First off, 60 cards is 60 cards: you sideboard is capped at 0, so Wishes are off limits. Even so, this effectively 72-card deck is still a far cry from the leading 60s.
Second off, it's better to have Copy Enchantment copy Pyromancer Ascension than Doubling Season, you have 8 and 12 clones of each respectively, instead of 4 and 16.
Start by playing Dream Stalker, responding to the trigger with all the Momentary Blinks, and charge Pyromancer Ascension on that. Now the four Heroes Remembered and the Renewed Faith (which you never actually need to cycle) will go to 794 life; your plan with only four Ascensions would have left you with only 180 life.
One copy of Storm Herd now results in 3,252,224 tokens, and the whole lot is worth 87,810,048. This is actually slightly worse than what can be done with extra Doubling Season copies, but they'll catch up soon enough.
Four Day of the Dragons takes you to 3573*2^61, falling further behind the 4-16 distribution But then...one Mogg Infestation with all its copies shoots you to 3573*2^178, flying past the version that gets fewer copies on each spell.
The order of the token-replacement spells doesn't much matter, but after 4 Mogg Infestations, 4 Deploy to the Front, and 3 (yes, only three) Hellion Eruptions, you have 3573*2^1204 tokens, or more than 2^1215. Craterhoof Behemoth at this point goes to 2^1215 power, and Fungal Sprouting gets nine batches of 2^1227 tokens, coming very close to 2^1231 in the end. Now repeat this by alternating Behemoth #2, Sprouting #2, and so on; after all of them you have more than 2^1264 tokens. The last Hellion Eruption sacrifices them all, including the Behemoths, and boosts to 2^1372.
Now of course Praetor's Counsel goes here. On the first copy, you can return Enter the Infinite and play it, drawing the fourth Counsel and putting back the useless Show and Tell after it's been returned to hand (this is why you don't need to cycle Renewed Faith). Each copy of Praetor's Counsel returns cards that can double your creature count about 1300 times, and there are now 36 copies of the spell, so that all will end up at 2^48172. Along the way, you'll also go to 28658 life.
That life total is relevant not because the subsequent casts of Storm Herd will make any difference, but because there's another step you can do when all the other recursion runs out, and it's a step that actually ends up being more powerful than everything else. Play Dream Stalker, return Day of the Dragons, and nothing special happens (your creatures will be Hellions or Dragons, not Goblins). But now you can play Cavern Harpy, bounce the Dream Stalker for gating, and pay 1 life to get its own bounce. Now Day of the Dragons, Cavern Harpy, and Dream Stalker are all back in hand. So far, so good, but not much has changed.
Now that Day of the Dragons is back in hand, play it again. This multiplies your ranks by 4096 (and exiles all the Craterhoof Behemoths), and now they will be composed of dragons. So play Dream Stalker again, choose to bounce Day of the Dragons, and this time you have to respond to the LTB trigger to Day, or else you lose your progress. Cavern Harpy gets everything back in hand, ready to repeat again, this time with one less life and one more trigger waiting on the stack. Repeat this process 28,657 times, down to 1 life, and then respond to the top trigger with the final Hellion Eruption to get your creature base turned into something that isn't Dragons again. Now the triggers will make you sacrifice all dragons (which you don't have any of), and nothing returns until the last trigger, which returns four Craterhoof Behemoth.
You have roughly 2^392056 creatures here, and each Behemoth trigger will give that much power to everything. Flame-Kin Zealot gives everything haste, and then you can attack for roughly 2^784114 damage.
That's a number with over 230,000 digits, but big numbers are big. No, bigger than that. If you can write out the number in full, it's too small. If you can write out the number of digits in the number, it's too small. Single-exponential expressions certainly qualify as being able to write out the number of digits. And that's with a deck that goes twelve cards over budget.
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)
I tried to explain the basic combo here and here. There I was talking specifically about the interaction between Elvish Spirit Guide and Ezuri, Renegade Leader, but all of the first eight combos in my deck work the same way: there is one card, call it card A, that is a creature that can be discarded or exiled to provide a resource, typically mana of a particular color, and another card, card B, that can use that resource to return card A from the battlefield to your hand (by targeting it and using Cowardice). Then there is generally a card C that can also be targeted by card B, that triggers the next combo in the sequence. Landcyclers are a roundabout way of having "discard to provide a mana of a particular color"; you discard it to draw a land of the particular type from the library, then you put it in play and tap it for mana.
Just to go over the way the combo works again, let's take the blue stage of the deck. (It's a little more complicated due to Riven Turnbull being legendary) The important cards are:
To get the combo jumpstarted, we need the first card in the next combo, Norritt. Say we have a bunch of hasted Norritts on the battlefield, and the aforementioned cards in our hand. We also have all our support cards on the battlefield, which I won't bother to list here. First, we cast Shoreline Ranger, which puts a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers on the stack. We then counter Shoreline Ranger, putting it in the graveyard, and resolve the first Bloodbond March trigger, putting it on the battlefield. We then put Island on the battlefield via Patron of the Moon and untap it using Amulet of Vigor, and cast Paragon of Gathering Mists as well, getting a bunch of hasted copies via Minion Reflector (Colorless mana is cheap, so we can keep some spare colorless mana to use; Mana Echoes will get us back a lot more than the two mana we spent.). We tap the Island and spend the blue mana to activate Paragon of Gathering Mists, getting a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers that go on top of the Bloodbond March triggers; We use the first one to bounce Shoreline Ranger back to hand. Now we cast and counter Shoreline Ranger again, getting a group of new Bloodbond March triggers going on top of the Psychic Battle triggers, and this time we tap a hasted Norritt to get a new group of Psychic Battle triggers, and use the first one to bounce Shoreline Ranger back to our hand again. We repeat this process for each hasted Norritt. At the end of all that, we have a stack of alternating groups of triggers looking like:
group of Bloodbond March triggers
group of Psychic Battle triggers
group of Bloodbond March triggers
...
group of Psychic Battle triggers
group of Bloodbond March triggers
Now that we have built up our stack, we are ready to resolve it. First, we want to put the Island in our library, so we sacrifice it to Stormwatch Eagle, then put it in the library with Soldevi Digger. Next, we cycle Shoreline Ranger to fetch the Island from the library, put it on the battlefield, and tap it for a blue mana. Now we can resolve the first Bloodbond March layer, putting Shoreline Ranger on the battlefield; next we cast Riven Turnbull, putting a Minion Reflector trigger for it on the stack. Respond to that trigger by activating Paragon of Gathering Mists, getting a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers; use two of them to bounce Shoreline Ranger and Riven Turnbull. Resolve the Minion Reflector trigger, putting a hasted Riven Turbull token on the battlefield (well, many, but they all die but one due to Legendary status). Tap the Riven Turnbull for black mana. Continue this process for each of the Bloodbond March triggers in the top group. At the end we will have a whole bunch of black mana, which we can use to fuel the first combo in the deck; the end result will be a lot more of all our enchantments, including Bloodbond March and Psychic Battle.
Now that all the Bloodbond Marches in the first group are gone, we can now resolve the first Psychic Battle trigger in the second group. This allows us to bounce Shoreline Ranger back to our hand, and cast and counter it again, creating a new first group of Bloodbond March triggers, except this time there are astronomically more Bloodbond Marches around then previously, so we get astronomically more triggers. We resolve this new batch of Bloodbond March the same way as last time until we use them all up, and get more Psychic Battles and Bloodbond Marches; then we resolve the second Psychic Battle trigger in the second group, then the third, et cetera, until we run out of Psychic Battle triggers. Now it's time to refresh the group of Psychic Battle triggers, so this time we cycle Shoreline Ranger rather than cast it, getting us an Island and thus a blue mana, and use the first Bloodbond March trigger in the third group of triggers to bring it back to the battlefield. Then we activate Paragon of Gathering Mists with our newly acquired blue mana, creating a new group of Psychic Battle triggers, as desired, and the first of those triggers can be used to create a new first group of Bloodbond March triggers, and the combo continues. Every once in a while, we will need to use a Psychic Battle trigger to bounce Paragon of Gathering Mists so that we can get more tokens, but using up an occasional Psychic Battle trigger won't affect the combo.
I hope that is enough for you to see the pattern here. we have a stack of alternating groups of triggers; the top group can be used to generate lots of black mana to fuel to next combo after it; we can resolve one trigger from the second group to recreate the top group, only with a lot more triggers; we can resolve one trigger from the third group to recreate the second group with a lot more triggers, and so on down the line. This is a classic implementation of the Ackermann function, so I have been calling the combos "Ackermann stages". In terms of numbers, each X black mana we create fuels the first Ackermann stage, so it produces more than 10 -> 10 -> X Doubling Seasons in the end, or equivalently 10 -> 10 -> X -> 1. So each time we resolve X Bloodbond March triggers in the top group, we produce more than 10 -> 10 -> X -> 1 Bloodbond Marches. This happens for each Psychic Battle trigger in the second group; so with X Psychic Battle triggers, we take Y to 10 -> 10 -> Y -> 1 X times, which produces 10 -> 10 -> X -> 2. So the third group of X Bloodbond March triggers takes Y to 10 -> 10 -> Y -> 2 X times, which produces 10 -> 10 -> X -> 3; and then Nth group takes X to 10 -> 10 -> X -> N. So if the stack is X groups high, we produce more than 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> X Doubling Seasons from the combo.
Each Ackermann stage adds one arrow to the numbers, so after eight Ackermann stages plus a little more at the top, we wind up with a final damage of more than
I tried to explain the basic combo here and here. There I was talking specifically about the interaction between Elvish Spirit Guide and Ezuri, Renegade Leader, but all of the first eight combos in my deck work the same way: there is one card, call it card A, that is a creature that can be discarded or exiled to provide a resource, typically mana of a particular color, and another card, card B, that can use that resource to return card A from the battlefield to your hand (by targeting it and using Cowardice). Then there is generally a card C that can also be targeted by card B, that triggers the next combo in the sequence. Landcyclers are a roundabout way of having "discard to provide a mana of a particular color"; you discard it to draw a land of the particular type from the library, then you put it in play and tap it for mana.
To clarify this point, in order for this step to be safe, discarding A can only be capable of producing just enough mana or other resource to activate B exactly once more, for each time we're in a position to discard A. If it can be activated multiple times, that's no good. So certain cards, which were used freely in other attempts at a long, saturated combo, are now off-limits:
-Rings of Brighthearth (this could copy the landcycling ability, letting it fetch the land multiple times and tap it for mana each time)
-March of the Machines (this allows Amulet of Vigor to trigger Minion Reflector, and the multiple copies will allow it to untap multiple times for each time it gets dropped by Patron of the Moon)
-Nature's Revolt (this allows the land itself to trigger Minion Reflector)
-Mana Reflection (this causes the land to produce more mana than it takes for one use of the ability)
Because A is carefully constrained so it can't convert itself into B at any better than a 1-for-1 basis, the steps essentially boil down to "By activating B once, and paying for it the hard way, we lock in some large but predetermined number of times where we can activate it again, effectively for free. These free activations are achieved in such a way that they do not open up any further windows for more free ones, but just the same, they increase the numbers of everything further down the line. Then the next paid activation gets a window for a vastly greater amount of free ones."
But they're not Toads, they're Frogs! That's why Bloated Toad has protection from Turn to Frog (and, for that matter, Rapid Hybridization)!
Does Slayer of the Wicked, a targeted ETB trigger with only one Minion Reflector, actually do what it's supposed to? It looks to me like the stack has to clear too deep before Twisted Abomination can come back a second time.
What, WOTC doesn't know the difference between frogs and toads?!
You're right, Slayer of the Wicked runs into stack problems; we need to keep bouncing Twisted Abomination one at a time, but all of Slayer's triggers are put on the stack at once. Using more Bloodbond March triggers doesn't help, nor would more Minion Reflector triggers, since they also all go on the stack at the same time. Note to self: Activated abilities are okay, ETB triggers that generate mana are okay, ETB triggers that target are not okay.
We can go back to the Tinder Wall deck, which requires one more cord, so we remove one Ground Rift.
Zero transitional cards, or two better than the Tinder Wall deck, which more than makes up for the fact that we can't use Chaos Warp in the combo anymore.
Eastern Paladin to hit the elves, and then later on Morselhoarder--not quite. Morselhoarder is an ugly card to work around anyway, since we have to get rid of every single DS to avoid "comes into play dead", and without a number of Dual Natures or Minion Reflectors that scales up at the same time, the recovery isn't just a matter of one replay of the enchantment. That much, at least, would be easy to fix by swapping out Morselhoarder for Composite Golem.
Also, going to Rimescale Dragon actually means we'd have to cut Gilder Bairn, and that's a loss that's definitely visible in the end, more so than an extra Temporal Fissure or whatever storm card, or maybe even Grip of Chaos if adding that back is more powerful than duplicate storm cards.
Ah, right. Too bad Rimescale Dragon is the only red card that targets creatures with snow mana. (It would be awesome if we could use Ohran Yeti, but there don't seem to be any snow creatures suitable for cycling/discard.) We could replace Rimescale Dragon with Lava Dart, except that can activate Night Dealings. So it's only worth it if we can get another stage; using Lava Dart clears snow mana, but then we run into the problem of too many general target creature effects again.
That explanation makes sense, thanks for being so obliging! If I understand correctly, the outlet for actually dealing all that damage is five-alarm fire?
Five-Alarm Fire actually does a couple different things:
-If we have spare life, pay 2 life for Soul Channeling to put a regeneration shield on the Gilder Bairn token it's enchanting. Then use Five-Alarm Fire to burn the Gilder Bairn, which causes it to regenerate, and thus tap. It then gains a use of its untap ability, which can bounce any creature a bunch, and end by putting even more counters on the Five-Alarm Fire.
-If there is no spare life, Five-Alarm Fire burns the opponent, which triggers every copy of Night Dealings to get a whole bunch of counters.
The final blow is actually a three-part affair.
-First, get the ranks of everything as high as possible in the main phase, using what tools are available at that time.
-In the first combat phase, attack with a single creature, triggering several copies of Finest Hour to create an uninterrupted string of additional combat phases. Each one will result in more creatures, and more Five-Alarm Fire triggers.
-When that predetermined string of combat phases finally runs out, pass the baton by casting World at War as many times as possible. When the game gets to the second main phase, there will be another spurt of combat phases.
The opponent is obviously taking combat damage each time, but after both methods for generating additional combat phases have done as much as they possibly can, the last burst of Five-Alarm Fire damage in the final combat phase proves to be the most numerous factor of all.
For the absolute maximum damage, the bulk of it will be from Five-Alarm Fire, but if one desires instead to take the opponent as far negative as possible, you can do almost as much by attacking with all available creatures during the last combat phase.
Sweet setup! Enough space for three Ground Rifts. (or perhaps two Ground Rifts and a Grip of Chaos is slightly better)
Ground Rift will get (storm count * Psychic Battle) triggers all at once, and both figures in that product are committed at the same time, which is 1+epsilon layers compared to the 1 layer of an ordinary Chaos Warp. A slot for Grip of Chaos is definitely better than just repeating that multiple times.
Yawgmoth's Bargain isn't the most appealing thing to use for card draw, because life has another purpose later on, and because it doesn't scale at all: there will never be a time when it makes sense to have more than five copies of Thought Reflection out at once. In my estimation, we're better off cutting both of those cards. Words of Wisdom is still on as a more promising approach, but we do have to use Consecrated Sphinx instead of Psychic Possession. Now that Copy Enchantment is gone, there's no way to get token Auras. Meanwhile, Consecrated Sphinx isn't touchable until stage 3, but that's certainly better than nothing.
I suppose Primal Surge is workable now. After ESG/SSG/land/Warp/Surge there are 2 cards left in hand. I think it's best if these are Soul Channeling and Words of Wisdom--we definitely don't want Soul Channeling to show up in the surge, since it needs to end up on a token copy of Gilder Bairn (remember, no token Auras!), and we might as well take the opportunity to get some free rounds of targeting in the mean time.
Another thing that's workable, if we're not depending on Show and Tell or anything like Wheel of Fortune to set up, is switching Soldevi Digger back to Reito Lantern. That opens up a role for Pain Magnification, another card that shouldn't make a notational difference but does work at a higher level than Chaos Warp or Ground Rift all the same.
After all that, my current working copy still shows two free slots, maybe three if we can do better than the Ground Rift bonus.
You can keep going as long as you can keep drawing cards.
You can keep drawing cards as long as Words of Wisdom doesn't kill the opponent.
When you attack, you make them discard with Pain Magnification, then put it back in their library with Reito Lantern. Which lets you play more Words of Wisdom. Which lets you play more World at War. Which lets you make them discard more with Pain Magnification... etc... etc... etc...
Pain Magnification isn't a safe addition.
Private Mod Note
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Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
No matter how many times we play World at War, they only insert phases immediately after the first postcombat main phase of the turn. It doesn't have any effect that could cause anything to grow at all until the ensuing combat phase, and once we reach that phase, the jig is up: any further casts of World at War will do absolutely nothing.
World at War actually can't be used as part of an infinite loop; it will only have an effect before the end of the first postcombat main phase, andits effect is to add more combat phases after the first postcombat main phase, so it doesn't feed on itself. Same with Finest Hour, so our combat phases are limited.
I believe Yawgmoth's Bargain is definitely worth putting in the deck, and is ahead in value to Pain Magnification, Grip of Chaos and Ground Rift. Pain Magnification adds a sideways benefit to Five-Alarm Fire, which is not as beneficial as another Doubling Season boosting the number of Night Dealings; since an extra Ground Rift or Grip of Chaos can provide this boost, they are still better. Yawgmoth's Bargain is better still, since along with Thought Reflection it can draw 32 cards 19 times, including the trio of Bloated Toad, Chaos Warp, and Ground Rift. This will allow us to create a very large stack for the eight stage (over a hundred alternating layers) before we even start casting Words of Wisdom. So that can fill out the deck, pending finding something better.
This also shows the benefit of adding Ground Rifts: each additiional one can be drawn 19 times in the early going by Yawgmoth's Bargain to add to the most important stage. So I'm pretty sure that an extra Ground Rift is currently better than Pain Magnification at this point. What would be nice if we could add an extra layer there; currently we get one layer for all the Pain Magnifications, then one for all the Consecrated Sphinxes, which is equal to the two from Night Dealings, so neither has the advantage at the moment.
Now that I think about it, Pain Magnification allows for opponent card draw, and Night Dealings allows for our own card draw, so there may be a possibility to put them in sequence. Is there some card that requires the opponent to draw a card, that deals 1 or 2 damage to the opponent? No Parley card seems to work.
Now that I think about it, Pain Magnification allows for opponent card draw, and Night Dealings allows for our own card draw, so there may be a possibility to put them in sequence. Is there some card that requires the opponent to draw a card, that deals 1 or 2 damage to the opponent? No Parley card seems to work.
Words of Wisdom itself can be repurposed to do just that, in the presence of Underworld Dreams.
Very nice, so adding Underworld Dreams increases the number of final layers to nine. We have to cut a card, and I think the best cut is actually Grip of Chaos, instead of Ground Rift. With Grip of Chaos, we can draw Chaos Warp 19 times with Yawgmoth's Bargain, getting 3 layers of the eighth stage stack each time, building up a stack of 57 layers. With Ground Rift, we can draw Bloated Toad and Ground Rift in our initial hand, getting two layers, then each Yawgmoth's Bargain activation can fetch both Chaos Warp and Ground Rift, each getting 2 layers, so we get 2 + 4*19 = 78 layers. It's true that without Grip of Chaos each subsequent stack will only be doubled instead of tripled, but I believe the initial eighth stage stack will create an advantage that will carry through till the end.
I think I am not completely satisfied with how much life gain is getting us; I was considering Selvala, Explorer Returned instead of the life gain section at the top. Ashcloud Phoenix connects Selvala with Night Dealings without adding a layer, but we wind up one layer behind. If there is a card that can use a fixed amount of our life to deal 1 or 2 damage to the opponent many times, we could at least get some extra slots.
Instead of Pain Magnification down to Words of Wisdom and Underworld Dreams, we could have Pain Magnification down to Sangromancer, then that leading into Searing Meditation which is the requisite small-damage source that Night Dealings needs. There are a couple problems with this, though: Sangromancer has another ability, one that breaks if Phelddagrif is allowed to create tokens on the other side of the board that get finished off by Searing Meditation. We have to keep Words of Wisdom or some functional facsimile in order to make repeated Pain Magnification triggers useful, so there cannot be a guardrail that stops the opponent from losing by decking, but at the same time they need to be able to gain life at a low enough level that Searing Meditation doesn't make them lose on damage.
Soldevi Steam Beast should work for that; it effectively cuts the number of copies of Searing Meditation in half and makes them cost three times as much mana, but neither of those factors are anywhere close to limiting by this point. Pay 2 to regenerate a Steam Beast, 2 more to hit it with a Searing Meditation trigger, use up the shield, and hand out 2 life. Then the next trigger goes to the dome, exactly cancelling out the life they gained just before. Along the way, the lower levels can easily create more Steam Beasts if there's a need to get more that are untapped, since the Searing Meditation triggers create some generalized targets to be passed around.
Having enough spare Steam Beasts to cover a Five-Alarm Fire is downright easy; it might be trickier to make sure they have enough life to cover the entire swath of combat damage dealt in a single blow, but by saving a round of Steam Beasts and a discard until after attackers are locked in, the "last number is biggest" rule appears to triumph.
That amounts to -Soul Channeling, -Phelddagrif, -Underworld Dreams, +Sangromancer, +Searing Meditation, +Soldevi Steam Beast, for no net change in card slots. Actually, the setup makes the lifegain a layer but doesn't actually spend it on anything other than the comparatively weak Yawgmoth's Bargain, so I suppose we can free 2 slots by cutting Righteous Cause and Boon Reflection, if they aren't doing anything better.
If Sangromancer didn't have that ability to trigger on opposing creature deaths, then not only would Phelddagrif be preferred, but Searing Meditation would do better to aim itself at the tokens it's able to create, because then we could add Repercussion. Alternatively, if there were some way to donate an indestructible creature in whatever limited card slots are left, that's safe even with Sangromancer, but then the opponent is taking lots and lots of damage below the level at which Soldevi Steam Beast can give them life, and there's no surviving that unless we severely hobble the damage mechanism.
What we really want (besides a Sangromancer that only has the last ability) is some hard-limited way to gain life before the first combat phase. Chaos Warp can resituate any permanent, disqualifying attempts like Elspeth Tirel or Trading Post. Of course, any instant or sorcery spell can simply be redrawn, and even going to exile is not a major hurdle. Decimator Web is more in line with the kind of thing we need, but there's no safe way to convert that into life gain given the cards we're using.
In fact, the only acceptable card I found was Chancellor of the Dross. And that's worth exploring.
Start by revealing Leyline and Chancellor. Now we need to get to 3 mana in upkeep, so no land drops. Black Lotus doesn't work because it can be recalled by Night Dealings for 0. Desperate Ritual doesn't work because Chaos Warp has to target a permanent, and if we shuffle away Leyline then there's not much else we can do in the upkeep. But Mox Jet would work, and better yet Mana Crypt works too (and lets us avoid throwing away ESG early, so we only need two Riftsweepers instead of three to get the exiled cards back). So Leyline, Chancellor, SSG, Mana Crypt, Chaos Warp, Primal Surge with a card left in hand. Now the objective is to get as many copies of Boon Reflection as we can before the Chancellor trigger resolves. The opponent still only loses 3 life, so they're safe for now, and the life gain both gets an early round of Searing Meditation/Night Dealings, and gets a lot more than 19 draws with Bargain.
That squeezes out both Ground Rift and Grip of Chaos, and I think this is actually powerful enough that it makes sense to cut Thought Reflection and add a second Chancellor to occupy the final slot in the opening hand. Then each trigger resolves separately, so the life gain from the first one can be used to power up the second, and we just do it again. Yawgmoth's Bargain spends about four iterations drawing "bare" cards that are lower-power than Chaos Warp, but after two Chancellor loops they won't be missed much.
Reckless Assault will work, and as long as Boon Reflection is in the deck, I think it is actually a little better than Searing Meditation; X Searing Meditations can damage the opponent X times, whereas with X Boon Reflections on the battlefield, Reckless Assault can damage the opponent 1.5 * 2^X times after Chancellor of the Dross activates. It is true that Searing Meditation allows the life gain to be used on Yawgmoth's Bargain, but that is comparatively weaker than getting extra uses of Night Dealings.
However, it looks like Boon Reflection is not actually all that beneficial. As noted above, the card draw from Searing Meditations into Night Dealings will be much greater than what we get from Yawgmoth's Bargain, even with Boon Reflection. So, we can replace Boon Reflection with a card that gets us more Searing Meditations; it looks like Grip of Chaos will be better than Thought Reflection, as we currently have just Chaos Warp to increase the eighth stage stack.
Hunting for more improvements, I notice that Circle of Affliction is very interesting, although it doesn't play nice with Searing Meditation or Reckless Assault. If we can enter into it with something that damages ourselves, and exit out of it by paying life for something, it would be worth two layers with Boon Reflection.
Although the deck is "full" right now, I see 6 slots that are more or less expendable. Mana Crypt and both Chancellors are only used to get something going at the start and then we never hear from them again. Then Boon Reflection can afford to go as well (although, depending on what uses life as a resource, it may merit a slot in the main sequence anyway). We can also do without Consecrated Sphinx and even Primal Surge--if nothing else, Yawgmoth's Bargain drawing 19 cards is enough to set up reuse of Words of Wisdom to get the rest.
My first thought for getting value out of Circle of Affliction was to go back to Phelddagrif and play Fire Covenant for 1, but alas...Fire Covenant can also be played for 3, making Repercussion damage high enough to jump up and hit Pain Magnification. Additionally, Fire Covenant could also target our own creatures, which also causes Repercussion to trigger and that goes right back to Circle of Affliction. Taking out the life payment cards that can cause self-inflicted damage, there's...nothing.
If we did have the "clean Sangromancer", then Repercussion would actually count for two layers: one by aiming Five-Alarm Fire at a created Hippo token, and one lower down when Cleansing Meditation or Reckless Assault does the same.
A complete list of matches for "whenever an opponent discards": Megrim - This works, but it wedges itself in tightly between Pain Magnification and Night Dealings without any room to do much. Geth's Grimoire - not only is it an artifact which we can't copy, it's a less powerful effect than Night Dealings. Abyssal Nocturnus - yawn... Nath of the Gilt-Leaf - No, really, that's enough Elves for one turn. Quest for the Nihil Stone - It's great at generating counters, just a bit lacking in having anything to do with those counters. Liliana's Caress - Actually worse than Megrim for our purposes. If anything actually hooked into this event, it would cut off all opponent-life-loss events, and since damage results in life loss, nothing could possibly trigger Night Dealings in line with the sequence. Sangromancer - *scribble through the top two-thirds of the text box* Waste Not - A goldfish opponent has only land cards to discard, so the only trigger that will ever happen is the BB mana. Not that any of them are particularly compelling.
And that's it.
Hang on, though: Another thing we can do with opponent discards is take advantage of the 1:1 correspondence they have with the tolerance for opponent draws. So then draw triggers: Consecrated Sphinx - well known already Underworld Dreams - we already discussed this Kederekt Parasite - miniature Underworld Dreams, whatever Fate Unraveler - unacceptable, it's an enchantment that has a creature type, allowing Allay to bounce something that makes more colorless mana
and the winner...Nekusar, the Mindrazer.
Nekusar is legendary, so let's add a Mirror Gallery. No matter what we do, the first turn of the game will not have a draw step, so Nekusar's first ability is useless. That leaves it as just another Underworld Dreams, right? Not quite, because Nekusar has a creature type. And unlike Kederekt Parasite, that creature type is Zombie.
Necromancer's Covenant looks potentially dangerous at first glance, an enchantment that can create typed creature tokens. But in order to create any of them, it has to succeed in exiling cards from the graveyard, and it won't be able to do that next time without help from higher up--specifically, Riftsweeper to put the exiled cards back. That makes it safe, and it does exactly what we need it to do: put lifegain on the damage dealt by Nekusar, without touching the damage from Five-Alarm Fire, Repercussion, or Searing Meditation. (The only other Zombie in the deck, Twisted Abomination, won't be dealing any damage except combat damage, so no tripwires go off there either.) It's not quite as good as "Whenever a black creature deals damage, its controller gains that much life"--that would have been worth a full extra layer--but in the days of lifelink technology, it's really asking too much of them to go back to that wording.
I scrapped the Chancellor start because those cards just aren't doing anything after the very beginning, but you may be able to find a better tweak in what edge cards make the cut. Otherwise, this deck looks packed and polished enough to be close to a final product.
I had an idea for getting a clearn Sangromancer: Bloodchief Ascension seems like what we want, except that it doesn't get the necessary quest counters until the end step, when it's too late to attack. So, I figured we could use Fate Transfer + Quest for Ancient Secrets (which can replace Reito Lantern) to get the needed quest counters.
So a final damage of more than 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 3 -> 11.
Hmm, it looks like Gilder Bairn doesn't actually add any layers by itself; I must have been thinking back to when we had Rings of Brighthearth available. Neither does Thrummingbird it seems. We can keep Gilder Bairn in mind in case there might be something else to untap it, but it doesn't look promising.
Hateflayer is another untapping possibility; we could have Five-Alarm Fire deal damage to Hateflayer, ressurect it with Soul Channeling, then have Hateflayer deal damage to Hippo - but that gets us nowhere, it seems.
The choice between Primal Surge and Yawgmoth's Bargain is interesting; Primal Surge gets us more cards, but it doesn't get us Allay, which is pretty darn crucial. So we'll keep Yawgmoth's Bargain.
Bloodchief Ascension + Fate Transfer would save a card over Nekusar + Mirror Gallery + Necromancer's Covenant. The trouble is we'd need a separate copy of Fate Transfer for each Quest (which is a pain, but manageable) and that Bloodchief Ascension triggers on cards going to the graveyard from anywhere. Altar of Dementia makes that too easy.
I'm actually inclined to give Consecrated Sphinx the axe before Primal Surge. The Sphinx essentially says "each endgame layer 5 comes with a free layer -1", which really doesn't do a lot if we can start up without it.
If Rings of Brighthearth did work, it would be a layer on Five-Alarm Fire, Night Dealings, Gilder Bairn (which gets added back), and Reckless Assault (replacing Searing Meditation). In terms of recreating that effect somehow, Illusionist's Bracers would be ideal, if not for the pesky equip ability. Since it only affects abilities of things on the battlefield, cycling continues to be constrained properly. The only other alternative is Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient, which...there's already Mirror Gallery, so it works in multiples already, but only on artifacts. Mycosynth Lattice is right out, as always, for messing with the mana. The two promising effects here are Liquimetal Coating and Argent Mutation. In the former case, nothing can reset the Coating lower than Chaos Warp, but then again it has the ability to target Bloated Toad which can cycle to redraw Chaos Warp, and I believe that's its scarlet letter. The latter option is a spell which is safe in its own way (and it's even a blue spell that can't touch the Toad), but that spell is also a cantrip, a potentially hazardous clause that would need to be examined under a microscope. Either way, those cards don't work under the current configuration because we have a targeting step that uses Metallurgeon and Hearth Kami.
Bloodchief Ascension + Fate Transfer would save a card over Nekusar + Mirror Gallery + Necromancer's Covenant. The trouble is we'd need a separate copy of Fate Transfer for each Quest (which is a pain, but manageable) and that Bloodchief Ascension triggers on cards going to the graveyard from anywhere. Altar of Dementia makes that too easy.
I'm actually inclined to give Consecrated Sphinx the axe before Primal Surge. The Sphinx essentially says "each endgame layer 5 comes with a free layer -1", which really doesn't do a lot if we can start up without it.
If Rings of Brighthearth did work, it would be a layer on Five-Alarm Fire, Night Dealings, Gilder Bairn (which gets added back), and Reckless Assault (replacing Searing Meditation). In terms of recreating that effect somehow, Illusionist's Bracers would be ideal, if not for the pesky equip ability. Since it only affects abilities of things on the battlefield, cycling continues to be constrained properly. The only other alternative is Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient, which...there's already Mirror Gallery, so it works in multiples already, but only on artifacts. Mycosynth Lattice is right out, as always, for messing with the mana. The two promising effects here are Liquimetal Coating and Argent Mutation. In the former case, nothing can reset the Coating lower than Chaos Warp, but then again it has the ability to target Bloated Toad which can cycle to redraw Chaos Warp, and I believe that's its scarlet letter. The latter option is a spell which is safe in its own way (and it's even a blue spell that can't touch the Toad), but that spell is also a cantrip, a potentially hazardous clause that would need to be examined under a microscope. Either way, those cards don't work under the current configuration because we have a targeting step that uses Metallurgeon and Hearth Kami.
Hmm, with Liquimetal Coating, we can use Bloated Toad to redraw Chaos Warp, use Chaos Warp to bounce Bloated Toad and also recycle Liquimetal Coating, and Liquimetal Coating can wait around to bounce Bloated Toad a second time, so that's a problem. Same problem with Argent Mutation. But, I suppose we can change Chaos Warp back to Show and Tell, which doesn't seem to be a problem since we can't kill of an Island that the opponent puts into play. Then, Argent Mutation or Liquimetal Coating can become the targeting card for Bloated Toad, and also turn our desired cards into artifacts.
What's the problem with having a targeting step that uses Metallurgeon and Hearth Kami?
Oh wait, Argent Mutation can't target Bloated Toad. Then I believe it is safe with Chaos Warp.
Second off, it's better to have Copy Enchantment copy Pyromancer Ascension than Doubling Season, you have 8 and 12 clones of each respectively, instead of 4 and 16.
Start by playing Dream Stalker, responding to the trigger with all the Momentary Blinks, and charge Pyromancer Ascension on that. Now the four Heroes Remembered and the Renewed Faith (which you never actually need to cycle) will go to 794 life; your plan with only four Ascensions would have left you with only 180 life.
One copy of Storm Herd now results in 3,252,224 tokens, and the whole lot is worth 87,810,048. This is actually slightly worse than what can be done with extra Doubling Season copies, but they'll catch up soon enough.
Four Day of the Dragons takes you to 3573*2^61, falling further behind the 4-16 distribution But then...one Mogg Infestation with all its copies shoots you to 3573*2^178, flying past the version that gets fewer copies on each spell.
The order of the token-replacement spells doesn't much matter, but after 4 Mogg Infestations, 4 Deploy to the Front, and 3 (yes, only three) Hellion Eruptions, you have 3573*2^1204 tokens, or more than 2^1215. Craterhoof Behemoth at this point goes to 2^1215 power, and Fungal Sprouting gets nine batches of 2^1227 tokens, coming very close to 2^1231 in the end. Now repeat this by alternating Behemoth #2, Sprouting #2, and so on; after all of them you have more than 2^1264 tokens. The last Hellion Eruption sacrifices them all, including the Behemoths, and boosts to 2^1372.
Now of course Praetor's Counsel goes here. On the first copy, you can return Enter the Infinite and play it, drawing the fourth Counsel and putting back the useless Show and Tell after it's been returned to hand (this is why you don't need to cycle Renewed Faith). Each copy of Praetor's Counsel returns cards that can double your creature count about 1300 times, and there are now 36 copies of the spell, so that all will end up at 2^48172. Along the way, you'll also go to 28658 life.
That life total is relevant not because the subsequent casts of Storm Herd will make any difference, but because there's another step you can do when all the other recursion runs out, and it's a step that actually ends up being more powerful than everything else. Play Dream Stalker, return Day of the Dragons, and nothing special happens (your creatures will be Hellions or Dragons, not Goblins). But now you can play Cavern Harpy, bounce the Dream Stalker for gating, and pay 1 life to get its own bounce. Now Day of the Dragons, Cavern Harpy, and Dream Stalker are all back in hand. So far, so good, but not much has changed.
Now that Day of the Dragons is back in hand, play it again. This multiplies your ranks by 4096 (and exiles all the Craterhoof Behemoths), and now they will be composed of dragons. So play Dream Stalker again, choose to bounce Day of the Dragons, and this time you have to respond to the LTB trigger to Day, or else you lose your progress. Cavern Harpy gets everything back in hand, ready to repeat again, this time with one less life and one more trigger waiting on the stack. Repeat this process 28,657 times, down to 1 life, and then respond to the top trigger with the final Hellion Eruption to get your creature base turned into something that isn't Dragons again. Now the triggers will make you sacrifice all dragons (which you don't have any of), and nothing returns until the last trigger, which returns four Craterhoof Behemoth.
You have roughly 2^392056 creatures here, and each Behemoth trigger will give that much power to everything. Flame-Kin Zealot gives everything haste, and then you can attack for roughly 2^784114 damage.
That's a number with over 230,000 digits, but big numbers are big. No, bigger than that. If you can write out the number in full, it's too small. If you can write out the number of digits in the number, it's too small. Single-exponential expressions certainly qualify as being able to write out the number of digits. And that's with a deck that goes twelve cards over budget.
I tried to explain the basic combo here and here. There I was talking specifically about the interaction between Elvish Spirit Guide and Ezuri, Renegade Leader, but all of the first eight combos in my deck work the same way: there is one card, call it card A, that is a creature that can be discarded or exiled to provide a resource, typically mana of a particular color, and another card, card B, that can use that resource to return card A from the battlefield to your hand (by targeting it and using Cowardice). Then there is generally a card C that can also be targeted by card B, that triggers the next combo in the sequence. Landcyclers are a roundabout way of having "discard to provide a mana of a particular color"; you discard it to draw a land of the particular type from the library, then you put it in play and tap it for mana.
Just to go over the way the combo works again, let's take the blue stage of the deck. (It's a little more complicated due to Riven Turnbull being legendary) The important cards are:
Riven Turnbull
Island
Shoreline Ranger
Paragon of Gathering Mists
To get the combo jumpstarted, we need the first card in the next combo, Norritt. Say we have a bunch of hasted Norritts on the battlefield, and the aforementioned cards in our hand. We also have all our support cards on the battlefield, which I won't bother to list here. First, we cast Shoreline Ranger, which puts a bunch of Bloodbond March triggers on the stack. We then counter Shoreline Ranger, putting it in the graveyard, and resolve the first Bloodbond March trigger, putting it on the battlefield. We then put Island on the battlefield via Patron of the Moon and untap it using Amulet of Vigor, and cast Paragon of Gathering Mists as well, getting a bunch of hasted copies via Minion Reflector (Colorless mana is cheap, so we can keep some spare colorless mana to use; Mana Echoes will get us back a lot more than the two mana we spent.). We tap the Island and spend the blue mana to activate Paragon of Gathering Mists, getting a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers that go on top of the Bloodbond March triggers; We use the first one to bounce Shoreline Ranger back to hand. Now we cast and counter Shoreline Ranger again, getting a group of new Bloodbond March triggers going on top of the Psychic Battle triggers, and this time we tap a hasted Norritt to get a new group of Psychic Battle triggers, and use the first one to bounce Shoreline Ranger back to our hand again. We repeat this process for each hasted Norritt. At the end of all that, we have a stack of alternating groups of triggers looking like:
group of Bloodbond March triggers
group of Psychic Battle triggers
group of Bloodbond March triggers
...
group of Psychic Battle triggers
group of Bloodbond March triggers
Now that we have built up our stack, we are ready to resolve it. First, we want to put the Island in our library, so we sacrifice it to Stormwatch Eagle, then put it in the library with Soldevi Digger. Next, we cycle Shoreline Ranger to fetch the Island from the library, put it on the battlefield, and tap it for a blue mana. Now we can resolve the first Bloodbond March layer, putting Shoreline Ranger on the battlefield; next we cast Riven Turnbull, putting a Minion Reflector trigger for it on the stack. Respond to that trigger by activating Paragon of Gathering Mists, getting a bunch of Psychic Battle triggers; use two of them to bounce Shoreline Ranger and Riven Turnbull. Resolve the Minion Reflector trigger, putting a hasted Riven Turbull token on the battlefield (well, many, but they all die but one due to Legendary status). Tap the Riven Turnbull for black mana. Continue this process for each of the Bloodbond March triggers in the top group. At the end we will have a whole bunch of black mana, which we can use to fuel the first combo in the deck; the end result will be a lot more of all our enchantments, including Bloodbond March and Psychic Battle.
Now that all the Bloodbond Marches in the first group are gone, we can now resolve the first Psychic Battle trigger in the second group. This allows us to bounce Shoreline Ranger back to our hand, and cast and counter it again, creating a new first group of Bloodbond March triggers, except this time there are astronomically more Bloodbond Marches around then previously, so we get astronomically more triggers. We resolve this new batch of Bloodbond March the same way as last time until we use them all up, and get more Psychic Battles and Bloodbond Marches; then we resolve the second Psychic Battle trigger in the second group, then the third, et cetera, until we run out of Psychic Battle triggers. Now it's time to refresh the group of Psychic Battle triggers, so this time we cycle Shoreline Ranger rather than cast it, getting us an Island and thus a blue mana, and use the first Bloodbond March trigger in the third group of triggers to bring it back to the battlefield. Then we activate Paragon of Gathering Mists with our newly acquired blue mana, creating a new group of Psychic Battle triggers, as desired, and the first of those triggers can be used to create a new first group of Bloodbond March triggers, and the combo continues. Every once in a while, we will need to use a Psychic Battle trigger to bounce Paragon of Gathering Mists so that we can get more tokens, but using up an occasional Psychic Battle trigger won't affect the combo.
I hope that is enough for you to see the pattern here. we have a stack of alternating groups of triggers; the top group can be used to generate lots of black mana to fuel to next combo after it; we can resolve one trigger from the second group to recreate the top group, only with a lot more triggers; we can resolve one trigger from the third group to recreate the second group with a lot more triggers, and so on down the line. This is a classic implementation of the Ackermann function, so I have been calling the combos "Ackermann stages". In terms of numbers, each X black mana we create fuels the first Ackermann stage, so it produces more than 10 -> 10 -> X Doubling Seasons in the end, or equivalently 10 -> 10 -> X -> 1. So each time we resolve X Bloodbond March triggers in the top group, we produce more than 10 -> 10 -> X -> 1 Bloodbond Marches. This happens for each Psychic Battle trigger in the second group; so with X Psychic Battle triggers, we take Y to 10 -> 10 -> Y -> 1 X times, which produces 10 -> 10 -> X -> 2. So the third group of X Bloodbond March triggers takes Y to 10 -> 10 -> Y -> 2 X times, which produces 10 -> 10 -> X -> 3; and then Nth group takes X to 10 -> 10 -> X -> N. So if the stack is X groups high, we produce more than 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> X Doubling Seasons from the combo.
Each Ackermann stage adds one arrow to the numbers, so after eight Ackermann stages plus a little more at the top, we wind up with a final damage of more than
10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 3 -> 8
To clarify this point, in order for this step to be safe, discarding A can only be capable of producing just enough mana or other resource to activate B exactly once more, for each time we're in a position to discard A. If it can be activated multiple times, that's no good. So certain cards, which were used freely in other attempts at a long, saturated combo, are now off-limits:
-Rings of Brighthearth (this could copy the landcycling ability, letting it fetch the land multiple times and tap it for mana each time)
-March of the Machines (this allows Amulet of Vigor to trigger Minion Reflector, and the multiple copies will allow it to untap multiple times for each time it gets dropped by Patron of the Moon)
-Nature's Revolt (this allows the land itself to trigger Minion Reflector)
-Mana Reflection (this causes the land to produce more mana than it takes for one use of the ability)
Because A is carefully constrained so it can't convert itself into B at any better than a 1-for-1 basis, the steps essentially boil down to "By activating B once, and paying for it the hard way, we lock in some large but predetermined number of times where we can activate it again, effectively for free. These free activations are achieved in such a way that they do not open up any further windows for more free ones, but just the same, they increase the numbers of everything further down the line. Then the next paid activation gets a window for a vastly greater amount of free ones."
1 Black Poplar Shaman
1 Skirge Familiar
1 Riven Turnbull
1 Island
1 Shoreline Ranger
1 Paragon of Gathering Mists
1 Spinal Villain
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
1 Morgue Toad
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 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
2 Ground Rift
Used the extra slots for Ground Rift, which seems better than Chaos Warp due to Storm and cheaper mana cost for Night Dealings.
I wouldn't have thought we would have two Toads in a max damage deck!
Does Slayer of the Wicked, a targeted ETB trigger with only one Minion Reflector, actually do what it's supposed to? It looks to me like the stack has to clear too deep before Twisted Abomination can come back a second time.
You're right, Slayer of the Wicked runs into stack problems; we need to keep bouncing Twisted Abomination one at a time, but all of Slayer's triggers are put on the stack at once. Using more Bloodbond March triggers doesn't help, nor would more Minion Reflector triggers, since they also all go on the stack at the same time. Note to self: Activated abilities are okay, ETB triggers that generate mana are okay, ETB triggers that target are not okay.
We can go back to the Tinder Wall deck, which requires one more cord, so we remove one Ground Rift.
Okay, take four: (or five?)
1 Black Poplar Shaman
1 Skirge Familiar
1 Riven Turnbull
1 Island
1 Shoreline Ranger
1 Paragon of Gathering Mists
1 Skyshroud Archer
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
1 Eastern Paladin
1 Swamp
1 Twisted Abomination
1 Horror of Horrors
1 Slimy Kavu
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Breaking Through the Line
1 Jungle Patrol
1 Plains
1 Noble Templar
1 Icatian Lieutenant
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Chartooth Cougar
1 Rimescale Dragon
1 Disciple of Law
3 Temporal Fissure
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 Chaos Warp
Zero transitional cards, or two better than the Tinder Wall deck, which more than makes up for the fact that we can't use Chaos Warp in the combo anymore.
Also, going to Rimescale Dragon actually means we'd have to cut Gilder Bairn, and that's a loss that's definitely visible in the end, more so than an extra Temporal Fissure or whatever storm card, or maybe even Grip of Chaos if adding that back is more powerful than duplicate storm cards.
So, the Tinder Wall deck it is, for now.
-If we have spare life, pay 2 life for Soul Channeling to put a regeneration shield on the Gilder Bairn token it's enchanting. Then use Five-Alarm Fire to burn the Gilder Bairn, which causes it to regenerate, and thus tap. It then gains a use of its untap ability, which can bounce any creature a bunch, and end by putting even more counters on the Five-Alarm Fire.
-If there is no spare life, Five-Alarm Fire burns the opponent, which triggers every copy of Night Dealings to get a whole bunch of counters.
The final blow is actually a three-part affair.
-First, get the ranks of everything as high as possible in the main phase, using what tools are available at that time.
-In the first combat phase, attack with a single creature, triggering several copies of Finest Hour to create an uninterrupted string of additional combat phases. Each one will result in more creatures, and more Five-Alarm Fire triggers.
-When that predetermined string of combat phases finally runs out, pass the baton by casting World at War as many times as possible. When the game gets to the second main phase, there will be another spurt of combat phases.
The opponent is obviously taking combat damage each time, but after both methods for generating additional combat phases have done as much as they possibly can, the last burst of Five-Alarm Fire damage in the final combat phase proves to be the most numerous factor of all.
Oh, and here's a setup that should finally be rid of the extra transition cards:
1: Black Poplar Shaman, Skirge Familiar
2: Basal Sliver, Twisted Abomination, Swamp, Horror of Horrors
3: Daraja Griffin, Shoreline Ranger, Island, Air Servant (good thing Gilder Bairn can't be given flying)
4: Skyshroud Archer, Elvish Spirit Guide, Riftsweeper, Ezuri, Renegade Leader
5: Copper Myr, Sanctum Plowbeast, Plains, Metallurgeon
6: Hearth Kami, Simian Spirit Guide, Paragon of Fierce Defiance
7: Axebane Guardian, Pale Recluse, Snow-Covered Forest, Adarkar Windform
8: Bloated Toad, Chaos Warp or Ground Rift or whatever. But definitely not Turn to Frog.
Sweet setup! Enough space for three Ground Rifts. (or perhaps two Ground Rifts and a Grip of Chaos is slightly better)
Yawgmoth's Bargain isn't the most appealing thing to use for card draw, because life has another purpose later on, and because it doesn't scale at all: there will never be a time when it makes sense to have more than five copies of Thought Reflection out at once. In my estimation, we're better off cutting both of those cards. Words of Wisdom is still on as a more promising approach, but we do have to use Consecrated Sphinx instead of Psychic Possession. Now that Copy Enchantment is gone, there's no way to get token Auras. Meanwhile, Consecrated Sphinx isn't touchable until stage 3, but that's certainly better than nothing.
I suppose Primal Surge is workable now. After ESG/SSG/land/Warp/Surge there are 2 cards left in hand. I think it's best if these are Soul Channeling and Words of Wisdom--we definitely don't want Soul Channeling to show up in the surge, since it needs to end up on a token copy of Gilder Bairn (remember, no token Auras!), and we might as well take the opportunity to get some free rounds of targeting in the mean time.
Another thing that's workable, if we're not depending on Show and Tell or anything like Wheel of Fortune to set up, is switching Soldevi Digger back to Reito Lantern. That opens up a role for Pain Magnification, another card that shouldn't make a notational difference but does work at a higher level than Chaos Warp or Ground Rift all the same.
After all that, my current working copy still shows two free slots, maybe three if we can do better than the Ground Rift bonus.
2 Mana Echoes
3 Black Poplar Shaman
4 Skirge Familiar
5 Basal Sliver
6 Twisted Abomination
7 Swamp
8 Horror of Horrors
9 Daraja Griffin
10 Shoreline Ranger
11 Island
12 Air Servant
13 Skyshroud Archer
14 Elvish Spirit Guide
15 Riftsweeper
16 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
17 Copper Myr
18 Sanctum Plowbeast
19 Plains
20 Metallurgeon
22 Simian Spirit Guide
23 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
24 Axebane Guardian
25 Pale Recluse
26 Snow-Covered Forest
27 Adarkar Windform
28 Bloated Toad
29 Chaos Warp
30 Ground Rift
31 Night Dealings
32 Pain Magnification
33 Five-Alarm Fire
34 Gilder Bairn
35 Soul Channeling
36 Righteous Cause
37 Boon Reflection
38 Finest Hour
39 World at War
40 Omniscience
41 Primal Surge
42 Words of Wisdom
43 Consecrated Sphinx
45 Doubling Season
46 Bloodbond March
47 Cephalid Shrine
48 Cowardice
49 Grip of Chaos
50 Psychic Battle
51 Leyline of Anticipation
52 Minion Reflector
53 Reito Lantern
54 Altar of Dementia
55 Stormwatch Eagle
56 Patron of the Moon
57 Amulet of Vigor
58 Phelddagrif
59 One with Nothing
60 Door to Nothingness
You can keep drawing cards as long as Words of Wisdom doesn't kill the opponent.
When you attack, you make them discard with Pain Magnification, then put it back in their library with Reito Lantern. Which lets you play more Words of Wisdom. Which lets you play more World at War. Which lets you make them discard more with Pain Magnification... etc... etc... etc...
Pain Magnification isn't a safe addition.
I believe Yawgmoth's Bargain is definitely worth putting in the deck, and is ahead in value to Pain Magnification, Grip of Chaos and Ground Rift. Pain Magnification adds a sideways benefit to Five-Alarm Fire, which is not as beneficial as another Doubling Season boosting the number of Night Dealings; since an extra Ground Rift or Grip of Chaos can provide this boost, they are still better. Yawgmoth's Bargain is better still, since along with Thought Reflection it can draw 32 cards 19 times, including the trio of Bloated Toad, Chaos Warp, and Ground Rift. This will allow us to create a very large stack for the eight stage (over a hundred alternating layers) before we even start casting Words of Wisdom. So that can fill out the deck, pending finding something better.
This also shows the benefit of adding Ground Rifts: each additiional one can be drawn 19 times in the early going by Yawgmoth's Bargain to add to the most important stage. So I'm pretty sure that an extra Ground Rift is currently better than Pain Magnification at this point. What would be nice if we could add an extra layer there; currently we get one layer for all the Pain Magnifications, then one for all the Consecrated Sphinxes, which is equal to the two from Night Dealings, so neither has the advantage at the moment.
Now that I think about it, Pain Magnification allows for opponent card draw, and Night Dealings allows for our own card draw, so there may be a possibility to put them in sequence. Is there some card that requires the opponent to draw a card, that deals 1 or 2 damage to the opponent? No Parley card seems to work.
Words of Wisdom itself can be repurposed to do just that, in the presence of Underworld Dreams.
I think I am not completely satisfied with how much life gain is getting us; I was considering Selvala, Explorer Returned instead of the life gain section at the top. Ashcloud Phoenix connects Selvala with Night Dealings without adding a layer, but we wind up one layer behind. If there is a card that can use a fixed amount of our life to deal 1 or 2 damage to the opponent many times, we could at least get some extra slots.
Soldevi Steam Beast should work for that; it effectively cuts the number of copies of Searing Meditation in half and makes them cost three times as much mana, but neither of those factors are anywhere close to limiting by this point. Pay 2 to regenerate a Steam Beast, 2 more to hit it with a Searing Meditation trigger, use up the shield, and hand out 2 life. Then the next trigger goes to the dome, exactly cancelling out the life they gained just before. Along the way, the lower levels can easily create more Steam Beasts if there's a need to get more that are untapped, since the Searing Meditation triggers create some generalized targets to be passed around.
Having enough spare Steam Beasts to cover a Five-Alarm Fire is downright easy; it might be trickier to make sure they have enough life to cover the entire swath of combat damage dealt in a single blow, but by saving a round of Steam Beasts and a discard until after attackers are locked in, the "last number is biggest" rule appears to triumph.
That amounts to -Soul Channeling, -Phelddagrif, -Underworld Dreams, +Sangromancer, +Searing Meditation, +Soldevi Steam Beast, for no net change in card slots. Actually, the setup makes the lifegain a layer but doesn't actually spend it on anything other than the comparatively weak Yawgmoth's Bargain, so I suppose we can free 2 slots by cutting Righteous Cause and Boon Reflection, if they aren't doing anything better.
If Sangromancer didn't have that ability to trigger on opposing creature deaths, then not only would Phelddagrif be preferred, but Searing Meditation would do better to aim itself at the tokens it's able to create, because then we could add Repercussion. Alternatively, if there were some way to donate an indestructible creature in whatever limited card slots are left, that's safe even with Sangromancer, but then the opponent is taking lots and lots of damage below the level at which Soldevi Steam Beast can give them life, and there's no surviving that unless we severely hobble the damage mechanism.
Reckless Assault?
In fact, the only acceptable card I found was Chancellor of the Dross. And that's worth exploring.
Start by revealing Leyline and Chancellor. Now we need to get to 3 mana in upkeep, so no land drops. Black Lotus doesn't work because it can be recalled by Night Dealings for 0. Desperate Ritual doesn't work because Chaos Warp has to target a permanent, and if we shuffle away Leyline then there's not much else we can do in the upkeep. But Mox Jet would work, and better yet Mana Crypt works too (and lets us avoid throwing away ESG early, so we only need two Riftsweepers instead of three to get the exiled cards back). So Leyline, Chancellor, SSG, Mana Crypt, Chaos Warp, Primal Surge with a card left in hand. Now the objective is to get as many copies of Boon Reflection as we can before the Chancellor trigger resolves. The opponent still only loses 3 life, so they're safe for now, and the life gain both gets an early round of Searing Meditation/Night Dealings, and gets a lot more than 19 draws with Bargain.
That squeezes out both Ground Rift and Grip of Chaos, and I think this is actually powerful enough that it makes sense to cut Thought Reflection and add a second Chancellor to occupy the final slot in the opening hand. Then each trigger resolves separately, so the life gain from the first one can be used to power up the second, and we just do it again. Yawgmoth's Bargain spends about four iterations drawing "bare" cards that are lower-power than Chaos Warp, but after two Chancellor loops they won't be missed much.
2 Mana Echoes
3 Black Poplar Shaman
4 Skirge Familiar
5 Basal Sliver
6 Twisted Abomination
7 Swamp
8 Horror of Horrors
9 Daraja Griffin
10 Shoreline Ranger
11 Island
12 Air Servant
13 Skyshroud Archer
14 Elvish Spirit Guide
15 Riftsweeper
16 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
17 Copper Myr
18 Sanctum Plowbeast
19 Plains
20 Metallurgeon
22 Simian Spirit Guide
23 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
24 Axebane Guardian
25 Pale Recluse
26 Snow-Covered Forest
27 Adarkar Windform
28 Bloated Toad
29 Chaos Warp
30 Night Dealings
31 Searing Meditation
32 Soldevi Steam Beast
33 Sangromancer
34 Pain Magnification
35 Five-Alarm Fire
36 Gilder Bairn
37 Finest Hour
38 World at War
39 Chancellor of the Dross
40 Chancellor of the Dross
41 Leyline of Anticipation
42 Mana Crypt
43 Omniscience
44 Primal Surge
45 Yawgmoth's Bargain
46 Boon Reflection
48 Consecrated Sphinx
49 Opalescence
50 Doubling Season
51 Bloodbond March
52 Cephalid Shrine
53 Cowardice
54 Psychic Battle
55 Minion Reflector
56 Reito Lantern
57 Altar of Dementia
58 Stormwatch Eagle
59 Amulet of Vigor
60 Patron of the Moon
Reckless Assault will work, and as long as Boon Reflection is in the deck, I think it is actually a little better than Searing Meditation; X Searing Meditations can damage the opponent X times, whereas with X Boon Reflections on the battlefield, Reckless Assault can damage the opponent 1.5 * 2^X times after Chancellor of the Dross activates. It is true that Searing Meditation allows the life gain to be used on Yawgmoth's Bargain, but that is comparatively weaker than getting extra uses of Night Dealings.
However, it looks like Boon Reflection is not actually all that beneficial. As noted above, the card draw from Searing Meditations into Night Dealings will be much greater than what we get from Yawgmoth's Bargain, even with Boon Reflection. So, we can replace Boon Reflection with a card that gets us more Searing Meditations; it looks like Grip of Chaos will be better than Thought Reflection, as we currently have just Chaos Warp to increase the eighth stage stack.
Hunting for more improvements, I notice that Circle of Affliction is very interesting, although it doesn't play nice with Searing Meditation or Reckless Assault. If we can enter into it with something that damages ourselves, and exit out of it by paying life for something, it would be worth two layers with Boon Reflection.
My first thought for getting value out of Circle of Affliction was to go back to Phelddagrif and play Fire Covenant for 1, but alas...Fire Covenant can also be played for 3, making Repercussion damage high enough to jump up and hit Pain Magnification. Additionally, Fire Covenant could also target our own creatures, which also causes Repercussion to trigger and that goes right back to Circle of Affliction. Taking out the life payment cards that can cause self-inflicted damage, there's...nothing.
If we did have the "clean Sangromancer", then Repercussion would actually count for two layers: one by aiming Five-Alarm Fire at a created Hippo token, and one lower down when Cleansing Meditation or Reckless Assault does the same.
A complete list of matches for "whenever an opponent discards":
Megrim - This works, but it wedges itself in tightly between Pain Magnification and Night Dealings without any room to do much.
Geth's Grimoire - not only is it an artifact which we can't copy, it's a less powerful effect than Night Dealings.
Abyssal Nocturnus - yawn...
Nath of the Gilt-Leaf - No, really, that's enough Elves for one turn.
Quest for the Nihil Stone - It's great at generating counters, just a bit lacking in having anything to do with those counters.
Liliana's Caress - Actually worse than Megrim for our purposes. If anything actually hooked into this event, it would cut off all opponent-life-loss events, and since damage results in life loss, nothing could possibly trigger Night Dealings in line with the sequence.
Sangromancer - *scribble through the top two-thirds of the text box*
Waste Not - A goldfish opponent has only land cards to discard, so the only trigger that will ever happen is the BB mana. Not that any of them are particularly compelling.
And that's it.
Hang on, though: Another thing we can do with opponent discards is take advantage of the 1:1 correspondence they have with the tolerance for opponent draws. So then draw triggers:
Consecrated Sphinx - well known already
Underworld Dreams - we already discussed this
Kederekt Parasite - miniature Underworld Dreams, whatever
Fate Unraveler - unacceptable, it's an enchantment that has a creature type, allowing Allay to bounce something that makes more colorless mana
and the winner...Nekusar, the Mindrazer.
Nekusar is legendary, so let's add a Mirror Gallery. No matter what we do, the first turn of the game will not have a draw step, so Nekusar's first ability is useless. That leaves it as just another Underworld Dreams, right? Not quite, because Nekusar has a creature type. And unlike Kederekt Parasite, that creature type is Zombie.
Necromancer's Covenant looks potentially dangerous at first glance, an enchantment that can create typed creature tokens. But in order to create any of them, it has to succeed in exiling cards from the graveyard, and it won't be able to do that next time without help from higher up--specifically, Riftsweeper to put the exiled cards back. That makes it safe, and it does exactly what we need it to do: put lifegain on the damage dealt by Nekusar, without touching the damage from Five-Alarm Fire, Repercussion, or Searing Meditation. (The only other Zombie in the deck, Twisted Abomination, won't be dealing any damage except combat damage, so no tripwires go off there either.) It's not quite as good as "Whenever a black creature deals damage, its controller gains that much life"--that would have been worth a full extra layer--but in the days of lifelink technology, it's really asking too much of them to go back to that wording.
2 Mana Echoes
3 Black Poplar Shaman
4 Skirge Familiar
5 Basal Sliver
6 Twisted Abomination
7 Swamp
8 Horror of Horrors
9 Daraja Griffin
10 Shoreline Ranger
11 Island
12 Air Servant
13 Skyshroud Archer
14 Elvish Spirit Guide
15 Riftsweeper
16 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
17 Copper Myr
18 Sanctum Plowbeast
19 Plains
20 Metallurgeon
22 Simian Spirit Guide
23 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
24 Axebane Guardian
25 Pale Recluse
26 Snow-Covered Forest
27 Adarkar Windform
28 Bloated Toad
29 Chaos Warp
30 Night Dealings
31 Repercussion
32 Searing Meditation
33 Nekusar, the Mindrazer
34 Necromancer's Covenant
35 Words of Wisdom
36 Pain Magnification
37 Five-Alarm Fire
38 Gilder Bairn
39 Finest Hour
40 World at War
42 Omniscience
43 Primal Surge
44 Yawgmoth's Bargain
45 Consecrated Sphinx
46 Opalescence
47 Doubling Season
48 Bloodbond March
49 Cephalid Shrine
50 Cowardice
51 Grip of Chaos
52 Psychic Battle
53 Minion Reflector
54 Reito Lantern
55 Altar of Dementia
56 Stormwatch Eagle
57 Amulet of Vigor
58 Patron of the Moon
59 Mirror Gallery
60 Phelddagrif
I scrapped the Chancellor start because those cards just aren't doing anything after the very beginning, but you may be able to find a better tweak in what edge cards make the cut. Otherwise, this deck looks packed and polished enough to be close to a final product.
I think we can get one more layer by adding Armadillo Cloak + Copy Enchantment. Ah, but that goes infinite with Searing Meditation or Reckless Assault, never mind.
Looking over the final sequence, I get:
1 Doubling Season on Night Dealings
2 Night Dealings
3 Repercussion on Searing Meditation
4 Searing Meditation
5 Nekusar, the Mindrazer
6 Pain Magnification
7 Repercussion on Five-Alarm Fire
8 Doubling Season on Five-Alarm Fire
9 Five-Alarm Fire
10 Finest Hour / World at War
11 that extra layer we know and love
So a final damage of more than 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 10 -> 3 -> 11.
Hmm, it looks like Gilder Bairn doesn't actually add any layers by itself; I must have been thinking back to when we had Rings of Brighthearth available. Neither does Thrummingbird it seems. We can keep Gilder Bairn in mind in case there might be something else to untap it, but it doesn't look promising.
Hateflayer is another untapping possibility; we could have Five-Alarm Fire deal damage to Hateflayer, ressurect it with Soul Channeling, then have Hateflayer deal damage to Hippo - but that gets us nowhere, it seems.
Chancellor of the Dross gets us four layers up the final stage, so it's more valuable than Yawgmoth's Bargain or even Words of Wisdom initially. So we definitely want to add that back in. So
+Chancellor of the Dross
+Chancellor of the Dross
+Mana Crypt
-Gilder Bairn
-Grip of Chaos
-Yawgmoth's Bargain/Primal Surge?
The choice between Primal Surge and Yawgmoth's Bargain is interesting; Primal Surge gets us more cards, but it doesn't get us Allay, which is pretty darn crucial. So we'll keep Yawgmoth's Bargain.
2 Mana Echoes
3 Black Poplar Shaman
4 Skirge Familiar
5 Basal Sliver
6 Twisted Abomination
7 Swamp
8 Horror of Horrors
9 Daraja Griffin
10 Shoreline Ranger
11 Island
12 Air Servant
13 Skyshroud Archer
14 Elvish Spirit Guide
15 Riftsweeper
16 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
17 Copper Myr
18 Sanctum Plowbeast
19 Plains
20 Metallurgeon
22 Simian Spirit Guide
23 Paragon of Fierce Defiance
24 Axebane Guardian
25 Pale Recluse
26 Snow-Covered Forest
27 Adarkar Windform
28 Bloated Toad
29 Chaos Warp
30 Night Dealings
31 Repercussion
32 Searing Meditation
33 Nekusar, the Mindrazer
34 Necromancer's Covenant
35 Words of Wisdom
36 Pain Magnification
37 Five-Alarm Fire
38 Finest Hour
39 World at War
40 Leyline of Anticipation
41 Chancellor of the Dross
42 Chancellor of the Dross
43 Mana Crypt
44 Omniscience
45 Yawgmoth's Bargain
47 Opalescence
48 Doubling Season
49 Bloodbond March
50 Cephalid Shrine
51 Cowardice
52 Psychic Battle
53 Minion Reflector
54 Quest for Ancient Secrets
55 Altar of Dementia
56 Stormwatch Eagle
57 Amulet of Vigor
58 Patron of the Moon
59 Mirror Gallery
60 Phelddagrif
Replaced Reito Lantern with Quest for Ancient Secrets, since an occasional five mana payment seems better than a three mana payment every activation.
I'm actually inclined to give Consecrated Sphinx the axe before Primal Surge. The Sphinx essentially says "each endgame layer 5 comes with a free layer -1", which really doesn't do a lot if we can start up without it.
If Rings of Brighthearth did work, it would be a layer on Five-Alarm Fire, Night Dealings, Gilder Bairn (which gets added back), and Reckless Assault (replacing Searing Meditation). In terms of recreating that effect somehow, Illusionist's Bracers would be ideal, if not for the pesky equip ability. Since it only affects abilities of things on the battlefield, cycling continues to be constrained properly. The only other alternative is Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient, which...there's already Mirror Gallery, so it works in multiples already, but only on artifacts. Mycosynth Lattice is right out, as always, for messing with the mana. The two promising effects here are Liquimetal Coating and Argent Mutation. In the former case, nothing can reset the Coating lower than Chaos Warp, but then again it has the ability to target Bloated Toad which can cycle to redraw Chaos Warp, and I believe that's its scarlet letter. The latter option is a spell which is safe in its own way (and it's even a blue spell that can't touch the Toad), but that spell is also a cantrip, a potentially hazardous clause that would need to be examined under a microscope. Either way, those cards don't work under the current configuration because we have a targeting step that uses Metallurgeon and Hearth Kami.
Bloodchief Ascension triggers on cards going to the opponent's graveyard, which doesn't seem too easy; I only see Pain Magnification (and Decimator Web, which is now worth putting in) triggering it.
We have the opportunity to cast Words of Wisdom 53 times at the beginning, so the boost from Consecrated Sphinx is much more than what we would get from Primal Surge.
Hmm, with Liquimetal Coating, we can use Bloated Toad to redraw Chaos Warp, use Chaos Warp to bounce Bloated Toad and also recycle Liquimetal Coating, and Liquimetal Coating can wait around to bounce Bloated Toad a second time, so that's a problem. Same problem with Argent Mutation. But, I suppose we can change Chaos Warp back to Show and Tell, which doesn't seem to be a problem since we can't kill of an Island that the opponent puts into play. Then, Argent Mutation or Liquimetal Coating can become the targeting card for Bloated Toad, and also turn our desired cards into artifacts.
What's the problem with having a targeting step that uses Metallurgeon and Hearth Kami?
Oh wait, Argent Mutation can't target Bloated Toad. Then I believe it is safe with Chaos Warp.