the guide once more. Exile it for another green.
We generated one extra green and are back to where we started. (Apart from minor differences that can be fixed by that extra green, just like they are after standard transitions)
What is the plan for getting the correct number of Winding Constrictor tokens back?
From there, Wall of Roots is out, but we may be able to find a soulshift creature that can slot in there.
That route closes off Mana stages, but opens token stages because we can go back to Gloomwidow's Feast over a mass untap. Though the setup is gonna be awfully expensive with no lotus...
Edit: heh. Synthetic Destiny is the card we were using earlier, I think. For the constrictors, Deedlit has some math worked out that uses up the spare Explosives activations we get from the megastage reset to create the exact right amount of Constrictors.
The idea behind the Winding Constrictor was that, Kederekt Leviathan gets us two extra uses of Engineered Explosives, by bouncing the Explosives and also bouncing Goblin Dark-Dwellers. So we would use those two Explosives activations to create two Winding Constrictor tokens. We start with one Winding Constrictor on the battlefield, and cast the Explosives so that it has two charge counters. Then we sacrifice the Explosives, and imprint it on the Mimic Vat. Activate the Mimic Vat, bring the Winding Constrictor back via Verdant Succession, get Engineered Explosives back via Salvaging Station, put a Vedalken Orrery on the stack, cast Goblin Dark-Dwellers, trigger a Rebuild cast, bounce Engineered Explosives, get Orrery back and cast Mimic Vat again, play the Explosives with two charge counters, sacrifice the Explosives, destroy the Winding Constrictor, imprint it on a Mimic Vat, activate the Mimic Vat, wind up with two Winding Constrictor tokens. Get the Winding Constrictor back to have three Winding Constrictors in total.
I don't know if that opens us to any token stages, but I think it might.
Of course that would also be a problem if we don't want to use Explosives on two for the Winding Constrictor. The Megstage itself doesn't require Winding Constrictors unless we need to execute the sub-Hyperstages, so for the purpose of going infinite we could just ignore them and use the extra explosives for Metallurgeon anyway.
Some other drain would be needed for explosives. I actually thought Academy Rector is intended for that, but that only gets rid of one Explosive, and since Omniscience persists through Rebuild the second Explosive is still free to use in going infinite.